Intelligence_ From Secrets to Policy - Mark M. Lowenthal [20]
THE FALL OF THE SOVIET UNION (1989-1991). Beginning with the collapse of the Soviet satellite empire in 1989 and culminating in the dissolution of the Soviet Union itself in 1991, the United States witnessed the triumph of its long-held policy of containment, first postulated by George Kennan in 1946-1947 as a way to deal with the Soviet menace. The collapse was so swift and so stunning that few can be said to have anticipated it.
Critics of the intelligence community argued that the inability to see the Soviet collapse coming was the ultimate intelligence failure, given the centrality of the Soviet Union as an intelligence community issue. Some people even felt that this failure justified radically reducing and altering the intelligence community. Defenders of U.S. intelligence argued that the community had made known much of the inner rot that led to the Soviet collapse.
This debate has not ended. Significant questions remain not only about U.S. intelligence capabilities but also about intelligence in general and what can reasonably be expected from it. (See chap. 11 for a detailed discussion.)
THE AMES SPY SCANDAL (1994) AND THE HANSSEN SPY CASE (2001). The arrest and conviction of Aldrich Ames, a CIA employee, on charges of spying for the Soviet Union and for post-Soviet Russia for almost ten years shook U.S. intelligence. Espionage scandals had broken before. For example, in the “year of the spy” (1985), several cases came to light—the Walker family sold Navy communications data to the Soviet Union, Ron Pelton compromised NSA programs to the Soviet Union, and Larry Wu-tai Chin turned out to be a sleeper agent put in place by China.
Ames’s unsuspected treachery was, in many respects, more searing. Despite the end of the cold war. Russian espionage against the United States had continued. Ames’s career revealed significant shortcomings in CIA personnel practices (he was a marginal officer with a well-known alcohol problem), in CIA counterespionage and counterintelligence, and in CIA-FBI liaison to deal with these issues. The spy scandal also revealed deficiencies in how the executive branch shared information bearing on intelligence matters with Congress.
The arrest in 2001 of FBI agent Robert Hanssen on charges of espionage underscored some of the concerns that first arose in the Ames case and added new ones. Hanssen and Ames apparently began their espionage activities at approximately the same time, but Hanssen went undetected for much longer. It was initially thought that Hanssen’s expertise in counterintelligence gave him advantages in escaping detection but subsequent investigations revealed a great deal of laxness at the FBI that was crucial to Hanssen’s activities. Hanssen. like Ames. spied for both the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia. Hanssen’s espionage also meant that the damage assessment done after Ames was arrested would have to be revised, as both men had access to some of the same information. Finally, the Hanssen case was a severe black eye for the FBI, which had been so critical of the CIA’s failure to detect Ames.
In addition to the internal problems that both scandals revealed, the two cases served notice that espionage among the great powers continued despite the end of the cold war. Some people found this offensive, in terms of either Russian or U.S. activity. Others accepted it as an unsurprising and normal state of affairs.
THE TERRORIST ATTACKS AND THE WARON TERRORISM (2001- ). The terrorist attacks in the United States in September 2001 were important for several reasons. First, although al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden’s enmity and capabilities were known, the nature of these specific attacks had not been anticipated. Although some critics called for the resignation of DCI George Tenet.