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Authors: Mark M. Lowenthal

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Within the United States, a long-standing debate has taken place about which agency should be responsible for paramilitary operations: the CIA or DOD. The CIA has traditionally run paramilitary operations because, initially, DOD wanted no involvement in them. If covert action is an alternative to military operations, DOD might find it difficult to keep the two options separate. International law poses another difficulty. Although no international acceptance has been given to covert action, the target may consider the use of military personnel (in or out of uniform) in such an activity to be an act of war. Finally, the involvement of DOD may undercut the effort to achieve plausible deniability.
However, DOD has greater expertise than the CIA in the conduct of military operations as well as a greater infrastructure to carry them out, which might save some money. Removing paramilitary operations from the CIA might spare the intelligence community some internal strains caused by having responsibility for both analysis and operations. New strains might subsequently appear in DOD.
The war in Afghanistan and the war against terrorism renewed the debate. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld pushed for a greater role for the Special Operations Command, including recruiting and maintaining spies in enemy forces. At the same time, the CIA had increased its own paramilitary capability, both as part of DCI George J. Tenet’s overall effort to enhance the Directorate of Operations and to respond to the war on terrorism. In its 2004 report, the 9/11 Commission (National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States) recommended that the Special Operations Command take over paramilitary operations from the CIA, based on the view that the two organizations had redundant capabilities and responsibilities. The commission envisaged the CIA organizing paramilitary units but SOCOM being responsible for final planning and execution.
A January 2004 study by the Army War College pointed out some fundamental differences in how the two groups operate, suggesting that even a collaborative effort would be difficult. For example, in joint operations, would military personnel be covered by the Geneva Convention? Would the necessary secrecy create chain of command problems and make it more difficult to communicate with or to identify friendly units? How would Congress oversee such operations? In February 2005, a study requested by President George W. Bush came out against the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission and argued that the CIA should retain its paramilitary capabilities. In June 2005, the Bush administration confirmed the CIA’s role in covert action. Still, Special Operations Command can be expected to continue to play a larger part in this area than was the case in the past, probably necessitating some clarification of duties in the future.
One concern raised by the conduct of covert actions is their possible effect on intelligence analysis, which is carried out, in part, by the same agency conducting the operation. If the CIA is conducting an operation—particularly a paramilitary operation—is it reasonable to expect analysts of the CIA to produce objective reports on the situation and the progress of the paramilitary operation? Or will there be a certain impetus, perhaps unstated, to be supportive of the operation? DCI Allen Dulles kept the Directorate of Intelligence—the CIA’s analytical arm—ignorant of operations in Indonesia (1957-1958) and at the Bay of Pigs (1961) so as not to contaminate it with knowledge of these operations.
In seventeenth- and (to a lesser extent) eighteenth-century Europe, statesmen occasionally used assassination as a foreign policy tool. Heads of state, who were royalty at this time, were exempt from this officially sanctioned act, but their ministers and generals were not. Soviet intelligence occasionally undertook “wet affairs,” as it referred to assassinations. Israeli intelligence has allegedly killed individuals outside of Israel. More recently, a former KGB officer, Alexander Litvinenko, was assassinated in London via radioactive polonium. The British government suspects Russian involvement in the 2006 assassination. The Church Committee (Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities), chaired by Frank Church. I)-Idaho, was formed in 1975 to investigate allegations that the CIA had exceeded its charter. The panel found in 1976 that the United States was involved in several assassination plots in the 1960s and 1970s—the most famous being that against Fidel Castro—although none succeeded.
(See box, “Assassination: The Hitler Argument.
”)
Since 1976 the United States has formally banned the use of assassination, either directly by the United States or through a third party. The ban has been written into three successive executive orders, the most recent signed by President Reagan in 1981, which remains in effect.
Still, the policy remains controversial. Although support for the ban was fairly widespread when instituted by President Gerald R. Ford (1974-1977), debate over the policy has been growing. Opponents continue to hold that it is morally wrong for a state to target specific individuals. But proponents have argued that assassination might be the best option in some instances and might be morally acceptable, depending on the nature of the target. Drawing up such guidelines still appears to be so difficult as to preclude a return to the previous policy. In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, debate over the assassination ban was renewed.
(See box, “The Assassination Ban: A Modern Interpretation.
”) The issue had changed somewhat, however, in that the United States now considered itself to be at war with terrorists, which altered the nature of the target and the legitimacy of using violent force. (See chap. 13 for a more detailed discussion of the ethical and moral issues raised by assassination.)
ASSASSINATION: THE HITLER ARGUMENT
 
Adolf Hitler is often cited as a good argument in favor of assassination as an occasional but highly exceptional policy option But when would a policy maker have made the decision to have him killed? Hitler assumed power legally in 1933. Throughout the 1930s he was not the only dictator in Europe who repressed civil liberties or arrested and killed large numbers of his own population. Josef Stalin probably killed more Soviet citizens during collectivization and the great purges than the Nazis sent to death camps. Deciding to kill Hitler prior to his attacks on the Jews or the onset of World War II would have required a fair amount of foresight as to his ultimate purposes. Little about Hitler was extraordinary until he invaded Poland in 1939 and approved the “final solution” against the Jews in 1942.
Britain revealed in 1998 that its intelligence service considered assassinating Hitler during the war, even as late as 1945. The British abandoned the plan not because of moral qualms or concerns about success but because they decided that Hitler was so erratic as a military commander that he was an asset for the Allies.
 
THE ASSASSINATION BAN: A MODERN INTERPRETATION
 
In August 1998 the United States launched a cruise missile attack on targets in Afghanistan associated with al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. The United States believed that bin Laden was behind the terrorist attacks earlier that month on two U.S. embassies in East Africa.
The Clinton administration later stated that one goal of the raid was to kill bin Laden and his lieutenants. Administration officials also argued that their targeting of bin Laden did not violate the long-standing ban on assassinations. Their view was based on an opinion written by National Security Council lawyers that the United States could legally target terrorist infrastructures and that bin Laden’s main infrastructure was human.
After the September 2001 attacks, bin Laden and other terrorists were seen as legitimate combatant targets, as the United States was at war against them.
 
ASSESSING COVERT ACTION
 
In addition to raising ethical and moral issues, the utility of covert action is difficult to assess. When examining a covert action, what constitutes success? Is it just achieving the aims of the operation? Should human costs, if any, be factored into the equation? Is the covert action still a success if its origin has been exposed?
Some people question the degree to which covert actions produce useful outcomes. For example, critics point to the 1953 coup against Iranian premier Mohammad Mossadegh and argue that it helped lead to the Khomeini regime in 1979. Proponents argue that an operation that put in place a regime friendly to the United States for twenty-six years, in a region as volatile as the Middle East, was successful. If no covert action is likely to create permanent positive change given the volatility of politics in all nations, is there some period of time that should be used to determine the relative success of a covert action?
As with all other policies, the record of covert action is mixed, and no hard-and-fast rules have been devised for assessing them. Assistance to anticommunist parties in Western Europe in the 1940s was successful; the Bay of Pigs was a fiasco. The view here is that the Mossadegh coup was a success, for the reasons noted earlier. But covert action is also subject to the law of unintended consequences. Abetting the fall of Allende helped lead to the regime of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Average Chileans were probably better off than they would have been under an evolving Marxist regime, but many people suffered repression and terror. Aid to the Mujaheddin in Afghanistan was highly successful and played an important role in the collapse of the Soviet Union. At the same time, Afghanistan remained mired in a civil war ten years after the last Soviet troops withdrew and was eventually ruled by the Taliban, who hosted the al Qaeda terrorists.
Covert action tends to be successful the more closely it is tied to specific policy goals and the more carefully defined the operation is.
KEY TERMS
 
blowback
covert action
paramilitary operations
plausible deniability
plumbing
presidential finding
propaganda
third option
FURTHER READINGS
 
The works listed do not go into the details of specific operations. Instead, they focus on the major policy issues discussed in this chapter.
 
Barry, James A. “Covert Action Can Be just.”
Orbis
37 (summer 1993): 375-390.
Berkowitz, Bruce 1)., and Allan E. Goodman. “The Logic of Covert Action.”
National Interest
51 (spring 1998): 38-46.
Chomeau. John B. “Covert Action’s Proper Role in U.S. Policy.”
International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence
2 (fall 1988): 407-413.
Daugherty, William J. “Approval and Review of Covert Action Programs since Reagan.”
International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence
17 (spring 2004): 62-80.
Gilligan, Tom.
10.000 Days with the Agency.
Boston: Intelligence Books Division, 2003.
Godson, Roy S. Dirty Tricks or Trump Cards:
U.S. Covert Action and Counterintelligence.
Washington, D.C.: Brassey’s. 1996.
Johnson, Loch K. “Covert Action and Accountability: Decision-Making for America’s Secret Foreign Policy.”
International Studies Quarterly
33 (March 1989): 81-109.
Knott, Stephen F.
Secret and Sanctioned: Covert Operations and the American Presidency.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Prados, John.
Presidents’ Secret Wars: CIA and Pentagon Covert Operations since World War II.
New York: William Morrow, 1986.
Reisman, W. Michael, and James E. Baker.
Regulating Covert Action: Practices. Contexts, and Policies of Covert Coercion Abroad in International and American Law.
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992.
Rositzke, Harry.
The CIA
’
s Secret Operations: Espionage, Counterespionage, and Covert Action.
New York: Reader’s Digest Press, 1977.
Shulsky, Abram N., and Gary J. Schmitt.
Silent Warfare: Understanding the World of Intelligence.
2d rev. ed. Washington, D.C.: Brassey’s, 1993.
Stiefler, Todd. “CIA’s Leadership and Major Covert Operations: Rogue Elephants or Risk-Averse Bureaucrats?”
Intelligenre and National Security
19 (winter 2004): 632-654.
Treverton, Gregory F.
Covert Action: The Limits of Intervention in the Postwar World.
New York: Basic Books. 1987.
CHAPTER 9
 
THE ROLE OF THE POLICY MAKER
 
M
OST AUTHORS and experts in the area of intelligence do not consider the policy maker to be part of the intelligence process. In their opinion, once the intelligence has been given to the policy client, the intelligence process is complete. The view in this book is that policy makers play such a central role at all stages of the process that it would be a mistake to omit them. Policy makers do more than receive intelligence; they shape it. Without a constant reference to policy, intelligence is rendered meaningless. Moreover, policy makers can play a determining role at every phase of the intelligence process.
BOOK: Intelligence: From Secrets to Policy
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