Fixing The Spy Machine

FIXING THE SPY
MACHINE
This page intentionally left blank
FIXING THE SPY

MACHINE
Preparing American Intelligence
for the Twenty-First Century
Arthur S. Hulnick
Foreword by Richard R. Valcourt
PRAEGER
Westport, Connecticut
London
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hulnick, Arthur, 1935Fixing the spy machine : preparing American intelligence for the
twenty-first century / Arthur S. Hulnick ; foreword by Richard R. Valcourt
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-275-96652-6 (alk. paper).ISBN 0-275-96653^ (pbk. :
alk. paper)
1. Intelligence serviceUnited States. I. Title.
JK468.I6H85 1999
327.1273dc21
99-37523
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available.
Copyright 1999 by Arthur S. Hulnick
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be
reproduced, by any process or technique, without the
express written consent of the publisher.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 99-37523
ISBN: 0-275-96652-6
0-275-96653-i (pbk.)
First published in 1999
Praeger Publishers, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881
An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc.
www.praeger.com
Printed in the United States of America
The paper used in this book complies with the
Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National
Information Standards Organization (Z39.48-1984).
10 9 8 7 6 5 4
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) asked the author to include the
following statement in this book:
CIA's Publications Review Board has reviewed the manuscript for this
book to assist the author in eliminating classified information and poses
no security objection to its publication. This review, however, should not
be construed as official release of information, confirmation of its accuracy,
or an endorsement of the author's views.
In fact, the CIA's review was helpful and certainly not onerous. No
other intelligence service seems to be as willing as the CIA to permit its
former officers to write about intelligence matters.
For Eileen, Sandra and Larisa
Contents
Foreword by Richard R. Valcourt
Acknowledgments
Acronyms
xi
xvii
xix
Is the Spy Machine Broken?
Stealing the Secrets
23
Puzzles and Mysteries
43
Secret Operations
63
Catching the Enemy's Spies
87
Stopping the Bad Guys
105
Managing and Controlling Secret Intelligence
129
Spying for Profit
151
Secret Intelligence and the Public
173
Fixing the Spy Machine
191
10
Bibliography
209
Index
217
Foreword
Proposals to reform the U.S. intelligence community are not new. Congress and outside investigators have persistently urged that alterations
be made in the structure of the Central Intelligence Agency since its
inception in 1947 and to those of its sister agencies in the various years
thereafter. Efforts at reform tend to run in cycles, increasing in intensity
in the aftermath of the failure of a particularly unpopular covert action,
or when an intelligence analysis has proven embarrassingly inaccurate.
Internal reform efforts are generally more incremental than the broadscale suggestions offered by external forces. The bureaucracy appreciates
its own accomplishments and naturally protects its members, as might be
anticipated in any functioning organization, public or private. Even scholars are loathe to have their presumably closely-reasoned, informed assessments challenged. But internal commentary is often more astute than that
offered by outsiders. Intimate knowledge of relevant intellectual and organizational processes takes a significant amount of time and effort, and
those who have challenged any government agency's performance often
soften their criticisms when given access to the decisionmakers and their
rationale, or upon personal participation in an agency's ranks.
Arthur S. Hulnick, a veteran of more than thirty-five years in the intelligence community, has had the benefit of learning the business from
the ground up. Starting with his service in the U.S. Air Force and subsequent recruitment by the CIA, Mr. Hulnick served in both the analytical and clandestine branches of the Agency. Subsequently, he became
an editor of the President's Daily Brief and Coordinator of Academic Affairs in the CIA's Office of Public Affairs. He also served as Chairman
of the Director of Central Intelligence's Management Advisory Group.
As an Agency spokesman, Mr. Hulnick embarked upon an extensive
xii
Foreword
speaking tour of U.S. colleges and universities, writing and speaking

about the CIA and its role in the intelligence community. Explaining the
world of intelligence to generally skeptical audiences, he won numerous
friends by advocating greater Agency openness and easier access to its
noncritical documents, so as to allow a deeper public understanding of
the real work of intelligence officers. Yet, to date, the CIA remains substantially unable to adequately explain itself to the public.
Late in his Agency career, Mr. Hulnick became a CIA officer-inresidence at Boston University, teaching about the intelligence profession
and its role in the policymaking process. Subsequent to his retirement
from the Agency, he remained with the university, lecturing in its department of international relations. In conjunction with his teaching, Mr.
Hulnick has participated consistently in the activities of the Intelligence
Studies Section of the International Studies Association and has long
been a member of the editorial board of the International Journal of Intelligence and Counterlntelligence.
Over more than a dozen years, Mr. Hulnick's articles, reviews, and
commentaries in numerous publications have addressed an assortment
of vexingly difficult intelligence issues, some of which are revisited in
Fixing the Spy Machine. In the pages of the International Journal of Intelligence and Counterlntelligence and elsewhere, he has written, naturally,
about the Agency's often controversial and contentious relationship with
academia, indicating that it should be a symbiosis not a psychosis; dealt
with the difficulty of obtaining information about intelligence and advocating greater openness to facilitate scholarly research and greater
public understanding and appreciation; discussed the "uneasy relationship" between intelligence and private industry; wondered about the
effectiveness of contemporary counterlntelligence efforts while examining the cause and effects of the Aldrich Ames case; differentiated between intelligence officers and police officers, indicating that "spies are
not cops"; questioned the future of covert action; and examined the possibilities for intelligence cooperation in the post-Cold War era. On the
Agency's internal operations, Mr. Hulnick has studied techniques for
managing the CIA's analysis process and speculated on methods for determining U.S. intelligence policy. He has reviewed books dealing with
the federal government's long-standing reliance, dating to President
George Washington's days, on various forms of intelligence, military and
political, and on the delicate balance that must be maintained by the
American intelligence community in a world essentially hostile to its
operations.
Fixing the Spy Machine is Mr. Hulnick's first book. Taking his previous
writings several steps further, this volume is a scholarly, yet easily understandable treatise on numerous reorganization proposals from legislators
and special commissions in the past several years. Rather than dwelling at
Foreword
xiii
length on the intense criticisms of the past quarter century, dating back to
the upheavals of the early 1970s when the Seymour Hersh articles in The
New York Times and the Select Senate and House Committees conducted
hearings that brought the intelligence community to its figurative knees,
Mr. Hulnick looks at more recent reorganization efforts and applies them
to the contemporary CIA and its sister agencies. For instance, he notes that
a major impediment to achieving a more beneficial relationship between
intelligence producers and consumers is the decisionmakers' preference
for "top secret" information rather than material collected mainly from
open sources. He deplores the relative lack of appreciation for the work of
intelligence analysts and the frequent downplaying of their contribution
to overall policymaking in government.
Mr. Hulnick also questions the financial balance of intercept intelligence, noting the difficulty of determining the effectiveness of this very
expensive process. Technology can go only so far, or as he puts it, "Spy
cameras are not much use without the spy." Much is requested from the
intelligence community, but, as Mr. Hulnick points out, intelligence can't
predict the future, it can offer only a weighted judgment about the likely
course of events.
Arthur Hulnick's assessment of the wide discrepancy in power between the titular head of the intelligence community, the director of central intelligence, and its actual head, the secretary of defense, is
noteworthy. Most media attention focuses on the DCI because of his
statutory position as both coordinator of the overall intelligence apparatus and director of the Central Intelligence Agency. But the DCI controls little more than 10 percent of the intelligence budget; most of the
remainder is under the jurisdiction of the defense secretary through his
direct line of supervision over the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, the National
Imagery and Mapping Agency, and the new Measurements and Signatures Intelligence Office. Smaller pieces of the intelligence budget are
held by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Commerce, the State Department (through its Bureau of Information and Research), and the Treasury Department. This huge budgetary imbalance
is the foundation for considerable bureaucratic struggle within the intelligence community and confusion in the outside world among those unfamiliar with the internal financial and organizational struggles.
Intelligence is now part of the corporate world. Many nations encourage
considerable collaboration between their intelligence apparatuses and the
business and corporate sectors. The United States has so far refrained from
developing such a symbiosis, believing in the separation of government
and the private sector, at least in these matters. Furthermore, most intelligence professionals consider themselves public servants, working on behalf of the general welfare of the nation and not as paid snoops for private
xiv
Foreword
companies. And, as Mr. Hulnick points out, U.S. firms have not been overeager to get help from the CIA. The American economy is relatively free of
nationally sponsored corporations, and the intensive competition among
companies makes each of them wary of individual assistance from a government unit. A significant number of former intelligence professionals
have joined firms specializing in political risk analysis and business intelligence, but practitioners in those firms realize that private espionage is
theft, and those caught participating in stealing business secrets often incur a criminal liability.
In the espionage business, the "spies" ("agents") are generally foreign
nationals working in their home country on behalf of the United States
or another intelligence service. The CIA personnel are called "case officers." Their job is to recruit, train, "task," and debrief the agents and
send the collected information back to CIA headquarters in Virginia. The
case officer's job is difficult, for he/she must carefully evaluate any potential agent lest the United States's presence in a country be jeopardized
or compromised. The officer's own life is occasionally at stake, as is that
of the prospective recruit. Mr. Hulnick points out that human agents are
often more valuable than sophisticated and expensive technological devices because a person can communicate and interpret in ways no machine can.
The CIA's Clandestine Service case officers must often do business
with "evil people," individuals with whom they would seldom otherwise
associate. Such relationships are a negative, yet essential, part of the intelligence/espionage business. The CIA is aware that relationships with
"evil people" involve considerable danger, ranging from identity disclosure to torture or even death. The worldwide reputation of the United
States is also at stake. In my article "Controlling U.S. Hired Hands"
(International Journal of Intelligence and Counterlntelligence, Vol. 2, No. 2,
Summer 1988, pp. 163-178), I pointed out that these undesirable types
frequently control the legitimate agencies of government in their homelands and hold their nations' seats in the United Nations while participating extensively in international diplomatic circles. Therefore, both
diplomats and intelligence officers are compelled to interact with them.
Given generally accepted U.S. political, social, and ethical mores, these
relationships must become more discrete over time.
The question is often raised as to whether secret ("covert") action is
necessary and whether the Clandestine Service should be separated from
the CIA and, perhaps, attached to the military. This debate, intermittently waged for over five decades, has been consistently resolved in
favor of the Agency's retention of both paramilitary and covert functions.
Covert action is not strictly an intelligence matter, according to the author, who suggests that the relationship between the operations directors
and the analytical branch be closer, particularly among the top people.
Foreword
xv
Mr. Hulnick also recommends the establishment of a Covert Action Coordination Center and that any operation undertaken have a realistic
chance of success and be considered reasonable by the public should it
be disclosed prematurely or result in failure.
The author suggests an enhanced recruitment effort among the best
and brightest college and university graduates as the best method of
developing highly qualified and motivated intelligence officers at all levels and in all directoratesfrom analysts, to case officers, to administrative personnel. He advocates a partial return to the "old school" network,
whereby sympathetic college professors encourage their most promising
students to consider an intelligence career.
Intelligence courses, now being offered at more than one hundred U.S.
institutions of higher learning, are routinely over-subscribed. Not everyone taking these classes is a suitable candidate for an intelligence career,
but several among them might show enough talent to be considered. The
Agency also faces the challenge of developing a better system of training
and retaining these new officers after recruitment so that they can function as a permanent cadre of professionals for two or three decades,
thereby constituting both experienced staff and institutional memory.
The widespread belief that the intelligence community no longer has
a primary function a decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union and
its empire is easily dispelled. In July 1999 Russia's then-prime minister,
Sergei V. Stepashin, a former director of that country's security apparatus, told reporters at the National Press Club in Washington that "[a]s
long as states exist, there will always be special services, intelligence
communities." But, according to The New York Times, "he added that such
ungentlemanly pursuits should not stand in the way of 'partnerlike' relations between the two countries" (July 28, 1999, p. A8).
The continuity of intelligence agencies being virtually guaranteed, Arthur S. Hulnick's Fixing the Spy Machine is not merely a valuable addition
to the literature on intelligence. It is a blueprint for improving the intelligence community of the United States, not by dramatically taking it
apart and building anew, but by acknowledging its accomplishments
over a half-century, incorporating better internal and external communication, balancing investment costs and anticipated results, and finetuning every member agency's components for greater efficiency and
accuracy. Given his four decades of experience as a professional intelligence officer and scholar, Mr. Hulnick's instructions, akin to those of a
master mechanic or technician, should be followed as directed.
Richard R. Valcourt
Editor-in-Chief
International Journal of Intelligence and Counterlntelligence
Acknowledgments
As usual in works of this sort, I owe a debt of gratitude to many people
who helped me and encouraged me in writing this book. Special thanks
go to Deborah and Richard Valcourt of New York City because it was
over a lovely dinner at one of Richard's favorite Manhattan restaurants
that the two of them first kindled the idea of writing this book, pushed
me to come up with a plan for it and even a title. Thanks also to Richard
for finding a publisher and preparing the foreword. As managing editor
and later editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Intelligence and
Counterlntelligence, Richard has published a number of my articles, thus
laying the groundwork for this book.
My wife Eileen and my daughter Sandra were helpful in providing
patient but consistent support whenever my enthusiasm for the project
waned, but it was my younger daughter Larisa who gave me specific
help in editing the original manuscript, questioning my occasionally
vague writing, and providing useful suggestions over the two years it
took to get this book done.
My graduate assistant during the last year of the project, Lisa Sasson,
helped me track down some of the source materials I needed and helped
me put the bibliography together. I was able to obtain other useful data
from the electronic notes sent out by the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO), an organization of which I am an active member.
I am grateful to the folks at Greenwood Publishing for deciding to
publish the book, especially Dr. Heather Ruland Staines, the history editor, who first took an interest in the manuscript, and the others, some
of whom I don't know, who prepared the copy and readied the book for
printing, including Nicole Cournoyer and Bridget Austiguy-Preschel.
My former colleagues at the Central Intelligence Agency have helped
xviii
Acknowledgments
me over the years in staying current on the world and profession of

intelligence. Thanks go to the Center for the Study of Intelligence, which
has taken over the job of providing unclassified materials to me and
hundreds of other academics who teach or write about intelligence matters, and to the Public Affairs Staff which sends out useful information
to those of us who are now or who were CIA Officers-in-Residence on
college campuses around the country. I am especially grateful to the
Publications Review Board at the CIA for their prompt review of this
work and the other articles I have written. They have never been arbitrary or capricious in asking for the very few revisions and deletions
they have requested over the years.
Finally, I wish to thank my colleagues in the Department of International Relations at Boston University who welcomed me when I first
arrived on campus in 1989, defended me against the skeptics who wondered about the propriety of having a CIA "agent" in the classroom, and
questioned the validity of intelligence as an academic subject. The popularity of the courses and the spreading interest in studying the arcane
world of intelligence seem to have silenced the critics.
Acronyms
AFIO
Association of Former Intelligence Officers
ANSIR
FBI security awareness network
ASIS
American Society for Industrial Security
CA
covert action
CFI
Committee on Foreign Intelligence
CI
counterlntelligence; also competitive intelligence
CIA
Central Intelligence Agency
CMS
Community Management Staff
CNC
CNN
Counter Narcotics Center
COMINT
communications intelligence
CTC
Counter Terrorism Center
DCI
director of central intelligence
DDI
deputy director for intelligence
DEA
Drug Enforcement Administration
DGI
Cuban intelligence service
DGSE
French intelligence service
DI
Directorate of Intelligence
DIA
Defense Intelligence Agency
DMI
director of military intelligence
Cable News Network
DNI
director of national intelligence
DO
Directorate of Operations
DOD
Department of Defense
xx
Acronyms
ELINT
electronic intelligence
FBI
Federal Bureau of Investigation
FBIS
Foreign Broadcast Information Service
FOIA
Freedom of Information Act
GOC
global organized crime
GRU
Soviet-Russian military intelligence service
HPSCI
House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
HUMINT
human intelligence
IC
Intelligence Community
IG
inspector general
INR
Bureau of Intelligence and Research (State Dept.)
IOB
Intelligence Oversight Board
KGB
Soviet intelligence service
MASINT
measurements and signatures intelligence
MI-5
British internal security service
MI-6
British secret intelligence service
NACIC
National Counterlntelligence Center
NFIB
National Foreign Intelligence Board
NIC
National Intelligence Council
NIE
National Intelligence Estimate
NIMA
National Imagery and Mapping Agency
NIO
national intelligence officer
NPIC
National Photographic Intelligence Center
NRO
National Reconnaissance Office
NSA
National Security Agency
NTM
National Technical Means
OSINT
open source intelligence
OSS
Office of Strategic Services
PCI
Italian communist party
PDB
President's Daily Brief
PFIAB
President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board
PHOTINT photographic intelligence

R&A
research and analysis
SCIP
Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals
SIGINT
signals intelligence
SIS
Secret Intelligence Service (MI-6)
Acronyms
SSCI
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
SVR
Russian intelligence service
UN
United Nations
WMD
weapons of mass destruction
xxi
CHAPTER 1

America's intelligence system is at a crossroads. As we approach the
twenty-first century, many questions are being raised about a system that
is now more than fifty years old. The roots of this system lie in the
conflagrations of World War II. The system's founding fathers included
such luminaries as "Wild Bill" Donovan, the commander of the Office
of Strategic Services (OSS), and J. Edgar Hoover, director of the Federal
Bureau of Investigation (FBI). American intelligence rang up many victories in World War II. It captured German and Japanese spies, ran
agents into occupied Europe and Asia, broke enemy codes, and carried
out spectacular feats of aerial reconnaissance. During the Cold War
American intelligence repeatedly forecast, with considerable accuracy,
the plans and intentions of the Soviet Union and its associated states
while repeatedly thwarting the operations of its "main enemy," the Soviet KGB intelligence apparatus.
Today America's intelligence system is, by any measure, the largest
and most expensive intelligence bureaucracy in the Western worldperhaps the largest anywhere on the planet. But it's in serious trouble. Despite myriad successes over the past half century as America's first line
of defense in shooting wars and Cold War confrontations, many observers of American intelligence believe the system is seriously flawed and
that America's "Spy Machine" needs a major overhaul.
These days people who think at all about American intelligence remember its failures rather than its victories. Starting with Pearl Harbor
and the invasion of South Korea by the North, up to modern times and
Saddam Hussein's attack on Kuwait, American intelligence does not
seem to do what it was designed for: preventing surprise. Covert action
failures also remain in memory, from the failed Bay of Pigs invasion to
the attempted overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile. And who could

forget the debacle of Aldrich Ames, the Soviet mole inside CIA headquarters?
For many years the CIA ran a film for newly hired employees that
pointed out that while the CIA's failures often became known, its successes had to remain hidden. At the time this was not a big issue for
those of us who toiled inside the CIA because we understood that by
hiding our victories, we stood a very good chance of repeating them. If
our adversaries knew that our sister agency, the National Security
Agency (NSA), was reading their codes, they would change them. If the
enemy knew that we had recruited agents inside their walls, they might
find them and execute them or turn them against us. If they could tell
how good our photo reconnaissance was, they might hide the very weapons or activities we were capable of seeing. We never thought about the
drawback of hiding success.
Is Failure Inevitable?
As American intelligence failures became known, they caused serious
problems. Failure is inevitable in intelligence. It is not always possible
to forecast the future, or measure a hidden weapons system, or stop a
determined terrorist, or find a "mole," an undercover spy inside the intelligence system. Human judgment sometimes results in faulty analysis,
poor decisions, or bad policy. In intelligence operations, where an adversary is working in secret to discredit the intelligence system, as
happened in the Cold War, the enemy may circulate false stories, or
disinformation, to those quite willing to believe that their own intelligence agencies are flawed.
The result of all this is that the American people, to the extent that
they pay attention to such things, and even those who are close observers
of American intelligence, in the media, in academe, and in government,
may have a faulty perception of the successes and failures of the intelligence system. This does not mean that the American people are opposed to having good intelligence. All it takes is a bombing in Saudi
Arabia or Oklahoma City to provoke an outcry for more intelligence. As
General Vernon Walters once said, when the American people feel
threatened, they want intelligence to work for them. He added that they
soon lose interest when the threat is over.1
Misunderstanding of intelligence is further complicated by the growth
of a great body of literature, films, and television over the past fifty years
devoted to spy fiction and espionage drama. People think they know
about the CIA because they've seen James Bond movies or read Tom
Clancy novels. In one absurd incident, students at a prominent eastern
college reportedly protested the appearance of a CIA recruiter after they

had seen a fictional movie portraying CIA involvement in the assassination of a U.S. president.
Examining the System
How can we examine a system that is cloaked in secrecy? In fact, it is
not so difficult. For the careful observer, America's intelligence system
is the most open in the world. This was not always the case. In its early
years the system followed the British style and tried to keep everything
secret. Malcolm Muggeridge, the British author and wit, who served in
British intelligence in World War II, once observed that secrecy in intelligence was akin to vestments in church, creating an aura that is necessary for the process. In America's free society, however, maintaining
secrecy was not so easy. After a series of revelations in the press about
the evils of American intelligence, a host of "tell all" books by former
intelligence officers, and the subsequent development of congressional
oversight by legislators who had for years avoided close scrutiny of intelligence, many of the activities of the intelligence system became public.
This new openness was reinforced when Admiral Stansfield Turner
decided that the American public was paying large sums for the CIA
and American intelligence and that they had a right to know more about
where their money was going. Despite the objections of some old-timers
in the Agency, Turner set up the Public Affairs Office, held press conferences, released previously classified material, and after leaving the
CIA wrote his own book about intelligence. 2 His successors have been
equally open. Despite having been nurtured in the OSS tradition, the late
William Casey became a willing public speaker, and Bob Gates, director
of central intelligence (DCI) under President George Bush, himself a former DCI, wrote a book about his experiences as well. 3 Coupled with
press stories, growing academic interest in intelligence, and the open
literature about it, we now have the opportunity to learn a great deal.
In fact, studying American intelligence is a form of intelligence in itself.
Just as the clever intelligence analyst pieces together small bits of data
from a variety of sources, from agents, from space photos, and from a
variety of open sources, so can we examine the Spy Machine. Admittedly, it helps that the author spent thirty-five years inside the system
as a military intelligence officer and as a CIA official. As with all intelligence professionals, however, the author is sworn to keep the secrets
he learned during his service and is required to submit his manuscripts,
including this one, for review by the CIA. That a reader has access to
this book at all suggests that the CIA had no objection to its publication,
although the Agency may not like what it says. This is yet another rea-
son why American intelligence is unique. In some countries, the author

might have quietly "disappeared."
Reform Studies
Perceptions of failure, concerns about cost and needless duplication
among the various intelligence agencies, the psychological marker of the
dawn of the twenty-first century, the end of the Cold War, the traditional
friction between the Congress and the president, inept management,
bloated bureaucracyany of these might have led to an examination of
the intelligence system. To have them come together all at once, however,
made the examination inevitable. In 1995, at the urging of the Congress
and with the agreement of the president, a study commission was established to make a careful review of American intelligence.4 The commission was to be bipartisan, have access to the entire system of intelligence
agencies that make up the American Intelligence Community, and take
testimony as it wished from practitioners, observers, and opponents of
the system.
At the same time the House of Representatives, through the House
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the oversight committee,
undertook its own study. 5 It was not alone. The Twentieth Century Fund
commissioned a task force on the "Future of U.S. Intelligence" and published the study in Washington, and the Consortium for the Study of
Intelligence, a Georgetown University group, did the same. 6 The results
of all these efforts appeared within months of each other in the first half
of 1996. Interestingly, many of the same people made inputs, gave
testimony, or wrote parts of all four studies. Their conclusions and recommendations, as one might expect, were similar, though with significant differences. Because of the enormous amount of material that went
into the four, the studies provide even more information with which to
study the Spy Machine.
Of course, these studies were written and circulated, for the most part,
"inside the Beltway," that is, within the narrow confines of the Washington governmental community that lies inside the ribbon of concrete
surrounding our capital city. Whereas it did not take much effort to
acquire these studies for someone in the know or for someone with good
contacts in Washington, they did not receive much attention in the rest
of the country. The really knowledgeable could find the studies on the
Internet, but most people have probably never seen them. Nonetheless,
for the careful intelligence watcher, the studies are extremely useful.
Is It Broken?
Now we can begin to analyze the question posed at the beginning of
this chapter. Is the Spy Machine broken? As in most exercises of this
nature, the answer is a mixed one. In some respects, American intelligence is without peer in the world; in others, it is less successful. It is
not nearly as incompetent as some charge, but there are many areas
where repair seems appropriate. Although certainly not the evil "secret
government" that its detractors fear, it has taken on some operations
where it should probably have said an emphatic no. Probably much
larger than it needs to be, the Spy Machine is certainly a confusing conglomerate of agencies strung together through weak ties and in some
cases weak leadership. It has, over time, been penetrated by the enemy,
though not as often as one might expect. Its successes outweigh its failures, but its mistakes have been costly.
What is intelligence anyway? We need to define intelligence if we are
going to examine it, and we have many definitions from which to choose.
Some say that intelligence is information about a nation's adversaries,
enemies, or competitors or about threats to national security. Others argue that intelligence is information designed to assist policy officials in
formulating strategies or reaching decisions. Both positions are correct.
Intelligence is also the business of stopping others from stealing national
secrets, plans, or policies; from penetrating the government; and from
carrying out terrorism. It can include anti-subversive activity, although
the United States has rarely suffered from real internal subversion; or it
can be used to combat narcotics flows and organized crime. Finally, intelligence can include secret operations designed to carry out national
policy by surreptitious methods, or in modern terms covert action.
Intelligence can also be studied in terms of functions. These activities
can be divided in a variety of ways. There is strategic intelligence that
operates at the national level to support the president and his policymakers, and there is tactical intelligence for military operations. Intelligence includes collection operations for gathering information, research
and analysis to make sense out of the gathered data, counterlntelligence
to stop others from doing to you what you are doing to them, covert
action, and intelligence management and control. All these functions will
figure in our examination.
The Intelligence Process
We begin with the general nature of the intelligence process. In almost
all schools that teach about intelligence to practitionersin the military
or the CIAthe concept of the intelligence cycle is widely studied. 7 This

cycle begins with requirements from policy officials, which leads in turn
to collection, analysis, circulation of reports, and decision making. This
is not a particularly accurate or useful explanation of the process generally, but since it is so widely taught, it cannot very well be ignored.
The concept nonetheless gives a distorted picture of how intelligence
really works.
First, policy officials rarely provide intelligence requirements for collection of data. Their questions, to the extent that they ask them at all,
are far too general to guide the gathering of information. Usually requirements for collection come from within the system, since intelligence
professionals know best what information they are missing. Policy officials might give some sense of priorities, but again, they rarely do so.
This forces intelligence collectors to rely on their own reading of what's
going on at the top. In the military, this process is a bit more orderly.
Military commanders do provide guidance for tactical collectors, espcially at the combat level.
Second, collectors cannot always afford to wait for guidance in gathering data. Sometimes they have to anticipate what will be needed and
grab information as they can get it. This is especially true in dealing with
human sources or in some forms of technical collection.
Third, analysts cannot always wait for data to be collected in order to
deal with a fast-breaking issue or problem. Usually analysts have built
a large database and can deal with most subjects using incremental bits
of new data as they get them.
The circulation of reports to consumersdecisionmakers, military
commanders, policy staffers, or intelligence usersis hardly as automatic as the intelligence cycle depicts. In fact, getting intelligence to those
who need it is a major problem for intelligence managers. Ensuring that
the right people receive the information they need or should have, in a
useful format and on a timely basis, is the "end game" in intelligence,
and when it is played poorly, the entire system suffers. History tells us
that intelligence failure can often occur at this point in the intelligence
process.
Last, we know from surveys, interviews, and experience that decisions
are rarely made on the basis of intelligence alone. Although intelligence
may be a crucial part of policy formulation, or in carrying out policy, it
is rarely decisive on its own. Where this has happened, it has usually
been in time of war, such as at the Battle of Midway in World War II in
the Pacific, when Admiral Chester Nimitz trusted his intelligence analysts, who had broken the Japanese code, to tell him where to fight the
Japanese carrier fleet.
Understanding the Process

We also know from surveys and from listening to intelligence consumers that they do not understand the process or the product very well.
After a terrorist bombing in Saudi Arabia in 1996, Defense Secretary
William Perry was heard to remark that he took no action on intelligence
reports because they were "inconclusive." 8 What did he expect? Intelligence is almost always less than perfect in that respect; it is not fact or
truth but judgments based usually on partial evidence, incomplete data,
bits and pieces.
Intelligence managers have never been very good at educating consumers about what to expect from intelligence. Unless the consumer has
been a part of the system, he or she is likely to know the same halftruths about intelligence as the man in the street. In other words, not
much. When he was director of intelligence, former DCI Bob Gates created a handbook for consumers to try to inform them about the system,
but because the text was Top Secret and therefore protected by further
restrictions, few consumers actually had access to it.
Even though the intelligence cycle is a poor depiction of the intelligence process, it gives us a place to start in further defining and describing how intelligence works. We can begin with the collection process,
which breaks down into three major categories: open source collection,
technical collection, and human source collection, which usually means
espionage. Surprisingly, the vast majority of the data collected by intelligence is from open sources. This doesn't sound very exciting, but it has
proven to be extremely useful, effective, and relatively cheap. Open
sourcespress reports, TV and radio broadcasts, governmental reporting, and these days the Internetcan all provide a surprising amount of
information at relatively low cost.
O p e n Sources
During the Cold War we could learn a great deal about our adversaries, even in countries where our diplomats were carefully restricted in
their travels or where there was no U.S. presence at all, from their radio
and TV broadcasts or from publications we could obtain. We learned
about Soviet military strategy from the writings of their generals, and
we could tell what was going on in the Kremlin just from the way the
Soviet leaders arranged themselves on the top of Lenin's Tomb for parades. We could interpret Cuban policy by careful "content analysis" of
Fidel Castro's endless speeches, and we could interpret China's activities

from statements by the New China News Agency.
Open source intelligence is hardly the stuff of spy movies. Yet some
intelligence veterans in Washington have been pushing the system to
place even more reliance on open sources. The Intelligence Community
has responded by appointing an open source coordinator; but unfortunately, when budget cuts have had to be made, such open source organizations as the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), which
has been translating and publishing media reports for more than fifty
years, take the brunt of the reductions. FBIS is a component of the CIA,
and in spite of some antipathy toward the CIA on many college campuses, academics have welcomed their translations and subscribed to
FBIS publications for many years.
Open sources may make up as much as 80 percent of the database on
any given subject or country, though in dealing with a closed society
such as in North Korea, it may be much less. One of the problems involved in using open sources is that they are unclassifiednot secret
and thus the analysis derived from such sources is not supposed to be
secret either. When an analyst combines open source information with
secret sources, the resulting analysis may be classified at the level of the
most sensitive source.
Policy officials are rarely interested in unclassified analysis. They see
it as no better than the New York Times. When the analysis has "Secret"
or "Top Secret" stamped on it, however, it has a cachet. Only cleared
people can have such information, so policy officials are more interested
in paying attention to it. Thus, the clever analyst soon learns that if he
or she wants the attention of the policy community, it is important to
find secret material to use in drawing the analysis, even if the bulk of
the information comes from open sources.
Technical Sensors
Technical collection, using sophisticated electronic sensors, provides
an increasing amount of information in intelligence. Although the techniques date back to before World War I, modern systems have become
increasingly sophisticated in design and capability. Breaking of codes
and ciphers is an ancient practice; indeed, the first codes may have been
used by Alexander the Great. 9 Evidence of code breaking can be found
in the American Revolution and in our Civil War, and similar practices
were used at the same time in Europe. In World War I the British successfully broke German ciphers, leading to the famous Zimmermann
Telegram incident in which a German offer of an alliance with Mexico
was intercepted and deciphered by British intelligence, helping in part

to push America's entry into the war. 10
In World War II a combined group of British, French, and Polish intelligence officers managed to decipher transmissions from the supposedly unbreakable Enigma system. The Germans never found out that
their transmissions were being read by their enemies. At the same time
U.S. Navy code-breakers derived ways to read Japanese diplomatic and
military communications traffic. To protect these intelligence successes,
special handling was required for all those with access to the deciphered
material, and special Top Secret "compartments" were created to limit
distribution of the reports. This is the system that American intelligence
still uses.
When NSA, the National Security Agency, was established in the 1950s
to centralize communication and signals intelligence taken from intercepted foreign transmissions, it was cloaked in secrecy. Later, insiders
claimed that NSA really stood for "No Such Agency" or "Never Say
Anything." Even now, when its mission and activities and even the location of its facilities are relatively well known, NSA remains the most
secretive of all America's intelligence services. Nonetheless, NSA has established a small museum to herald its exploits and has begun to advertise its location and even to sell souvenirs.
Communications intelligence, or COMINT, and its related discipline
of electronic intelligence (ELINT) rarely come in for criticism. Yet, Americans were disturbed after the Vietnam War to discover that NSA resources had been used to gather information about American citizens
involved in anti-war protests in violation of regulations established to
prevent such abuse. Since those revelations there has been no further
evidence of misuse of the intercept system, but there are those who still
fear the possibility that their civil rights might be violated by such a
system.
It is difficult to measure the utility of intercept intelligence. In the author's experience intelligence derived from intercepts tends to be fragmentary and of limited use. Nonetheless, others consider such systems
to be valuable. Because COMINT and ELINT require satellites for much
of the intercept work, the process has turned out to be very expensive.
Also, because so much of such intelligence is still considered Top Secret
and is tightly compartmented, few outside observers can tell much
about its effectiveness. In fact, former CIA director Admiral Turner tried
to write about it in his book Secrecy and Democracy, but his unclassified
draft was allegedly returned stamped "Top Secret." He protested to no
avail.
10
Photo Intelligence
The same protections were given to American photo reconnaissance
in its early post-World War II days. Actually, photo reconnaissance dates
back to the American Civil War when intrepid "intelligencers" lugged
heavy plate cameras onto hot air balloons to capture photos of the enemy. 11 Both sides used balloons, but not until the invention of the airplane did photo observation really became practical. In World War I,
hand-held cameras were soon replaced by photo apparatus specifically
designed to be mounted in the flimsy aircraft of those days, and by
World War II the business of taking photos from high altitude and interpreting them had become quite advanced. The photos were used for
targeting, bomb damage assessment, and other forms of intelligence
gathering. Although no one was paying much attention, photos taken
over Auschwitz revealed clear evidence of Nazi death camps. 12
When the Cold War began and Soviet-controlled territory became
closed to the West, attempts were made to take photos from the periphery of the Iron Curtain using converted bombers. Many planes returned
from such missions full of bullet holes, and some did not return at all.
In order to learn about Communist military capability, a better system
was needed, and so the high-flying U-2 was built, a joint project of the
U.S. Air Force, the CIA, and Lockheed. It was enormously successful.
Flying at over 70,000 feet, the U-2 was immune at first to Soviet attempts
to bring it down. Eventually the Soviets managed to bring down Francis
Gary Powers, and the exploits of the U-2 became known. Nevertheless,
the U-2 remained a very effective weapon in the American intelligence
arsenal, and more than forty years after it first flew, it is still gathering
intelligence for America and its allies.
The follow-on aircraft, the SR-71, ironically called "Oxcart" when it
was first built, was an even more capable airplane. It could fly at Mach
3, three times the speed of sound, fast enough to outrun enemy missiles.
It could fly higher than the U-2, though with more limited range. It was
too expensive to operate, however, and was eventually taken out of service despite sporadic efforts to keep it flying. When one SR-71 was sent
to Dulles Airport from Los Angeles to become part of a planned air
museum, it made the trip in sixty-eight minutes.
Today photo reconaissance has changed. A great deal of emphasis has
shifted from supersonic aircraft to unmanned aircraft, some no larger
than model airplanes. They are relatively inexpensive, are expendable,
and can stay over targets for more than twenty-four hours in some cases.
They are flexible and can be targeted by field commanders rather than
by a remote headquarters in Washington.
The other great change in overhead photography came with the de-
11
velopment of satellites. During the Cold War both the United States and
the Soviet Union, as well as other nations, developed space systems for
photography. At first these systems relied on the return of camera film
from space, but the resulting photos were not timely and were sometimes
lost in returning from space. Later systems used digital imagery to beam
pictures back to Earth in "real time," that is, soon after the image was
captured by the space camera. They provided incredible detail from
more than 150 miles over Earth.
At first the resulting imagery was considered Top Secret and was protected by the same compartmented controls used to protect communications intercepts. Lately the controls have been loosened and the
classification lowered. Nonetheless, the ability of the photo systems remains protected. Some observers have written that the cameras can "read
license plates from space." Why anyone would want to see such a thing,
or how it would be managed, considering that the images are usually
taken from directly over the target, is difficult to conceive.
No one argues about the value or utility of overhead reconnaissance.
Although space-based reconnaissance may not be as useful as photo imagery from aircraft as far as the tactical military commander is concerned, it has many other uses. It can be used to keep an eye on potential
adversaries to prevent surprise attack. It can be targeted against potential
environmental disasters and against narcotics growers and shippers as
well. Space-based reconnaissance is expensive, but modern technology
has given the space "platforms" remarkably long life and capability. Few
critics suggest that we stop using such techniques, but in any budget
discussion, costly space reconnaissance systems are always on the table.
Overlooked in all the hype about overhead reconnaissance is the utility
and value of ground photography. Throughout the Cold War a regular
and systematic effort using surreptitious methods was made to gather
photos of intelligence targets. The history of the "spy camera," for example, parallels that of photography itself. As cameras became smaller,
they were rouinely hidden in matchboxes, in cigarette cases, and even
in buttons. They were used to photograph documents as well as other
targets. Some of the spy cameras are still being manufactured today, and
though early examples are prized by camera collectors, modern models
can still prove useful. The spy camera is not of much use, however,
without the spy.
Espionage
Espionage is probably the oldest form of intelligence gathering. Biblical stories recount the deeds of spies, and Sun Tzu, writing four centuries before the birth of Christ, noted their value in his treatise on war.
12
Recruiting a secret agent to penetrate the enemy's defenses is what many

people think about when the term "intelligence" is used, and clearly,
espionage has been a significant factor in American history. George
Washington ran spy rings against the British, Thomas Jefferson understood the value of spies, James Madison employed them, and James
Knox Polk defended against efforts by the Congress to reveal their identities.13 Spies were used by both sides in the American Civil War, and in
World War II, espionage activity was incorporated in the OSS. Many of
the original members of the CIA, founded in 1947, learned their espionage "tradecraft," as spy techniques are called, in the OSS and returned
to the business when the Agency was created.
Espionage, sometimes called HUMINT for "human intelligence," is
still a controversial subject. Despite its role in the history of the United
States, there are those who take the position, much like the British in the
nineteenth century, that obtaining intelligence by clandestine methods is
abhorrent. Modern critics have argued that espionage is a waste of time.
This view was taken by jailed Soviet spy Aldrich Ames to justify his
willingness to steal information from the CIA. Former State Department
chief of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research Roger Hilsman has said
that he thought foreign service officers were quite capable of collecting
the material that the CIA's Clandestine Service normally gathers, and
George Kennan, the architect of America's strategy during the Cold War,
has said that clandestine intelligence collection is overrated. 14
The Department of Defense (DOD), however, thinks human intelligence is an important part of its data collection system and has established the Defense HUMINT Service to carry out espionage for DOD.
Efforts to link the DOD system with the CIA's Directorate of Operations
in early 1996 came to nothing, despite the recommendations of the study
panels. Actually, the DOD espionage net and the CIA's Clandestine Service are after different targets. Defense is likely to use the system to
obtain tactical military information, whereas the CIA will target political
and economic data. This issue is worthy of further discussion later in
this work.
Espionage is the stuff of spy novels. Intelligence analysis is something
quite different. If you consider that the unknowns in the world are made
up of secrets, puzzles, and mysteries, then intelligence ought to have a
way to get at them. Intelligence collection operations ought to be able to
unearthor stealthe secrets. Intelligence analysis ought to be able to
solve the puzzles and perhaps even divine the mysteries. Intelligence
13
analysis is the most fascinating and yet the least understood or recognized part of the intelligence process.
Intelligence collection systems produce what might be thought of as
"raw" data. The information has not been evaluated or compared to intelligence already on hand. When an analyst evaluates the raw material
and synthesizes judgments from iteither to solve the puzzle or to understand the mysterythen we have what some call "finished" intelligence. Others might call the result an intelligence product. We can
understand this a bit better by looking at the different types of products
intelligence creates.
One major role of any intelligence service is to warn policymakers of
impending crisis. Warning intelligence should alert decisionmakers early
enough so that they can take action to stop or prevent the crisis or at
least prepare themselves to react to it. In order to be able to warn of
crisis, most intelligence services these days maintain twenty-four-houra-day crisis or operations centers, where all incoming material is reviewed and evaluated to make sure that no activity that might be
potentially threatening is missed.
The warning analyst is looking for anomalies or deviations from the
norm, sometimes using "indicators" such as changes in communications
patterns or increases in military movements to tell that something is up.
For example, it is quite common to be able to detect a military overthrow
of a government when normal commercial or governmental broadcasts
switch from their regular programming to the playing of military march
music. Today warning intelligence analysis is aided and abetted by the
proliferation of all-day news services such as CNN, and most operations
centers in the United States probably watch CNN for early warning.
Current Intelligence
A second product is the daily report, a heritage from military intelligence; for many years military commanders have expected to receive,
first thing in the morning, an intelligence briefing to begin their day.
President Truman was an early and eager recipient of an intelligence
brief designed just for the White House, and the practice of issuing a
daily brief has become a staple of CIA intelligence production. The same
may be said for the other U.S. intelligence agencies as well, each with
its own list of "subscribers." With the growth of secure on-line computer
systems, the daily brief has become available electronically day and night
and thus can be updated at a moment's notice. This process is usually
referred to as current intelligence, and it takes up a good part of the
work of intelligence analysts.
14
Inevitably, current intelligence products are criticized because they are

written by experts for non-expertssenior policy officials who are generalists rather than specialists. Consumers of intelligence who are area
or functional specialists usually find daily reports lacking in specificity
or detail and complain that the reports do not help them. Generalists,
however, find them a good, quick update to supplement what they learn
from the media. In fact, because of the efficiency of electronic distribution
of raw intelligence reports to policy users, who receive them at about
the same time as intelligence analysts, policy specialists find few surprises in the resulting daily intelligence products. The "value added" by
intelligence experts in the daily briefs is in the judgments the analysts
reach, untainted by policy considerations or political pressure.
Intelligence analysts create a database out of raw intelligence by writing studies, memoranda, and other research products. Some of these may
be circulated to interested users, others kept on the shelf until a need for
them arises. When analysts share their research with other intelligence
experts, they not only educate their colleagues but also create networks
for sharing knowledge and ideas. Unfortunately, for many years intelligence analysts were pressed to send their research to policy officials,
whether it was wanted or not. The resulting glut of rather lengthy intelligence research papers on policy desks led to a cheapening of the
product, and much of the material went unread. Former DCI Bob Gates
often noted that when he was director of intelligence analysis, his unit
turned out more than 5,000 reports and papers a year. He never said
who wanted them.
We know from interviews, consumer surveys, and informal discussions that policy officials really want intelligence delivered only when
they need it, and in a form they can use: a printed or electronic report,
a video, or a briefing. Intelligence producers thought that as long as they
were putting out an intelligence research paper, they might as well ship
it to anyone who might conceivably have use for it. Modern desktop
publishing techniques and electronic links make it much easier to deliver
just-in-time intelligence only to those who really need it.
A final category of product is the most controversial. These are forecasts of the future, usually referred to as intelligence estimates. They
became a special category of intelligence analysis in World War II when
OSS chief William Donovan created a board of "wise men" to write
estimates for strategic planning. He dubbed the board his "College of
Cardinals." 15 Later, in the CIA, this became the Board of National Estimates, and under DCI Bill Colby the estimates function was taken up by
the newly created National Intelligence Council.
The controversy surrounding intelligence estimates involves the fact
that intelligence analysts cannot really predict the future. The British,
who developed a similar system of estimates, believed that smart people
15
given good data could do so. Experience, however, shows that the best
that can be expected is to give policymakers insights into the future or
weighted judgments about the likely course of events. In other words,
intelligence can try to solve the puzzles or unearth the mysteries, but it
can make no guarantees. This problem is still not well understood by
those who wonder why we spend billions on intelligence if we cannot
forecast the future. The entire issue of intelligence analysis was tackled
by the various reform studies and is worth considerable discussion.
Counterintelligence
The business of counterintelligence (CI) is as old as intelligence collection. It makes sense that if one country is spying on another, the target
country will want to stop its secrets from being stolen. This process is
called counterespionage, one of several categories of activity that might
be considered part of counterintelligence. Most countries in the modern
era have counterintelligence and security services, and many of them
have at least some form of police power. This is the case with America's
domestic CI and security service, the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Of
course, the FBI is primarily focused on fighting crime, but countering
foreign espionage has always been part of its mandate.
The founder of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, tried to keep the FBI in the
forefront of American intelligence activity, and he fought long and hard
against the growth of the OSS in World War II and the creation of the
CIA in the post-war period. Through much of the Cold War, there was
relatively little cooperation or even communication between the FBI and
the CIA. After Hoover's death, these barriers began to break down. As
the emphasis on countering terrorism has grown in the United States,
more and more efforts have been made to bring the two agencies into a
closer working relationship. In the aftermath of the Aldrich Ames spy
case, the alleged failure of the CIA to give information to the FBI moved
the Clinton administration to detail FBI agents to the CIA to help direct
some CI activity.
Foreign Spies
Penetration of an intelligence organization by foreign spies is almost
inevitable, and it is quite remarkable that American intelligence has so
rarely fallen victim to a "mole." Nonetheless, when it has happened, it
has caused enormous anguish both inside and outside the agencies concerned. It is easy to forget that foreign intelligence organizations, some
friendly, some not so friendly, are working assiduously to get someone
16
inside. More often, hostile intelligence services are able to turn an agem
into a "double" and feed false information to the service that has been
fooled. Today such activity has spread beyond government and has become part of the murky world of business intelligence and industrial
espionage.
Intelligence services have to work diligently to protect themselves
against penetrations, moles, and double agents. In some countries, where
respect for human and civil rights is not strong, a variety of tacticsphone
taps, surveillance, or strong-armed interrogationmight be used against
those suspected of working for the other side. In Western democracies,
and especially in the United States, such draconian methods are carefully
controlled. Thus, intelligence services in democracies have a double burden: They must protect themselves against hostile intelligence agencies
and at the same time respect the rights of their own citizens.
The United States has rarely had a serious problem with internal subversion despite the hysteria of the various "Red scares" that occurred
after both world wars. In many countries, including America's close
neighbor, Canada, internal subversion has been an important target for
CI and security services.16 CI techniques have been used to combat the
growing threat of terrorism, to work against narcotics flows, and increasingly to deal with global crime. Efforts to strengthen CI resources in the
United States, usually in demand after a terrorist incident or a spy case,
tend to be offset by fears of abuse. This was illustrated dramatically in
the summer of 1996 when the Clinton administration, in the aftermath
of the TWA Flight 800 crash, asked Congress for emergency legislation
to fight terrorism. Civil libertarians protested plans to broaden FBI phone
taps and special interest groups quickly rallied to fight chemical markers
in gun powder.
Covert Action
Secret operations, called "covert action" in the United States and "active measures" in Russia, are not intelligence operations in the strict
sense. They are not designed to gather or analyze information. Rather,
they are used to carry out the foreign and security policy of the state
using clandestine methods. They include various forms of psychological
warfare, including deception and disinformation, the use of "agents of
influence" for political or economic operations, support for guerrillas or
irregular military forces, and in some countries assassination, terrorism,
or sabotage. Despite a long history of such covert activity by the United
States, the subject is one of continuing controversy.
George Washington's use of covert action to combat the British is well
documented, and the other Founding Fathers, including Jefferson and
17
Madison, were not opposed to such activity. In fact, running secret operations out of the White House became a tradition in the United States,
involving many presidents up through Teddy Roosevelt. The IranContra affair and the involvement of White House officials in both the
events and subsequent coverup would not have seemed strange to
nineteenth-century presidents.
During the Cold War the American CIA and the Soviet KGB both
carried out covert action to support their respective governments. The
United States said that it was forced to use such dirty tricks because the
other side was so good at them. Thus, the CIA gained a reputation as a
"secret government," allegedly overthrowing regimes it did not like, assassinating leaders it opposed, and supporting evil forces. The reputation
was hardly deserved. When Senator Frank Church claimed that the CIA
was a "rogue elephant running amok," his hearings into the subject
proved that he was wrong. Nonetheless, the reputation of the CIA in
regard to such activity never recovered. There are still those who believe
that the CIA is in league with the devil, or at least is doing business with
the devil's associates.
It is not surprising that questions about covert action were raised in
the various studies on American intelligence. Yet, none of them suggested that the United States should give up on covert action as a potential tool against the bad guys. The studies reiterated that covert action
may prove useful when military action is too strong and where diplomacy seems ineffective. Covert action is a "third option" for policymakers. 17 Most intelligence watchers agree that covert action needs to be
carefully controlled, and so the United States has the most stringent restrictions on covert action of any nation. No president has ever said that
he would be opposed to the use of covert action, and all modern presidents have authorized its use at some point in their tenure.
Managing Intelligence
Controlling and managing intelligence is hardly the subject of spy fiction. Yet, the various studies undertaken during 1995-96 focused a great
deal of attention on management and control issues, and this was true
as well of the studies of the intelligence system carried out in previous
administrations. Whereas management and control issues are of little
interest to the general public, they are the very lifeblood of Washington
bureaucrats. "Turf issues," as they are calledwho controls what functionsare critical in Washington because they mean power, personnel,
and resources and thus rank and importance.
Budget matters are equally critical to the Beltway insider. Money is
power in Washington, and this is true in most areas of government, not
18
just in intelligence. But in intelligence, turf and budget issues are more
difficult to see because of the secrecy that surrounds so much of the
intelligence business. In fact, a great deal of discussion in the recent survey panels was devoted just to the question of whether or not to make
public the total amount of money spent on intelligence each year, as if
no one in Washington knew what the number was. Thanks to leaks to
the press, a common policy tool in Washington, the budgeted amount
spent on intelligence has been general knowledge for years. The breakdown of the budgethow much of the pie each agency receiveswas
also leaked, and so it is relatively easy to calculate the percentage breakdown for future budgets.
The Intelligence Community argues, by the way, that the number is
still secret because it has never been officially confirmed. Can something be secret if everyone knows it? The problem of secrecy, keeping
secrets, and who can determine what should be secret is in itself a subject worth examination. One enterprising reporter tried to find out not
long ago the date of America's oldest secret and found one in the Pentagon (called the "Five-sided Puzzle Palace" by some) that dated back
to World War I.18 Apparently no one had ever bothered to "declassify"
the document, which related to the shipment of American troops to
Europe.
The DCI
A great deal of controversy surrounds the role of the DCI, the director
of central intelligence. Although this person is supposed to be the coordinator of all American intelligence activity and the intelligence advisor to the president, the DCI really has control only over the CIA, a
significant but small part of the overall intelligence bureaucracy. When
the position of DCI was created in 1946, there was no CIA; but when
the Agency was established in 1947, the DCI became its leader.
Most of America's intelligence resources belong to the Department of
Defense, and most of the money spent on intelligence is controlled by
the Pentagon. Smaller intelligence units exist in other departments, including the State Department, Treasury, and Energy and Justice, but they
are "small potatoes" compared to DOD. The FBI, or at least its intelligence components, are part of the Intelligence Community, the conglomerate intelligence establishment, although J. Edgar Hoover fought to keep
the FBI independent of any outside interference.
As one might expect in Washington, the role of the DCI, the extent of
the DCI's control, the resources, and the budget issues all received serious attention in the various intelligence studies. These issues are worth
19
careful study from an outside-the-Beltway perspective. After the official

study commission report was published, efforts were made to make
changes in the intelligence bureaucracy as the study had recommended,
but these initial steps were quickly quashed because of "turf" issues.
Control is also a matter of serious concern. Who does control American
intelligence? It seems clear that it is not always the DCI. Is it the president? The Founding Fathers were very specific in deciding that intelligence was an executive function and should be controlled by the
president. This was argued in the Federalist Papers and in constitutional
debate and has been the general practice since 1790. Efforts by Congress
to challenge the president's preeminent role in intelligence have been
consistently rejected. Yet it remains the subject of discussion.
Any student of management who looks carefully at the conglomerate American Intelligence Community would certainly conclude that it
ought to be realigned. There are nine major agencies plus a host of minor
units, a chief executive with no control over most of these units, and a
budget process that can only be called byzantine. Likely, this system
could be "right-sized" and duplication cut back. But this is very difficult
in Washington, where turf and money are so critical. The problem, then,
is not only proposing changes to the Intelligence Community but also
figuring how to make the changes actually happen.
Management is an internal issue in intelligence, complicated not only
by secrecy but also by what is termed "compartmentation," allowing
intelligence employees to have access only to those secrets they need to
know to do their jobs. In theory, by compartmenting secrets, no single
individual can learn enough to give away everything, even if he or she
should choose to do so. The result is an intelligence bureaucracy in which
many do not know all that they should and are too intimidated to find
out. It seems clear that an individual who really does want to get around
secrecy and compartmentation, and Soviet spy Aldrich Ames or Israeli
agent Jonathan Pollard are good examples, can get whatever he or she
wants.
Management Issues
Intelligence agencies, as large bureaucracies, have the same problems
as any large organization. They have to manage their people and resources, communicate with each other, and handle problems of medical
care, insurance, and even such mundane things as parking for their employees. All of this becomes more difficult when the employees' identities are hidden to allow them to work in secret. A substantial number
of CIA employees are "under cover" to allow them to work abroad with-
20
out becoming targets and to protect their contacts and activities. Some
maintain this cover even in the United States, and this means that their
ties to the CIA have to be protected. Obviously, they cannot have insurance or tax forms or bank accounts that identify them as CIA employees.
This forces the creation of yet another layer of bureaucracy.
Over the years, as America's intelligence agencies have grown, they
have become increasingly bureaucratic. Several of them occupy buildings
spread around Washington and its suburbs, and they always seem to
outstrip their resources. During the Reagan administration, for example,
the CIA was able to double the size of its headquarters, only to find that
it could not shoehorn in all its employees when the building was finished. The formerly Top Secret National Reconnaissance Office (NRO)
created a real stink when it was revealed that its new headquarters had
been built in secret and that it was four times as large as the agency that
was to go in it.
American intelligence agencies have traditionally hired their new employees by seeking the best and the brightest from the nation's top universities and colleges. They no longer recruit in the traditional sense,
however, but merely invite graduates to apply. In the "good old days"
spotters on campus were able to seek out good students and convince
them to apply. This means that some graduates who might have been
effective intelligence officers have never been tapped. Further, the system
tends to try to bring new people in at the lowest level and allow them
to advance through the ranks. It is far less successful at bringing in people at middle grades, even though they might have acquired skills the
system could use.
One study took particular aim at the training American intelligence
professionals receive in preparation for their work. Each agency tends to
run its own training programs, in its own style, emphasizing its own
values. The result is an intelligence system in which values and culture
differ remarkably. Within disciplines, training varies as well. Thus, CIA
officers entering the Clandestine Service, as the Operations Directorate
is known, receive much different preparation than those who go into
analysis or administration. The result has been the creation of a fraternal
atmosphere among those who train together, and this has created problems over the long run, since those who do not belong to the fraternity
are rarely allowed access to its activities.
Over the last few years it has become quite clear that an arrogance has
developed within the Clandestine Service. Activities that should have
been reported to managers or policy officials were withheld because they
were deemed to have "no need to know." Interestingly, the military takes
an entirely different approach to training its intelligence people with
what appear to be far better results, but the CIA has steadfastly refused
to adopt such techniques.
21
Business Intelligence
It should also be noted that intelligence is now no longer the purview
of the government alone. Traditionally, intelligence organizations around
the world, and especially in the United States, have been part of the
federal establishment. Now, we have seen intelligence practices spread
into the private sector. With the growth of industrial espionage, some of
it sponsored by foreign intelligence agencies, American businesses have
turned to intelligence techniques to protect themselves.
There has been a growth as well in intelligence collection and analysis
in the private sector as business firms seek to learn more about areas of
the world in which they might do business or to learn about their competitors in the marketplace. Should the U.S. government help American
business by using national intelligence resources? The Japanese and the
French, not to mention a host of other countries, do use their intelligence
agencies to assist the private sector. So far, both policy officials and intelligence managers in the United States have resisted this, and businesses have not been eager to get help. Nonetheless, the issue remains
open to debate.
Many problems have been created as American intelligence has grown
increasingly large, bureaucratic, and inflexible. Can they be fixed? The
recent surveys have offered some solutions, but because the commissions
took most of their testimony from senior professionals, rather than from
workers at all levels of the bureaucracy, they got some rather self-serving
information from people who had been successful in the bureaucracy.
There are other answers and solutions.
Most of the recent works on intelligence begin their discussions from
the top down. They focus first on the DCI and on the upper elements of
the system. It makes more sense to start at the beginning. We can begin
our exploration where the process starts, with the collection of data, and
go on from there. Perhaps the Washington way makes sense to the bureaucrats, but to a working intelligence officer, the process starts with
collection. So should we.
Notes
1. Vernon Walters, Silent Missions (New York: Doubleday, 1978), p. 611.
2. Stansfield Turner, Secrecy and Democracy: The CIA in Transition (New Y
Houghton Mifflin, 1985).
3. Robert M. Gates, From the Shadows (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996
4. Preparing for the 21st Century, Report of the Commission on the Roles an
Capabilities of the United States Intelligence Community (Washington, DC: GPO,
March 1996).
22
5. IC 21: The Intelligence Community in the 21st Century, Staff Study, Permanent
Select Committee on Intelligence, House of Representatives, 104th Congress
(Washington, DC: GPO, 1996).
6. See In from the Cold: The Report of the Twentieth Century Fund Task Force o
Intelligence (New York: Twentieth Century Fund, 1996); Council on Foreign Relations, Making Intelligence Smarter: The Future of U.S. Intelligence (1996); and Gary
Schmitt and Abe Shulsky, The Future of U.S. Intelligence: Report Prepared for the
Working Group on Intelligence Reform (Washington, DC: Consortium for the Study
of Intelligence, 1996.
7. Amos Jordan, William Taylor, and Michael Mazar, American National Security (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), p. 147.
8. "Perry Underestimated Terrorist Threat in Saudi Arabia/' Star Tribune, 10
July 1996, p. 3A.
9. Jock Haswell, Spies and Spymasters (London: Thames & Hudson, 1977).
10. Barbara Tuchman, The Zimmermann Telegram (New York: Ballentine Books,
1966).
11. Edwin Fishel, The Secret War for the Union (New York: Houghton Mifflin,
1996).
12. "Photos of Auschwitz Extermination Unit Produced/' New York Times, 24
February 1979; the author had the opportunity to see and hear Mr. Brugioni's
presentation on the subject.
13. Stephen F. Knott, Secret and Sanctioned: Covert Operations and the American
Presidency (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).
14. George F. Kennan, "Spy and Counterspy/' New York Times, 18 May 1997,
p. E17.
15. Nathan Miller, Spying for America: The Hidden History of U.S. Intelligence
(New York: Paragon House, 1989), p. 279.
16. John Sawatsky, Men in the Shadows: The RCMP Security Service (Toronto:
Doubleday Canada, 1980).
17. Theodore Shackley, The Third Option: An American View of Counterinsurgency (Pleasantville, NY: Reader's Digest, 1981).
18. Jonathan Landay, "Prying Open T o p Secret' U.S. Safe," Christian Science
Monitor, 27 November 1998, p. 3.
CHAPTER 2

Espionage means the gathering of information through clandestine surveillance or observation, or through the use of spies to steal information.
In ancient days clandestine observation meant climbing a hill or a tree
to view the enemy without being seen. If one needed to get closer, a spy
might be sent under the cover of a disguise or through subterfuge, but
this proved to be much more dangerous than surveillance. If the spy
were discovered, the enemy might be alerted to take action or hide the
very information the spy was sent to obtain. Modern technology has
changed the way people spy on each other, but the basic notions remain
the same as Sun Tzu described them almost 2,500 years ago. 1
We no longer have to find a mountain for secret reconnaissance; we
can use a satellite, or we can fly a long-range unmanned photo aircraft
over the targets we seek. We can pick up electronic communications or
signals in the same way that each side intercepted the signals of the other
during America's Civil War. Of course, in the nineteenth century the
signals were made by soldiers using hand-held flags. Today spies might
use fiber-optic cables to send their signals, using high-tech encryption
devices. Interestingly, as more and more countries develop the ability to
intercept signals and communication, they are also developing the ability
to protect their transmissions from their adversaries. Intelligence services
are continually trying to stay one step ahead.
Governments do not usually protest electronic and communications
intercepts. Recently the Japanese government did raise the issue when it
was alleged that the United States was intercepting Japanese communications to gain an advantage in trade negotiations. As one might expect,
the United States denied the charge, even though the U.S. government
probably has the capability to do just what the Japanese suggested. Most
24
governments seem to understand that if they fail to protect their communications, they may very well be intercepted. They do not protest
overhead photography either, although they might try to hide their activities. The Soviets tried, for a while, to hide their latest developments
in submarines from U.S. photo satellites but later gave up when they
realized that there was no way to take the subs out for sea trials without
leaving the covered sheds they had built for the vessels.
National Technical Means
During the last stages of the Cold War, the use of satellites for photography and electronic intercepts became enshrined in arms control
treaties. The satellites were referred to as National Technical Means
(NTM), and it seems likely that none of the treaties would have been
ratified without an agreement on NTM, since both sides could use the
satellites to monitor and verify that the other was following the rules.
Thus, the gathering of intelligence by technical sensors has become generally accepted, though it is still considered a form of spying. It is, however, far less intrusiveand far less dangerousthan the use of human
agents to gather information.
It is tempting to think that technical sensors, whether for imagery or
for intercepts, can replace the secret agent. When he was DCI, Admiral
Stansfield Turner got the notionprobably based in part on advice from
people who knew even less about intelligence than the admiralthat
technical sensors could do what the spies could do, only better and more
safely. The DCI was very much taken with this notion and decided that
a combination of sharply focused intelligence requirements and capable
satellites would be the wave of the intelligence future. He established a
complex, expensive, and rather large bureaucracy to handle the requirements. He put his money in the wrong place.
We have spent billions on satellites but we haven't yet spent the necessary funds to deal with the enormous amounts of data the satellites
gather. Thus, we can collect far more information than we can process.
This became obvious during the Cold War when congressional probers
learned that a Soviet brigade had been resident in Cuba for many years
and wondered why the Intelligence Community had failed to find it. As
it turned out, a search of data that had never been processed revealed
that we could have known about the brigade from its earliest assignment
to the island, but because policy officials expressed little interest, the
imagery was not analyzed and no reports were written.
In another example of problems with processing, analysts discovered
that they could not review imagery fast enough to retarget the photo
satellites from one "pass" over Earth to the next. Typically, it takes about
25
ninety minutes for a satellite at the usual altitude to go around the globe,
but it takes much longer for the photo analyst to tell what's in the first
image. Computer techniques help the photo analyst, but at first no investment was made on the processing side. All the money went into the
space vehicles themselves. According to the various intelligence reviews,
this problem has yet to be completely fixed.
Collecting intelligence with technical sensors is further complicated by
the rather large organizations that handle the work. The National Security Agency, located near the Baltimore-Washington Airport, is responsible for communications and electronic intercepts; it is probably the
largest organization of its kind in the world. During the author's service
in Washington, it was at least twice as big as the CIA and certainly more
secretive. To get NSA to respond to informal requirements for information was difficult and formal requests involved lots of paperwork.
Just to visit NSA was a tough job. Even with the appropriate clearances
and badges, official visitors required an escort, and walking around
freely was certainly not allowed. These measures have supposedly been
relaxed in recent years, but outsiders are not likely to find out.
Judging the Value of Signals Intelligence
It is very difficult to judge the value of intercepted communications.
In the author's experience, NSA intercepts were occasionally useful but
often fragmentary and of little value. Others swore by them and found
them to be essential. Much of the value of such signals intelligence (SIGINT) depends on the target. In working against closed societies, such as
Iraq, Iran, or North Korea, intercepts may be a large part of what we
can get. Against terrorists, drug dealers, or organized criminal groups,
however, our ability to collect information will depend on the extent to
which these groups use communications that can be intercepted.
In battlefield situations or against potential military targets, intercepted communications or electronic signals can be extremely valuable.
Under the pressure of military operations, an enemy may very well
loosen communications security or make mistakes in encrypting data. In
World War II, for example, the British capability to intercept German
signals was enhanced when the Germans made errors in using their "unbreakable" Enigma encoding machine. Even when the signals cannot be
broken, the volume and direction of the communications can often be
determined, and much can be learned from what is called "traffic analysis." In the preparations for the Soviet invasions of Czechoslovakia in
1968 and Afghanistan in 1978, traffic analysis gave useful intelligence on
events.
It seems clear, then, that maintaining the "Big Ear" to intercept poten-
26
tially useful communications and signals is necessary if the United States

is to keep its lead in tracking events and activity that might have the
potential to affect U.S. national security. Still, the costs are very great,
and there is the potential for misuse of this capability. NSA is not supposed to focus on U.S. personsU.S. citizens, resident aliens, or U.S.
corporationsin intercepting communications. Can this be avoided?
After all, the system was abused during the Vietnam War, when it was
turned against Americans involved in anti-war protests. The government
argued then that it was seeking to find out if the Soviets or their allies
were somehow involved in the anti-war activity, but we now know that
the regulations and laws that protected against such abuse were violated.
Controlling SIGINT
Clearly, some method of control has to be maintained to prevent the
illegal use of the intercept capability. Pvight now we rely on the internal
control mechanisms of NSA, the DCI's overall control of the Intelligence
Community, and the monitoring of the congressional oversight committees to make sure that the system is not abused. These controls can be
effective in preventing an individual from using the system improperly.
An effort to acquire data illegally would quickly become apparent to
managers. The controls that are in place today did not exist during the
Vietnam War, but because of the top secret nature of SIGINT, some outsiders may continue to worry about potential abuse.
The cost issue in SIGINT is a little easier to understand. The satellites
that we use for intercepts are terribly expensive, are complicated, and
require a rather large infrastructure for construction, launching, and
maintenance. Add the costs of personnel and computers, and you have
accounted for a major part of the intelligence budget. Can SIGINT costs
be reduced? Certainly, but the options may not be too palatable to oldline professionals. Reducing the size and complexity of the satellites is
already under consideration. The new "small satellites" would be
cheaper and simpler in construction, easier to build and launch.
Reducing other costs in SIGINT is tougher. Cutting personnel, or processing capability, might sound good to budget folks, but people and
computers are critical. Slowing the rate of construction and satellite
launches, building satellites with long space life, and cutting unneeded
layers of bureaucracy and management would help. To say much more
than that is difficult because the system is so shrouded in secrecy. Is so
much secrecy really necessary?
27
The N e e d for Secrecy

We learned in World War II that rigorous protection of our intercept
capability kept the Japanese and the Germans from learning that their
"unbreakable" encryption systems had been penetrated. Today careful
observers of intelligence understand what NSA does, but secrecy and
compartmentation have kept observers from learning how the intercepting is done and how much we have learned. 2 If we relax controls on
intercept intelligence and as a result adversaries learn the specifics of
NSA's methods, they might change their codes or alter their communications techniques, which might cut us off from critical information just
when we need it. So, in this area rigid security controls are one good
way to maintain NSA's capability, even if this means that much about
the agency will be kept secret from the public or even from other intelligence professionals.
We know much more about imagery intelligence and how that part of
technical intelligence collection works. At least in photo intelligence, very
often what you see is what you get. And sometimes, what you get is
more than what you see. The interpretation of photos and images taken
from the reaches of space is both an art and a science, and the resulting
intelligence has had significant impact ever since someone dragged that
first plate camera into a hot air balloon and came back with pictures of
the enemy.
Imagery Intelligence
In World War II we began to perfect aerial reconnaissance techniques
and the associated photo analysis methods. The photos were taken from
the then-unheard-of altitude of 30,000 feet, and the systems we have
today are not much different in concept, although we can obtain images
from much higher altitudes. As we developed the ability to fly higher,
each successive development remained shrouded in secrecy at first; but
over time, to hide what we were doing became increasingly difficult.
Thus, the U-2, the glider-like spy plane that penetrated the Soviet
Union, was kept so secret that air bases where the plane took off and
landed were closed to unauthorized visitors during U-2 operations. 3
When Francis Gary Powers, the CIA U-2 pilot, was shot down by the
USSR in 1961 as he flew over Soviet missile bases, secrecy could no
longer be maintained, and the U-2 became a well-known part of the
American intelligence arsenal. Not long ago a U-2 was displayed in the
Smithsonian, a tribute to clever engineering and American intelligence
28
know-how, but its wingspan was so huge that only part of the plane
could fit inside the museum.
Space Reconnaissance
Early efforts at space reconnaissance were kept secret as well. In fact,
the same system that was used to protect SIGINT was replicated at first
to protect space photography. In addition, a "cover story" was created
to explain the launches as weather satellites or military testing. 4 Nonetheless, the press were quick to ferret out what was going on, and literature on space imagery made clear that the United States was in the
lead in this area of intelligence collection. Although the Soviets were first
into space with Sputnik, their breakthrough was soon overtaken by
American technical sophistication.
Both sides relied, for a while, on satellites that could take pictures in
space on film and return the exposed material back to Earth via capsules
that separated from the parent vehicle. This provided excellent images,
but the pictures were two or three weeks old by the time the film capsules were recovered. In the 1970s the United States developed a "nearreal-time" photo capability from space that used digital imagery to
return pictures almost instantly and with remarkable clarity. At first the
KH-11, as the near-real-time satellite was called, was protected by strict
security controls, but when a low-level CIA officer decided to steal the
manual that explained the KH-11's operation and sell it to the Soviets,
the strict controls proved worthless.
Later, imagery from the satellite was released to the press to support
various White House positions, and so the entire imagery methodology
has become quite well known. In this case the government recognized
that secrecy was no longer necessary. The CIA has publicized its early
achievements in space reconnaissance, and literature on space reconnaissance has become readily available. The government refuses only to
release the details of the potential "resolution" of the imagery, that is,
how small an object can be identified in the picture. Suffice it to say, in
the author's experience the resolution can be safely described as unbelieveably good.
Benefits and Costs of Imagery
Maintaining both the space-based imagery capability and the new
techniques in aerial reconnaissance using manned or unmanned aircraft
has many potential benefits. In addition to the standard usage in spying
on one's enemies or in monitoring treaties, overhead imagery can be
29
used to locate narcotics crops, assess natural disasters, and detect pollution. It is, nevertheless, an expensive business. Launching and maintaining the satellites is just one aspect of aerial operations. Sophisticated
ground stations are needed to retrieve the imagery, and photo analysts
require advanced machinery to analyze the resultant intelligence. Remotely piloted vehicles, in contrast, are less expensive, but they require
targeting and guidance, and the analytic cost is much the same as in
space imagery. Maintaining this capability reportedly eats up about as
much as SIGINT in the intelligence budget, and there is little pressure
to reduce this because the benefits are great and the payoff is obvious.
The same cannot be said for the bureaucracy that controlled the imagery systems. Unlike NSA, which centralized the control of SIGINT
soon after it was established, control of imagery was fragmented and the
operations decentralized. Some control were maintained by the DCI, but
the Department of Defense owned most of the assets. A super-secret
agency, the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) was created under
the Department of Defense to manage the overhead systems, but analysis
was handled in a joint CIA-military organization, and requirements were
put together in yet another unit.
It was quite clear, right from the start, that the different intelligence
agencies could not each launch their own imagery satellites and that they
would have to share. This forced the Intelligence Community to work
more closely together and eventually to establish management systems
to regulate the sharing. Much of the management was kept within the
National Reconnaissance Office, whose very existence was considered to
be secret, although many knew of it. This secrecy broke down, in part,
because the press picked up much of the information about the NRO,
and it fell apart completely when enterprising sleuths on Capitol Hill
discovered that the NRO was building new headquarters out near Dulles
Airport in Virginia that exceeded its needs, according to press stories,
by some 300 percent. Coupled with reports that the NRO management
had violated budget rules by squirreling away extra money from previous allocations, the resulting scandal forced the administration's hand.
A N e w Agency
The National Reconnaissance Office has not been broken up. Rather,
a new overarching imagery operations and management agency has
been created to take over much of the work of imagery intelligence. This
unit, the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA), has subsumed
the Central Imagery Office that managed requirements, the National
Photograpic Intelligence Center (NPIC), the Defense Mapping Agency,
and some smaller units related to imagery. The new organization belongs
30
to the Department of Defense and, like NPIC, is reportedly staffed by

a combination of military officers, DOD civilians, and CIA officers. Of
course, this means the creation of yet another support bureacracy, but it
shouldn't be too big, since most of the people will belong to their parent
organizations and NIMA will not need a large cadre of its own personnel.
Another idea for saving money is to privatize the launching of imagery
satellites and the collection of images. It is already possible to purchase
imagery from French, Russian, and some American satellites, although
the resolution of the images is probably too large for intelligence purposes. Such imagery might be useful, however, for analyzing natural
disasters, narcotics production, or problems of pollution. The Brown
Commission suggested that we try to arrange cooperation with our allies
to share the cost burden of building and launching satellites, but there
is always a reluctance in intelligence to become too dependent on others,
even if they are supposed to be our friends. In any event, the business
of imagery, once classified as tightly as intercept intelligence, has become
so open that little secrecy is left.
Espionage
Secrecy, however, remains essential in dealing with secret agents, the
traditional form of espionage. Espionage has also become an accepted
part of international behavior, even though most countries have strict
laws against such activity. If a spy is caught, it usually means death for
the spy and disgrace, if not something worse, for the spy's masters.
Throughout the Cold War the United States and its allies, and the
Soviets and their allies, placed resident diplomats and attaches on each
other's territory, understanding that they would be gathering information. Their travel might be restricted or other limitations placed on them,
but they were never confined to their embassies. They were supposed to
gather information openly and not involve themselves in clandestine intelligence collection. If they were to do so and were caught in the act,
they would be declared in violation of their diplomatic privilege and
sent home as persona non grata, "PNG-ed."
Both sides also sent intelligence officers who were career officers of
their respective clandestine services. For the United States, this meant
members of the operations directorate of the CIA; for the KGB, officers
from the First Chief Directorate. Other countries, East and West, sent
similar people, all of whom were supposed to manage the business of
clandestine intelligence collection, operating from stations in the host
country. Their job was not to spy but, rather, to recruit others to do the
spying for them. The spies were the "agents" of the spymasters "case
31
officers" in American terminology. The case officers were to recruit the

spies, give them their assignments, teach them how to avoid detection,
and translate the information they gathered into usable intelligence reports.
The literature on the actual activity of case officers is derived mostly
from outside observers. CIA clandestine service careerists have written
only rarely for publication, and their counterparts in other services have
been equally reluctant to go public, although such works are starting to
appear in print. 5 A great deal of material about espionage and tradecraft,
the term used to describe spy behavior, emerged from the capture of
Aldrich Ames and the subsequent books about his case.6 We can learn
about espionage from a careful reading of open literature, and we can
even find information in spy fiction, although most of it is far from realistic. Retired officers have from time to time spoken about their experiences at meetings of retired intelligence personnel, and the recent spate
of reform literature has added to our knowledge.
Managing Espionage Operations
In the world of clandestine operations, there is a remarkable similarity
in the ways in which such activity is handled, whether we are speaking
of the CIA, the old KGB, or the Israeli Mossad. The general nature of
espionage is thus well known, although specific cases remain secret.
Above all else, intelligence services want to protect the identities of the
spies and the spymasters and the targets on which they spy. Spy cases
usually come to light only when an agent is caught or there is a leak of
information. As in so much of the intelligence business, success is carefully hidden in hopes that it can be repeated.
How do intelligence officers recruit and train agents to spy for them?
Aind how are the case officers and the agents equipped to carry out such
potentially dangerous and sensitive missions? Let's begin with the case
officers themselves. In the United States, members of the CIA's Directorate of Operations (DO)sometimes referred to as the Clandestine Servicejoin the agency after a rigorous hiring process. They are chosen
because they have lived and worked abroad, they already speak at least
one foreign language fluently and have demonstrated the capacity to
learn others, and they display the kind of personality that will enable
them to recruit and handle clandestine agents. 7 Psychological testing and
tough interviews weed out those who do not have the personality for
such unusual work. By the time they reach the end of the selection process, the applicants have passed through a medical test, a polygraph
exam, and a thorough background check.
Typically the new Clandestine Service officers are between the ages of
32
twenty-five and thirty, have a graduate degree, and show some military
or business experience; they do not come right out of college or graduate
school. In spite of the Agency's continuing effort to attract more minorities and women into the ranks of the Clandestine Service, case officers
are still mostly white males. At one time case officer trainees tended to
come from eastern college backgrounds, especially from the Ivy League,
but that changed some years ago.
W o m e n in Clandestine Operations
Recently a group of women within the Clandestine Service sued the
CIA in a class action claiming that there had been systematic discrimination against females in the Directorate of Operations and that women
had neither received the same good assignments nor promotions as their
male counterparts. 8 In the end, the agency had to admit that the claims
were true and there had indeed been discrimination. Promises were
made that such injustices would not continue and that women would
receive equal treatment with the men in the Directorate of Operations.
This ought to be the case, since there are very few jobs that men can
perform that women cannot. There may be some assignments in the Middle East, for example, that would be difficult for women to take on because of the restrictions of Muslim religious laws, but in other areas
women might under some circumstances be even more effective than
their male counterparts. The Agency contends that the inequalities associated with women in the Directorate of Operations have been corrected, but we may not know for sure until there is another lawsuit.
Once admitted to the Agency, the potential case officers undergo at
least one year of training, much of it at "the Farm," the CIA's training
facility near Williamsburg, Virginia. The site is supposed to be secret,
but the location and mission of the place is widely known. The trainees
learn the rudiments of intelligence and the specifics of managing clandestine operations abroad. 9 They undergo some physical training as well
as weapons handling and other skills training that they may have to
teach to future agents.
If they are successful and do well in training, the trainees may be
assigned to language school or they may be sent abroad to acquire field
knowledge while they perfect their language skills. If they remain in the
Clandestine Service, where agent recruiting and handling is done, the
potential case officers will spend most of their time overseas. In most
cases it takes several years of overseas work to become completely proficient as a case officer. An assignment to headquarters is not seen as
productive because it involves support for overseas operations, paperwork, and bureaucracy and because promotions are mostly won abroad.
33
A n Isolated Career
Because of the arcane skills needed to be a case officer and because of
the extensive training for the job, Clandestine Service officers tend to
stay within the Service throughout most of their careers. They win no
points for serving outside the Directorate of Operations in what are
called "rotational assignments," although such assignments may be
broadening and may give officers exposure to other parts of the Agency.
Members of the Clandestine Service worry that their cover may be blown
if they work with open employees, thus jeopardizing their effectiveness
overseas. They prefer to socialize with others under cover so that they
don't have to worry about saying the wrong thing to the wrong person.
The result of this has been the growth of a Clandestine Service that is
isolated from the rest of the CIA and the Intelligence Community.
Recent problems that have surfaced within the Directorate of Operations indicate that its members have been reluctant to report their activities to their ambassadors abroad or to senior Agency managers outside
the Directorate of Operations at home. 10 This arrogance has developed
because of the isolated nature of the Directorate of Operations, the insularity of its case officers, and the almost fanatic zeal to protect clandestine operations from prying eyes. This attitude has led to errors in
judgment on the part of case officersmistakes the DO senior managers
should have prevented. These managers, however, came up through the
same system as those they supervise, belong to the fraternity, so to speak,
and seem protective of their brothers (and occasionally their sisters).
Perhaps some arrogance is justified among those who handle clandestine operations. It takes a special talent and a particular personality to
do this work. Not everyone is able to find potential sources of information and convince the sources to become secret agents. This job requires facility in foreign language, the ability to understand personality
well enough to detect vulnerabilities and motivation, and the confidence
to make the "recruiting pitch." It also means having to deal with people
who are sometimes unpleasant, coarse, or venal; who have carried out
criminal acts or violated human rights; or who might be terrorists.
D e a l i n g w i t h Evil People
The American people may be somewhat squeamish about the need to
work with evil people, but Clandestine Service officers have to deal with
them anyway. This caused something of a fuss when a New Jersey congressman alleged that the CIA had two Guatemalan colonels on the payroll as sources, and that these colonels had been involved in the mur-
34
der of two American citizens. The subsequent investigation revealed that

Agency managers had failed to inform the ambassador about the
sources, and this led to a revision of the rules about whom to recruit as
clandestine agents.
If we are going to be successful in working against enemies and adversaries, against terrorists and criminals, intelligence officers are going
to have to do business with people they don't like and whom they
wouldn't invite home to dinner. They need to get at people who have
or can obtain the information they want, even if the contacts are unsavory. Intelligence managers should not encourage illegal activity or
condone activity they find reprehensible, but if they are going to be successful in gathering intelligence, they'll just have to accept the negative
aspects of clandestine operations. Clandestine Service managers will
have to balance the demands for information against the dangers of dealing with evil people.
Why do people, evil or not, become spies? Sometimes it's for the
money, although most agents are not paid princely sums. An agent who
receives too much money and spends it on high-priced goods immediately draws attention to himself. This was one of the great mistakes the
Soviets made in handling the Ames case: Ames spent too much money
on cars and high living, leading to his eventual discovery. Agents may
work for ideological reasons against a regime or people they don't like,
or they may help establish a government or support a faction they prefer.
And sometimes they become agents for the thrill or excitement of the
work.
In fictional accounts of spying, agents are sometimes coerced or blackmailed into clandestine work after they have been caught in a sex scandal
or in black market transactions. This was a technique actually used by
the Soviets and their allies. During the Cold War it was not unusual for
foreigners in Moscow to be offered an exchange of rubles for dollars at
a very attractive rate, only to be ambushed by police or the KGB once
the money changed hands. The KGB would then offer to overlook the
"crime" if the victim would become a source. Although such blackmail
may be an easy way to trap someone into becoming a spy, the information the spy then collects may be suspect. The agent may be generating information just to keep his handler off his back. In some cases the
blackmail victims went to the police when they returned from Moscow,
reported what had happened, and were then turned against the KGB by
the FBI.
Controlling Agents
Whatever the method, once the agent has been recruited, the case officer has to establish a contract with the agent so that the rules of the
35
relationship are clear. The case officer wants to control the agent, set up
an agreement on pay, and in other ways ensure that the agent does what
the case officer wants. This system ensures that the case officer is in
charge.
After the agent is under control, the case officer has to provide training
and establish rules of tradecraftthe common term for clandestine practicesto mask the relationship between case officer and agent and protect the agent against the possibility of discovery by counterintelligence
or security services. The case officer has to give the agent some means
of communication, either a radio that cannot be easily intercepted or
perhaps the traditional "dead drop," a hiding place where messages can
be exchanged. During the Cold War the Soviets were fond of using old
soda cans left on the side of the road as places to hide messages, and in
one case an American case officer was caught putting a message into a
hollow "rock" built for the purpose.
After the communications and security systems are in place, the case
officer and agent can get down to the actual business of espionage. The
case officer might train the agent to use tiny cameras to photograph
documents or other targets, provide equipment to hide papers, or give
the agent miniature recorders to capture conversations. In many cases
the agent is sent to find out particular information and is directed to
report back to the case officer at an agreed time. Meetings between case
officer and agent usually take place in a "safe house," often an apartment
that is known to be secure, where the two can enter and leave without
being noticed and where they can speak without fear of being intercepted.
Agent Reporting
If the agent is performing properly, he or she obtains the intelligence
sought by the case officer and reports back. The case officer then has to
turn the conversation or the documents into a useful report. The report
has to capture faithfully what the agent has said, not what the case officer
wishes he or she had said, but usually a provision is made for the case
officer or others to provide comments on the agent report. This report is
sent to users to fulfill an established requirement, but this does not quite
complete the reporting process. Each agent has to be evaluated over time
to see if he or she is actually providing useful and reliable intelligence.
In some cases agents turn out to tell more than they know or to become
"paper factories," agents who fabricate information. In the worst situation, the case officer may discover that the agent is a "double," someone
controlled by a hostile intelligence service and who is actually working
for the other side, feeding false information to the case officer. It may be
36
necessary to terminate the agent. In spy fiction, this has an ominous ring
and means death to the agent. In reality, however, the agent has to be
terminated with little fuss, certainly no violence, and in such a way that
the agent does not tell all about working for the Americans. This may
mean a final payoff of some kind or putting the agent on ice, telling the
agent to wait for a signal to resume operations. Of course, the signal may
never come.
The Value of H U M I N T
After the arrest of Aldrich Ames in 1994 and his subsequent public
comments that espionage was a waste of time and that Americans
weren't very good at it anyway, there was some discussion in the press
and on Capitol Hill about the value and utility of HUMINT. How much
does human intelligence collection add to our knowledge? Considering
the dangers inherent in espionage operations, should we continue to do
it? Were Roger Hilsman and George Kennan correct when they claimed
that the CIA should get out of the espionage business?
Although intelligence derived from clandestine sources may make up
only 10 or 20 percent of the inputs to intelligence analysis, agent reports
can provide insights that are truly valuable. Traditionally supporters of
HUMINT argue that agent reports can help us learn about the attitudes
and intentions of our adversaries. Agents can bring us material that cannot be obtained by technical sensors or developed by diplomats. It seems
foolish to give up the possibility of learning inside information from a
well-placed source. If we agree that we should continue to use clandestine sources as a way of learning about our adversaries, what changes
should be made to improve the system?
Better Recruiting Methods
It seems clear that the traditional method of recruiting Clandestine
Service officers by putting ads in newspapers or sending recruiters to
college job fairs is not good enough. The Agency rarely hires officers for
the Clandestine Service right out of college anyway, and it cannot rely
on the possibility that the more seasoned people it really wants will see
the newspaper ads. Too many people with the necessary talent may be
missed by what is essentially a passive system. We know a great deal
about recruiting agents, so why are we reluctant to be a bit more aggressive about finding the kinds of talented people the system needs?
In the early days contacts at colleges and universities, some of whom
had served in the OSS, were enlisted to find the right candidates for the
37
CIA's clandestine work. In fact, that's how the author was first steered
in the agency's direction, as were several of his classmates. There are
plenty of people on college campuses who would be prepared to help
find the best and the brightest if only someone would let them. The CIA
ought to be looking in other areas as well. The agency has never been
particularly good about recruiting officers or enlisted men and women
completing active military service. Perhaps there is some fear of poaching on the armed services. Still, military service is good preparation for
intelligence work, and there are probably many service people who
would be only too glad to continue to serve the country as CIA staffers.
Breaking down the isolation of those who serve in the Clandestine
Service is much more difficult than finding recruits. To maintain cover
in those parts of the CIA that routinely have contact with other parts of
the government is no easy task, and the tendency of those under cover
is to shy away from meetings or activities where they might meet too
many outsiders. Moving in and out of cover destroys what little credibility most covers provide. Without effective cover, a case officer may be
relegated to liaison work abroad and would not be able to recruit and
handle difficult targets.
Overcoming the Fraternal Mentality
Solving this dilemma is not easy. It may well be that the clandestine
operators will have to resign themselves to the same fate as hot-shot
fighter pilots, who know that they can remain in the cockpit only early
in their careers, when their reflexes are still good and their eyesight keen.
Eventually, to advance their careers, they have to give up front-line flying, take command positions, and maintain their flying proficiency in
less-demanding aircraft. Clandestine Service officers may have to give
up agent handling at some point in their careers, take on management
jobs in other parts of the intelligence system, and understand that when
they go overseas again, their cover will only be sufficient to maintain
"deniability." They will be able to handle liaison with other intelligence
services and direct operations, but they will no longer be expected to do
street work. By making clear that advancement in the ranks requires
moving outside the Clandestine Service, the old fraternal mentality can
be overcome.
In addition, officers at mid-grades from other parts of the agency
should be given assignments in the Clandestine Service. Agency managers talked about doing this for years, but not much was accomplished.
The operators resented the "outsiders" and refused to accept them completely into their ranks. Experience shows that competent intelligence
officers from other disciplines are quite capable of handling work over-
38
seas, especially management and liaison functions. To fit into the operations group, the transferees would have to be given additional training,
but much of it could be done on the job.
Although the CIA has not said much about what it is doing in regard
to changes in the Clandestine Service, agency managers have reportedly
begun to put analysts together with operations officers, either in centers
or in geographically oriented offices. That is, analysts and operations
people who work on Latin America, for example, are sitting in the same
place in the agency instead of in totally isolated offices. The same is true
for analysts and operations people who work on terrorism, counternarcotics, and counterintelligence. This will certainly break down the traditional barriers between analysts and operations officers.
Only time will tell if it will break down the fraternal mentality of the
operations directorate. Perhaps agency managers will realize that people
who sit together and work together may be able to do each other's job.
When that happens, the insularity of the clandestine operators is bound
to diminish. Some critics of the Agency argue that placing analysts and
DO officers together will allow the operators to influence the analysis to
support operations. This criticism suggests that DO officers are interested
only in the cases they run and not in the information that is collected,
and that analysts are weak minded and incapable of detecting attempts
to influence them. Neither charge is correct. In the author's experience,
both collectors and analysts are after the best information, although they
use different methods of getting it.
Military H U M I N T
What about the problem of military HUMINT? Should military officers
be seconded to the CIA to gather information critical to military operations? Or should the Department of Defense run its own clandestine
collection operations aimed at the targets it thinks important? The issue
remains unresolved, and there are good arguments to be made on both
sides. The author once served in a military collection unit in the U.S. Air
Force, and the comparison between it and the CIA's operations were
striking. Nonetheless, there are good reasons to have the military run its
own effort to gather tactical military data from human sources.
The CIA's focus is on strategic issues, and it does not collect tactical
military information. It is a civilian organization focused on political and
economic issues, and its interest in military problems aims at strategic
issues of interest to high-level users. It does not have the resources to go
after information of interest to the battlefield commander, nor should it.
What the CIA can do, and is doing better all the time, is to provide the
information it does collect and analyze to military users. But the specific
39
and detailed information fighting men and women need should be gathered using military intelligence resources.
Some information will be gathered by military attaches. They can recruit and handle agents; but since they are diplomats, they have to be
careful about getting caught. Usually, military attaches are expected to
coordinate their activities with the CIA chief of station to make sure that
there are no conflicts in their respective operations. Another way to handle tactical targets is to assign a military collections officer to the CIA
station and allow the officer to operate under station guidance, but
against military sources.
The military has traditionally operated its own collection units, but
their operations are usually fairly visible and their tradecraft has been
poor, even with CIA training. In one case of which the author is aware,
a military case officer was seen driving an official army carwith army
markings on the sidesto an agent meeting, hardly good clandestine
practice. Stand-alone units are costly to operate and difficult to hide.
Placing a military HUMINT officer under cover inside a CIA station
might prove cost-effective but means that the CIA officers have to get
over having a non-CIA officer in their midst. An effective station chief,
however, should be able to make the arrangement work.
A Separate Agency?
One idea that surfaced in the course of the various reform studies on
clandestine operations, an idea that was espoused by Admiral Bobby Ray
Inman, the respected former DCI and director of NSA, was to establish
a Clandestine Service agency, outside the CIA, just for secret operations. 11 This hardly seems feasible. To maintain the cover of the officers
in such an agency would be nearly impossibleunless the whole operation was set up as a proprietary, or business, operation, and then the
officers would all have to be put under non-official cover. This would
mean that their stations abroad would have no access to diplomatic or
official circles, and thus protecting the officers abroad would be a nightmare. A stand-alone agency would be cut off from analytic units as well.
If anything, there should be a closer working relationship between collectors and analysts, not complete separation.
There seems little question that the United States is going to continue
to run clandestine operations abroad, and not only for gathering positive
foreign intelligence but also against traditional counterintelligence targets and for covert action operations. These problems will be discussed
later; for now, suffice it to say that if the United States is going to employ
secret agents, then the agent handlers ought to be given the best equipment, the best cover, and the most effective communications systems as
40
possible. Also, the American people ought to understand that this can
be a nasty business and that those who engage in it will receive little
recognition for their work. Clandestine Service officers should not be
saddled with guilt for what they do; rather, they should be given support
for what can be a dangerous way to serve the country.
The Value of O p e n Sources
We should not leave the discussion of stealing secrets without some
recognition of the importance of open sources. Neither glamorous nor
adventurous, open sources are nonetheless the basic building block for
secret intelligence. Why, then, is open source collection being cut back
when it is a relatively inexpensive part of the budget?
A key element in the collection of open sources is the Foreign Broadcast Information Service, the unit that translates foreign media. FBIS is
one of the oldest components of the intelligence system, dating back to
World War II when it was a unit of the State Department. When the CIA
was created, FBIS became part of that organization. It maintained stations around the world to pick up radio broadcasts and had a team of
local native-speaking translators to provide the linguistics. It produced
translations by cable and in printed books; unclassified, the books could
be obtained by subscription. FBIS publications were available in many
college libraries as an important source of information for those who
could not obtain or could not read the foreign media in the original
language.
Of course, in the modern world of electronics, many foreign newspapers and magazines are available on the Internet; but for those who cannot read the language, they are of little use. Analysts who cannot handle
the originals will be dependent on news services to provide the information, but some important details or nuances may be missed. Foreign
broadcasts are an equally important source of information, but who can
spend hours trying to find the transmissions, record them, and then
translate them? Anyone who has listened to one of Fidel Castro's sixhour orations, even with fluent Spanish, understands the problem. In
contrast, a translation can easily be skimmed for the key points.
At one time FBIS had an analysis unit of its own to carry out a process
known as content analysis. This was a way of divining the real meanings
in the obtuse pronouncements made by some world leaders, especially
those who ruled in the Communist world. With the end of the Cold War
that unit was broken up in the mistaken belief that its services were no
longer needed. These days when leaders like Saddam Hussein or Fidel
Castro speak, analysts in other parts of the Intelligence Community are
left to figure out what they really mean.
41
Early Warning
FBIS performed another valuable service as part of the intelligence
community's early warning system. It was the FBIS radio teams that
through careful monitoring of foreign broadcasts often picked up the first
signs that something was happening. Now the intelligence system has
to rely on the Cable News Network (CNN). FBIS was and remains a
cost-effective intelligence collector, but it is not likely to remain so if the
cuts in personnel and resources continue.
During the Cold War it was considered cost-effective for U.S. embassies and missions abroad to gather open source documents, usually
newspapers and magazines, and send them back to Washington. When
cost was no problem, analysts could order the important news magazines or papers from the country they were following, assuming they
were able to read them in the original language. If they could not, FBIS
could usually be relied on to provide a translation through its Joint
Publications Research Service.
Today an enormous number of open source databases are available
electronically, and the CIA is proud of programs it has set up to tap
these materials. We have no way of measuring the effectiveness of these
new inputs in the intelligence world, but if university research is any
indicator, then these databases are truly a gold mine of information.
These programs to take advantage of open sources indicate that Agency
managers realize that if American intelligence is really intent on maintaining our intelligence system as an all-source establishment, then we
must not lose the capability to obtain and analyze open sources. These
sources make up the great majority of the inputs in many areas, and they
do not cost much to gather.
In fact, what is really special about our intelligence system is that it
does gather all sources for the analysts to study. Although the intelligence collection system gives us the way to steal the secrets, intelligence
analysis enables us to understand the puzzles and divine the mysteries.
That is the subject to which we now turn.
Notes
1. Sun Tzu, The Art of War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1963).
2. The classic work on revealing the inside story on NSA is James Bamford,
The Puzzle Palace (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1984); an update appeared in
series in "No Such Agency: America's Fortress of Spies," Baltimore Sun, 3-1
December 1995.
3. The CIA has published the official story of the U-2 in Gregory W. Bedlow
42
and Donald E. Welzenbach, The CIA and the U-2 Program, 1954-1974 (Washington,
DC: Central Intelligence Agency, 1998).
4. Jeffrey Richelson, Keyhole: America's Secret Eyes in Space (New York: Harper
& Row, 1990).
5. See, for example Tom Gilligan, CIA Life: 10,000 Days with the Agency (Guilford, CT: Foreign Intelligence Press, 1991); Duane R. Clarridge, A Spy for All
Seasons (New York: Scribner, 1997). A work of fiction by a senior DO officer is
also useful: Milt Bearden, The Black Tulip (New York: Random House, 1998).
6. The most informative books on the Ames case are David Wise, Nightmover:
How Aldrich Ames Sold the CIA to the KGB for $4.6 Million (New York: HarperCollins, 1995); and Pete Earley, Confessions of a Spy: The Real Story of Aldrich Ames
(New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1997).
7. These characteristics are listed in the CIA's recruiting ads and brochures.
8. R. Jeffrey Smith, "Judge Approves Payment in CIA Sexual Bias Case,"
Washington Post, 10 June 1995, p. A3.
9. The author completed this training himself during his first year in the CIA.
10. John Walcott, "Mission Impossible? Anthony Lake Takes on a Demoralized, Recalcitrant CIA," Washington Post, 8 December 1996, p. CI; "CIA Should
Clean House on Honduras: Agency Disciplines 10 for Shielding Human Rights
Abuses," Baltimore Sun, 13 October 1995, p. 22A.
11. Associated Press, "New Spy Agency Proposed," Boston Globe, 20 January
1996.
CHAPTER 3

Tom Clancy had the right idea when he made the hero of his technothrillers an analyst. Of course, Clancy's hero, Jack Ryan, gets to do many
things besides intelligence analysis. Nonetheless, throughout his novels
Clancy emphasizes the importance of the intelligence products and the
role they play in bringing intelligence to the top decisionmakers in government and to the working stiffs at lower levels. That's not fiction.
Intelligence analysis is the "end game" in intelligence, providing the
judgments of the intelligence system to policymakers. 1 Intelligence analysts are the ones who figure out the puzzles and divine the mysteries
about threats to national security. Intelligence analysis is also where intelligence failure can often occur. This process deserves careful examination.
No country devotes more resources and attention to intelligence research and analysis than does the United States. The roots of this emphasis on the study of raw reports from all sources may lie in the Civil
War, according to historian Edwin Fishel. He claims that it was Union
general "Fighting Joe" Hooker, one of the series of failed U.S. Army
commanders preceding General Ulysses S. Grant, who first came up with
the idea of analyzing reports from various intelligence sources by comparing them to each other and to an existing database. 2
When General "Wild Bill" Donovan became President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt's chief of intelligence and the commander of the Office of Strategic Services at the beginning of World War II, the general quickly
established a unit for research and analysis (R&A) in the new organization. 3 It paralleled the unit set up for secret operations, rather than
serving in a subordinate position, and this organizational structure carried over into the CIA. Donovan tasked R&A with producing intelligence
44
reports ranging from short-range daily reports to long-term strategic

judgments. To be sure that these judgments were carefully considered,
Donovan appointed a board of "wise men" to oversee the process, and
perhaps because Donovan was a practicing Catholic, he dubbed this
group of wise men the "College of Cardinals." This, too, carried over
into the CIA, and the wise men became the Board of National Estimates.
The Legacy of Pearl Harbor
Part of the drive to create an R&A unit stemmed from the World War
II experience. The intelligence failure at Pearl Harbor was believed by
most observers to have been a failure of intelligence analysis rather than
a failure to gather the secrets. The inevitable investigation into the Pearl
Harbor disaster revealed that some of the intelligence that might have
given clues to the Japanese attack was either not reported to Washington
or not shared among the intelligence units of the U.S. Army and Navy.
There was a clear need for a central clearing house for intelligence reporting, and so Donovan recommended to President Roosevelt in 1944
that a civilian-run central intelligence organization be created after the
war to serve as an all-source repository for intelligence data. 4 Donovan
envisioned this new agency as a replica of the OSS, with parallel operations and analysis units.
After a false start in 1945 when J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI leaked
Donovan's recommendations to the press and stories circulated that FDR
was planning a post-war "secret police" organization more like the Nazi
Gestapo than an intelligence agency, the CIA was created by President
Truman in 1947 much as Donovan had suggested. The new agency had
the parallel analysis and operations structure of the OSS, and many old
hands from the OSS days flocked back to the new agency to resume
careers they believed were more exciting and valuable than either academics or business.
President Truman had already come to value the idea of an all-source
intelligence agency even before the CIA's creation. In 1946 Truman had
seen the need for some kind of intelligence leadership and had tapped
Admiral Sidney Souers to serve as his director of central intelligence
(DCI). Truman called him his "head snoop," but Souers was apparently
not offended.5 Later the post was given to Lieutenant General Hoyt Vandenberg of the U.S. Army Air Corps, who was waiting in the wings for
the establishment of the new independent U.S. Air Force, which he was
to head. While serving as DCI, Vandenberg decided to begin sending
Truman a daily intelligence report, and the president liked it.
The practice of sending a special daily intelligence report to the pres-
45
ident has continued ever since that first one in 1946. Today the supersensitive report is called the President's Daily Brief (PDB) and it contains
information that appears in no other intelligence publication, in addition
to the regular run of daily intelligence items. Because of its sensitivity,
the PDB is usually carried to the White House by a special briefing officer
who may sit with the president while he goes through the report. If the
president has questions, the briefing officer can answer them or the answer can be put in the next day's brief. Comments from the president
are eagerly sought by the PDB staff to make sure the report is meeting
the needs of the White House. Usually the PDB is also carried by hand
to the secretaries of state and defense, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff, and the national security advisor. They are avid readers, if for
no other reason than that they want to be sure to know what the president is being told by the CIA.
Daily Intelligence Products
Other intelligence customers, perhaps as many as several hundred,
receive a daily publication from the CIA as well, called for many years
the National Intelligence Daily. Although it does not contain the most sensitive items hand-carried to the White House, it is classified Top Secret.
This daily publication is supposed to be a joint document that contains
not only articles written at the CIA and coordinated with the other key
intelligence agencies but also pieces produced by the other agencies
themselves. Thus, the publication is national-level intelligence analysis
and may include disagreements or dissents about the judgments made
by the producing agency. This document has traditionally been printed
and distributed as a paper product, but advances in desk-top publishing
and electronic delivery mean that most consumers cleared for this product can now receive such material on their secure office computers.
The delivery of a daily report about current events is one of the most
traditional of intelligence activities and is replicated at many levels from
the highest offices of government in Washington down to field units in
the various agencies involved in foreign and security affairs. Some cynical intelligence consumers have told evaluators that the daily reports
are no betterand sometimes far lessinformative than the daily press
or TV news, yet persistent questioning often reveals that such readers
do actually use current intelligence. The value of current intelligence is
demonstrated by the fact that though intelligence managers push analysts to write longer and more complex analyses, it is the shorter and
more focused daily intelligence that policymakers actually take the time
to read.
46

The Analytic Challenge
The challenge for the analyst in writing current intelligence is to inform policymakers and other consumers, including intelligence users,
not only about what is happening and why but also about what is likely
to happen next. This short-term forecast requires a judgment from the
analyst and is the great difference between journalism and intelligence.
Newswriters do not have to make such judgments, but intelligence analysts have to take the plunge. There is no great trick to making such
short-term forecasts. They are usually based on historic trends, patterns
of behavior, the context in which the activity takes place, and the actors
involved.
The analyst must be steeped in the history of the target area and must
be immersed in the information flow from it. That's why intelligence
analysts are such information junkies; they are always looking for keys
and clues in the inputs they receive. Many analysts become nervous
when separated from their mailboxes by holidays and weekends, and
this explains why many analysts tend to go to their offices to read their
incoming traffic even on days off. Analysts are aided in their judgments
by discussing trends and forecasts with colleagues. Coordination, as this
process is called, helps prevent judgmental error and surface disagreements and differences. Some analysts, though, may become arrogant
over time and think that they alone have correctly analyzed events; their
attitude can lead to intelligence failure.
The judgment about what might happen next is the value intelligence
analysts add to the flow of information. After all, many policy people
see the same incoming information at about the same time as the analysts. In theory, however, and usually in practice, the intelligence analysts can make judgments without concern for policy considerations and
without fear of political pressure.
From the perspective of the analyst, current intelligence is the favored
method of communicating judgments to decisionmakers. When events
abroad are changing rapidly, daily reports mean the analyst can focus
on the short-term forecasts, which are usually easier to make and more
meaningful to users, than on a longe-range prediction that is of little use
to a policymaker coping with a near-term crisis. The daily reports are
incremental and enable the analyst to give users intelligence judgments
as events unfold. Current intelligence creates a dialogue between intelligence producer and policy consumer, the most effective way of delivering intelligence. It is no surprise, therefore, that current intelligence
takes up a great deal of an analyst's time and energy and that daily
47
reports are the most useful of intelligence products, according to feedback from users.
Warning Intelligence
Intelligence analysts have the responsibility of warning policymakers
about impending crises or events, especially those that may require a
response by the United States. Based on the experience of Pearl Harbor
and other such surprises, the goal is to provide warning before the event;
but clearly surprise cannot be completely avoided. Nonetheless, the analyst benefits from a variety of systems designed to detect changes in
world events that may signal the possibility of a potential surprise. Analysts look for indicators that might serve as warning signals. By establishing specific targets that can be monitored frequently and regularly,
changes to established patterns of behavior may be observed. For example, movements of military vehicles from regular routine travel,
changes in fuel supplies or food shipments, shifts in political rhetoric by
key politicians, or even changes in communications patterns may signal
that something is happening that deserves extra attention.
Analysts throughout the U.S. intelligence system can take advantage
of a worldwide communications and warning network that monitors
events through military commands and other facilities so that the
changes, once observed, can be evaluated. This system operates twentyfour hours a day, seven days a week, and is supplemented, of course,
by the twenty-four-hour news services such as CNN. The analyst, however, cannot just push the panic button every time change is observed.
Though it is tempting to try to alert policy officials just to be sure there
is no surprise, doing so may lead to the "cry wolf" syndrome. That is,
after being awakened several times by overeager or nervous intelligence
officers, policy officials may become blase; disinterested, or just annoyed.
Then they might not respond when there really is a problem. Thus, analysts have to be careful about initiating the alerting process.
Once they do initiate the process, analysts have to be able to convince
their managers that there really is a problem, and there have been occasions when the analysts had warning of surprise but were unable to
alert policymakers because senior intelligence officials were skeptical
about the data. The senior officer in charge of warning at the CIA believed strongly that Saddam Hussein was preparing to invade Kuwait
in 1990 but could not prove this to his bosses. 6 When he went to policy
officials anyway with his information, they rejected it because senior CIA
leaders had not approved. In the end, of course, the warning officer was
48
correct, but some observers remember only that the CIA gave them little
warning of the invasion.
Preventing Surprise
Although the system may not be able to prevent surprise in every case,
the track record of American intelligence in detecting surprise is actually
quite good. Unfortunately, there is little way to prove this, since in many
cases the warnings issued by intelligence came early enough for policymakers to deal with the problems before they got out of hand. Thus,
there were no crises, no publicity, and therefore no public record of success. Even within the intelligence system there was little effort to keep
track of successful warning operations. We are left, then, with records
only of failure, and these are not likely to be forgotten.
Failure to detect changing events may be inevitable in intelligence, as
Richard Betts has said, but he also points out that intelligence failure
may really be policy failure when decisionmakers fail to pay attention
to warnings or fail to take action.7 Intelligence warnings in the Middle
East in regard to potential danger to U.S. Marines in Lebanon or soldiers
in Saudi Arabia were apparently ignored by operational leaders, who
took no action to protect their troops. The results were deadly. Reprisals
by Iranians after the United States admitted the ailing Shah in 1978 were
expected by intelligence analysts, but the U.S. embassy in Teheran was
stormed anyway and hostages taken. 8
To make the warning process work properly, analysts have to provide
detailed requirements to collectors so that the indicator targets can be
regularly monitored. This suggests that there ought to be a close relationship between analysts and collectors and that efforts to have them
work more closely together make sense. Of course, the monitoring of
many indicators will be derived from technical collection systems rather
than from espionage agents. Thus, analysts, especially those in the CIA
or the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) have to communicate regularly
with the agencies that run the satellite systems. Modern electronic links
between the agencies ought to facilitate this, but analysts have to understand the collection discipline of the technical agencies and spend
time becoming known to their counterparts at NSA and the new NIMA.
Although U.S. intelligence may not be able to avoid surprise completely, it can ameliorate the effects of surprise through rapid alerting of
officials to crisis. This is an area in which the intelligence system is usually quite effective. Because all the intelligence agencies operate an alert,
watch, or operations centerthe terms are more or less synonymous
on a twenty-four-hour, seven-day-a-week basis, incoming intelligence
from around the world can be reviewed rapidly, and hints that some-
49
thing is happening are difficult to miss. Each watch center can communicate with all the others, so coordination or discussion among watch
center analysts can easily be arranged. When it becomes clear that policy
officials need to be alerted, communications systems are in place to make
such alerting rather automatic. Unfortunately for policy officials, this
means that a certain amount of practice must take place to ensure that
the communications systems and equipment are working, so practice
exercises have to be held periodically. This does not bother military people, but civilians can quickly become annoyed at being awakened just
for an exercise. Nonetheless, experience shows that if communications
and other electronic systems are not used frequently, they will not work
just when they are needed, or watch officers may become rusty on procedures.
Once policy officials are alerted to a crisis, intelligence officers must
keep them informed about developments. Often an intelligence task force
is established for a crisis, and the various watch centers facilitate preparation of situation reports periodically to keep policy and intelligence
officials up to date on events as they unfold. Modern electronics have
made it possible for intelligence analysts engaged in such task forces to
communicate without actually moving to a central location and to coordinate the analytic judgments they put into the situation reports. Consumers usually understand that the intelligence analysis in situation
reports is short term and can easily be overtaken by events. In the early
days of the CIA, watch center officers could expect a steady flow of
senior officers into the center to keep up with events, allowing rather
junior analysts to meet and brief top officials. Electronic systems have
probably killed the excitement of such meetings.
The Importance of Personal Relationships
Current and warning intelligence systems work well, even though policy officials sometimes say they could be better, without being specific
about what should be included in the analysis. The various reform studies give such systems high marks, asking only that there should be better
communication between intelligence and policy bureaucracies to make
sure that the right subjects are covered on a timely basis. The Brown
Commission thought that this might be facilitated by electronic systems,
but the author is convinced that there is no substitute for establishing
personal relationships between intelligence producers and policy consumers at all levels. Intelligence officers have to take the initiative to find
their consumers, go to see them, establish a working relationship so that
each is known to the other, and the intelligence officer has to determine
what material would be useful for the consumer, not only meeting what
50
the consumer thinks are his or her needs but also providing material that
may not necessarily be welcome.
Current studies as well as those carried out in prior years all point to
the importance of the relationship between intelligence producers and
policy consumers. There are many impediments, however, to making
this relationship work. The intelligence agencies are, for the most part,
physically separated from their consumers. The CIA, the DIA's analytic
component, and NSA are all located away from Washington. They are
easily connected through secure electronic communications both with
each other and with consumers, but the physical separation means that
the establishment of personal relationships is made that much more difficult. Analysts, who don't want to leave their desks anyway in case a
key message comes in, are faced with heavy traffic, lack of parking, tedious bus systems, and other such problems in going downtown to the
National Security Council Staff, to the State Department, or over to the
Pentagon, where the consumers are located. Many analysts are introverts
who are happy not to have to go out to meet people they do not know.
The idea of calling some faceless policy official and arranging a meeting
is anathema to an introvert, who would much rather do all the communication through the relative distance of the computer screen.
Circuit Riders
One solution to this chronic problem is to replicate in some ways the
method used to keep the president informed, namely, by sending briefing officers out to the various policy officers on a periodic basis to give
an intelligence briefing. This rarely works well because the briefers cannot be experts on everything and will either have to arrange to obtain
answers to the questions they cannot handle or, more dangerously, tell
more than they know. Such briefers were often referred to as "circuit
riders," and they often wore out their welcome when it became clear that
they were not the experts the policy officials wanted to see. Intelligence
managers sometimes referred to such visits as "parish calls" and were
clearly not interested in such visits, arranging them only to satisfy a
mandate from the top.
One answer to this question of establishing a better working relationship between producers and consumers is to put an analytic office in
downtown Washington, where it would be relatively easy to find common ground between policy offices and the analysts. The intelligence
system has always avoided this, claiming that political pressure on the
analysts would destroy their objectivity. Intelligence managers have argued that analysts would be sucked into policy debates and would be
pressured to tailor their analysis to meet policymakers' needs. This is
51
not a frivolous argument. Policymakers often admit that what they

want from intelligence is information to help them achieve their policy
aims. They do not want to be told that the world is different from the
way they see it, and they expecially do not want to be told that the policies they are pushing might not work. They see such negative information as obstructive or even as an effort by intelligence analysts to
give assistance to their policy adversaries.
The National Intelligence Council
During his tenure as DCI, Robert Gates set out a series of reform measures, among which was a plan to move the National Intelligence Council (NIC) to a downtown location to facilitate better communication
between senior intelligence officials and their consumers. The NIC is
made up of twelve to eighteen very senior officials, each of whom has a
specific functional or regional specialty. Some of the officials are professional intelligence analysts who have risen through the ranks; others are
drawn from the military, from the foreign service, academe, or even from
the operational side of intelligence. These officers, called national intelligence officers or NIOs, report directly to the DCI, are responsible for
overseeing intelligence production in their specialty, and are in charge
of coordinating this production throughout the Intelligence Community.
The NIOs are also supposed to serve as a liaison with senior consumers
to determine their intelligence needs. The NIOs supervise the production
of interagency intelligence studies, including National Intelligence Estimates.
The NIC has an interesting history. The system was put together when
Bill Colby was DCI as a way to improve and modernize the Board and
Office of National Estimates, which dated back to the earliest days of the
CIA and which had its roots in the OSS. The board was seen as archaic,
and some critics thought it had become merely a place to put senior
officials before they retired. It had certainly become a poor imitation of
the board of wise men envisioned by William Donovan and later established by DCI "Beetle" Smith. Arguing and defending an estimate in
front of the board had become something like defending a Ph.D. thesis,
only with professors who knew less about the subject than their students.
Perhaps Colby had envisioned a council that would also serve as a
substantive board of final review for interagency in-depth analysis, but
the NIC never reached that point. Instead, the NIOs each went their own
ways in determining what would be produced, and eventually each was
given a deputy drawn from the ranks and the power to assign work to
other Intelligence Community components as needed. It never became
collegial, as the old Board of National Estimates had been, but it did
52
create a new level of expertise at the highest levels of the intelligence

system. In fact, the final level of review for estimates became the National
Foreign Intelligence Board, which was made up of the directors of each
of the IC agencies.
The first director of the NICthe chairman of the board, so to speak
was George Carver, a CIA professional who had come through the ranks,
and a man who had considerable substantive expertise in a variety of
areas and the complete confidence of the DCI. Carver set the tone for
the role of the chair of the NIC as a close confidant of the DCI, his
substantive spokesperson on intelligence issues and his alter ego in meetings with senior administration officials, members of Congress, or within
the Intelligence Community. Subsequent NIC chairs took on the same
role, and several of Carver's successors came from prestigious universities with no particular intelligence experience but with the cachet of
being wise, well known, and well connected.
The Impact of the NIC
It is not clear why the plans to move this latest version of the "wise
men" downtown never went anywhere. Instead, they remain located at
the CIA, although they are technically not a part of the agency itself but,
rather, a part of the DCI's community system. Because they are the most
senior officials, meeting with their policy counterparts is made easier by
their ability to arrange transportation downtown and to return them
quickly, except in Washington's notorious rush hour, and they are usually well enough known to be able to get in to see the most senior people
much more easily than an analyst in the lower ranks could. As usual in
government, the NIO record in regard to improving producer-consumer
relations is a mixed bag. Some NIOs have been particularly effective in
this role; others have tended to closet themselves at Langley.
It still seems to make sense to have the NIOs closer to the people they
are supposed to serve. Not all of Washington's business is done in the
office. Lunchtime is a critical part of the working day for senior officials
at State, Defense, or the White House, and being close enough to take
part in this daily ritual is important. In many respects, getting close to
policy people is an operational problem for intelligence. Substantive officers, like their operational colleagues, have to establish a relationship
through personal contact. This requires personal presence, and better
electronics is not going to make the relationships more close.
Long-term Analysis
Although daily or current intelligence analysis is the product most
used by policy consumers, the intelligence system continues to believe
53
that its most effective output lies in the area of longer-term analysis.
There has been a great deal of debate over the years about which longerterm or in-depth intelligence analyses are the most useful for consumers.
In the 1960s, senior officers in the CIA's Directorate of Intelligence (DI)
decided that the daily and weekly analytic publications sent to policymakers were falling short of their needs. Of course, in-depth studies had
been done from time to time, especially in the economic and military
analytic offices, but the Office of Current Intelligence, where most of the
political analysis was performed, had done relatively few of them. Eventually the flow of longer-term studies increased, and as the Directorate
of Intelligence reorganized itself in various ways, the pressure to produce
more "think-pieces" increased. An effort was made to study not only the
substance of the material but the methodology as well.
Could the traditional analytic methods be improved by using statistical or other analyses being pioneered in academe? The methodologists
discovered that their new techniques were unpopular with analysts because they had no time to absorb these systems in the face of tight deadlines. Finally, in 1981, on becoming the deputy director for intelligence
(DDI), Bob Gates decided that the Directorate of Intelligence would produce all the in-depth material he said policymakers were demanding.
Every DI analyst was expected to produce at least two papers a year on
subjects that would enlighten their consumers and provide the encyclopedic intelligence that decisionmakers needed.
The result of this campaign was the production of some 5,000 reports
a year, a figure of which Gates was quite proud. Looking back on this
period, it now seems clear that this enormous effort achieved far less
than Gates had hoped. Many consumers had no idea why they had received the papers they got from the CIA, were not interested in the
subject, or had no need for the analysis when it arrived. 9 Typically these
research papers went out to several hundred consumers, and informal
surveys showed that some addressees had stuck them in a safe unread,
passed them to others, or destroyed them without actually reading them.
In some cases, the recipients had moved on to other offices or had left
the government. In one case, the addressee had been dead for quite some
time, but the office had never informed the CIA, which continued to
send material.
K n o w i n g Consumers
Part of the problem, of course, was that some CIA analysts had little
idea about their consumers or their needs. The analysts were also
trapped by the production planning schedule, which required them to
forecast the papers they planned to write. Because the plan called for
quarterly submissionsevery three monthsmany papers were pub-
54
lished to meet the planning deadline, rather than the timing that would
be most beneficial for consumers. Some papers arrived late, some too
early, and some never got to the people who needed them. If the papers
contained compartmented, Top Secret intelligence, some consumers had
to go a special room to read them, could not take them back to their
desks, and therefore lost interest in the studies.
Managers thought they were doing good work through broad circulation of the intelligence studies, but in reality only a handful of consumers were really interested in any particular publication. This problem has
been solved in part by the development of desktop publishing, which
enables an analyst to produce a report in a limited number of copies
with the same professional appearance as those coming out of the printing press. In fact, even in the Gates era, CIA analysts often wrote what
became known as "typescript memos." These were studies that were not
published through the regular production system, but which were requested by specific consumers. They lacked the style of the printed reports because they were typed and sent out just like an internal office
memo. Analysts did not want to do such informal papers because they
got more credit for the published ones. Now longer-term studies can be
geared to the needs of individuals, delivered at just the right time, and
not only cover the material in the ways most useful to the particular
recipients but look professional as well.
This issue is less significant in other analytic componentsat DIA and
State, for examplewhere analysts are used to the idea of gearing studies to individuals and producing only a handful of copies. At the State
Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), such studies
have usually been designed to support policy initiatives and are not
written until specifically requested. At Defense, DIA studies are written
to supplement war plans or contingency plans. Only the CIA became
caught up in the publish-or-perish syndrome. Now the CIA's intelligence
production can be set up for just-in-time delivery. 10
The Estimate
There is yet one more intelligence product to examine, and that is the
most controversial of all, the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), the
forecast of the future, the premier product of intelligence. The theory
behind the NIE or any long-range intelligence forecast is simple: Give
very smart analysts good information, and they will be able to predict
the future. This was the basis for General Donovan's "College of
Cardinals" and later the Board of National Estimates. The theory is actually derived from British intelligence, whose leaders believed that analysts should be able to reach a judgment about the future if forced to
55
do so. In practice, British analysts were indeed able to reach judgments

about the future, but they tended to be rather general because the analysts could agree with each other only at a relatively low level.
Over time the Americans modified British practice to look at a variety
of possible scenarios for the future instead of seeking some basic thesis
on which all could agree. Since the major analytic agencies were represented in drawing up the estimates, each had a voice in the conclusions.
If the majority took one position, those who disagreed could "take a
footnote." That is, the minority view could be represented as a dissent
or disagreement, but only in small type at the bottom of the page. In
practice, it was a way for intelligence managers to try to intimidate dissenters by forcing them to make their identities and dissents specific.
Alternatively, it gave agencies who disagreed with the majority a chance
to cover themselves if the estimate proved to be wrong.
In later years, as the Board of Estimates became the National Intelligence Council, the NIEs have tried to present disagreements in the body
of the text and argue out varying scenarios, especially when it is difficult
to reach an agreed conclusion. The process of creating an estimate is
lengthy and complicated, although in crisis situations, special estimates,
or SNIEs, as they are called, have been turned out in just a few days.
Each participating agency is expected to make inputs to a selected analyst or team that drafts the actual paper. Then, in a series of meetings,
agency representatives hash out a final text. Finally, the draft is briefed
to the National Foreign Intelligence Board (NFIB), made up of the directors of the agencies that constitute the Intelligence Community. If the
NIE passes that hurdle, it is signed by the DCI and distributed to consumers.
The Premier Product?
Intelligence managers believe that the NIE is the premier output of the
intelligence process. Although these papers may not necessarily predict
the future, they do outline the most likely course of events, some possible
scenarios that ought not to be overlooked, and even some unlikely possibilities that should not be ignored. The text is supposed to provide
policymakers with a sense of the certainty of the analysts in their judgments. Because consumers may have differing views on what "probably"
or "likely" means, analysts have begun to use betting terminology. They
might, for example, indicate that they believe a scenario has one chance
in five of taking place. Analysts are also supposed to indicate blanks in
their knowledge, but this is difficult because any blank implies criticism
of the collection system. Nonetheless, where gaps exist is important for
readers to know.
56
When each NIE is delivered to policy officials is usually a proud moment because these papers represent the best thinking within the intelligence system. Unfortunately, policy consumers have consistently
indicated that they do not like them and do not rate them as highly as
intelligence managers think.
If the estimates reach conclusions with which policymakers agree, they
dismiss the NIEs as telling them nothing they do not already know. 11 If
the conclusions are at odds with what decisionmakers think, the NIEs
may be dismissed as wrong, or even as an effort by intelligence leaders
to drive policy. If over time the conclusions prove to be correct, intelligence is rarely given credit; but if the estimate turns out to be incorrect,
then intelligence managers are blamed for an intelligence failure, especially if policymakers either fail to take action or move in the wrong
direction. Clearly the NIE creates a "no-win" situation for intelligence.
Nonetheless, intelligence managers continue to tout the NIE as an important input to policy, perhaps because of the long tradition and history
associated with the intelligence estimate.
In discussions with policy officials, in surveys of users, and in examining the fate of estimates, it is apparent that both intelligence managers
and policy users expect more from this product than it can deliver. For
policy consumers, the NIEs are too long, too complicated, and tell them
more than they want to know. Many senior officials in policy agencies
admit that they never read NIEs, or that if they open them at all, it is
only to read the one- or two-page executive summary that gives them
the bottom line, the key judgments of the estimate. In many cases these
users are already knowledgeable about the subject of the estimate and
have drawn their own conclusions based on a variety of sources, including current intelligence that they may have read over time.
Lack of a Planning System
Estimates are hampered as well by the lack of a long-range planning
system in the national security policy apparatus of the U.S. government.
Estimates try to look out about six months to a year, but policy planners
rarely seem to look that far ahead. They are too busy dealing with current issues and efforts to take a longer-range view and are usually overtaken by whatever crisis is on the front burner in Washington. The Carter
administration was one of the few to try to plot out long-range policy
initiatives, but by the time the year-long studies were completed, the
Carter White House was buried in a series of crises, and action on longrange plans had to be set aside. 12
Intelligence managers have to take some responsibility for the failure
of the estimates process to have the impact it warrants. The managers
57
have given policymakers the impression that the NIE will indeed be an
accurate forecast, even though they should know that too many variables
exist in most situations to make such predictions more than educated
judgments. In their efforts not to overlook any possibility, the managers
have allowed the estimates to become too complicated. They have not
sold this product to consumers, and it should not be surprising that NIEs
are not meeting consumers' needs.
Interestingly, military intelligence estimates have fared better in the
world of defense planning and receive higher marks than their civilian
counterparts. War plans, contingency plans, and other such policyplanning documents in the Pentagon have always included within them
a threat assessment or estimate about a potential enemy. Because these
inputs are part of the plans, they are read and absorbed by military and
defense leaders as a matter of course. They tend to be shorter than the
NIEs and more specific. Written within the Pentagon system, they are
usually not coordinated or even discussed with other agencies, although
the analysts who write them are aware of what analysts in other agencies
think about the issues contained in the threat analysis.
The same process takes place at the State Department, where its small
intelligence unit, INR, writes analysis keyed to policy initiatives as directed from the various policy offices. Although the forecasting done at
Defense and State are well regarded by their respective consumers, this
analysis can be criticized as being "politicized" in the sense that it gives
decisionmakers information that they want to make and support policy.
It is not necessarily policy neutral. In theory the NIEs written under the
direction of the National Intelligence Council are independent of pressure from policy officials and free of politicization. They are also irrelevant to the making of national security policy in many cases. Can this
situation be fixed?
Perhaps it is time for intelligence to admit that analysts cannot predict
the future, despite the best inputs, the most competent methodologies
and the smartest writers. What they can and should do, however, is to
provide policymakers with independent judgments about possible
courses of events untainted by political pressure or bias. This is still a
tall order and is the reason, more than any other, that estimates ought
to be written by groups rather than by individuals. Team writing tends
to eliminate bias because each team member will have different views
and prejudices. A team is more likely to stand up against political pressure, especially if the members come from different parts of the Intelligence Community.
There is no "magic bullet" in trying to forecast the most likely course
of future events. Just as in current intelligence, analysts must look forward seeking trends, looking at the historical record, evaluating how
individuals behave, and understanding the atmosphere in which events
58
might take place. The process requires a thorough understanding of the

culture and dynamics of an alien society and its people, and it requires
a good deal of risk taking. Nonetheless, experience shows that this process can be taught to analysts whose academic expertise is usually in
looking backward, rather than forward.
A n Interactive Process
It seems clear that the bureaucracy surrounding the estimates needs
to simplified and streamlined. Intelligence managers have to realize that
policymakers are not waiting around for the NIC to deliver its wise
judgments before they take action. This suggests that the estimates team
ought to have a way of telling consumers where they are going while
they are going there. The estimates ought to be part of an interactive
process in which consumers are consulted at each step. Consumers
should be consulted as the terms of reference of the estimatethat is,
the questions the estimate will seek to answer or the issues it will discussare put together, and they ought to be privy to the deliberations
as they progress. If this process is carried out properly, the team's basic
judgments will be known to decisionmakers well before the final version
hits the street.
Intelligence deals with uncertainty, and no part of the intelligence
process is more uncertain than predicting the future course of events.
Yet, if the creation of an estimate can be a dialogue rather than the delivery of a judgment as if from Mount Olympus, end-users will find the
process more useful. Further, intelligence managers are going to have to
trust the estimates teams they select to carry out the estimates dialogue
without the constant supervision that has been so frustrating for analysts.
In the early days of the CIA, analysts were hired because they were
the best and the brightest and were therefore trusted to provide judgments to their consumers without having to pass their work through
several levels of review. Fear of failure, however, has led to a process in
which some analysts hardly ever see their analysis appear in print the
way they wrote it. Everything written in the CIA's Directorate of Intelligence seems to have been written by the same nerd. Managers argue
that they have to be sure that what is delivered to consumers represents
an agency rather than an individual viewpoint, but if the CIA is really
hiring the best and the brightest, agency managers should be more confident about their troops.
The Competence of Analysts
This raises an issue that appears from time to time about the competence of intelligence analysts. Melvin Goodman, a frequent critic of in-
59
telligence analysis and a former senior analyst and intelligence manager

himself, has suggested that they are less than the best and often not the
brightest. 13 Similar criticisms appeared in the report prepared by retired
U.S. Navy admiral David Jeremiah, who was asked to determine why
the CIA failed to catch Indian nuclear tests in 1998.14 Other critics, especially in the academic world, have made similar arguments. Is there
merit in these criticisms? If so, what can be done about the problem?
Analysts are recruited in much the same way as operations officers.
Advertisements are aimed at students at the graduate level, and recruiters visit key college campuses to interview potential candidates. Emphasis is placed on language skills and area knowledge, but there has always
been a certain bias in hiring in favor of those who might become case
officers. Recruits who do not meet the operations officer personality test
are relegated to the analytic directorate or to support fields. Just as in its
failure to seek well-qualified operations officers, the agency does not
really go after graduate students who might fit the analytic bill. Rather,
the CIA offers the opportunity to apply and hopes that the right people
will read the advertisements.
At colleges and universities where intelligence is taught as an academic subject, students have the opportunity to learn more about intelligence. Academics who teach the subject report consistently that interest
in intelligence as a career is high, although it is the rare student who is
actually accepted into the profession. Unfortunately, intelligence agencies seem unaware of the growth and intensity of intelligence studies
and have not taken advantage of this process as a recruiting tool.
The CIA and other intelligence agencies continue to be reluctant, as
well, to take in qualified analysts at mid-level grades. This might be
understandable in intelligence operations, where tradecraft is a skill that
is not easily learned in civilian endeavors. A great many people in the
private sector have the talent, area knowledge, language ability, and experience to become good analysts. Even if interested in serving in intelligence, however, they could hardly be expected to go back to square
one in their lives. They would have to be convinced that they could do
some good by switching careers, and they would have to be offered
sufficient monetary incentive to come aboard. So far, the CIA has failed
to take advantage of the talent that is out there, continuing to run its
personnel system just as it did in the Cold War.
Analysts have been promised, since the earliest days of the CIA, that
they could reach senior grade without having to become managers. This
promise has never been fulfilled in any meaningful way. Some analysts
have indeed been promoted to the lower senior grades, but the top ranks
still go to office directors and division chiefs. It would seem feasible to
create a separate career track for non-managers and promote them to the
highest pay grades based on their capability and track record, but again,
intelligence managers are mired in the old ways of doing things.
60
These situations suggest that Mel Goodman is right, that the CIA and
the other intelligence agencies are not attracting and retaining the best
and the brightest. From an inside perspective, however, the view is
somewhat different. The author served as an analyst, as an analytic supervisor, and as a production manager in the CIA's Directorate of Intelligence. The quality of analytic ability was never in question. The
Directorate of Intelligence was filled with brilliant people with fascinating backgrounds, exceptional skills, and superior ability. If a problem
existed, it was in the quality of training and preparation given analysts.
Most had to learn the business on the job.
Analyst Training
Intelligence managers have traditionally believed that intelligence operationsmanaging espionagecan be learned only in an intelligence
trade school, that is, at a place like the CIA's training facility in Virginia.
Even trainees who have prior experience in military intelligence are told
to forget what they had previously learned so that they could absorb the
"right way" to do things. But in the world of intelligence analysis, managers have taken an entirely different approach. The CIA, for example,
assumes that analysts would have learned about substantive issues in
graduate school, and that they need to be trained only about the mechanics of writing intelligence products.
The CIA used to invest considerable time and money in preparing
operations officers for their work. Several of the author's classmates in
operations training spent two years after training in foreign assignments
where their only task was to perfect their language skills. The CIA has
never given analysts that kind of opportunity. Analysts may indeed
serve duty tours abroad, but only after they have become established in
the profession. Overseas duty for analysts is considered more of a reward
than an opportunity to advance their skills and knowledge, and they are
rarely promoted because of their overseas performance. If anything, such
so-called "rotational tours" are career-damaging for anyone below the
most senior grades.
The result of this bias is a situation in which a substantive analyst,
who should be an expert in terms of the area he or she covers, may have
spent far less time on the ground in the region than the consumers. Is it
any wonder, then, that consumers may be skeptical about the analyst's
expertise? Intelligence managers must begin investing in their analysts
in the same way that they invest in operations officers. This means that
analysts have to spend a fair part of their formative years in the area in
which they are supposed to be expert. Unfortunately, several obstacles
block such a practice.
61
First, travel funds are usually in short supply in the analytic directorate. Operations people travel all the time and rarely run into a travel
budget crunch, whereas travel for analysts has always been considered
something of a luxury. Second, operational stations abroad do not welcome visiting analysts, consider them outsiders, and are reluctant to have
to hand-hold them while they are in the area. Operations officers fear
that the analysts will do something stupid to jeopardize operations, and,
indeed, there have been some horror stories. Finally, analytic supervisors
are reluctant to have their junior analysts running around overseas when
they should be at their desks reading their mail. All of this must change
if analysts are to become well versed in the politics, the culture, and the
ambience of their area of expertise.
W o m e n and Minorities
Another issue recently raised is criticism of the government's effort to
attract more women and minorities into the profession of intelligence to
redress the imbalance in the intelligence profession, which is still run
mostly by white males. The CIA has tried a variety of schemes to try to
recruit more women and minority candidates, but with only limited success. In his book on his experiences in the Clandestine Service, former
operations officer Dewey Clarridge complains that the emphasis on female and minority hiring may well produce case officers who cannot be
successful in recruiting agents. 15 In the world of analysis, though, sex
and race should play no part. There is no position in the Directorate of
Intelligence that could not be filled by someone other than a white male.
In fact, the CIA's problem is not in hiring women and minorities, but
in retaining them and in promoting them to senior positions. Although
the CIA has recognized the "glass ceiling" problem facing women, it has
promoted or appointed only a few women to senior positions. Minority
officers are another story. No black, Latino, or Asian American has ever
reached top rank anywhere in the Agency. Until that situation is remedied, the minority retention problem will continue, with little justification for the CIA's failure to deal more forthrightly with the issue.
The production of finished intelligence is truly the "end game" of the
intelligence business. Unless cogent analysis is provided to decisionmakers, the satellites and spies are not worth the money spent on them.
Intelligence managers have to realize that intelligence analysis, while
hardly the glamorous or adventurous part of the intelligence process,
may be the most meaningful in terms of how the process serves policymaking. Observers of intelligence have been saying these things for
years. Now it is time for the intelligence leadership to pay attention.
62
Notes
1. The author first proposed this usage in his "Managing Intelligence Analysis: Strategies for Playing the End Game," International Journal of Intelligence and
Counterlntelligence. vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 321-343.
1996), pp. 298-299.
3. Barry M. Katz, Research and Analysis in the Office of Strategic Services, 19421945 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989).
4. George J. A. O'Toole, Honorable Treachery: A History of U.S. Intelligence,
Espionage, and Covert Action from the American Revolution to the CIA (New York:
Atlantic Monthly Press, 1991).
5. Ibid.
6. Michael Wines, "Washington at Work; CIA Sidelines Its Gulf Cassandra,"
New York Times, 24 January 1991, p. D22.
7. Richard K. Betts, "Analysis, War and Decision: Why Intelligence Failures
Are Inevitable," World Politics, vol. 31, 1978.
8. Gary Sick, All Fall Down: America's Tragic Encounter with Iran (Harrisonburg, VA: R. Donnelly & Sons, 1986).
9. The author participated in several studies on the value of long-term analysis; all reached more or less the same conclusions.
10. John C. Gannon, "Sharing Secrets with Lawmakers: Congress as a User of
Intelligence/' address to a conference at Georgetown University, 20 March 1997.
11. Consumer surveys have consistently produced such judgments.
12. The author studied the uses of intelligence in the Carter administration
while serving as a DCI Fellow in the Center for the Study of Intelligence.
13. Melvin Goodman, "The Road to Intelligence Reform: Paved with Good
Intentions," paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Studies
Association, Toronto, Canada, 1997.
14. Walter Pincus, "CIA Chief Cited Loss of Agency's Capabilities," Washington Post, 25 May 1998, p. A4.
15. Duane R. Clarridge, A Spy for All Seasons (New York: Scribner, 1997).
CHAPTER 4
Secret Operations
When the famous Chinese military philosopher Sun Tzu wrote about
intelligence in his treatise The Art of War, much of the material actually
concerned what we call today "covert action," secret operations designed
to carry out security or defense policy rather than collecting and analyzing information. Writers about intelligence and practitioners of the art
have used other terms for covert action, including psychological warfare,
active measures (Russian terminology), or "dirty tricks" (used mostly by
those opposed to covert action). Covert action includes a variety of activities that deserve careful explanation and scrutiny because in democractic societies such activity is quite controversial. Certainly covert
action has played an important role in American history, although it is
a factor that is often ignored or misunderstood by historians, perhaps
because so much of it remains buried in secret archives.
Covert action isn't intelligence in the strict sense, yet intelligence services are almost always involved in carrying out such activity largely
because they have the resources to do it. They have secret agents, safe
houses, spy paraphernalia, and other tradecraft necessary to hide covert
action, so that a government undertaking such action can deny the activity if it becomes public. This "deniability" has been especially important in democractic societies when questions are raised about the
morality or legality of such operations. Of course, dictators and authoritarian governments do not have to worry about moral or legal issues,
although they, too, enjoy the benefits of being able to deny responsibility
for secret operations.
64
A Third Option
What is covert action? Most modern scholars who have written about
covert action agree about what it is, although they do not necessarily
agree about how different aspects of covert action should be categorized.
Some say that covert action is designed to serve as a "third option," lying
somewhere between military force on one end of the spectrum and diplomacy on the other. Covert action would be used to accomplish an
objective when military force is too strong and where open diplomacy
is not strong enough. Others argue that covert action by itself cannot be
decisive and should be used only as an adjunct to some larger scheme
of policy. Professor Roy Godson, an intelligence scholar at Georgetown
University, has pointed out that covert action is not a "magic bullet." 1
A Variety of Activities
Covert action encompasses a variety of activities designed to accomplish objectives in such a way that the hand of the action country is not
seen, or at least in a way that provides deniability. Covert action may
include political operations to aid favored parties or factions in a target
country, especially in situations where these groups may be at a serious
disadvantage. Thus, the United States aided Solidarity in Poland when
it became the victim of a government crackdown in the 1980s, but this
had to be done secretly of course, to protect Solidarity members and the
reputation of the party.
Covert action can mean the use of economic action to disrupt an adversary's financial structure or other parts of its economy. Iran has been
accused of secretly forging U.S. banknotes as a way of disrupting the
American economy, although most of the counterfeit bills have circulated
outside the United States. Former members of the KGB, highly skilled in
the techniques of forgery, may be doing the same thing.
Covert action encompasses various aspects of psychological warfare,
including the use of "black propaganda" that hides the origin of the
information; deception, especially in military operations; and disinformation, circulating false information to disrupt or discredit an adversary.
During the Cold War the United States sponsored a number of clandestine radio stations whose function was to broadcast news as the United
States saw it, but whose sponsorship was hidden; these stations included
Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. Later, these stations became acknowledged entities of the U.S. government.
Deception operations are widely known in U.S. history, from George
Washington's use of deception to trick the British and their Hessian allies
Secret Operations
65
at the Battle of Trenton to General Schwarzkopf's deception to mask his

flank attack on Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War. Deception to trick an
enemy is a key factor in Sun Tzu's writings; there is no more graphic
example of its use than the Allied creation of a "phony" army in World
War II to convince the Nazis that the D-Day invasion was to come at
Calais rather than at Normandy.
Disinformation was a major part of the KGB's efforts to discredit the
United States and the CIA during the Cold War. Some of the charges
seem ludicrous, but they wereand still arewidely believed in parts
of the Third World. The Russians circulated stories that the CIA had
created the AIDS virus as a by-product of its drug experiments and that
the United States was behind the assassinations of world leaders from
Olaf Palme in Sweden to Indira Gandhi in India, not to mention Martin
Luther King and Malcolm X. Although no facts were ever presented to
substantiate such charges, they were couched in a such a way as to make
them believeable. The Soviets valued disinformation so highly that they
co-opted the Czech intelligence service to carry out disinformation operations on behalf of the USSR throughout the Cold War. 2
Support for Paramilitary Forces
Finally, covert action includes support for guerrilla, irregular, or paramilitary forces who may fight as surrogates for their secret sponsors.
During the American Revolutionary War, the French sent secret aid to
the Americans as a way of getting back at the British, and they even
enlisted clandestine help from Spain for the enterprise. Later the United
States sent secret aid to Panamanian revolutionaries who were trying to
throw off Colombian rule. Of course, the U.S. assistance was not altruistic; rather, it was part of an agreement to give rights to the United
States to build a canal if the revolutionaries were successful.
During the Cold War there were many cases on both sides of aid to
paramilitary groups. For example, in Central America, the KGB aided
the Farobundo Marti guerrillas in El Salvador, who were fighting a U.S.favored government; while next door in Nicaragua, the U.S.-backed Contras were trying to unseat a Soviet-supported Sandinista regime. Both
sets of guerrillas were considered "freedom fighters" by their respective
clandestine supporters.
The use of terrorist tactics, including assassination, is also part of covert action, but the United States has foresworn such operations ever
since they were banned by the first of a series of presidential executive
orders in 1976.3 The Soviets were not so fussy and were known to have
carried out assassinations"wet operations" in their terminology
against defectors such as Stefan Bandera and Georgi Markov. Other
66
nations, including Syria, Libya, and Iran, are believed to be using their
intelligence services to carry out state-sponsored terrorism against targets in the West and in Israel.
The Agent of Influence
In covert action operations, a key figure is the so-called agent of influence, a secret agent who does not steal information but, rather, manages
the covert action. He or she may be recruited and handled by the sponsoring intelligence service in much the same way as a spy who gathers
data, but the role of the agent of influence is different. The covert action
agent serves as the conduit for passing money, providing arms, or giving
other assistance to political parties or military groups. When the operation becomes too large, the sponsoring country may seek broader help
from another intelligence service. The CIA reportedly used the Pakistani
intelligence service to handle support for the guerrilla fighters trying to
drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan, for example. 4 The KGB turned to
the Cuban intelligence service, the DGI, to assist in defeating antiCommunist guerrillas in Angola and Ethiopia.
The Cold War is over, but covert action remains part of the arsenal of
the major powers as well as that of many lesser nations. Now observers
of intelligence as well as reformers are asking if covert action should be
used against the post-Cold War problems such as global organized
crime, terrorism, and drug cartels. To answer that question, a more detailed examination of covert action and its history is necessary. Just as
in the case of espionage, the roots of covert action lie deep, although the
information is fragmentary and anecdotal.
Early Uses of Covert Action in the United States
Over the past ten years a number of good books on covert action have
appeared, mostly focused on covert action by the United States, partly
because the history of its use has been hidden and because so much
controversy surrounds it.5 We know now that covert action has been a
part of American history since the earliest days of revolutionary fervor
in the British colonies and that is it not merely a child of the Cold War.
Even before the Declaration of Independence, the American colonists had
formed secret committees to gather arms and to share information about
their British masters. When war broke out, it was clear that George
Washington would have to use all possible methods if his rag-tag army
of poorly trained colonials was going to defeat what was then part of
the best-trained and -equipped army in the world. Washington may
Secret Operations
67
never have heard of Sun Tzu, but Washington's tactics in winning the
war might have come right out of the ancient Chinese philosopher's
book.
Washington tricked the British generals into believing that his army
was much larger than its actual strength by circulating false information
to British spies, and Washington's deputies were able to keep the British
from attacking by deceptive demonstrations of strength by a handful of
troops. Washington understood the value of propaganda and at one
point arranged the purchase of a newspaper, the Montreal Gazette, as a
way of trying to convince the Canadians to join the revolution. The
French engaged in deception as well in supporting the Americans by
setting up a phony trading companywhat we would call today a "proprietary"to cover the secret transfer of funds and arms to the United
States.
After the war, Washington insisted, when he became president, that a
secret fund, the Contingent Fund for Foreign Intercourse, be established
to give him the ability to carry out secret operations without having to
reveal to Congress what he was doing, only that he had spent the money.
The first allocation amounted to $40,000, but it soon grew to $1 million,
almost 12 percent of the federal budget. It demonstrated that Congress
understood that in matters of clandestine operations, the chief executive
was to be the controller and ratified the views contained in the Federalist
Papers that such operations would be possible only if they were kept
hidden.
Although there is no evidence that John Adams dabbled in covert action, his successors in the White House were not reluctant to take advantage of secret operations in carrying out foreign policy. Thomas
Jefferson became the first president to approve an operation to overthrow a government hostile to the United States, and James Madison
used secret agents to try to wrest East and West Florida away from
Spanish rule. When Congress sought to find out more about these operations, the White House refused to turn over full information, a tradition that has lasted until the modern era.
Dispatching Secret Agents
Andrew Jackson, our first "western" president, was not above sending
secret agents to bribe foreign officials to bend to American will. John
Tyler (who became president in 1841 only because William Henry Harrison contracted pneumonia and died in office after a long-winded inaugural speech in freezing Washington weather) permitted his secretary
of state to engage in a highly questionable disinformation campaign
in order to convince the people of Maine to sign on to the Webster-
68
Ashburton Treaty establishing the northern border with Canada. This

effort involved the circulation of doctored maps, the use of foreign funds,
and secret deals that bring to mind the later scandals of the Iran-Contra
affair. When Congress sought to investigate, Tyler's successor, James
Knox Polk, refused to turn over the data, claiming executive privilege.
In a statement that rings as true today as it did in 1846, Polk wrote:
The experience of every nation on earth has demonstrated that emergencies
may arise in which it becomes absolutely necessary for the public safety
or the public good to make expenditures, the very object of which would
be defeated by publicity. Some governments have very large amounts at
their disposal, and have made vastly greater expenditures than the small
amounts which have from time to time been accounted for on the president's certificates. In no nation is the application of such sums ever made
public. In time of war or impending danger the situation of the country
may make it necessary to employ individuals for the purpose of obtaining
information or rendering other important services who could never be prevailed upon to act if they entertained the least apprehension that their
names or their agency would in any contingency be revealed.6
As they did from time to time in such circumstances, members of
Congress raised a fuss but in the end permitted the chief executive to
protect the operations and agents just as Polk had demanded.
Covert Action and War
Polk engaged again in covert action in order to support rebels seeking
to overthrow Mexican rule in California and to foment war with Mexico
over Texas. According to Professor Stephen Knott, who has documented
these operations in detail, Polk's instructions to his agents were vague
and occasionally contradictory. Nonetheless, they resulted in a vast expansion of the United States along its present borders. Polk thus deserves
credit, not only for his deft handling of American expansionism, but also
for his understanding of the utility of covert action as an adjunct to
foreign policy.
During the Civil War both sides engaged actively in covert actions,
from the use of political action to propaganda, disinformation, and sabotage. President Lincoln sent agents to Europe to squelch efforts by the
European powers to recognize the Confederacy, and his agents arranged
to interfere with ship construction in England, the main source of supplies for the rebels. We don't know quite as much about Confederate
operations because many records were destroyed in the sack of Richmond, but rebel agents were known to have given clandestine support
to the anti-war Copperheads in the North.
Secret Operations
69
Toward the end of the nineteeth century, President Benjamin Harrison,

taking a page from President Madison's book, used a secret agent to
foment rebellion among the American planters who had moved into the
Hawaiian Islands, eventually forcing Queen Liliuokalani out of power.
Harrison's successor, Grover Cleveland, while expressing regret about
the queen's overthrow, refused to undo the action that had resulted in
the islands' becoming a territory of the United States.
The United States Acquires an Empire

There was probably no more blatant secret operation run out of the
White House than the one that created the Republic of Panama and gave
the United States the land to build the Panama Canal. President Theodore Roosevelt himself provided the guiding hand behind the operation,
taking advantage of a rebel movement in Panama that was seeking to
throw off Colombian rule. One of the secret agents in the operation,
Manuel Amador, later became Panama's first presidentthe first but
certainly not the last president of Panama to take money from the United
States. Roosevelt was quick to claim credit for the adventure when he
was criticized by Congress, thereby violating the unwritten rule of deniability. Roosevelt's secretary of war later said that Roosevelt had been
accused of seduction but was in fact guilty of rape. 7
The United States had thus acquired an empire partly as a result of
its secret operations, aided by the power of the U.S. Navy. The United
States then entered a period of isolation, broken only by its reluctant
entrance into World War I. Not until Franklin Delano Roosevelt became
president did the United States again turn to secret operations, spurred
by the specter of war. It was FDR who created America's first organized
intelligence service, the Office of Strategic Services, under the leadership
of General William Donovan, and part of its mandate involved covert
action. The creation of the OSS enabled the White House to shift responsibility for secret operations to this new organization, a situation
that lasted until 1945.
During World War II the OSS and other military intelligence units
carried out secret operations against the Nazis and the Japanese at the
direction of the White House and U.S. military commanders. Sabotage,
psychological warfare, the use of secret agents, even assassination, became the order of the day. The United States aided the Norwegian underground in destroying Nazi nuclear research facilities, the U.S. Army
Air Corps targeted Japan's Admiral Yamamoto for assassination, and
secret agents in France were enlisted to sabotage roads and bridges in
advance of the Allied invasion of the Continent. Such operations, when
70
they became known, were applauded as an integral part of the war effort, although they might not have been tolerated in peacetime.
The CIA Takes on Covert Action

After World War II the OSS was disbanded and its secret operations
handed over to the Pentagon. These operations included efforts, largely
unsuccessful, to prevent the Soviets from putting puppet regimes in
power in Eastern Europe, but also operations designed to snatch German
scientists before they could fall into Soviet hands. After the CIA was
created in 1947, most of these secret operations were passed to the new
agency despite grumbling from the Pentagon. Some CIA officials questioned whether or not the CIA really had authority to carry out covert
action. The law that created the CIA merely said that it should carry out
activity related to intelligence as directed by the president or the National Security Council.
The first DCI under the new system, Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoeter,
asked for advice from his legal counsel, who recommended against covert action, but Hillenkoeter decided to go ahead in 1948 with plans to
aid the Christian Democratic Party of Italy stave off an election bid by
the Communist Party (PCI). The Soviets threw their support to the PCI,
but the Americans had much more experience in "buying" elections and
in the end, the PCI was defeated. This operation confirmed the role of
CIA in covert action.
This system for carrying out secret operations at the direction of the
White House required that Congress be brought in to provide the funding. The "secret fund" operation used by so many presidents was no
longer in effect, since the mandate had gotten so big. Congress wanted
to know in general what was going on, although many members thought
that they should not be privy to operational details because that would
be dangerous. Since there were no intelligence committees in those days,
the CIA worked with key members and subcommittees to arrange financing of secret operations. 8 The record of accomplishment is mixed.
Controversial Operations
Efforts to overthrow a reformist and freely elected government in Guatemala in 1954 remain controversial even now. At the time the replacement of President Jacobo Arbenz was seen as a victory against the spread
of communism in Central America, although Arbenz was hardly a Communist. His reformist ideas included plans to seize the property of the
Secret Operations
71
United Fruit Company and pay compensation based on the measly sum
the company had declared as the value of the property. United Fruit
lobbied Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, who had served United
Fruit as its general counsel, and Dulles turned to his brother Allen, the
DCI, to help out. The CIA carried out a psychological warfare campaign
and was able to force Arbenz to quit. Critics of the policy, even now,
note that this may have been the main cause behind Guatemala's subsequent civil war, which raged into the 1990s and reportedly resulted in
thousands of deaths.
Another "victory" for covert action was the overthrow of the Mossadegh regime in Iran at about the same time as the Guatemala campaign.
The young and timid shah had been forced into exile by Prime Minister
Mohammed Mossadegh, who planned to take over British and American
oil assets in Iran. Naturally this made him a Communist in some eyes.
The situation was further complicated by the threat that the USSR might
somehow move into northern Iran if Mossadegh remained in power. The
CIA was again enlisted to save the day. Chief of Station Kermit Roosevelt
organized riots and demonstrations against Mossadegh, and the prime
minister was forced to resign. The shah returned, thanked Roosevelt for
saving his throne, and began a period of rule that ended in his overthrow
by the fundamentalist Shiite clergy in 1978. It was another case of shortterm victory becoming a long-term disaster.
A b u s e s of Covert Action
Other operations to change governments unacceptable to the United
States did not go as well as those in Italy, Guatemala, and Iran. An effort
to oust President Sukarno in Indonesia in 1958 failed miserably; the CIA
had tried to convince the Eisenhower administration not to try it but was
pressed to carry out the operation anyway. Interestingly, the Indonesians
themselves eventually ousted Sukarno's government. Although the subsequent regime under President Suharto was only minimally democratic,
it was stable and anti-Communist, just what Washington wanted. In this
case, short-term failure resulted in a long-term victory in the Cold War.
The worst abuse of covert action came in the wake of Fidel Castro's
rise to power in Cuba in 1959. When Castro announced that he was really
a Marxist-Leninist and threw in his lot with the Soviets, he became anathema to Washington. The attempt to oust him by arranging an invasion
by anti-Castro Cuban exiles at the Bay of Pigs was not only a disaster,
it turned out that the director of operations at the CIAthen called the
deputy director for plansRichard Bissell had lied to the White House,
Congress, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the DCI, and his colleagues about the
operation. 9 Bissell knew it had little chance of success, but apparently he
72
thought that somehow the new president, John F. Kennedy, would bail
out the operation with U.S. military troops.
The failure to get rid of Castro by military force led to a new operationspurred, it appears, by the president's brother, Attorney General
Robert F. Kennedyto assassinate the Cuban leader. The younger Kennedy may not have said "kill him" in so many words, but CIA leaders
determined that a hit was what the White House wanted. Of course, the
many rather bizarre attempts to kill Castro failed, and he has outlasted
six U.S. presidents at last count. Even now a psychological warfare campaign against Castro seems to be ongoing, although it is no longer clandestine.
The Doolittle Mandate

In all these cases, the U.S. was following a policy outlined by General
Jimmy Doolittle in 1954. Doolittle had been asked to carry out an examination of U.S. intelligence as part of a larger study on government
at the time. In regard to covert action, Doolittle wrote:
It is now clear that we are facing an implacable enemy whose avowed
objective is world domination by whatever means and at whatever cost.
There are no rules in such a game. Hitherto acceptable norms of human
conduct do not apply. If the United States is to survive, long-standing
American concepts of fair play must he reconsidered. We must. . . learn to
subvert, sabotage and destroy our enemies by more clever, more sophisticated and more effective methods than those used against us. It may
become necessary that the American people be made acquainted with, understand, and support this fundamentally repugnant philosophy.10
This policy of seeking to be at least as devious as our adversaries
continued for almost twenty years. Orders to carry out covert action
came from the White House but were driven at times by the State Department or the president's close advisors. Members of Congress provided the money and did not ask too many questions. The CIA never
made final decisions about covert action by itself, although it may from
time to time have made suggestions to State officials or the White House
staff. Nonetheless, the CIA gained a reputation as a secret government,
planning and carrying out covert action without any oversight from anyone, raising money by secret means to fund the operations.
In reviewing the covert actions carried out by the CIA during the early
Cold War period, CIA historian Michael Warner describes in some detail
efforts by the CIA to recruit liberal and even leftist groups to take up
the ideological struggle against the Communist enemy. 11 These cooperative groups included labor organizations, student and academic orga-
Secret Operations
73
nizations, and political groups of various leanings. In some cases key

officials in these organizations were aware of the ties to the CIA, but
many leaders and the rank-and-file were kept in the dark.
A Mixed Record
Looking back, it seems clear that many of these groups would have
been unable to combat their Soviet-sponsored counterparts without funding from the U.S. government. Because of the rampant antiCommunist hysteria in the United States at that time, open funding by
Congress would have been impossible. Thus, hiding the funds by letting
the CIA manage the money gave Congress a way out. We know now
that some key members of Congress were quite aware of these secret
operations but chose not to seek the details. 12
The other aspects of covert action during the Cold War period have
been described and discussed in detail elsewhere in books, journal articles, and the press. Both the Americans and the Soviets used the full
panoply of covert action operations against each other with mixed success. We supported practically anyone willing to declare himself antiCommunist, whereas the Soviets were willing to aid those who said they
were Marxist-Leninist. The outcomes of these efforts were hardly what
each side professed as its goals. We ended up backing a variety of dictators from Somoza in Nicaragua to Mobutu in Zaire, all in the name of
democracy, and the Soviets found themselves backing such stalwart
"Communists" as Mengistu in Ethiopia and Najibullah in Afghanistan.
Ironically, the one real ideologue in the mix, Salvador Allende in Chile,
got relatively little support from the USSR.
Finally, a series of revelations in the press about covert action operations, triggered in part by the Watergate affair and hints of CIA involvement, as well as by the overthrow of the Allende government, caused
the pot to boil over. Senator Frank Church of Idaho led a congressional
inquiry in the Senate on the allegations that the CIA was a secret governmenta "rogue elephant" in Church's terminologycarrying out the
foreign policy of the nation using covert action.13 Church thought that
neither the president nor Congress was privy to the CIA's activities. We
now know that Church was quite wrong. The investigation and subsequent report have become public and permit an examination of all the
alleged abuses in detail.
Results of the Church Committee Investigation
In fact, the CIA never plotted its operations behind closed doors without direction from the White House, and members of Congress were only
74
too willing to provide the money as long as their role could remain
secret. If CIA officials were guilty of anything, it was perhaps a bit more
enthusiasm for some of the more hair-brained schemes than was warranted. In retrospect, the efforts to assassinate Fidel Castro and Patrice
Lumumba seem amateurish. Far worse, the CIA's involvement in drug
experimentation, in which mind-altering drugs were administered to unwitting victims, one of whom subsequently committed suicide, might
lead today to an indictment for criminal behavior. White House oversight of the operations was loose at best, and Congress preferred not to
know. Is it any wonder that there were significant errors in judgment?
With the revelations of the Church Committee and those of the press,
Congress was forced to come to grips with its failure to exercise adequate
oversight of the intelligence process. At the same time the White House
recognized that it, too, needed to take a stronger hand in the direction
of intelligence operations. The result was the establishment of oversight
committees for intelligence in both houses of Congress and the issuance
of the first of a series of executive orders by President Gerald Ford regulating intelligence. The executive order banned assassination or any effort to support such practices and forbade drug experimentation as well.
The congressional committees soon realized that their role should go
well beyond the narrow oversight of covert action. They established, as
their mandate, budget review, evaluation of intelligence analysis and
management practices, and counterintelligence matters. On the Senate
side, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) became the
group responsible for determining the suitability of the president's
choice for DCI, a role that has become increasingly important and increasingly visible. In fact, the establishment of rigorous congressional
oversight of intelligence has changed the balance between the executive
and legislative branches in ways that would have astonished the Founding Fathers of the nation, who thought that intelligence operations were
an executive function only.
Still, the establishment of congressional oversight has provided an unexpected benefit in regard to covert action. To have a covert action, the
president must issue a written "finding" that the operation is necessary
and has his approval, and then the DCI must advise Congress of the
president's intentions through the oversight committees. Although the
committees cannot veto the operation, they can seek to have the president withdraw his plans, or they can try to stop funding for the covert
action. The committee members are not supposed to reveal the covert
action in order to tie the president's hands, but there have been leaks
from Capitol Hill from time to time. Nonetheless, having a system that
requires the White House to keep Congress in the loop on covert action
means that though the public can't know about these actions ahead of
Secret Operations
75
time, their representatives in Congress are acting on the public's behalf

to make sure that covert actions are acceptable.
Controlling Covert Action

The oversight system has not eliminated the tension between the executive and legislative branches over the control of intelligence operations. It has, however, made it more visible. Congress has for years
sought to force the president to provide information about covert action
before the start of operations, but without success. Modern presidents
have claimed executive privilege just as early presidents had done. The
president is required to provide information only on a timely basis and
may even restrict the briefings on covert action to key members of Congress in the interests of national security.
In the covert action set up to free hostages taken by militant students
in Iran after the fall of the shah, Congress was kept in the dark to prevent
leaks that might have scuttled the effort. Even though the main mission
failed, some Americans were taken out of Teheran in a secret operation
in cooperation with Canada that would have been impossible if even a
hint of it had become public. 14 Although Congress was critical of the
handling of the hostage rescue operation, it did not complain about the
administration's reluctance to advise it about the covert action aspects
of the scheme. Perhaps Congress would have taken a different stance
had the cooperative effort with Canada gone awry, but success is usually
welcomed by congressional overseers.
Failure to advise Congress about various aspects of the Reagan administration's support for the Contras in Nicaragua, however, became a
key factor in the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s. It appears that President Reagan was given bad advice about his responsibilities in telling
Congress about his secret operations. Some of the president's close advisors thought that the oversight rules allowed them to keep secret operations from the oversight committees if the operation was run directly
from the White House rather than through the CIA. A number of rules
were violated, causing Congress to try to micro-manage the intelligence
process to prevent further abuse. The public was unhappy about the
administration's Central American policy anyway and was unenthusiastic about aiding the Contras in trying to overthrow the Sandinistas in
Nicaragua and in giving support to the right-wing regime in neighboring
El Salvador. Yet, the public favored covert action to support the mujahedeen in Afghanistan, even though there was not much distinction between the Afghan rebels and the Contras.
76

Rules for Covert Action
This demonstrates several important lessons. Covert action will probably gain public support if the overall policy of which the action is a
part is popular, and the public will oppose secret operations in support
of a policy it does not like. Second, if the administration chooses to have
a covert operation, it should use the system set up to run it, not turn to
White House amateurs as stand-in case officers. Finally, trying to make
an end run around the rules set up to control covert action only leads
to abuse. There are other rules, as well, that will be discussed later.
The tension between the executive and legislative branches of the U.S.
government regarding covert action has led to making Congress become
increasingly aggressive about its role in determining the scope of U.S.
intelligence operations, with the White House trying to fight back by
restricting the information it gives Capitol Hill. Thus, CIA officials, required not to lie to Congress, have taken a page from DCI Bill Casey's
book, answering only the questions asked in congressional hearings and
volunteering nothing. If congressional stafferssome of whom are former intelligence officers themselvesdo their homework and ask the
right questions, the committees can perform their oversight function. If
they do not probe in the right places, the committees are likely to remain
in the dark about secret operations.
With the end of the Cold War and the defeat of the "implacable enemy," new questions have been raised about covert action. Whether or
not covert action was a significant factor in the Cold War is extremely
difficult to say, but there is no question that the intelligence officers engaged in the battles thought they were doing the right thing in going
head to head with the Communist adversary. Clearly there were successes and failures, but one can only imagine what might have happened
had we done nothing.
Is Covert Action Still Necessary?
Critics of covert action argue that as the world's leading democratic
nation, the United States has no business engaging in such practices. Yet,
all the investigations of secret intelligence operationsthe Church Committee, the Rockefeller Commission, the Joint Investigation of the IranContra Affairhave all concluded that covert action is and ought to
remain an important part of the U.S. national security arsenal and that
the capability to carry out such operations should be maintained, but
carefully controlled. No president in modern times, Democrat or Repub-
Secret Operations
77
lican, liberal or conservative, has stood for election on a platform that

calls for the end of covert action, and no president in modern memory
has said that he would not use it.
Perhaps covert action made sense during the Cold War when we were
facing an adversary who was highly skilled in its use; it seemed then to
be good policy to fight fire with fire. But now the problems are different.
We are no longer trying to win the hearts and minds of the uncommitted
and to roll back Communist ideology. Instead we face what former DCI
R. James Woolsey called "poisonous snakes," problems that during the
Cold War were minor irritants but now have become potential threats
to American security. These include the so-called rogue states, nations
that seem to defy the rule of law and international agreements, states
including Iran, Iraq, Libya, and North Korea. Other threats come from
terrorists, some of whom are sponsored by the rogue states, from drug
dealers, and from foreign organized crime. Is there a role for covert action in combating these threats? Should secret operations continue to be
a regular part of U.S. national security policy? So far, the answer seems
to be a qualified yes.
During the Cold War the CIA was accused of overthrowing governments throughout the world, although in reality it ran relatively few such
operations and with only limited success. It seems unlikely that covert
operations to depose Saddam Hussein or other dictators we dislike will
work unless the people they lead really want to depose them as well.
More and more, we are seeing indigenous movements grow in opposition to some of our former Cold War partners, and these movements do
not seem to want our help. They understand that they could be tarnished
if they were to be perceived as the handmaidens of the United States.
This did not keep House Speaker Newt Gingrich from pressing $20 million on the CIA to overthrow the government of Iran, of course, but the
glare of publicity surrounding the issue would certainly prevent the CIA
from carrying out the operation in secret.15
Dealing with terrorists is another vexing problem for covert action.
Terrorist groups are difficult to penetrate because they operate in small
cells and their members are prone to violence. Distaste for recruiting
such people is growing, and trying to stop or thwart their operations
does not seem to be a valid target for most covert operations. The same
may be said about operations to stop drug dealers and organized criminal operations. Some conservatives have argued that covert action might
be used to disrupt terrorists or criminals, but it seems more likely that
a combination of good intelligence and effective police operations will
be more successful at thwarting crime. This creates a different set of
problems, which will be discussed in a later chapter.
78

Managing the N e w Covert Action
Covert action operationsor at least the capability to carry out such

activityhas been eroded by the loss of intelligence veterans from the
Cold War period. Coupled with low morale at the CIA and increasing
public attention, carrying out such clandestine work has become increasingly difficult for the United States. Supporters of the system and reformers alike nonetheless agree that the United States should maintain
the capability to carry out covert action. Only those on the fringessome
of them who decry covert action as inappropriate for a free and open
society and others who think it gets in the way of other intelligence
workhave called for an end to it. Since the political leadership in the
United States, Republican and Democrat alike, seems to want to have
the capability to use covert techniques, it seems unlikely that covert action will disappear anytime soon.
Evaluating the success or failure of a covert action is probably more
difficult than judging intelligence collection or analysis. Keeping score in
the collection of intelligence comes down to whether or not the collectors
were able to obtain the needed information and if their techniques were
appropriate. Evaluating analysis is more difficult, but intelligence managers have developed useful systems for making such judgments. Evaluating covert action is not so easy, though. Judging covert action on the
basis of the accomplishment of the mission may miss the long-term implications of what has been done.
In Guatemala, for example, the overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz was seen,
in 1954, as a victory against the Communist menace in Central America,
and the restoration of the shah in Iran kept a friendly ruler in power. In
the long run, however, what happened was hardly of benefit to either
the United States or the target countries. Guatemala slipped into a period
of prolonged instability and civil war and thousands died. Iran has gone
from being a stalwart defender of U.S. interests in the Middle East, albeit
under a weak ruler, to an adversarial, theocratic state that wants to
spread its fundamentalist philosophy throughout the Muslim world and
views the United States as the "Great Satan." Short-term success has led
to long-term failure in both cases.
Of course, there is another side to the coin. There have been occasions
when a covert action has failed, but the long-term outcome sought by
the United States was achieved anyway. Failure to overthrow Sukarno
in Indonesia in 1958, for example, led to the development of a stable
regime, although the United States could hardly claim responsibility for
the outcome. Even in Chile there has been a victory, though not without
a high price. The overthrow of leftist Salvador Allende, sought so
Secret Operations
79
strongly by the Nixon administration, came about in spite of efforts by

the CIA. It was Allende's own army chief, General Augusto Pinochet,
who brought down his president and without U.S. help. This led to almost fifteen years of draconian rule by the Chilean military; but democracy has now been restored in Chile, the outcome sought in vain by
Nixon. This was hardly a victory for U.S. covert action, but the end result
was what Washington wanted.
Only Fidel Castro remains to demonstrate that covert action is not a
"magic bullet." Efforts to kill him consistently failed, and operations to
destabilize his regime were neutralized by Castro's ruthless security
service. Propaganda "radios" have not done the job either. Here is a case
where short-term failure has led to a long-term problem. In fact, the
revelations about Washington's efforts to bring down the Cuban dictator
have only strengthened his hand and his resolve to maintain the last of
the Marxist-Leninist dictatorships.
Recent Cases
Two more recent cases are instructive of how a short-term covert action victory can lead to an unexpected outcome in the long run. U.S.
attempts to unseat the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua in the 1980s by
backing a rag-tag coalition of rebel groups quickly became widely
known. Many in the United States opposed this policy, even though the
president called the rebels "the moral equivalent of the Founding Fathers." This led to protests, demonstrations, and an outcry in the United
States against covert action.
Although covert support for the Contras, as the U.S.-backed rebels
were known, did not bring down the Sandinistas, the policy certainly
weakened the Managua government. Finally, the Sandinista regime decided to hold an open and honest election, perhaps to demonstrate once
and for all that it was the legitimate government of Nicaragua. To everyone's surprise, the Sandinistas lost at the polls the power they had won
by the bullet. But the Contras did not win either. Instead, a new power
center developed that put Nicaragua back on the road to stable democracy. One could argue that this happened despite Washington's best efforts.
In Afghanistan, a different situation developed. Again, the covert action campaign became widely known, but in this case the administration's policyto force the Soviets out of Afghanistan, where they had
been ever since their invasion of the country in the 1970sgarnered
broad support. The rebels in Afghanistanagain, a coalition of disparate
groupsbecame known as the mujahedeen, and the CIA established a
80
conduit through Pakistan to provide them with arms, ammunition, and

training. Instead of protesting, however, the American people cheered,
and there was a sense of victory when the Soviets were forced to withdraw. In this case, the victory was short-lived.
The puppet regime the Soviets had installed in Kabul under former
security chief Najibullah did not collapse, as the CIA had predicted,
when the Soviets pulled out. Instead, the mujahedeen began fighting
among themselves over who was to take power, their squabble leading
to chaos and civil war. The current rise of the Taliban, a fanatic, fundamentalist Muslim group, has produced a regime that is, if anything,
worse than the Soviet-backed Najibullah dictatorship. A short-term victory for the United States and for covert action has become a long-term
disaster.
Evaluating Covert Action

The preceding examples demonstrate that judging the success or failure of a covert action solely on the accomplishment of the short-term
mission may not be particularly sound. In fact, the evaluation of covert
action is a subject that has received relatively little attention by intelligence managers. Figuring out whether or not a covert action has been a
success is difficult partly because covert action is a policy rather than an
intelligence function.
From the viewpoint of the policymaker, the judgment about the utility or success of a covert action will be based on the success or failure
of the policy governing the action. From the perspective of the intelligence manager, the judgment will probably be narrowly focused. Were
the right agents recruited? Was appropriate tradecraft used? Was the
Clandestine Service's part of the operation effective? Judging a covert
action from the manager's perspective is thus going to deal with operational details rather than overall outcomes. Seeing the issue only from
the policymaker's perspective may ignore how the outcome was
achieved.
In the United States the evaluation of a covert action might well lie
with the public, which learns about such actions only from the press.
Inevitably, the public will quickly hear about a covert action that fails
such as the flawed effort at the Bay of Pigs or more recently abortive
efforts to overthrow Saddam Husseinbut will rarely hear about a successful venture. Examples abound of covert actions gone awry, but there
is relatively little information about success. This is not surprising, since
CIA managers have long believed that the only way to have success is
not to talk about it. One senior CIA officer is alleged to have said that
Secret Operations
81
"the secret of our success is the secret of our success." Readers may have
to repeat this a few times to understand it.
Explaining Covert Action to the Public
It seems surprising that an agency supposedly so adept at carrying
America's messages behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War has
never been able to explain itself to the American people, especially in
regard to so controversial a subject as covert action. The CIA seems unable to gauge public reaction to its operations, does not anticipate when
covert actions will be revealed, and usually falls back on the old line
that it can "neither confirm nor deny allegations of intelligence activity."
The situation is exacerbated by those who intend to do damage to the
Agency, including some former officers who circulate credible but false
stories about covert action. The public, the press, and even scholars seem
to pick up these stories and in repeating them give them a credibility
they do not deserve. During the Cold War the Soviet Union and its allies
took advantage of this situation by circulating disinformation about CIA
operations to make it appear that the CIA was carrying out illegal activity. Thus, the CIA was given the blame for assassinations it did not
commit, failed governments it did not overthrow, and bank scandals it
did not touch. In spite of voluminous evidence that the CIA had nothing
to do with drug dealing in the United States, press stories to the contrary
have triggered several congressional investigations, each of which has
turned up nothing. Yet, the story does not die.
The issue of how a secret intelligence agency should deal with the
public in a free and democratic society will be addressed later. The issue
here is how the publicand the officials they elect to run the governmentcan judge the utility, the value, and the success or failure of covert
action. There are no quick answers. Most covert actions will eventually
become public over time, especially if they involve large numbers of
operatives and significant resources as in Nicaragua or Afghanistan. The
government, when it chooses to use a covert action, should be prepared
to explain what it did and why it did so. Merely responding to negative
media coverage is not as effective as preparing for the inevitable revelations.
Because covert action will remain a part of the U.S. security arsenal
no mainstream politician has indicated a willingness to give up the option of using covert actionthe issues of management and control
should be reviewed. The United States has the most carefully constructed
and scrutinized system of any major nation in managing covert action.
It should preclude abuse. Nonetheless, problems still arise. Why?
82

Friction b e t w e e n the President and Congress
Part of the problem relates to the inevitable friction between the president and Congress over policy matters. Unlike intelligence collection or
analysis, covert action is a policy issue; but unlike other kinds of policy
debates, discussion of covert action must take place in secret if the action
is to have any chance of success. Thus, the president will be reluctant to
tell Congress what action is planned, and the legislators will try to pry
the information out of the White House or out of the DCI. If Congress
does not like what it hears or what it thinks it knows, it will seek ways
to short-circuit the covert action plan. Nothing does this better than publicity. Current legislation requires the DCI to brief the intelligence oversight committees on planned covert action on a timely basis, but
presidents find that these rules tend to interfere with their freedom of
action. The result is that presidents tend to tell Congress as little as possible, especially when the covert action may become controversial, and
legislators tend not to like what they cannot learn about ahead of time.
The reporting requirement probably inhibits risk taking in covert action, not always a bad thing. The Council on Foreign Relations, in its
study on intelligence reform, suggested that CIA managers should be
rewarded for taking risks in secret operations, but recent experience
shows that CIA officials can be quite vulnerable when a covert action
goes sour.16 The experiences of the Reagan period and efforts to criminalize the actions of senior CIA officials in the Iran-Contra affair have
left CIA careerists wondering how much support they can expect if they
take risks that lead to failure. It is one thing to be given an internal
reprimand for errors in judgment or failures in control. It is quite another
to be treated as a criminal, to be hauled into court, and to face the enormous expense as well as the public humiliation of a trial.
Maintaining a Covert Action Infrastructure

If future administrations want to maintain the capability to undertake
covert actionsand all the signs suggest that they dothen changes
must be made both in the planning and in the implementation of covert
action management and control. In recent years covert action has been
initiated in a variety of ways. State Department officials sometimes seek
to use covert action, initiatives for it may come from the National Security Council, or the CIA itself may suggest its use. No matter where
the idea comes from, new initiatives for covert action must, first of all,
be coordinated at the White House level, usually in a committee set up
Secret Operations
83
for just that purpose. The members usually include representatives from
the policy offices as well as from the CIA's operations directorate. The
aim of the committee is to make sure the covert action fits in with other
policy plans and that it is politically acceptable to the National Security
Council. This committee, however, may not be the best place to make
judgments about covert action or analyze its chances for success. That
judgment ought to come much earlier in the planning process.
The CIA has had considerable success in establishing centers to deal
with such issues as counterintelligence, counterterrorism, and counternarcotics. Perhaps a similar center could be established to deal with covert action. The centers are supposed to bring together representatives
of the various CIA directorates, as well as representatives from the other
intelligence agencies. Although this was not favored at first by those who
wanted a strict separation between analysts and operations officers and
between intelligence and law enforcement, the centers have actually
worked well. Analysts have demonstrated that they can protect sources
and methods, operations officers have shown that they will not skew
analysis to support operations, and intelligence officers from the CIA
have been working well with representatives from the other agencies.
At present, as far as we know, there is no covert action center either
in being or planned. The CIA does reportedly ask the most senior managers to review covert action initiatives, but this is not the same as submitting such plans to an intensive analysis. The purpose of the intensive
review would be to look at several issues that inevitably arise in covert
action. Since a covert action cannot, on its own, be successful, reviewers
ought to ask whether or not the covert action fits in with some larger
scheme of foreign policy.
Second, the covert action must have some realistic chance of actually
achieving the goal set for it. Throwing large sums of money at a questionable projectas was done at the Bay of Pigs in the 1960s and more
recently in vain attempts to overthrow Saddam Husseinnot only is
wasteful but also stands a good chance of being counterproductive,
squandering precious covert resources and perhaps putting agents in
danger.
Third, the covert action must be activity that would, if revealed, be
seen as sensible by the American public. Without public support a covert
action is bound to be pilloried in the press, even though it would have
been approved by the White House and by the oversight committees in
Congress. The administration ought to be prepared to explain why it
chose to undertake the covert action if the matter becomes public, a possibility that seems inevitable in today's media-hungry world.
Finally, the covert action ought to have long-term as well as shortterm benefits. Too often administrations have chosen to use covert action
for a quick fix in a situation where wiser heads might have chosen a
84
different approach. Unless a covert action offers some hope that the longterm outcome will be as beneficial as the short-term results, the covert
action may be a poor choice for policymakers. If policy officials had taken
the longer view in Cuba or Chile, for example, they might have chosen
different policies.
A Covert Action Center
A covert action center within the intelligence system would be able to
weigh the various issues to determine if a planned covert action meets
the criteria outlined above. Analysts and operators would be able to
discuss the long-term prospects for planned operations and make recommendations to policy officials who would make the final decision on
using covert action. If such a system had been in place, policy officials
might have understood the folly of the invasion of Cuba because analysts
knew there was no groundswell of support for the overthrow of Castro.
In the case of Chile, the analysts not only realized that there was no way
to prevent the election of Salvador Allende; they saw no evidence that
he would refuse to step down when his term was over.
In addition to changing the way covert action is reviewed within the
intelligence bureaucracy, we also need to overhaul the existing system
for oversight. No one is suggesting that the present method of reporting
to the oversight committees is a mistake; but in assessing this matter, the
Council on Foreign Relations has raised an important issue: Covert action can be killed by leaks, and this seems to be happening with increasing frequency in recent years. The White House sometimes leaks a covert
action plan either to gain support for it or to see if there are objections
to it. Congress has been known to leak as well, sometimes to undercut
support for a covert action or at least to voice its displeasure.
Covert action cannot be successful unless secrecy is maintained until
the action has taken place. After the action maintaining secrecy may be
impossible. Therefore, the White House ought to be prepared to defend
the policy choices it made, and the oversight committees have to explain
that they reviewed the covert action. During the Cold War both the
White House and Congress chose to take the path of deniability, partly
because to do so meant that a covert action choice might be repeated
without a breach in secrecy. Today, however, covert actions receive so
much scrutiny that they ought to be defended after the fact, although
the secret resources involved still deserve protection.
Further, the CIA ought to be more aggressive about declassifying and
releasing information about past covert actions that remain controversial.
Agency managers do not seem to realize that the public is willing and
able to understand and analyze these cases, often to the benefit of the
Secret Operations
85
CIA. If anything, the system set up by DCI Casey, in an agreement with

Congress early in the Reagan administration, for a systematic review and
release of historic intelligence documents has been allowed to falter, especially in regard to controversial issues such as the overthrow of Arbenz
in Guatemala or the Allende episode in Chile. The CIA has pleaded that
it lacks the resources to carry out a more extensive review program, but
that it has sought more support from Congress is not clear.
Covert action is an irresistable tool for American presidents. Since it
will be needed in the future, intelligence managers must maintain the
infrastructure to plan, review, and carry out such actions. There seems
to be no good reason to shift covert action away from the CIA to some
other part of the government. The CIA has the experience and the personnel to do this well, but they need the backing of the White House,
Congress, and the American public. Failing such support, the CIA will
continue to have to face public anger when covert action goes awry and
will continue to seem to be a rogue elephant, even though everyone in
Washington will know better.
Notes
1. Roy Godson, Dirty Tricks or Trump Cards: U.S. Covert Action and Counterintelligence (Washington, DC: Brassey's, 1995), p. 121.
2. As related by Professor Larry Martin of Boston University, who as Ladislav
Bittman managed such operations for the Czech intelligence service.
3. The last such executive order, EO 12333, issued by the Reagan administration in 1981, states, "No person employed by or acting on behalf of the U.S.
Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination."
4. Brian Cloughley, "Pakistan Secret Service Leaves Violent Legacy from Cold
War," Washington Times, 11 February 1995, p. A8.
5. Among the best books on the subject are Stephen F. Knott, Secret and Sanctioned: Covert Operations and the American Presidency (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996); and Christopher Andrew, For the President's Eyes Only (New
York: HarperCollins, 1995).
6. Edward F. Sayle, "The Historical Underpinnings of the U.S. Intelligence
Community," International Journal of Intelligence and Counterlntelligence, vol. 1, no.
1, 1986, p. 15.
7. Andrew, For the President's Eyes Only, pp. 27-28.
8. Anne Karalekas, "History of the Central Intelligence Agency," in William
M. Leary (ed.), The Central Intelligence Agency: History and Documents (Tuscaloosa:
University of Alabama Press, 1989).
9. Uri Bar-Joseph, Intelligence Intervention in the Politics of Democratic States
(University Park, PA: Perm State Press, 1995).
10. Karalekas, "History of the Central Intelligence Agency," pp. 64-65.
11. Michael Warner, "Sophisticated Spies: CIA's Links to Liberal Anti-
86
Communists, 1949-1967," International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, vol. 9, no. 4, pp. 425-433.
12. Karalekas, "History of the Central Intelligence Agency," p. 66.
13. A good account of how the Church Committee investigation was managed
appears in Loch K. Johnson, A Season of Inquiry: Congress and Intelligence (Chicago:
Dorsey Press, 1988).
14. Gary Sick, All Fall Down: America's Tragic Encounter with Iran (Harrisonburg, VA: R. Donnelly & Sons, 1986).
15. Tim Weiner, "U.S. Plans to Oust Iran's Leaders Is an Open Secret before
It Begins," New York Times, 26 January 1996.
16. Making Intelligence Smarter: The Future of U.S. Intelligence, report of an independent task force, Council on Foreign Relations, 1996.
CHAPTER 5

It stands to reason that if the United States is running espionage operations against other countries, those same countries may be spying
on the United States. Of course, if the United States is carrying out espionage, it is only because it is necessary for national security, it is accepted as a part of international practice, and there is no alternative for
self-defense. If, however, other countries run espionage operations
against the United States, they are seen to be evil, they must be violating international law, and they must be stopped. Counterintelligence
(CI)the business of catching enemy spieshas long been a part of
the intelligence world and has deep roots in the United States. Today
countering espionage is just one part of counterintelligence, which now
may include countering terrorism, narcotics trafficking, or global
crimes. We can examine these other threats later, but we should begin
by looking at the system designed to stop espionage by other intelligence services.
George Washington understood very well the uses of espionage
against the British, but the Colonials were chagrined and frustrated to
discover that they were ill-prepared to take action against British spies
who penetrated their army and their government. One of the first spies
the British used against the upstart Americans was Dr. Benjamin Church,
the surgeon general of the American Army. 1 It was Church who had
leaked information about the weapons held by the colonial militias in
Lexington and Concord. It was no wonder that the British seemed to
know so much about the plans of the revolutionaries in and around
Boston. Church was the "mole." When the good doctor was discovered
after his mistress gave an encoded letter from Church to an acquaintance
88
in the American Army, the Americans discovered that they had passed
no laws against espionage and could do no more than jail Church and
repatriate him to England.
Subsequent efforts corrected that failure, and soon the Committee on
Spies and a law against spying were established. Major John Andre
found out the hard way when he was captured after helping Benedict
Arnold in the effort to betray West Point and was hanged for his work.
If Washington's plans to kidnap Arnold had succeeded, the former
American hero might have ended up swinging from a rope as well.
Throughout the Revolutionary War, the Americans had to face espionage
operations by Tory loyalists and their British masters, but the lesson was
well learned. The discussions surrounding the Constitutional Convention
after the waras illustrated in the Federalist Papersshow how concerned John Jay and Alexander Hamilton were about potential foreign
efforts to undermine or penetrate the pending new government. 2 Their
writings show their determination to give the president the dual role of
carrying out foreign operations and protecting the government from foreign operations.
During the Civil War Americans showed that although they were eager to have protection from their enemies, they were not willing to sacrifice legal or civil rights. President Abraham Lincoln's unprecedented
step of denying suspected Confederate spies the writ of habeus corpus
and Lafayette Baker's draconian police methods were rejected by the
post-Civil War Congress. Baker had set up what amounted to a secret
police in the style of authoritarian regimes, and his minions were known
to drag civilians out of their houses in the middle of the night, throw
them in jail, and treat them harshly. 3 In spite of his cruel tactics, Baker
never picked up the plot to assassinate Lincoln, a major counterintelligence failure.
Meanwhile, Alan Pinkerton, a former railroad detective, was able to
protect Lincoln using methods that would be familiar today. Pinkerton
penetrated groups plotting against the president and, using surveillance,
identified the famous Confederate spy Rose Greenhow, although not before she had given away the battle plans for what turned out to be the
Union disaster at the First Battle of Bull Run. 4 Pinkerton later became
General McClellan's chief of intelligence, consistently overestimating the
strength of the Confederate enemy and thus helping McClellan snatch
defeat from the jaws of victory in the Penninsula campaign. Perhaps this
illustrates the notion that good CI officers do not necessarily make good
collectors of intelligence or good analysts.
89
Civil and H u m a n Rights

Concern for legal, civil, and human rights has often affected the way
in which Americans apply CI methods. This issue came up during the
hysteria surrounding the Bolshevik Revolution, when U.S. Attorney General Palmer mounted raids against suspected "reds," and it arose again
in the McCarthy period after World War II, when the Wisconsin senator
sought to oust suspected Communists from the government. As it turned
out, Soviet-directed Communists had indeed penetrated the government,
but it was J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI, not Joseph McCarthy, who
rooted them out, aided by defectors and double agents and by information derived from intercepts of Soviet cables.5
Racism was certainly a factor in counterintelligence in the United
States both during and after World War II. There was relatively little
clamor, for example, when persons of Japanese descent were rounded
up and thrown into what amounted to concentration camps early in
World War II; and the death sentences applied against Julius and Ethel
Rosenberg, the Soviet spies who transmitted information about the
atomic bomb to their Soviet handlers at the end of World War II, might
have been a bit lighter had they not been both Jewish and Communists.
There was a strong outcry when revelations about CIA and FBI activity
during the Vietnam War showed that specific rules, designed to prevent
abuse in CI cases, were routinely violated by both the Johnson and Nixon
administrations, all to find out whether foreign influence was responsible
for the anti-war movement in the United States. Of course, if the tactics
tended to intimidate the "peace-niks," so much the better, as far as the
two administrations were concerned. The reaction to revelations that the
rules had been broken was so strong that it not only led to further regulations against abuse but also spurred congressional hearings and eventually a new system of oversight to protect citizens from extra-legal
practices.
A Plethora of Spy Cases
Toward the end of the Cold War, a plethora of espionage cases became
known to the public, including the John Walker spy ring, which revealed
U.S. Navy code secrets to the Soviets; the Chinese "mole" Larry Wu-tai
Chin, who spied for Beijing for decades; and the infamous Aldrich Ames
case, in which a number of Soviet agents, spies for the United States,
were executed after their identities were blown by Ames, a CIA officer.
Perhaps more troubling was the case of Jonathan Pollard, who spied for
the Israelis during the 1980s, showing that friends as well as adversaries
90
engage in such practices. In all these cases the legal restraints on CI

activity were scrupulously followed, perhaps delaying the apprehension
of the Americans working for the other side. This stands in marked contrast to the work of the reknowned CI officer in the CIA James J. Angleton, who hounded a number of CIA officials out of the Agency in the
1960s using what would be unacceptable tactics today. 6
We can examine the rules later, but to begin we should start with the
fundamentals of counterintelligence. Counterintelligence remains an important part of the American intelligence system, just as it does throughout the rest of the world. Exploring it in some detail has been made
easier by publicly available information about spy cases, terrorist activity, crime groups, narcotics dealers, and all kinds of "bad guys" the intelligence system is supposed to counter. We can start by looking at
counterespionage, the most basic and fundamental of all CI operations.
The traditional wisdom about countering espionage is that a penetration of the adversary's intelligence service is the most effective way to
learn about the operations being run against the country. Although this
is rarely successful, when it does work, it enables CI and security officers
to thwart the adversary's spying operations and perhaps turn them into
an advantage. The cases we know about illustrate this quite well. No
penetration of an intelligence service is a better illustration of this than
the case of Kim Philby.
Philby, the Master Spy
Kim Philby was a British intelligence officer, a member of MI-6, Britain's foreign intelligence service and a Soviet mole. 7 This is one of the
few cases where the agent was recruited to become a member of an
intelligence service, and Philby carried out his mission almost to perfection. He had been recruited at Oxford University, in part because of his
communist leanings, and began his intelligence career during the Spanish Civil War, ostensibly as a journalist sympathetic to the Spanish Fascist general Francisco Franco, but secretly reporting to the Communists
supporting the Loyalists.
During World War II Philby worked for MI-6, rising in rank as the
war progressed. After the war ended, Philby stayed on at MI-6, eventually becoming a senior counterintelligence officer and liaison to the
American CIA, where he worked closely with James J. Angleton, the
CIA's top counterspy. Angleton was convinced that there was a mole in
the CIA but he apparently never realized that it was Philby, and not a
CIA officer, who was the penetration. Philby was thus able to give away
to his Soviet masters the CIA's secret operations, including the planned
invasion of Albania, and information about CIA's espionage activities
against the Soviets.
91
Another case involving a mole, recruited to penetrate a hostile intelligence service, was that of Larry Wu-tai Chin, who was sent to infiltrate
American intelligence soon after the Communists drove the Nationalists
out of mainland China in 1949. Chin became a translator for the Americans on Okinawa and eventually worked his way into the CIA as a
translator for the Foreign Broadcast Information Service. Although Chin
did not have access to the most sensitive operations, he was a regular
employee of the agency and could meet with CIA officers who might
have useful intelligence for his Communist Chinese handlers. We don't
know the extent of the damage Chin was able to do because he committed suicide after being arrested by the FBI when a defector gave away
his identity. 8
Recruiting a M o l e
These two cases aside, recruiting an agent to infiltrate an intelligence
service is chancey indeed. Even if a hostile intelligence service were to
find someone of the right age and with the right credentials and who
was willing to take on the task, just getting this person into the pool of
applicants would be no mean feat. Every year thousands of people apply
for jobs in American intelligence, and only a relative handful are asked
to take the next step, which is to send in a detailed background form.
From this handful only a selected few are invited to Washington to interview, and many who reach this stage fail to pass the polygraph test
or some other hurdle in the hiring process. The prospective penetration
would probably fail to pass the security screening, although there are a
few cases where security checks failed. Most of these cases involved employees already on board, rather than new hires. Thus, it seems unlikely
that there would be a payoff for an intelligence service trying to penetrate American intelligence by using this strategy.
The more probable way to infiltrate an intelligence service is to recruit
an agent who is already a member of the target service. Most professional intelligence officers would, however, recognize immediately that
they were being targeted and would not fall for the ploy unless their
superiors decided to have the intelligence target pretend to go along with
the recruitment to see what developed. Although this works in fictional
espionage stories, it is unlikely to be productive in reality.
Walk-Ins
Most efforts to penetrate a hostile intelligence service involve defectors
or "walk-ins," intelligence officers who seek to flee their own country or
to sell out to the enemy. Most of the cases we know about fit into this
92
category. Pyotr Popov and Oleg Penkovsky were famous Soviet "walkins" from the GRU, the Soviet military intelligence service, who provided
significant information about their service before they were caught and
executed. George Blake was a British MI-6 officer who was turned into
a penetration of his service by the Soviets after being interned in North
Korea during the Korean War. Blake was key in revealing to the Soviets
the existence of the famous Berlin Tunnel, the Allied operation to tunnel
under the streets of Berlin to tap Soviet communications cables.9
Some more recent cases of Communist intelligence officer "walk-ins"
include Oleg Gordievsky, a KGB officer handled by the British; Dmitri
Polyakov, run by the Americans; and Farewell (a code name), a French
penetration of the KGB's technical collection unit. A Polish military intelligence officer, Colonel Ryszard Kuklinski, a "walk-in" to the United
States, was able to report on plans for the imposition of martial law in
the 1980s in Poland, before he was forced to defect outright when he
was in danger of being captured. After the Cold War and the return of
democracy in Poland, Kuklinski, over some objections, was freed from
the death sentence imposed by Poland's former Communist rulers and
was able to return to Poland from his new home in the United States.10
The Pollard Case
Jonathan Pollard was also a walk-in. 11 Pollard, a civilian employee of
the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence and a fervent Jewish supporter of
Israel, sought out Israeli officials because he believed that the United
States was denying the Israelis the intelligence information Israel really
needed for its own defense. Pollard pushed himself on the Israeli government, but the Israelis decided to run the case, even though they knew
they were taking a chance of offending the United States if Pollard were
caught. In the end a combination of Israeli bungling and poor security
practices by Pollard, who had no training in clandestine operations, led
to his discovery. When Pollard tried to escape the FBI by fleeing to the
Israeli embassy in Washington, security guards turned him away. The
Israelis had failed to give him an escape plan so that he could get away
to Israel.
Despite continued Israeli efforts to win Pollard's freedom through diplomatic measures, even going so far as to admit that Pollard had been
an Israeli agent, as of 1999 Pollard remained in jail serving a life sentence.
When Pollard's case was raised in efforts to secure a peace agreement in
the Middle East, U.S. intelligence officials reacted vehemently to the possibility that he might be released. Was this another example of racism?
Or was it designed to send a message to America's friends not to engage
in espionage against the United States?
93
A m e s and N i c h o l s o n
Of course, the cases of Aldrich Ames and Harold J. Nicholson, both
walk-ins to the Russians from the CIA, are the ones with which we are
most familiar because so much was revealed about them. Still, both cases
follow the pattern of an intelligence officer who seeks to sell out to the
enemy. In the cases of many Communist walk-ins, including those just
mentioned, ideology had as much to do with their sell-out as the money
involved. In the Ames and Nicholson cases, however, as well as those
of other American intelligence officers who sought out the opportunity
to spy for the enemy, greed was the motivating force that drove them
into the enemy camp. Ames was able to give his Soviet handlers information about American and British penetrations of the KGB, resulting
in the deaths of at least ten of them. Nicholson gave away the identities
of several classes of new case officer trainees, thus ending their careers
in the Clandestine Service before they ever got started. 12
Although greed and ideology seem to be the major factors behind the
defection of intelligence officers to their adversaries, anger, frustration,
revenge, and perhaps the thrill of such activity cannot be discounted.
Unlike fictional spies, who are lured to work for their enemies by sexual
encounters or by blackmail, the defector or walk-in cases we know about
don't seem to involve such factors. Trying to escape a bad marriage or
a deteriorating family situation has been a factor in defections as well as
alcoholism or drug use.
Presented with a walk-in, intelligence services not only would check
to make sure the walk-in is genuine and really has something to offer
(by seeking proof of access to secret materials, for example) but also
would want to make sure the walk-in is stable enough to continue to
operate within his own intelligence service. The walk-in, who might very
well want to defect on the spot and not return to his service, might be
told that he would have to earn his transfer by spying on his service for
some specified period of time. Of course, the walk-in would be given an
escape plan in case he had to bail out of his situation. Not providing
such a plan was the error the Israelis made in handling the Pollard case.
Double Agents
Another traditional method of infiltrating an opposition intelligence
service is to turn a penetration into a double agent. In order to save
himself from possible prosecution, a mole might be willing to continue
to work with the service that controlled him, but he would report to the
service in which he was the penetration and perhaps pass false infor-
94
mation to his opposition controllers at the direction of the service in

which he was the mole. This sounds confusing, and it is no wonder that
some writers have referred to this situation as a "wilderness of mirrors."
The evidence that such double-agent cases have been successful is limited. In the recent spy cases neither the CIA nor the KGB tried to double
the agents they caught spying for the other side. The CIA did not consider doing this in either the Ames or the Nicholson case, nor did the
KGB; the Soviets preferred execution, whereas the Americans chose plea
bargains. Are such double-agent tactics even possible?
According to Fidel Castro, all the agents the CIA recruited in Cuba
were allegedly turned and run against the American service, and apparently the same was true for at least some American agents in East
Germany before the Berlin Wall fell. We know that in Operation DoubleCross in World War II, British intelligence officers were able to turn the
German spies they caught and were able to use them to help support
the deception designed to convince Hitler that the Allied invasion at
Normandy was just a feint and that the real invasion was to come at the
Pas de Calais. It thus seems possible that under the right circumstances,
a mole can be turned into a double agent, but we have no details of
modern cases to confirm this.
There are other ways to learn about a hostile intelligence service besides trying to infiltrate the organization. For one intelligence service to
be aware of the identities of at least some of the members of opposition
intelligence services is not unusual. Thus, clandestine surveillance of the
known intelligence officers may well reveal their contacts or their operational patterns. It may be possible to deduce from this the nature of
their targets or their operational interests. The surveillance has to be
discreet, however, so as not to alert the opposition that they are being
watched.
Monitoring of communications may also provide information of interest as long as it can be done without detection. Modern systems of communications surveillance have largely eliminated the need to tap phones
or put bugs in walls, but these methods may still prove useful under
certain circumstances. According to press reports, a CIA officer was arrested in Vienna in 1997 while trying to bug the office of several North
Korean representatives, and Israeli intelligence officers were caught in
Switzerland around the same time trying what the professionals call an
"audio op." In both cases the local police were alerted by what appears
to have been clumsy tradecraft by the intelligence officers installing the
taps and bugs. A more sophisticated approach might have been better,
but it is possible that intercepts were not picking up the wanted material
off-site, thus making the audio op necessary.
95
A Bizarre Case
In a rather bizarre case in 1998, a CIA officer named Douglas Groat
was arrested by the FBI after he attempted to blackmail the CIA by
threatening to reveal details of CIA clandestine operations to steal code
and other operational materials from foreign intelligence services by
breaking into their embassies. The details of the Groat case emerged after
Groat and the government reached a plea bargain. Groat had threatened
to seek, in discovery, details that the government would have preferred
to keep secret. It turned out that Groat was a former police and military
officer who had trouble in his previous careers. In some foreign intelligence services, an attempt by a career officer to blackmail his masters
might well result in the quiet disappearance of the officer concerned.
Penetrations, the use of walk-ins, or surveillance may indeed reveal
something about the activities of a hostile intelligence service directed at
one's own intelligence system, but these counterintelligence collection
operations have to be supported by defensive measures to protect one's
own service against the enemy. This process is, at least in the American
system, considered more an administrative function than one involving
intelligence operations. Perhaps this might help to explain why failures
have occurred from time to time.
D e f e n s i v e Measures
Typically, defensive measures fall under the category of security; they
involve the protection of data and facilities against penetration by an
adversary, as well as the careful screening of personnel to ensure their
reliability, to monitor their behavior and limit their access to sensitive
information. No matter how carefully these processes are handled, history shows that a determined intelligence professional who wants to
overcome security hurdles can sometimes do so, as we can see in cases
that have come to light in recent years.
American intelligence, beginning with the OSS and continuing as more
modern intelligence agencies developed, has relied on background investigations based on material supplied by the applicant to determine
the reliability and stability of potential new hires. This means that professional investigators have had to interview acquaintances, family, and
former employers of each potential intelligence recruit, a painstaking and
expensive process, to verify the data submitted. The investigators look
for discrepancies in the data supplied by each applicant in voluminous
96
forms and for evidence that the applicant may have lied or hidden information about his or her past.
During the Cold War applicants who had relatives behind the Iron
Curtain were subjected to additional scrutiny, but few were turned away
on that basis alone unless their relatives in Communist countries were
in a position to put pressure on the applicant after employment. After
World War II, during the McCarthy era of anti-Communist hysteria,
membership in organizations that were extremist, left or right, inevitably
raised questions, but later this issue generally disappeared. Security investigators began to concentrate more on personal behavior than ideological views, especially after the defection to the Soviets of National
Security Agency members William H. Martin and Bernon F. Mitchell,
both of whom turned out to be homosexual.
The Polygraph
The investigators are aided by the use of the polygraph, or so-called
lie detector, in screening new applicants. The polygraph is supposed to
detect lying or hiding of information by measuring respiration, heart
rate, blood pressure, and perspiration. Its ability to detect deception is
based on the theory that lying or hiding information requires more effort
than telling the truth. Unfortunately, the polygraph has proven to be an
unreliable tool in some respects, although security investigators swear
by its use. To new applicants who have never undergone such a procedure, being put on the "box," as the machine is sometimes called,
creates high stress and sometimes hysteria. This inevitably affects the
results, and many young people who have been through the process,
especially those who were turned away after the examination, have
reported that the grilling they had to go through was unbelievably
stressful.
It seems clear from years of experience that the polygraph does indeed
intimidate people into revealing information they would have preferred
not to divulge and that these revelations do aid in determining the reliability and stability of the applicant. Yet, it also seems clear that many
talented and otherwise qualified people have probably been turned away
by this process, and their abilities have been lost. Security officials argue
that the polygraph is an extremely useful tool, but like many such machines, it requires a skilled operator and careful management to make
sure the process is not only effective but also equitable. Efforts to develop
other techniques to detect lying or hiding, such as voice stress analysis,
have not yet been perfected, and we see no evidence that security managers are trying to find a better system.
Once people are hired, background reinvestigations are used period-
97
ically to make sure that the employee has not "gone sour" and become
either an agent of a foreign service or engaged in compromising behavior
such as drug use or crime. This is not a fool-proof process, although in
the negative cases we know about, it was the interpretation of the machine's readouts rather than the machine itself that was at fault. Larry
Wu-tai Chin reportedly said that he repeatedly passed the polygraph
exam because he was able to lie easily in English, but he might have had
difficulty if the exam had been given in his native Chinese dialect. Aldrich Ames was shown to have indicated deception on the polygraph at
least twice but in each case was let go by the operator or his supervisor.
Cases of success are also well known. Harold J. Nicholson was quickly
put under surveillance and eventually arrested after clearly trying to beat
the machine in 1995, and Edward Lee Howard, the CIA officer who
defected to the Soviets in 1985, was fired after the polygraph led to revelations about his misconduct. 13 Most of us in the CIA believed that the
polygraph would catch us if we broke the security rules or engaged in
conduct unacceptable to the Agency.
The Background Check
The background check is not foolproof either, as we have learned from
some espionage cases. Investigators in the Ames case never seemed to
be aware of his increasing alcoholism or his binge drinking, and a security officer sent to Colombia to verify the source of his new found
wealthAmes claimed it came from his wife's rich Colombian family
failed to detect that Ames was wildly overstating their resources. In the
years since the author has left the CIA, security investigators have from
time to time checked on students or former colleagues, but they seem to
follow a rote script and never probe beyond the formal questions on
their interview forms.
In fact, the security system depends a great deal on self-revelation. A
determined rogue officer may be able to beat the system, at least for a
while, by hiding derogatory information and coaching individuals listed
as references. Of course, we have to remember that the system is generally successful in weeding out problems, and the cases that we know
of represent only a handful of security failures in a system that has over
fifty years had relatively few disasters. As usual in intelligence, however,
it is the disasters that we remember.
Another defensive mechanism traditionally applied in intelligence
work is called compartmentation, which means that intelligence workers
at all levels have access only to the information they need to know to
do their jobs. This need to know principle is supposed to prevent an
insider bent on obtaining information for a foreign intelligence service
98
from having unlimited access within the system. In several of the wellknown spy cases, security alerts were sounded when the moles began to
seek out sensitive information to which they were not supposed to have
access. This move was the first clue that Jonathan Pollard was a security
risk and one of the steps in building a case against Harold Nicholson.
At the CIA and in other American intelligence services, compartmentation is reinforced by security access controls that provide physical barriers to keep unauthorized insiders from areas where they have no
business. Thus, even inside the closely guarded CIA headquarters, where
employees have Top Secret security clearances, there are vaulted doors
with security locks that require employees who do not belong to a particular office to request entry and identify themselves at the door. Of
course, this requires that the gate-keepers question even people they
know relatively well, which was probably how Aldrich Ames was able
to gather materials from offices where he had no business, but where he
was well known.
D o c u m e n t Controls
CIA officers are trained early in maintaining control over documents
entrusted to them so that others who have no need to know about the
material cannot casually peruse them. Even in vaulted offices, sensitive
materials are supposed to be locked away in safes within the vaults for
added security, and the vaults are regularly checked to make sure the
practice is followed. Perhaps the worst breach of good security practice
in this regard was the Kampiles case, in which a junior officer, William
Kampiles, fired during his probationary hiring period in the 1970s, took
away with him a manual for the then-Top Secret KH-11 photo satellite.14
No one knew the document, despite its Top Secret labels, was missing
until Kampiles revealed to a friend that he had sold the manual to the
Soviets. Kampiles was arrested by the FBI and ended up serving a
lengthy prison sentence.
Good security practices can in theory prevent even a clever mole from
gaining access to more than just a slice of the intelligence pie, but as we
know from the Ames case, even that slice can be devastating. Given the
history of intelligence in which moles appear from time to time despite
even the most stringent security, intelligence managers have to assume
that there is a mole, even if they have no evidence. But there has to be
a balance between the extreme paranoia of James Angleton and the lax
practices that let Ames run loose for almost nine years. Among intelligence professionals, good security practices have to be learned and enforced, even though this may create an atmosphere that is less warm
than many managers may prefer.
99
Countering espionage requires not just learning about the operations

of hostile intelligence services and good security practices to limit damage; it also requires punishment of spies to deter others from espionage
against the United States. Thus, there has to be a combination of intelligence work and law enforcement. In the United States, this has not been
so easy to achieve. Part of this difficulty resulted from animosity that
was generated by J. Edgar Hoover, the legendary director of the FBI,
America's traditional counterintelligence organization.
CIA-FBI Friction
Hoover was intent on preventing the development of a civilian-based
intelligence service, even before World War II. Although he could not
stop the creation of the OSS, he was able to keep it out of Latin America,
which he considered to be the FBI's turf. His leaking of the plans Bill
Donovan had submitted to President Roosevelt in late 1944 about creating a follow-on service to the OSS delayed the creation of the CIA.
Hoover's leak and subsequent press stories led the public to believe that
Donovan wanted to create a secret police in the image of the hated Gestapo of Nazi Germany.
When General Hoyt Vandenberg developed the legislation that eventually led to the creation of the CIA in 1947, the marked-up bill contained
specific restrictions that kept the CIA from having police or subpeona
power or any role in internal security. 15 The law was interpreted so
strictly that for many years the CIA was unable to have its own guard
force and had to use security police at the gates and guard posts from
the General Services Administration. When Mir Aimal Kansi, the Pakistani terrorist, gunned down several CIA officers on the road leading to
the CIA headquarters building in 1994, it was the Fairfax County police
who came to the scene. If Kansi had been caught at the time, the CIA
guard force would have had no jurisdiction outside CIA property.
In its early days, because of Hoover's restrictions, there was almost no
contact between the FBI and the CIA. One FBI special agent was appointed as liaison with the CIA, and it was this agent alone whom CIA
officers were to contact.16 Occasional FBI reports were sent to analysts at
the CIA, but they were of limited utility. An informal agreement was
apparently reached between Hoover and James Angleton that the CIA
would deal with its own internal security, including the pursuit of suspected moles and penetrations. Because of the legacy of this agreement,
the FBI was not called in until late in the Howard case: Ed Howard had
been dismissed by the CIA in 1983 when his failed polygraph, and reinvestigation showed possible criminal behavior and drug use, but the
FBI was apparently not informed until after Howard left Washington.
100

Impact of the Howard Case
According to author David Wise, who wrote extensively about the

Howard case, senior CIA officers, dismayed that Howard turned out to
be a problem while he was being prepared to serve his first operational
assignment in Moscow, were either ashamed, embarrassed, or arrogant
in failing to inform the FBI that Howard was being fired for cause. In
the event, Howard sought out KGB officers in 1984 while in Vienna and
later eluded FBI surveillance in order to escape to the USSR. Howard
was, as far as we know, the only CIA officer ever actually to defect to
the Soviets during the Cold War; but some of the CIA's Soviet agents
that Howard allegedly betrayed, we know now, were actually given
away by Aldrich Ames.
In the aftermath of the Howard case, Congress mandated that cooperation between the FBI and the CIA be increased, and FBI agents were
assigned to CIA headquarters. This cooperation was increased even further when DCI William Webster established the Counterintelligence Center at the CIA and FBI agents were assigned to it. The move was spurred
by what became known as the Year of the Spy, in 1985, when the John
Walker spy ring, the Howard and Pollard cases, and the case of Larry
Chin became public. The press made it appear that the U.S. Intelligence
Community was riddled with spies and that these cases were only the
tip of the iceberg. From the perspective of the counterintelligence and
security officers who had broken the cases, however, the arrests of these
foreign agents appeared to be a major victory.
Cooperation between the FBI and the CIA in countering espionage
improved even further in the Ames case, although press reporting at the
time and the subsequent flood of books on the case might make it seem
otherwise. A careful reading of the case shows how both agencies
worked together to stop Ames, although it was too late to prevent the
enormous damage he had done to American and British intelligence assets in the former Soviet Union. Dogged efforts by CIA and FBI professionals, working together, eventually broke the Ames case despite sloppy
security, failure to follow up on reports from Ames's co-workers that he
was a problem, and some clever tradecraft by Ames to elude detection. 17
After Ames was arrested, another senior CIA officer, Harold J. Nicholson, a former station chief, was found to be working for the Russian
Intelligence Service (SVR). In the Nicholson case, which surfaced in 1996,
FBI and CIA officials worked together as soon as evidence of Nicholson's
betrayal surfaced. Nicholson failed a polygraph, and after surveillance
was begun, was seen photographing secret documents in his office using
a CIA document camera he had obtained from the Office of Technical
101
Services. This rather blatant flaunting of proper espionage techniques by

a man who was supposed to be an expert led to Nicholson's arrest.
Cops versus Spies
The fallout from the Ames case led to even further FBI encroachment
onto traditional CIA turf. A senior FBI agent was made chief of counterintelligence at the CIA, and the role of FBI agents abroad was expanded. When legislation enabled the FBI to task CIA and other
American intelligence units to collect information that might be used in
criminal cases, fear grew among some intelligence professionals that the
traditional barrier between intelligence and law enforcement was eroding. This has led to what some observers have called the "cops versus
spies" problem. 18
Beginning with the founding of the CIA, intelligence officers overseas
were supposed to deal with counterintelligence issues abroad, whereas
the FBI was the lead agency working against espionage in the United
States. If the CIA uncovered information about Americans spying for
foreign powers, it was to turn the intelligence over to the FBI for action.
The CIA would deal with espionage involving its own employees just
as did the military counterintelligence units, such as the U.S. Army
Counterintelligence Corps or the U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations. The recent spy cases, however, show that more cooperation
between intelligence and law enforcement is needed.
Intelligence officers"spies"are not interested in making cases in
the same way as are law enforcement officers, the "cops." Intelligence
officers want to obtain information by recruiting sources and exploiting
them. Law enforcement officials want to arrest law breakers, convict
them of crimes, and see that they are punished. These two aims are really
incompatible. Intelligence officers are reluctant to see their sources arrested, even if they are criminals, because if the sources are arrested,
their ability to provide new information effectively ceases. The cops want
evidence that enables them to arrest a perpetrator of a crime, and they
want to be able to present that evidence in court to obtain a conviction.
Thus, the evidence has to be handled in ways that are consistent with
good legal practice. The cops have to be prepared to testify in court about
how they obtained the evidence, and they must be prepared to provide
information in disclosure to the perpetrator's defense. The spies want
nothing to do with such practices.
Intelligence officers would be hard-pressed to develop information
from sources that might be considered evidence or to handle the information according to legal rules. The spies could hardly be expected to
102
appear in court, destroying their cover in the process; nor would they
be interested in revealing their sources and methods to a defense attorney. It's easy to see, under such circumstances, why culture and tradition, as well as a marked difference in professional procedure, create the
spies versus cops dilemma. Legal rules exacerbate the problem.
Counterintelligence to Criminal Investigation
In the Ames and Nicholson cases, counterintelligence officers in both
the CIA and the FBI were able to obtain warrants to put the suspected
spies under surveillance from a little-known secret body, the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Court. This court can authorize wire taps, physical surveillance, mail opening, or other such practices to obtain information to pinpoint an American who might be spying for a foreign
power. No such rules are necessary if the suspect is a foreign espionage
agent. The aim of the warrants is to identify spies; but to arrest them
and obtain evidence of their espionage, a criminal investigation is
needed. The spies cannot do this. They must turn the cases over to the
cops, who then obtain warrants under the criminal code, gather evidence
suitable for trial, and make the arrests.
The administrative problem here is to determine when the counterintelligence investigation ends and when the criminal procedure begins.
The United States has no fixed rule for this turnover and relies on a
series of informal agreements between the intelligence agencies and the
Justice Department about the transition from spy business to cop business. Clearly, a firewall is necessary to make sure that intelligence
sources and methods are not dragged into a criminal case, or that a court
case might be compromised in the interest of protecting secret assets. In
several recent espionage cases defense lawyers have threatened to challenge the constitutionality of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act,
but plea bargains have kept these cases from coming to trial.
Although it is certainly necessary to stop, arrest, and punish enemy
spies, intelligence managers want to be sure that no loose ends are left
dangling. They want to be able to determine the extent of the damage
done by the spy and ensure that no remaining enemy agents are left in
place. In the Ames case there was much discussion about the possibility
that Ames had recruited other CIA officers for his Soviet masters and
that they had gone undetected. Unless the principal agentAmes, in this
casewillingly gives up his subagents or reveals the extent of his operations, there may be no way to determine with certainty the answers
to these riddles. In many espionage cases a plea bargain was one tool
used to obtain information for a damage assessment. In the Ames case,
103
it seems clear that Ames had kept some of his secrets to himself, perhaps
in hopes of one day writing a book about his exploits.
The end of the Cold War has not ended spying by America's adversaries or competitors. If anything, the situation is now more complicated
because the number of potential enemies, or adversaries, has increased,
not diminished. We can see from the Ames and Nicholson cases that the
Russian intelligence service has taken up where the KGB left off, and
that other countries are willing and eager to try to steal America's secrets.
This means that counterintelligence has to remain a potent tool in America's intelligence arsenal. Press reporting suggests that it is a sign of
intelligence failure when spies are caught; to the contrary, it is, in fact,
a form of victory. The concern should be about how many spies remain
at large.
Counterintelligence as a Career
To ensure American capability to combat espionage, more emphasis
must to be put on training and establishing a cadre of professionals who
devote themselves to counterintelligence as a career. Jim Angleton and
his associates had become career CI officers in the early days of the CIA,
but their system of institutionalized paranoia created serious problems.
They suspected as potential moles everyone they did not know and trust
personally, and the hostile climate this attitude created was counterproductive and, to some people, dangerous. Is there a way to avoid this
dilemma? Paul Redmond and his associates, the CIA officers instrumental in catching Aldrich Ames, were clever, dedicated, but hardly paranoid. Their example shows that with proper training and experience, a
CI corps that uses professional techniques to work against enemy espionage can be built.
Training has to be coupled with a security atmosphere that makes clear
to intelligence employees that they are under scrutiny all the time. This
means consistent application of background checks, finding a more reliable mechanism to replace the polygraph, and an indoctrination in security awareness for everyone. Intelligence is a special profession, and
those who engage in it must be prepared to sacrifice personal freedoms
routinely enjoyed by employees in other work in the interest of preserving the security of intelligence sources and methods. This is a hard sell
in the United States, where so much emphasis is placed on the protection
of civil and human rights. Still, for those of us who toiled in intelligence
during the Cold War, accepting these restrictions seemed a very low
price to pay for the excitement of serving the country in this special way.
104
Notes
1. Thomas Fleming, Liberty: The American Revolution (New York: Viking Penguin, 1997), p. 147.
2. Stephen F. Knott, Secret and Sanctioned: Covert Operations and the American
Presidency (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 42-47.
1996), p. 27.
4. Ibid., pp. 58-61.
5. Robert L. Benson and Michael Warner (eds.), VENONA: Soviet Espionage
and the American Response (Washington, DC: NSA and CIA, 1996).
6. Ronald Kessler, Inside the CIA (New York: Pocket Books, 1992), pp. 60-62.
7. Phillip Knightley, The Master Spy: The Story of Kim Philby (New York: Vintage Books, 1988).
8. Kessler, Inside the CIA, p. 155.
9. David E. Murphy, Sergei Kondrashev, and George Bailey, Battleground Berlin: CIA vs. KGB in the Cold War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997).
10. Christine Spolar, "Once Spurned, Polish Spy Returns to Hero's Welcome,"
Washington Post, 28 April 1998, p. A l l .
11. Wolf Blitzer, Territory of Lies: The Exclusive Story of Jonathan Jay Pollard (New
York: Harper & Row, 1989); Seymour M. Hersh, "The Traitor: The Case against
Jonathan Pollard," New Yorker, 18 January 1999, pp. 26-34.
12. Arthur S. Hulnick, "Understanding the Ames Case," International Journal
of Intelligence and Counterlntelligence, vol. 8 no. 2, pp. 133-154; for details on the
Nicholson case, see R. Jeffrey Smith and Robert Suro, "Waiting to Close the Trap
on Suspected Spy," Washington Post, 24 January 1996, p. Al.
13. David Wise, The Spy Who Got Away (New York: Random House, 1988).
14. The author was one of Kampiles's supervisors and raised the issue of firing
him. The details of what happened subsequently appear in Jeffrey T. Richelson,
A Century of Spies (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 346-347.
15. Arthur Darling, The Central Intelligence Agency: An Instrument of Government
to 1950 (State College: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1990), p. 28; see also
Michael Turner, "CIA-FBI Non-Cooperation: Cultural Trait or Bureaucratic Inertia?" International Journal of Intelligence and Counterlntelligence, vol. 8, no. 3, p.
265.
16. Cartha DeLoach, Hoover's FBI (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 1995);
Ronald Kessler, The FBI (New York: Pocket Books, 1993).
17. Hulnick, "Understanding the Ames Case."
18. Stewart D. Baker, "Should Cops Be Spies?" Foreign Policy no. 97 (Winter
1994-95), pp. 36-52; see also Arthur S. Hulnick, "Intelligence and Law Enforcement: T h e Spies Are Not Cops' Problem,' " International Journal of Intelligence and
Counterlntelligence, vol. 10, no. 3, pp. 269-286.
CHAPTER 6

During the Cold War, beginning even before the establishment of the
modern U.S. intelligence system just after World War II, the major focus
of America's intelligence resources was the Soviet Union, the only nation
that had the power to destroy our country. Nevertheless, and from the
very beginning, intelligence resources were also spent on other targets.
The CIA and the other services could not ignore potential threats or hot
spots around the world, given the wide range of American interests
abroad and the huge number of Americans who lived, worked, or traveled overseas. Collectors and analysts alike worked on country issues,
including politics, economics, and military and social problems as well
as such transnational issues such as terrorism, instability, and revolution.
The U.S. Intelligence Community had to be able to respond to policymakers' needs, no matter the subject.
Since the end of the Cold War, a myth has proliferated that American
intelligence failed to watch the the non-Soviet topics and was illprepared to deal with the transnational issues that had became the new
national security threats. This was hardly the case. In fact, the intelligence
system had been collecting and analyzing information related to these
problems for many years. But the intelligence system was in large part
merely a passive actor. It was designed to alert policymakers to issues
with which they had to deal, but it was not supposed to give recommendations for action. The action was left to the State Department or the
military for response. In rare cases, as we have seen, the intelligence
system might provide covert action as part of the policy, but that was
carried out by a handful of operatives.
106

The Equation Has Changed
In the post-Cold War era the equation has changed. The intelligence
system has already been enlisted to help combat the transnational threats
by using a combination of counterintelligence and law enforcement techniques. In some cases covert action might be added to the mix. This
means that intelligence assets will no longer be used only as passive
observers; they will instead become part of the arsenal of measures used
to fight at least some of the problems. The issues are wide-ranging, from
the growth in weapons of mass destruction controlled by so-called rogue
states to terrorism, global organized crime, narcotics trafficking, and industrial espionage.
Can U.S. intelligence, either on its own or working with foreign security services, combat these new threats to national security? Clearly
some of the same techniques traditionally used in counterespionage operations might well prove useful. Just as in counterespionage, however,
combating the threats will require cooperation among intelligence, law
enforcement, and military organizations in ways that none of the participants are used to, or in ways they may very well oppose. Yet, they must
be brought together if they are to deal with the new threats and beat
them back.
Weapons of Mass Destruction
Working against weapons of mass destruction (WMD) ought to be the
easiest target for intelligence because the threat seems more like the Cold
War issue than any other. We successfully tracked Soviet weaponry during the Cold War using a combination of photo reconnaissance, SIGINT,
and espionage. Now that the Cold War is over, we can look back and
see that the U.S. intelligence system's analysis of Soviet military capability was, if anything, overstated, although we had the order of battle
correctly analyzed. What we may have missed was poor hardware performance and the inflexibility of the battle tactics. This was illustrated
very well in the Gulf War in which the Iraqis, using Soviet equipment
and tactics, proved quite vulnerable to Western weaponry and battle
techniques. 1
Despite assurances that Russia no longer targets the United States and
that the United States is not currently pointing its missiles at Russia, both
sides could easily retarget if necessary. Thus, some U.S. intelligence effort
must remain focused on Russia, to keep track of not only its strategic
weapons but also its ability to maintain security and control over its
arsenal. The possibility that a rogue general or criminal group might take
107
control of a strategic weapon cannot be ruled out. Since China is potentially an adversary of the United States and has some limited capability
to launch strategic missiles at the United States, additional resources
have to be directed against the Beijing arsenal as well.
Using a mix of collection methods, U.S. intelligence working with sophisticated Western services ought to be able to track weapons of mass
destruction in the hands of potential adversary states other than Russia
and China, but the targets are elusive. Weapons of mass destruction are
comprised of nuclear, chemical, and biological systems. Nuclear weapons are the most frightening, perhaps because many of us, remembering
the end of World War II, have seen for ourselves the awesome power
and gruesome destruction of an atomic explosion. Although nuclear
weapons have not been used in actual combat since World War II, their
destructive power, increased many times over, remains a threat. Both the
United States and Russia maintain large arsenals of such weapons, along
with France, Great Britain, and China, the so-called Nuclear Club. In 1998
India and Pakistan both tested nuclear devices despite worldwide condemnation. Thus, these two powers joined the second tier of nuclear
weapons states, a group that includes Israel and probably North Korea.
Although there is little fear that India or Pakistan might attack the United
States, there is great anxiety over the possibility that the two countries
could use nuclear weapons against each other.
If the U.S. intelligence system is capable of tracking nuclear capability,
why did it fail to pick up the 1998 testing by India until the tests were
completed? The study carried out in the wake of this intelligence failure
has not yet been made public, but the reasons seem clear enough, just
based on press reporting. 2 Clearly, the satellite reconnaissance systems
that would have been able to detect preparations for a test were not
focused on the testing area targets. This resulted from a combination of
factors: India carried out a deception to divert attention to a missile test;
analysts who should have recognized the potential for testing based on
public statements by the new government in New Delhi and who should
have provided requirements to the satellite managers failed to do so;
apparently none of the intelligence agencies had developed a capability
to collect information from human sources in India; there was a problem
with mirror imaging by less-than-expert analysts with little experience
who judged India's intentions based on faulty perceptions; and policy
officials seemed uninterested in the potential for trouble. The system had
no difficulty in detecting the tests carried out by Pakistan, but the damage had been done.
Since neither Pakistan nor India can hurt the other with nuclear weapons until each develops a delivery system and the ability to mate the
weapon and the delivery vehicle, the intelligence targets now are obvious. It appears that as of 1998, India was perfecting the ability to use
108
missiles against both Pakistan and possibly China, whereas the regime
in Islamabad might choose an air-launched weapon. Surely U.S. intelligence needs no further guidance to figure out what intelligence data it
should be collecting and analyzing in regard to this issue.
Weapons and Delivery Systems
Equally troubling is the possibility that other nations, some of which
seem to be rogue states that do not behave according to the rules established by the United Nations or general international practice, might
have nuclear capability. These states include North Korea, Iran, and Iraq.
North Korea has hinted that it has set aside its nuclear weapons development program, and Iraq's facilities were badly damaged by Israel in
its attack on the Osirak reactor, even before the Gulf War targeted suspected nuclear facilities.3 Nonetheless, both North Korea and Iraq remain
suspect as possible or potential nuclear states. Iran, another rogue state,
may have nuclear warheads that it obtained from Russia or Khazakhstan,
according to some press reports, but it does not yet have the capability
to manufacture its own.
As we have seen, creating a viable nuclear threat requires both a
weapon and a delivery system. The most available delivery system seems
to be a missile with a nuclear warhead. The rogue states do not have
nor do they seem likely to obtain the kinds of aircraft that might be used
for a nuclear bomb. We have seen Iraq's capability to use missiles in the
Gulf War when Saddam Hussein's forces fired short-range surface-tosurface Scud missiles at Israel and Allied targets. We know that Iran has
tested missiles it has acquired from China and North Korea; and, of
course, North Korea itself has tested missiles of short- and mediumrange capability. So far, none of these countries has been able to mate a
non-conventional warhead to such a missile, but they might very well
have the sophistication to do so. To have a credible threat, however,
would require the testing of a missile with a nuclear warhead attached,
something none of the rogue states has yet been able to do.
Just because these countries have not yet tested a nuclear weapon does
not mean that the U.S. Intelligence Community should be complacent
about keeping an eye on them. During the Cold War U.S. intelligence
tracked nuclear developments in a number of countries from Argentina
and Brazil to South Africa. In one case that remains something of a mystery, a U.S. satellite reportedly detected a nuclear air burst off the coast
of South Africa, and the supposition at the time was that this could have
been a South African nuclear test and that the white-run government
had obtained help from Israel for the test.4 Of course, both nations denied
the reports.
109
Keeping Track of Weapons and Delivery Systems

Nonetheless, as evident by its track record in the Cold War, U.S. intelligence is quite capable of keeping track of nuclear weapons and delivery systems when it wants to. A combination of photo reconnaissance,
SIGINT, and HUMINT ought to enable us to find out who actually has
nuclear weapons and their status. Just as in the Cold War, though, the
action that might be taken once the weapons or delivery systems are
identified lies outside the purview of intelligence. A diplomatic or military response, and not covert action, is the most likely way for the United
States or its allies to respond to a rogue state's nuclear threat.
More insidious is the possibility that non-state actorsterrorists or
guerrilla bandsor rogue states may develop a portable nuclear device,
a suitcase bomb. This would be used as a terror weapon rather than as
a combat weapon. In fact, according to press reports, the United States
had just such a weapon in its inventory until 1989.5 This device, the
"Special Atomic Demolition Munition," weighed about sixty pounds and
could be carried in a backpack by a paratrooper. Designed to be used to
destroy fixed targets, it would have had the explosive force of one kiloton. It's not clear how the paratrooper placing the device would have
escaped injury in the blast, but since the United States does not rely on
suicide missions, some protection for the paratrooper was probably envisioned.
Russian general Alexander Lebed frightened many in the West in 1997
when he suggested in one of his political speeches that the former Soviet
Union had hundreds of such suitcase weapons, many of which were no
longer under government control. Further investigation revealed that Lebed was speaking more for political effect than to warn the West. The
Russians denied at the time that they had such weapons, but a defector
from the Soviet military intelligence service, the GRU, told congressional
investigators in 1998 that he had scouted potential sites in the United
States for such weapons, which he claimed were the size of a golf bag. 6
The image created by General Lebed was one of terrorists blithely carrying Samsonite-style luggage through airports or cities, dropping them
at suitable locations, and watching the mushroom clouds grow. The GRU
defector indicated that the weapons were to be detonated by remote
control.
Terrorists and N u k e s
We expect that guerrilla groups or terrorists would not have the sophistication required to create a really small bomb, even though the in-
110
formation needed to create such a weapon seems readily available on

the Internet. The nuclear material necessary for a bomb is well guarded
in both the United States and the former Soviet states. Even though tiny
amounts have been discovered in the hands of smugglers, a group would
have to obtain several kilos of radioactive, bomb-grade uranium or plutonium and then have the machinery to form the components into a
weapon. This sounds good to fiction writers such as Tom Clancy, but
the reality is quite different.7
Intelligence resources are well placed to track nuclear materials partly
because of the willingness of most nations to cooperate in this endeavor.
Sharing of intelligence among security services (the methodology that
revealed the small amounts of loose nuclear material and identified the
smugglers) coupled with strict controls among the nuclear states is probably a strong deterrent to those who might try to build a suitcase bomb.
Besides, rogue states, terrorists, and guerrilla groups have a much easier
way to achieve their ends. They can develop cheaper and more easily
constructed chemical or biological weapons, the weapon of mass destruction of choice for all of them.
Chemical and Biological Weapons
Chemical weapons are usually found in the form of poison gas and
have been used by combatants ever since World War I. Both sides used
various poison gases in that war, and both sides began at the same time
to develop protective gear to permit soldiers to fight while gas was being
used. The gas mask became standard issue for soldiers in most armies,
and the expectation was that chemical weapons would be used in future
wars. In fact, the major combatants in World War II had the capability
to use poison gas but refrained from doing so. The United States did use
napalm and flamethrowers in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. These
weapons use a jellied petroleum product but are not considered chemical
weapons in quite the same way as poison gas.
Modern technology has increased the range of poison and debilitating
gases as well as ways to manufacture such products. Whereas the United
States has been going through the process of destroying its rather immense stockpiles of chemical weapons, other states seem to be producing
new chemical weapons of their own. We know from the experience of
the Gulf War that identifying chemical weapons using overhead reconnaissance or battlefield observation is not so easy. In fact, one weapons
dump in Iraq was destroyed using conventional methods and apparently
resulted in the release of toxic gas that caused lingering illness among
American and other U.N. forces. A CIA study published after the event
to explain what happened concluded that the munitions did not have
111
the usual chemical weapons markings and there was no other way to
tell what they were. 8
That chemical weapons can be disguised to look like conventional munitions compounds the intelligence problem, but much can still be done.
Overhead reconnaissance can identify production facilitiesthey seem
to have particular characteristics visible from aboveas well as storage
depots and handling facilities. Chemical weapons do require various special handling techniques, and these too, may be observable. If time permits, it is conceivable that human sources may be recruited to provide
information about a nation's chemical weapons. Although the West did
not have all the data it would have liked about Iraq's chemical weapons
capability, it did know quite a bit even before the Gulf War started. This
intelligence was not satisfactory to battlefield commanders, but it was
sufficient to allow for planning and training before the combat phase
began, and some targets were identified during the bombing that preceded the land attack.
We knew something about how Iraq might employ chemical weapons
based on their use in the Iran-Iraq war and on the Iraqi use of poison
gas against Kurdish dissidents. This enabled analysts to develop the scenarios needed to predict what Iraq might do. As it turned out, Iraq did
not actually use chemical weapons against either the U.N. forces or
against Israel. Nonetheless, Israelis went through gas-mask drills and
built various shelters to defend against the possibility that they would
become victims of SCUD-launched poison gas.
Terrorists and Chemical Weapons
Intelligence can identify nations that either have or plan to develop a
chemical weapons capability. It is much more difficult to pinpoint nonstate actorsthat is, guerrilla groups and terroristswho are seeking to
develop and use such weapons. This was brought home clearly when a
Japanese cult group called Aum Shinrikyo released sarin gas in the Tokyo subway system in 1995, killing and injuring hundreds. 9 Sarin is relatively easy to make in a home lab, is extremely toxic, but can be
employed without particularly sophisticated methods. Another toxic gas,
ricin, can be made from castor beans. Both ricin and sarin are nerve
gases, and a only a tiny amount of either is needed to cause paralysis or
death.
The U.S. attack on what it claimed was a chemical weapons facility in
August 1998 in Sudan demonstrates what can be done when intelligence
does identify a target. The U.S. government said that intelligence sources
had enabled it to identify a plant in Sudan that was creating a precursor
chemical for VX nerve gas.10 Although the Sudanese government quickly
112
denied that the plant was doing any more than producing medicine, the
evidence must have been compelling to back up Washington's claim.
Biological Weapons
Attention has also begun to focus on biological weapons as an alternative to chemical compounds. A flurry of press reports was stimulated
by revelations that Iraq had been developing a way to use anthrax spores
in combat. Further reporting showed that the United States had been
testing similar weapons in the past, primarily as a way of developing
defensive measures. 11 Included in the tests was a form of encephalitis
virus that would disable but not kill an enemy.
Whereas most countries have signed a 1972 treaty outlawing the use
of biological weapons, the rogue states have either failed to do so or
could not be counted on to abide by the treaty in any event. Bio-weapons
have become more sophisticated because the viruses or other ingredients
can be genetically altered to make them more deadly and harder to combat. Nonetheless, delivering a bio-weapon may not be so easy. A rocketlaunched delivery system with some form of explosive warhead might
very well destroy the disease-laden materials when they reach the target,
and conditions of wind and other variables have to be just right to release
bio-weapons on the battlefield.
Identifying the manufacturing plants, the delivery systems, or the nature of the bio-weapons themselves presents much the same challenge
for intelligence as in the case of chemical weapons. Reconnaissance, surveillance, and HUMINT are the tools needed; and again, the necessary
countermeasures will likely fall in the realm of diplomatic or military
action, especially in the case of rogue states. But what would happen if
a terrorist group were to gain the capability to produce and deliver a
chemical or biological weapon? Given the nature of terrorists and terrorism, identifying groups with chemical or biological weapons capability is a tough task for intelligence. Stopping them is even tougher. The
same may be said for terrorism.
The Nature of Terrorism
What is terrorism? It is the use of violence to create fear and panic, to
call attention to a group or its philosophy, to target victims, or to exact
revenge against an enemy. It is certainly not a new phenomenon, but it
has become more dangerous and threatening in recent years because
terrorists have access to such a wide variety of weapons and because
terrorist violence is sure to gain broad media attention. Coupled with
113
the fact that rogue states have sponsored, trained, encouraged, and protected terrorists, terrorism has become a threat in ways that no one might
have imagined just a few years ago.
Terrorists usually have a specific agenda. They may commit random
violence to call attention to themselves, but more often they have a particular target in mind when they strike. Terrorists may be religious fanatics who seek to destroy those who do not conform to their view of
worship or behavior, such as the Taliban in Afghanistan, or they may
combine religious fanaticism with ethnic vengeance, such as the Hezbollah in Lebanon. They might have a political ideology, such as the
"maoist" Sendero Luminoso of Peru, or they could be motivated by monetary gain, such as some of the new "mafia" families in Russia. According to some terrorism experts, the new style of terrorism is based on
revenge for perceived abuses or as an outlet for rage. 12 The challenge for
intelligence is not only in finding out who the terrorists are but in stopping them before they can kill and destroy.
Since terrorists operate in small cellshandfuls of people who know
and trust each other, usually because they come from the same ethnic,
religious, and social backgroundand because they are by nature extremely violent, traditional methods of counterespionage are difficult to
use against them. Penetrating a terrorist cell by recruiting one of its members is not just extremely difficult and dangerous; it means working with
a person who likely is a violent criminal. Establishing a close relationship
with such a person puts both the case officer and the terrorist at risk of
a quick end if the relationship is discovered.
Informants and Surveillance
Experience shows that a more likely route to learning about a terrorist
cell is through informants and surveillance. We know from past experience that good investigative techniques can identify and locate terrorists. When Brigadier General William Dozier of the U.S. Army was
kidnapped by terrorists in Italy in the 1980s, informants in the neighborhood where he was being held recognized that something unusual
and suspicious was going on, and eventually the Italian security forces
were able to pinpoint his location and free him. 13 Similar methods were
used to keep track of hostages being held by the Hezbollah in Lebanon,
even though the hostages were moved periodically to thwart countermeasures.
Even more painstaking forensic work was involved in tracking down
the terrorists who used a bomb hidden in a radio to bring down a
Pan Am airliner, Flight 103, over Lockerbie, Scotland. Eventually, careful
sifting of shards and pieces produced bits of the bomb, and the nature
114
of these fragments enabled investigators to determine that the terrorists

must have come from Libya. The Libyan government, however, denied
complicity and refused to extradite the individuals, though investigative
and intelligence work had actually been able to identify the terrorists.
Finally, Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi agreed to permit the two
suspects to be tried outside the United States, apparently in a bid to have
economic sanctions against Libya lifted. This meant, as well, that he was
prepared to write off the two terrorists, who were reportedly members
of the Libyan security services.14
Terrorism is crime, and U.S. security and intelligence services have
become quite good at identifying terrorists and even at bringing cases to
court to convict and punish perpetrators. The foreign terrorists who exploded a bomb in the World Trade Center in New York were quickly
identified, their terrorist cell exposed, and the terrorists convicted and
jailed. The two men who blew up the Federal Building in Oklahoma
Citynot foreign terrorists at all but two Americans who sought revenge
against the government for its supposed abuseswere also brought to
justice in short order.
To bolster its ability to go after terrorists who have targeted Americans, the United States has declared that it will use extra-territorial jurisdiction to indict foreign terrorists outside the United States and
attempt to bring them to justice in the United States. This is illustrated
by the case of Fahwaz Yunis, who was lured into international waters
by the CIA, snatched by the FBI, and brought back to the United States
for trial.15 Yunis was targeted because he had harmed American citizens,
was indicted in a U.S. court, and was vulnerable. Other terrorists who
target Americans will certainly have learned a lesson from this case.
Other Aspects of Counterterrorism

The intelligence system has assisted in other aspects of counterterrorism in addition to using traditional methods. During the 1980s, when
hostage taking by terrorists was a favored ploy, CIA and State Department psychiatrists working together developed negotiating strategies to
deal with hostage takers. Meanwhile, the military developed operational
teams designed to storm hostage havens, particularly hijacked airliners.
In one famous case the CIA chief in Argentina was able to talk a hijacker
into surrendering and releasing his hostages. Most operational units,
however, were taking a lesson from the famous Israeli operation to free
hostages taken to Uganda by terrorists. Israeli commandos stormed the
Air France airliner on the ground, killing the terrorists, losing only one
hostage and one soldier in the operation. 16
Now airline hijacking has become much reduced through strong se-
115
curity measures. As the danger shifted to airline bombing, new developments in security screening have made it increasingly difficult for
terrorists to bring explosives into an airliner. What this means is that
terrorists will have to develop new methods for violence, and that the
intelligence system will have to fight back with new security methods.
An area of increasing vulnerability lies in other parts of the U.S. infrastructure.
In fact, President Clinton in 1997 issued a directive to increase efforts
by intelligence and security forces to protect the U.S. infrastructure, including transportation systems, bridges and highways, and the information network. 17 The U.S. reliance on computers in all aspects of
modern life has made the nation vulnerable to what have become known
as cyber-terrorists. These new electronic terror gangs have been breaking
into computers to disrupt operations of government and private industry, steal funds through unauthorized electronic transfers, and trash electronic databases. As one cyber-expert pointed out, no matter how clever
the cyber-terrorists might be, countermeasures are likely to be developed
to thwart them. 18 This means that the terrorists will just have to develop
new methods of electronic violence in what has become an unending
game of cat-and-mouse.
The Internet has now become a useful tool for foreign terrorist groups
as well as for to those groups based in the United States. According to
press reports, a number of foreign terrorist groups have web sites, including the National Liberation Army in Colombia, the Hezbollah in
Lebanon, and the Zapatista guerrillas in Mexico.19 The Internet provides
a means for them to share their views with the public, but it also enables
security forces to keep track of them.
Despite the horrors of the two major terrorist incidents in the United
States in the 1990sthe bombing of the World Trade Towers in New
York by foreign terrorists and the destruction of the Federal Building in
Oklahoma City by two Americansthe United States has been relatively
free of terrorism in recent years. A good deal of this can be laid to the
effectiveness of the FBI in identifying and thwarting terrorists before they
can do damage. Of course, the FBI has been reluctant to reveal how it
has been able to counter terrorists, pointing out that revealing its methods would only aid potential bad guys bent on violence. A good lesson
to be learned from the two incidents cited above is that it takes only a
handful of people and relatively simple methods to create a good deal
of destruction.
U.S. Embassies as Targets
That terrorism may not require great sophistication was brought home
to the American people by the simultaneous truck bombings of U.S. em-
116
bassies in Kenya and Tanzania in the summer of 1998. These attacks

demonstrated that although we may be relatively safe at home, we are
increasingly vulnerable overseas. U.S. embassies, American businesses,
and even American tourists provide ready targets for terrorists, and the
reasons are simple: American facilities and people abroad are visible,
open, and accessible. Attacks on Americans and their embassies and
businesses, especially in the Third World, are guaranteed to generate just
the kinds of publicity and attention terrorists crave. Though the U.S.
press and the government have condemned the apparent mastermind
behind the bombings, the reclusive, wealthy Saudi Osama Bin Laden,
the unceasing press coverage of the events have undoubtedly made Bin
Laden a hero to many.
When the United States responded to the embassy attacks by launching cruise missiles at Bin Laden's terrorist headquarters in Afghanistan,
many U.S. activists were encouraged, especially those who believe the
system ought not to wait for terrorists to commit violence before seeking
to bring them to justice, those who believe in pre-emptive action against
the terrorists. There are a number of problems with this view. The American system of justice requires that criminals, such as terrorists, have to
be arrested in the commission of a crime and stand trial by their peers.
Is the American public completely prepared for a vigilante system to
strike terrorists, either as acts of revenge, as in the 1998 embassy bombings, or in a pre-emptive strike? Are Americans prepared for what might
become an escalating war with terrorists? Although polls showed public
support for the attacks against Bin Laden's base and the Sudanese chemical plant, this support may change if terrorists began to increase their
operations against Americans. Israel has long favored a policy of striking
back against terrorism, but it has not deterred terrorists who are prepared to become martyrs in their battle against the Jewish state.
U s i n g Terror against Terrorists?
In the wake of the killings of Israeli athletes in Munich in 1979 by
Arab terrorists, the Israeli Mossad took on the task of vengeance against
the alleged perpetrators. 20 Unfortunately, one of their targets was an innocent civilian working as a waiter in Norway, where he was killed by
mistake. The chances of making such mistakes is probably very great,
given the elusive nature of the terrorist. This means that democratic societies have to be very careful in using extra-legal methods against terrorism, lest their security organizations become terrorists themselves.
The fight against terrorism requires patience and typical intelligence
methods: careful recordkeeping to identify known terrorists, the development of sources who might be able to provide information about
117
terrorist activity, and coordination with law enforcement and security

forces who may be able to stop the terrorists and bring them to justice.
Although the United States has made strides in stopping or thwarting
some forms of terrorism, it is unlikely that this type of political expression will go away. In fact, we can expect new kinds of terrorism to arise,
perhaps using methods we don't yet recognize. Therefore, the intelligence system has to be prepared to identify these threats and assist in
developing countermeasures, just as it has done in the past.
One effective development in dealing with terrorism has been the establishment of the Counter-Terrorism Center within the U.S. Intelligence
Community. Resembling the center established to deal with counterintelligence, the unit brings together representatives from around the U.S.
Intelligence Community to share information, help develop requirements
for collection, and coordinate analysis on terrorism issues. In addition,
the Department of State issues an annual publication entitled "Patterns
of Global Terrorism," which provides an unclassified compendium of
data on terrorism worldwide. 21 The FBI has established a security awareness network (ANSIR) to provide warnings to the private sector about
potential security threats, and private businesses can subscribe to consultant services that gather and analyze security threat information.
Possible Countermeasures
The State Department has put together helpful brochures for Americans who travel or work abroad, although this material tends to be dated
by the time it appears. More and more of such information is available
on-line, thus speeding up the reporting process. Information valuable to
U.S. businesspeople is available from the Commerce Department as well.
The aim of all this intelligence data is to enable Americans to be able to
make sensible judgments about traveling, working, or investing abroad.
It does not take much, however, to replace reason with panic.
During the buildup to the Gulf War, Saddam Hussein's agents were
able to place stories in the press suggesting that Iraq might target airliners carrying Americans as retaliation for strikes on Iraq. Even though
nothing actually happened and there was no terrorist attack by Saddam's
people, the fear and panic generated by the stories, multiplied by press
reporting, led many people to cancel planned travel, thus achieving Saddam's aim of disruption without actually doing anything. Press restraint
in cases of terrorism would be welcome, but in a free society such restraint is not likely. Terrorists know this and can be counted on to take
full advantage of the press.
Some terrorism experts have suggested that U.S. intelligence develop
the clandestine capability to undermine terrorists by attacking their sup-
118
port networks, identifying their sources of funds and equipment, and

cutting them off. This sounds good in theory, but it is likely to be highly
labor-intensive and potentially dangerous to those involved. This tactic
may work against someone with vast wealth and connections, such as
Osama Bin Laden, but it is not likely to work against the small terrorist
cell. Attacking a terrorist infrastructure will require focused intelligence
collection and analysis to identify and pinpoint the targets before any
action can be taken. In that sense, it will require the political will to go
after the terrorists as well as good intelligence.
Global Organized Crime
The latest threat to national security in the United States is one with
which U.S. intelligence has had relatively little experience. That is the
threat of global organized crime (GOC). Of course, the FBI has long battled the traditional Italian Mafia, the so-called Cosa Nostra, with some
success, while the CIA was apparently working with some Mafia dons
to assassinate Fidel Castro, but the threat of crime has taken on several
new dimensions in recent years. The most familiar problem is that of
countering the illegal flow of narcotics into the United States. The more
recent issue concerns the growth in the United States of crime "families"
from around the globe who are exporting their militant style of crime
from a base abroad. What role should U.S. intelligence play in battling
crime? The answer is not so clear.
When Judge Webster was director of Central Intelligence in the 1980s,
probably based on his own experience in law and as director of the FBI,
he complained that the so-called war on narcotics was a misnomer. Webster argued that drug dealers were criminals and should be attacked
using law enforcement rather than military techniques. The United States
has tried a variety of methods to combat illegal shipments of narcotics
into the United States, and although there have been some spectacular
tactical successes, strategically the problem remains as acute as ever.
What should be the role of intelligence in this fight?
Over the years the role of intelligence has expanded considerably from
a time when it was hardly an issue. From military intelligence service in
the Far East, the author can remember discussions at the time about drug
lords running opium in Burma and elsewhere in the region. It was rated
of little importance because the drugs were not affecting the United
States at the time. Later, in Latin America in the 1960s, the drug issue
again received a low priority because it was not a direct threat to the
United States, even though we knew that some Latin American military
officers were running illegal drug-smuggling operations.
Once the drugs started to flow to the United States in increasing vol-
119
ume, the situation changed. The role of intelligence seemed clear: identify
the areas where raw materials were being cultivated; find the processing
units that produced the actual narcotics; determine the shipping channels
used to bring the drugs into the United States; and coordinate with the
FBI and, later when it was established, the Drug Enforcement Administration, so that law enforcement organizations could seize the drugs
and arrest the dealers. Some of this work could be done easily with
overhead reconnaissance systems, some in liaison with foreign security
and intelligence services, and some using traditional sources. Gathering
the information was not the problem. Stopping the drugs before they hit
the street was much tougher.
Countering Narcotics Flows
Farmers in Bolivia, for example, were reluctant to give up a steady
cash crop in coca leaves, and they certainly objected when the U.S. and
Bolivian governments tried to defoliate the coca plantations. Even today
growers of coca and poppy plants, the source of opium, are fighting to
retain the right to grow their crops. Stopping the processing proved
equally difficult, since most narcotics are easily fabricated in crude facilities that can be picked up and moved quite rapidly. Destroying them
only delayed but did not stop production. Trying to stop the shippers
ran up against the so-called drug cartels, whose wealth and power exceeded that of several foreign governments. The drug lords were able to
co-opt local and national law enforcement and, in some cases, practically
destroyed the fabric of the justice system by systematically executing
those who stood in their way.
Emphasis then shifted to stopping the drugs at the border using a
combination of surveillance and early warning techniques. Military
units, police, and DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration), FBI, and intelligence personnel all got into this, with some success. Illegal shipments
were detected in the air, at sea, and on the ground, and substantial quantities were intercepted and destroyed. Nonetheless, it seems clear that
drug shippers can continue to profit even if a great deal of their illegal
narcotics is seized. This led several administrations in Washington to
begin to work against drugs on the demand side, beginning with Nancy
Reagan's "Just Say No" campaign in the 1980s. This has also had only
limited success.
It seems clear that working against the narcotics trade will continue
to be a significant task for U.S. intelligence in the years ahead, but success
may well be elusive. If the United States did nothing, the proliferation
of drugs on the streets would increase, although the price of drugs might
drop. If anti-narcotics work were given a high priority, the number of
120
drug shipments destroyed might go up, but drug shipments would not
likely be eradicated. The American people would have to accept the fact
that increased efforts at drug eradication will be only partially successfula concept that flies in the face of the American experience that finds
success the only acceptable outcome.
The CIA and Drug Smuggling
American intelligenceespecially the CIAhas been victimized by its
involvement in the anti-drug campaign. In 1996 an enterprising reporter
for a newspaper in San Jose, California, wrote a front-page article in
which he claimed that the CIA was responsible for bringing drugs into
black and Latino areas of Los Angeles. 22 According to the article, Nicaraguan Contras, some of whom had been supported by the CIA, were the
actual drug runners, but the CIA was allegedly aware of the drug deals
and complicitous in the shipments. This story created a firestorm in the
media, despite denials from Washington. A California congresswoman
attacked the CIA, and other politicians were quick to get on the band
wagon. The then-DCI, John Deutch, went to Los Angeles to hold a "town
meeting" to answer the allegations firsthand, but this achieved little,
since his answers to the vigorous protests were not what the crowd
wanted to hear.
This was just the last in a series of such allegations that had floated
around Washington for years. In fact, the CIA and the oversight committees of Congress had investigated each of the allegations, and no credible evidence of CIA drug-running was discovered. When he was DCI,
Judge Webster promised that he would assist in the prosecution of any
CIA or other intelligence personnel who were involved in drug dealing,
but again no evidence surfaced. As usual in such cases, the allegations
were front-page news, whereas the results of the investigations hardly
made it into print at all.
In the San Jose case the reporter was eventually forced to resign and
the paper issued an apology for running the story without more careful
scrutiny. The story was hard to kill, however, and the reporter has now
written a book detailing his charges, although his case remains pretty
weak according to reviewers. 23 Finally, the CIA's inspector general issued a report on the subject that showed that intelligence managers did
make some mistakes in dealing with the Contras suspected of drug dealing, but that the managers were certainly not supporting drug smuggling. 24
Despite the adverse press the CIA and the other U.S. intelligence agencies continue to work against illegal drugs. The Counter Narcotics Center, like the other centers, remains the focal point for collecting and
121
analyzing information and for intelligence sharing with other countries

in the anti-narcotics campaign. Intelligence can only do so much in the
struggle. Law enforcement and military units are the operational elements that actually seize the drugs and arrest the dealers. In that respect,
intelligence in counternarcotics operates much as it does in military operations, supporting but not supplanting action arms.
Other Aspects of Fighting Crime

In regard to other aspects of global organized crime, the role of intelligence at the national level remains open to debate. Traditionally, in
working against the Italian mafias, the CIA and the other intelligence
agencies had no role to play. This was a law enforcement problem handled almost exclusively by the FBI in conjunction with state and local
law enforcement officials.25 Many of the crimes for which Mafia figures
were indicted had to be prosecuted at the state or local level, and these
jurisdictions typically developed their own police intelligence units to
combat organized crime.
Since many organized crime groups are based off-shore, shouldn't
agencies such as the CIA, with assets abroad, be able to help out in attacking organized crime groups? This raises a number of thorny issues
for national-level intelligence agencies. Just as in counterintelligence
cases, the aims of intelligence and law enforcement are different. The
CIA is enjoined by law from engaging in law enforcement activity, and
in the end the American system demands that members of organized
crime groups be brought to justice on a case-by-case basis. What contribution can intelligence make?
Organized crime groups operate very much like armies, and intelligence systems can gather information about them in just the same way
they deal with enemy military forces. Since GOC groups have hierarchies, identifiable leadership, headquarters, and troops, intelligence can
locate them, identify the leaders, count the troops, and pinpoint their
types of crime. Organized crime groups are usually ethnically based,
speak an identifiable dialect, and sometimes specialize in particular kinds
of crime. Because these groups are more broadly based than terrorist
groups, they are more easily penetrated by recruited agentsas the FBI
has done successfully with the Mafiaand they are more vulnerable to
electronic surveillance.
Since the private sector is the target of much criminal activity, this
raises some new issues for intelligence, which traditionally provides its
support to the government. What is the responsibility of the government
in aiding the private sector to combat global organized crime? The
United States has actually taken initiatives in this area that deserve at-
122
tention. As in the case of terrorism, the Department of State provides

warning information to private industry that may face threats from
global organized crime when doing business abroad. This is bolstered
by the FBI, which sends out warning notices to domestic industrial consumers, just as it warns them about terrorism.
Sharing Intelligence on Crime
The FBI, to the dismay of traditionalists in the CIA, has expanded its
legal attache system abroad, in part to help America's allies in working
against organized crime. The United States shares information about
global organized crime through Interpol and other centers where intelligence about crime groups can be brought together. Beyond information
sharing and cooperation among police forces, are there other steps that
might be taken? Some observers have suggested that crime groups might
be attacked through publicity or even sabotage. Based on experience
with the Italian mafias, this seems unlikely. In their hey-day, Mafia dons
seemed to glory in publicity and were not afraid to be identified in public, daring law enforcement to catch them in the act. And sabotage usually involves some criminal act itselfnot a tactic welcomed by police.
The most likely step for the United States is to develop the kinds of
information sharing systems seen elsewhere, such as the Criminal Intelligence Service Canada or the Bundeskriminal Amt in Germany. So far,
that task has fallen to the National Counterintelligence Center (NACIC);
but as global organized crime proliferates in the United States, a more
comprehensive system centered around law enforcement at national,
state, and local levels, will probably be more effective. In addition, a
regularized way to share intelligence information will have to be developed. We know this is possible because a system was set up for just such
intelligence sharing to protect the Olympic Games in Los Angeles and
Atlanta. It needs only to be institutionalized on a permanent basis.
Industrial Espionage
Industrial espionage is a problem the United States has fought since
the height of the Cold War. We realized fairly early on that the USSR
was trying to steal technological secrets from the West, using the resources of the KGB and the GRU. The Soviets even recruited the Polish
intelligence service to specialize in industrial espionage. This was
brought home in the 1980s when a Polish spy, Marian Zacharski, was
arrested by the FBI in California's Silicon Valley after trying to recruit
an engineer to steal sensitive industrial secrets.26
123
When the United States and its allies developed a system for preventing the export of defense-related technology to the USSR, the Soviet intelligence services became even more heavily involved in stealing both
the secrets and the machinery. When he was DCI, Bill Casey used to
point out in his public speeches that the Soviets were using Western
technology in their missile guidance systems and fighter aircraft avionics,
just to name two examples. With some success the FBI took the lead in
rooting out attempts at such technology transfer, with the CIA working
to develop leads that might help identify potential targets.
Since the end of the Cold War, industrial espionage has become even
more of a problem because a number of former adversary services along
with some friendly ones have gotten into the business. One former head
of the French intelligence service, the DGSE, admitted openly that the
French were attempting to steal industrial secrets, and the evidence is
strong that the Germans and Israelis, as well as the Chinese and Russians, are doing the same thing. 27 This was brought home very clearly
in 1999 when Chinese penetration of U.S. nuclear weapons labs became
known.
After the United States passed the Economic Espionage Act in 1996,
industrial espionage became a federal crime, thus enabling the FBI to
work against the problem directly, rather than waiting to be called in by
state or local officials. The FBI has also been given the authority to be
able to task the CIA and other intelligence agencies to collect information
to help the Bureau fight this and other crimes. Although this authority
has been accepted warily by the intelligence agencies, it should help stop
some industrial espionage as well as other kinds of organized crime. The
FBI cannot fight this battle alone. The role of the private sector and the
growth of non-governmental intelligence and security will be examined
in a later chapter.
Countering Subversion
One problem the United States has not had to deal with very often,
but which requires counterintelligence techniques, is that of countersubversion. Indeed, in many countries, countering subversion is one of the
main tasks of the intelligence service. This is especially true in authoritarian societies where the ruler may well have come to power by overthrowing a previous government and needs to be sure the same thing
does not repeat itself. Even in democratic societies, however, subversion
cannot be ruled out, as we have seen in the cases of the Front for the
Liberation of Quebec in Canada or in several Latin American countries
where guerrilla groups, such as the Sendero Luminoso in Peru seem
intent on overthrowing an elected regime.
124
The traditional approach to countering subversion is to penetrate the

movement with agents, identify leaders and operations, and arrest the
leadership before the movement can solidify itself or win converts to its
cause. Usually security forces are able to find agents willing to join a
subversive movement, and unlike terrorist groups, the subversive groups
are usually large, eager for new members, and often careless with security. Once on the inside, the agents can provide intelligence to their
handlers, and operations can then be developed to strike back at the
dissidents. In Peru this worked very well indeed when Abimael Guzman, the leader and strategic thinker behind Sendero Luminoso, was
captured by the government in 1992, thus weakening the movement and
depriving it of its brain. 28
Of course, democratic societies have to be careful to distinguish between genuine political organizations and subversives. Clearly, the
United States government violated the rules in the 1960s and 1970s by
using intelligence resources against the anti-war movement. The CIA and
other intelligence agencies opened mail, put people under surveillance,
and failed to abide by the internal security restrictions built into the
enabling legislation of the 1940s. The anti-war movement was not run
from abroad, was not designed to overthrow the government, and had
a legitimate political agenda, although there were times when it used
tactics that could be called extra-legal if not subversive. In fact, the CIA
did study the movement and advised the Johnson and Nixon administrations that it was not foreign dominated, but this was not intelligence
that was welcome in the White House.
The abuses of the Vietnam War period have not been repeated, and
legislation has been created in the wake of congressional and White
House investigations in the 1970s to ensure that the government seeks
legal sanction before treating a political movement is if it were a subversive entity. Nonetheless, the intelligence and security services must
deal with subversion as a threat to national security when the need
arises.
Problems in Intelligence Sharing
The Brown Commission, in 1996, recommended that the CIA and other
U.S. intelligence agencies deal with the transnational issues discussed
here, in part, through intelligence sharing with allies and friendly countries. The notion of broad-based sharing of sensitive intelligence creates
problems for intelligence agencies because of concerns about protecting
sources and methods. Traditionally, intelligence agencies, including
those of the United States, share intelligence on a bilateral basis, giving
a "partner service," to use the German term, useful information in return
125
for similar consideration. The unspoken rule is that no third-party service

will be informed about the nature or content of the shared information
and that both sides will protect carefully the relationship as well as the
shared data.
Sharing finished or evaluated intelligence is much easier than sharing
operational information, such as agent reports, sensitive intercepts, or
some forms of overhead reconnaissance materials. Analytic products
have already been written to protect sources and methods, but even
though the sensitivity might not be so great, bilateral sharing has been
the rule. Clearly, this is material that could be more broadly disseminated, and that seems to be the case now that the Cold War is over. But
to combat the transnational issues, sharing of operational data is going
to be required. Why are intelligence services so nervous about multiparty
intelligence sharing? This is not an irrational fear.
On a bilateral basis, intelligence services want to learn about the protective abilities of the partner service and whether or not the partner
service can actually protect the materials being shared. As we have already learned, opposition services try to penetrate a target by getting a
mole on the inside.
It is easy to understand why the United States and Britain, perhaps
the two nations that share intelligence more easily with each other than
in any other partnership, became concerned about penetration of the
partner, first when British intelligence officer Kim Philby gave away to
the Soviets secrets he had learned while in liaison with the United States
and later when it was learned that the United States had also been a
victim of a Soviet mole in the person of Aldrich Ames. Could Ames have
learned about British sources inside the Soviet system? Indeed he did,
revealing to his Soviet masters that Oleg Gordievsky, a British agent and
Soviet rezident in London, was a mole. 29 Fortunately, the British MI-6
was able to rescue Gordievsky, exfiltrating him from the USSR where he
was being detained and interrogated by the KGB.
We knew, during the Cold War, that the West German services were
penetrated by the opposition services in East Germany. Certainly in such
a circumstance one would have to assume that information given to our
West German allies might very well end up in Potsdam. With that assumption in mind, it would have been possible to tailor the intelligence
we gave our German allies so that our German adversaries could not
take advantage of obtaining it. Of course, the reality remains shrouded
in secrecy.
If intelligence services have to be wary about bilateral sharing, multilateral sharing creates even more problems. What if one of the accessing
services has been penetrated by organized crime or by one of the rogue
states? Once the operational information has been made available, control by the originating service is lost, for all practical purposes. How can
126
a service recruit agents or seek informants if there is a possibility that

the identity of the source may somehow be revealed? So far, no one has
designed a system to deal with this dilemma. All the efforts that we
know about to increase intelligence sharing seem to be continuing to take
place bilaterally. If the intelligence agencies do develop a method for
multilateral sharing, they are not likely to broadcast the nature of the
system.
Dealing with the transnational issues will continue to be a major task
for intelligence services in the years ahead. International cooperation will
be required, and that seems to be getting better, but intelligence and
security services are going to be reluctant to take the cooperative steps
that diplomats, military officials, or police find much easier. At least we
know that intelligence services, both at home and abroad, recognize the
problems, even though all the solutions are not yet at hand.
Notes
1. Michael R. Gordon and General Bernard Trainor, The Generals' War: The
Inside Story of the Conflict in the Gulf (New York: Little, Brown, 1995); Tom Clancy
with General Fred Franks, Jr., Into the Storm: A Study in Command (New York: G.
P. Putnam's Sons, 1997).
2. Walter Pincus, "Spy Agencies Faulted for Missing Indian Tests," Washington Post, 3 June 1998, p. A18.
3. Ian Black and Benny Morris, Israel's Secret Wars: A History of Israel's Intelligence Services (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991), p. 332.
4. Dan Raviv and Yossi Melman, Every Spy a Prince: The Complete History of
Israel's Intelligence Services (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990), p. 3
5. Walter Pincus, "U.S. Developed 60-Pound Nuclear Weapon a Parachutist
Could Deploy," Washington Post, 23 December 1997, p. A4.
6. Joseph C. Anselmo, "Defector Details Plans to Plant Nukes in U.S.," Aviation Week & Space Technology, 17 August 1998, p. 52.
7. Tom Clancy, The Sum of All Fears (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1991).
8. CIA, Report on Intelligence Related to Gulf War Illnesses, 24 August 1996.
9. Jim McGee and Brian Duffy, "Someone to Watch over Us," Washington
Post Magazine, 23 August 1996, pp. 9-18.
10. M. J. Zuckerman, "Terrorism War Spurs Silence," USA Today, 23 September 1998, p. Al.
11. John M. Broder, "Plan for Germ Warfare Facility Defended," Los Angeles
Times, 4 May 1988, p. 16.
12. Vincent Cannistraro, "A Strike against Terrorismand Ourselves?" Boston
Globe, 23 May 1998, p. El.
13. General Dozier came to the CIA to explain his ordeal and how he was
released.
14. Evelyn Leopold, "U.S. and Britain Warn Libya to Hand over TWA Suspects," Boston Globe, 27 February 1999, p. A5.
127
15. Duane R. Clarridge, A Spy for All Seasons: My Life in the CIA (New York:
Scribner, 1997), pp. 349-359.
16. Raviv and Melman, Every Spy a Prince, pp. 217-219.
17. Mike Billington, "U.S. to Erect 'Cyber-Wall' around Computer Networks,"
United Press International, 9 April 1998.
18. George I. Seffers, "NSA Chief ups Info War Ante," Defense News, 29 June
1998, p. 1.
19. Kevin Whitelaw, "Terrorists on the Web: Electronic Safe Haven," U.S. News
& World Report, 22 June 1998, p. 46.
20. Raviv and Melman, Every Spy a Prince, pp. 184-194.
21. U.S. Department of State, Patterns of Global Terrorism, April 1998; this seems
to be an annual publication.
22. Andrea Orr, "Disgraced Reporter Stands by Stories of CIA Drug Link,"
Reuters, 10 August 1998.
23. Gary Webb, Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion (New York: Seven Stories Press, 1998).
24. Walter Pincus, "CIA Ignored Tips Alleging Contra Drug Links, Report
Says," Washington Post, 3 November 1998, p. A4.
25. Cartha DeLoach, Hoover's FBI (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 1995),
pp. 297-317.
26. Winston Williams, "Spy Case and Tool Industry," New York Times, 4 July
1981, p. B25.
27. John Fialka, War by Other Means: Economic Espionage in America (New York:
W. W. Norton, 1997).
28. Alonso Cueto, "Celebrations and Reflections after Peru's Capture of the
Century," Wall Street Journal, 9 October 1992, p. 15.
29. Christopher Andrew and Oleg Gordievsky, KGB: The Inside Story (New
York: HarperCollins, 1990), pp. 8-16.
CHAPTER 7
Managing and Controlling

Secret Intelligence
Managing an intelligence service is no different than running any large
bureaucracy, but it is complicated by secrecy, compartmentation, needto-know, and the fact that some of its employees are devious, manipulative, and trained to hide their activities from others. How can
intelligence managers and political leaders be sure that their intelligence
officers are doing only what they are supposed to, that they are not
stealing the secret funds so carefully hidden from public scrutiny, or that
they are not plotting some off-the-record operation bypassing the chainof-command and the system designed to monitor their activities? How
do intelligence managers handle a system in which a substantial number
of employees are under cover, their affiliation with their service carefully
hidden, even from other government officials and their own fellow intelligence officers? And how does anyone manage a system in which the
director has line authority over only one of several intelligence agencies
in a convoluted and complicated system, little budget control, and very
little real power?
This is a subject that has not received much attention in the media and
the standard books on intelligence, although the reform studies in recent
years have given the problem considerable focus.1 In fact, unless a crisis
erupts about these issues, most people probably never think much about
them at all. We can begin by looking at some of the internal management
issues that any intelligence service must face, followed by an examination of the overall U.S. system of management and control. Despite numerous shortcomings, the system, like the bee that should not be able to
fly but does anyway, functions remarkably well.
All intelligence services have to deal with standard administrative issues, but the nature of intelligence operations makes many of these func-
130
tions more complicated than in private industry or other parts of the

government. These functions include handling human resources, security, training, communications, money management, and logistics. These
last three functions are quite sensitive in intelligence for a variety of
reasons, and it would not be surprising if an intelligence service objected
to much discussion about them. Throughout the Cold Warand even
before thatcommunications activities required considerable protection
because a breach of security in this area could lay bare many of an
agency's most highly prized operations. The case of Igor Gouzenko, a
Soviet code clerk who defected in Ottawa, Canada, soon after the end of
World War II highlighted the value of getting at an adversary's communications. 2 Gouzenko knew a great deal about Soviet penetrations of
the U.S. Manhattan Project, the atomic bomb research, and how the Soviets had made their way inside. Generally intelligence services restrict
access to their internal communications systems to a small group of specially cleared people and no one else is permitted entry.
Finance and Logistics
Finance and logistics are not quite so sensitive, but consider the problems for an intelligence service operating abroad in which most if not
all of its overseas staff are under cover. The service couldn't very well
furnish its safe houses with standard issue government desks and chairs
that would instantly give away to any visitor the nature of the facility.
It might also want to keep secret the contracts it lets for goods and services or when it outsources some of its activities to contractors. It would
have to keep secret the funds it used and find a way to hide the paper
trail the logistics activities created.
Similarly, the intelligence service would want to hide the financial connection between itself and its employees under cover. Thus, an arrangement would be needed to create a system for pay and allowances that
would show that the employee under cover was being paid by his cover
employer, including tax data, pension plans, insurance, and reimbursements. In dealing with agents overseas (foreign nationals the service's
case officers have recruited), a payment system would be needed to hide
any connection with the case officer. In other words, the intelligence
service would have to "launder" whatever currency was used so that
the agent could account for the payments received. This was one of the
major mistakes the Soviets made in handling its spy cases in the United
States, paying such people as John Walker and Aldrich Ames in U.S.
cash currency, which the recipients then deposited in banks, creating a
paper trail that was eventually followed by the FBI. Had Soviets used
131
foreign currency and the deposits been made abroad, following the
money might have been much tougher for the investigators.
The other administrative matters are less sensitive, more easily discussed here and are matters that lend themselves to a measure of reform.
This is especially true in the handling of human resources, the modern
euphemism for what was once called "personnel." America's intelligence
services seem to be having serious problems in this regard, although this
was not always the case. How does an organization such as the CIA
find, recruit, and retain the best and the brightest?
Help Wanted
Open any major newspaper and turn to the help wanted section. If a
reader hits this on the right day, he or she will see a small, catchy advertisement by the CIA seeking those people who might be qualified to
serve abroad in challenging assignments. The ads note that speakers of
exotic languages, or those with prior military service, or individuals with
experience living or working overseas would be preferred. Similar information now appears on a web site, and both the print ad and the
electronic ad advise the prospective employee to write to the agency at
a post office box for further consideration. This method of attracting new
talent is just the latest effort by the CIA to fill its ranks, but it is hardly
recruiting and it probably does not reach all those the agency ought to
attract.
In its early days the CIA did indeed recruit those with the talents it
needed, using a system later condemned as the "old boy" method. 3 Former members of the service or of the OSS, many of them teaching on
college campuses, would identify students they thought might be right
for the CIA and encourage them to apply. 4 Since many of these "spotters" were working on Ivy League campuses, it was not surprising that
a great many CIA recruits emerged from what might be called the Eastern establishment. Later the CIA sought to broaden its employee base
by setting up recruiting offices around the country. The recruiters would
use a variety of methods to find the right people and encourage them to
apply. At first, this resulted in bringing together at the CIA a mix of
talented and interesting people with a broad range of skills and experience. As the CIA grew bigger, however, this system began to deteriorate.
The search for talent began to be overshadowed by the search for
numbers. During the Reagan administration a friendly Congress gave
the Intelligence Community funds for new buildings and more people.
It was understood by intelligence managers that Congress would look
unkindly at them if they failed to fill the slots, so CIA recruiters came
132
under pressure to send more and more files to Washington. The recruiters were supposed to "beat the bushes" for new talent. Unfortunately
for them, this recruiting push came at a time when protests began to
grow against the Reagan administration's policies in Central America.
The CIA recruiters became the focus for anti-government protests. The
CIA was also criticized for what many thought was discrimination
against hiring homosexuals. Although that had certainly been true in the
early days, the CIA emphatically denied, during the recruiting push, that
any discrimination continued. The Agency's credibility in this regard
seemed to be quite low on many campuses.
Pressure from Congress
Under pressure from Congress and in response to criticism that the
CIA was still largely dominated by white, male employees, the CIA began to seek out more women and minorities to fill its ranks. This was
certainly the right thing to do, not only because of pressure to open up
the agency to women and minorities but also to broaden the base of its
employees and take advantage of their skills and talents. Despite its best
efforts, however, this campaign was only partly successful. Among some
minority groups the CIA had a poor image based on media coverage,
disinformation, and apocryphal beliefs.5 Women needed only to look at
who was serving in top positions in the CIA; there were few women
among them. Thus, attracting members of the non-white, non-male population was a hard sell for the recruiters.
Although the CIA has reportedly made gains in hiring more minorities
and women, it is not clear that these groups are remaining in the Agency
for their careers. A study undertaken some years ago seemed to indicate
that minority professionals were leaving the CIA after several years because they found that there were relatively few role models in higher
grades, that there was no minority network they could rely on for support, and that senior managers failed to understand differences in their
cultural backgrounds. Although the CIA has issued statistics from time
to time indicating that the Agency's minority hiring is growing, minority
retention might be a more interesting measure of how well the Agency
is dealing with this aspect of the human resource problem.
The Dreaded Polygraph

Initial screening of the thousands of applicants for CIA positions,
based on lengthy application forms and personal interviews, usually produces a crop of potential new hires that probably look fine, but all these
133
recruits have to pass a security screening that includes a polygraph interview. The polygraph remains a controversial tool for such screening.
In theory, by measuring a variety of physical responses, the polygraph
is supposed to enable a trained operator to detect prevarication or withholding of information. Even to a person who has regularly been through
such interviews, the polygraph interview is highly stressful, and its accuracy remains in serious question. To a potential new hire who has
never been through a polygraph interview/the experience can be a disaster.
The poor recruit sits facing a blank wall, the machine operating behind
him or her, the unseen interviewer asking questions that probe the most
personal experiences of the recruit's young life. Some of the questions
relate to counterintelligence issues that the recruit most likely finds to be
no problem: "Have you given secret information to a foreign power?"
for example. More troubling are questions about sex, drugs, and personal
behavior. These are questions that the recruit's most intimate friends or
family are not likely to ask, and they are being asked by someone the
recruit has never seen before and who must seem terribly intimidating.
Is it any wonder that many talented young people, especially the more
imaginative, never get through this test? 6
Security officials defend the polygraph and the way it is administered
as their most reliable tool to root out potential penetrations of the CIA
and those whose reliability and stability are open to question. One writer
notes that an increasing number of veteran CIA employees were having
difficulty with the polygraph, even though they had no real security
problems. 7 In contrast, Aldrich Ames twice showed deception on the
polygraph, but no action was taken. No intelligence agency can afford
to tread lightly in investigating the security and reliability of its potential
new hires as well as its veterans; but in the author's view, based on many
years of observing the results of its use, the polygraph is costing the CIA
dearly in turning away potential talent. Other intelligence agencies in the
U.S. system that use the polygraph may be having similar problems, but,
of course, the data either to confirm or to deny this are not publicly
available.
CIA Training
Once hired, the new recruit is then turned over to the CIA's training
system to learn the ropes. Unfortunately, not everyone gets the same
rope. Typically the new recruit begins with what some call "CIA 101,"
a basic examination of the world of intelligence, including emphasis on
laws, regulations, ethics, and morality. Students who have studied strategic intelligence at the university level, based on admittedly anecdotal
134
reporting, indicate that the CIA's training is less detailed than what they
had already studied. But this is only the beginning. Then the recruit
begins to study the material directly related to his or her assignment.
Here the CIA and the military services tend to part company.
The CIA's training philosophy parallels its philosophy about human
resources. According to CIA practice, new people are hired based on
specific needs, and the Agency uses a variety of methods to determine
the work for which each recruit is best suited. Thus, some new hires
become operations officers, some become analysts, some go into scientific
work, and others are directed into administrative fields. Generally there
is little movement between career fields, so the training is career-specific
right from the beginning. In the military a different philosophy applies:
Intelligence officers are expected to be able to perform a wide variety of
tasks in intelligence, so the training is more broadly based. 8 All new
intelligence officers receive the same training, regardless of their future
assignment.
In the CIA additional training is designed to advance the officer in
one specific career field. Thus, CIA's mid-grade officials tend to know a
good deal about their own work but relatively little about those in other
departments or directorates. Years ago the CIA would bring officials at
mid-grade together from the various departments for more advanced
and general training, but work pressure, lack of funding, and perhaps
security considerations reduced this practice. It used to be repeated for
more senior officers headed for top management, but that too was cut.
The result is that senior CIA officers have little experience in fields outside their own career and tend not to know their contemporaries outside
their own offices.
The Military System
The military seems to have a much better system. Intelligence officers
who train together develop a bond that extends throughout their careers.
This is reinforced when they are brought together later for further training. At mid-career and senior levels, intelligence officers have the
opportunity to train with officers from other career fields. Military intelligence officers would also have had a variety of assignments as they
advanced in rank. The result is that senior intelligence officers in the
military are probably better equipped than their CIA counterparts to take
on senior management positions and are more flexible in how they can
be used.
A second major difference between the CIA and the military concerns
training for leadership and management. Military officers are trained
early on in how to lead, as well as how to manage, based on the as-
135
sumption that they will have to do both in the years ahead. The CIA
does not train its managers until they actually take on a position that
requires management skill, and they do not train people for leadership
roles at all. CIA managers tend to advance because they are good analysts or good operations officers, not because they have displayed talent
as leaders. One would often hear that someone had been appointed to
a senior position at the CIA, but that this person was a terrible manager.
Surely this is a system that begs for correction.
Language Training and Area K n o w l e d g e
In the Cold War era, when the CIA had a substantial number of operations officers abroad, a great deal of emphasis was put on language
training and area knowledge. This seems no longer to be the case. Years
ago a fledgling case officer might spend one or two years just perfecting
language ability in an overseas assignment, or he or she might serve in
a support position while absorbing the culture and ambiance in an area
where the case officer would later have to recruit agents. Based on the
recent examination of the intelligence failure in India in 1998, it appears
that the CIA is no longer investing the money it took to give a case officer
language and area knowledge; most probably this is so because of
budget cuts.
Similarly, the CIA used to have analysts take frequent orientation trips
to the countries or areas they were covering. That practice began to erode
as early as the 1960s, and the situation has gotten worse ever since. The
CIA has never invested as much effort in analyst training as in the training of case officers, and now both categories of substantive officers are
being short-changed. Admiral Jeremiah's review of the India debacle
confirmed that analysts had committed one of the cardinal sins in intelligence analysis, that of mirror-imaging. The analysts had apparently
assumed that the Indian leadership would not test nuclear weapons because Western leaders in similar circumstances would not do it. The
analysts failed to understand the Indian mindset largely because they
had not been exposed to it.
Personnel Cuts
Human resources in intelligence were dealt a further blow at the end
of the Cold War when budget cuts forced severe cutbacks in personnel.
This is particularly difficult in intelligence work because a disgruntled
employee may take revenge on the intelligence service that fired him or
her by seeking to peddle information to a hostile intelligence service. In
136
fact, there was just such a case years ago when an angry employee, let
go in a round of personnel cutbacks, offered to deliver secret information
by throwing a package of classified files over the fence of the Soviet
embassy in downtown Washington, with a note explaining that there
was more where that came from.9
In the event, the KGB watcher on duty decided that the package might
be a bomb and turned it over, unopened, to the Secret Service officer on
duty outside the embassy. This led eventually to a sting operation in
which the FBI was able to trap the disgruntled CIA officer when he went
to pick up what he thought was his payoff from the Soviets. We don't
know what happened to the KGB watcher, but we can speculate that he
was certainly not rewarded for his caution.
As far as we know, the various schemes developed by the government
in general, and not just for the intelligence services, have succeeded in
thinning the ranks at the CIA and other agencies. These schemes have
included buyouts for early retirement and cash payouts for those willing
to leave. From all accounts, this has created a serious morale problem,
since many employees who used to think of themselves as having tenure
in the intelligence profession have now realized that they are as vulnerable to downsizing as any firm in the private sector. This has, according
to some reports, caused some intelligence professionals in mid-grades to
leave to seek their fortune elsewhere. 10 Who can be totally dedicated to
a service that might force an employee out when the employee has
served in such unique work? In some cases, the former intelligence officer would be hard pressed to account for years of service under cover.
The downsizing has also led to the consolidation of the hiring system.
In 1991-92, the CIA began closing its recruiting offices around the country, relying on a centralized system operated out of the Washington area.
Now it appears that pressure to rebuild the ranks, especially in terms of
case officers, may require rethinking the way the system operates. If
college campuses are any indication, students are very interested in intelligence work and often seek advice about how to prepare for a career
in the field. Unfortunately, the CIA seems to know little about this and
has not taken advantage of the network of professors who teach about
intelligence around the country.
N o Longer Special
A further blow to morale came in 1998 when DCI George Tenet announced that because of budget restrictions, CIA retirees who had previously had their retirements managed by CIA employees would now
be turned over to the Office of Personnel Management and would be
treated just as any other retired civilian employees of the government. 11
137
This sends an ominous message to the intelligence ranks, and not just at
the CIA, because intelligence employees are not part of the regular civil
service; rather, they serve in a category called the "excepted service."
This gives the DCI and other intelligence managers considerable leeway
in handling personnel matters, although they have traditionally relied
on civil service rules as a matter of uniformity and convenience.
Thus intelligence personnel in the civilian ranks, who used to think of
themselves as a special breed, now realize they are not much different
than the rest of the Washington bureaucracy. In the military, however,
things have been a bit different. Intelligence as a career field used to be
thought of as only for those who could not make it in the combat arms.
In World War I one German general was reported to have left his intelligence officer behind when his troops went into combat because the
officer was excess baggage. 12
Over time, however, as intelligence officers have achieved senior ranks
and generals' stars, that attitude has changed. Military intelligence is no
longer an oxymoron, and intelligence officers are no longer considered
second-class citizens when it comes time to choose officers for senior
schools and advancement. Like the CIA the military has also suffered
budget cuts and has had to force officers into retirement, and intelligence
personnel are treated in the same way as their counterparts.
One would think that the civilian intelligence services would be eager
to recruit veterans of military intelligence, and indeed, the intelligence
agencies under the Department of Defensethe Defense Intelligence
Agency and the National Security Agency among themhave done so.
The CIA has traditionally hired only those beginning a career, and its
record of taking on veterans who would have to be hired at mid- or
senior grades is not a good one. In fact, the CIA has even discriminated
against its own officers who have served outside the CIA on various
assignments, rewarding them by asking them to "prove themselves"
upon their return and denying them promotion or reward based on the
work they have performed elsewhere.
Other Services
U.S. intelligence agencies perform other tasks that should be noted
because some of them are unique and require resources that support the
main tasks of collection, analysis, or other operations. For example, the
CIA has to maintain a medical staff to assist employees overseas who
are serving in areas where medical care is either inadequate or dangerous
compared to that in the United States. This is another of the functions
that has to take account of cover and clandestine activity abroad. Some
employees need help and counseling for drug- or alcohol-related prob-
138
lems, if not for themselves, then for their families, especially in an overseas environment where such problems are endemic. After all, families
have to live under cover, too, even when they are not actually CIA employees.
In recent years the CIA has had to deal with problems that no one
foresaw when the Agency was created. Because of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the CIA and other intelligence agencies have to
search secret files and release material when proper application is made.
Bill Casey did manage to make a deal with Congress, when he was DCI,
to exempt operational files from such searches because that material was
almost never released anyway. 13 But this deal created a new problem.
Casey agreed that he would begin a systematic effort to review and release old Agency files that might be of historic interest, but this meant
that a significant number of resources had to be assembled because no
intelligence service can release documents in bulk if there is the slightest
danger that sources and methods might be compromised. This is an issue
that will be examined later when we look at how intelligence services
deal with the public.
The Security Function

One critical administrative function, already discussed in part, is that
of security. Security, as we have seen, is a key defensive element in
counterintelligence, but it is certainly more than that. The security function is wide-ranging and includes protection of physical facilities, of personnel, of operational activities, and protection of data. As in many large
organizations, the security function includes protecting the organization
from its personnel as well. Thus, the security function is not only an
administrative necessity but serves as a control element as well.
When Mir Aimal Kansi, a Pakistani citizen, gunned down several CIA
officers on the road leading to CIA headquarters in Virginia, it brought
home to many the need for protection of CIA people and facilities.14 In
this case, the CIA itself could do very little because its jurisdiction, in
terms of physical security and police power, covered only CIA buildings
and grounds. Outside those areas the CIA must turn to the local police
for aid, just as any private citizen would do. In fact, the CIA obtained
the right to maintain its own security police only in the 1980s. Before
that time the CIA relied on government uniformed security police, the
same people who guarded museums and other government facilities
to guard its domestic buildings. This system was used because of the
1947 law preventing the CIA from engaging in law enforcement activities.
139
Security Abroad
Overseas the CIA is also dependent on others for much of its physical
security. The bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in
August 1998 revived discussion about the vulnerability of U.S. diplomatic facilities abroad, many of which were built to be open and available to the public. CIA officials have undoubtedly not forgotten about
that vulnerability. CIA officers were taken in the storming of the U.S.
embassy in Teheran in 1979, and several CIA officers were lost in the
bombing of the embassy in Beirut in 1983. At the time a committee was
set up to review security at embassies abroad, and the CIA concluded
that the security provided by the State Department was inadequate. Anyone who has served abroad in a CIA post would certainly be able to
confirm that conclusion. Nonetheless, very little was done, except that
more training was developed to help officers abroad protect themselves
through defensive driving and other such skills.
Even though the CIA has to rely on other agencies to protect its facilities at home and abroad, there is still a role for its own security office.
A key element in developing protective measures is to determine the
nature of the threat. Here, security personnel can work with both analysts and operations officers to develop threat assessments, so at least
the CIA can decide where it is most vulnerable. Security can also play a
role in protecting personnel by helping to develop defensive training and
by providing actual physical protection to key leaders. It always seemed
a bit excessive, however, that such protection was provided inside the
CIA headquarters, a place we all thought was one of the safest places in
the country. When President Reagan visited CIA headquarters in 1985
for the groundbreaking for a new building, the Secret Service brought a
bomb-sniffing dog to patrol the Langley campus, an event that led many
to wonder just how safe we were. The Kansi shooting, years later, proved
that the CIA security officials and the Secret Service were not wasting
their time.
Control and Protection
It is perhaps an unfortunate fact of life that the Office of Security at
the CIA has had to become an element of control as well as one of protection. Yet, we know that as in any large bureaucracy, people must
believe that wrongdoing will be detected and punished. In the private
sector, white-collar crime is endemic and a great deal of money is lost
in business because of fraud, embezzlement, extortion, and more recently
140
electronic theft. The CIA probably has one of the most carefully controlled, carefully screened, most reliable workforces of any organization
in the country, and the other intelligence services seem to be the same.
Despite the special nature of its personnel, the CIA has been victimized
by inside crime from time to time.
One of the more egregious cases was that of Ed Wilson, a contract
operations officer who was arrested by the FBI in 1981 after it was
learned that he had become a rogue agent, selling illegal arms to East
Germany and Libya.15 A second CIA officer was implicated in Wilson's
nefarious operations and was also arrested. More recently we learned
that Douglas Groat, a former military and police officer, had attempted
to extort money from the CIA by threatening to inform target countries
about CIA plans to gather information about them. In the summer of
1998, Groat worked out a plea bargain with the government that focused
on the extortion rather than the more serious charges of espionage that
might have forced the government to reveal sensitive data in court.16
These famous cases are among the few that have reached the public.
More low-level crime goes largely unreported. One CIA officer was
found to have tried to take advantage of a CIA purchase of automobiles
he was administering to get a free car for himself; he was quickly caught
and prosecuted. Agency employees always believed that any attempt to
do anything illegal would eventually be detected by the polygraph or
other security checks. It is not a bad atmosphere to create in an agency
where keeping secrets is the norm.
The Inspector General
Another control element in the CIA is the Office of the Inspector General (IG). In the early days of the CIA, the inspector general was always
a senior Agency official with many years of service and his staff was
drawn from around the various directorates and components of the organization. 17 This was a so-called rotational tour of duty, and it was
expected that the IG staffer would return to his or her component when
the tour was over. The IG office was supposed to serve not only as a
unit to inspect and evaluate the components of the Agency but also as
a grievance office as well. Employees were told that if they could not
get a hearing from within their own chain-of-command, they could go
to the inspector general with a grievance. This meant, however, reporting
to officials who were actually peers and co-workers. Many employees
were undoubtedly reluctant to air grievances with people with whom
they might later have to work.
This system militated against a hard-charging examination of internal
components as well. What career officer wanted to attack the managers
141
of a unit for poor performance and then find out that these very same
managers might later be their supervisors or be in a position to review
their promotions? Despite these drawbacks, most employees would
probably agree that the Office of Inspector General did perform a useful
function, even if its reports were softer than some might have liked.
After the Iran-Contra affair, Congress began an attack on the CIA's IG
system, demanding that the CIA have an independent inspector general,
and not someone drawn from within the ranks. This would put the CIA
on equal footing with the rest of government, where inspectors general
are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate, as are most
political appointees. President Bush agreed to this requirement, appointing as his first inspector general Frederick Hitz, a lawyer who had served
in the CIA both as a case officer and later in the Office of General Counsel. He was not really an outsider, but he was not then serving within
the CIA. He was easily confirmed and his tenure, which stretched on
through much of the Clinton administration, has set a tone that bodes
well for the system.
Hitz led the IG office through examinations of alleged drug running
or complicity in such affairs, bank scandals, and the Ames case.18 Some
of these examinations that have been released to the public show an IG
office that has not been reluctant to draw attention to CIA mistakes in
management and substance. After Hitz retired in 1998, his successor, L.
Britt Snider, was also confirmed by the Senate.19 Snider, while not truly
a CIA insider, had served on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
staff, had written about intelligence matters for publication, was well
known to many senior CIA officers, and was not a "babe-in-the woods"
when it comes to asking the tough questions. Nonetheless, the IG staff
is still drawn from Agency ranks and is still subject to returning to the
ranks, and this remains a weakness in what has otherwise been a very
effective system for control.
The Audit Staff
One aspect of the Office of the Inspector General that is not well
known is the audit staff, whose job is to ensure that CIA officers who
spend the Agency's money are not skimming off the top or mishandling
funds. This is especially important in a system where a great deal of
money is spent in clandestine ways. Nothing strikes more fear in the
hearts of officers serving abroad than when the auditors come and each
officer has to account for every penny, whether in dollars or rupees or
lekas. Controlling the money may well be the key to controlling everything else because no rogue operation is possible without funds. By following the money the perpetrators in the Iran-Contra affair were soon
142
tracked, and so the audit function remains one of the key tools management has to be sure that its secret operatives are following the rules.
For the most part the president relies on the DCI and other agency
leaders to control their agencies, deal with legal and management issues,
and make sure that clandestine operatives are doing only what the management has approved and funded. The executive branch has two other
tools to use to oversee the intelligence system, but both are relatively
weak and have been judged ineffective from time to time.
President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and
Intelligence Oversight Board
When President Eisenhower inherited the intelligence system from
President Truman, he established a board of review to access outside
advice about the efficiency of the intelligence agencies he commanded.
This board became the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board
(PFIAB), pronounced "PIFF-ee-ab" in the world of Washington acronyms. Then, as now, it was made up of retired senior officials, retired
business leaders, and friends of the president. PFIAB members received
clearances and were able to investigate allegations of inefficiency or mismanagement as well as subtantive judgments made by the U.S. Intelligence Community, not by just the CIA.
Except for expenses, PFIAB members are not paid for their services,
but most seem sufficiently wealthy that this is no bar to their public
service. Unfortunately, we know relatively little about how well PFIAB
members perform their function because their reports are sent only to
the White House and are not shared with the working level at the intelligence agencies themselves. The small staff that supports the PFIAB
is equally close-mouthed, pointing out that by reporting directly and
only to the president, they can be more free about what they say. It may
well be that the DCI and other senior leaders in the Intelligence Community are privy to these reports, but no information about this, with
rare exceptions, has ever surfaced.
The second element of this White House mechanism is the Intelligence
Oversight Board (IOB). This is composed of three members, again appointed by the president to serve without pay, who investigate allegations of malfeasance or illegal behavior. The Intelligence Oversight Board
has issued statements from time to time about its work, but its most
famousor infamousmoment came when it was revealed that the lawyer who was serving at the time as legal advisor to the board had given
the White House bad advice, saying that members of the White House
staff did not have to report to Congress about covert action in the same
way as did intelligence officials. This apparently led to Ollie North's
143
misadventures in the Iran-Contra affair, for which the IOB lawyer was
soundly criticized by congressional investigators. 20
Given that these two boards are made up of part-time political appointees, it is difficult to see how effective they might be in dealing with
serious matters requiring in-depth investigation. Their staffs are too
small to do much investigating on their own, and so this appears to be
a relatively weak control mechanism for any president. Most recent presidents have also had officers drawn from professional intelligence ranks
to serve on the White House staff as intelligence advisors or coordinators, but these officials do not form part of a control mechanism. They
are there to deal with the development of intelligence policy, including
covert action, or to ensure that intelligence judgments are reaching senior
officials on the president's staff.
Taken as a whole, it seems clear that the president has to rely for the
most part on his DCI and the other intelligence agency heads to control
the system on behalf of the executive branch. This serves in sharp contrast to many other countries where the chief executive, whether a prime
minister or a president, has direct control of the several intelligence services of the nation, each of which reports directly to the top. Of course,
in most countries the intelligence services are much smaller and the system much less complicated than the services and system in the United
States.
Presidential Orders
In response to criticism of presidential control of intelligence, in 1976
President Ford issued a presidential executive order detailing who was
responsible for what within the U.S. Intelligence Community. 21 The order
specifically banned the use of assassination and human experimentation,
activities that had come to light in the course of investigations of the
Intelligence Community, and that order, somewhat revised, was reissued
by President Carter and then by President Reagan.22 Despite the fears of
some human rights activists that the Reagan order was "unleashing" the
CIA to carry out domestic intelligence operations, the order proved to
be sufficiently non-partisan that it was adopted wholesale by both the
Bush and Clinton administrations. Future presidents may choose to revise this order again if they see a need to change the priorities and lines
of authority it contains.
The United States has another control mechanism that is unique, effective, and perhaps only possible in its peculiar political system of
checks and balances. Since 1976 the United States has had a congressional
committee for intelligence oversight in each house of Congress, a development that would have been seen as unworkable by the Founding Fa-
144
thers of the nation, who thought that intelligence matters were the
purview of the chief executive alone. In fact, many presidents stonewalled attempts by Congress to investigate secret operations, pointing
out the dangers of revealing sources and methods to a large, elected
assembly and thus to the public.
Chief executives in the United States had to inform Congress that they
were making secret expenditures, but they were not required to explain
the details. In the aftermath of World War II and the coming of the Cold
War, members of Congress were satisfied to have only the sketchiest of
information about secret intelligence operations, preferring not to know
more. 23 Since there were no committees to oversee the growing U.S. Intelligence Community, members of the U.S. Armed Services Committee
were usually the ones to sign off on funds for the CIA or the other
services. Military intelligence activities were dealt with more openly as
part of the regular military budgets.
Congressional Oversight
This all changed in 1974 when Senator Frank Church began his landmark investigation of charges that the CIA was a rogue elphant. Out of
the Church and companion Pike Committee in the House of Representatives emerged a demand for more rigorous oversight of intelligence,
which led to the establishment of the Senate and House oversight committees. 24
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), each created in 1976,
are made up of members of Congress appointed by the congressional
leadershipmaking them select committeesand are granted complete
access to intelligence materials through the highest levels. Whereas the
members themselves need go through no security or background checks,
the staffs of the two committees are cleared in the same way as intelligence professionals. In fact, over time the staffs have usually contained
former intelligence professionals who have decided to leave the executive branch.
The original drive to create these committees was mostly based on a
need to oversee covert action operations, the kinds of activities that Senator Church thought were being run by CIA professionals without even
the direction of the White House. The Church Committee and the Pike
Committee learned, to their chagrin, that this had not been the case at
all; all the covert actions were directed by the White House and were
made known to certain key members of Congress, who then arranged
the funding.
Once the SSCI and HPSCI were in place, a new system for dealing
145
with covert action was established in which the DCI was to report to the
committees any presidential policies requiring covert operations. The
president was to issue a written "finding" attesting to the need for such
action, and the DCI was to testify to the details before the committees.
Although neither the SSCI nor the HPSCI could veto the president's order, each could withhold funds or express its reservations to the president. The committees were not supposed to torpedo the policies by
leaking the details.
This system worked reasonably well and should have given critics of
intelligence some assurance that while the public was not able to learn
in advance about covert action, their representatives on Capitol Hill were
carefully reviewing plans for secret activities. This assurance was badly
eroded by the Iran-Contra affair. The investigations of the Reagan White
House revealed that senior administration officials and the DCI had either misled the committees, lied to them, or withheld information from
them about covert action. Of course, this caused congressional leaders to
seek even tighter control of intelligence activities, including more careful
review of budgets, more wide-ranging evaluation of intelligence analysis,
and increasing attempts to micro-manage the intelligence process.
A n Effective Control Mechanism?
Despite the rancor and friction created by the seemingly constant debate over intelligence activities between the White House and Congress,
the U.S. oversight system has proven to be an effective way to control
secret organizations, albeit at a high price. It is a remarkable change from
the original notion that intelligence activities were supposed to be an
executive function alone, immune from congressional prying. Now we
have a system in which the representatives of the people, on their behalf,
have an obligation on a non-partisan basis to review the workings of the
intelligence agencies and in which the executive branch is required to
cooperate in this rather intrusive and adversarial process.
Some problems are inevitable as Congressmen probe more deeply than
is needed and as intelligence officers seek to avoid giving out information that might compromise their operations. With good will on both
sides, the system can work. We know from the Iran-Contra affair, however, that it is still possible to subvert this control mechanism for a time,
but that in the end, malfeasance, illegal activities, or stupidity are bound
to surface. When that happens, further congressional controls and restrictions are inevitable. And if Congress is less than careful about protecting secrets, more information will be withheld for security reasons.
Thus, it pays for both sides, executive and legislative, to play by the
rules.
146

The Intelligence Community
Finally, we have the issue of the system itself, the convoluted, complicated, multiheaded U.S. Intelligence Community. When President
Truman appointed the first DCI, Rear Admiral Sidney Souers, in 1946,
he was seeking a way to coordinate the information he was receiving
from the FBI and the State, War, and Navy Departments, each of which
had intelligence elements. 25 Truman didn't have time to sift through the
conflicting reports or assess the information himself. Creating the Central
Intelligence Agency was perhaps an inevitable next step, endowing it
not only with the ability to sift and evaluate but to collect and operate
as well.26 The DCI could then have an agency to support him, and this
creation would give him troops to lead, a budget, buildings, turfall
the elements of bureaucratic power in Washington.
Technically, the DCI was to serve not only as the head of the CIA but
also as the intelligence advisor to the president and coordinator, whatever that meant, of all U.S. intelligence activities. In reality the DCI's
power to coordinate was limited to the extent that other agencies were
willing to cooperate. J. Edgar Hoover, who fought bitterly against what
he saw as attacks on his turf, power, and his beloved FBI, was not about
to let himself be overshadowed by this upstart new agency or the DCI.
As additional intelligence elements were created with the Department of
Defensethe National Security Agency in 1954 and the Defense Intelligence Agency in 1961the secretaries of defense were also wary of efforts that might compromise their control of DOD intelligence resources.
Similarly, the secretary of state wanted to be able to keep the Bureau
of Intelligence and Research (INR) out of the clutches of the CIA and
the DCI.
Turf Issues
The result of these turf issues was a system in which the DCI had
almost no power over any agency outside the CIA. The only tools he
could use were his access to the White House, his legal requirement to
protect sources and methods, and his force of personality. When he met
periodically with the other agency heads as chair of the National Foreign
Intelligence Board to coordinate estimates or review intelligence policy,
his ability to get everyone to play from the same sheet of music was
more limited than that of the director of the National Symphony.
At the working level the various intelligence agencies did deal with
each other on substantive issues from time to time. Because the CIA
styled some of its publications as "national intelligence," CIA analysts
147
were required to coordinate with (that is, seek comments and approval
from) State, INR, DIA, and even NSA, when writing for the nationallevel publications. INR, DIA, and NSA were not required to reciprocate.
Community analysts did make inputs to National Intelligence Estimates,
most of which were drafted at the CIA and then sent out for coordination, but analysts at other agencies wrote their own forecasts for internal
use at Defense and State.
As for administrative matters, each agency was on its own. Efforts to
coordinate security clearances, for example, went nowhere. Each agency
wanted to do its own background checks and grant its own clearances.
Budgets were submitted by each agency to the Office of Management
and Budget and then defended at the congressional level. And access
between agencies was restricted so that officials of one agency often had
to be escorted when they visited other elements of the Intelligence Community, even though they had the necessary clearances. The CIA even
maintained two cafeterias, one for open employees and one for those
under cover. Guests were not allowed in the "cover" cafeteria.
Change in the 1970s
All this began to change in the 1970s, spurred by three major developments. First, the vast expense of intelligence collection satellites required the agencies to share their use. Second, the new intelligence
oversight committees of Congress demanded that the DCI submit one
consolidated budget that covered all the intelligence agencies at the national level. Third, DCI William Colby had scrapped the system for writing National Intelligence Estimates, eliminating the CIA Office of
National Estimates and its staff and creating the National Intelligence
Council (NIC). The NIC was to be made up of senior officers drawn
from around the Intelligence Community, and they were supposed to be
able to tap talent at any agency to draft the new estimates.
These changes meant that the Intelligence Community had to cooperate and work together, whether its members wanted to or not. A
system was needed to task the collection satellites and to manage the
budget. It was assumed that the NIC would deal with substantive issues
on its own. Eventually, under DCI Stansfield Turner in 1978, the Intelligence Community Staff was set up, some of whose members were assigned from the IC agencies and some of whom were hired directly,
although they were considered CIA employees and made to go through
CIA clearance procedures to avoid even more bureaucratic processes.
The IC Staff, as it was called, set up committees to deal with requirements and tasking, not just for the satellites but for human collection as
well. A budget group was to bring together the budgets developed by
148
each agency and establish an overall budget, with funding requests listed
by priority. Other staff elements dealt with evaluation and planning. The
staff was located in downtown Washington in a building that once
housed General Lewis Hershey and the Selective Service Commission.
Unfortunately, for officers drawn from the IC agencies, word got around
that serving on the staff was tantamount to "career death," so many
officers were reluctant to serve on the staff or to stay there very long.
The permanent cadre was informed that they had no right to transfer to
the other agencies, even to the CIA, unless someone really wanted them.
Despite these hassles, the IC Staff did bring the Intelligence Community
together on a variety of issues and became an effective clearinghouse for
discussing problems of mutual concern.
When Bob Gates took over as DCI, the IC Staff was moved to the CIA
and restyled the Community Management Staff; also, an attempt was
made to bring together the administrative elements of the old IC Staff
and the substantive units that made up the NIC. The functions of dealing
with requirements and tasking, budgets and planning remained more or
less the same.
The Role of the DCI
Much of the focus of the reform studies carried out in 1996 focused
on the role of the DCI and the organization of the U.S. Intelligence Community. Most critics agreed that the present arrangement was not effective or sensible. The DCI has too little power to really run the
community, most of which belongs to the secretary of defense and the
Department of Defense. The overall budget is skewed in that way as
well, since the CIA reportedly controls only about 10 percent. Nonetheless, efforts by the Congress to give the DCI more power and more control over the budget failed. Giving the DCI more power meant taking
power away from the secretary of defense. In the zero sum game of
Washington politics, that was not about to happen. This is an issue that
deserves more careful scrutiny in a later chapter.
Why does the system work if it is so divided and cumbersome? The
answer lies in the fact that the people involved want it to work and seek
ways either to evade, ignore, or circumvent the bureaucratic rules when
these rules get in the way of cooperation. This is true throughout the
government, but particularly true in the Intelligence Community, despite
turf battles, personality clashes, secrecy, and compartmentation. Several
years ago the then-IC Staff carried out a survey that showed that at least
seventy-five informal committees and working groups in the IC had been
created by their members to solve problems or deal with issues. These
groups had not been ordered or legislated, or even budgeted, but be-
149
cause there was a need, an informal solution was found. The same may
be true today.
The DCI makes the system work in much the same way. If the DCI
has a personality that creates harmony rather than friction, much can be
accomplished. Even when prickly J. Edgar Hoover was running the FBI,
DCIs such as Richard Helms learned how to get along with the "old
man." In the end, the Agency heads all want to accomplish the same
general goals, even if they disagree on the methods. This means that
DCIs must reach out to their counterparts in the other agencies and bring
them on board.
Administration, management, and control are not the stuff of spy novels, but they are critical issues in a system that now costs $27 billion to
run and engages thousands of people. It is no wonder that reformers
zero in on these issues when it comes seeking fixes. Yet, revising the
lines of commandthe "plumbing charts" or "wiring diagrams," as
Washington insiders call themmay not be the key. The American system is very much dependent on the personalities of the people involved
and their willingness to cooperate and work together. Rewiring the bureaucracy may not make that happen and may even stifle the energy that
makes the system function.
Notes
1. Books that do discuss management issues include Bruce Berkowitz and
Allan Goodman, Strategic Intelligence for American National Security (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1989); Loch K. Johnson, Secret Agencies: U.S. Intelligence in a Hostile World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996); and
Ronald Kessler, Inside the CIA (New York: Pocket Books, 1992).
2. John Sawatsky, Men in the Shadows: The RCMP Security Service (Toronto:
Doubleday Canada, 1980), pp. 71-91.
3. See Burton Hersh, The Old Boys: The American Elite and the Origins of the
CIA (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1992).
4. In fact, the author was recruited for the CIA in just such a fashion.
5. When the author was chairman of the DCI Management Advisory Group,
he worked closely with a group of minority employees who were trying to study
and fix the retention problem.
6. Although their stories are admittedly anecdotal, a number of the author's
former students have reported a variety of horror stories about the polygraph.
7. Vernon Loeb, "CIA Still Recuperating from Mole's Aftermath," Washington
Post, 22 February 1999, p. A13.
8. The author was trained in both the military system and the CIA system.
9. Ronald Kessler, Inside the CIA (New York: Pocket Books, 1992), p. 158.
10. Tim Weiner, "Spies Wanted/7 New York Times Magazine, 24 January 1999,
p. 36.
150
11. Letter to annuitants from George C. Clark, CIA Human Resource Management Office, May 1998.
12. Jock Haswell, Spies and Spymasters (London: Thames and Hudson, 1977),
p. 114.
13. Arthur S. Hulnick, "Learning about U.S. Intelligence: Difficult but Not Impossible," International Journal of Intelligence and Counterlntelligence, vol. 5, no. 1,
pp. 89-99.
14. Daniel Kleidman and Gregory Vistica, "In Search of a Killer," Newsweek,
11 August 1997, p. 37.
15. Peter Maas, Manhunt (New York: Random House, 1986), p. 278.
16. Walter Pincus and Bill Miller, "Ex-CIA Operative Pleads Guilty to Blackmail Attempt at Langley," Washington Post, 28 July 1998, p. Al.
17. Scott D. Breckinridge, The CIA and the U.S. Intelligence System (Boulder, CO:
Westview Press, 1986).
18. The Inspector General Reports released to the public were available on the
CIA website at www.odci.gov.
19. White House press announcement, 5 May 1998 (www.fas.org).
20. Loch K. Johnson, America's Secret Power: The CIA in a Democratic Society
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 237-238.
21. Executive Order 11905, "U.S. Foreign Intelligence Activities," 19 February
1976.
22. President Carter's order was Executive Order 12036, "U.S. Intelligence Activities," 26 January 1978; President Reagan's was Executive Order 12333, "U.S.
Intelligence Activities," 4 December 1981.
23. Anne Karalekas, "History of the Central Intelligence Agency," in William
M. Leary (ed.), The Central Intelligence Agency: History and Documents (Tuscaloosa:
University of Alabama Press, 1955), p. 66.
24. Loch K. Johnson, A Season of Inquiry: Congress and Intelligence (Chicago:
Dorsey Press, 1988).
25. Christopher Andrew, For the President's Eyes Only: Secret Intelligence and the
American Presidency from Washington to Bush (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), p.
164.
26. Arthur Darling, The Central Intelligence Agency: An Instrument of Government
to 1950 (State College: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1990), pp. 171-183.
CHAPTER 8
Spying for Profit

When most people think about intelligence, they probably consider it a
function of government, and indeed, intelligence activity has largely
been run by governments since early history. At first most governments
used intelligence to spy out subversion. Thus, we have evidence of "the
King's eyes" in a number of civilizations, including early Egypt and the
lands conquered by Genghis Khan and the Mongols. Spying to learn
about foreign enemies was well described by Sun Tzu in The Art of War
and practiced by Hideyoshi in uniting the feudal warlords of Japan under the Tokugawa shoguns. Before the Cold War, intelligence was often
thought of as a part of military operations, but with the development of
civilian intelligence services in the twentieth century, that concept was
broadened. Still, it was the government that ran such secret services
whether in democracies or dictatorships.
The idea of using intelligence techniques in the private sector is relatively new. Perhaps its earliest manifestations can be found in the first
days of the Industrial Revolution, although the evidence is scanty and
anecdotal at best. We do know that in 1811, Francis Cabot Lowell, an
American, managed to memorize the construction and operation of the
British cotton loom despite stringent controls imposed to prevent anyone
from stealing the secret of this machine. 1 Lowell was able to reconstruct
the machine from memory, thus creating a new industry in the United
States. In an even more bizarre incident, a farmer in Maine is alleged to
have ordered his daughter to enter a Shaker community in the state so
she could steal the formula for condensed milk the Shakers had invented.
Even before World War II, American auto manufacturers consistently
tried to learn about new developments in style or construction from their
competition. Using photo reconnaissance, the intelligence collectors
152
would stake out test tracks or roads used to try out the new vehicles. To
thwart this, manufacturers would try to disguise their new cars to prevent anyone from seeing what they really looked like.
If the marketplace is a battlefield, as some suggest, then trying to outfox one's adveraries and competitors requires a method of knowing one's
enemies, just as in political or military affairs. Can the traditional functions of governmental intelligence work in the private sector as well?
Comparing the the two sectors shows what works and what doesn't.
Differences in Law
A key element that separates the public and private sectors when it
comes to intelligence is the law. Espionage is illegal all over the world,
yet governments routinely practice if and even admit it if they are caught
in an espionage operation. Agent handlers, as long as they have diplomatic immunity, may suffer no more than being declared persona non
grata and sent home from a foreign post. The agents they handled, however, may well be severely punished or even executed. Still, it appears
that most nations are willing to accept the fact that foreign intelligence
officers will be posted in their countries and will conduct espionage.
In the private sector the rules are quite different. Private espionage is
theft, and those caught in the act are treated as thieves. This has led to
two interesting developments. The first is that many governments have
begun to use their official intelligence services to engage in industrial
espionage, thus giving protection to the agent handlers. 2 They use the
information collected to help make their domestic industries more competitive with foreign firms. The second development is that the United
States has finally begun to protect itself against industrial espionage by
using its intelligence services in a counterintelligence and law enforcement role. In fact, the 1996 Economic Espionage Act signed into law by
the Clinton administration has turned industrial espionage into a federal
crime, thus permitting the FBI to go after the criminals instead of relying
on state and local law enforcement.
Differences in Cost
Another factor that separates governmental intelligence and private
intelligence is cost. In the government the cost of carrying out intelligence operations is based on an annual budget developed by the Intelligence Community, supported by the president's Office of Management
and Budget, and passed by Congress. Whereas intelligence managers
Spying for Profit
153
may concern themselves with keeping their operations within budget

guidelines, this is not usually a concern of those actually doing the work.
No one worries about the cost of each agent meeting or of a daily intelligence report. In the private sector, in contrast, each intelligence activity
has to be measured against cost and the contribution it makes to corporate earnings and profit.
It is easy to see, then, that intelligence activity in the private sector
faces obstacles that either do not appear in government or are not of
major concern. We can examine intelligence in the private sector by comparing the various functions of collection, analysis, counterintelligence,
and covert action with their governmental equivalents, and we can see
how intelligence actually manifests itself in the marketplace.
More Narrow Focus
Intelligence collectors in the private sector have a more narrow focus
than their counterparts in government, and the rules governing their
behavior are more strict, at least for the United States. The government
has declared several times, through several administrations, that it will
not use its intelligence services to spy for American industry, even if
other countries do so. Since espionage is illegal when practiced by nongovernmental operatives, this effectively rules out traditional forms of
spying as a collection method. The cost of trying to carry out electronic
intercepts would be prohibitive for the private sector, even if it were
legal, so technical collection has to be limited to the kinds of overhead
photography that can be purchased from the growing number of sources
that provide such data. The Russians, for example, have said that they
will sell satellite photos of particular targets on demand, and the cost
seems reasonable for a firm that might be seeking such data.
Realistically, then, most private intelligence collection, at least as far
as Americans are concerned, is going to be limited to open sources, legally obtained. We already know that a great deal of information is available, either through print or electronic sources, and can be gathered
merely for the cost of Internet time or sending someone to the library.
Some information is available from the U.S. government and may have
been derived from governmental intelligence collection systems, suitably
declassified to protect sources and methods.
A third category of open information has been dubbed "grey intelligence" by some writers and refers to legally obtainable information not
open to the general public but accessible through some form of application process. 3 Many financial and property records can be seen in this
way, and some can be obtained from the government through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which also requires an application pro-
154
cess plus a small charge for copying any documents that might be
released. For example, when a firm purchases a piece of heavy equipment and finances the purchase through a U.S. lending institution, various public records are created, including descriptions of the machinery
and the tasks for which it will be used. 4
Similarly, firms that build new plants or renovate older ones usually
have to file environmental impact statements that describe the nature of
the construction or renovation as well as the purpose of the plant, the
expected product and output, the number of workers to be employed,
and the nature of the materials that will be needed to manufacture the
product. The environmental impact statement is obtainable through legal
means, as are the licensing documents or other details of the project. In
fact, as one writer on competitive intelligence has noted, almost every
transaction in the private sector generates information that can be legally
obtained, so intelligence collectors need only follow the money to find
out a great deal of data.
A Form of H U M I N T
Whereas espionage has been ruled out for Americans, there is a form
of human intelligence collection, HUMINT, that is quite legal and effective, and it works for the private sector just as it does in government.
Elicitation is the art of gathering information from people so that they
do not realize they are providing it. It involves careful listening, perhaps
a bit of prodding, and a good memory to capture the details. A favorite
technique for eliciting information is to attend technical meetings, symposia, conferences, and other open gatherings and hang around the coffee bar, listening carefully for useful conversation and perhaps zeroing
in on someone who seems to be both knowledgeable and forthcoming.
Such gatherings are also a good source of printed materials and papers.
Of course, the intelligence gatherer has to understand the technical language and jargon of the conferees, so a good deal of homework might
be required to prepare for eliciting intelligence.
The rules that govern private intelligence suggest that the intelligence
collector should not lie about his or her reasons for being at the conference or seeking the information, but telling everything is not required
either. The collector should have worked out ahead of time just what
will be revealed and in what detail. Leonard Fuld, a noted practitioner
and writer on private intelligence, says that the collector should do no
damage, hurt no one's job, and create no problems in collecting data. 5
These seem to be sound principles for such activity. Others are not quite
so pristine in their advice. Some practitioners see no harm in making up
cover stories for elicitation, including pretending to be potential custom-
Spying for Profit
155
ers for a product in order to gather pricing data or seeking information

from suppliers using false references.6
However it is done, the information gathered from human sources has
to be collated, just as in government, to be useful for analysis. Whereas
an operative in government might use secret recording devices to make
sure no information is lost in speaking with a human source, this is
illegal in the private sector unless the source is informed that a recording
is to be made. In such cases, elicitation becomes interviewnot necessarily a bad thing, but something that has to be done openly. In fact,
interviews are good ways to obtain information as long as the interviewer is well prepared, has thought out questions ahead of time, and
does not try to hide the real reason for the session.
Analysis in the Private Sector
In government, as we know, intelligence collection is a rather specific
operation, whether from open sources, from human sources, or from
technical sensors. Those who collect information then turn their raw data
over to analysts, who function quite separately from the collectors. This
is done, in part, to avoid bias in analysis and to protect sources and
methods. In the private sector, in contrast, because of cost considerations
and the small size of the units involved, those who collect are almost
always those who analyze the collected data. Since the division between
collection and analysis disappears in the private sector, an intelligence
worker may be doing both things at the same time.
Intelligence analysis in the private sector falls into different categories
than in government, although some of the output may appear similar.
One kind of analytic product is focused on the feasibility of doing business in the overseas environment and is generally called "political risk
analysis" or simply risk analysis. It is aimed at business abroad because
the assumption is that there are no secrets to doing business domestically. All the information an investor needs about the United States is
readily available, and there are no mysteries about rules and regulations,
culture and environment, or security and safety. Overseas, however,
these issues may not be so clear.7
In investigating the business climate outside the United States, intelligence collection and analysis is necessary because some information
needed for business decisions may be difficult to find, hidden, or falsified. The security climate is of particular interest because of possible
corruption or incompetence. No one can do business safely and effectively if the big goons who come to the door demanding payoffs or
protection money are the police. The topics that need to be investigated
in the foreign environment range from legal restrictions on hiring and
156
firing, to the health and welfare of personnel, to restrictions on repatriation of capital and profit. The literature on risk analysis clearly specifies
the range of topics to be investigated.
Much of the needed data on such topics can be gathered through readily available open sources either through the private sector or from the
U.S. Departments of State and Commerce. Getting a good feel for the
business climate, the security situation, or the cultural atmosphere probably means an investigative trip to the target country by someone fluent
in the local language, familiar with local customs, and capable of seeing
beyond the host government's propaganda to find out what may be going on behind the scenes.
Businesses that are used to working in the United States may forget
that in some countries, political and economic stability are much shakier
than they are in the United States. Even though democracy is growing
in Third World countries more accustomed to political dictatorships and
to economies prone to inflation, the recent experience in Russia ought to
be instructive. Under communism, Soviet rulers routinely falsified and
hid economic data to make their system appear more effective than it
really was. Today, the reliability of economic statistics seems little improved, although the reason may be based on incompetence rather than
on dictatorship.
Forecasting in Risk Analysis

Risk analysts in the private sector have to be able to forecast the climate for business, the likely outcomes of investment, and potential security issues in much the same way that governmental intelligence
analysts write national estimates for security and planning. Both the
processes and the methodologies are similar, but there is a major difference between the public and private sectors. In government, analysts
avoid at all costs suggesting what action political leaders should take on
the basis of their estimates. When asked what should be done, intelligence analysts in government usually reply by saying that such decisions
are none of their business. When he was DCI, Judge William Webster
went so far as to walk out of cabinet meetings when policy issues were
under discussion so as to avoid political taint of intelligence. 8 In the
private sector the approach is quite different.
Firms that undertake risk analysis want to see clearly the bottom line
of any forecast. They want a "go or no-go" recommendation, and they
would be impatient indeed if a risk analyst to whom they had paid big
money avoided the issue. This means that before reaching the conclusions of the risk analysis, the intelligence analyst must consult with financial and management experts in order to provide both a forecast and
Spying for Profit
157
a recommendation. Thus, risk analysis closely resembles military thinking and planning.
As in government, risk analysts in the private sector have to be adept
at presenting their conclusions to management. This is made easier by
the fact that most firms, at least in the United States, rely on consultants
to provide risk analysis rather than having an internal intelligence unit.
This is not surprising, given concerns about cost and also about the propriety of having a unit labeled "intelligence," since this smacks of industrial espionage. Risk analysis may be the easiest form of intelligence
to outsource anyway, unless the firm is one constantly looking for business opportunities abroad. Hiring a consultant may be cheaper and more
effective and eliminates the need to acquire expertise for what may be a
one-shot deal. Although the evidence is anecdotal at best, consultants
who carry out risk analysis indicate that they have better access to top
management than counterparts in internal intelligence units and are
more able to give the fruits of their work to those who may actually do
something with the information.
Doing business abroad may require more than just a one-time risk
analysis forecast, however. Once the firm actually starts operating in a
foreign country, it may need other kinds of intelligence to protect its
operations. The firm needs to pay attention to the political, economic,
and security situation in the country where it operates, so in this respect
the firm's concerns are similar to those of U.S. officials in that country,
and the U.S. embassy there may well be the best source of current intelligence. As well, the firm may wish to subscribe to one of the growing
number of security newsletters written for such situations. These newsletters usually contain intelligence analysis similar to the current intelligence analysis written for senior policy officials in Washington, and a
subscription is likely to be much cheaper than hiring someone to be an
intelligence collector and analyst in the overseas location.
Competitive Intelligence
A second kind of intelligence product in the private sector is called
competitive or competitor intelligence because it concerns adversaries
and competitor firms in the marketplace. It is as much tactical as strategic
intelligence and seems to be the fastest-growing form of private intelligence today. In many ways it is more like governmental intelligence than
risk analysis because it involves gathering and analyzing information
that the firm's competitors would really prefer to keep confidential. The
practitioners of this form of private intelligence are more like their governmental counterparts than the researchers who carry out risk analysis,
and this makes many private practitioners a little nervous. They certainly
158
do not want to be seen as spies or to be accused of industrial espionage,

and these concerns color the way competitive intelligence, usually called
CI by its practitioners (but not to be confused with counterintelligence)
is conducted in the United States.
In many countries, competitive intelligence is seen as a necessary part
of doing business, and CI professionals are incorporated into the firm in
both strategic planning and marketing departments. One former CIA
official, who left the CIA to become one of the pioneering CI professionals in the United States, believes that almost all firms in Japan have CI
departments and many European firms have them as well. 9 Further, in
many countries the government's professional intelligence service collects and analyzes CI information and provides it to businesses in the
country to make them more competitive abroad. Although some countries deny that they actually do this, the evidence is strong that such
activity exists. In fact, the former head of the French intelligence service
some years ago not only admitted that his service carried out such practices but also explained in some detail why this was a necessary and
right thing to do. 10
In the United States the situation is quite different. The U.S. government is happy to provide assistance to firms willing to invest abroad and
makes information available for risk analysts openly through the Departments of State and Commerce. Some of this information is indeed
derived from intelligence collected by the U.S. Intelligence Community
and declassified to protect sources and methods. But when it comes to
competitive intelligence, the U.S. government draws the line. This issue
has been debated ever since Admiral Turner was DCI in the Carter administration, and each succeeding administration and DCI has ratified
the original decision. The U.S. government will not assist U.S. firms to
become more competitive abroad, and the reasons certainly make some
sense.
There seems to be no reasonable way to provide CI intelligence to
private firms even-handedly; that is, there is no way to share equally
between large corporations and smaller firms. Second, the nature of corporations in the United States is that ownership is often multinational.
How could the government provide intelligence to firms that might be
partly owned by foreigners? And why should taxpayers fund such activity when they might derive no benefit from such operations? Funding
governmental intelligence to provide for national security gives each citizen a benefit, but funding private intelligence benefits only stockholders.
As one CIA operative is alleged to have put it, he was willing to risk his
life for his country, but he was not willing to risk it for General Motors.
Interestingly, most CI professionals in the United States and the firms
that use them are reluctant to seek the government's help anyway. They
do not want the government to be involved in their businesses; they do
Spying for Profit
159
not want to have help from governmental intelligence professionals; and

they believe, with some justification, that they are capable of finding out
what they need to know on their own. Further, some of them distrust
former governmental intelligence operatives, perhaps explaining why
relatively few former intelligence professionals have found their way
into competitive intelligence, although they may be active in other aspects of business intelligence or industrial security.
The Business Intelligence Unit
The data remain somewhat anecdotal, but it appears that some kinds
of firms do see the need for having a competitive intelligence unit integrated into the business, whereas others prefer to outsource this function.
Service firms such as banks, insurance companies, and communications
firms and the like seem to be attracted to integration, whereas manufacturing and pharmaceuticals like to outsource their CI needs. Overall, the
use of a CI consultant firm may make economic and managerial sense
in the United States, and the number of such firms seems to be growing.
Despite the growing reliance on consultant CI firms, the argument for
having a CI unit integrated into the business is a strong one. A permanent unit can stay on top of the competition, continuously monitor the
marketplace, and provide what one writer calls "actionable" intelligence,
the kind of information that managers can use to steer the firm to beat
the competition by developing new products, seeking productive markets, or instituting new services.11 The CI unit can provide management
with a regular flow of intelligence, whereas the consultant CI firm can
deliver intelligence only to meet specific requirements. However, the nature of modern business management in the United States works against
an integrated CI unit.
Too many managers seem to focus on quarterly earnings statements
and are not able to see how the CI unit contributes to corporate profit,
according to CI practitioners. When cuts have to be made, the CI unit
may be the first to feel the axe. Some firms may see competitive intelligence as only a marketing tool rather than as a strategic planning mechanism. If the CI unit is relegated to the marketing department, its real
value to the firm may be lost.
Some of the problems may lie with CI professionals themselves. Few
of them admit to having any professional intelligence experience, although the number of former government intelligence veterans in competitive intelligence seems to be growing. Many CI professionals are
trained in library science and are very good at pulling information together, but they may not be capable of making the data into the kind of
actionable intelligence the firm really needs. Unlike in government, CI
160
professionals in the private sector seem to learn mostly on the job. There
are very few courses on competitive intelligence in American colleges
and universities, and most of the training programs that do exist are
one- or two-day seminars put on at rather heavy prices by the CI consultant firms themselves. Although the literature in the field is growing,
aided in part by the work of the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP), which publishes a professional journal and a magazine,
basic texts are few indeed. 12 Further, there is no standard that CI professionals have to meet, and one can become a CI professional without
prior experience or training.
Given the rather loose nature of competitive intelligence, some business managers may believe they are better served by an experienced CI
firm than by creating their own integral unit from scratch with people
who may have to learn on the job. Of course, whether the CI professional
is working as a consultant or is integrated into the firm, the work remains the same. The task is to find out about competitors, using legal
and ethical methods, to improve the tasking firm's position in the marketplace.
Collecting Competitive Intelligence
Thus, for the CI professional, the requirements may vary from learning
about a competitor's pricing strategies to production methods, marketing
techniques, or the introduction of a new product. Further, the CI professional must not only collect the data using legal methods but also derive
the appropriate analysis and usually make recommendations to the tasking firm about how to counter the operations of the competitor. From
the literature on competitive intelligence, it seems clear that the means
of doing this work involve lots of clever techniques and fall short of
operations that violate either the spirit or the letter of the Economic Espionage Act. A great deal of information can often be collected from the
tasking firm's own employees, and much of the rest can be obtained from
open sources or gray intelligence, or from using methods already discussed.
D e f e n s i v e Measures
Just as the government's intelligence services have to protect themselves against espionage, the target private sector firm has to protect
itself against competitor intelligence. The defense methods are similar to
those used in government, but they involve a quite separate group of
professionals, the practitioners of industrial security. Unlike CI profes-
Spying for Profit
161
sionals, the world of industrial security is filled with people who have
considerable experience in intelligence, investigative, or police work. The
skills learned in government translate easily into the private sector, and
those individuals with prior government experience are welcomed and
not treated with suspicion as in competitive intelligence. Because many
industrial security professionals have extensive experience and training
acquired in government, they tend to be better equipped to deal with
private security issues.
Industrial security professionals who enter the field without government experience will find a broad range of training available to them
either through college programs or in courses taught by security professionals. There is even a certification program supported by the American
Society for Industrial Security (ASIS); achieving the Certified Protection
Professional certificate is a reliable indicator that the holder has met national standards. Training literature in the security field is much broader
than that in business intelligence as well, so the aspiring professional has
a good chance of learning the basics just by going to the library. 13
Industrial security can be broken down into a number of fields, each
of which has its own problems and characteristics. These fields include
protection of plant, facilities, and equipment; personnel security; and operational and data security. Given the similarities to governmental practices as well as the differences in each field, making the comparison with
government methods can be instructive. We can begin with protection
of plant, facilities, and equipment because private sector security and
government security deal with similar issues in that area.
Physical Security
Both government and the private sector face limited jurisdiction when
it comes to physical protection. Privately hired security guards can patrol
the perimeter of a facility, but their jurisdiction ends where their property ends. In government, the same rules apply. Local police take over
if a crime has been committed or if trespassers have entered the property
and then fled. CIA security guards can no more pursue criminals off CIA
grounds than can Wackenhut guards patrolling a factory. In fact, summoning the police is one of the key roles security plays in both government and the private sector.
Both government and private companies want to create an image of
security to deter illegal or unwanted entry. Strong fences topped with
barbed or razor wire, good lighting, surveillance cameras, and manned
patrols, especially with guard dogs, should certainly intimidate anyone
trying to penetrate a government facility, and similar tools are available
to private companies. Many companies in the private sector, however,
162
want to be open to the public and appear friendly and welcoming rather
than intimidating. Who would want to stay in a hotel that appeared to
be as well guarded as the CIA, or shop in a department store with guard
dogs and patrols nearby?
Maintaining security in the private sector often means creating the
illusion to the casual observer that there is none while at the same time
letting potential troublemakers know that security officials are on the
job. There is probably no better example of this than in the many casinos
in Las Vegas and other gambling centers, where security is pervasive but
very low key. The same is true for sporting events or other large gatherings, where managers want the presence of security to be visible but
not intrusive. In retail trade where shoplifting is a problem, managers
might want to give security surveillance a high profile to deter theft.
Physical security also includes barrier protection to prevent unauthorized entry. In some firms, expecially in manufacturing, unauthorized visitors are a threat to safety and to operational security and can be kept
out in much the same way as in government. The use of various forms
of entry and exit devices is growing and becoming increasingly sophisticated. Today, instead of having to swipe an encoded badge through a
reader to gain entry, employees may use recognition devices that check
fingerprints or eyeball patterns. Many businesses have been reluctant to
use such expensive and intimidating machinery, though, preferring instead to rely on low-paid receptionists or guards to scan photo IDs. Penetrating businesses that do not use barrier devices is simple for the thief
or industrial spy; often entry can be gained merely by looking as if you
know where you are going or by melting into a throng.
The Security Inventory
To assess the capabilities and vulnerabilities of the firm in terms of
physical security, the security force should probably undertake a security
inventory to determine the strengths and weaknesses of the firm's physical security systems and barrier entry devices. Security professionals
may even go so far as to attempt to bypass the firm's security systems
in order to find strengths and weaknesses and thus be able to recommend changes where needed.
Such attempted forced entry is often carried out in military units. In
one such intelligence unit in which the author served, the troops penetrated a high-tech, highly classified collection unit by hiding in the trunk
of the commander's official vehicle and were eventually able to place a
box labeled "bomb" on the commander's desk without being detected.
In that case security was increased in a hurry.
Security professionals must deal with the fact that in many parts of
Spying for Profit
163
the country, each employee will drive his or her car to work and expect
to find a place to park. Parking security is a continually growing headache in both government and the private sector and has been exacerbated
by the threat of terrorist car bombs. In government, parking facilities
have been upgraded to ensure entry only by authorized employees. The
facilities themselves may have pop-up road barriers or other obstacles
to keep bad guys from getting close enough to do damage. In the private
sector, however, parking and parking protection create expenses most
firms would rather do without. This creates a security vulnerability that
may degrade whatever barrier protection the firm has instituted. Turning
parking management over to a specialty firm to control both access and
safety of the area may prove cost-effective in the long run.
Cars are a security headache in other ways, especially in the world of
intelligence. Whereas CIA employees may themselves be under cover
and have their pay and allowances routed through their cover agencies,
their cars are not under cover and become identifiers. During the Cold
War, rumor had it that Soviet agents occasionally hid outside entrances
to the CIA to photograph license plates as a way of breaking the cover
of clandestine service employees. Since the cars could not be going anywhere else, this must have been a useful way for the KGB to find out
who we were. This was also a factor in the Mir Aimal Kansi case when
that Pakistani terrorist killed and wounded CIA employees by shooting
them as they waited in line to make the turn onto the CIA access road.
The people waiting at that particular place had to be CIAthe access
road goes nowhere else.
The CIA is not the only intelligence service whose employees can be
given away by their cars. We have recently learned that the former East
German intelligence service was able to track virtually all the employees
of the West German service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst, through their
license plates. And it should come as no surprise that the Soviets and
their allies were also vulnerable to identification in this way in Washington or those few restricted areas where they were allowed to travel.
Overseas, for the United States, the situation is somewhat better. A story
surfaced in 1998 that a CIA officer overseas was able to maintain a socalled clean car, not identified with him at all, and he used this car to
rescue one of the agents revealed to the Soviets by Aldrich Ames. 14
Personnel Protection
Intelligence services, especially those in the United States, want to protect their personnel from harm both at home and abroad. They also want
to protect their agencies from their employees who may "go sour." We
have already discussed the steps intelligence agencies take to be sure
164
they are hiring the right people. If an employee does not measure up,
an extended probationary period of employment enables the CIA or
other U.S. services to terminate the employee without too much fuss.
Indeed, there have been cases where the fired employee sought revenge,
a problem the intelligence services have to keep in mind.
In the private sector, the situation is different. Private firms hire and
fire people all the time, but the firm's ability to investigate a potential
employee is much more restricted than in government. In the private
sector, protecting the firm from employees has higher priority than protecting the employees from security hazards. Private firms lose millions
of dollars a year through employee crime, a problem the CIA rarely has
to face. Overseas, however, the private sector has to devote as much
effort to employee protection as do many government agencies.
Many of the methods the government can use to clear potential employees, especially in the security sector, are not available to the private
firm. The CIA can use the polygraph, extensive background checks, and
access to financial and criminal records, all methods forbidden to the
private firm for legal reasons. Private companies, unless they are doing
business with the security sectors of government, cannot routinely use
the polygraph or gain access to private records without cause. Thus, they
have to rely on self-reporting by the potential employee and on information from previous employers to determine the reliability and
dependability of the new hire. Only in the security sector, where government clearances are required, is the private firm able to carry out an
investigation similar to that in government. Drug testing, however,
seems to be equally applied in government and the private sector.
Other Restrictions
The CIA can look at a broad range of issues when it interviews potential new recruits, and it can ask about private activity, including sexual activity, or other personal issues more or less without restriction. In
the private sector, questions about sex or personal activity are restricted
unless an issue that the potential employee is willing to discuss surfaces.
Unless the firm is willing to pay a private investigator to look into a
potential employee's past, even a criminal record might easily be covered
up. Unable to learn about a person's past in ways the CIA considers
routine, the firm is vulnerable to hiring people of questionable reliability.
In the CIA, security officers monitor employees more or less without
restriction, as we know. When monitoring becomes investigation, however, such as in the Ames or Nicholson cases, then a court order is necessary. In the private sector, employers have to be much more careful
about employee monitoring and must warn employees if they are going
Spying for Profit
165
to be watched through surveillance cameras or if their phone conversations will be recorded. In the CIA, security awareness requires that employees alert security officials to suspected improper conduct by their
co-workers. This did happen in the Ames case, when several Agency
officers reported Ames's questionable behavior, though without much
effect. Private sector employees are not likely to report on their office
mates without provocation, requiring managers to be vigilant in looking
for bad conduct.
Theft is always a potential problem in the private sector, especially in
businesses that have something to steal. White-collar crime is by far the
more difficult problem to deal with, however, because it is less overt
than, say, someone who steals products on the sales floor. White-collar
crime includes, but is not limited to, extortion, embezzlement, fraud, and
increasingly, electronic vandalism. This is an area where the firm's security force may not be effective without outside help. The security force
is, after all, not the police. But the security force can be helpful in dealing
with white-collar crime. Their first job is to determine that a crime has
been committed, something they will probably have to do in conjunction
with management. Then they need to identify the possible culprits and
make sure that any evidence related to the crime is protected. Beyond
that, their task is to summon law enforcement officials, again in conjunction with management, make evidence available, and then provide
whatever help investigators need to pursue the criminals. 15 An overzealous security force eager to stop a crime might well taint the evidence
or give the criminals enough warning to cause them to flee.
Operational Security
Industrial security units have a major task in protecting the operations
and the proprietary information of the firm. In the face of growing
threats from industrial espionage, data protection is becoming an increasingly important part of the industrial security umbrella. Taking a
page from the government's security book can be instructive. Throughout the security system of the U.S. government, data protection is a key
issue. All information of a sensitive nature is classified according to how
much damage would be created by its loss or according to the nature of
the sources and the methods by which the information was obtained.
Information handling and storage are governed by strict rules about
marking the information, recording the passage of the information
through the system, and storing it in safe containers.
Those of us responsible for information handling at the CIA probably
never even considered the cost to the government of the recordkeeping,
the cost of the storage containers, or the price of the cover sheets used
166
to protect documents. In the private sector, however, these costs cannot

be ignored. Yet, it seems clear that many firms that have valuable proprietary data to protect, including such things as the formula for a pharmaceutical drug, a new soft drink, or a software product would help
themselves if they copied the procedures used in government. The U.S.
government encourages firms that do business abroad to protect their
data using readily available encryption technology or even commercially
available scrambler phones. Firms that do business at home might consider these economical measures as well.
Firms that do business overseas have to face the possibility that they
might be targeted by the host country's intelligence or security service
either for the purposes of industrial espionage or just to verify that the
firm is doing what it said it would when it moved into the country. In
the latter case, of course, there is nothing to worry about as long as the
firm is indeed living up to whatever commitments it made when it
opened for business. In dealing with industrial espionage abroad, the
firm will probably need help if it becomes an intelligence target.
H e l p from the Government
Although the U.S. government has said repeatedly that it will not help
firms to be more competitive by carrying out industrial espionage, it has
agreed to assist firms that may be the victims of foreign spying at home
and overseas. The FBI has been tasked with alerting firms to possible
dangers from industrial espionage and is now able to task the collection
agenciesthe CIA or NSA primarilyto gather information about foreign industrial espionage. 16 The firm has the responsibility of taking
measures to protect its proprietary data through proper handling and
storage procedures, and it should be using its own security force to take
steps to detect possible problems. Employees should be alerted to report
any attempts to collect data on the firm, however innocent the approach
may seem; barrier devices should be used to detect attempts at unlawful
entry; and communications systems should be secured from interception.
If a problem is uncovered, the firm's managers ought to be reporting to
the U.S. embassy.
Industrial espionage that takes place within the United States is definitely the responsibility of the FBI, and firms working in areas that may
leave them vulnerable to espionage ought to be on the FBI's alerting
network even before they detect a problem. During the Cold War the
Soviets or their allies used to cruise areas where high-tech firms were
located, looking for opportunities to meet employees who might somehow be seduced into espionage. One approach was to seek publicly
available data from the employee; if a relationship developed, then the
industrial spies would go after more sensitive materials, pointing out to
Spying for Profit
167
the victims that they had already violated the company's rules and that
they might lose their jobs if word got back to their bosses about what
they had done. Fortunately, most of these attempts at blackmail pushed
the victims to report the incidents and in some cases led to FBI sting
operations against the enemy.
Security Awareness
Security awareness is a key factor in dealing with industrial espionage.
Employees who have access to a firm's proprietary data and trade secrets
must be trained to recognize signs of potential industrial spying and
ought to be encouraged to report anything out of the ordinary. They
need to be taught how to protect their information, how to avoid saying
too much at meetings and conferences to the wrong people, and how to
recognize attempts at elicitation. This is the kind of training routinely
given to government employees who handle classified materials, and the
private sector could easily follow suit at relatively low cost.
To assist the firm in data protection, the security force should carry
out both a vulnerability assessment and a threat assessment. Security
professionals should be able to advise management not only where the
firm might be vulnerable to the loss of data but also who might be the
likely culprits if an attempt is made to steal proprietary information or
trade secrets. This might enable the firm to strengthen weak points, but
also to set up warning devices that might indicate attempts at penetration. In electronic data systems, for example, attempts at penetration
ought to be detectable to provide early warning of possible industrial
espionage. Then the firm can make a determination about calling for help
from law enforcement. The firm needs to weigh potential losses against
possible adverse publicity that might arise from acknowledging a possible security weakness.
In this area the private sector has an advantage over government. In
the private sector a firm can seek to indemnify itself against loss by
purchasing insurance. The government, in contrast, is essentially selfinsured and has to seek budgetary relief in case of loss, under the circumstances suffering what could be embarrassing revelations about poor
security. Unlike government, a private firm, properly insured, can make
choices about how it seeks to cover losses from security penetrations or
data theft.
A v o i d i n g Turbulence
Operational security can be a headache for the private firm, but it is
an issue that cannot be ignored. To generalize about operational security
168
is difficult because businesses come in so many varieties, but in all cases,

firms seek to avoid what some writers describe as "turbulence," anything
that might disrupt the smooth operation of the firm. These disruptions
may range from natural disasters, such as earthquakes and floods, to
man-made disasters like fires or electrical failures, to crime or just plain
stupidity. To protect against turbulence, the security unit should develop
a threat analysis to try to outline the most likely problems that might be
disruptive in addition to contingency plans to deal with the disruptions.
As in other security issues, the firm must choose which actions to take
to deal with turbulence and insurance to cover the cost of damage from
disruptions.
Developing a threat analysis requires the same input and talent that
drive the creation of any intelligence product, but in this area security
units often fall short. Only in the last few years or so has the security
literature begun to discuss the development of intelligence analysis. A
serious disconnect seems to exist between the various forms of business
intelligence and the security function. Since most U.S. firms do not have
internal intelligence units, there is no one to assist the security people in
determining possible threats to the firm and in developing the analysis
to support contingency planning. This forces the firm to seek outside
help when it might be more cost-effective and fit better to have the work
done by those employees familiar with the firm's operating characteristics and internal culture.
Since there is no way to predict with any certainty what disasters the
firm may face, the security office must examine a broad range of problems and develop contingencies for each. This is an issue with which
government has had a great deal of experience, so the private sector can
learn another lesson in this case. At the Pentagon, for example, contingency plans are written for all kinds of situations, and each plan has, at
its core, a threat assessment prepared by intelligence officers. These plans
can be adjusted when actually needed. After the Gulf War some writers
suggested that the plan used for the defense of Kuwait and the subsequent invasion of Iraq was based on a contingency plan for an invasion
of Iran that was never actually used.
Preparing for Disaster
Unlike the Pentagon the private sector cannot spend time and money
drawing up a wide range of contingency plans, and therefore the threat
assessment has to focus on the problems most likely to face the firm so
that management can decide whether to establish a disaster plan, buy
more insurance, or arrange some combination of both. Some disasters
certainly require a contingency disaster plan as well as insurance. For
Spying for Profit
169
example, airline companies must plan for crashes, hotels and retail establishments for fire, and manufacturing companies for power failures.
The firm should practice the procedures outlined in the plan, but firms
are usually reluctant to do this because such practices are disruptive and
can create adverse publicity.
Governmental experience shows that even the best plans will not always work smoothly even if continual practice is held. Firms can take
another leaf from the government's book by using a form of practice that
in the Pentagon is called a command post exercise. In such a scenario
plans are rehearsed in a very limited way to test communications, leadership roles, or systems needed for operations. In the private sector a
limited exercise would test to make sure that alarm systems work, emergency communications systems function, or substitute power systems are
ready to go.
Mixing Intelligence and Security
Planning for disaster or the disruption of operations requires a mix of
intelligence and security activities that seem to be absent in most firms,
at least according to the literature and to anecdotal material that appears
among professionals in both fields in the private sector. The CIA and the
FBI seem to be working cooperatively in a way no one could have anticipated years ago. This same cooperation could take place in the private
sector if security professionals were more attuned to the intelligence
function, or if firms were to establish internal intelligence units along
with security offices.
Intelligence and security in the private sector can protect firms in much
the same way that intelligence and security operations serve to protect
national security. The United States has a long way to go in developing
such operations in the private sector, but clearly progress is being made.
So far the government is playing only a limited role in aiding and protecting the private sector, and private firms do not always take advantage of the services the government has to offer. It seems clear that
although the U.S. government is not going to use its intelligence resources to spy on foreign firms the way the French or Russians do, intelligence information is available to the private sector if it wishes to use
it. Similarly, the United States is not going to provide security directly
for firms to protect them against foreign industrial espionage, but it is
going to provide assistance, information, and ultimately the force of law
to aid them.
Is the government doing enough to help the private sector in the
United States? One would have to conclude that potential assistance is
available, but that the private sector may not know it. Perhaps the in-
170
telligence a n d security agencies in g o v e r n m e n t o u g h t to try h a r d e r to

e d u c a t e p r i v a t e firms a b o u t the assistance they are p r e p a r e d to offer;
unfortunately, the agencies d o n o t consider this a major mission, so it's
n o t surprising that the CIA or the other agencies are reluctant to d o
m o r e . O n l y the FBI h a s m a d e a n intensive effort to set u p a w a r n i n g
n e t w o r k for the private sector. Until the g o v e r n m e n t decides that m o r e
h e l p is n e e d e d , c h a n g e in the situation is n o t likely.
Notes
1. John Fialka, War by Other Means: Economic Espionage in America (New York:
W. W. Norton, 1997), pp. xi-xiv.
2. Ibid.; Peter Schweizer, Friendly Spies: How America's Allies Are Using Economic Espionage to Steal Our Secrets (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1993).
3. Jon Sigurdson and Patricia Nelson, "Intelligence Gathering and Japan: The
Elusive Role of Grey Intelligence," International Journal of Intelligence and
Counterlntelligence, vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 17-34.
4. Leonard M. Fuld, The New Competitive Intelligence (New York: John Wiley
& Sons, 1995).
5. Ibid., p. 33.
6. Alfonso Sapia Bosch and Robert S. Tancer, "Navigating through the Legal/Ethical Gray Zone: What Would You Do?" Competitive Intelligence Magazine,
vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 22-31.
7. Wen Lee Ting, Multi-national Risk Assessment and Management: Strategies for
Investment and Marketing Decisions (New York: Quorum Books, 1988); David M.
Raddock (ed.), Assessing Corporate Political Risk: A Guide for International Businessmen (Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield, 1986); and William D. Coplin and
Michael K. O'Leary (eds.), The Handbook of Country and Political Risk Analysis (E.
Syracuse, NY: Political Risk Services, 1994).
8. Mark Perry, Eclipse: The Last Days of the CIA (New York: William Morrow
& Co., 1992), p. 78.
9. Jan P. Herring, "Senior Management Must Champion Business Intelligence
Programs," Journal of Business Strategy, September 1991.
10. "French Spy Admits Economic Espionage," United Press International, 10
January 1996.
11. Jan P. Herring, "The Role of Intelligence in Formulating Strategy," Journal
of Business Strategy, September 1992, pp. 54-59.
12. In addition to Competitive Intelligence Magazine cited above and published
by the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP), see also Competitive Intelligence Review, published by John Wiley. Both publications are distributed to members of SCIP.
13. Two texts the author has used in class are Robert J. Fischer and Guion
Green, Introduction to Security (Boston: Butterworth-Heinemann, 1998); and Richard S. Post and Arthur S. Kingsbury, Security: An Introduction to the Protective
Services (Boston: Butterworth-Heinemann, 1991).
Spying for Profit
171
14. David Wise, "The Spy Who Wouldn't Die," GQ, July 1998, p. 198.
15. Fischer and Green, Introduction to Security, pp. 447-450.
16. Arthur S. Hulnick, "Intelligence and Law Enforcement," International Journal of Intelligence and Counterlntelligence, vol. 10, no. 3, pp. 269-286.
CHAPTER 9
Secret Intelligence and

the Public
Secrecy in intelligence is a virtue as well as a necessity. The sources of
information and the methods by which the information is gathered must
remain unknown to the targets of intelligence. The extent of knowledge
about an adversary as well as the operations aimed at him have to be
hidden. But in modern democracies intelligence services require public
support and need to earn public trust to be completely functional. Without such support and trust the services will not be able to obtain resources or recruit talented people and their judgments will be questioned
by those who use the intelligence product. Maintaining secrecy while
gaining public support creates a dilemma for intelligence services in democracies in general and in the United States in particular.
In 1998, during the U.S. government's efforts to broker a Middle East
peace agreement, President Bill Clinton sought to use the CIA as a treaty
monitor, a role apparently welcomed by Palestinians and Israelis alike.
The plan to use the CIA in this fashion, however, caused something of
a stir in the United States despite the fact that the CIA and the other U.S.
intelligence services had been engaged in treaty monitoring for many
years. This was no secret, but the role of intelligence in this regard was
obviously not well known or recognized by the American public. Should
U.S. intelligence managers have made more of an effort to publicize their
treaty-monitoring work? It may never have occurred to them to do so
because secrecy in intelligence is not only a tradition but also a habit.
The British, who have served as intelligence role models for their
American "cousins" from time to time, have had almost an obsession
with secrecy in intelligence. For many years the British refused to acknowledge the existence of their secret services, and their records of the
intelligence services remain largely sealed, even now that the Cold War
174
is over. Under the Official Secrets Act members of the British services
are rarely given permission to speak about their work, journalists can be
enjoined by the government from writing about intelligence, and intelligence matters have only lately been debated in Parliament. The British
attitude about secrecy is well characterized by British author Malcolm
Muggeridge, himself a veteran of British intelligence, who wrote: "Secrecy is as essential to intelligence as vestments and incense to a Mass,
or darkness to a spiritualist seance, and must at all costs be maintained,
quite irrespective of whether or not it serves any purpose." 1
As often seems to happen in democracies, a series of scandals involving intelligence officers eventually forced public discussion about intelligence matters in Great Britain. When the government tried to suppress
the publication of a book about MI-5, the internal security service, the
issue engendered further public debate. Peter Wright's book Spycatcher
turned out to be an interesting memoir of his experiences in MI-5, but
his accusation that Sir Roger Hollis, at one time the head of MI-5, had
been a Soviet mole proved to be groundless. 2 Hollis, who had died before
the book's publication, was unable to defend himself, but others turned
out to be more careful researchers than Wright. This incident and the
subsequent public turmoil eventually led to a loosening of British restrictions on intelligence data; finally in 1994, Parliament passed the Intelligence Services Act, which established a statutory basis for the British
intelligence organizations. 3 Nonetheless, the British remain more closemouthed about intelligence than are many other Western democracies.
The American Experience
The American experience is somewhat different despite the influence
of British custom and tradition. During the country's beginnings American leaders extolled the virtues of keeping intelligence matters secret.
George Washington understood this very well indeed. In 1777 he wrote
to Colonel Elias Dayton outlining the need for intelligence support for a
planned attack on the British by the American general William Alexander, who referred to himself as Lord Stirling. Washington wrote:
The necessity of procuring good intelligence is apparent and need not be
further urgedall that remains for me to add is, that you keep the whole
matter as secret as possible. For upon Secrecy, Success depends in most
enterprizes of the kind, and for want of it, they are generally defeated,
however well planned and promising a favourable issue.4
The Central Intelligence Agency thought so much of this statement
that it reproduced the letter in its entirety and hung it on the wall of its
headquarters for all employees to see.
175
During the discussions leading to the creation of the U.S. Constitution,

John Jay and Alexander Hamilton discussed the need for secrecy in intelligence matters, urging that the intelligence function remain the purview of the "chief magistrate," pointing out that it would be difficult to
carry out "secret correspondence" if it had to be made known to the
select members of the planned upper chamber of the legislature, and it
would be impossible if given to a "large popular assembly." Thus, the
Founding Fathers accepted the notion that intelligence matters were to
be left in the hands of the "chief magistrate." When Washington became
president in 1790, he asked for and was granted by Congress a secret
fund for foreign operations. Congress stipulated that the president need
only submit a voucher certifying that the funds had been spent, but that
he need not explain the details of the expenditures.
In later years Congress challenged the president from time to time
about his expenditures for foreign intelligence. In response to one such
challenge, as we have seen, President James Knox Polk in 1846 rejected
congressional demands for details of the use of secret funds by his predecessor, John Tyler. As it turned out, Polk was helping to cover up the
rather scandalous use of secret funds and British money to convince the
citizens of Maine to support the Webster-Ashburton Treaty establishing
the northern border with Canada. Today such activity would certainly
result in public hearings and intense media scrutiny, but Polk was able
to face down Congress in this case. His statement about keeping the
secrets is as valid today as it was more than a century ago.
During the Civil War Lafayette Baker established what was called the
Secret Service, although it was not the forerunner of the modern service
we have today. In fact, Baker's service was rather draconian, operating
with few constraints under the suspension of some normal judicial procedures, and became a kind of secret police.5 After the war the reaction
to Baker's excesses was strong and demonstrated that even in times of
crisis most Americans will not support such organizations, although they
are prepared to accept the need for secrecy in other parts of government.
Thus, when the Office of Strategic Services was created at the beginning
of World War II, Americans understood that little could be said about
what it did because enemy espionage could surface anywhere. As we
now know, it was not the enemy who was carrying out espionage in the
United States as much as it was our ally in World War II, the Soviet
Union.
Secrecy and the CIA
When the CIA was created in 1947, the government did not attempt
to hide its existence; instead, it kept secret the details about what the
176
agency was to do. The law creating the agency is suitably vague, so much
so that early leaders of the CIA wondered from time to time about the
limits of their charter. When President Truman asked the CIA to help
prevent the election of the Communists in Italy in 1948, DCI Roscoe
Hillenkoeter sought legal advice to determine if the CIA was actually
authorized to carry out Truman's request. Despite some misgivings, the
operation went forward, and its success cemented the role of the CIA in
covert operations.
It was not surprising that the CIA sought to build its headquarters in
a wooded parkland setting, making it almost invisible to the casual observer. In a speech in 1959 at the laying of the cornerstone, President
Eisenhower said: "By its very nature, the work of this agency demands
of its members the highest order of dedication, ability, trustworthiness
and selflessness.. .. Success cannot be advertised; failure cannot be explained. In the work of intelligence, heroes are undecorated and unsung,
often even among their own fraternity." 6
For many years this was the norm in American intelligence. The
United States did not hide the establishment of the National Security
Agency in 1954, but details of its activities were not made public, even
after the defection of two of its officers to the USSR. Nonetheless, as in
the case of the CIA, information dug up by journalists or leaked by the
administration made it possible for persistent researchers to figure out
what went on to some degree, even if the government would refuse to
confirm the facts. Even the super-secret National Reconnaissance Office,
created to manage technical intelligence collection, became known, although its very existence was classified. This led to the rather bizarre
concept that information known to the public could still be secret as long
as the government did not confirm it. Of course, for adversary intelligence services, this made gathering information about U.S. intelligence
activities no more complicated than subscribing to defense-related magazines such as Aviation Week.
Secrecy about U.S. intelligence activities suffered a grievous blow after
a series of newspaper revelations about alleged CIA excesses. First came
stories about the CIA's relationship with the National Student Association, then a full-blown expose by Seymour Hersh in the New York Times.
The main thrust of these stories was that the CIA was carrying out covert
operations in contravention of U.S. policy and U.S. law; it was alleged
to be a government unto itself without benefit of control by either the
White House or Congress. Coming as it did in the wake of the Watergate
scandal, in which the CIA had only the most peripheral role, these stories
led Senator Frank Church to condemn the CIA as a "rogue elephant"
and to call for hearings to investigate the allegations raised in the press.
The Church Committee investigation became something of a water-
177
shed in American intelligence. It not only led to the development of

rigorous congressional oversight of intelligence but also opened up
American intelligence to a degree the Founding Fathers could not have
imagined. To his credit, DCI Bill Colby decided to be open and frank
with the Church Committee, revealing information that had, until then,
remained hidden. Colby's dramatic testimony probably confirmed to
many their worst fears about the CIA. When Colby died of an apparent
heart attack while canoeing many years later, conspiracy theorists were
quick to claim that his death was a revenge killing by old CIA hands
who never forgave Colby for his openness and honesty on the witness
stand.
O p e n i n g u p Intelligence
So the genie was out of the bottle. The Church Committee report actually contradicted the allegations that the CIA was out of control and
that it was a secret government. Clearly the CIA had only done what
presidents had ordered, and key members of Congress were not only
privy to the operations, but had eagerly supported clandestine activities
they could not have voted for in open session. The hearings nonetheless
exposed the CIA, and there was no turning back. President Gerald Ford's
executive order outlining the roles and duties of the intelligence system
and banning assassination as well as drug experimentation was issued
as a public document. Coupled with congressional demands for complete reporting to the new intelligence oversight committees about
planned covert operations, the CIA became the most highly scrutinized
and controlled intelligence service anywhere in the free world.
President Carter's DCI, Admiral Stansfield Turner, took openness a
step farther at the CIA by creating the Public Affairs Office, saying that
the American people were shelling out big bucks for the intelligence
system and that they deserved to know what it was doing with their
money. It was a bold step that was greeted with uncertainty and anger
by some intelligence professionals who thought the admiral, and not the
CIA, was out of control. Turner began to hold press conferences at CIA
headquarters. He circulated declassified intelligence analysis to the public, and the Public Affairs Office began to answer letters and take phone
calls. It was a brand of openness unseen anywhere else in the intelligence
world, even in other U.S. intelligence agencies.
The results of DCI Turner's openness are difficult to measure. The
press was no more inclined than before to write positive articles about
the CIA just because the door had occasionally been thrown open to
them, nor were critics of CIA analysis less harsh. In fact, some were even
more virulent in criticizing the CIAespecially academicsbecause
178
they thought the analysis they were seeing was less profound than their
own, not realizing that much of the really sensitive material had been
excised. Turner's fling with openness raised the hackles of his successor,
William J. Casey, a veteran of the "oh so secret" days of the OSS and no
stranger to intelligence.
The Casey Era
Casey's initial reaction, upon learning that he had a public affairs office, was to shut it down. This didn't last long. The press was accustomed
to being able to contact the CIA and complained when they could not.
Letter writers wrote their Congressmen when they got no response from
the CIA. Casey himself became a public figure because he had been Ronald Reagan's campaign chairperson and thought of himself as a policymaker as well as the DCI. In fact, he was the first DCI to become a
member of the president's cabinet, breaking the traditional barrier between intelligence and policy. It did not take long for Casey to realize
that he needed a public affairs function, so he restored the office more
or less along the lines Turner had established. Casey's choice for its chief,
however, raised some issues because he had selected a career operations
officer, a person who had been schooled in keeping the secrets, to run
the office. This officer, George Lauder, thought his job was damage limitation rather than public enlightenment. This attitude created an adversarial relationship with the press, a serious problem during a period
when the CIA was increasingly in the spotlight because of its less-thanclandestine role in supporting the Nicaraguan Contras and the rebels in
Afghanistan. 7
Casey himself began to become a frequent spokesperson for the CIA
and seemed increasingly to enjoy his public appearances, even though
he was hardly a polished speaker, frequently mumbling in his rather
heavy New York accent. He had, by luck, chosen as his speech writer a
highly competent intelligence analyst who turned out to be so professional in preparing the DCI's speeches that she received lucrative offers
from private industry, a choice she refused to make.
As the Iran-Contra affair began to surface in the press, DCI Casey
became fatally ill and could no longer defend himself. His illness forced
him finally to resign just before his death. Some conspiracy theorists
seemed to believe that Casey's illness was the work of the CIA, which
was trying to silence him, but in fact it was a real tragedy. We will never
learn what Casey knew about the various issues raised in the Iran-Contra
affair; but for those of us who knew him, he was hardly the evil genius
depicted in the press.
179
The FBI Influence

Casey's successor, Judge William Webster, the former director of the
FBI, brought a new approach to public affairs when he asked a skilled
FBI career agent to run the Public Affairs Office. Bill Baker, the new
public affairs chief, carried with him the open tradition of the FBI. Unlike
the CIA, which had always been closed to the public, the FBI opened a
part of its headquarters in downtown Washington to tourists, who were
able to see displays demonstrating the FBI's victories over criminals and
spies, peer into the vaunted crime lab, and watch an agent fire a machine
gun. J. Edgar Hoover had established a tradition of openness early in
his leadership of the FBI. Hoover supported radio and TV programs that
made the FBI look good and had his agents undergo public relations
training before they took charge of FBI offices.
Baker not only earned a good reputation with the press but also began
to move toward improving relations between the FBI and the CIA as
well. Coupled with DCI Webster's public appearances in the aftermath
of the Iran-Contra affair, the CIA's image began to recover from the
scandal-ridden days of the immediate past. Although Webster had no
foreign affairs experience and suffered from the distrust of some careerists in the CIA's Directorate of Operations, he proved to be a quick study
and was soon able to handle tough questions from skeptical audiences.
He would occasionally preface his responses by saying, "I can't wait to
hear my answer to that question." His aides were finally able to convince
him to stop saying that his job was so secret that even he did not know
what he was doing.
Gates Takes Over
When Bob Gates became DCI at the end of the Bush administration,
he undertook a number of studies on reforming intelligence, among them
the question of openness. According to one story that circulated at the
time, a reporter allegedly called the CIA to find out who was chairing
the study on openness, only to be told that the information was secret.
This unfortunate knee-jerk answer says something about the tradition of
secrecy at the CIA; the CIA's normal response to questions about operational matters was to say that the Agency could neither confirm nor
deny allegations of intelligence activities.
Bob Gates's rather short tenure as DCI kept him from completing
many of the reforms he had planned. Nonetheless, his successors, R.
James Woolsey and John Deutch, continued the pattern of openness.
180
Both made public appearances, and both used the public affairs function
to try to educate the public about intelligence matters. Unfortunately,
dealing with a public that seems prepared to believe the worst about its
intelligence services demonstrates the frustration of attempting to be
open and honest about intelligence.
When the San Jose, California, Mercury News surfaced a story alleging
that the CIA had somehow been complicitous in drug dealing in Los
Angeles as part of an effort to support the Nicaraguan Contras, even the
best efforts by DCI Deutch to turn the story around proved futile. Although the newspaper later repudiated the story, Congress launched yet
another investigation on top of several previous ones, and some political
activists used the story as an excuse to blast Washington's racist policies.
A further investigation by the CIA's inspector general showed that the
CIA was probably aware of suspicious activities by Contra functionaries
and did try to cut off support to those who might have been involved
in drug dealing, but the story of the CIA's complicity in drug dealing
remains imbedded in the databases and continues to surface from time
to time. 8
The Most O p e n Intelligence System
In spite of the frustration of dealing with conspiracy theorists, such as
those who believe the CIA is hiding aliens from outer space who landed
in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947, or with political activists who like to
use the CIA as a target for government bashing, the American intelligence system has become the most open of any in the industrialized
world. The evidence to support this is readily available to the public at
large and to those who study intelligence matters at colleges and universities.
For more than a decade, beginning in the late 1980s, the CIA published
books on intelligence matters that contain formerly secret material reviewed and released with only a few blacked-out words or phrases.
These publications, pulled together by the history staff and others in the
CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence, covered such diverse subjects
as the Cuban missile crisis, the views of President Harry Truman on
intelligence, the early attempts to launch photo satellites in the Corona
Project, and Soviet spying in the United States as revealed in the Venona
files. Each of these publications was preceded by a conference to which
outsiders were invited in order to discuss the issues and hear from key
intelligence officials. All publications available to the public were listed
in a catalog available from the National Technical Information Service
and increasingly appeared on the CIA's Internet web site.
In addition, Penn State Press, in cooperation with the CIA, published
181
the authentic early history of the Agency drawn from the classified work
of Arthur Darling, the CIA's first historian, as well as a book on DCI
Walter "Beetle" Smith by Ludwell Montague, one of the early members
of the CIA's Board of National Estimates. 9 Not to be outdone by the CIA,
the National Security Agency (whose initials NSA were thought to mean
either "No Such Agency" or "Never Say Anything") joined in the openness business by establishing the National Cryptologic Museum just off
the Baltimore-Washington Parkway in Maryland. Visitors were able to
see cryptologic gear used to break codes during World War II and other
material related to NSA's normally Top Secret work. The CIA had similar displays of spying equipment, but they were inside the headquarters
building at Langley and not open to the public. Included in the display
were personal items that belonged to Wild Bill Donovan as well as artifacts associated with Moe Berg, the Boston Red Sox catcher who was
an operative for the OSS. Even the National Reconnaissance Office,
whose very existence was once highly classified, established a public
affairs unit.
Openness in intelligence reached the academic world as well. More
and more former practitioners found positions teaching about intelligence at American colleges and universities, writing learned papers, and
publishing articles and books, even though they were, like the author,
required to submit their manuscripts for review.
The Spreading of O p e n n e s s
As the twentieth century drew to a close, openness in intelligence began to spread beyond the United States. In fact, in the dying days of the
Soviet Union, even its intelligence service, the KGB, opened a public
affairs office and produced films about its activities. Its credibility was
called into question, however, when one of the senior KGB officers alleged that he preferred the food in the Lubyanka prison to what he got
at home and that's why he spent so much time in the office. The KGB's
activities were also highlighted in the wake of the Aldrich Ames spy
case when former KGB officers as well as those in the new intelligence
service, the SVR, seemed to get official permission to talk with Pete Earley, the enterprising journalist and author, about the mole in the CIA.
O p e n n e s s on the Internet
Evidence of the new openness began to appear increasingly on the
world wide web as the 1990s were ending. Intelligence services with web
sites ranged from Argentina and Australia to South Africa and even the
182
United Kingdom. Most of the sites provided information about internal

security services rather than about foreign intelligence, but with the
growing interest in intelligence matters and the breakdown in the British
tradition of secrecy, it seemed likely that even the foreign intelligence
services would put something up on the web before long. Since the British have served as a role model for many intelligence services, their foray
into the public electronic arena may spur others to do the same. So far
MI-5, the internal security service, has a web site, but MI-6, the foreign
intelligence service, does not.
During this period, the CIA seemed to be out in front in regard to the
world wide web, maintaining a web site for scholars and potential recruits as well as for children. The appearance of the junior web page
drew a great deal of publicity when it first appeared and both the regular
and kids-only web sites demonstrated what could be done to educate
people about intelligence. The drawback to this effort involves vandalism; in its early days the CIA web page was trashed by hackers. Nonetheless, the ability of an intelligence service to tell its story on the web,
release unclassified information, provide access to such useful tools as
the Worldwide Fact Book, or provide the text of the DCI's speeches, was
a positive step.
Releasing D o c u m e n t s
A key issue in regard to openness is the wholesale release to the public
of documents that no longer need to be classified. In many industrialized
countries a systematic release of documents takes place after twenty or
thirty years; these documents are not necessarily reviewed but are released based on the date of their creation. Some scholars in the United
States have argued that intelligence documents should be treated like
those of the State Department, which regularly releases a compendia of
documents on U.S. foreign policy. Wholesale release of intelligence documents, however, creates a number of problems for intelligence services.
One of the voices crying out for document release was that of Senator
Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, a former member of the Senate
Select Committee on Intelligence. Senator Moynihan, in his book Secrecy,
published in 1998, argued that because secrecy in government created
inefficiency and friction, we would be better off without it.10 But Senator
Moynihan seemed to confuse secrecy in government policy with secrecy
in intelligence. The senator did, from time to time, call for the disestablishment of the CIA, so one must to wonder what he may have learned
during his service on the SSCI. Moynihan appeared to twist the facts to
fit his argumentsa questionable practice indeed for someone who used
183
to be an academician. Moynihan claimed, for example, that President

Truman was never told about the Soviet spying in the United States that
was revealed by the Venona intercepts. In fact, we don't really know
whether Truman was told or not, only that General Omar Bradley told
his subordinates that he would take on the responsibility of informing
the presidentnot a bad decision in a case where the White House itself
might have been penetrated by Soviet agents. 11
Moynihan repeated what had become something of a mantra among
intelligence-bashers in the aftermath of the Cold War: that the CIA failed
to predict the fall of the Soviet Union. Moynihan also slammed the CIA
for estimating during the Cold War that the economy of East Germany
was growing faster than that of its wealthy, highly productive sibling,
West Germany. No one who ever saw the plastic-bodied, lawn-mowerengined East German "Trabi" automobile and compared it to a Mercedes
or even a Volkswagon Beetle could reach such a conclusion, and so far
no evidence to support Senator Moynihan's criticism has surfaced. The
alleged failure to predict the fall of the USSR was equally incorrect, yet
those criticisms continue to be voiced despite the careful analysis of the
facts by CIA officers and their counterparts. 12
Would document release help clear up misunderstandings about CIA
successes and failures? Perhaps, but no intelligence service can afford the
wholesale release of documents if doing so jeopardizes sources and
methods or gives an adversary knowledge about how much we know
about him. As part of an effort to win release from the CIA's having to
review operational documents under the Freedom of Information Act,
DCI Bill Casey agreed that the Agency would begin a systematic and
comprehensive historical review of documents and release all that it
could. Over time, however, the task proved to be more time-consuming
and expensive than anyone expected.
The CIA, for the most part, had to rely on annuitantsretired CIA
officersto review and release intelligence materials, but finding people
willing to spend thirty hours a week redacting documents and coming
up with the money to pay them was a problem. More recently, in explaining why the process was so slow, DCI George Tenet blamed the
shortage of resources and defended his reluctance to release documents
until he could be sure that U.S. intelligence assets and abilities were
protected. Clearly the CIA should have continued to release what it
could as quickly as possible, but unless Congress was prepared to provide additional resources, the CIA was likely to create more secrets in a
year than it could review and make available to the public.
Even more dangerous in considering wholesale document release was
the possibility that the identity of a former clandestine service officer or
an agent might somehow be compromised. This seems unlikely in releasing analytic products of an earlier era, but who can be sure? When
184
the files of the former East German intelligence service were plundered
after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the East German
regime, several people were revealed to have had ties with East German
intelligence, thus ruining their prospects for a political role in the newly
combined Germany.
Educating the Public
An intelligence service has other ways to educate the public about
what it does and how it does it. The FBI learned long ago that it paid
to cooperate with film and TV or radio producers if the programs were
fair in their content, not necessarily puff pieces, but honest attempts to
cover aspects of the intelligence or law enforcement process. It appears,
however, that fiction is more popular than truth. The CIA received lots
of favorable publicity from the Tom Clancy films, even though his characters and events are hardly accurate depictions of the real CIA or military intelligence for that matter. Stories circulated under President
Clinton's DCIs that the CIA was cooperating with other producers for
future programs, but we have yet to see the results.
We know from the public appearances of directors of Central Intelligence from Bill Casey to George Tenet that public speeches about the
CIA and American intelligence can give the system credibility. Coming
from the Agency executive, explanations about how or why things were
done, or why judgments were made, can be helpful in educating the
nation about its intelligence agencies. DCI Tenet said at the beginning of
his tenure in 1997 that he did not want to be a public figure, but modern
DCIs can no longer avoid this role. Having other intelligence officials
appear in public, however, proved to be something of a mixed bag.
The CIA has tried from time to time to maintain a speakers' bureau
to respond to requests for presentations from civic groups, academic
associations, or other such gatherings but has had limited success. Although press coverage of these presentations is usually positive, serving
officers seem reluctant to become too heavily involved with the public
for fear that they will say the wrong thing, inadvertently reveal secret
information, or otherwise jeopardize their careers. Especially in periods
when the CIA is under fire for one reason or another, appearing in public
can be stressful and not always productive. Further, it seems clear from
discussions with serving officers that they have little sense of how much
the public knows about intelligence and how much they should or can
say. Inevitably, in press coverage of such presentations, the speaker is
quoted as refusing to answer certain questions because of secrecy constraints.
The pressure on former intelligence officers who appear in public is
much lower than that experienced by serving officers, and sometimes
185
their presentations are more forthcoming than those of their active duty
colleagues. The Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO),
whose membership includes veterans of all the U.S. intelligence services
as well as others interested in the business, has made known its willingness to find speakers for public presentations. Although some of their
knowledge may be out of date, the members bring with them a great
deal of credibility because they have "seen the elephant," as Civil War
veterans used to say.
Fixing the Image
It would be nice to think that the political leaders who oversee and
use intelligence would defend it more often, but this rarely happens. Nor
can we expect the media to be even-handed in its treatment of intelligence matters. Occasionally reporters do try to find positive things to
say about U.S. intelligence and the CIA, but most reporters would probably agree that to get a story above the fold on page one, or as the lead
on the nightime TV news, it has to be a "grabber." That usually seems
to mean scandal or failure rather than success. Journalists argue that
scandal and failure are news, but success is not. The result of this is that
the public has developed a skewed view of the intelligence system in
general and the CIA in particular.
Should American intelligence spend scarce resources to fix its image?
This is an issue that has been debated from time to time inside the system. Using governmental resources for the purposes of public relations
is difficult to justify and may even be forbidden by governmental regulations. Public education, however, can be justified if it improves the
ability of the intelligence services to perform their functions, including
as noted earlier, the ability to obtain resources, to recruit employees, or
to serve their consumers. This is not much of an issue for the intelligence
components of the Department of Defense, which make up most of the
American intelligence system, or for the small components of the other
civilian departments such as State or Treasury, because their functions
are subsumed within the larger activities of their departments. And
clearly it is not a problem for the FBI, which has developed polished
and effective methods of telling its own story or having others tell it the
way the FBI would like. But the CIA has a different image and a different
problem.
The Budget Debate

One of the issues related to openness that surfaces frequently in the
United States is that of the budget for the Intelligence Community. In
186
most countries that subject is not only kept secret; it is not even debated
in the legislature. In most countries the budget also involves far fewer
resources than in the United States. In 1997, after considerable pressure
from Congress and from special interest groups, particularly the Federation of American Scientists, the overall budget figure for fiscal years
1997 and 1998 were revealed to the public, although specific information
about the allocations for the several agencies was not. The DCI refused
to reveal the 1999 figure, however, despite continuing pressure to do so.
In fact, interest in learning about the intelligence budget has been high
for many years. Those who think it should be revealed claim that constitutional rules require it, forgetting the long-established precedent, dating back to our first president, that such sums would not be made public.
In reality the general budget figures, as well as the breakdown of specific allocations, seem to be well known to intelligence watchers in Washington. A story in USA Today published in the early 1990s gave a
breakdown of the budget by agency, but the government refused to confirm the figures. Nonetheless, this meant that adversary intelligence services probably knew how much the United States was spending on
intelligence, for whatever that is worth. Was this an issue worth the fuss
that arose each year as the intelligence budget was prepared?
Worth the Fuss?

Ever since the congressional oversight process was established in 1976,
the preparation of the intelligence budget has been subject to intense
scrutiny, first within the agencies, then by the president's Office of Management and Budget, then by the Oversight Committee of the House of
Representatives. Considering the sensitivity of some of the issues contained in these budget submissions, it is no wonder that the entire process is handled under stringent security. This is not a subject for public
debate, nor should it be. Keeping the budget secret was the intention of
the Founding Fathers, as we know from the documents in the Federalist
Papers, and this policy has been ratified from time to time ever since.
Maintaining the secrecy of the budget has little to do with protecting
operational information. Knowledge of the overall budget figure hardly
allows even a careful researcher to learn more than the general allocation
funds for each of the U.S. intelligence agencies. Rather, maintaining the
secrecy of the budget keeps it from being debated in public and thus
politicized. Hiding the budget in the line items of other agencies prevents
eager researchers from making the intelligence budget public just to
show how clever they are. If Americans want results from the money
they spend on intelligence, then they should ensure that their representatives in Washington are asking the tough questions of intelligence managers.
187
Releasing Analysis
A second push comes from those who believe, including, apparently,
Senator Moynihan, that the analysis prepared by intelligence experts in
the various agencies should be made available to the public. Such a process would destroy the utility of the analysis itself and would drag the
analysis into endless political debate over the issues. The whole point of
having an independent central intelligence service was to enable it to
make judgments without consideration of Washington's political winds
or pressures or the operational interests of the various federal departments. Although the track record is not perfect, experience shows that
intelligence analysts at the CIA as well as those in the Defense and State
Departments are eager to tell their consumers what they want to know
as well as what they ought to know. Public disclosure of current intelligence analysis would inevitably raise political issues.
In late 1998 a press story appeared that suggested that Vice President
AI Gore had refused to accept CIA analysis concerning the former prime
minister of Russia because Gore liked the minister and did not appreciate
intelligence that suggested the minister might be having problems. Of
course, both the White House and the CIA denied that the intelligence
analysis had been rejected, but the story revealed that intelligence officials recognize that their analysis may make political leaders uncomfortable, if not downright angry. This should not stop the analysis from
being written or delivered, however. Making any of this material public,
though, would enmesh the analysts as well as the recipients in an endless
and fruitless debate.
Intelligence analysis is prepared to aid decisionmakers in formulating
and implementing policy. Degrading that process by making controversial analysis public would be harmful. Releasing intelligence analysis that
is twenty or thirty years old, however, should be of historical interest
and show the mindset of those who were doing the work. Surely we
have learned a great deal from the release of documents related to the
Cuban missile crisis, including the fact that both sides were a lot closer
to a nuclear confrontation than either believed at the time. As more and
more of this intelligence product becomes available, scholars will have
plenty to do. As it is, the intelligence system does release a considerable
amount of current data and analysis to the public, but the best stuff must
remain secret to be useful.
Handling O p e n n e s s
A careful examination of the issues suggests that the CIA is handling
openness about as well as can be expected, given the nature of what it
188
does. Yet there are steps that may be taken within the restrictions of
protecting sources and methods, as well as budget constraints that may
be tried. To begin, CIA managers ought to make an effort to find out
what the public really knows, especially outside the Washington Beltway, a roadway that seems to restrict thinking as well as traffic. Asking
academics or former professionals who regularly deal with the public on
intelligence matters around the country may be a good first step.
Although justifying the resources needed to create a museum for the
CIA would be difficult, establishing a display at an existing facility, such
as the Smithsonian's Museum of American History, may be a relatively
inexpensive way to show the public some of the CIA's more interesting
artifacts. The CIA does open itself up to visitors on occasion, although
the security effort to do this is costly. Allowing selected groups to see
part of the facility tends to create a positive image of the CIA, and careful
planning can reduce the potential security hazards.
Public Appearances
Public appearances by CIA officials, from the DCI, to senior managers,
to the working troops, almost always draw favorable comment in the
local press, even though they might not receive coverage in the Washington Post. The public is usually fascinated to meet CIA officials, but the
officials need to be schooled in what to say and how to say it. Experience
shows that intelligence professionals in general and CIA employees in
particular are not aware of the copious literature on intelligence available
to the public. Thus, serious students of intelligence at the university level
may be better read about some aspects of intelligence than their professional counterparts. This information is admittedly anecdotal, but the
author has been questioned by active service intelligence officers from
time to time about what to say in public, indicating their ignorance of
the open literature. The CIA occasionally publishes a short bibliography
of intelligence literature; it would be interesting to survey CIA employees
to see how many of them have actually read the items listed.
Planning for Disaster
The Agency needs to put more effort into planning for disaster, a formula security officials in the private sector emphasize a great deal. In
most cases, revelations about CIA clandestine activity surface only when
things go wrong. The CIA's response to such revelations usually begins
with denial, then grudging admissions, and the agency's credibility suffers accordingly. In the private sector, managers are urged to plan for
189
disaster, including the public response that might be needed. For example, airline officials ought to be prepared for crashes, hotel managers
for fires, or manufacturers for natural disasters, and all should practice
how they will deal with the public should a disaster happen. But CIA
managers seem to ignore the possibility that their secret operations will
be revealed until the word gets out. Then, the responses seem ad hoc,
without much thought about long-term consequences. This was clearly
the case in the Los Angeles drug story.
Preparing for public revelations of secret intelligence activity ought to
be part of any operational plan. This requires a level of cooperation between clandestine service managers and public affairs personnel that
might be uncomfortable for the operations people and compromises
good security practices, the need-to-know principle, and compartmentation, but good preparation is necessary to reduce misperceptions, misinterpretations, and outright lies about what happened. After all, CIA
professionals in public affairs are just as interested in CIA successes as
are the operations people, even though the two functions are quite different.
Service in Public Affairs
Dealing with the public is as much a function of intelligence these days
as the recruiting of agents or the forecasting of future events. Yet the
public affairs function is considered by many professionals as a side
show to the main event. Service in that part of the profession is not
considered first-line work, and for some professionals, taking on the public affairs function probably precludes further employment in anything
clandestine. Traditionally intelligence services seek people for the public
affairs function from among their own ranks, probably with the idea that
since the service has hired the best and the brightest, the intelligence
officers hired ought to be just as good at public affairs as they are at
secret operations. This may not always be the case. Dealing with the
public requires professional training and expertise, but few intelligence
professionals are ever given such schooling, even after they are assigned
to the job. The FBI has found that the investment in public affairs training
pays off for its senior agents; the CIA might give this some consideration.
Malcolm Muggeridge was at least partly correct when he suggested
that a certain aura and level of mystery is necessary in an agency that
carries out espionage and secret operations. Intelligence professionals are
indeed different from other government bureaucrats and should not be
perceived the same as the typical civil servants who grind away at more
mundane duties. During the Middle East peace negotiations, DCI George
Tenet wrote that misperceptions about intelligence are the price of doing
190
business, b u t such m i s p e r c e p t i o n s m a y b e costly, especially w h e n a n

agency n e e d s public s u p p o r t . O p e n n e s s h a s its limits in secret intelligence, b u t intelligence m a n a g e r s o u g h t to p l a n for w h a t those limits
s h o u l d be. Being public a b o u t secret intelligence m a y b e just as i m p o r t a n t
in a democratic society as b e i n g secret a b o u t it. Intelligence m a n a g e r s
h a v e to b e equally concerned a b o u t b o t h issues w h e n they p l a n their
operations.
Notes
1. Malcolm Muggeridge, Chronicles of Wasted Time (New York: William Morrow & Co., 1974), p. 123.
2. Peter Wright, Spycatcher (New York: Viking Books, 1987).
3. Kenneth G. Robertson, "Recent Reform of Intelligence in the United Kingdom: Democratization or Risk Management?" Intelligence and National Security,
vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 144-158.
4. As quoted in Intelligence and the War of the Revolution (Washington, DC:
Central Intelligence Agency, 1976).
1996), pp. 27-28.
6. As quoted in Presidential Reflections on Intelligence, Center for the Study of
Intelligence, CIA, at www.odci.gov/csi/monograph/firstin/eisenhower/html.
7. A short history of the Public Affairs Office appears in Ronald Kessler,
Inside the CIA (New York: Pocket Books, 1992), pp. 213-236.
8. A good summary of the San Jose Mercury News story and its aftermath can
be found in Walter Pincus, "CIA Ignored Tips Alleging Contra Drug Links,"
Washington Post, 3 November 1998, p. A4; Peter Kornbluh, "The Fresh Dope on
CIA Drug Link," Baltimore Sun, 30 August 1998, p. CI; and in the CIA's Inspector
General's Report.
9. Ludwell Lee Montague, General Walter Bedell Smith as Director of Central
Intelligence (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992).
10. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Secrecy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998).
11. See Robert L. Benson and Michael Warner (eds.), VENONA: Soviet Espionage and the American Response (Washington, DC: NSA and CIA, 1996), p. xxiv.
12. A careful analysis of this controversy appears in Douglas J. MacEachin,
"CIA Assessments of the Soviet Union: The Record vs. the Charges," Center for
the Study of Intelligence, CIA, 1996.
CHAPTER 10

America's intelligence system is, by any measure, the largest in the free
world and certainly the most complicated, bureaucratic, convoluted, and
expensive system anywhere. Its failures, as President Eisenhower noted,
are often heralded and its successes hidden. With the end of the Cold
War, some critics have argued that the system is too big for what it does,
and others have suggested that we don't need it at all. Wiser heads,
however, generally agree that intelligence is our first line of defense and
that it should be strengthened, not made weaker. Is there a way to improve what we have?
Despite the relatively enormous cost of American intelligence and its
bureaucratic complexity, it does work surprisingly well. Nonetheless,
there are several ways in which the system could be made to work better
if there was sufficient will among intelligence managers and political
leaders. So far efforts at reform have been either too difficult to manage
or too politically charged to be acceptable. Further, efforts at reform have
almost always been triggered by perceptions of failure or hints of scandal. Typically the response to either scandal or failure has been to look
for ways to reorganize the system rather than seek to change the way it
works. There are other ways to approach the problem, but first we have
to understand the present structure and its operating philosophy.
Intelligence Structure
In most developed countries and even in some less-developed nations,
the intelligence structure is made up of a foreign intelligence service,
whose role is to ferret out threats to the country from abroad; an internal
192
security service to work against threats at home; a military intelligence

service to support the combat arms; a police intelligence service; and in
more sophisticated countries, a technical intelligence service for SIGINT,
or communications intercepts. The overall chief of the system is usually
the prime minister, chief of state, or key minister in the cabinet. Only
the United States has a director of central intelligence, a role with real
responsibility but little real power. The DCI, as we have seen, is not
an officer of first rank compared to cabinet officers, nor does he have
control or authority over most of the intelligence system he is supposed
to oversee.
In fact, the American system is so convoluted that efforts to depict it
by using the standard organizational diagrams do not work well. In most
of the literature the system is drawn as a circle with all the agencies
around the circumference and the DCI in the middle. Since the DCI has
no control over any agency but the CIA, no organizational lines of authority are shown. A better way to describe the system would be to
outline the intelligence agencies that belong to the various departments
at the national level. Thus, most of the system would be shown as subordinate to the Secretary of Defense, and the rest, except for the CIA, to
other departments. Only the CIA is truly an independent agency. 1
The U.S. system is further complicated by the fact that its major internal security service, the FBI, combines the functions of internal security,
federal police powers, and criminal intelligence, whereas America's technical services such as signals intelligence or imagery intelligence belong
to the defense structure. Some of the intelligence units are part of the socalled Intelligence Community and thus fall under the aegis of the DCI;
others do not. No one could have invented such a system, but because
it grew in bits and pieces, it has become the complicated structure we
have today.
Most reform efforts since World War II have focused on making the
system more efficient, more reliable, and less prone to failure. By and
large, efforts at restructuring have not been successful. In recent years
reforms of intelligence have received a great deal of attention but not
much action. Various reform studies published in 1996-97 all seemed to
focus on the role of the DCI. The Brown Commission, for example, the
most prestigious of the study groups, suggested that the way to make
the system work better was to give more power and authority to the
DCI. Unfortunately for the reformers, this meant taking power from the
Secretary of Defense, who quickly squelched the effort. Thus, the money
and time spent by the commission was largely wasted, although there
were some good ideas generated by that study as well as the others.
193
Intelligence Policy and Operations

Perhaps a better way to look at reform is to divide the issues into
questions of intelligence policy and intelligence operations rather than a
question of intelligence structure. Since the key actor in all this is the
director of central intelligence, perhaps we should start by examining
this rather anomalous position. The DCI, a position established by President Harry Truman in 1946, predates the CIA. Some DCIs have been
strong and effective; others have been relatively weak. Most have been
political or military appointees, and only a few have been career intelligence officers. Some have had ready access and a close relationship
with the president they served; others have had to try to reach the president through White House staffers and aides. Some of the appointees,
especially those with little intelligence background, seem to have absorbed quite a bit about the world of intelligence; others never seemed
to understand exactly how to handle the position.
With the creation of the CIA in 1947, the DCI acquired an agency to
head. This fleshed out the position so that the DCI was now not only
the intelligence adviser to the president and the National Security Council and the coordinator of all U.S. intelligence activities but also the head
of an agency. 2 Now the DCI had bureaucratic power, a budget, and
troops. Before long the DCI was ensconced in a sprawling new campus
hidden in the woods in Langley, Virginia, several miles from the White
House and even more distant from the real decisionmakers in government. As the American Intelligence Community continued to grow, the
DCI's position became weaker. He was supposed to coordinate intelligence activities, but he had no real authority over any intelligence agencies but his own. As we have seen, this changed with the coming of
satellites, coordinated budgets, and pressure for long-range planning.
C o m m o n Interests
DCIs such as Dick Helms, the consumate professional, or George Bush,
the erstwhile politican, dealt with the other agencies through meetings
of the agency heads in a forum called the National Foreign Intelligence
Board. Where there were common interests, the agency directors usually
agreed to work together, but often the demands of the individual agencies took priority, especially in the Defense Department. Until Admiral
Turner became DCI, there was no real need for the agencies to work
together, except in regard to producing coordinated estimates and other
analysis. Overseas the CIA chiefs of station were supposed to coordinate
194
the intelligence activities in their various locations, replicating the role

of the DCI; but the ultimate disposition was up to the American ambassadors, who spoke for the president.
When the sharing of satellite time, the coordinating of budgets, and
pressure for long-range planning came together in the 1970s, Admiral
Turner was at the helm of the intelligence ship, a role for which he was
well qualified even though he had no prior intelligence experience. Under Turner the role of the DCI as coordinator of the Intelligence Community's variegated agencies took on real meaning. Turner also had
good access to President Jimmy Carter, his Annapolis classmate. To be
sure, being DCI meant more than just running the CIA. Turner established and staffed an office in the Old Executive Office building, next
door to the White House, and he created a management staff, the IC
staff, and put it in a nearby building downtown.
Cabinet Rank
The next DCI, William J. Casey, was even more aggressive than Turner
in cementing his role as the president's intelligence advisor. Casey insisted on having cabinet rank, which President Reagan, grateful for
Casey's key role in getting the former California governor into the White
House, was happy to bestow. Casey asked his deputy, Admiral Bobby
Ray Inman, a widely respected former director of the National Security
Agency, to play the key role in overseeing Intelligence Community affairs. In one of his first efforts, Inman led a long-range planning study
that drew close cooperation among the various agencies, probably because they knew that this would lead to increased budgets, human resources, and facilities.3
Casey's successor, Judge William Webster, former head of the FBI,
sought to distance himself from the White House by insisting that he not
be given cabinet rank and by withdrawing from policy planning meetings so as to be seen as politically neutral in policy debates. Interagency
cooperation began to fracture a bit, and real differences emerged in the
wake of the Gulf War. The military claimed that it was not well served
by the CIA during the hostilities, and military intelligence managers began to work out ways to ensure that they could manage without the
Agency if they had to. 4
DCI Robert M. Gates, the last professional intelligence officer to serve
as DCI, tried to bring the community back together, but moving the IC
staff, renamed the Community Management Staff, back to CIA headquarters at Langley only emphasized its CIA dominance. Gates might
have been able to make things work had his tenure been extended, but
195
his close ties to President Bush proved his undoing. When the president
failed to be reelected, Gates knew he had to go. 5
The Clinton Era
Under President Clinton, the role of the DCI as community leader and
intelligence manager deteriorated even further. Clinton's first DCI, R.
James Woolsey, proved unequal to any of the tasks set for him, either
as CIA leader or as intelligence community manager; and President Clinton's second DCI, John Deutch, though well meaning and hard-working,
was no better. President Clinton's third DCI, George Tenet, turned out
to be better than anyone had expected. Tenet was neither a career intelligence officer nor a real political appointee; rather, he was someone who
had served on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence staff, and later
in the Clinton White House as intelligence coordinator. Some observers
thought that Tenet had gotten the job because no one else wanted it.
Nevertheless, he managed to rebuild morale at the CIA and to resume
the interagency cooperation that had been missing.
The lesson from all of this is a simple one. The effectiveness of the
DCI is dependent not on bureaucratic power or political power but on
the power of personality and the DCI's management style. The most
effective DCIs have been those who could bring the disparate elements
of the community together to cooperate and share tasks. Of course, good
access to the president is necessary as well as an understanding of the
intelligence process. When the DCI can bring the other leaders into a
cooperative circle, all things are possible. If the DCI cannot do this, bureaucratic structure or political power won't help. The DCI has to be a
leader as well as a manager.
From time to time intelligence observers and critics have suggested
that the DCI position should be removed from the CIA and made into
a more independent posta director of national intelligence (DNI) who
would oversee the community. A DNI would be part of the National
Security Council apparatus and would have a small staff, but no agency
to run. Interestingly, a position of this kind is often referred to as an
"intelligence tzar." Considering what happened to the real tzars in Russia, it seems a poor term, though perhaps a bit more benign than "emperor." Most insiders believe that creating a DNI is a bad idea.
A DCI with no agency behind him would have no power or authority
at all, even if he were an effective leader and manager. Under the present
system, as director of the CIA the DCI has both a very special intelligence
collection capability, the Clandestine Service, and an independent analytic staff, the Directorate of Intelligence. If intelligence creates power,
196
then separating the DCI from the CIA would leave the DNI position
powerless. It would also create even more bureaucracy, which the system
does not need. There is nothing wrong with the present system if the
DCI is capable of making it work.
Politicizing the DCI
One step that should be taken to assist the DCI in his roles as CIA
manager and U.S. intelligence coordinator would be to depoliticize the
position, that is, to make it politically neutral as it was originally conceived and give it tenure. This was the way President Truman probably
envisioned it, but this situation has been seriously eroded over time. 6
Even though the DCI position is one requiring presidential nomination
and ratification by the Senate, there is no reason why the DCI should
necessarily be a member of the president's political party or even sympathetic to the president's political goals. Intelligence officers are supposed to be politically neutral anyway, and the DCI should be no
different in that respect.
The first DCIs were military officers, so politics did not figure into
their appointments. Allen Dulles was the first DCI to have political connections to the administration since his brother, John Foster Dulles, was
secretary of state under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower. Dulles's tenure as DCI extended into the Democratic administration of President John F. Kennedy and might even have lasted longer had it not
been for the abortive Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. Dulles's successor,
Republican industrialist John McCone, served both Kennedy and President Lyndon Johnson, but he fell into disfavor as Johnson sought to find
someone who would be willing to be more sympathetic to his foreign
policies, especially in Vietnam.
Johnson's first choice, Admiral "Red" Raborn, proved willing but unable to do the job, and the task fell to Dick Helms, a politically astute
career Clandestine Services officer. Helms outlasted Johnson himself,
serving well into the Republican Nixon administration, but Helms ran
afoul of Nixon's Watergate scandal. When Helms refused to participate
in the coverup that eventually led to Nixon's resignation, he was banished to Iran as U.S. ambassador. His successor, Jim Schlesinger, a real
politician, soon left the DCI's position for the more prestigious post of
secretary of defense. Another Clandestine Services careerist, Bill Colby,
tried to put the role of DCI back into neutral, but Colby was swept out
in the wake of the Church Committee hearings and the resignation of
Nixon. Another politician, George Bush, took over as DCI, but his political ambitions did not stop at Langley either.
197
Totally Politicized
Finally, the DCI position became totally politicized when President
Jimmy Carter, who campaigned in part against the CIA, nominated
Theodore Sorensen, an active member of the president's party but without any intelligence experience or leadership history, to the DCI's post.
When Sorensen's nomination quickly ran into trouble in the Senate, President Carter turned to his Annapolis classmate Admiral Stansfield
Turner to be DCI. Turner was as apolitical as any other four-star officer,
at least when he took the position, and although he had no intelligence
background, his management skills were legendary. Many of us disagreed with some of Admiral Turner's approaches to management and
substance, yet to his credit he did not use his post for political purposes.
In fact, some of the reforms in procedures and regulations instituted by
Admiral Turner are still being followed. Nonetheless, when President
Carter was turned out of office by the voters, Admiral Turner was forced
out as well. This was part of the Reagan administration's total housecleaning to make sure that no Democratic appointees were left in political
positions.
Of course, President Reagan's DCI, William J. Casey, was as much a
politician as he was an intelligence veteran, although he wisely rejected
efforts by the Reagan transition team to place additional Republican appointees in key intelligence posts. Casey was not bashful about giving
President Reagan and his key advisors the benefit of his rather conservative analysis on the issues, although he never actually suppressed the
judgments of his more neutral analysts. Nonetheless, we all knew who
had the president's ear. After Casey passed away, his successor, Judge
William Webster, tried to de-politicize the position of DCI by insisting
that he not be made a member of the cabinet and by avoiding political
debate where he could.
When George Bush became president, he asked Judge Webster to stay
on. In fact, there was some discussion at that time about giving the DCI
position a ten-year tenure, as had been done when Webster was director
of the FBI. After Webster decided to step down, his successor, Bob Gates,
an intelligence careerist, was nominated to be DCI. Gates was tainted,
however, by his service in the Bush White House and the controversy
surrounding his nomination. When Bill Clinton defeated George Bush
for the presidency, Gates knew he would not be asked to stay. Clinton's
first choice for DCI, R. James Woolsey, seemed non-political, but Woolsey turned out to be a lackluster leader and eventually found a good
excuse to resign. Clinton's second choice, clearly a man sympathetic to
the president's politics, John Deutch, was no better than Woolsey.
198
Finally, toward the middle of his second term, Clinton gave the DCI
job to George Tenet, who was neither an intelligence veteran nor a politican. Tenet turned out be both a better intelligence manager and a better
analyst than anyone expected. He quickly began to restore morale in the
CIA, stem the tide of resignations, and rebuild consensus among the
other intelligence agency leaders. It was a remarkable performance, but
certainly no guarantee that Tenet would be kept on beyond the end of
President Clinton's term of office. This is a situation that begs for fixing.
American presidents would be well served by giving the DCI the tenyear tenure that the director of the FBI enjoys. Doing this would depoliticize the position, of course, but it would also give the DCI the
chance to make systematic and meaningful reform within the system. It
would give employees a sense of stability and take the entire system out
of the political arena. It should give the political leadership, regardless
of political party, confidence that the intelligence they receive has nothing to do with who they are and everything to do with what they need
to know. This is an easy fix that requires only a bit of political will on
the part of the president and Congress.
Interagency Cooperation
Another management fix that would substitute for what we now know
is the almost impossible task of restructuring the American intelligence
system is to encourage interagency cooperation at all levels. Years ago a
study undertaken by community managers revealed that there were dozens of informal interagency cooperative groups at various levels focused
on substantive and management issues. These groups were formed
mostly because the people involved recognized the need to meet from
time to time to discuss problems they faced or to anticipate issues with
which they might have to deal. These groups can now communicate with
each other more easily via the electronic network, but face-to-face meetings can help create bonding that technology does not achieve as well.
The formal interagency groups, such as the Counterintelligence Center
and Counterterrorism Center, have proven to be effective in generating
interagency cooperation. Intelligence managers ought to encourage the
formation of informal interagency committees and groups, but this
means that they have to be more tolerant of employees being away from
their desks from time to time. The groups themselves ought to let managers know more about what they are doing, as long as the bureaucracy
is willing to accept informal reporting rather than something more cumbersome.
If there is no practical way to reorganize the American intelligence
199
community and only limited ways to give the DCI more clout, what
other reforms might be meaningful or useful? This leads us to questions
of operations more than of structure. This is the area where real change
might take place. To begin, we might consider the idea that intelligence
should be divorced from policy. In the American system this is symbolized by the fact that almost the entire intelligence system is out of town:
The CIA is in suburban Virginia, most of the DIA is isolated at a defunct
airbase south of the Washington proper, the NSA is nearly in Baltimore,
and the NRO is out near Dulles Airport. Only the FBI and the small
analysis unit in the State Department are anywhere near the center of
power. The argument made today in support of this system is that electronic links make location unimportant. But this ignores a crucial factor.
American security policy is still made by people, and human relationships are critical in making the system work.
The Intelligence-Policy Link

A great deal of policy is created in various committee meetings and
gatherings where ideas are tossed around and positions on the issues
argued. For intelligence to count, it has to be in the loop. This means
that intelligence managers have to make an effort to encourage the inclusion of intelligence officers at the appropriate level in policy discussions; it also means that policy officials have to seek an intelligence input.
When the author first joined the CIA, this was more prevalent than it is
today. As time went on, intelligence managers became increasingly content with delivering intelligence in print, or more recently electronically,
rather than by appearing in person. This was an easy road to take because it meant that the intelligence managers could completely control
the content of the intelligence that was delivered. In the give and take
of policy discussion, who could tell what an intelligence analyst, especially a relatively junior one, might say.
If the CIA and the other substantive agencies are indeed hiring the
best and the brightest, then they should be willing to send these individuals out confident that they will faithfully deliver the considered wisdom of the agencies they represent as well as their own views on the
issues. Policy officials often want to have both and welcome the input.
For the most part, these inputs will involve hot-burner issues, that is,
current intelligence. Our policy system is not well equipped to deal with
long-range issues, even though the intelligence system spends a fair
amount of time in estimating the future. This is a fix that lies outside the
realm of intelligence.
200

N o Long-Range Planning System
The United States has no real long-range national security policy planning mechanism outside the Pentagon. Defense planners have to anticipate requirements, especially in regard to weapons procurement, many
years in advance. Therefore, long-range planning is a must, and defense
intelligence has had to support this planning requirement with long-term
threat analysis. On the civilian side, in contrast, long-range planning often gives way to more immediate concerns.
Years ago a long-range policy-planning function did indeed exist
within the National Security Council and in the policy planning mechanisms of the State Department. Increasingly over the years, however,
this function has become politicized. Instead of having professional, nonpolitical appointees in positions where they could deliberate longe-range
American policy, the posts have been filled with people whose qualifications must include loyalty to the president and party in power. The
appointees do not seek to build American policy so much as try to satisfy
the constituencies the president and their party represent. This subtle
difference means that policy planners want intelligence to help them
achieve their political goals, and so some of the long-range analysis is
either of no use in that regard or is seen as obstructive. Further, the
policy planners know that their tenure is linked to that of the president,
so their long-range vision ends when his term ends.
Fixing this system has nothing to do with intelligence, but if there were
a long-range, non-political policy-planning system within the executive
branch, then long-range intelligence would be more useful and more
welcome. How often have we seen presidents come into office expressing
vision statements about their long-term foreign policy or national security goals only to become enmeshed in crisis management? In such
circumstances, decisionmakers become firefighters, and they want intelligence to help them put out the fire. They don't have time to think about
the long-term consequences of their decisions, so long-term intelligence
is of no use to them. Remedying this situation requires the political will
of the president and Congress.
The National Security Council staff was created to serve this function,
coordinating the various policy proposals of the State, Defense, and other
departments into some coherent national security strategy. This function
could be restored if the NSC staff returned to its roots, with the staff
built from a mix of careerists seconded from the departments as well as
political appointees. And they should be given tenure to create continuity in long-range planning, without the house-cleaning that seems now
to go on whenever the presidency changes hands. If the United States
201
had a truly effective long-range policy-planning staff, then long-term intelligence analysis would be able to provide the necessary inputs that
now beg for an audience.
Micro-Managing Intelligence
Another operational issue in fixing intelligence concerns the continuing effort by Congress to try to micro-manage the U.S. intelligence system. The Founding Fathers may not have realized that the system of
checks and balances they were creating would result in establishing an
adversarial relationship between the president and Congress. The congressional effort to micro-manage government has been with us from the
birth of the nation, but only relatively lately has Congress tried to employ intelligence management. Early efforts by Congress to horn in on
intelligence matters was rebuffed by early presidents, and in later years
members of Congress indicated that they would prefer to leave intelligence matters to the executive branch. The establishment of rigorous
congressional oversight of intelligence matters in 1976 changed all that.
Suddenly members of both houses had the tools to tinker with intelligence policy and intelligence management. The DCI was required to
send them a detailed consolidated budget for all the intelligence agencies, to report to them on planned covert actions, and to provide them
with the same intelligence analysis provided executive branch decisionmakers. It did not take long for members of the committees to start to
press their own agenda on the DCI and to find fault, sometimes in public,
with the way in which the system was run. This politicized micromanagement ought to stop.
Congressional oversight is, in general, a good thing for the country as
well as for intelligence. It should give the American people confidence
that their representatives are, on their behalf, seeking to ensure that a
system run largely in secret is not abusing the peoples' trust. But its
mandate should end there. There should be no need to tell the DCI, in
detail, how to spend the intelligence budget. Insisting on expenditures
for covert action in public, most recently in the effort to overthrow Saddam Hussein of Iraq, is certainly counterproductive, though politically
satisfying. Congressional efforts to micro-manage intelligence force intelligence managers to be less than candid and forthright in their reporting to the committees in fear that somehow they will say something
that the members will use against the DCI, the president, or them. Only
Congress can police its own house in this regard; as part of the executive
branch, intelligence managers have to protect the system they represent.
The 1996 staff study on intelligence reform undertaken by the House
202
of Representatives, IC 21: The Intelligence Community in the Twenty-first

Century, though well meaning and interesting, demonstrates this kind of
micro-managerial effort.7 The study does make one recommendation that
deserves action, however, and it is one that would head off the congressional zeal to dabble in intelligence policy. The study recommends the
creation of the Committee on Foreign Intelligence (CFI) within the National Security Council to be made up of a combination of policymakers
and intelligence officials. Their job would be to set out the general direction for the use of intelligence resources and establish priorities for
intelligence managers. While the DCI may not have much control over
the intelligence agencies that belong to the Department of Defense or the
other departments, the White House certainly has that power and should
use it. Of course, the DCI and the senior intelligence manager from Defense should be part of the CFI, but the ultimate authorities should be
the president and the national security advisor.
Directing Military Intelligence
Both the IC 21 study and the Brown Commission suggested that there
should be a director of military intelligence (DMI), presumably a senior
general or admiral, to oversee the myriad intelligence components of the
military services and the joint intelligence agencies such as the DIA and
NSA. In addition, there should be an assistant secretary of defense to
assist the secretary of defense in creating defense intelligence policy.
These are sensible suggestions for intelligence management, would not
require large additional bureaucracies, and would create positions to
manage and control the resources devoted to intelligence support for
decisionmakers and military commanders.
Traditionally the senior military officers who head the DIA and the
NSA have not been key figures in intelligence at the national level, although they have played a significant role within the Department of
Defense. The two leaders are usually three-star officers with intelligence
background and experience, and that has been true since the founding of the NSA in 1954 and the DIA in 1961. The DIA director fills the
role of the J-2, the chief intelligence officer of the Joint Staff, and the
director of the NSA is responsible for SIGINT and communications security. The DIA is smaller than the CIA, but it does play an important
part in providing intelligence support to military operations as well as
strategic planning. The NSA is believed to be quite a bit larger than the
CIA, but the actual figures remain classified.
With the growth of various aspects of military intelligence, it would
make sense to have a very senior officer, with four-star rank, to oversee
and direct the entire process. The National Imagery and Mapping
Agency (NIMA) has become a major player within the military system,
203
and most observers believe that measurements and signatures intelligence (MASINT), now the purview of the military's Central MASINT
Office, is bound to grow. 8 Since most of the national intelligence budget
goes to support various components of military intelligence, and since
most of the personnel belong to the military system, it makes sense to
have a senior officer in charge of this empire. Although Congress has
suggested that the appointment of such a senior officer be coordinated
with the DCI, the secretary of defense is unlikely to give the DCI a veto
over the officer nominated. The advice and consent of the Senate ought
to be sufficient, but it would make the entire Intelligence Community
work a great deal better if the DCI and the DMI got along well with
each other.
Personnel Reform
Congress could help reform the intelligence system by supporting personnel reform. After the turmoil created by the end of the Cold War,
intelligence personnel have found that instability in the system, lack of
resources, and perceptions that intelligence services are no longer needed
in the post-Cold War era have made a career in intelligence work less
and less desirable. A strong economy, good jobs that pay better than
government, and perhaps the greater flexibility of work in the private
sector may also be factors. Although it is true that the system in general
may have been too large, intelligence managers fell under considerable
pressure to reduce the intelligence work force rapidly. This led to various
schemes to force people out, schemes aimed especially at those in a position to retire after long years of service.
Soon it became clear that potential retirees were either not leaving fast
enough or were seeking ways to stay on. Intelligence managers tried new
schemes, including payoffs for early retirement, or so-called buyouts that
provided enough cash so that personnel who did not have enough time
in the system to retire might be induced to seek other employment. In
many ways these schemes were far more palatable than what was happening in private industry, where layoffs and outright dismissals at all
levels had become commonplace. Nonetheless, the early retirements and
buyouts sent a poor message to mid-level careerists, who began to leave
the system while they still had the chance to find other employment.
A Brain Drain
In its study the Brown Commission pointed out that personnel costs
in intelligence had risen by some 50 percent from 1980 to 1989 and concluded that the work force ought to be reduced. At the same time the
204
study acknowledged that people are the Intelligence Community's most

vital resource. The commission recommended that more effort be made
to weed out poor performers, although there was no evidence in the
study to suggest how many such weak performers there were. This may
have been another overreaction to the Ames case, in which clearly Ames
was himself a weak performer, though clever enough to manage to elude
capture for nine years.
The result of downsizing has been a brain drain among those careerists
who would have comprised the next group of senior managers in the
intelligence agencies. Losing a large number of mid-careerists is a blow
in any organization, but because of the special nature of intelligence
work, it is particularly devastating to lose the people who would be in
the best position to nurture new employees in the arcane skills of intelligence work. Coupled with a system that for several years hardly hired
any new professionals at all, the U.S. Intelligence Community is suffering
from a personnel situation that must be fixed. This is especially true
among those who do clandestine work or carry out highly technical intelligence collection operations.
It takes years to train a case officer to be able to operate overseas in a
hostile environment and to recruit and handle human sources. To the
dismay of the CIA, when Harold J. Nicholson gave to the Russians the
names of several entire classes of new Clandestine Service recruits in
the early 1990s, he wiped out an entire cadre of potentially capable case
officers.9 Once the identities of these potential case officers was made
known to a hostile intelligence service, they could no longer be sent
abroad under cover; thus their careers were ruined before they even
started. Coupled with downsizing in the Clandestine Service, the CIA
has had to crank up a hard-driving recruitment campaign to seek new
talent, but it will be years before potential trainees become proficient in
handling espionage operations.
A similar situation exists in technical areas such as SIGINT or in imagery intelligence, although no one has betrayed the people who do the
work, as far as we know. In most of the technical areas, the intelligence
system has had to do its own training, since intercepting communications, deciphering codes, or analyzing satellite imagery is rarely taught
elsewhere. Unfortunately for intelligence managers, these technical skills,
once acquired, can lead employees to seek lucrative positions in the private sector, and this has caused yet another brain drain within intelligence.
Still a Desirable Career
Years of downsizing and cutbacks in resources, coupled with the
greater benefits offered in private industry, blows to morale from spy
205
cases, and attacks on the system by politicians and the press, have hurt
careerists in intelligence in many ways. The nature of the intelligence
profession is such that their stories are not widely known or frequently
told. A rare few have written books or denounced the system in public,
but most have just quietly faded away to seek other opportunities. Yet,
we know from the responses to recruiting advertising, web site contacts,
and reports in the press, that intelligence work remains a desirable career
path for many young people. The system has to do more to recruit new
people and, more importantly, to retain those it has already brought on
board.
One way to revise the system would be to scrap the present pay scale,
which is tied to the general civil service scale, for something more imaginative. The DCI has the authority to do this for the CIA, as does the
secretary of defense for the DOD agencies, but it has always been more
convenient and simple just to replicate the civil service system already
in place throughout the government. The intelligence managers who
adopted the civil service pay scale in the early days of the CIA could
then claim that they were just treating their employees the same as everyone else in government. Considering the special nature of the intelligence
business, however, means that intelligence personnel are not like everyone else. Intelligence managers ought to investigate ways to modify the
system to entice more people to stay, especially in special skills areas,
such as the Clandestine Service, or in the technical fields.
Attempts were made in the past to organize a new system for pay and
allowances, but employees were not enthusiastic about change. Intelligence managers ought to try again, though. The intelligence system must
be prepared to compete with private industry in finding, hiring, and
retaining the best and the brightest. Most careerists enter the world of
intelligence not to get rich but to serve the country in a unique field.
Their dedication ought to be rewarded. Congress ought to support pay
reform and various incentives to encourage recruiting and retention. Personnel costs in intelligence are not nearly as great as the costs of satellites
or other technical hardware. If Congress really believes in the value of
intelligence personnel, it ought to be eager to keep them on duty.
Again, the Polygraph

Further, intelligence managers must try to find a better clearance
mechanism than the polygraph. Not only does it work against new hires,
but we now know that long-time employees are running afoul of this
insidious device. Employees are reportedly finding that reinvestigations
and the accompanying polygraph interview are turning up unresolved
issues that are hurting their careers even though they have done nothing
206
wrong. This scrutiny is mostly an overreaction to the Ames case. In their

zeal to make up for the security errors in checking out Ames, intelligence
managers are bending over backward to make sure such a breach of
security never happens again. The result is that they are doing as much
damage to the system as Ames did, though in a different way.
The polygraph has been around in intelligence usage for more than
forty years, and there seems to be little effort to find something better.
Considering the amount of money spent on sophisticated new technical
intelligence techniques to ferret out biological or chemical weapons, narcotics, or electronics, one would think that such sophistication could be
extended to a way to detect prevarication or subterfuge. From time to
time mention has been made of voice stress analysis as one way to tell
if a person is lying or hiding information. The polygraph has been
judged to be of questionable reliability in court cases, and since at least
one intelligence service we know has been told by its overseers to drop
the machine, perhaps it is time for the United States to find an alternative.
Size and Duplication
One issue raised at the beginning of this work was that of duplication
of effort. A second was that of size. Is the U.S. Intelligence Community
too big? Is there a great deal of duplication of effort? How could outsiders judge either of these issues? In fact, we know from the reform studies
done in recent years that these judgments are difficult to make even for
those paid to study the problem with all the necessary data. There are
good reasons to have duplication in some areas, especially in both collection and analysis. Collecting data from a variety of sources, even if
there is overlap, is just what analysts need to solve the mysteries. From
the analyst's perspective, there is never too much raw material. Analysts
are comforted when several analytic units go through the data and reach
similar conclusions; when they disagree on the interpretation, then there
is a good reason to confer and sort things out. Competitive analysis is a
good way to avoid intelligence failure. One could conclude from this
that redundancy in the substantive areas of intelligence is generally a
good thing and should not be cut back.
In administrative areas, there may be some hope for reducing duplication. This is especially true in military intelligence, where personnel
management, logistics, and support is fungible and where people can be
moved in and out of the various parts of the system. Thus, recruiting,
clearance procedures, obtaining supplies, communications, and other
such support services could be centralized. If there were a director of
military intelligence and this officer had control of support services for
207
all military intelligence, it seems likely that some savings could be made.
But attempts to do the same things for the entire Intelligence Community
are not likely to work, and they violate sensible rules about compartmentation.
As far as size is concerned, there is no evidence from which to draw
a conclusion. Is the system too big? Are there too many people? Does it
spend too much money? Perhaps there are managers within the system
who might be able to answer such questions, but the answers would
certainly not be made public. We do know that the intelligence oversight
committees of Congress do ask such questions and probably receive
some fairly detailed data in answer. In this case we have to trust that
our representives in Congress are satisfied with the information they are
getting. From the perspective of an intelligence professional, however,
the system does seem to have become incredibly large and cumbersome,
bureaucratic, and increasingly inflexible. But that's just one person's
view, supported only by personal experiences and perspectives. Perhaps
intelligence managers ought to ask their current employees what they
think, as long as they are not afraid of the answers they may get.
Risk Averse
One writer who knows the world of intelligence wrote in 1999 that
U.S. intelligence managers have become increasingly risk averse, fearing
the wrath of their political masters if they fail to predict the future accurately, if their agents are caught by the opposition, or if our system is
penetrated by a foreign intelligence service.10 Failure is inevitable in intelligence, and a failure to take risks almost guarantees a poor outcome.
America cannot have a zero-defect intelligence system. Perhaps we have
been fooled by the nearly perfect record of our manned space missions,
where zero-defect technology can be achieved. This does not work in
intelligence because of the heavy dependence on people to do the work.
Human judgment is critical in intelligence, but it will occasionally produce failure. Political leaders should be prepared not only to accept it
but to defend the system as well.
Is U.S. intelligence in need of a major overhaul, as some critics have
suggested? Is the Spy Machine broken? It appears that what is needed
is not a major fix but, rather, a good tune-up. Throughout this work
numerous small changes and fixes have been suggested. Implementing
them will require a coordinated effort by intelligence managers, political
decisionmakers and Congress. Even if it does no more than spark discussion about some of the issues, this review will have been worthwhile.
America's intelligence system seems to be ready to handle the chal-
208
lenges of the n e w p o s t - C o l d W a r era, b u t it still n e e d s h e l p . W e can n o

longer d o m o r e w i t h less. Intelligence is, in m a n y w a y s , A m e r i c a ' s first
line of defense against the n e w threats of terrorism, global crime, a n d
cyber-warfare, as well as the age-old p r o b l e m s g e n e r a t e d b y nationalism,
dictatorships, a n d h a t r e d . Wise political leaders s h o u l d a c k n o w l e d g e that
i n v e s t m e n t s in intelligence are cheaper a n d h a v e a potentially greater
payoff t h a n s p e n d i n g h u g e s u m s o n w e a p o n s systems. The Chinese p h i losopher Sun T z u recognized this almost 2,500 years ago. W e s h o u l d p a y
attention to w h a t h e h a s t a u g h t u s .
Notes
1. For detailed descriptions of the various components of the U.S. Intelligence
Community and organizational charts of the agencies, see Jeffrey T. Richelson,
The U.S. Intelligence Community, 3rd ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995).
2. This early history is well recorded in Arthur Darling, The Central Intelligence Agency: An Instrument of Government to 1950 (State College: Pennsylvania
State University Press, 1990).
3. The author worked on this study during his tour with the IC staff.
4. The chief complainant was General Norman Schwarzkopf, the overall commander of the combined forces. See H. Norman Schwarzkopf, It Doesn't Take a
Hero (New York: Bantam Books, 1992).
5. Robert M. Gates, From the Shadows (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996).
6. Michael Warner (ed.), CIA Cold War Records: The CIA under Harry Truman
(Washington, DC: Center for the Study of Intelligence, CIA, 1994).
7. John Millis, staff chief for the HPSCI, at a presentation in Washington at
the International Studies Association Annual Convention in February 1999, argued that Congress had to micro-manage the CIA and the other agencies when
it saw evidence of poor management or leadership. Millis was himself a former
CIA careerist.
8. MASINT refers to such exotic targets as reflected energy, nuclear emanations, biological weapons, industrial pollution, and nerve gas, to name just a few.
9. David Wise, "The Spy Who Sold the Farm," GQ, March 1998, pp. 294-301.
10. David Ignatius, "Failure: Ticket to Success," Washington Post, 3 March 1999,
p. A23.
Bibliography
American Intelligence
Andrew, Christopher. For the President's Eyes Only: Secret Intelligence and the American Presidency from Washington to Bush. New York: HarperCollins, 1995.
Breckinridge, Scott D. The CIA and the U.S. Intelligence System. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1988.
Cline, Ray. The CIA: Reality vs. Myth: The Evolution of the Agency from Roosevelt to
Reagan. Washington, DC: Acropolis Books, 1982.
Corson, William R. The Armies of Ignorance: The Rise of the American Intelligence
Empire. New York: Dial, 1977.
Darling, Arthur. The Central Intelligence Agency: An Instrument of Government to
1950. State College: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1990.
Dawidoff, Nicholas. The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg. New
York: Pantheon Books, 1994.
Fishel, Edwin. The Secret War for the Union. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1996.
Grose, Peter. Gentleman Spy: The Life of Allen Dulles. Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
1994.
Hersh, Burton. The Old Boys: The American Elite and the Origins of the CIA. New
York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1992.
Jeffreys-Jones, Rhodri. The CIA and American Democracy. New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 1991.
Johnson, Loch K. A Season of Inquiry: Congress and Intelligence. Chicago: Dorsey
Press, 1988.
. America's Secret Power: The CIA in a Democratic Society. New York: Oxford
Katz, Barry M. Research and Analysis in the Office of Strategic Services, 1942-1945.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989.
Kessler, Ronald. Inside the CIA. New York: Pocket Books, 1992.
. The FBI. New York: Pocket Books, 1993.
210
Bibliography
Knott, Stephen F. Secret and Sanctioned: Covert Operations and the American Presidency. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Leary, William M. (ed.). The Central Intelligence Agency: History and Documents.
Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1989.
Meyer, Cord. Facing Reality: From World Federation to the CIA. New York: Harper
& Row, 1980.
Miller, Nathan. Spying for America: The Hidden History of U.S. Intelligence. New
York: Paragon House, 1989.
Montague, Ludwell Lee. General Walter Bedell Smith as Director of Central Intelligence. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992.
OToole, George J. A. Honorable Treachery: A History of U.S. Intelligence, Espionage,
and Covert Action from the American Revolution to the CIA. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1991.
Perry, Mark. Eclipse: The Last Days of the CIA. New York: William Morrow & Co.,
1992.
Persico, Joseph. Casey: From the OSS to the CIA. New York: Viking Penguin, 1990.
Powers, Thomas. The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA. New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979.
Ranelagh, John. The Agency: The Rise and Decline of the CIA. New York: Simon &
Schuster, 1986.
Richelson, Jeffrey T. The U.S. Intelligence Community. Boulder, CO: Westview
Press, 3rd ed. 1995.
Smith, Richard Harris. OSS: The Secret History of America's First Central Intelligence
Agency. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972.
Thomas, Evan. The Very Best MenFour Who Dared: The Early Years of the CIA.
New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995.
Troy, Thomas F. Donovan and the CIA: A History of the Establishment of the CIA.
Frederick, MD: University Publications of America, 1981.
Turner, Stansfield. Secrecy and Democracy: The CIA in Transition. New York:
Houghton Mifflin, 1985.
Warner, Michael (ed.). CIA Cold War Records: The CIA under Harry Truman. Washington, DC: Center for the Study of Intelligence, CIA, 1994.
Winks, Robin. Cloak and Gown: Scholars in the Secret War, 1939-1961. New York:
Morrow, 1987.
Foreign Intelligence Systems

Andrew, Christopher. Her Majesty's Secret Service: The Making of the British Intelligence Community. London: Heinemann, 1985.
Andrew, Christopher, and Oleg Gordievsky. KGB: The Inside Story. New York:
HarperCollins, 1990.
Black, Ian, and Benny Morris. Israel's Secret Wars: A History of Israel's Intelligence
Services. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991.
Brook-Shepard, Gordon. The Storm Birds: Soviet Post-War Defectors. New York:
Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1988.
Dziak, John J. Chekisty: A History of the KGB. Massachusetts: D.C. Heath & Co.,
1988.
Bibliography
211
Eftimiades, Nicholas. Chinese Intelligence Operations. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1994.
Knight, Amy. Spies without Cloaks: The KGB's Successors. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
Knightley, Phillip. The Master Spy: The Story of Kim Philby. New York: Vintage
Books, 1988.
Porch, Douglas. The French Secret Services: From the Dreyfus Affair to the Gulf War.
New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1995.
Raviv, Dan, and Yossi Melman. Every Spy a Prince: The Complete History of Israel's
Intelligence Services. Boston: Houghton Mifflon, 1990.
Richelson, Jeffrey T. Foreign Intelligence Organizations. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger,
1988.
Sawatsky, John. Men in the Shadows: The RCMP Security Service. Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 1980.
Waller, John H. The Unseen War in EuropeEspionage and Conspiracy in the Second
World War. New York: Random House, 1996.
West, Nigel. Games of Intelligence: The Classified Conflict of International Espionage.
London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989.
Autobiographical Accounts and Personal Viewpoints

Adams, Sam. War of Numbers: An Intelligence Memoir. So. Royalton, VT: Steerforth
Press, 1994.
Blake, George. No Other Choice. London: Cape, 1990.
Casey, William J. The Secret War against Hitler. Washington, DC: Regnery Gateway, 1988.
Clarridge, Duane R. A Spy for All Seasons: My Life in the CIA. New York: Scribner,
1997.
DeLoach, Cartha. Hoover's FBI. Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 1995.
Gates, Robert M. From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider's Story of Five Presidents
and How They Won the Cold War. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996.
Gilligan, Tom. CIA Life: 10,000 Days with the Agency. Guilford, CT: Foreign Intelligence Press, 1991.
Gordievsky, Oleg. Next Stop Execution. London: Macmillan, 1995.
McGehee, Ralph. Deadly Deceits: My Twenty-five Years in the CIA. New York: Sheridan Square, 1983.
Meyer, Cord. Facing Reality: From World Federation to the CIA. New York: Harper
& Row, 1980.
Philby, Kim. My Secret War. MacGibbon and Kee, 1968; paperback, New York:
Ballantine Books, 1983.
Philips, David Atlee. The Night Watch: Twenty-five Years of Peculiar Service. New
York: Atheneum, 1977.
Shevchenko, Arkady N. Breaking with Moscow. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998.
Strong, Major-General Sir Kenneth. Intelligence at the Top: the Recollections of an
Intelligence Officer. London: Cassell, 1968.
Walters, Vernon. Silent Missions. New York: Doubleday, 1978.
212
Bibliography
Wolf, Markus. Man without a Face: The Autobiography of Communism's Great Spymaster. New York: Random House, 1997.
Wright, Peter. Spycatcher. New York: Viking Books, 1987.
Women in Intelligence
Adams-Deschamps, Helene. Spyglass: An Autobiography. New York: Holt, 1995.
Bancroft, Mary. Autobiography of a Spy. New York: Morrow, 1983.
Lovell, Mary S. Cast No Shadow: The Life of the American Spy Who Changed the
Course of World War II. New York: Pantheon Books, 1992.
Macdonald, Elizabeth P. Undercover Girl. New York: Macmillan, 1947.
Mclntosh, Elizabeth P. Sisterhood of Spies: The Women of the OSS. Annapolis, MD:
Naval Institute Press, 1998.
Rossiter, Margaret. Women in the Resistance. New York: Praeger, 1991.
The Practice of Intelligence

Bar-Joseph, Uri. Intelligence Intervention in the Politics of Democratic States. University Park, PA: Perm State Press, 1995.
Berkowitz, Bruce E. and Allan Goodman. Strategic Intelligence for American National Security. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989.
Betts, Richard K. Surprise Attack: Lessons for Defense Planning. Washington, DC:
Brookings Institution, 1982.
Dulles, Allen. The Craft of Intelligence. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1977.
Felix, Christopher. A Short Course in the Secret War. New York: Dell, 1963; 1988.
Ford, Harold P. Estimative Intelligence. Lanham, MD: University Press of America,
1993.
Handel, Michael I. War, Strategy, and Intelligence. London: Cass, 1989.
Haswell, Jock. Spies and Spymasters. London: Thames & Hudson, 1977.
Herman, Michael. Intelligence Power in Peace and War. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
Johnson, Loch K. Secret Agencies: U.S. Intelligence in a Hostile World. New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 1996.
Jordan, Amos, William Taylor, and Michael Mazar. American National Security.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989.
Kent, Sherman. Strategic Intelligence for American World Policy. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1966.
Laqueur, Walter. A World of Secrets: The Uses and Limits of Intelligence. New York:
Basic Books, 1985.
Levite, Ariel. Intelligence and Strategic Surprises. New York: Columbia University
Press, 1987.
Martin, David C. Wilderness of Mirrors. New York: Bantam Books, 1980.
Maurer, Alfred C , Marion D. Tunstall, and James M. Keagle (eds.). Intelligence:
Policy and Process. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1985).
Bibliography
213
Murphy, David E., Sergei Kondrashev, and George Bailey. Battleground Berlin:
CIA vs. KGB in the Cold War. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997.
Oseth, John M. Regulating U.S. Intelligence Operations: A Study in Definition of the
National Interest. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1985.
Richelson, Jeffrey T. A Century of Spies: Intelligence in the Twentieth Century. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Shulsky, Abram N. Silent Warfare. Washington, DC: Brassey's, 1991.
Espionage and Counterintelligence

Allen, Thomas, and Norman Polmar. Merchants of Treason. New York: Delacorte
Press, 1988.
Barron, John. Breaking the Ring. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987.
Benson, Robert L., and Michael Warner (eds.). VENONA: Soviet Espionage and the
American Response. Washington, DC: NSA and CIA, 1996.
Blitzer, Wolf. Territory of Lies: The Exclusive Story of Jonathan Jay Pollard. New York:
Harper & Row, 1989.
Earley, Pete. Confessions of a Spy: The Real Story of Aldrich Ames. New York: G. P.
Putnam's Sons, 1997.
Hood, William. The Mole. New York: W. W. Norton, 1987.
Mangold, Tom. Cold Warrior: James Jesus Angleton, the CIA's Master Spy Hunter.
New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991.
Riebling, Mark. Wedge: The Secret War between the FBI and the CIA. New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1994.
Sakharov, Vladimir. High Treason. New York: Ballantine Books, 1981.
Wise, David. The Spy Who Got Away: The Inside Story of Edward Lee Howard. New
York: Random House, 1988.
. Nightmover: How Aldrich Ames Sold the CIA to the KGB for $4.6 Million.
New York: HarperCollins, 1995.
Covert Operations
Barnett, Frank R., B. Hugh Tovar, and Richard H. Schultz. Special Operations in
U.S. Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1985.
Godson, Roy. Dirty Tricks or Trump Cards: U.S. Covert Action and Counterintelligence. Washington, DC: Brassey's, 1995.
Leary, William M. Perilous Missions: Civil Air Transport and CIA Covert Operations
in Asia. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1984.
Prados, John. Presidents' Secret Wars: CIA and Pentagon Covert Operations from
World War II through Iranscam. New York: William Morrow, 1986.
Rositzke, Harry A. CIA's Secret Operations: Espionage and Counterespionage and
Covert Action. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1988.
Shackley, Theodore. The Third Option: An American View of Counter insurgency.
Pleasantville, NY: Reader's Digest, 1981.
214
Bibliography
Treverton, Gregory F. Covert Action: The Limits of Intervention in the Postwar World.
New York: Basic Books, 1987.
Warner, Roger. Backfire: The CIA's Secret War in Laos and Its Links to the Vietnam
War. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995.
Webb, Gary. Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.
New York: Seven Stories Press, 1998.
Business Intelligence
Coplin, William D., and Michael K. O'Leary (eds.). The Handbook of Country and
Political Risk Analysis. E. Syracuse, NY: Political Risk Services, 1994.
Fialka, John. War by Other Means: Economic Espionage in America. New York:
W. W. Norton, 1997.
Fischer, Robert J., and Guion Green. Introduction to Security. Boston: ButterworthHeinemann, 1998.
Fuld, Leonard M. The New Competitive Intelligence. New York: John Wiley & Sons,
1995.
Post, Richard S., and Arthur A. Kingsbury. Security: An Introduction to the Protective Services. Boston: Butterworth-Heinemann, 1991.
Raddock, David M. (ed.). Assessing Corporate Political Risk: A Guide for International
Businessmen. Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield, 1986.
Schweizer, Peter. Friendly Spies: How America's Allies Are Using Economic Espionage
to Steal Our Secrets. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1993.
Ting, Wen Lee. Multi-national Risk Assessment and Management: Strategies for Investment and Marketing Decisions. New York: Quorum Books, 1988.
Winkler, Ira. Corporate Espionage. Rocklin, CA: Prima Publishing, 1997.
Analysis
Helgerson, John. Getting to Know the President: CIA Briefings of Presidential Candidates, 1952-1992. Washington, DC: Center for Study of Intelligence, CIA,
1995.
MacEachin, Douglas J. CIA Asessments of the Soviet Union: The Record vs. the
Charges. Washington, DC: Center for the Study of Intelligence, CIA, 1996.
Prados, John. The Soviet Estimate: U.S. Intelligence Analysis and Russian Military
Strength. New York: Dial Press, 1982.
Sick, Gary. All Fall Down: America's Tragic Encounter with Iran. Harrisonburg, VA:
R. Donnelly & Sons, 1986.
Steury, Donald (ed.). Sherman Kent and the Board of National Estimates. Washington, DC: CIA History Staff, 1994.
Technology
Bamford, James. The Puzzle Palace. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1984.
Bedlow, Gregory W., and Donald E. Welzenbach. The CIA and the U-2 Program,
1954-1974. Washington, DC: Central Intelligence Agency, 1998.
Bibliography
215
Beschloss, Michael R. Mayday: Eisenhower, Kruschev and the U-2 Affair. New York:
Harper & Row, 1986.
Brugioni, Dino. Eyeball to Eyeball: The Inside Story of the Cuban Missile Crisis. New
York: Random House, 1990.
Burrows, William. Deep Black: Space Espionage and National Security. New York:
Random House, 1986.
Day, Dwayne, John M. Logsdon, and Brian Latell (eds.). Eye in the Sky: The Story
of the Corona Spy Satellites. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press,
1998.
Kahn, David. The Codebreakers. New York: Macmillan, 1973.
Layton, Edwin T., Rear Admiral USN (Ret.). "And I Was There": Pearl Harbor and
MidwayBreaking the Secrets. New York: William Morrow & Co., 1985.
Lewin, Ronald. The American Magic: Codes, Ciphers, and the Defeat of Japan. London:
Penguin, 1983.
Peebles, Curtis. The CORONA Project. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1997.
Rich, Ben R., and Leo Janos. Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed. New York: Little, Brown, 1994.
Richelson, Jeffrey T. Keyhole: America's Secret Eyes in Space: The U.S. Spy Satellite
Program. New York: Harper & Row, 1990.
Ruffner, Kevin (ed.). CORONA: America's First Satellite Program. Washington, DC:
CIA History Staff, 1995.
General Interest
Bearden, Milt. The Black Tulip. New York: Random House, 1998.
Clancy, Tom, and General Fred Franks, Jr. Into the Storm: A Study in Command.
New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1997.
Codevilla, Angelo. Informing Statecraft: Intelligence for a New Century. New York:
Free Press, 1992.
Godson, Roy, Ernest May, and Gary Schmitt (eds.). U.S. Intelligence at the Crossroads: Agendas for Reform. Washington, DC: Brassey's, 1995.
Gordon, Michael R., and General Bernard Trainor. The Generals' War: The Inside
Story of the Conflict in the Gulf. New York: Little, Brown, 1995.
Hilsman, Roger. Strategic Intelligence and National Decision. Glencoe, IL: Free Press,
1956.
Muggeridge, Malcolm. Chronicles of Wasted Time. New York: William Morrow &
Co., 1974.
O'Toole, G.J.A. The Encyclopedia of American Intelligence and Espionage. New York:
Facts on File, 1988.
Schwarzkopf, H. Norman. It Doesn't Take a Hero. New York: Bantam Books, 1992.
Smith Thompson, Robert. The Missiles of October: The Declassified Story of John F.
Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992.
Tuchman, Barbara. The Zimmermann Telegram. New York: Ballantine Books, 1966.
Tzu, Sun. The Art of War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1963.
Watson, Bruce W. United States Intelligence: An Encyclopedia. New York: Garland
Publishers, 1990.
Index
Afghanistan, 25, 66, 73, 113; U.S. covert action in, 75, 79-81, 116, 178
Allende, Salvador, 2, 73, 78-79, 84
Amador, Manuel, 69
American Revolution, 8; counterintelligence in, 87-88; covert action in,
65-67
American Society for Industrial Security (ASIS), 161
Ames, Aldrich, 2, 15, 19, 31, 89, 94,
141, 163-164; betrayal of Gordievsky, 125; case results, 101-103; and
Pete Earley, 181; and the Howard
case, 100; and the polygraph, 97,
133, 206; Soviet errors in handling,
34, 130; views on espionage, 12, 36;
as a "walk-in, " 93
Angleton, James J., 90, 98-99, 103
Angola, 66
Arbenz, Jacobo, 70-71, 78
Argentina, 108, 114
Arnold, Benedict, 88
Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO), 185
Aum Shinrikyo, 111
Auschwitz, 10
Baker, Lafayette, 88, 175
Baker, William, 179
Bandera, Stefan, 65
Berg, Moe, 181
Betts, Richard K., 48
Bin Laden, Osama, 116, 118
Bissell, Richard, 71
Blake, George, 92
Bradley, General Omar, 183
Brown Commission. See United
States, Intelligence Community, reform studies of
Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), 163.
See also Germany
Bush, George, 3, 141, 193, 195, 197;
administration of, 143, 179
Cable News Network (CNN), 13, 41,
47
Canada, 16, 75, 122-123, 130, 175
Carter, Jimmy, 143, 177, 194, 197; administration of, 56, 158
Carver, George, 52
Casey, William J., 3, 76, 85, 123, 138,
178-179, 183, 194, 197
Castro, Fidel, 7-8, 40, 71-72, 74, 84,
94, 118
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 2 4, 8, 18, 105, 142, 192, 199; analysis
in, 13-14, 43-45, 50-54, 58-61, 110111, 147-148; clandestine service of,
218
Index
12, 20, 30-40, 93, 204; counterintelligence in, 89-91, 94-95; and counterterrorism, 114, 117, 198; and covert
action, 17, 65-66, 70-85; and crime,
121; and the FBI, 15, 99-103, 122,
146, 166, 178; and industrial espionage, 123, 158, 170; inspector general of, 120, 140-142, 180;
intellignece sharing in, 124-126;
management of, 19-20, 137, 193198, 205; and narcotics, 120; open
sources in, 41; photo reconnaissance
in, 27-28, 30; public affairs in, 176185, 187-190; security in, 98, 138140, 161-164; training in, 133-135;
and treaty monitoring, 173; warning in, 47-48. See also Director of
central intelligence
Chile, 73, 78-79, 84
Chin, Larry Wu-tai, 89, 91, 97, 100
China, 8, 91, 107-108, 123
Church, Benjamin, 87
Church, Frank, 17, 73-74, 144, 176177
Clancy, Tom, 2, 43, 110, 184
Clarridge, Duane R., 61
Cleveland, Grover, 69
Clinton, William J., 115, 173, 184; administration of, 15-16, 141, 195, 197198
Colby, William E., 14, 51, 147, 177,
196
Cold War, 1-2, 4, 10, 130, 151, 173,
191; counterintelligence in, 89-91,
96-97, 100, 105-106, 163; covert
action in, 65-66, 76-77, 81; industrial espionage in, 166-167; open
sources in, 7-8
Colombia, 65, 69, 97, 115
Consortium for the Study of Intelligence, 4
Contras. See Nicaragua
Corona, 180
Council on Foreign Relations, 82-84
Cuba, 7, 24, 84, 196; Bay of Pigs landing in, 1, 71, 83; intelligence service
of (DGI), 66; missile crisis in, 180,

187
Czechoslovakia, 25, 65
Darling, Arthur, 181
Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA),
48, 50, 54, 137, 146-147, 202
Deutch, John, 120, 179-180, 195-197
DGI (Cuban intelligence service), 66.
See also Cuba
DGSE (French intelligence serveice).
See France
Director of central intelligence (DCI),
3, 18-19, 21, 29, 44, 51-52, 55, 7071, 137, 142-143, 146-149, 156, 183,
186; and Congress, 74, 82, 120, 145,
177, 201-202; and intelligence reform, 192-199, 205; and military intelligence, 203; and the public, 177180, 184, 188
Donovan, William "Wild Bill," 1, 181;
and College of Cardinals, 14, 44, 51,
54; and Office of Strategic Services
(OSS), 4 3 ^ 4 , 69, 99
Doolittle, General Jimmy, 72
Dozier, General William, 113
Dulles, Allen W., 71, 196
Dulles, John Foster, 71, 196
Earley, Pete, 181
Eisenhower, Dwight D., 142, 176, 191,
196; administration of, 71
El Salvador, 65, 75
Enigma machine, 9, 25
Ethiopia, 66, 73
Farobundo Marti, 65, 75
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI),
1, 192, 198-199; and CIA, 99-101,
146, 149, 179, 194; and foreign espionage, 15, 34, 89, 91, 98, 130, 136;
and global crime, 118-119, 121; and
industrial espionage, 123, 152, 166,
170; and intelligence, 18, 44, 122,
140; and private industry, 117, 122;
and the public, 184, 189; and terrorism, 16, 114-115
Federation of American Scientists, 186
Index
Fishel, Edwin, 43
Ford, Gerald, 74, 143, 177
Foreign Broadcast Information Service
(FBIS), 8, 40-41, 91
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Court, 102
France, 21, 30, 65, 67, 69, 92, 107, 123,
158
Fuld, Leonard, 154
Gandhi, Indira, 65
Gates, Robert M. 3, 7, 14, 51, 53-54,
148, 179, 194-195, 197
Germany, 8-9, 25, 70, 94, 99, 122, 125,
137, 140, 163, 183
Global organized crime (GOC), 106,
118-119
Godson, Roy, 64
Goodman, Melvin, 58-60
Gordievsky, Oleg, 92, 125
Gouzenko, Igor, 130
Great Britain, 64, 67-68, 71, 87-88,
107, 182; intelligence services of (MI5, MI-6), 3, 8-9, 54-55, 90, 125, 173174
Greenhow, Rose, 88
Groat, Douglas, 95, 140
GRU (Soviet Union, military intelligence service of), 92, 109, 122
Guatemala, 33-34, 70-71, 78
Gulf War, 65, 106, 111, 117, 194
Guzman, Abimael, 124
Harrison, Benjamin, 69
Helms, Richard, 149, 193, 196
Hersh, Seymour, 176
Hezbollah, 113, 115
Hillenkoeter, Admiral Roscoe, 70, 176
Hilsman, Roger, 12, 36
Hitz, Frederick, 141
Hollis, Sir Roger, 174
Hoover, J. Edgar, 1, 15, 18, 44, 89, 99,
146, 149, 179
Howard, Edward Lee, 97, 99-100
HPSCI (House Permanent Select
Committee on Itelligence). See
United States, Congress, intelligence
oversight committees of
219
HUMINT (human intelligence). See

Intelligence, espionage in
Hussein, Saddam, 1, 40, 47, 65, 77, 80,
83, 108, 117, 201
Imagery, photo intelligence (PHOTINT), 10-11, 23-24, 27-30, 194
India, 59, 65, 107, 135
Indonesia, 71, 78
Inman, Admiral Bobby Ray, 39, 194
Intelligence: analysis in, 12-15, 21, 4 3 61, 155-157; counterintelligence in,
15-16, 87-103, 106; covert action in,
16-17, 63-85; definitions of, 5-7; espionage in, 11-12, 23, 30-40, 87,152155; management and control in, 1720, 129-149; measurements and signatures (MASINT), 203; photo
(PHOTINT), 10-11, 23-24, 27-30,
194; polygraph use in, 31, 96-97,
132-133, 205-206; and private
industry, 21, 151-170; recruiting in,
131-132, 136; signals (SIGINT), 8-9,
23-27, 29, 206-107, 192
Iran, 25, 48, 64, 66, 71, 75, 77-78, 108,
139
Iran-Contra Affair, 17, 68, 75-76, 82,
141, 143, 145, 178
Iraq, 25, 77, 106, 108, 111-112, 117
Israel, 66, 89, 92, 94, 107-108, 111,
116, 123, 173
Italy, 70-71, 113, 118, 121
Jackson, Andrew, 67
Japan, 6, 21, 23, 69, 111, 151, 158
Jefferson, Thomas, 12, 16, 67
Jeremiah, Admiral David, 59, 135
Johnson, Lyndon, 196; administration
of, 89, 124
Joint Publications Research Service, 41
Kampiles, William, 98
Kansi, Mir Aimal, 99, 138, 163
Kazakhstan, 108
Kennan, George, 12, 36
Kennedy, John F., 72, 196
Kennedy, Robert F., 72
Kenya, 116, 139
220
Index
KGB. See Soviet Union, intelligence

service of
KH-11, 28, 98
Knott, Stephen, 68
Kuklinski, Colonel Ryszard, 92
Kuwait, 1, 47
Lauder, George, 178
Lebanon, 48, 113, 115, 139
Lebed, General Alexander, 109
Libya, 66, 77, 114, 140
Lincoln, Abraham, 68, 88
Lowell, Francis Cabot, 151
Lumumba, Patrice, 74
McCarthy, Joseph, 89, 96
McCone, John, 196
Madison, James, 12, 17, 67
Markov, Georgi, 65
Martin, William H., 96
Mengistu Haile Mariam, 73
Mexico, 68, 115
MI-5, MI-6. See Great Britain, intelligence services of
Mitchell, Bernon F., 96
Mossad, 116. See also Israel
Mossadegh, Mohammed, 71
Moynihan, Daniel Patrick, 182-183,
187
Muggeridge, Malcolm, 3, 174, 189
lic, 181; recruiting in, 137; secrecy

in, 27
National Technical Means (NTM), 24
Nicaragua, 65, 73, 75, 81, 120, 180
Nicholson, Harold J., 93, 97, 100-103,
164, 204
Nimitz, Admiral Chester, 6
Nixon, Richard M., 79; administration
of, 89, 124, 196
North Korea, 25, 77, 92, 94, 107-108
Office of Strategic Services (OSS), 1, 3,
12, 36, 4 3 ^ 4 , 51, 69, 95, 99, 131, 175
Pakistan, 66, 80, 107-108
Panama, 65, 69
Pearl Harbor, 1, 44, 47
Penkovsky, Oleg, 92
Perry, William, 7
Peru, 113, 123
Philby, Kim, 90, 125
Pinkerton, Alan, 88
Pinochet, General Augusto, 79
Poland, 64, 92, 122
Polk, James K., 12, 68, 175
Pollard, Jonathan, 19, 89, 92, 98, 100
Polyakov, Dmitri, 92
Popov, Pyotr, 92
Powers, Francis Gary, 10, 27
President's Daily Brief (PDB), 45
Qaddafi, Muammar el-, 114
Najibullah, 73, 80
National Estimates, Board of, 14, 44,
51, 54-55, 147, 181
National Foreign Intelligence Board
(NFIB), 52, 55, 146, 193
National Imagery and Mapping
Agency (NIMA), 29-30, 48, 202
National Intelligence Council (NIC),
14, 51-52, 55, 58, 147-148
National Reconnaissance Office
(NRO), 20, 29, 176, 181, 199
National Security Agency (NSA), 2, 9,
50, 146; and CIA, 25, 48, 147; and
controls, 26; costs of, 29; defectors
from, 96, 176; and the FBI; and military intelligence, 202; and the pub-
Raborn, Admiral William, 196

Reagan, Nancy, 119
Reagan, Ronald, 75, 139, 143, 178, 194,
197; administration of, 20, 131, 145
Redmond, Paul, 103
Roosevelt, Franklin D., 43-44, 69, 99
Roosevelt, Kermit, 71
Roosevelt, Theodore, 17, 69
Rosenberg, Julius and Ethel, 89
Russia, 106-107, 109, 123, 153, 187,
204; intelligence service of (SVR),
100, 103, 181
Sandinistas. See Nicaragua
Saudi Arabia, 2, 7, 48
Index
Schlesinger, James, 196
Schwarzkopf, General Norman, 65
Sendero Luminoso, 113, 123
SIGINT (signals intelligence), 8-9, 2 3 27, 29, 106-107, 192
Smith, General Walter Bedell, 51, 181
Snider, L. Britt, 141
Society of Competitive Intelligence
Professionals (SCIP), 160
Sorensen, Theodore, 197
Souers, Admiral Sidney, 44, 146
Soviet Union (USSR), 1, 10-11, 70;
and the Cold War, 105-106, 130,
166; and Cuba, 71; and economic
data, 156, 183; and SIGINT, 24-28;
and the Third World, 73, 79-80
Soviet Union, intelligence service of
(KGB), 1, 136; and covert action, 17,
64-66; and espionage, 30-31, 34, 8990, 92-94, 100, 103, 125, 163; and industrial espionage, 122; and public
affairs, 181
Soviet Union, military intelligence
service of (GRU), 92, 109, 122
SR-71, 10
SSCI (Senate Select Committee on Intelligence). See United States, Congress, intelligence oversight
committees of
Sudan, 111, 116
Sukarno, 71, 78
Sun Tzu, 23, 63, 65, 67, 151, 208
Taliban, 113. See also Afghanistan
Tanzania, 116, 139
Tenet, George, 136, 183-184, 189-190,
195, 198
Truman, Harry S., 44, 142, 146, 176,
180, 183, 193, 196
Turner, Admiral Stansfield, 3, 9, 24,
147, 158, 177-178, 193-194, 197
Twentieth Century Fund. See United
States, Intelligence Community, reform studies of
Tyler, John, 67
U-2, 10, 27
United States: civil war, intelligence
221
in, 8, 10, 12, 23, 43, 68, 88; Congress, 68, 70, 72-76, 82-83, 85, 89,
132, 141, 175, 203; Congress, intelligence oversight committees of, 4,
26, 144-145, 176-177, 186, 195, 201202; defense, secretary of, 45, 148,
192; Department of Defense, 12, 18,
29-30, 146, 185, 193, 200, 202-203;
Department of Justice, 18, 102; Department of State, 18, 40, 50, 52, 72,
105, 117, 122, 139, 156, 158, 182,
187, 200; Department of State, Bureau of Intelligence and Research of
(INR), 54, 57, 146-147; Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA),
119; Economic Espionage Act, 152,
160; executive office of (White
House), 45, 52, 69, 71-76, 81-83,
124, 142-144, 176, 183, 193-194; executive orders, 65, 74, 143, 177;
Founding Fathers, 12, 16, 74, 79,
175, 186, 201; Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), 138, 153, 183; Intelligence Community (IC), 18-20, 29,
50, 108, 114-115, 117, 124, 137-138,
143-144, 146-149, 152, 158, 191-196,
198-199; Intelligence Community,
reform studies of, 4, 18-21, 30, 4950, 76-82, 191-193, 195, 201-204,
206; Intelligence Oversight Board
(IOB), 142-143; President's Foreign
Intelligence Advisory Board
(PFIAB), 142
USSR. See Soviet Union
Vandenberg, General Hoyt, 44, 99
Venona, 180, 183
Walker Spy Ring, 89, 130
Walters, General Vernon, 2
Warner, Michael, 72
Washington, George, 12, 16, 64, 66-67,
87, 174
Watergate, 73, 176, 196
weapons of mass destruction (WMD),
106-112
Webster, William, 100, 118, 120, 156,
179, 194, 197
222
Index
Wilson, Edwin, 140

Woolsey, R. James, 77, 179, 195,
197
World War I, 8, 18, 69, 110
World War II, 9-10, 12, 43, 65, 69 -70,
89, 130, 151, 175, 192
Wright, Peter, 174

Yamamoto, Admiral Isoroku, 69
Yunis, Fahwaz, 114
Zacharski, Marian, 122
About the Author

ARTHUR S. HULNICK is a thirty-five year veteran in the intelligence
profession, including seven years as an Air Force Intelligence Officer and
twenty-eight years in various assignments in the Central Intelligence
Agency. He has been teaching about intelligence at Boston University
since 1989, first as a CIA Officer-in-Residence and, after his retirement
from the CIA in 1992, as a regular member of the faculty. He has published numerous articles on intelligence matters and serves on the Editorial Board of International Journal of Intelligence and Counterlntelligence.
He is an active member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers
(AFIO) and is a member of the board of its New England chapter.

Fixing The Spy Machine

Diunggah oleh

Informasi Dokumen

Judul Asli

Hak Cipta

Format Tersedia

Bagikan dokumen Ini

Bagikan atau Tanam Dokumen

Opsi Berbagi

Apakah menurut Anda dokumen ini bermanfaat?

Apakah konten ini tidak pantas?

Hak Cipta:

Format Tersedia

Fixing The Spy Machine

Diunggah oleh

Hak Cipta:

Format Tersedia

FIXING THE SPY

This page intentionally left blank

FIXING THE SPY

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

This page intentionally left blank

For Eileen, Sandra and Larisa

This page intentionally left blank

Is the Spy Machine Broken?

Stealing the Secrets

Puzzles and Mysteries

Catching the Enemy's Spies

Stopping the Bad Guys

Managing and Controlling Secret Intelligence

Spying for Profit

Secret Intelligence and the Public

Fixing the Spy Machine

This page intentionally left blank

speaking tour of U.S. colleges and universities, writing and speaking

This page intentionally left blank

me over the years in staying current on the world and profession of

Association of Former Intelligence Officers

FBI security awareness network

American Society for Industrial Security

Committee on Foreign Intelligence

counterlntelligence; also competitive intelligence

Central Intelligence Agency

Community Management Staff

Counter Narcotics Center

Counter Terrorism Center

director of central intelligence

deputy director for intelligence

Drug Enforcement Administration

Cuban intelligence service

French intelligence service

Defense Intelligence Agency

director of military intelligence

Cable News Network

director of national intelligence

Federal Bureau of Investigation

Foreign Broadcast Information Service

Freedom of Information Act

global organized crime

Soviet-Russian military intelligence service

House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence

Bureau of Intelligence and Research (State Dept.)

Intelligence Oversight Board

Soviet intelligence service

measurements and signatures intelligence

British internal security service

British secret intelligence service

National Counterlntelligence Center

National Foreign Intelligence Board

National Intelligence Council

National Intelligence Estimate

National Imagery and Mapping Agency

national intelligence officer

National Photographic Intelligence Center

National Reconnaissance Office

National Security Agency

National Technical Means

open source intelligence

Office of Strategic Services

Italian communist party