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Authors: Mark M. Lowenthal

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The proximate school argued that separating the two functions deprives both analysis and operations of the benefits of a close relationship. Analysts gain a better appreciation of operational goals and realities, which can be factored into their work, as well as a better sense of the value of sources developed in espionage. Operators gain a better appreciation of the analyses they receive, which can be factored into their own planning.
Although critics of the current structure have repeatedly suggested separating analytical and operational components, the proximate school has prevailed. In the mid-1990s the DI and DO entered a partnership that resulted in bringing together their front offices and various regional offices. This did not entirely improve their working relationship. One of the by-products of the 2002 Iraq WMD estimate was an effort to give analysts greater insight into DO sources. This was largely a reaction to the agent named CURVE BALL, a human source under German control whose reporting on Iraqi biological weapons proved to be fabricated, unbeknownst to some analysts, who unwittingly continued to use this reporting as part of their supporting intelligence even after the reporting had been recalled.
 
THE DEBATE OVER COVERT ACTION. As discussed in Chapter 1, covert action in the United States has always generated some uneasiness among those concerned about its propriety or acceptability as a facet of U.S. policy. In addition, many debated the propriety of paramilitary operations—the training and equipping of large foreign irregular military units, such as the contras. Other than assassination, paramilitary operations have been among the most controversial aspects of covert action, and they have an uneven record. The vigor of the debate for and against paramilitary operations has varied widely over time. Little discussion occurred before the Bay of Pigs invasion (1961), and afterward there was little discussion until the collapse of the bipartisan cold war consensus that had supported an array of measures to counter Soviet expansion and the revelations about intelligence community misdeeds in the mid-1970s. The debate revived once again during the contras’ paramilitary campaign against Nicaragua’s government in the mid-1980s. In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in the United States in 2001, however, broad agreement emerged on a full range of covert actions.
 
THE CONTINUTY OF INTELLIGENCE POLICY. Throughout most of the cold war, no difference existed between Democratic and Republican intelligence policies. The cold war consensus on the need for a continuing policy of containment vis-à-vis the Soviet Union transcended politics until the Vietnam War, when a difference emerged between the two parties that was in many respects more rhetorical than real. For example, both Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan made intelligence policy an issue in their campaigns for the presidency. Carter, in 1976, lumped revelations about the CIA and other intelligence agencies’ misconduct with Watergate and Vietnam; Reagan, in 1980, spoke of restoring the CIA, along with the rest of U.S. national security. Although the ways in which the two presidents supported and used intelligence differed greatly, it would be wrong to suggest that one was anti-intelligence and the other pro-intelligence.
 
HEAVY RELIANCE ON TECHNOLOGY. Since the creation of the modern intelligence community in the 1940s, the United States has relied heavily on technology as the mainstay of its collection capabilities. A technological response to a problem is not unique to intelligence. It also describes how the United States has waged war, beginning as early as the Civil War in the 1860s. Furthermore, the closed nature of the major intelligence target in the twentieth century—the Soviet Union—required remote technical means to collect information.
The reliance on technology is significant beyond the collection capabilities it engenders, because it has had a major effect on the structure of the intelligence community and how it has functioned. Some people maintain that the reliance on technology has resulted in an insufficient use of human intelligence collection (espionage). No empirical data are available supporting this view, but this perception has persisted since at least the 1970s. The main argument, which tends to arise when intelligence is perceived as having performed less than optimally, is that human intelligence can collect certain types of information (intentions and plans) that technical collection cannot. Little disagreement is heard about the strengths and weaknesses of the various types of collection, but such an assessment does not necessarily support the view that espionage always suffers as compared with technical collection. The persistence of the debate reflects an underlying concern about intelligence collection that has never been adequately addressed—that is, the proper balance (if such balance can be had) between technical and human collection. This debate has arisen again in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in 2001. (See chap. 12 for a discussion of the types of intelligence collection required by the war on terrorism.)
 
SECRECY VERSUS OPENNESS. The openness that is an inherent part of a representative democratic government clashes with the secrecy required by intelligence operations. No democratic government with a significant intelligence community has spent more time debating and worrying about this conflict than the United States. The issue cannot be settled with finality, but the United States has made an ongoing series of compromises between its values—as a government and as an international leader—and the requirements for some level of intelligence activity as it has continued to explore the boundaries of this issue.
 
THE ROLE OF OVERSIGHT. For the first twenty-eight years of its existence, the intelligence community operated with a minimal amount of oversight from Congress. One reason was the cold war consensus. Another was a willingness on the part of Congress to abdicate rigorous oversight. Secrecy was also a factor, which appeared to impose procedural difficulties in handling sensitive issues between the two branches. After 1975, congressional oversight changed suddenly and dramatically, increasing to the point where Congress became a full participant in the intelligence process and a major consumer of intelligence. Since 2002, Congress has also become more of an independent intelligence consumer in its own right, in several cases requesting national intelligence estimates (NIEs) on specific topics.
MAJOR HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENTS
 
In addition to the themes that have run through much of the history of the intelligence community, several specific events played pivotal roles in the shaping and functioning of U.S. intelligence.
 
THE CREATION OF COI AND OSS (1940-1941). Until 1940 the United States did not have anything approaching a national intelligence establishment. The important precedents were the COI and the OSS, both created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. At that time, the COI and OSS were headed by William Donovan, who had advocated their creation after two trips to Britain before the United States entered World War II. Donovan was impressed by the more central British government organization and believed that the United States needed to emulate it. Roosevelt gave Donovan much of what he wanted but in such a way as to limit Donovan’s authority, especially his relationship to the military.
In addition to being the first steps toward creating a national intelligence capability, the COI and OSS were important for three other reasons. First, both organizations were heavily influenced by British intelligence practices, particularly their emphasis on what is now called covert action—guerrillas, operations with resistance groups behind enemy lines, sabotage, and so on. For Britain this wartime emphasis on operations was the natural result of being one of the few ways the country could strike back at Nazi Germany in Europe until the Allied invasions of Italy and France. These covert actions, which had little effect on the outcome of the war, became the main historical legacy of the OSS.
Second, although OSS operations played only a small role in the Allied victory in World War II, they served as a training ground—both technically and in terms of esprit—for many people who helped establish the postwar intelligence community, particularly the CIA. However, as former DCI Richard Helms, himself an OSS veteran, points out in his memoirs, most of the OSS veterans had experience in espionage and counterintelligence and not in covert action.
Third, OSS had a difficult relationship with the U.S. military. The military leadership was suspicious of an intelligence organization operating beyond its control and perhaps competing with organic military intelligence components (that is, military intelligence units subordinated to commanders). The Joint Chiefs of Staff therefore insisted that the OSS become part of its structure, refusing to accept the idea of an independent civilian intelligence organization. Therefore, Donovan and the OSS were made part of the Joint Chiefs structure. Tension between the military and nonmilitary intelligence components has continued. with varying degrees of severity or cooperation. It was evident as recently as 2004, when the Department of Defense (DOD), and its supporters in Congress, successfully resisted efforts to expand the authority of the new director of national intelligence to agencies within DOD. (See chap. 3 for details.)
 
PEARL HARBOR (1941). Japan’s surprise attack in 1941 was a classic intelligence failure. The United States overlooked a variety of signals: U.S. processes and procedures were deeply flawed, with important pieces of intelligence not being shared across agencies or departments; and mirror imaging blinded U.S. policy makers to the reality in Tokyo. The attack on Pearl Harbor was most important as the purpose of the community that was established after World War II. Its fundamental mission was to prevent a recurrence of a strategic surprise of this magnitude, especially in an age of nuclear-armed missiles.
 
MAGIC AND ULTRA (1941-1945). One of the Allies’ major advantages in World War II was their superior signals intelligence, that is, their ability to intercept and decode Axis communications. MAGIC refers to U.S. intercepts of Japanese communications: ULTRA refers to British, and later British-U.S., interceptions of German communications. This wartime experience demonstrated the tremendous importance of this type of intelligence, perhaps the most important type practiced during the war. Also, it helped solidify U.S.-British intelligence cooperation, which continued long after the war. Moreover, in the United States the military, not the OSS, controlled MAGIC and ULTRA. This underscored the friction between the military and the OSS. The military today continues to direct signals intelligence, in the National Security Agency (NSA). NSA is a DOD agency and is considered a combat support agency, a legal status that gives DOD primacy over intelligence support at certain times. Both the secretary of defense and the DNI have responsibility for NSA.
 
THE NATIONAL SECURITY ACT (1947). The National Security Act gave a legal basis to the intelligence community, as well as to the position of director of central intelligence, and created a CIA under the director. The act signaled the new importance of intelligence in the nascent cold war and also made the intelligence function permanent, a significant change from the previous U.S. practice of reducing the national security apparatus in peacetime. Implicitly, the act made the existence and functioning of the intelligence community a part of the cold war consensus.
Several aspects of the act are worth noting. Although the DCI could be a military officer, the CIA was not placed under military control, nor could a military DCI have command over troops. The CIA was not to have any domestic role or police powers, either. The legislation does not mention any of the activities that came to be most commonly associated with the CIA—espionage, covert action, even analysis. Its stated job, and President Harry S. Truman’s main concern at the time, was to coordinate the intelligence being produced by various agencies.
Finally, the act created an overall structure that included a secretary of defense and the National Security Council; this structure was remarkably stable for fifty-seven years. Although minor adjustments of roles and functions were made during this period, the 2004 intelligence legislation (see chap. 3 for a fuller discussion of this act) and the establishment of a director of national intelligence brought about the first major revision of the structure created in the 1947 act.
 
KOREA (1950). The unexpected invasion of South Korea by North Korea, which triggered the Korean War, had two major effects on U.S. intelligence. First, the failure to foresee the invasion led DCI Walter Bedell Smith (1950-1953) to make some dramatic changes, including increased emphasis on national intelligence estimates. Second, the Korean War made the cold war global. Having previously been confined to a struggle for dominance in Europe, the cold war spread to Asia and, implicitly, to the rest of the world. This broadened the scope and responsibilities of intelligence.
 
THE COUP IN IRAN (1953). In 1953 the United States staged a series of popular demonstrations in Iran that overthrew the nationalist government of Premier Mohammad Mossadegh and restored the rule of the shah, who was friendlier to Western interests. The success and ease of this operation made covert action an increasingly attractive tool for U.S. policy makers, especially during the tenure of DCI Allen Dulles (1953-1961).
 
THE GUATEMALA Coup (1954). In 1954 the United States overthrew the leftist government of Guatemalan president Jacobo Arbenz Guzman because of concern that this government might prove sympathetic to the Soviet Union. The United States provided a clandestine opposition radio station and air support for rebel officers. The Guatemala coup proved that the success in Iran was not unique, thus further elevating the appeal of this type of action for U.S. policy makers.
BOOK: Intelligence: From Secrets to Policy
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