National Security Intelligence

by Loch K. Johnson

  With the right spy in the right place, with surveillance satellites in the proper orbit, or with reconnaissance aircraft that can penetrate enemy airspace, a nation might be able to uncover secrets. With mysteries, though, leaders must rely largely on the thoughtful assessments of intelligence analysts about the contours of an answer, based on hunches and as much empirical evidence as can be found in open sources or through espionage. Prudent nations establish an intelligence capability to ferret out secrets and, as best they can, to ponder mysteries.

  Central themes

  This is a book about a nation's efforts to unravel secrets and mysteries, as its leaders attempt to understand world affairs and make sound decisions in a hostile global environment. It has two unifying themes that focus on intelligence failures and scandals. The first theme argues that intelligence agencies in the West have helped protect the democracies against a variety of dangers, from bellicose totalitarian regimes to terrorist organizations at home and abroad, but that these agencies have often fallen short in meeting their responsibility to provide a “first line of defense” against threats. The events of 9/11, along with subsequent erroneous predictions about weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq, have vividly and tragically underscored the possibility of error by American and other Western intelligence organizations.

  Nations and other organizations have periodically experienced significant intelligence mistakes, some of which have led to disaster. Hitler's espionage services predicted that Britain would be weak-kneed and unwilling to react with force against a Nazi invasion of Poland. Joseph Stalin assumed that he could depend on the Third Reich to honor a non-aggression pact signed with the Soviet Union early in the Second World War. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his intelligence aides assumed that Japan would not be so bold as to strike Pearl Harbor in 1941. As a result of human error and bureaucratic blunder, intelligence misjudgments have haunted leaders and organizations in regimes of every stripe. Intelligence failure is far more the norm than it is a rare exception. Self-delusion; mirror-imaging (that is, assuming other nations will behave in the same manner as one's own nation, despite cultural differences); bureaucratic rivalries that hinder intelligence-sharing; the lack of human agents or surveillance satellites in the right place – the list of reasons for failure goes on. How prescient was the philosopher of war Karl von Clausewitz (1730–1831) when he concluded that “many intelligence reports in war are contradictory, even more are false, and most are uncertain.”2 The same is true in times of peace. This reality about the limits of intelligence is the uncomfortable truth woven like a dark thread through the pages of this volume.

  Another truth, and the second theme presented here, is that – regrettably – intelligence agencies (in the manner of other organizations, whether governmental or private sector) often fall prey to Lord Acton's well-known prophecy that “power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”3 He might have added: “especially secret power, hidden as it is from the guardians of liberty.”4 History reveals that time and again a nation's secret services have turned their disquieting capabilities for surveillance and manipulation against the very citizens they were meant to shield. Efforts within democratic regimes to maintain accountability over intelligence agencies (“oversight,” in the awkward expression of American political scientists) has proven difficult and has often failed.

  Neither of these themes – the inability to predict future events with precision, and the acknowledgment that secret government organizations can be a danger to open societies – should astound the reader. After all, intelligence agencies are comprised of human beings – flawed by nature and devoid of a crystal ball; consequently, one can anticipate failures and abuses. (The famous “Grand Strategy” course at Yale University begins with the reading of Paradise Lost, a drama by John Milton on the seeds of human corruption.) No mere mortal is omniscient, nor can any mere mortal lay claim to Kantian purity in government affairs. Yet societies seem regularly taken aback by the occurrence of intelligence failures and scandals. Citizens and policymakers alike express amazement and dismay that their espionage services have been unable to provide a clairvoyant warning of impending danger; or that these agencies have spied even at home, not just against enemies abroad. In contrast to this naivety, the American founder James Madison and his colleagues understood that nations were led not by angels but by human beings of flesh and blood; failure and scandal were inevitable.

  With the admirable common sense of a Midwesterner, President Harry S. Truman echoed Madison's cautionary words found in Federalist Paper 51 about the importance of constitutional safeguards against government abuse. “You see,” Truman said, “the way a government works, there's got to be a housecleaning every now and then.”5 Citizens in the democracies can throw up their hands in despair over the fact that intelligence errors and misdeeds are inescapable, or they can acknowledge the limits and the foibles of humans and adopt measures to lessen their effects. That is the challenge laid down in this book.

  Given the reality of persistent forecasting miscues and periodic corruption in government (which is especially hard to discern within the dark crevasses of the polity), why do nations dedicate substantial resources to the establishment and support of secret agencies? Are not the mistakes, as well as the risks to civil liberties, too great for democratic societies to tolerate the presence of clandestine organizations and their shadowy activities within the interstices of their free and open government institutions? The answer is that all living species have a primordial desire to shield themselves from threats to their well-being; thus, they establish – as well as they can – prudent defenses, whether radar installations erected by human societies to detect the presence of enemy bombers, or by motion-sensitive webs spun by spiders to warn of an intruder. As fundamental as the atom is to physics, so is the human instinct for survival to the creation of government institutions, including secret intelligence agencies. Moreover, reformers in the open societies continue to hope that corruption within intelligence agencies might be discovered early enough and rooted out before improper espionage activities manage to corrode the bedrock principles and procedures of democracy.

  Beyond survival, humans are motivated by a sense of ambition (see Figure 1.1). Intelligence agencies can assist leaders in their efforts to know in advance not only about threats they may face, but about opportunities that may arise to advance the national interest. This book focuses on intelligence agencies within nation-states; but they are not the only organizations drawn to espionage. The basic drives of survival and ambition apply as well to non-state organizations and factions around the world; they, too, often have their own intelligence apparatus.

  Figure 1.1 Basic human motivations and the quest for national security intelligence: a stimulus–response model

  Given the peril of modern WMD – or even the simpler but still catastrophic use of such low-tech methods as aerial terrorism (as occurred in the 9/11 attacks) or a large truck aimed at pedestrians (used in Nice in 2016) – nations hope that their intelligence agencies, however imperfect, might provide at least some degree of warning or leverage in dealings with foreign adversaries or domestic subversives. Nations are prepared to spend vast sums from their treasury on the gathering of information about threats near and far, in an attempt to avoid devastating surprises likes the 9/11 attacks, or to gain an advantage over foreign competitors in a world of military, commercial, cultural, and political rivalries.

  The intelligence missions

  Collection and analysis

  In myriad ways, the activities of intelligence agencies are vital for understanding international affairs.6 The most important intelligence mission is to gather reliable, timely information about the world, as well as to assess its meaning accurately. At the heart of decision-making in every nation is a scene where policy officials are seated around a table in a well-guarded government conference room, as they decide which direction to take their society in its relations with other nations
and international organizations. These deliberations are based on information from many sources – a vast flow of ideas and recommendations from personal aides, cabinet members, lobbyists, the media, academics, think-tank experts, friends, and family. Vital in this “river of information,” to use a metaphor favored by several American intelligence directors, are data collected by a nation's secret services. Often this source of information sets the government's agenda and shapes final decisions, especially in a time of crisis. One cannot fully comprehend the choices that a nation makes without an understanding of how these secret agencies operate, and without knowing something about the scope and quality of the information they provide. Despite the many sources of data and guidance available to leaders, national security intelligence resides at the center of a nation's decision-making, largely because secret agents and spy machines can pry out information from foreign governments that is available only through clandestine methods.

  As a nation's intelligence services have erred, so have its global strategies and its defenses against internal subversion; and as a nation's intelligence agencies have abused their secret powers, so have its citizens suffered domestic scandals and foreign policy embarrassments. Conversely, as examples throughout this book will attest, reliable information has led to better decisions; and democratic safeguards have curbed intelligence abuses.

  Covert action

  While primarily interested in the collection and analysis of information, intelligence agencies may also engage in a second mission: covert action – an attempt to change the course of history secretly, through the use of propaganda, political and economic operations, and paramilitary activities (that is, warlike endeavors, which can include assassination plots against the leaders of other nations and terrorist groups). These “dirty tricks,” as they are characterized by critics, can be attractive to leaders who seek quick and (they hope) quiet measures to gain an advantage over global competitors. Yet sometimes covert action has brought grief and disrepute to a nation for violating the canons of propriety and international law.

  Counterintelligence

  Every nation's intelligence service has a third important mission known as counterintelligence, of which counterterrorism is a part. Here the purpose is to guard a nation's secrets and institutions against secret penetration and deception by hostile foreign governments or factions – or, in the case of terrorists, their outright attack against the nation. Foreign adversaries will attempt to burrow into a rival (and sometimes even a friendly) government, mole-like, in search of secrets or to sow disinformation. The Soviets succeeded in penetrating the CIA and the FBI at high levels during the Cold War, as well as the British, German, and French intelligence services, with harmful effects for the West.

  Reports from the FBI and British intelligence indicate that Russian and Chinese intelligence officers have been spying against Western nations even more aggressively in recent years, mainly in a quest for technical, military, and commercial secrets. Russia is thought to have the capacity to disrupt the electricity grid in the United States, raising the prospect of cyber-warfare against this crucial national infrastructure. Every nation seeks to thwart the presence of foreign spies or terrorist “sleeper cells” in its midst. The end result is a game of cat and mouse played between malevolent intruders and spy-catchers within the inner sanctums of national capitals around the world.

  The challenge of intelligence accountability

  Further, for democratic regimes, the matter of intelligence accountability is critical to those who fear the possible rise of a Gestapo within their own society. In the United States, media investigators discovered in 1974 that the CIA had resorted to spying against American citizens whose only transgression had been to protest the war in Vietnam or to participate in the nation's civil rights movement – activities protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. In response to the disclosure of these intelligence abuses, Congress moved to reform America's spy agencies and promulgate safeguards against a repeated misuse of their secret trust. This intelligence reform movement in the United States spread around the world, and continues to be a subject of scholarly discussion and practical experimentation inside the world's existing and would-be democracies.

  This book's purpose

  The objective of this book is to place the topic of national security intelligence under a microscope, particularly with an eye toward examining its flaws and how they might be addressed in order to strengthen a nation's shield against terrorists and other enemies of democracy. This subject is often overlooked, because it is especially difficult to conduct research into the hidden domain of government. This opening chapter offers an introduction to national security intelligence in the United States by presenting some basic definitions and organizational diagrams necessary to understand how secret agencies operate.

  Ideally a book on national security intelligence would examine the approaches taken in various democratic and non-democratic societies. Some work of this nature has been undertaken.7 This volume, though, will explore the American experience for the most part. One day, when more data become available about intelligence activities in South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and elsewhere, a reliable comparative analysis of espionage services will likely yield significant insights into the evolution and function of intelligence agencies around the globe. Until that time, as the French intelligence studies scholar Sébastien Laurent has put it, “the Anglo-Saxon school of intelligence is the only show in town and currently enjoys an unrivaled global hegemony.”8

  In sum, this volume attempts to provide readers with a sense of the failures and scandals that ineluctably accompany the existence of secret agencies. Drawing upon the American example, it demonstrates how each of the intelligence missions is plagued by periodic error and misdeed. It investigates what might be done to mitigate failure and abuse – how a democracy can improve its odds for accurate indications and warnings (I & W) of danger, while promoting the rule of law even inside the government's darkened recesses. Despite the inevitability of failure and scandal, steps can be taken to reduce their incidence. America's intelligence agencies have also recorded many notable successes in defense of democracy and they are examined as well in these pages.

  National security intelligence is frustrating because of the inherent weaknesses that attend the imperfections of humankind; nonetheless, on a trouble-ridden world stage characterized by uncertainty, ambiguity, fear, and danger, no nation can afford to be without the shield – the eyes, the ears, and the mind of collection and analysis, and sometimes the sword (covert action and counterespionage) – that intelligence agencies can provide. A good starting place to develop an appreciation for the complexity of this topic is an exploration of the various meanings evoked by the phrase “national security intelligence.”

  The multiple dimensions of national security intelligence

  Intelligence as secret information

  Observers, and even intelligence specialists and practitioners, do not always agree on the precise meaning of national security intelligence. The major point of disagreement usually pivots around whether a definition of intelligence ought to be narrow or broad. Defined narrowly (as is most commonly the case), national security intelligence focuses on the primary mission of a nation's secret agencies: the gathering and analysis of information that might help to illuminate policy decisions made by its leaders. Refined still further, the definition may focus strictly on the actual product of the collection and analysis process: a written report or an oral briefing that conveys a blend of secretly and openly derived information to a government official. The CIA has defined intelligence simply as the “knowledge and foreknowledge of the world around us – the prelude to Presidential decision and action.”9 In this instance, national security intelligence means information. Some choose to limit the meaning even further to just secret information: that is, the findings gathered clandestinely by spies, satellites, reconnaissance aircraft, and electronic interceptions, and then inter
preted by analysts.

  Intelligence as a set of missions

  More broadly, national security intelligence can refer as well to the three primary intelligence missions: collection and analysis, covert action, and counterintelligence. One might imagine a policy official in Israel asking an intelligence director: “What mixture of secret operations might be most effective in finding out more about, and then stopping, Iran's development of a nuclear bomb?” Here the emphasis is on national security intelligence as a mélange of activities, or secret options, that a leader might adopt to achieve a foreign policy goal. In this case, then, national security intelligence means a catalogue of basic missions carried out by secret government agencies.

  Intelligence as a process

  A third usage of the term may refer solely to the most preeminent among the trio of missions: collection and analysis. In this instance, the concept of national security intelligence points to the means or the process by which information is gathered from the field – say, a document stolen by a British agent from a safe in Beijing, or a photograph snapped by a camera on a U.S. surveillance satellite passing over a North Korean vessel steaming through the South China Sea – and then transmitted to a government's decision-makers.

  Intelligence as organization