is spying necessary?

We have a controversy raging in our midst. The government has been trying to spy on terrorists' conversations and the civil libertarians amongst us say that this is illegal and should be off limits.
This goes to the heart of what a democracy based upon principles of freedom can or can't do to defend itself.
This goes to the heart of the question as to whether spying is a necessity. Today is the anniversary
of D-Day which marked the beginning of the end of Hitler's Reich. The immediate cause of the
entrance of our country into the war was the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. The reason it was
such a successful raid for the Japanese was due to good intelligence right under our noses. We , on the other hand, hand very little sophisticated intelligence available. Hence we were caught
off guard.
What does the Torah imply about the need for intelligence or spying?
G-D did not command Moshe to send spies into the Land of Canaan. Moshe, however agreed to send spies in order to head off any uneasiness that the people might have if he would push them to go forward against their will. Now this is strange. We find in the previous Sidra that there were complainers about the difficulty of the travel that was being done so rapidly that the children weren't eating right and the adults hadn't gotten sufficient rest from the last move,so how dare you push us ? Nonetheless , Moshe pushed on and the complainers were let loose to never land!
So why now does Moshe hesitate with so much at stake?
Did Moshe not understand the possibility of a mutiny if the spies brought back a negative report?
Furthermore if the Shechinah was leading them and the Holy Ark destroyed the enemies along the way what did they need spies for?
We must conclude that the question about sending spies indicated a level of Faith that represented a descent from the position they had been prior to the request. As long as they they were on a relied on Moshe' s leadership, only questioning details in the decisions , supernatural plane and deserving of G-D's direct leadership.
When a person begins to question the relationship altogether ,then this level of Providence stops of its' own accord.
Thus Moshe had no choice but to heed the wishes of the nation as they no longer had the same relationship with G-D. This was not a punishment . rather it is a consequence of man's own decision making. In a natural order, spying isn't a luxury . It's a necessity brought on by the presence of enemies. As long as a nation has enemies spies are a necessary evil. This is why Moshe agreed to send the spies.

Interestingly , who are chosen to be the spies for the nation? Its' greatest leaders!? "Why" , you might ask ? This is precisely because of the stakes involved in the process of intelligence . Oftentimes you find that the secret organizations such as the C.I.A. and even the Shin -Bet have been known to use people ruthlessly . For this reason also, the people sent on such missions usually are unattached, single people. These are also taught to be callous and mercenary without regard to those around him. Somehow the greater good is invoked in all of these capers.

Not so with Moshe's spies! They had to be the leaders and the scholars .They had families to worry about and had to do everything scrupulously according to the Halachah!
As a postscript, Caleb and Pinchas the High Priest's son are sent 39 years later as the spies for Joshua . Again , notice the care in choosing only a high profile leader to risk his own life in the process , even while refusing temptations of the flesh.
Their final act as spies was saving Rahab who helped them along with her family. Now this was unheard of in the past that spies would guarantee the lives of citizens who helped them against their own government. Usually those who did so were bribed handsomely and as mentioned
in the spy game people are only as necessary as the fulfillment of your mission. Here they would overwhelm Jericho shortly. No one would know whether they had ever promised amnesty to anyone . Yet these were not the unattached predators of humanity that swim amongst the sharks.
These were the finest characters of our nation. As such, even while they pursued surreptitious methods, they retained their standards of humanity!