Intelligence_ From Secrets to Policy - Mark M. Lowenthal [130]
ISSUES IN COVERT ACTION
Covert action, both in concept and practice, raises a host of issues. The most fundamental is whether such a policy option is legitimate. Like most questions of this sort, there is no correct answer. The prevailing opinions can be divided into two schools—idealists and pragmatists. Idealists argue that covert intervention by one state in the internal affairs of another violates acceptable norms of international behavior. They argue that the very concept of a third option is illegitimate. Pragmatists may accept the arguments of the idealists but contend that the self-interest of a state occasionally makes covert action necessary and legitimate. Historical practice over several centuries would tend to favor the pragmatists. Idealists would respond that the historical record does not justify covert intervention. (This debate took a curious turn with passage of the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act, in which Congress and President Bill Clinton agreed to spend $97 million to replace the regime of Saddam Hussein—an overt commitment to interfere in Iraq’s internal affairs.)
In several instances during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the United States intervened in other nations, primarily in the Western Hemisphere, but these activities were largely overt and usually military in nature. The United States began to use covert action in the context of the cold war. Did the nature of the Soviet threat make covert action legitimate? Did the use of this option—not only directly against the Soviet Union but also in developing nations that were often the battlegrounds of the cold war—lessen the moral differences between the United States and the Soviet Union? Again, there are broad differences of opinion. To U.S. policy makers during the administrations of Harry S. Truman (1945- 1953) and Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953-1961), the Soviet threat was so large and multifaceted that the question of the legitimacy of covert action never arose. In any event, both administrations preferred covert action to the possibility of a general war in Europe or Asia. However, some people believe that the use of the covert option blurred distinctions between the two nations that were important.
Assuming that covert action is an acceptable option, is it circumscribed by the nature of the state against which it is being carried out? Or does this question become irrelevant if one accepts the legitimacy of covert action? For example, the United States used covert economic destabilization against Fidel Castro’s Cuba and Allende’s Chile. Both were communists, but Castro had seized power after a guerrilla war; Allende never commanded an electoral majority, but he had been elected according to the Chilean constitution. Castro turned Cuba into a hostile Soviet base; Allende showed only disturbing signs of friendliness to Castro and to other Soviet allies. Instead of having a second Soviet satellite in the Western Hemisphere, the United States opted to destabilize Allende in the hope of fomenting a coup against him. Should the fact that Allende had been elected according to Chilean law have been sufficient to preclude covert action by the United States? Or were U.S. national security concerns of sufficient primacy to make the covert option legitimate? This was not the first time the United States had intervened in democratic processes. For example, it gave covert assistance in a variety of forms to centrist parties in Europe in the late 1940s to preclude communist victories.
Central to the U.S. concept of covert action is plausible deniability—that U.S. denials of a role in the events stemming from a covert action appear plausible. The need to mask its participation stems directly from the idea that the action has to be covert. If the situation could be addressed overtly, the role of the United States would not be an issue. DCI Richard Helms (1966-1973) held that plausible deniability was an absolute requirement for a covert