National Security Intelligence

by Loch K. Johnson

  The role of intelligence in support of America's two longest wars – in Iraq and in Afghanistan in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks – is given added attention in this second edition. So is the unsettling rise of so-called ISIS, a terrorist organization concentrated in Syria, Iraq, and Libya, but with aspirations to create a new “caliphate” or Islamic nation in the Middle East – an empire based on a narrow form of Islamic radicalism with little tolerance for anything modern, such as the rights of women to an education, to a professional career, or even to drive an automobile. The ISIS leaders have inspired “lone wolf” terrorist attacks in the West, including in recent years mass killings in Paris; Brussels; San Bernardino, California; Nice; and Orlando, Florida. Other topics given closer scrutiny in this edition are the complex relationship between intelligence officers and the policymakers they serve; and the important legal and ethical debates surrounding the use of drones to kill suspected terrorists, some of whom have been citizens of the democratic nations.

  The second edition, moreover, has expanded sections on the organizational tensions that exist within the U.S. Intelligence Community, especially between the Department of Defense and the CIA; on the expansion of CIA paramilitary covert actions; on the technical means of gathering intelligence; and on how intelligence can become a political football, “politicized” by some individuals to advance their policy initiatives – even if it means “cooking” (slanting) the information to suit their own political ends. Here is the cardinal sin of intelligence.

  While this second edition is a little longer than the first, I have been determined not to turn these pages into an encyclopedic treatise. My goal from the beginning has been to provide a manageable primer on the subject of national security intelligence, without drowning the reader in too many details. Once the fundamentals of intelligence presented in this book are understood, the reader can then turn to the more detailed works offered in the “Suggested Readings” section at the end of this volume.

  The study of intelligence is an exciting and meaningful pursuit. The subject ranges across many topics and academic disciplines. It has a certain flare that only secret operations, hidden rendezvouses with foreign agents, long-distance spying by glittering satellites in space, mole-hunting, and drone-warfare can impart. Welcome to the second edition, and to the mysterious and fascinating world of modern-day espionage.

  Athens, Georgia

  Notes

  1 See Richard W. Aldrich, The Hidden Hand: Britain, America and Cold War Secret Intelligence (London: John Murray, 2001), p. 5; and Michael Herman, Intelligence Power in Peace and War. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

  2 For the 2009 survey, see Peter Monaghan, “Intelligence Studies,” Chronicle of Higher Education (March 20, 2009), pp. B4–B5; and for the more recent appraisal that finds a dramatic growth in the discipline since the survey, see Loch K. Johnson, “The Development of Intelligence Studies,” in Robert Dover, Michael S. Goodman, and Claudia Hillebrand, eds., Routledge Companion to Intelligence Studies (London and New York: Routledge, 2014), pp. 3–22.

  3 See Peter Gill, Stephen Marrin, and Mark Phythian, eds., Intelligence Theory: Key Questions and Debates (New York: Routledge, 2009). Also: Peter Gill and Mark Phythian, “What Is Intelligence Studies?” International Journal of Intelligence, Security and Public Affairs 18/1 (2016), pp. 5–19; Loch K. Johnson and Allison M. Shelton, “Thoughts on the State of Intelligence Studies: A Survey Report,” Intelligence and National Security 28 (February 2013), pp. 109–20; Stephen Marrin, “Improving Intelligence Studies as an Academic Discipline,” Intelligence and National Security 31/2 (March 2016), pp. 266–79; and Damien Van Puyvelde and Sean Curtis, “‘Standing on the Shoulders of Giants’: Diversity and Scholarship in Intelligence Studies,” Intelligence and National Security 32/1 (February 2017).

  4 See R. Gerald Hughes, Peter Jackson, and Len Scott, eds., Exploring Intelligence Archives: Enquiries into the Secret State (New York: Routledge, 2008); and Loch K. Johnson, ed., Strategic Intelligence, Vol. I: Understanding the Hidden Side of Government (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007).

  Acknowledgments

  With pleasure, I acknowledge the well-springs of my understanding about national security intelligence, namely: the authors of the works that are cited in this book; the many intelligence officers who have responded to my endless questions and requests for interviews over the years since 1975; and lawmakers Les Aspin, Frank Church, Wyche Fowler, and Walter F. Mondale (who also served as Vice President during the Carter Administration) who provided wise counsel on the view from Capitol Hill. This work has benefited, too, from my own opportunities to work as a staff aide in the Senate, the House of Representatives, and the White House during the 1970s and 1990s. I would like to express my appreciation as well to Dr. Louise Knight, who originally approached me about writing this book for Polity. She is a wonderful editor and I am grateful for her guidance and friendship. Helpful, too, at Polity was Nekane Tanaka Galdos, who provided valuable guidance throughout the preparation of this second edition, and to Sarah Dancy for her sure-handed copyediting. As well, I want to thank Marie Milward and Lieutenant Colonel James Borders – both PhD recipients in International Affairs at the University of Georgia – for their research assistance and insights; and Markus M. L. Crepaz, head of the Department of International Affairs at the University of Georgia, for his support and encouragement. My greatest debt, as always, is to Leena S. Johnson, my discerning “in-house editor” and wife of many blissful years; and to Kristin E. Swati, our daughter, and her husband Jamil Swati – both a constant source of infectious enthusiasm and good judgment. Their encouragement and unbending support made life much easier for me as an author.

  1

  National Security Intelligence

  The First Line of Defense

  Only a few puffs of white cloud marred a perfect blue sky as American Airlines Flight 11 prepared to depart from Boston's Logan International Airport at 7:59 on Tuesday morning, September 11, 2001. Destination: Los Angeles. Passenger Mohamed Atta, short in stature and dour in countenance, had seated himself in 8D, business class. Four other men from the Middle East, equal to Atta in their unfriendly demeanor, sat near him in business and first class.

  In the cockpit of the Boeing 767, Captain John Ogonowski and First Officer Thomas McGuinness went through the usual pre-flight checklist at the control panel. Everything was in order. The Captain backed the plane out of its berth and taxied down the runway. He pulled back on a lever and headed for an altitude of 26,000 feet. Eighty-one passengers settled in for the scheduled five-hour flight and the crew's nine flight attendants bustled about in the kitchens, preparing for cabin service. At 8:14, fifteen minutes into the journey, a routine radio message from the Federal Aviation Administration's center for air traffic control (ATC) in Boston requested that Captain Ogonowski take his aircraft to a higher elevation, 35,000 feet. Contrary to standard procedure, the Captain failed to acknowledge these instructions. A commotion on the other side of the cockpit door had distracted him.

  Just as the ATC message arrived in the cockpit of Flight 11, two of the men who had boarded the aircraft with Atta sprang from their seats in first class. With knives, they stabbed two flight attendants who were wheeling a beverage cart down the aisle. One of the attendants collapsed, mortally wounded; the other shrieked and clasped a hand over a cut on her arm. The assailants moved quickly to the cockpit door and forced their way inside.

  In their wake, Atta raced from his seat and commandeered the controls of the airplane. Back in the passenger cabin, another of his companions knifed a male passenger in the throat and began to spray Mace throughout the business and first-class sections. The poisoned air drove some passengers down the aisle, away from the front of the airplane; others huddled low in their seats. Wielding his knife in plain sight, the killer – muscular, intense, ready to strike again – warned in a heavy Middle Eastern accent that he had a bomb. One of his allies added in flawless English: “Nobody move. Everythin
g will be okay. If you try to make any moves, you'll endanger yourself and the airplane. Just stay quiet.” In the coach section, passengers remained unaware of the danger, believing that a medical emergency had arisen in first class.

  Filled with Mace, the air in the front cabin was proving impossible to breathe. A flight attendant hid by the curtain that separated the coach and business sections and tried to reach the Captain in the cockpit with an on-board telephone. When this failed, she called the American Airlines operations center in Fort Worth, Texas, and, with remarkable composure, explained in a low voice that a violent hijacking of Flight 11 was under way. Officials in Fort Worth also had no success with their repeated calls to the cockpit.

  Twenty-five minutes had elapsed since take-off. The airplane was now flying erratically. It made a lurch southward, circled in a wide arc, and went into a sharp descent. Perhaps it was bound for the John F. Kennedy Airport in New York and a round of bargaining on the tarmac: a demand for a ransom, in exchange for the release of the aircraft and its hostages.

  But the plane was flying so low. Far too low.

  At 8:46, Flight 11 slammed into the ninety-sixth floor of the North Tower at the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan.

  Instant inferno. Temperatures above the melting point for steel. Metal wrenching against metal. Immediate death for all those on board the airplane and an unknown number of office workers – the lucky ones who at least escaped the fiery end that would soon consume others in the building. Some people above the impassable impact site chose to leap from windows toward the streets, an eternity below, rather than perish in the searing flames.

  Another aircraft – United Airlines Flight 175 – had also set off for Los Angeles from Logan Airport. Hijacked in coordination with Flight 11, it soon turned to the south as well, arced back toward the east, and plunged toward the skyscrapers of New York City, their windows glittering in the morning sunlight. The plane struck the South Tower at 9:03, about seventeen minutes after the North Tower impact.

  Two other teams were part of the hijacking plot, later traced to Al Qaeda, a terrorist group sheltered by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Instead of New York City, however, they directed their confiscated airplanes toward the nation's capital city. At 9:27, American Airlines Flight 77, originally on its way to L.A. from Washington Dulles, smashed into the Pentagon like a huge missile, traveling at a speed of 530 miles per hour.

  When terrorists took over the fourth plane, United 93, on its way to San Francisco, its passengers had heard – in heart-wrenching cell phone calls with loved ones – about the fate of American 11 and United 175. At 9:57, several of the passengers decided as a group to rush the hijackers in a desperate attempt to prevent the plane from reaching its target – perhaps the Capitol or the White House. Their brave struggle lasted for several minutes, as the terrorist pilot at the controls attempted to throw them off balance by jerking the steering column from side to side and up and down. Undeterred by these maneuvers, the passengers fought their way to the door of the cockpit. About to be overwhelmed, the terrorists chose to destroy the plane rather than surrender. The counterfeit pilot turned a lever hard to the right and rolled the aircraft over on its back. Within seconds, it fell from the sky and exploded in a fiery ball across a barren Pennsylvania field. In another twenty minutes of flying time it would have reached Washington.

  In New York, the tragedy was not over. Under the extreme heat caused by the impact of large and fast-flying airplanes filled with volatile aviation fuel, the structural girders of the Twin Towers buckled and soon collapsed, sending office workers, tourists on the observation deck, and rescuing firefighters and police officers into a downward free fall to their deaths. Steel, glass, furniture, and bodies plummeted from the heavens. Massive grey and black plumes of dust and pulverized metal billowed throughout lower Manhattan as thousands of people in the streets below fled from the crumbling 125-story buildings. Blackness blotted out the sky, as if the sun had died that morning along with all the innocents in the Twin Towers.

  When the dust settled, nearly 3,000 Americans had perished in New York City, in Washington, and in smoldering farmland near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. The United States had suffered its worst attack since the British burning of Washington, DC in the War of 1812, surpassing the horrific Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941.1

  The importance of national security intelligence

  The terrorist attacks on the United States carried out by Al Qaeda on September 11, 2001, were a brutal reminder of the importance of national security intelligence (NSI) – in this instance, information provided to a nation's leaders by secretive government agencies to protect citizens against threats posed by domestic or foreign sources. If only the CIA, America's most well-known espionage service, had been able to place an agent high in the Al Qaeda organization, a “mole” who could have tipped off U.S. authorities about the planned hijackings. If only the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), America's premier domestic intelligence agency, had been more successful in tracking down the hijackers in California earlier in 2001. If only the National Security Agency (NSA), the largest of the U.S. spy organizations, had translated more quickly from Farsi into English intercepted telephone messages between Al Qaeda lieutenants that hinted at an approaching attack on the United States from the skies. If only airport security officers and American pilots had been warned about the immediacy of possible hijackings and been provided with profiles and photographs of at least some of the 9/11 terrorists, which the CIA and the FBI had on file. Mistakes were made by intelligence officers and political leaders alike that might have halted the aerial terrorism that claimed so many innocent lives that awful day.

  In the hours and days after the attacks, no one in the United States knew if the tragic events of 9/11 were just the first of many assaults that would follow, perhaps using chemical, biological, or even nuclear devices rather than airplanes as weapons. Fortunately, no more immediate attacks occurred in the United States, but anxiety remained over possible fresh outbreaks of violence against American citizens at home and abroad. After 9/11, Al Qaeda and its loosely affiliated factions targeted other locations around the globe – London, Madrid, and Bali, for example. In more recent years, this terrorist organization, whose leaders (Osama bin Laden chief among them) were thought to be hiding in the rugged mountain terrain of North Waziristan in Pakistan, has lurked behind assaults on American, British, and other international armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. Al Qaeda has openly proclaimed its presence in Somalia, Yemen, and in parts of Pakistan as well, along with sleeper agents in all the major democracies. Al Qaeda terrorist factions have been aided and abetted by jihadists associated with the Taliban, the insurgent organization that provided Bin Laden and his associates with a safe haven in Afghanistan prior to and during the terrorist operations directed against the United States from 1998 to 2001.

  In defense against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, nations in the West have escalated their intelligence activities in the Middle East and Southwest Asia, in hopes of both acquiring prior knowledge of future attacks and crippling the terrorists by way of aggressive paramilitary operations. This approach bore fruit in May 2011 when a U.S. Navy SEAL team, supported by intelligence gathered by America's spy agencies, raided a private compound in Abbottabad (a city near the Pakistani capital, Islamabad) and killed Osama bin Laden.

  Soon after Bin Laden's death, another global terrorist faction came to the forefront in the Middle East and North Africa, known as ISIS, a brutal army of insurgents in Syria, Iraq, and Libya, which has demonstrated a sophisticated use of social media to recruit young men and women to its cause. The abbreviation ISIS stands for Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, also known as the Islamic State, ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant), or, in Arabic, Daesh. This organization claimed credit for attacks not only in the Middle East and Libya, but also in Paris, Brussels, and Nice. Further, adherents to ISIS's anti-Western agenda have engaged in mass shootings on its behalf in California (
San Bernardino) and Florida (Orlando). Al Qaeda remains high on the U.S. and allied lists of major threats, but has been edged out of the top tier by the growing virulence and ability of ISIS to spawn “lone wolf” attacks against the democracies.

  Mysteries and secrets

  Intelligence practitioners speak of “mysteries” and “secrets.” Mysteries are subjects that a nation (or some other entity, such an international peacekeeping organization) would like to know about in the world, but which are difficult to fathom in light of the limited capacity of human beings to forecast the course of history – say, the question of who might be the next leader of Russia or China, or whether Pakistan will be able to survive the presence of Taliban warriors and Al Qaeda terrorists based inside its borders. In contrast, secrets are more susceptible to human discovery and comprehension, although even they may be difficult to unveil – say, the number of nuclear submarines in the Chinese Navy, the identity of Russian agents who have infiltrated the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), or the efficiencies of North Korean rocket fuel and the range of its long-distance missiles.