Intelligence_ From Secrets to Policy - Mark M. Lowenthal [14]
THE DEBATE OVER COVERT ACTION. As discussed in Chapter 1, covert action in the United States has always generated some uneasiness among those concerned about its propriety or acceptability as a facet of U.S. policy. In addition, many debated the propriety of paramilitary operations—the training and equipping of large foreign irregular military units, such as the contras. Other than assassination, paramilitary operations have been among the most controversial aspects of covert action, and they have an uneven record. The vigor of the debate for and against paramilitary operations has varied widely over time. Little discussion occurred before the Bay of Pigs invasion (1961), and afterward there was little discussion until the collapse of the bipartisan cold war consensus that had supported an array of measures to counter Soviet expansion and the revelations about intelligence community misdeeds in the mid-1970s. The debate revived once again during the contras’ paramilitary campaign against Nicaragua’s government in the mid-1980s. In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in the United States in 2001, however, broad agreement emerged on a full range of covert actions.
THE CONTINUTY OF INTELLIGENCE POLICY. Throughout most of the cold war, no difference existed between Democratic and Republican intelligence policies. The cold war consensus on the need for a continuing policy of containment vis-à-vis the Soviet Union transcended politics until the Vietnam War, when a difference emerged between the two parties that was in many respects more rhetorical than real. For example, both Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan made intelligence policy an issue in their campaigns for the presidency. Carter, in 1976, lumped revelations about the CIA and other intelligence agencies’ misconduct with Watergate and Vietnam; Reagan, in 1980, spoke of restoring the CIA, along with the rest of U.S. national security. Although the ways in which the two presidents supported and used intelligence differed greatly, it would be wrong to suggest that one was anti-intelligence and the other pro-intelligence.
HEAVY RELIANCE ON TECHNOLOGY. Since the creation of the modern intelligence community in the 1940s, the United States has relied heavily on technology as the mainstay of its collection capabilities. A technological response to a problem is not unique to intelligence. It also describes how the United States has waged war, beginning as early as the Civil War in the 1860s. Furthermore, the closed nature of the major intelligence target in the twentieth century—the Soviet Union—required remote technical means to collect information.
The reliance on technology is significant beyond the collection capabilities it engenders, because it has had a major effect on the structure of the intelligence community and how it has functioned. Some people maintain that the reliance on technology has resulted in an insufficient use of human intelligence collection (espionage). No empirical data are available supporting this view, but this perception has persisted since at least the 1970s. The main argument, which tends to arise when intelligence is perceived as having performed less than optimally, is that human intelligence can collect certain types of information (intentions and plans) that technical collection cannot. Little disagreement is heard about the strengths and weaknesses of the various types of collection, but such an assessment does not necessarily support the view that espionage always suffers as compared with technical collection. The persistence of the debate reflects an underlying concern about intelligence collection that has never been adequately addressed—that is, the proper balance (if such balance can be had) between technical and human collection. This debate has arisen again in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in 2001. (See chap. 12 for a discussion of the types of intelligence collection required by the war on terrorism.)
SECRECY VERSUS OPENNESS. The openness that is an inherent part