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the states of peace and war. That alone is enough to raise broad ethical questions, although the policy makers’ willingness to maintain a covert action capability indicates some agreement among them on the propriety of its use. The specific details of an operation are likely to raise ethical issues as well. Should assistance be given to foreign political parties facing a close but democratic election against communist parties (e.g., France and Italy in the 1940s)? Should a democratically elected but procommunist government be subverted and overthrown (e.g., Guatemala, 1954)? Should a nation’s economy be disrupted—with attendant suffering for the populace—to overthrow the government (e.g., Cuba, 1960s)? Should a group opposed to a hostile government be armed, with a view toward fomenting an insurgency (e.g., Nicaragua. 1980s)? The issues these questions raise are important not only intrinsically but also because of the risk of exposure. How do covert actions fit with the causes, standards, and principles that the United States supports?

In evaluating proposed covert actions, policy makers should examine analogous past operations. Have they been tried in this same nation or region? What were the results? Are the risk factors different? Has this type of operation been tried elsewhere? Again, with what results? Although these are commonsense questions, they run up against a governmental phenomenon: the inability to use historical examples. Decision makers are so accustomed to concentrating on near-term issues that they tend not to remember accurately past analogous situations in which they have been involved. They move from issue to issue in rapid succession, with little respite and even less reflection. Or, as Ernest R. May and Richard Neustadt pointed out in Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision Makers (1988), they learn somewhat false lessons from the past, which are then misapplied to new circumstances.

Legislative reaction to covert actions is a bigger issue for the United States than it is for other democracies. The congressional committees that oversee the intelligence community are an integral part of the process, as providers of funding and as decision makers who need to be apprised of planned operations. Although congressional support is important, it is not mandatory. The long lead times required for the operations also mean that they can be put into the budget process in advance, so that funds can be allocated for them. Assuming that appropriated funds exist and that there are no specific bars to the covert action in question, then Congress must be informed but has no approval role.

Covert action does require formal approval in the executive branch. The president must sign an order approving the operation, based on the president’s finding that covert action is “necessary to support identifiable foreign policy objectives of the United States, and is important to the national security of the United States.” In intelligence parlance, this document is called a presidential finding. Congress and the American public did not know that the president signed off on each operation until Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger was forced to reveal as much before a congressional committee in the mid-1970s. Presidential findings are now required by law and must be in writing (except for emergencies, in which case a written record must be kept and a finding produced within forty-eight hours).

The finding is transmitted to those responsible for carrying out the operation and to the members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees or a more limited congressional leadership group in a memo of notification (MON). Often, because of the long time lines involved, the congressional committees will already have learned about the operation via the budget process, which includes a review of the year’s covert action plan. Congress may wish to be briefed on the specifics of the finding and the operation. The briefings are advisory in nature. Other than denying funding during the budget process, Congress has no basis for