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Authors: Mark M. Lowenthal
BOOK: Intelligence: From Secrets to Policy
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THE MISSILE GAP (1959-1961). In the late 1950s concern arose that the apparent Soviet lead in the “race for space,” prompted by the launch of the artificial satellite Sputnik in 1957, also indicated a Soviet lead in missile-based strategic weaponry. The main proponents of this argument were Democratic aspirants for the 1960 presidential nomination, including Sens. John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Stuart Symington of Missouri. The Eisenhower administration knew, by virtue of the U.S. reconnaissance program, that the accusations about a Soviet lead in strategic missiles were untrue, but the administration did not respond to the charges in an effort to safeguard the sources of the intelligence. When the Kennedy administration took office, it learned that the charges were indeed untrue, but the new secretary of defense. Robert S. McNamara, came to believe that intelligence had inflated the Soviet threat to safeguard the defense budget. This was an early example of intelligence becoming a political issue, raised primarily by the party out of power.
The way in which the missile gap is customarily portrayed in intelligence history is incorrect. According to legend, the intelligence community, perhaps for base and selfish motives, overestimated the number of Soviet strategic missiles. But the legend is untrue. The overestimate came largely from political critics of the Eisenhower administration, not the intelligence agencies themselves. Not only did these critics overestimate the number of strategic-range Soviet missiles, but the intelligence community underestimated the number of medium- and intermediate-range missiles that the Soviets were building to cover their main theater of concern. Europe. McNamara’s distrust of what he perceived as self-serving Air Force parochialism moved him to create the Defense Intelligence Agency.
This was one of the earliest instances of intelligence being used for political purposes. It also underscored the problem of secrecy, in that President Eisenhower did not believe he was able to reveal the true state of the strategic missile balance, which he knew. He did not want to be asked how he knew, which might have led to a discussion of the U-2 program, in which manned aircraft equipped with cameras penetrated deep into Soviet territory in violation of international law. U-2 flights over the Soviet Union continued until May 1960, when Francis Gary Powers, on contract with the CIA, was shot down over Sverdlovsk. Powers survived and was put on trial. Eisenhower was initially reluctant to admit responsibility for the overflights. (The Soviet Union knew about the U-2 flights and also knew the true state of the strategic balance, as the size of U.S. forces was not classified.)
THE BAY OF PIGS (1961). The Eisenhower administration planned an operation in which Cuban exiles trained by the CIA would invade Cuba and force leader Fidel Castro from power. The operation was not launched until Kennedy had assumed the presidency, and he took steps to limit overt U.S. involvement to preserve the fiction that the Bay of Pigs invasion was a Cubans-only exercise. The abysmal failure of the invasion showed the limits of large-scale paramilitary operations in terms of their effectiveness and of the United States’ ability to mask its role in them. It was a severe setback for the Kennedy administration and for the CIA, several of whose top leaders—including DCI Allen Dulles—were retired as a result, as were all of the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS (1962). Although now widely interpreted as a success, the confrontation with the Soviet Union over its planned deployment of missiles in Cuba was initially a failure in terms of intelligence analysis. All analysts, with the notable exception of DCI John McCone (1961-1965), had argued that Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev would not be so bold or rash as to place missiles in Cuba. Analysts also assumed that no Soviet tactical nuclear missiles were in Cuba and that local Soviet commanders did not have authority to use nuclear weapons without first asking Moscow—both of which turned out to be false, although this was not known until 1992. The missile crisis was a success in that U.S. intelligence discovered the missile sites before they were completed, giving President Kennedy sufficient time to deal with the situation without resorting to force. U.S. intelligence was also able to give Kennedy firm assessments of Soviet strategic and conventional force capabilities, which bolstered his ability to make difficult decisions. It was an excellent example of different types of intelligence collection working together to support one another and to provide tips to other potential collection opportunities. The intelligence community’s performance in this instance went a long way toward rehabilitating its reputation after the failure of the Bay of Pigs.
THE VIETNAM WAR (1964-1975). The war in Vietnam had three important effects on U.S. intelligence. First, during the war concerns grew that frustrated policy makers were politicizing intelligence to be supportive of policy. The Tet offensive in 1968 is a case in point. U.S. intelligence picked up Viet Cong preparations for a large-scale offensive in South Vietnam. President Lyndon B. Johnson had two unpalatable choices. He could prepare the public for the event, but then face being asked how this large-scale enemy attack was possible if the United States was winning the war. Or he could attempt to ride out the attack, confident that it would be defeated. Johnson took the second choice. The Viet Cong were defeated militarily in Tet after some bitter and costly fighting, but the attack and the scale of military operations that the United States undertook to defeat them turned a successful intelligence warning and a military victory into a major political defeat. Many wrongly assumed that the attack was a surprise.
Often-heated debates on the progress of the war took place between military and nonmilitary intelligence analysts. This was seen most sharply in the order of battle debate, which centered on how many enemy units were in the field. Military leaders believed that intelligence analysis (primarily from the CIA) was not accurately reporting the progress being made on the battlefield. The argument on the enemy order of battle centered on CIA analysis that showed more enemy units than the military believed to be operating. Or, to put it conversely, if the United States was making the progress being reported by the military, how could the enemy have so many units in the field? The more long-lasting and most important result of the war was to undercut severely the cold war consensus under which intelligence operated.
THE ABM TREATY AND SALT ACCORD (1972). The Nixon administration negotiated limits on antiballistic missiles (ABMs) and strategic nuclear delivery systems (the land-based and submarine-based missile launchers and aircraft, not the weapons on them) with the Soviet Union. These initial strategic arms control agreements—the ABM treaty and the strategic arms limitation talks (SALT I) accord—explicitly recognized and legitimized the use of
national technical means
or NTM (that is, a variety of satellites and other technical collectors) by both parties to collect needed intelligence, and they prohibited overt interference with national technical means. Furthermore, these agreements created the new issue of verification—the ability to ascertain whether treaty obligations were being met.
(Monitoring,
or keeping track of Soviet activities, had been under way since the inception of the intelligence community, even before arms control. Verification consists of judgments or evaluations based on monitoring.) U.S. intelligence was central to these activities, with new accusations by arms control advocates and opponents that intelligence was being politicized. Those concerned that the Soviets were cheating held that cheating was either being undetected or ignored. Arms control advocates argued that the Soviets were not cheating or, if they were, the cheating was minimal and therefore inconsequential, regardless of the terms of the agreements, and they maintained that some cheating was preferable to unchecked strategic competition. Either way, the intelligence community found itself to be a fundamental part of the debate.
national technical means
or NTM (that is, a variety of satellites and other technical collectors) by both parties to collect needed intelligence, and they prohibited overt interference with national technical means. Furthermore, these agreements created the new issue of verification—the ability to ascertain whether treaty obligations were being met.
(Monitoring,
or keeping track of Soviet activities, had been under way since the inception of the intelligence community, even before arms control. Verification consists of judgments or evaluations based on monitoring.) U.S. intelligence was central to these activities, with new accusations by arms control advocates and opponents that intelligence was being politicized. Those concerned that the Soviets were cheating held that cheating was either being undetected or ignored. Arms control advocates argued that the Soviets were not cheating or, if they were, the cheating was minimal and therefore inconsequential, regardless of the terms of the agreements, and they maintained that some cheating was preferable to unchecked strategic competition. Either way, the intelligence community found itself to be a fundamental part of the debate.
INTELLIGENCE INVESTIGATIONS (1975-1976). In the wake of revelations late in 1974 that the CIA had violated its charter by spying on U.S. citizens, a series of investigations examined the entire intelligence community. A panel chaired by Vice President Nelson A. Rockefeller concluded that violations of law had occurred. Investigations by House and Senate special committees went deeper, discovering a much wider range of abuses.
Coming so soon after the Watergate scandal (which involved political sabotage and criminal cover-ups and culminated in the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon in 1974) and the loss of the Vietnam War, these intelligence hearings further undermined the public’s faith in government institutions, in particular the intelligence community, which had been largely sacrosanct. Since these investigations, intelligence has never regained the latitude it once enjoyed and has had to learn to operate with much more openness and scrutiny. Also, Congress faced the fact of its own lax oversight. Both the Senate and the House created permanent intelligence oversight committees, which have taken on much more vigorous oversight of intelligence and, as mentioned earlier in the chapter, are now major taskers of intelligence themselves.
IRAN (1979). In 1979, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s revolution forced the shah of Iran from his throne and into exile. U.S. intelligence, in part because of policy decisions made by several administrations that severely limited collection, was largely blind to the growing likelihood of this turn of events. Successive administrations had restricted U.S. contacts with opposition groups lest the shah would be offended. In addition to these limits placed on collection, some intelligence analysts failed to grasp the severity of the threat to the shah once public demonstrations began. The intelligence community took much of the blame for the result despite the restrictions within which it had been working. Some people even saw the shah’s fall as the inevitable result of the 1953 coup that had restored him to power.
One ramification of the shah’s fall was the closure of two intelligence collection sites in northern Iran that the United States used to monitor Soviet missile tests, thus impairing the ability to monitor the SALT I agreement and the SALT II agreement then under negotiation.
IRAN-CONTRA (1986-1987). The administration of Ronald Reagan used proceeds from missile sales to Iran (which not only contradicted the administration’s own policy of not dealing with terrorists but also violated the law) to sustain the contras in Nicaragua fighting against the pro-Soviet Sandinista government—despite congressional restrictions on such aid. The Iran-contra affair provoked a constitutional crisis and congressional investigations. The affair highlighted a series of problems, including the limits of oversight in both the executive branch and Congress, the ability of executive officials to ignore Congress’s intent, and the disaster that can result when two distinct and disparate covert actions become intertwined. The affair also undid much of President Reagan’s efforts to rebuild and restore intelligence capabilities.
THE FALL OF THE SOVIET UNION (1989-1991). Beginning with the collapse of the Soviet satellite empire in 1989 and culminating in the dissolution of the Soviet Union itself in 1991, the United States witnessed the triumph of its long-held policy of containment, first postulated by George Kennan in 1946-1947 as a way to deal with the Soviet menace. The collapse was so swift and so stunning that few can be said to have anticipated it.
Critics of the intelligence community argued that the inability to see the Soviet collapse coming was the ultimate intelligence failure, given the centrality of the Soviet Union as an intelligence community issue. Some people even felt that this failure justified radically reducing and altering the intelligence community. Defenders of U.S. intelligence argued that the community had made known much of the inner rot that led to the Soviet collapse.
This debate has not ended. Significant questions remain not only about U.S. intelligence capabilities but also about intelligence in general and what can reasonably be expected from it. (See chap. 11 for a detailed discussion.)
THE AMES SPY SCANDAL (1994) AND THE HANSSEN SPY CASE (2001). The arrest and conviction of Aldrich Ames, a CIA employee, on charges of spying for the Soviet Union and for post-Soviet Russia for almost ten years shook U.S. intelligence. Espionage scandals had broken before. For example, in the “year of the spy” (1985), several cases came to light—the Walker family sold Navy communications data to the Soviet Union, Ron Pelton compromised NSA programs to the Soviet Union, and Larry Wu-tai Chin turned out to be a sleeper agent put in place by China.
Ames’s unsuspected treachery was, in many respects, more searing. Despite the end of the cold war. Russian espionage against the United States had continued. Ames’s career revealed significant shortcomings in CIA personnel practices (he was a marginal officer with a well-known alcohol problem), in CIA counterespionage and counterintelligence, and in CIA-FBI liaison to deal with these issues. The spy scandal also revealed deficiencies in how the executive branch shared information bearing on intelligence matters with Congress.
The arrest in 2001 of FBI agent Robert Hanssen on charges of espionage underscored some of the concerns that first arose in the Ames case and added new ones. Hanssen and Ames apparently began their espionage activities at approximately the same time, but Hanssen went undetected for much longer. It was initially thought that Hanssen’s expertise in counterintelligence gave him advantages in escaping detection but subsequent investigations revealed a great deal of laxness at the FBI that was crucial to Hanssen’s activities. Hanssen. like Ames. spied for both the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia. Hanssen’s espionage also meant that the damage assessment done after Ames was arrested would have to be revised, as both men had access to some of the same information. Finally, the Hanssen case was a severe black eye for the FBI, which had been so critical of the CIA’s failure to detect Ames.
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