United States intelligence community oversight

Introductory observations, not part of the article

The idea of having the effects of actions, and the perception of them by other countries, is not unreasonable. My concern, and there may be ways to address it, is that when another country claims "CIA" did something, the effect upon them may very well have been not from the CIA alone, but from an overall strategy of the US government. Fully recognizing that some Administrations might have had trouble with regime change in a kindergarten, there have been times when covert action, economic policy, military operations, overt propaganda, and other factors were all applying to a given situation. Vietnam, for all of the irrationality at the highest levels (If you haven't read it, I suggest H. R. McMaster's Dereliction of Duty), cannot be judged in terms of the Phoenix Program without considering what was being done by the regular military. One cannot judge its decisionmaking without looking at the controversy and manipulation of numbers by, variously, working-level CIA analysts, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Military Assistance Command Vietnam, and the White House. Another recommendation is Sam Adams' War of Numbers, During the war in Vietnam, there were constant analytic disputes among the Military Assistance Command Vietnam, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and the Central Intelligence Agency. That the intelligence organizations in the military command were more optimistic is unsurprising, and not even indicative of something being seriously wrong -- as long as there are independent intelligence organizations to cross-check. as well as a thorough reading of the Pentagon Papers. The reality, I believe, that the working level analysts at CIA had some of the most realistic assessments of the situation, but they didn't agree with the preconceptions of Johnson and McNamara any more than realistic assessments of Iraq's WMD capability agreed with Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Bush.

All I ask is that even when a country is chanting "CIA! CIA!", that perception indeed should be noted, but if there is reasonable evidence that CIA's action (or even things they didn't do) are part of a overall United States Government policy, that editors do not take the easy way out of treating CIA as the heart of all that is sinister, when they may have been "following orders". There are cases where orders were inappropriate and should have been refused. Simply as a historical example, it may be well to note that the CIA did finally say NO to some of theWatergate, Plumbers Group, and other White House operations. This isn't Republican vs. Democratic; there was a point, during the run-up to the Bay of Pigs, that some CIA personnel should at least have resigned in protest about both illegality and, by the time of the operation, something that almost certainly would result in a bloody defeat for the invasion force.

There is also a problem with implying the CIA is the only agency of the US government that has anything to do with changing politics or rule in other countries. Iraq, Panama and Grenada were emphatically regime change, but rather overt in their methods. Overt propaganda from the Voice of America is under the quasi-public Broadcasting Board of Governors, and, earlier, under the United States Information Agency (USIA) of the United States Department of State, so it seems odd to attribute the broadcasts to Hungary in 1956 as CIA operations.

Another area, which was part of CIA for many years, and has now moved to the DNI is the group (with various names) that prepares National Intelligence Estimates(NIE). It was a 2002 NIE on WMD in Iraq, prepared when CIA still generated the NIEs, that the George W. Bush Administration used to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Preparing the NIE, or intelligence analysis and reports used in preparing NIEs, is just as important a component of the broad scope of US policy as is covert action. The invasion of Iraq was "regime change", but it was not covert.

In the history of the main CIA article, the approval authorities for covert action are touched upon, but there is no mention of CIA having any oversight, or receiving any orders. See Oversight of United States covert operations, which is in fairly good shape.

To establish that including oversight group approval, intelligence collection, intelligence analysis, and formal intelligence estimates are not a "whitewash", see CIA activities in Asia and the Pacific#Indonesia. The failed regime change in the 1950s, and the massive purge unexpected in the 1964-5 estimates on which a assist-Sukarno's-opponents, relatively mild covert action that was approved, do not exactly indicate omniscience or omnipotence on the part of CIA.

When things go bad

Not worrying about OR for the moment, I suspect that if there was a real analysis of inappropriate CIA actions, the causes would fall into several categories:

1. The period, mostly in the Truman Administration, when there was relatively little oversight of OSO and OPC, which were administratively attached to CIA but, until Smith forced them into the agency, made many of their own decisions. This is sourced in the Foreign Relations of the United States volume on the development of the intelligence community, 1950-1955
2. White House or close advisor (e.g., Robert Kennedy) coming up with a largely emotional decision, such as MONGOOSE against Castro. "Do it because you can". I wouldn't be surprised if there are some Kennedy biographies that address this. Nixon tolerance of people such as Colson, who would not ask permission but use White House authority, as in the Plumbers Unit, the Ellsberg psychiatrist breakin, etc.
3. Things that came out of a militant anticommunist attitude, especially in the fifties, which were reviewed by the proper authorities, but, in hindsight, were terrible ideas (e.g., Guatemala and Iran). I'd like to find a relatively NPOV source on this. The right kind of source would recognize that the bad ideas came from good intentions, from a mindset we don't have as much today.
4. Things that a conspiratorial DCI like Casey might want to do, such as Iran-Contra, which resonate with key personnel at the White House level.
5. Lower-level people freelancing. While MKULTRA was approved at a top level, I suspect Sidney Gottlieb did quite a few things on his own. I know I've seen documents that reflected this, and also some sources saying a lot of the records were destroyed. I just have to remember where I saw this material.

The really bad things, I suspect, are mostly for reasons 2-5

This is an excellent summary, and i agree with it in every point. As i've voiced elsewhere, my own worries are that the mistakes will be swept under the rug; some might be arguing that i live in the past, but the treatment the CIA has gotten in the media and popular press during my early life has been a clean whitewash, so i think you can understand why i worry.

In that vein i would like to see mentioned the 1950's era CIA connection with the China Lobby (Claire Chennault, J. Edgar Hoover, Clare Luce, Chiang Kai Shek, MacArthur, and Edward Lansdale are the figures i'm most familiar with) and the whole "Who lost China??" U.S./Asian anti-communist faction; for instance, i have a very reliable source here at home -- Bertil Lintner, a famed SEAsian journalist -- who has sources he quotes as saying that Sun Myung-moon was set up in business through a CIA counter-propaganda program that was undertaken with the direct involvement of high-ranking Japanese Yakuza, certain Asian triads are directly descended from U.S./Taiwanese counter-revolutionary groups, and so on. Much of this evidence is corroborated by Sterling Seagrave, Alfred W. McCoy and Martin Booth, as well (and yes, i also have those books). So i can help out with that end of things, but would appreciate your input as to how best to fit it into the article

That would be great, as I don't have a huge knowledge of Chinese politics of that time. (I do, however, take pride in my regional Chinese cooking). I have a much better sense of Japanese politics, and, for that matter, Sino-Vietnamese from the Vietnam side, and the way in which a really unlikely fear of Korean War-style Chinese intervention had a strong effect on the motivation for the Vietnam War. Unfortunately, few American policymakers knew about Vietnamese history with China, going back to the Two Trung Ladies in the first century AD. The most damning single paper in American decisionmaking on Vietnam, I believe, is http://vietnam.vassar.edu/ladrang03.html (which also has points relevant to Iraq) In the small world department, I did meet Anna Chennault on a couple of social occasions.Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 15:15, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

The famed "CIA and the Politics of Heroin" is something that deserves particular mention, and i'll be happy to work up a linked-in page regarding the book and its treatment. This book dovetails well with another i'll be happy to work on, the San Jose Mercury News' "Dark Alliance"; later editions of "CIA and the Politics..." have appendices discussing parallels between the Central American and Vietnamese counter-revolutionary operations. As you probably know, that paper's investigation sparked a Congressional oversight investigation that released two reports, one of which said that the CIA had no direct involvement -- and was pasted on the front page of the NYT -- and the second of which, two days later, revealed that even so the CIA had clearly much indirect involvement and complicity -- but of course the second report, IIRC, was buried on something like page 23 of second section. Since this all works is clear corroboration of the Kerry_Committee_report i would hope that there won't be any trouble in bringing it all together on this single page.

You might want to consider putting this into the page on CIA and transnational crime. Drug involvement is inherently transnational, so I thought that would be a way to bring that in more clearly than scattered factoids in the geographical sections -- which could very well link to the transnational page.

A lot of those non-web sources i mentioned discuss the CIA and its Asian anti-communist activities in the period from about '50 to '80. I'd like to see some of this included, but i know that in the States there's a lot of controversy surrounding some of these revelations. Even so, where i live - Taiwan - the "revelations" made by the books are considered quite commonplace banalities by people who pay attention to such things.

This would be great. I have some of the books, but I'm living in temporary quarters and most of my library is in storage.

Hopefully i haven't scared you with all this.  :) I'll admit that i have come to this subject first and foremost in an adverserial role; i do, however, hold academic research in high regard and long ago took those values to heart, so i just want to assure you that i'm not out looking to cause trouble, here. I trust your opinion as "project leader"; i have included these comments as a courtesy to you, so that you won't be surprised when i introduce the information. It's merely a gesture consideration, and i will be quite happy to work with you to find an appropriate way to integrate this informiation.

Further, i want to reassure you that i, too, have thought about how to write on these issues for a long time. It seems to me that what would make the most sense would be to point out that the CIA is a very large organization that has been purposefully set up to protect covert operations, and as a result it provides a convenient cover by which unscrupulous people can hide their activities. Yet even so, the agency is constituted largely of conscientious and sincere people who fill an important, key gap in the U.S.'s international relations. By specifically drawing attention to this dichotomy i think we will provide an large, open space for both sides of the discussion.

That's very true. One of the directors' autobiographies is titled Honorable Men, saying that at some point, there's a need to trust that you have such people in positions where they have little oversight. My version is "trust but verify". It's a very confusing period now, with the advent of the DNI--I don't yet have a strong feeling if that is good or bad, but some of the most critical CIA functions, such as national estimates, moved there after December 2004. I suppose I prioritize in my own mind, but it's tempting, where there is a good deal of source material, to go heavily into periods where the principals are dead. Simultaneously, I'm worried about political manipulation of intelligence analysis, which is worse in this Administration but certainly nothing new.

And just in case you're still in doubt, i'm well acquainted with a few U.S. intel people here in Taiwan (mainly military and journalists, but i have bumped into a couple of CIA people, as well), so yeah -- i can (and do) sit down with guys and gals like this and have a friendly beer.  ;-) Stone put to sky (talk) 05:05, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Authorization

In principle, CIA clandestine and covert operations require a Presidential Finding, and notification (i.e., not approval) to the pertinent members/committees. See Oversight of United States covert operations

As noted before, there are two categories of compartmented information: military SAP and intelligence SCI. Congress needs to be informed of only SCI matters. While there is obvious room for interpretation, military operations, such as special reconnaissance, HUMINT associated with Counterintelligence Force Protection Source Operations, and actions of the military intelligence & security organizations, such as NSA, that are deemed military rather than intelligence operations.

In its recommendations regarding reorganization of the intelligence community, the 9/11 commission states: "Lead responsibility for directing and executing paramilitary operations, whether clandestine or covert, should shift to the Defense Department," from the CIA where it has traditionally been housed.

The commissioners' reasoning is sound. They begin from the underlying assumption that against the current enemy, more decentralized and fluid than the Soviet opponent of the Cold War, there will be more call for smaller, paramilitary-type operations. They point out, though, that before 9-11 the CIA did not invest much in developing a paramilitary capability and that it would be redundant and expensive to build one up now when the military already has the Special Forces for exactly that purpose.

The problem lies in the fact that in all their recommendations about strengthening congressional oversight, the commissioners neglected to say anything about oversight of these covert paramilitary operations.

Legislation enacted in 1991, in response to the Iran-Contra Affair, all agencies of the U.S. government have had to meet two requirements for covert operations:

1. that they be justified, before the fact, in a written presidential finding
2. the administration notify the congressional intelligence committees.

Although the CIA has apparently met these requirements, there is considerable confusion over whether the military has or should. While CIA Special Activities Division teams apparently made contact with the Northern Alliance before United States Army Special Forces teams joined the fight against the Taliban, Special Forces specialize in unconventional warfare. If Special Forces went in first, it would seem that Congress would have no role in oversight of this type of covert military action. Even more confusing, military special operations have special Title 10 rules governing their action. When do they require an authorization to use force?

The law about Congressional approval of covert operations expressly exempts "traditional military activities." In true legislative form, the law itself does not define the phrase, but the conference committee report explained that it was meant to include actions preceding and related to anticipated hostilities that will involve U.S. military forces.

"That still leaves open, however, the interpretation of the word anticipated, since if future military hostilities are anticipated, no presidential finding or congressional notification are required. Although the conference report defines anticipated hostilities as those for which operational planning has already been approved, a knowledgeable Pentagon official maintains that some in the Defense Department believe that the act gives them the power to undertake activities "years in advance" of any overt U.S. military involvement.

The upshot? Under either one of the above interpretations, the Pentagon reasons that it can send Special Forces on a covert operation to wherever it wants, with Congress having no knowledge, input or recourse.

Although many Special Forces operations are necessary and well-thought out, combining that kind of blank-check authority with a civilian administration that has a taste for pre-emption and whose judgment is already in question is a recipe for potential disaster.

There is, of course, the additional question of who would or should conduct the oversight, since the intelligence committees have traditionally had the responsibility of determining if an operation is covert yet the Special Forces fall within the purview of the more powerful Armed Services committees.

Covert Action is One Way of Extending National Politics

Clausewitz's classic definition of war as the "extension of national politics by military means" has broadened into a wide range of means of extending national politics, under the term "grand strategy". One simplification of the means in grand strategy is DIME: Diplomatic, Informational, Military, and Economic, but there are other means, including covert action and law enforcement. Johnston used ethnographic methods to study intelligence community analytic culture. He developed three consensus definitions,of intelligence, intelligence analysis and intelligence errors, and covert action can be considered part of the first:

• Definition 1: Intelligence is secret state or group activity to understand or influence foreign or domestic entities.

• Definition 2: Intelligence analysis is the application of individual and collective cognitive methods to weigh data and test hypotheses within a secret socio-cultural context.

• Definition 3: Intelligence errors are factual inaccuracies in analysis resulting from poor or missing data; intelligence failure is systemic organizational surprise resulting from incorrect, missing, discarded, or inadequate hypotheses.

Definition 1 certainly includes covert action. The next issue, in the US context, is how potentially illegal covert actions are carried out. Before answering that question, it must be remembered that not all "regime change" or other actions of the US government are achieved through covert action. For example, there was regime change in Grenada, Panama, Afghanistan and Iraq, which was principally the result of overt military action. Other, even legal, decisions may lead to war, such as the Japanese decision to attack the United States, with the casus belli being embargoes on exports. Those embargoes, which, in modern terms, were overt economic warfare, were in response to Japanese expansion in Indochina; the embargoes were reversible if Japan released the captured territory.

Again, this is excellent work. I would suggest, however, that we add the part about Johnston to the Intelligence page, which -- i note -- you have already contributed some to, a few months back. We can ask the folks there if they'll have any problem with us creating a small section to place the Johnston portion in so that we can link it up to this page. From that, we'll have a directl link and you'll be able to refer to it as a source without being forced to quote the entire passage which -- correct me if i'm wrong -- doesn't seem necessary to draw out your point. It seems, instead, that you'll be using these three points throughout the article (and if you shan't then i probably will ;-)), and since the Johnston quote is dealing not with the CIA directly but intelligence personnel as a culture then i think it would be best if we could get it over on that page.

But then, if we can't then it may be that we're forced to simply include it here. Ho-hum. :S Stone put to sky (talk) 05:17, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

First, I am very much open to guidance on how much to quote from sources, especially things like US government documents that cannot be copyrighted. My Wikipedia experience is not broad enough, at least in controversial areas, to know when I have a convincing summary of a sources, rather than "CIA did foo", and, on the other wrong side, to have too much. Johnston and Heuer, especially, have so much good information that I think they help understand much of the big picture. Others do not, but, as in the TECHINT and Farewell Dossier articles I'm working on at present, there wasn't even a full citation, just an inline or "external links" URL. My philosophy is that when I put in a link, it should have enough context to explain why a reader should take the link.

Johnson, Heuer, and others are covered, perhaps at improperly long length, in the hierarchy of articles I mostly wrote, starting at Intelligence cycle management. At some point, that series and Intelligence_(information_gathering) probably should merge. There are a lot of orphan, or nearly orphan, articles on intelligence, that are independent of specific intelligence agencies. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 14:36, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Just to add one part: it may be useful to look at Johnston's work as a means of understanding, in the context of the time, why US (and Soviet, and possibly British & French) intelligence made deals with war criminals. Indeed, one might even go farther into social science literature to understand some of the tribal fear of Communism at the particular time of the deals. While it's really not directly relevant here, Ruth Benedict's The Chrysanthemum and the Sword is one example of the sort of social science data I have in mind. More complex are historical works like David Bergamini's Japan's Imperial Conspiracy. For some reason, there is more data on the Japanese societal structure on where some of the high-level war crimes fit. There are plenty on low-level Nazis, and perhaps medium-level, such as Lifton's The Nazi Doctors and (forgot the Polish author's name) Conversations with an Executioner and Sereny's Into That Darkness. There is an OK autobiography by Walter Schellenberg, but I don't know of any good, specific sources on Heydrich or Ohlendorf -- at least for Ohlendorf, there's extensive trial transcript. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 14:44, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Oversight and Approval

The fundamental decisions to do covert actions, and risky clandestine intelligence collection, are in a committee at White House level, although sometimes the decisions are made by the President and a very small number of advisors. There is a requirement to notify the Congress of certain operations, although the nature of the notification varies with the sensitivity of the project. For the most sensitive, typically eight members are briefed, without staff and without being allowed to take notes -- not necessarily the best way to do it. At least one proposal is floating around, from Paul Pillar, about setting up a mechanism that would get appropriate professional staff for the most sensitive analysis. After all, the Executive Branch uses experts in planning the proposal.

I've detailed things in the Classified information in the United States, and actually for Special Access Programs rather than the Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI) that is the category that holds the most sensitive intelligence. From a Congressional and budget standpoint, there are three general categories: one where "classified activity" shows up as a line item in the budget, one where the money is hidden but the entire relevant committees are briefed on the details, and on the most sensitive, the money is hidden and only the "Big 8" hear about it.

While the law is a little vague, the Executive Branch is simply keeping Congress informed, rather than asking permission. Congress however, can refuse to appropriate the basic budget, and this actually is being threatened. "CIA refusal to reveal what it knows about the Sept. 6 Israeli bombing of Syria's nuclear complex. Only chairmen and ranking minority members of the Intelligence committees, plus members of the congressional leadership, have been briefed. Other members of Congress, including Intelligence Committee members, were excluded. The Intelligence authorization bill, passed by the House and awaiting final action in the Senate, blocks most of the CIA's funding "until each member of the Congressional Intelligence committees has been fully informed with respect to intelligence" about the Syria bombing."

In principle, Congress could pass, with a veto-proof supermajority, legislation to cut off funding on a specific project, which is more or less what led to Iran-Contra after Congress said that money could not be committed to that purpose. Whenever and wherever Iran-Contra is written up, this is one of those areas where the Presidential and Congressional intent is as important, constitutionally, as the covert action itself.

Budget, of course, is part of oversight. I'll give the total budget, and some indication of how it is allocated. Question: is the history of getting to a point where any budget figures were disclosed appropriate for the main article, or a side page? It is important to understand, broadly, how the money goes, to CIA as well as the larger amount that goes to the military. What is being overseen?

Security classification system

Widely misunderstood as a classification level or specific clearance is "Sensitive Compartmented Information" (SCI) and "Special Access Program" (SAP).

In fact the terms refer to methods of handling certain types of classified information that relate to specific national-security topics or programs whose existence may not be publicly acknowledged, or the sensitive nature of which requires special handling.

To achieve selective separation of program information while still allowing full access to those working on the program, a separate "compartment," identified by a unique codeword (itself sometimes classified), is created for the information. This entails establishing communication channels, data storage, and work locations (SCIF—Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility), which are physically and logically separated not only from the unclassified world, but from general Department of Defense classified channels as well. Thus established, all information generated within the compartment is classified according to the general rules above. However, to emphasize that the information is compartmented, all documents are marked with both the classification level and the codeword (or sometimes the caveat "Handle via <compartment name> Channels Only").

For example, the NSA domestic telephone surveillance program is almost certainly designated "Handle through COMINT Channels Only", so its documentation would read, at least, TOP SECRET-CCO, probably with a special compartment within CCO, which, hypothetically, would be an arbitrary word such as ORWELL. It is presumably SCI.

SAPs are subdivided into three further groups There is no public reference to whether SCI is divided in the same manner, but news reports reflecting that only the "Big 8" Members are briefed on certain intelligence activities, it may be assumed that similar rules apply for SCI. The groups are

• Acknowledged: appears as a line item as "classified project" or the equivalent in the US budget, although details of its content are not revealed. The budget element will associate the SAP with an organization or major command, such as the Navy or Strategic Command
• Unacknowledged: no reference in the published budget; its funding is hidden in another entry, often called the "black budget". The appropriate Congressional committees, however, are briefed on the nature of the SAP and approve it.
• Waived: no mention in the budget, and briefed only to the "Big 8" members of Congress: Speaker of the House, House Minority Leader, Senate Majority and Minority Leaders, and the Chairman and Ranking Minority Members of the appropriate committees.

Examples of compartmented topics are sensitive intelligence activities (SCI), nuclear secrets (Restricted Data), and stealth technology (SAP). One or more compartments may be created for each area, and each of these compartments may contain multiple programs or projects (e.g., a specific reconnaissance satellite, ICBM, or stealth aircraft), themselves with their own codenames.

So, it is a reasonable assumption that the NSA telephone surveillance program might be a designated a Waived SCI program, with documentation stamped TS-CCO-ORWELL.

Effect of political climate on action decisions

• • Many of the covert operations, from 1945, at least through Vietnam, were based on an internal government assumption that Communism had to be stopped at all costs, including violations of human rights and national sovereignty. Whether or not this belief is now considered correct, it must be remembered, in terms of the orders given to the CIA, that it was in the minds of the policymakers that authorized actions.
  • Need some good references here on broad US policies, such as how Kennan's containment drifted into the much more intense anticommunism of the late Truman and then the Eisenhower administration. New Look covers some of this, but not enough.

• • In like manner to mentioning directors only to the extent they affected the climate, the same thing applies to the White House--either President alone, or when you have strong advisers like Kissinger or some of Kennedy's team.

• • Some of the references that come to mind may need balancing references, such as Woodward's Veil when it comes to Casey and Reagan.

Effect of directors

See Director of Central Intelligence for insights into the politics and management styles and actions associated with each director. Let me make some informal, nonchronological comments about knowing about certain directors is significant in understanding the behavior of the CIA.

For example, three directors, Dulles, Helms and Colby, came through the ranks, counting OSS. Dulles and Helms were clandestine intelligence collectors, while Colby was on the covert action side. I'll count Casey as half a director, as he was an OSS clandestine intelligence officer running the penetrations into Germany, but didn't stay in CIA, and came to the directorship through a political path. I believe that the OSS/CIA experience of these people affected how they ran things.

Smith is significant in that he was able to force the disparate operations groups into firm CIA control. Given he was Eisenhower's WWII Chief of Staff, he presumably enjoyed a Presidential trust that few other DCIs had.

Turner and Schlesinger were disastrous to morale, and probably caused the loss of a good deal of HUMINT corporate knowledge. Turner did have the advantage of being a classmate of Jimmy Carter's and enjoyed his trust.

McCone is very interesting to me. If I were to pick the best DCI, it would probably be McCone, who was a manager and engineer, not at all an intelligence specialist. It's also significant that he had a close relationship with JFK, but left because he and LBJ didn't trust one another. It's only speculation, of course, but I believe if he had stayed, he might have injected much more realism into Vietnam. He was known for making sure all sides of an issue were heard. Somewhat surprisingly, I've known people in CIA that said Bush did that as well.

Some DCIs, I will be the first to admit, really didn't do much to put their stamp on the Agency. In a way, it's worth examining Raborn, a very smart man in other contexts who was completely clueless when it came to intelligence. There are lessons from Raborn, Schlesinger, Turner, and, in a very different way, Dulles, about characteristics you do not want in a DCI.

Anyway, I have no problem if the section with the brief bios of directors is cut back, but I really hoep that we don't lose the effects of different management styles, and, especially with Dulles and Casey, when a DCI is more prone to run rogue. Having Dulles' brother John Foster Dulles as Secretary of State did not help oversight of CIA.

Sidney Souers, Hoyt Vandenberg, and Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter almost don't count, as they served before the organization really took shape.

Competing Demands

Especially when a hot war is in progress, there are often competing demands between Support to Military Operations and strategic intelligence. See CIA activities in Asia and the Pacific#Korea for the way that the pre-CIA OSO clandestine collectors' mission was a battleground between the Army tactical information requirements and the need for more global information (e.g., what were the Chinese and Soviets planning?). I'm reading the newly declassified NSA history of Southeast Asia, and, while the intelligence collectors in question were NSA and service cryptologic agency, there again were conflicting demands for tactical versus strategic use of limited human and equipment resources.

Indirectly, this sort of conflicts effects covert operations, if the tactical needs of intelligence collection have the covert operations somewhat in the dark. A good example coming from initially covert Direct Action (DA) mission was the POW rescue mission on the Son Tay prison camp. There was some intelligence indicating the POWs had been moved and the facility was empty, but the information was not confirmed and got to the strike force late. Complicating the issue were White House and Pentagon decisions that even if there were no prisoners, having the North Vietnamese know they were vulnerable to DA missions would divert their attention and resources. One could compare this with the effects, unknown to the US at the time, of the early 1942 Doolittle Raid on Japan, which did minimal damage but caused an overreaction on the Japanese side, bringing air defense back to the homeland, and then making an ill-advised attempt to extend their eastern defense line with the Battle of Midway.

Congressional Oversight and Authority

Congress has, in principle, some level of authority over military operations, clandestine intelligence collection, covert action (at least by the CIA, if not by the United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM)), and intelligence analysis. It exerts authority through approving budgets and authorizing the use of funds. It can also pass nonbinding resolutions of Congressional intent. Both of these areas have had little effect under the unitary authority doctrine of the George W. Bush Administration

Budgetary

The intelligence budget, for which the total is beginning to be reported, is divided between

1. the National Intelligence Program (NIP; formerly the National Foreign Intelligence Program or NFIP)
2. the Military Intelligence Program (MIP).

[This might be an aside or belong elsewhere, but I was surprised that TIARA, which covered programs directly supported military operations, is not clearly allocated. I honestly don't know, at this point, if it's been moved into the general military budget.

[Two things do apply to this area, since you can never fully separate tactical and national. There are various reporting mechanisms where a small military unit might run into something of national importance, and need to pass it up the chain of command. Marking material PINNACLE OPREP-3 and putting it into the general communications system is one way to do that.

[The process also works top to bottome, and, again, this isn't strictly part of the budget. There is a program called Tactical Exploitation of National Capabilities (TENCAP), which allows military units to access information generally considered of national interest alone. A good example was using the missile launch detection satellites, intended to warn the US of a Soviet strike, to give fast warning of SCUD launches in Iraq. There are cases, however, where the operating miitary forces made use of CIA data.]

The MIP was established in September 2005 and includes all programs from the former Joint Military Intelligence Program (JMIP), which encompassed DOD-wide intelligence programs (i.e., organizations like NSA, DIA, NRO, and NGA, which are part of the Intelligence Community but also part of the United States Department of Defense, and most programs from the former Tactical Intelligence and Related Activities (TIARA) category, which encompassed intelligence programs supporting the operating units of the armed services. The Program Executive for the MIP is the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence.

Only a small part of the intelligence budget is made public; the bulk of the $40 billion that media reporting associates with overall intelligence spending is “hidden” within the DOD budget. Spending for most intelligence programs is described in classified annexes to intelligence and national defense authorization and appropriations legislation. (Members of Congress have access to these annexes, but must make special arrangements to read them.)

For a number of years some Members have sought to make public total amounts of intelligence and intelligence-related spending; floor amendments for that purpose were defeated in both chambers during the 105th Congress. In response, however, to a lawsuit filed under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), DCI George Tenet stated on October 15, 1997 that the aggregate amount appropriated for intelligence and intelligence-related activities for FY1997 was $26.6 billion. He added that the Administration would continue “to protect from disclosure any and all subsidiary information concerning the intelligence budget.” In March 1998, Tenet announced that the FY1998 figure was $26.7 billion.

Figures for FY1999 and subsequent years have not been released and the executive branch has thus far prevailed against legal efforts to force release of intelligence spending figures. On May 23, 2000, the House voted 175-225 to defeat an amendment calling for annual release of an unclassified statement on aggregate intelligence spending. During consideration of intelligence reform legislation in 2004, the Senate at one point approved a version of a bill which would require publication of the amount of the NIP; the House version did not include a similar provision and, with the Senate deferring to the House, the Intelligence Reform Act does not require making intelligence spending amounts public. Provisions requiring public disclosure of the aggregate amount of funds for the NIP are included in the Senate’s version of the FY2008 authorization bill (S. 1538). Section 601 of P.L. 110-53.

Implementing Recommendations of the Implementing Recommendations of the 9/11 Commission Act of 2007, requires that the DNI publicly disclose the aggregate amount of funds appropriated for the NIP although after FY2008 the President could waive or postpone the disclosure upon sending a explanation to congressional oversight committees. However, during floor consideration of the H.R. 3222, the FY2008 defense appropriations act, an amendment was adopted that would preclude funds appropriated in the act from being used to make public disclosure of NIP spending levels. Jurisdiction over intelligence programs is somewhat different in the House and the Senate. The Senate Intelligence Committee has jurisdiction only over the NIP but not the MIP, whereas the House Intelligence Committee has jurisdiction over both sets of programs. The preponderance of intelligence spending is accomplished by intelligence agencies within DOD and thus in both chambers the armed services committees are involved in the oversight process. Other oversight committees are responsible for intelligence agencies that are part of departments other than DOD.

To improve financial control of intelligence, the Council on Foreign Relations proposed a "market constraint" on consumers of intelligence, in which they could only get a certain amount of intelligence from the intelligence community, before they had to provide additional funding. A different constraint would be that an agency, to get information on a new topic, must agree to stop or reduce coverage on something currently being monitored for it. Even with this consumer-oriented model, the intelligence community itself needs to have a certain amount of resources that it can direct itself, for building basic intelligence and identifying unusual threats.

"It is important that intelligence officers involved in articulating requirements represent both analysts and collectors, including those from the clandestine side. In addition, collection should be affected by the needs of policymakers and operators. All of this argues strongly against any organizational reforms that would isolate the collection agencies further or increase their autonomy.

Especially in nations with advanced technical sensors, there is an interaction between budgeting and technology. For example, the US has tended, in recent years, to use billion-dollar SIGINT satellites, where France has used "swarms" of "microsatellites". The quantity versus quality battle is as evident in intelligence technology as in weapons systems. The US has also fought a stovepipe battle, in which SIGINT and IMINT satellites, in a given orbit, were launched by different agencies. New plans put SIGINT, MASINT, and IMINT sensors, appropriate to a type of orbit, on common platforms.

Currently and historically, less than a tenth of what the United States spends on intelligence is devoted to analysis; it is the least expensive dimension of intelligence. Not all duplication is wasteful. This has been a continuing issue with Bomb damage assessment, going back to the beginnings of aerial bombardment. Even with considerably improved sensors in 1991, it remains a problem, and, as with the Vietnam case, there tended to be increasingly more pessimistic analyses in the theater command, the Department of Defense, and the CIA.

Expertise

There is a problem with things that are both sensitive and technical, which is more likely to involve clandestine intelligence collection than covert action,another reason not to think of the CIA as an agency that only does covert action. This is also a matter where things get confusing between the CIA proper and the Intelligence Community.

Changes in responsibility in the Intelligence Community

At one time, before the NGA had been created, CIA and the military jointly ran the National Reconnaissance Office, in charge of the launching and operation of satellites. The next generation of reconnaissance satellites, under the name Future Imagery Architecture, ran into a multibillion dollar overrun, because the contractor was trying to do something beyond the state of the art. The FIA was discussed in public, so it presumably was an Acknowledged program that the committee staff and consultants could discuss.

The NSA telephone surveillance program, however, is one of the blackest of black programs, and has not been reviewed by other than the "Big 8" members, none of whom have a relevant technical background.

Actually reading intelligence documents: White House, Congress, and the need for Staff

Yet another issue, not one of approval but interpretation, is whether the Executive Branch had adequately evaluated the intelligence the George W. Bush Administration had used to justify the very overt action, as the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Paul Pillar, who was National Intelligence Officer for the Middle East between 2000 and 2005, observed "Intelligence affects the nation's interests through its effect on policy. No matter how much the process of intelligence gathering itself is fixed, the changes will do no good if the role of intelligence in the policymaking process is not also addressed.... But a few steps, based on the recognition that the intelligence-policy relationship is indeed broken, could reduce the likelihood that such a breakdown will recur.

"On this point, the United States should emulate the United Kingdom, where discussion of this issue has been more forthright, by declaring once and for all that its intelligence services should not be part of public advocacy of policies still under debate. In the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Tony Blair accepted a commission of inquiry's conclusions that intelligence and policy had been improperly commingled in such exercises as the publication of the "dodgy dossier," the British counterpart to the United States' Iraqi WMD white paper, and that in the future there should be a clear delineation between intelligence and policy. An American declaration should take the form of a congressional resolution and be seconded by a statement from the White House. Although it would not have legal force, such a statement would discourage future administrations from attempting to pull the intelligence community into policy advocacy. It would also give some leverage to intelligence officers in resisting any such future attempts.

"The proper relationship between intelligence gathering and policymaking sharply separates the two functions....Congress, not the administration, asked for the now-infamous October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq's unconventional weapons programs, although few members of Congress actually read it. (According to several congressional aides responsible for safeguarding the classified material, no more than six senators and only a handful of House members got beyond the five-page executive summary.) As the national intelligence officer for the Middle East, I was in charge of coordinating all of the intelligence community's assessments regarding Iraq; the first request I received from any administration policymaker for any such assessment was not until a year into the war.

"The CIA has a "politicization ombudsman," but his informally defined functions mostly involve serving as a sympathetic ear for analysts disturbed by evidence of politicization and then summarizing what he hears for senior agency officials. The intelligence oversight committees in Congress have an important role, but the heightened partisanship that has bedeviled so much other work on Capitol Hill has had an especially inhibiting effect in this area. ...

"The legislative branch is the appropriate place for monitoring the intelligence-policy relationship. But the oversight should be conducted by a nonpartisan office modeled on the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Such an office would have a staff, smaller than that of the GAO or the CBO, of officers experienced in intelligence and with the necessary clearances and access to examine questions about both the politicization of classified intelligence work and the public use of intelligence. As with the GAO, this office could conduct inquiries at the request of members of Congress. It would make its results public as much as possible, consistent with security requirements, and it would avoid duplicating the many other functions of intelligence oversight, which would remain the responsibility of the House and Senate intelligence committees."

Pillar's proposal is certainly not the only way in which Congress would arrange the time and expertise for thorough examination of intelligence proposals, but it is a start. Just as the General Accounting Office (GAO, a Congressional agency now called the General Accountability Office) does not duplicate the size of the Executive Branch in order to audit it, an intelligence analysis office reporting to the Congress need not duplicate the intelligence community (IC). Its personnel would need all-source intelligence clearances, and, in many cases, the experts might have gained some of their knowledge while working in the IC.

Independent government reviews

Several investigations (e.g., Church Committee, Rockefeller Commission, Pike Committee), as well as released declassified documents, reveal that the CIA, at times, operated outside its charter. In some cases, such as during Watergate, this may have been due to inappropriate requests by White House staff. In other cases, there was a violation of Congressional intent, such as the Iran-Contra affair.

1949 Eberstadt Report (First Hoover Commission)

The first major analysis, following the National Security Act of 1947, was chaired by former President Herbert Hoover, with a Task Force on National Security Organization under Ferdinand Eberstadt, one of the drafters of the National Security Act and a believer in centralized intelligence.

The task force concluded that the system of the day led to an adversarial relationship, with little effective coordination, among the CIA, the military, and the State Department. "In the opinion of the task force, this produced duplication on one hand, and, on the other, departmental intelligence estimates that "have often been subjective and biased." In large measure, the military and State Department were blamed for their failure to consult and share pertinent information with the CIA. The task force recommended "that positive efforts be made to foster relations of mutual confidence between the [CIA] and the several departments and agencies that it serves."

This report stressed that the CIA "must be the central organization of the national intelligence system." It recommended a "...top echelon [of] an evaluation board or section composed of competent and experienced personnel who would have no administrative responsibilities and whose duties would be confined solely to intelligence evaluation." It also favored a civilian DCI with a long term in office.

"In the arena of covert operations and clandestine intelligence, the Eberstadt Report supported the integration of all clandestine operations into one office within CIA, under NSC supervision. To alleviate concerns expressed by the military who viewed this proposal as encroaching upon their prerogatives, the report stated that clandestine operations should be the responsibility of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) in time of war."

The report declared that the failure to appraise scientific advances (e.g., biological and chemical warfare, electronics, aerodynamics, guided missiles, atomic weapons, and nuclear energy) in hostile countries might have more immediate and catastrophic consequences than failure in any other field of intelligence. It urged the US to develop a centralized capability for tracking these developments.

1949 Dulles-Jackson-Correa Report

The Eberstadt report was soon eclipsed by what may have been the most influential policy paper. "On January 8, 1948, the National Security Council established the Intelligence Survey Group (ISG) to "evaluate the CIA's effort and its relationship with other agencies."The Jackson-Dulles-Correa report held an opposite view on clandestine collection to the Eberstadt Report, interesting in that Dulles was a clandestine collection specialist.

Like the Hoover Commission, this group was chartered at the request of President Truman, and was made up of Allen W. Dulles, who had served in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during the Second World War and would become DCI in 1953, William Jackson, a future Deputy DCI, and Matthias Correa, a former assistant to Secretary of Defense James V. Forrestal when the latter had served as Secretary of the Navy during the war. Chaired by Dulles, the ISG presented its findings, known as the Dulles-Jackson-Correa Report, to the National Security Council on January 1, 1949. Partially declassified in 1976, it "contained fifty-six recommendations, many highly critical of the CIA and DCI. In particular, the report revealed problems in the agency's execution of both its intelligence and operational missions. It also criticized the quality of national intelligence estimates by highlighting the CIA's--and, by implication, the DCI's--"failure to take charge of the production of coordinated national estimates." The report went on to argue that the CIA's current trend in clandestine intelligence activities should be reversed in favor of its mandated role as coordinator of intelligence." It was "particularly concerned about the personnel situation at CIA, including internal security, the high turnover of employees, and the excessive number of military personnel assigned to the agency." See the continuing concern about personnel in the 1954 Doolittle Report To add "continuity of service" and the "greatest assurance of independence of action," the report argued that the DCI should be a civilian and that military appointees be required to resign their commissions.

As with the Eberstadt Report, the Dulles Report also expressed concern about the inadequacies in scientific intelligence and the professionalism of the service intelligence organizations, and urged that the CIA provide greater coordination. This led to a recommendation for increased coordination between the DCI and the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the arena of counterespionage. In turn, the report recommended that the Director of FBI be elevated to membership in the committee to help the DCI coordinate intelligence and set intelligence requirements.

The report proposed a large-scale reorganization of CIA. Even though it emphasized intelligence analysis and coordination over operations, it

suggested incorporating covert operations and clandestine intelligence into one office within CIA. ... the Office of Special Operations (OSO), responsible for the clandestine collection of intelligence, and the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC), responsible for covert actions, be integrated into a single division within CIA. [It] recommended replacing existing offices with four new divisions for coordination, estimates, research and reports, and operations.

The heads of the new offices would be included in the immediate staff of the DCI so that he would have "intimate contact with the day-to-day operations of his agency and be able to give policy guidance to them." These recommendations would become the start of the model for the future organization and operation of the present-day CIA. Until the DNI creation, estimates were in a separate office reporting to the DCI, coordination was a job of the DDCI (later assisted by the Intelligence Community Staff), research and reports became the Directorate of Intelligence, and operations was first, euphemistically, called the Directorate of Plans. Directorates for Support (originally called Administration), and Science & Technology, were also created.

1954 Doolittle Report on Covert Activities

Gen. James Doolittle did an extensive report on covert actions, specifically for President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

The report's first recommendation dealt with personnel. It recommended releasing a large number of current staff that could never be more than mediocre, aggressively recruit new staff with an overall goal of increasing the workforce, and intensify training, with 10% of the covert staff time spent in training. The Director should be nonpolitical.

Security was the next concern, starting with a drive to reduce interim and provisional security clearances. The report strongly endorsed use of the polygraph both for initial recruits and existing staff. Counterespionage needed to be strengthened, and field stations needed both to report on their staff and periodically be inspected. Consolidating the Washington workforce, which was scattered among buildings, into one or a few main buildings was seen as a way of improving the security of classified information.

Coordination in the intelligence community was seen as a problem, especially agreeing on clear understandings between CIA and military intelligence organizations. The overall IC program for eliciting information from defectors needed improvement, with contributions from multiple agencies.

As far as organization and management, the report described the structure of the Directorate of Plans (i.e., the clandestine service) as too complex and in need of simplification. The Inspector General needed an agency-wide mandate. The role of the Operations Coordinating Board, the covert and clandestine oversight staff of the National Security Council needed to be strengthened, with operations clearly approved and guided from the highest levels of government.

The report addressed the classic problem of increasing performance while reducing costs. This meant better review of the budgets of covert and clandestine activities by a Review Board, except for the most sensitive operations. It meant providing the Comptroller with enough information, even if sanitized, to do a thorough job.

1956 Bruce-Lovett Report

In his biography of the late Robert Kennedy, historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr in briefly discussed a report he said was located in the Kennedy papers. There is no such report in the Kennedy papers, the CIA archives, the National Archives, the Eisenhower Library or other likely archives, and no documentation exists that an actual report ever existed. Schlesinger said that soon after President Dwight D. Eisenhower created the President's Board of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence Actitivites, that Board requested that Robert A. Lovett and David K.E. Bruce examine CIA's covert operations.. This information comes from Arthur Schlesinger's book about Robert F. Kennedy, cited by cryptome.org. ""Bruce was very much disturbed," Lovett told the Cuba board of inquiry in 1961. "He approached it from the standpoint of 'what right have we to go barging into other countries buying newspapers and handing money to opposition parties or supporting a candidate for this, that or the other office?' He felt this was an outrageous interference with friendly countries. . . . He got me alarmed, so instead of completing the report in thirty days we took two months or more.""

Schlesinger went on to argue that, "The 1956 report, written in Bruce's spirited style, condemned

the increased mingling in the internal affairs of other nations of bright, highly graded young men who must be doing something all the time to justify their reason for being.... Busy, moneyed, and privileged [the CIA] likes its "King Making" responsibility (the intrigue is fascinating -- considerable self-satisfaction, sometimes with applause, derives from "successes" -- no charge is made for "failures" -- and the whole business is very much simpler than collecting covert intellignece on the USSR through the usual CIA methods!).

According to cryptome's account of the Schlesinger book, "Bruce and Lovett could discover no reliable system of control. "there are always, of course, on record the twin, well-born purpose of 'frustrating the Soviets' and keeping others 'pro-western' oriented. Under these almost any [covert] action can be and is being justified.... Once having been conceived, the final approval given to any project (at informal lunch meetins of the OCB [Operations Coordinating Board] inner group) can, at best, be described as pro forma." One consequence was that "no one, other than those in the CIA immediately concerned with their day to day operation, has any detailed knowledge of what is going on." With "a horde of CIA representatives" swarming around the planet, CIA covert action was exerting "significant, almost unilateral influences... on the actual formulation of our foreign policies... sometimes completely unknown" to the local American ambassador." Bruce and Lovett concluded with an plea about taking control of covert operations and their consequences:

Should not someone, somewhere in an authoritative position in our government, on a continuing basis, be... calculating... the long-range wisdom of activities which have entailed a virtual abandonment of the international "golden rule," and which, if successful to the degree claimed for them, are responsible in a great measure for stirring up the turmoitl and raising the doubts about us that exist in many countries of the world today?... Where will we be tomorrow? | "Bruce was very much disturbed," Lovett told the Cuba board of inquiry in 1961. "He approached it from the standpoint of 'what right have we to go barging into other countries buying newspapers and handing money to opposition parties or supporting a candidate for this, that or the other office?' He felt this was an outrageous interference with friendly countries....

The CIA itself would like more detail on this so-called report, a copy of which could not be found, in 1995, by the Agency's History Staff. Referring to reports such as the Dulles-Jackson-Correa, Doolittle, Pike, Church, and Rockefeller reports, the Staff "recently ran across a reference to another item, the so-called "Bruce-Lovett" report, that it would very much like to read--if we could find it! The report is mentioned in Peter Grose's recent biography Gentleman Spy: The Life of Allen Dulles. According to Grose, [Bruce and Lovett] prepared a report for President Dwight Eisenhower in the fall of 1956 that criticized CIA's alleged fascination with "kingmaking" in the Third World and complained that a "horde of CIA representatives" was mounting foreign political intrigues at the expense of gathering hard intelligence on the Soviet Union.

The History Staff checked the CIA files on the President's Board of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence Activities (PBCFIA). They checked with the Eisenhower Library. They checked with the National Archives, which holds the PBCFIA records. They checked with the Virginia Historical Society, the custodian of David Bruce's papers. None had a copy.

"Having reached a dead end, we consulted the author of the Dulles biography, Peter Grose. Grose told us that he had not seen the report itself but had used notes made from it by historian Arthur M. Schlesinger for Robert F. Kennedy and His Times (1978). Professor Schlesinger informed us that that he had seen the report in Robert Kennedy's papers before they were deposited at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston. He had loaned Grose his notes and does not have a copy of these notes or of the report itself.

"This raises an interesting question: how did a report on the CIA written for President Eisenhower in 1956 end up in the RFK papers? We think we have the answer. Robert Lovett was asked to testify before Gen. Maxwell Taylor's board of inquiry on the 1961 Bay of Pigs operation. Robert Kennedy was on that board and may have asked Lovett for a copy of the report. But we do not have the answer to another question: where is the "Bruce-Lovett" report? The JFK Presidential Library has searched the RFK papers without success. Surely the report will turn up some day, even if one government agency and four separate archives so far haven't been able to find it. But this episode helps to prove one of the few Iron Laws of History: the official who keeps the best records gets to tell the story."

Schlesinger himself said the "report" had no influence on the CIA or on Eisenhower at the time; indeed no one at the time ever mentioned it.

1975 investigations

The 1975 United States President's Commission on CIA activities within the United States, better known as the Rockefeller Commission investigated questionable practices including assassination attempts and inappropriate domestic operations. Larger Congressional investigations followed in 1975, first the Church Committee of the United States Senate, followed by the Pike Committee of the United States House of Representatives. Eventually, these interim committees were replaced by the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

1996 reports

In 1996, the U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence issued a congressional report estimating that: "Hundreds of employees on a daily basis are directed to break extremely serious laws in countries around the world in the face of frequently sophisticated efforts by foreign governments to catch them. A safe estimate is that several hundred times every day (easily 100,000 times a year) DO officers engage in highly illegal activities (according to foreign law) that not only risk political embarrassment to the US but also endanger the freedom if not lives of the participating foreign nationals and, more than occasionally, of the clandestine officer himself."

In the same document, the committee wrote, "Considering these facts and recent history, which has shown that the [Director of the Central Intelligence Agency], whether he wants to or not, is held accountable for overseeing the [Clandestine Service], the DCI must work closely with the Director of the CS and hold him fully and directly responsible to him."

2007 documents

On 27 June 2007 the CIA released two collections of previously classified documents which outlined various activities of doubtful legality. The first collection, the "Family Jewels," consists of almost 700 pages of responses from CIA employees to a 1973 directive from Director of Central Intelligence James Schlesinger requesting information about activities inconsistent with the Agency's charter.

The second collection, the CAESAR-POLO-ESAU papers, consists of 147 documents and 11,000 pages of research from 1953 to 1973 relating to Soviet and Chinese leadership hierarchies, and Sino-Soviet relations.

Notes