Topics in Intelligence: Final Exam Essay

Topic 1

With rare exceptions, all covert action is immoral. The United States has received enormous benefit by differentiating itself from other nations as maintaining a higher standard in foreign affairs. We may be the first empire in history to have obtained super power status precisely because we didn’t seek it. Our foreign policy must reflect our values, not because it is the right thing to do, but because it is the ultimate source of our national power. Covert action should not be part of the equation.

Covert action is defined in the National Security Act, Sec. 503 (e), as “An activity or activities of the United States Government to influence political, economic, or military conditions abroad, where it is intended that the role of the United States Government will not be apparent or acknowledged publicly.”

Covert action spans a range of activities: At the lowest level, such actions, which do not violate national sovereignty, include providing economical or technical assistance to foreign governments, protection of VIPs, and the low-level and legal funding of political parties. There is nothing inherently immoral in such activities, nor in their being kept secret. Often, the secrecy of these innocuous activities is at the request of the beneficiary of the action, who for one reason or another finds it convenient not to be overtly tied to the Unites States.

The next highest level of activity includes violations of national or international law. However, morality is situational, not absolute. An action that might be of doubtful morality when considered in isolation might be necessary to prevent or correct a greater wrong. For instance, the earliest CIA covert actions were to give support to moderate French and Italian political parties in the late 1940s (Lowenthal 2003, 129). It is true that the US was interfering in the political processes of sovereign states; however, what necessitated these actions was the fact that the USSR was funding communist parties in France and Italy.

As another example, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty were covert actions in that they officially were privately financed operations, but in fact they were funded by the US government. The intentional broadcast of signals into another country from a foreign source is a violation of national sovereignty; however, these operations provided the peoples of Eastern Europe with a more balanced source of news and information than they otherwise would have had. Illegal certainly, but hardly immoral. Indeed, the post-communist presidents of the Czech Republic and Poland hailed Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty as the most successful covert actions by the US during the Cold War.

At the high end of the spectrum are the extremely intrusive and risky types of covert action: employing agents of influence, buying politicians, engaging in economic sabotage and paramilitary operations. The riskier and more intrusive the action, and the more such action conflicts with American values, the fewer the situations to which it is appropriate. For instance, the economic destabilization of Chile to undermine the legally elected Salvador Allende was clearly a violation of American values, and it is highly questionable whether it served a legitimate American national security concern (Lowenthal 2003, 32, Nathan and Oliver 1989, 326-327). Certainly the Chilean people paid a horrendous price throughout the long dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, as did the people of Guatemala for the American-imposed exchange of the legally elected Jacobo Arbenz Guzman for the dictatorship of Carlos Castillo Armas (Nathan and Oliver 1989, 153-154). On the other hand, American support of the Mujaheddin to expel the Soviets from Afghanistan was a covert action consistent with American values (Lowenthal 2003, 126, 133), although this should have been followed by overt and effective American aid to build the economic infrastructure and civil institutions necessary to the nurturing of a new democracy.

It is doubtful that US foreign policy operates at a higher standard than, say, that of Canada or Sweden, but it is certainly on a higher standard than any number of totalitarian regimes, including the former Soviet Union. To whom should we compare ourselves? We should certainly aspire to a higher standard than our strategic rivals since one of the roots of the rivalry is political philosophy. When we fail to operate on the standard of our liberal democratic allies, we weaken our claim to mantle of leadership of the Free World. Yet, the US has global interests that other states do not, and these are enticements to involve itself in the political and economic affairs of countries around the world.

While it can be said that there was no single, overarching policy-making body that deliberately set out the build the American Empire, various interests have promoted expansionist economic and political policies that have had the combinatorial effect of creating that empire. The power of the dollar as the global hegemonic medium of exchange has necessitated the development of a global projection capability to protect global strategic interests. We did not get here entirely by accident. On the other hand, much of American power is soft power--the power of our dynamic culture of free expression that readily embraces and reinterprets the diverse influences of other lands, the power of the political philosophy of liberal democracy, the power of acting in a legalistic way though multilateral institutions.

John Ikenberry describes the current unipolar world as “a liberal hegemony,” characterized by the international institutions the US has constructed since the end of the Second World War (Ikenberry 1999). Michael Doyle points out that liberal democracies are each other’s natural allies. Liberal pacific alliances such as NATO, ANZUS, and the US-Japanese alliance are the best hope for the evolution of a peaceful world (Doyle 1999). Although in terms of the global scale of interests and its ability to project military power, the US resembles imperial Rome, in terms of domestic political structure and relations with foreign states, a more accurate analogy would be republican Rome in the 2nd century BCE following the Second Punic War. The great strategic rival has been defeated after decades of struggle, the known world is becoming more economically integrated, power projection expands to protect those widening economic interests, the gap between rich and poor widens, the growing power asymmetry within society corrupts the character of the republic, the distinction between allies and dependent states inexorably blurs as does the distinction between citizen and illegal enemy combatant, and all the peoples of the Earth are made subject to our law. We are not yet an empire in all of the classic senses of the term, but we may be heading that way. Shakespeare’s Mark Antony asked rhetorically, “Here was a Caesar! When comes such another?” Perhaps sooner than we would expect or wish.

As the soft power of imperial Rome declined--its culture, its political philosophy, and its legal tradition--all that was left to hold the empire was its military power. Ultimately, this proved to be insufficient on its own, draining the economy and hastening the collapse. Our foreign policy must indeed reflect our values for as long as we can hold onto them, because soft power is the cheapest and most efficient source of national power.

In the final analysis, American values and covert action are not incompatible concepts per se. In every house there are transparent windows and opaque doors. There are situations in which covert action is entirely appropriate, just as there are cases in which it is entirely inappropriate, and many gray regions between the extremes, in which the skill of statecraft is in properly distinguishing one from the other, where to put the doors and where to put the windows.

Topic 3

The primary job of any intelligence organization is to provide policy makers the benefit of their best judgment. Yet having spent untold billions of dollars in the Cold War, the US intelligence community continues to miss the bull’s eye. From Indian nuclear bombs to the bombing of the USS Cole, we’ve been caught blissfully unaware.

“You can’t win ‘em all.” To expect the intelligence community to uncover every plot against the United States is totally unrealistic. What is the standard of success? Fifty percent or better? Ninety-nine percent? Somewhere in between?

When intelligence failures occur, they are sometimes spectacular, such as the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the Tet Offensive in 1968, the fall of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi of Iran in 1979, and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. But successes are undercounted by their very nature; it can be assumed that they often remain classified to protect sources and methods, and even when declassified they are usually unspectacular and therefore underreported in the media. Thus, even were there an agreed upon standard of success, it could not be measured using open-source information.

In any case, it would unfair to say that “we’ve been caught blissfully unaware.” The intelligence community had been on the trail of Al Qaeda for three years prior to the September 11, 2001 attacks, and it was well aware that it was planning a spectacular attack against a significant or symbolic American target. The problem was that there was no actionable intelligence, no precise indication of when, where, and how the attack would come.

At the same time, however, it is clear that more resources should have been dedicated to the “war” that Osama bin Laden declared in May 1998, a declaration which Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) George Tenet acknowledged and reciprocated on December 4, 1998, four months after the bombing of the US embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (Hill 2002, 13, 17). Approximately 10-15 people had been assigned to the bin Laden unit of the DCI’s Counterterrorist Center (CTC) prior to the embassy bombings. This staffing was ramped up to approximately 35-40 people immediately prior to September 11, 2001. Additionally, the FBI created its own bin Laden unit in 1999 and had 19-20 people assigned to it prior to September 11, 2001 (Hill 2002, 13). Nevertheless, it is nothing other than shocking that prior to September 11, 2001 there were only three analysts assigned to the bin Laden unit at the CTC, and that the FBI’s international terrorism analytical unit had only one person assigned to Al Qaeda (Hill 2002, 18). This hardly seems an adequate army to fight a war. One wonders whether it was here that the US Army’s later recruiting slogan “An Army of One” originated.

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) budget was cut by 40% between 1990-98. However, since 40% of the budget was devoted to covert action during the Cold War, and this had been reduced to less than 2% by 2001, it can be deduced that the budget reduction should not have substantially affected CIA capabilities in other areas. However, during the same period, the National Security Agency (NSA) suffered drastic losses in budget, which was reflected in both personnel cuts and in its inability to modernize its technological base. As a result, the NSA had one million untranslated Arabic documents in its possession on September 11, 2001.

It must be concluded from the above facts that the intelligence community was aware of the threat posed by Al Qaeda, but was unable to adequately respond to it for a number of reasons. In part it was due to the neglect of the executive and legislative branches to maintain Cold War funding levels. Also, the intelligence community, long used to working against a huge, bureaucratic, and technologically inferior nation-state, failed to adequately remold itself to face a small, nimble, transnational entity empowered by the latest commercially-available technology. Finally, the fragmentation of the community, together with its inherent culture of secrecy, inhibited the sharing of information across agencies between those who had the need to know. While it can never be known whether the timely correction of these deficiencies would have led to the foiling of the September 11 plot and the prevention of other intelligence failures, such corrective action would certainly have improved our chances.

References

Doyle, Michael W. 1999. A liberal view: Preserving and expanding the liberal pacific union,” In International order and the future of world politics, ed. T. V. Paul and John A. Hall, p. 41-66. Cambridge, UK. Cambridge University Press.

Hill, Eleanor. 2002. Joint inquiry staff statement, part I. Testimony before the Senate Select Intelligence Committee and the House Permanent Select Intelligence Committee, September 18.

Ikenberry, G. John. 1999. Liberal hegemony and the future of American postwar order,” In International order and the future of world politics, ed. T. V. Paul and John A. Hall, p. 123-145. Cambridge, UK. Cambridge University Press.

Lowenthal, Mark M. 2003. Intelligence: From secrets to policy. Washington, DC. CQ Press.

Nathan, James A., and James K. Oliver. 1989. United States foreign policy and world order. Glenview, Illinois. Scott, Foresman and Company.