Finally, national security intelligence may refer to a building, or perhaps a tent staffed by intelligence officers in an encampment of soldiers bivouacked on a remote battlefield. The people responsible for the information gathered and interpreted by intelligence agencies belong to bureaucratic organizations. “Get intelligence on the line,” a general might order, referring to a specific structural entity – perhaps a reconnaissance unit on the front edge of a battlefield – that the commander wants to contact.
A holistic view of national security intelligence
In light of these various dimensions of national security intelligence, thinking of the term purely as a final paper product or an oral briefing that combines secretly acquired and open-source information is too limiting – although certainly national security intelligence is precisely that at its core. Still, intelligence is what intelligence does, and the secret agencies spend much of their time engaged in covert action and counterintelligence, too, not just collection and analysis. Indeed, during times of overt warfare, and sometimes in between, aggressive overseas intelligence operations in the form of covert action can become preeminent – the tail that wags the intelligence dog.
During the 1980s, for instance, the Reagan Doctrine was the most important approach to American foreign policy adopted by President Ronald Reagan and his National Security Advisers. This “doctrine” (a description coined by the media, not the Administration) relied on the CIA to combat Soviet intervention in the developing world – a bold escalation in the funding, magnitude, and frequency of covert actions directed against the Soviet Union and its operations in poor countries around the globe (but especially in Nicaragua and Afghanistan). If one assumed during the 1980s that U.S. national security intelligence was all about the writing of top secret reports on world affairs (or the reports themselves), one would have missed the profound significance of intelligence as a covert action mission considered vital by the Reagan Administration.
Similarly with counterintelligence. Every intelligence officer has an obligation to protect government secrets, augmenting those offices within the spy agencies that are officially responsible for this mole-catching mission. Relegating counterintelligence to orphan status increases the odds of dangerous foreign penetrations, which in turn can lead to the riddling of an intelligence agency with traitors who have succumbed to blandishments (typically, secret cash payments) to spy against their own country. The end result of counterintelligence failures: a nation's own agents abroad are identified, captured, and often killed; its clandestine overseas operations are rolled up; and its reporting is contaminated by the machinations of double agents and disinformation. To focus on secret reports as the be-all and end-all of national security intelligence is to lose sight of the indispensable counterintelligence responsibility to protect a nation's secrets and otherwise shield the public against hostile agent penetrations and terrorist attacks.
Accountability is also often dismissed by some as something that is at best tangential to the subject of national security intelligence. In a democracy, however, intelligence officers and their managers – not to mention the squadrons of lawyers who counsel them (135 in the CIA today, up from six in 1975 and two in 1947) – spend a fair amount of time dealing with overseers: inspectors general (IGs), executive oversight boards, legislative review committees, special panels of inquiry, and select commissions. Again, assuming that intelligence is what intelligence officers do, one would have to include that – at least in democratic regimes – national security intelligence involves time spent with intelligence supervisors, in all three branches of government in the United States, who understand the warnings of Madison and Lord Acton.
National security intelligence is decidedly not covert action alone or counterintelligence; neither is it just responding to oversight panels of inquiry. But it is certainly more than gathering information about threats and opportunities, sitting with a cup of coffee and a computer (or a pencil), writing up what it all means (analysis), and delivering reports to policy officials. Intelligence officials carry out a combination of all these activities. Collection and analysis is usually of premier importance, but occasionally covert action will rush to the forefront of the intelligence agenda. When an Aldrich Ames (CIA) or a Kim Philby (MI6 in Britain) is discovered to be an agent of treason within one's own government – in both of these cases, pawns of the Russian spy services – suddenly intelligence managers rue their lack of sufficient attention to the counterintelligence mission. Or when the acronyms of a nation's secret services – say, CIA, FBI, MI6, or MI5 – are splashed across the newspaper headlines with allegations of failed analysis or scandalous conduct, intelligence managers will wish they had devoted more time to keeping those who fund them in Congress properly informed as they seek to carry out their oversight responsibilities.
Some, quite possibly most, practitioners and scholars alike, will continue to prefer a narrow definition of national security intelligence: the idea of intelligence as information – indeed, just secret information. Others, though, including the author of this book, will adopt a more encompassing view, along the lines suggested by British intelligence scholars Peter Gill and Mark Phythian:
Intelligence is the umbrella term referring to the range of activities – from planning and information collection to analysis and dissemination – conducted in secret, and aimed at maintaining or enhancing relative security by providing forewarning of threats or potential threats in a manner that allows for the timely implementation of a preventive policy or strategy, including, where deemed desirable, covert activities.
The ultimate purpose of intelligence is to provide policymakers with a decision advantage as they cope with resolving problems that face their nation.10
Whatever definition one prefers, the critical point is that espionage agencies engage in several activities to support the interests of their host nation. In the spirit of capturing this diversity of responsibilities, one can conclude that national security intelligence consists of a cluster of government agencies that conduct secret activities, including covert action, counterintelligence, and, foremost, the collection and analysis of information for the purpose of illuminating the deliberations of policy officials by way of timely, accurate knowledge of potential threats and opportunities.
Since intelligence activities are carried out by people in secretive government agencies, a closer look at intelligence as an organization is in order. Which institutions engage in crafting the final products – reports and oral briefings to decision-makers – that reside at the core of what is meant by national security intelligence; and which agencies and individuals engage in covert action and counterintelligence? Who in the intelligence bureaucracy responds to intelligence overseers? The configuration of the seventeen major spy organizations in the United States provides an illustration of what a nation's secret agencies actually do, and how.
Intelligence as a cluster of organizations: the American experience
A fundamental aspect of every nation's approach to spying is to recruit professional espionage officers and house them in buildings that are heavily fortified by fences, alarms, and armed guards. The American espionage establishment has grown into a sprawling bureaucracy – the largest ever devised by any society in history. Moreover, since the 9/11 attacks, the funding for intelligence in the United States has risen dramatically. For example, the NSA budget doubled between 2001 and 2006, reportedly reaching some $8 billion a year.11 As displayed in Figure 1.2, the President and the National Security Council (NSC) stand at the apex of America's behemoth security apparatus. Beneath this National Command Authority (NCA) lie sixteen major intelligence agencies, led from 1947 through 2004 by a Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) and since 2005 by a new spymaster: the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), who is in charge of the Office of the DNI (ODNI) – often viewed as America's seventeenth intelligence agency – and responsible for the coordination of the entire intelligence establishment. An examination of organiz
ational frameworks can be about as exciting as having hot porridge for breakfast on a summer's day; but knowing which agencies comprise the Intelligence Community, and what their duties are, is a necessary first step toward understanding the world of spies.
Figure 1.2 The U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) in 2016*
*From 1947 to 2005, a Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) led the IC, rather than a DNI.
Military intelligence agencies
America's secret agencies have evolved into a cluster of organizations known, in a classic misnomer, as the “Intelligence Community” (IC). In reality, these agencies display the earmarks of rival tribes more than a harmonious community. Eight of the spy agencies are located within the framework of the Department of Defense (DoD), seven in civilian policy departments, and one – the CIA – stands as a civilian-oriented but independent organization. The military intelligence agencies include the National Security Agency (NSA), the nation's codebreaking, encrypting, and signals intelligence (sigint) organization, engaged primarily in telephone and email eavesdropping; the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), dedicated chiefly to taking photographs of enemy troops, weapons, and facilities (“imagery intelligence” or “geo-intelligence”), using cameras mounted on satellites in space, as well as on lower-altitude Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs or drones) and other reconnaissance aircraft; the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), which supervises the construction, launching, and management of the nation's surveillance satellites; the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), which analyzes military-related subjects; and the intelligence units of the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines, each focused on the collection and analysis of tactical intelligence from places overseas – especially battlefields – where U.S. personnel serve in uniform.
Together, these military organizations account for some 85 percent of the total annual U.S. intelligence budget – an aggregate figure of some $80 billion in 2010 – and employ about 85 percent of the nation's intelligence personnel.12 These military agencies absorb such a great portion of the yearly funding for espionage because of the high costs of the “platforms” they use for intelligence-gathering – especially large and expensive surveillance satellites, but also a global fleet of UAVs.
Funding for intelligence in the United States comes from two separate budgets: the National Intelligence Program (NIP), which supports the large national spy agencies, such as the NGA, the NRO, and the NSA, that have both military and civilian missions; and the Military Intelligence Program (MIP), which is devoted chiefly to tactical intelligence and related activities (TIARA). The boundary between the NIP and MIP, though, is “fluid, imprecise and subject to change,” according to the Federation of American Scientists Project on Government Secrecy.13 For instance, in 2006, the NGA received 70 percent of its funding from the NIP and 30 percent from the MIP; then, during the next year, the respective figures were 90 percent and 10 percent. In 2010, the respective percentages were approximately 66 percent and 34 percent.
In 2014, the NIP stood at $52.6 billion and the MIP at $19.2 billion, for a total of $71.8 billion. In 2016, the budget projections suggested a slight increase for the NIP, at $53.5 billion, and a decrease for the MIP, at $16.8 billion, or a total of $70.3 billion – a figure lower than the record spending in 2010, though an amount still vastly larger than America's aggregate spy budget before the 9/11 attacks (indeed, double the amount).
Civilian intelligence
Of the seven secret agencies embedded in civilian policy departments, four have been part of the Intelligence Community for decades and three are newcomers. Among the older agencies, the FBI is located in the Department of Justice and assigned both a counterintelligence and a counterterrorism mission; the Office of Intelligence and Analysis is in the Department of Treasury, which includes among its duties the tracking of petrodollars and the hidden funds of terrorist organizations; the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) is in the Department of State, the smallest of the secret agencies but one of the most highly regarded for its well-crafted and often prescient reports; and the Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence is in the Department of Energy and monitors the worldwide movement of nuclear materials (uranium, plutonium, heavy water, nuclear reactor parts), while also maintaining security at the nation's weapons laboratories and nuclear weapons storage sites.
The three newcomer civilian agencies, all brought on board after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, include Coast Guard Intelligence; the Office of Intelligence and Analysis, in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS); and the Office of National Security Intelligence, in the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), which is part of the Justice Department. When admitted to the Intelligence Community in 2001, Coast Guard Intelligence initially had its own direct line to the nation's intelligence director on the organizational (“wiring”) diagrams for America's spy establishment; but when the second Bush Administration created the DHS in 2003, Coast Guard Intelligence became an offshoot of this new Department, because of their common mission to protect the U.S. homeland and its coastline. The DEA, America's lead agency in the global struggle against illegal drug dealers, has been a part of the Justice Department for decades, but became a member of the Intelligence Community only in 2006.
The CIA
The last of the older agencies, and the eighth civilian intelligence organization, is the CIA, which is located outside the government's policy cabinet. During the Cold War, “the Agency” enjoyed special prestige in Washington, DC as the only espionage entity formally established by the National Security Act of 1947. Equally important for status and political clout in the nation's capital, it became the home office of the DCI – the titular leader of all the intelligence agencies. As noted earlier, since 2005 the DCI office has been replaced by a Director of National Intelligence or DNI, assisted by a set of deputies (DDNIs), a National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), and a panel of top-flight analysts on the National Intelligence Council or NIC (see Figure 1.2). In the 1950s, the DCI moved with the CIA from a group of old Navy buildings in Washington, near the Mall, into new quarters located in Langley, Virginia, adjacent to the township of McLean. Today, the office of the DNI – the new leader of the American intelligence services – is located in an upscale building at Liberty Crossing, an urban neighborhood near the shopping district of Tyson's Corner, close to Arlington, Virginia, and some six miles away from CIA Headquarters at Langley.
As the names imply, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Director of Central Intelligence were originally meant to serve as a focal point for the U.S. intelligence establishment, playing the role of coordinators for the Community's activities and the collators of its “all-source” (that is, all-agency) reports, in an otherwise highly fragmented array of spy organizations. R. James Woolsey, who held the position of DCI during the early years of the Clinton Administration, has described the job of America's intelligence chief in this way: “You're kind of Chairman and CEO of the CIA, and you're kind of Chairman of the Board of the intelligence community.”14 He emphasized, though, that the Director does not have the authority to give “rudder orders” to the heads of the various intelligence agencies (Woolsey served for a time as Undersecretary of the Navy). Rather, he continued, “it's more subtle” – a matter of personal relationships, conversations, and gentle persuasion: the glue of trust and rapport rarely discussed in textbooks, but the essence of successful government transactions in DC and other national capitals.
As an example of the internal structure of an intelligence agency, the CIA's organizational framework during the Cold War is displayed in Figure 1.3. Admiral Stansfield Turner, who served as DCI during the Carter Administration (1977–81), has referred to the four Directorates within the Agency at the time – Operations, Intelligence, Science and Technology, and Administration – as “separate baronies,” underscoring the notion that the CIA has several different cultures within its walls that are not always in sync with one another, or with the leadership cadre on the Agency's seventh f
loor.15
Figure 1.3 The CIA during the Cold War
Source: Fact Book on Intelligence, Office of Public Affairs, Central Intelligence Agency (April 1983), p. 9.
The DO/NCS
As Figure 1.4 illustrates, during the Cold War the Directorate of Operations (DO), led by a Deputy Director for Operations (DDO), was the arm of the CIA that extended overseas, housed for the most part in “stations” around the world, along with a few smaller “bases” within some nations or on some battlefields. The stations have within their walls specially fortified rooms, known as SCIFs (pronounced “skifs” – sensitive compartmented information facilities), that are resistant to electronic eavesdropping and allow Agency personnel to conduct top secret meetings overseas without fear of local counterintelligence officers or foreign intelligence services listening in.
Figure 1.4 The CIA's Operations Directorate during the Cold War
Source: Loch K. Johnson, America's Secret Power: The CIA in a Democratic Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 46.
The DO went through a name change during the second Bush Administration, when it was known as the National Clandestine Service (NCS). During the Obama Administration it reclaimed its old DO tag. Its personnel abroad are referred to as “case officers,” or, in a recent change of nomenclature, “operations officers.” They are led by a chief of station, or COS, within each foreign country. The job of the case officer is to recruit locals (known as “assets” or “agents,” who, if successful, are inducted into the Agency's service) to engage in espionage against their own countries, as well as to support the CIA's counterintelligence and covert action operations. To succeed, case or operations officers need to be gregarious individuals: charming, persuasive, and willing to take risks. For a foreigner to fall under their beguiling spell – or the attraction of the money the CIA may be offering – is to be “case officered” or “COed.”
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