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Authors: Mark M. Lowenthal

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Maintaining a capability for covert action entails expenses, for the operation itself and for the infrastructure involved in mounting the action. Even though covert actions are not planned and executed overnight, a certain level of preparedness (such as having on hand equipment, transportation, false documents and other support items, and trained personnel, including foreign assets) must exist at all times. The operational support structure—which also includes prearranged meeting places, surveillance agents, letter drops, technical support—is sometimes referred to as
plumbing.
Forming and maintaining such a standby capability takes time and costs money. But the key question at this point in the decision-making process is whether the cost—both monetary and political—of carrying out a covert action is justified. Both types of cost become especially important when looking at actions that may last for months or longer.
Alternatives to covert action need to be considered. If overt means of producing a similar outcome are available, they are almost certainly preferable. Using them does not preclude either covert action if overt means fail or covert action employed in conjunction with overt means, but the overt means should usually be tried first.
Policy makers and intelligence officials examine at least two levels of risk before approving a covert action. The first is the risk of exposure. William E. Colby, perhaps reflecting on the large-scale investigations of intelligence that dominated his tenure as DCI (1973-1976), said a director should always assume that an operation will become public knowledge at some point. A difference clearly exists between an operation that is exposed while under way or shortly after its conclusion and one that is revealed years later. Nonetheless, even a long-postponed exposure may still prove to be embarrassing or politically costly.
The second risk to be weighed is failure of the operation. Failure of this nature may be costly at several levels: in human lives and as a political crisis for the nation carrying out the operation, as well as for those it may be trying to help. Decision makers must weigh the relative level of risk against the interests that are at stake. An extremely risky operation may still be worth undertaking if the stakes are high enough and no alternatives are available. In other words, the ends may justify the means, or at least the risks. For example, in the 1980s the United States was looking for ways to aid the Mujaheddin rebels in Afghanistan who were fighting Soviet invaders. One option was to arm the rebels with Stinger antiaircraft missiles, which would counter the successful Soviet use of helicopters. But policy makers were concerned that some Stingers would fall into the wrong hands or be captured by the Soviets. Ultimately. the Reagan administration decided to send the Stingers, which helped alter the course of the war. It also left Stingers in the hands of the Mujaheddin after their victory, but policy makers deemed that a smaller risk than Soviet victory in Afghanistan.
Even though intelligence analysis and operations exist only to serve policy, intelligence officers may be eager to demonstrate their covert action capabilities. Several factors may drive officers to do so: a belief that they can deliver the desired outcome, a bureaucratic imperative to prove their value, and their professional pride in doing this type of work. However, unless the operation is closely tied to agreed on policy goals and is supported as a viable option by the policy community, it starts off severely hampered. Covert action planners must therefore closely coordinate their plans and actions with policy offices.
Covert actions are extraordinary steps, something between the states of peace and war. That alone is enough to raise broad ethical questions, although the policy makers’ willingness to maintain a covert action capability indicates some agreement among them on the propriety of its use. The specific details of an operation are likely to raise ethical issues as well. Should assistance be given to foreign political parties facing a close but democratic election against communist parties (e.g., France and Italy in the 1940s)? Should a democratically elected but procommunist government be subverted and overthrown (e.g., Guatemala, 1954)? Should a nation’s economy be disrupted—with attendant suffering for the populace—to overthrow the government (e.g., Cuba, 1960s)? Should a group opposed to a hostile government be armed, with a view toward fomenting an insurgency (e.g., Nicaragua. 1980s)? The issues these questions raise are important not only intrinsically but also because of the risk of exposure. How do covert actions fit with the causes, standards, and principles that the United States supports?
In evaluating proposed covert actions, policy makers should examine analogous past operations. Have they been tried in this same nation or region? What were the results? Are the risk factors different? Has this type of operation been tried elsewhere? Again, with what results? Although these are commonsense questions, they run up against a governmental phenomenon: the inability to use historical examples. Decision makers are so accustomed to concentrating on near-term issues that they tend not to remember accurately past analogous situations in which they have been involved. They move from issue to issue in rapid succession, with little respite and even less reflection. Or, as Ernest R. May and Richard Neustadt pointed out in
Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision Makers
(1988), they learn somewhat false lessons from the past, which are then misapplied to new circumstances.
Legislative reaction to covert actions is a bigger issue for the United States than it is for other democracies. The congressional committees that oversee the intelligence community are an integral part of the process, as providers of funding and as decision makers who need to be apprised of planned operations. Although congressional support is important, it is not mandatory. The long lead times required for the operations also mean that they can be put into the budget process in advance, so that funds can be allocated for them. Assuming that appropriated funds exist and that there are no specific bars to the covert action in question, then Congress must be informed but has no approval role.
Covert action does require formal approval in the executive branch. The president must sign an order approving the operation, based on the president’s
finding
that covert action is “necessary to support identifiable foreign policy objectives of the United States, and is important to the national security of the United States.” In intelligence parlance, this document is called a
presidential finding.
Congress and the American public did not know that the president signed off on each operation until Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger was forced to reveal as much before a congressional committee in the mid-1970s. Presidential findings are now required by law and must be in writing (except for emergencies, in which case a written record must be kept and a finding produced within forty-eight hours).
The finding is transmitted to those responsible for carrying out the operation and to the members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees or a more limited congressional leadership group in a memo of notification (MON). Often, because of the long time lines involved, the congressional committees will already have learned about the operation via the budget process, which includes a review of the year’s covert action plan. Congress may wish to be briefed on the specifics of the finding and the operation. The briefings are advisory in nature. Other than denying funding during the budget process, Congress has no basis for approving or disapproving an operation, unless specific laws or executive orders ban them—such as the acts passed by Congress in the 1980s limiting aid to the contras or the executive order banning assassination.
However, should committee members or the staffers raise serious questions, a prudent covert action briefing team reports that fact to the executive branch. This should be enough to cause the operation to be reviewed. The executive branch may still decide to go ahead, or it may make changes in the operation to respond to congressional concerns. According to press accounts, the George W. Bush administration considered a covert action to support certain parties and candidates in the Iraqi election in 2005 but rescinded the action because of congressional opposition.
The covert action policy system, for all of its rules, remains fragile because of its inherent secrecy. The Iran-contra scandal underscored some of its weaknesses. A majority in Congress, opposed to support for the contras in Nicaragua, cut off funding. President Ronald Reagan, in his usual broad manner, urged his National Security Council (NSC) staff to help the contras “keep body and soul together.” NSC staffer Lt. Col. Oliver L. North did this by soliciting donations from private individuals and foreign governments, alleging that DCI William J. Casey, who died just as the scandal broke, had approved his actions. North also argued that Congress’s restrictions applied to the Department of Defense (DOD) and intelligence agencies, not to the NSC staff. In a parallel activity, the NSC staff pursued clandestine efforts to improve ties to Iran and free hostages in the Middle East, despite earlier objections to this policy by the secretaries of state (George P. Shultz) and defense (Caspar W. Weinberger). Israel shipped antitank missiles to Iran at the behest of the NSC staff, with the United States replacing them in Israel’s inventory. North also became involved in the Iranian initiative and suggested diverting to the contras the money that Iran had paid for the missiles.
Iran-contra pointed up several problems in the covert action process.
• Questionable delegations of authority ordered and managed covert actions (the actions of North on the NSC staff).
• Presidential findings were postdated and signed ex post facto (the finding authorizing the sale of missiles to Iran).
• Disparate operations were merged (using the Iranian money to fund the contras).
• The executive branch failed to keep Congress properly informed (disregarding the laws restricting aid to the contras and not briefing on the finding to sell missiles to Iran).
 
Debates on the worthiness of the respective policies involved in Iran-contra notwithstanding. NSC staff and other executive branch officials violated a host of accepted norms and rules in managing the operations.
The creation of the post of director of national intelligence (DNI) in 2004 raises new questions for the supervision of covert action. The DNI is now the president’s senior intelligence adviser, which would presumably include covert action, one of the most important types of intelligence activities. Operational responsibility for conducting covert action remains within the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The law states that the new director of the CIA (DCIA) reports to the DNI, but it does not specify how extensive this reporting requirement is. The law is clear that the DNI does not have operational control over the CIA. Thus, the DNI will have to create mechanisms that will allow for insight into covert action capabilities and the status of ongoing operations. One can easily foresee situations in which the DNI and the DCIA will be at odds over covert action.
THE RANGE OF COVERT ACTIONS
 
Covert actions encompass many types of activities.
Propaganda
is the old political technique of disseminating information that has been created with a specific political outcome in mind. Propaganda can be used to support individuals or groups friendly to one’s own side or to undermine one’s opponents. It can also be used to create false rumors of political unrest, economic shortages, or direct attacks on individuals, to name a few techniques.
Political activity is a step above propaganda, although they may be used together. Political activity enables an intelligence operation to intervene more directly in the political process of the targeted nation. As with propaganda, political activity can be used to help friends or to impede foes. For example, in the late 1940s the United States supplied scarce newsprint to centrist, anticommunist political parties in Italy and France during closely contested elections. The United States has also funneled money to political parties overseas to help during elections. Or a state can use political activity more directly against its foes, such as disrupting rallies or interfering with their publications.
 
Figure 8-1
The Covert Action Ladder
 
The United States has tended to use economic activity against governments deemed to be hostile. Every political leadership—democratic or totalitarian—worries about the state of its economy because this has the greatest daily effect on the population: the availability of food and commodities, the stability of prices, the relative ease or difficulty with which basic needs can be met. Economic unrest often leads to political unrest. Again, other techniques may be used in conjunction with economic activity, such as propaganda to create false fears about shortages. Or the economic techniques may be more direct, such as attempts to destroy vital crops or to flood a state with counterfeit currency to destroy faith in the monetary system. For years, the United States attacked Cuba’s economy directly as well as indirectly via a trade embargo. Economic unrest was also a key factor in U.S. efforts to undermine the government of Salvador Allende in Chile in the early 1970s. Economic destabilization may be more effective against a more democratic rule, as in Chile, than against a dictatorship, as in Cuba, which has fewer qualms about inflicting want or privation on its people and is much less responsive to—(or tolerant of) popular protests.
BOOK: Intelligence: From Secrets to Policy
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