Executive Secrets
Page 14
SUMMARY
There are a number of important points here that merit summarization. First, and possibly most important, covert action programs are very much the president’s programs: only he approves them, and since 1974 he has been required to do so by affixing his signature to the Presidential Finding. Thus, for three decades it has been impossible to label these programs as “rogue” operations, activities conjured up and run by the CIA for its own purposes and in the conduct of its own foreign policy independent of the president’s official policies. Covert action programs are specifically requested by the president and receive at least five different reviews ranging from the operational to the policy level, including all government agencies having a vested interest in the program.
Second, these are not extra-legal operations but rather are operational programs integrated into the overall foreign policy plan and scrutinized by lawyers at all review levels to ensure congruence with the Constitution, federal statutes, and Agency regulations.
Finally, not only is Congress aware of every covert program, it is a willing partner, for without the appropriation of funds there could be no program. It is important to know that covert action funds are always “fenced,” meaning that only these funds can be expended on the program, no additional funds from other sources can be added, and the fenced funds cannot be used for any other purpose. Once a program has begun, it is followed closely by Congress, with scheduled quarterly briefings to staff members bolstered by ad hoc briefings with members and staff as requested or required. There is also an annual briefing for members of both of the oversight committees each spring. When all of these processes are added up, it’s clear that the days of any “rogue” activity are long gone.
SEVEN
Harry S Truman
And we were alarmed particularly over the situation in France and Italy. We felt that the Communists were using the very extensive funds that they had in hand to gain control of key elements of life in France and Italy—particularly the publishing companies, the press, the labor unions, student organizations, women’s organizations, and all sorts of organizations of that sort—to gain control of them and use them as front organizations.1
George F. Kennan
With the end of World War II, the European continent was at peace for the first time in nearly six years. President Harry S Truman, just weeks into his administration, decided that the U.S. intelligence apparatus created during and for the war was no longer desirable. Despite pleadings from advisors, Truman truncated the intelligence community, disbanding many elements and limiting the size and charter of those that remained. However, Soviet mischief soon produced in the president’s mind serious concerns about the willingness of the Soviet Union, and Joseph Stalin in particular, to sustain and promote a peaceful world. In a speech to the Soviet Communist Party elite at the Bolshoi in February 1946, Stalin passionately declared that democratic capitalism and Communism could not live together peacefully and that Communism would eventually overcome the West. Soon thereafter, the Soviets solidified control over Eastern European nations in contravention of the February 1945 Yalta Agreements (or, at least, what the United States had thought had been agreed to at Yalta), turning the six countries into mere appendages of the Soviet Union itself. In Italy, France, Turkey, and Greece, local Communist parties began working with clandestine Soviet intelligence support to gain control of those governments as well.2
The local Communists in these and other European nations had “infiltrated a number of important non-governmental organizations, including labor unions [so that ] by the late 1940s, Moscow had established in Europe the largest and probably the most skilled collection of covert operatives that the world had ever seen.”3 Soon after Stalin’s speech, and in partial response to it, presidential advisor Clark M. Clifford authored a policy paper for President Truman asserting that the Soviet Union, with its expansionist Communist ideology, was “the gravest problem facing the United States,” as the Soviet leadership “appear to be on a course of aggrandizement designed to lead to eventual world domination.”4
In 1947 Stalin initiated serious attempts to force the Allied Powers out of West Berlin, resulting ultimately in a road and rail blockade of that city, engendering a crisis that could have easily led to a major war between the United States and the USSR. By that time, the Soviet intelligence service had also placed significant numbers of clandestine operations officers both under official diplomatic cover and as non-official “illegals” in such key Western capitals as London, Rome, Paris, and Washington, and also in New York to recruit and handle spies; but there were no intelligence officers from any of the Western intelligence or security services in Moscow.5 The aggregation of these and other events between 1945 and 1949 in which the Soviets had acted in a hostile fashion—including the detonation of an atomic bomb years earlier than Western intelligence had predicted thanks to a formidable spy ring in the American research program—acutely informed Truman of Soviet intentions and the threat Stalin posed to the West.
In consequence of these actions, and in response to recommendations of key advisors, the president initiated the first of a number of covert action programs intended to limit or “contain” Soviet advances in Europe and elsewhere in the free world. Here, Truman was advised and encouraged by such distinguished patriots as Secretary of State George C. Marshall, Undersecretary of State (and future secretary) Dean Acheson, Secretary of War Robert Patterson, Secretary of the Navy (and future secretary of defense) James Forrestal, and the eminent diplomat and Sovietologist George F. Kennan. These statesmen each believed that it was essential for the United States to possess covert political action and propaganda capabilities to counter similar Soviet programs, but none wanted these capabilities associated either with other “legitimate” diplomatic and foreign policy activities or with themselves personally. Truman heeded their advice, becoming the first modern president to endorse programs intended to counter “subversive political activities by giving covert assistance to those nations and groups which opposed Communist aims.” In short, a proposal for the U.S. government to “employ psychological warfare to counter worldwide Soviet subversion” became a cornerstone of American foreign policy, one that was adopted and utilized by every one of Truman’s successors, without exception, until the end of the cold war.6
THE FIRST STEP: NSC-1
On June 26, 1947, President Truman signed into law The National Security Act of 1947, establishing inter alia the National Security Council (NSC). Statutory members of the NSC were the president, vice president, and the secretaries of state and defense. By November 14, 1947, the NSC produced for the president its first policy document, the top secret NSC-1/1, The Position of the United States with Respect to Italy, with the president directing that “these Conclusions be implemented by all departments and agencies concerned, under the coordination of the Secretary of State.” NSC-1/1 found that the internal political situation in Italy was worsening, with the Italian Communist Party (PCI) gaining strength against the democratically oriented political parties. NSC-1/1 was in part based on an intelligence estimate sent to the White House three months prior, which concluded that “The Italian economic situation is desperate and the political situation unstable.”7 The intelligence analysts foresaw a possible Communist victory in Italy in the forthcoming spring 1948 elections; such an event, Kennan opined, would erode governments throughout Western Europe.8
NSC-1/1 stated that “The United States has security interests of primary importance in Italy and the measures to implement our current policies to safeguard those interests should be strengthened without delay.” The document called for the United States to support the Italian government through shipments of food aid and dollar credits, assist the Italian military, provide favorable foreign trade policies, and “[a]ctively combat Communist propaganda by an effective U.S. information program and by all other practicable means, including the use of unvouchered funds.” The nonspecific directive to combat Communist propaganda would s
oon open the door for the Central Intelligence Agency, also established four and a half months earlier in the National Security Act of 1947.9
The first days of the new year saw the U.S. government send to Rome “several hundred million dollars of military and economic assistance.”10 Several months later the original policy document was revised as NSC-1/2, appearing on March 12, 1948, under the same title as NSC-1/1. The revision further defined overt U.S. policy toward Italy and, like 1/1, ended with approval to commence a covert propaganda program intended to offset similar Communist efforts (using “unvouchered funds”), following the axiom that covert action should support overt policy measures. NSC-1/2 differed from NSC-1/1 by instructing the State Department to utilize the overt United States Information Agency (USIA) to “actively combat” Communist propaganda. NSC-1/1 made allusion to any covert element in the policy, but NSC-1/2 did include a vague reference to countering propaganda by “other practicable means, including the use of unvouchered funds.” The opaqueness of this phrase notwithstanding, it was clear to senior policymakers that it constituted presidential approval for the CIA to enter the business of covert psychological warfare. The covertly provided “unvouchered funds” eventually exceeded $10 million, the majority of which went to “get out the vote” operations for the Christian Democrats and, secondarily, to finance general anticommunist literature. NSC-1/2 was particularly forceful, advocating that the United States should not only apply political and economic power, but also military force if the threat of Italy’s “falling under the domination of the Soviet Union” seemed imminent. In its text, NSC-1/2 follows without deviation the axiom that covert action should support overt policy measures.11
NSC-1/3, Position of the United States with Respect to Italy in the Light of the Possibility of Communist Participation in the Government by Legal Means, dated March 8, 1948, and presented to the president for signature concurrently with NSC-1/2 on March 12, 1948, stated that the “problem” was to “assess and appraise the position of the United States with respect to Italy in the light of the possibility that the Communists will obtain participation in the Italian government by legal means,” and held that “United States security interests in the Mediterranean are immediately and gravely threatened by the possibility” of a Communist victory. The paper expressed fear that the “Communists will thereafter, following a pattern made familiar in Eastern Europe, take over complete control of the government and transform Italy into a totalitarian state subservient to Moscow.”
To counter the prospect of the PCI winning the election, or at least winning a plurality of seats in the Parliament, NSC-1/3 directed “as a matter of priority [to] immediately undertake further measures designed to prevent the Communists from winning participation in the [Italian] government . . .” and enumerated the steps the U.S. government should take to preclude such an eventuality. The very first action to be taken was to “[i]mmediately provide campaign funds from unvouchered and private sources to the parties at present represented in the Italian government.” Later Kennan was to acknowledge that Italy was precisely the reason why the CIA was given covert action responsibility and capabilities.12
These NSC papers in toto advocated U.S. intervention, through the mechanism of covert action programs managed by the Central Intelligence Agency, to forestall a PCI victory. It must be noted, however, that the covert action programs—the financial support of Italy’s political parties of the Center, Right, and selected Left, as well as tailored propaganda programs—were by far the smallest element in the United States’s overall policy to help Italy remain democratic.13
THE NEXT PHASE: NSC-4
President Harry S Truman was “deeply interested” in the employment of propaganda, believing it to be an underappreciated tool of statecraft for the cold war. The National Security Council’s concern over Soviet covert activities in the fall of 1947 led to the consideration of two “streams” of U.S. countermeasures. One stream would be “overt foreign information activities,” while the second would be covert propaganda and psychological warfare operations. After staff massaging, the overt proposal was authorized by Truman on December 14, 1947, in NSC-4, titled Coordination of Foreign Intelligence Information Measures. In it, authority was given to the secretary of state to counter through overt methods Communist propaganda and disinformation throughout Europe.14
At the instigation of the secretary of defense, James Forrestal, NSC-4 was accompanied by a top-secret annex, NSC-4/A, which was signed three days later on December 17 and provided the DCI with up to $20 million in unvouchered funds for the CIA to “initiate and conduct, within the limit of available funds, covert psychological operations designed to counteract Soviet and Soviet-inspired activities which constitute a threat to world peace and security, or are designed to discredit and defeat the United States in its endeavors to promote world peace and security.” (About half of this went to Italy for “anti-Communist propaganda and bribes to aid the [Christian Democratic Party].”)15 Operations authorized under 4/A included propaganda, sabotage, demolitions, subversion of adversary states, and assistance to indigenous, anticommunist underground movements. In NSC-4/A, Truman directed that control of covert propaganda (that is, “black” and “gray,” as opposed to the overt “white” information programs managed by the State Department) be given to a new entity first known as the Special Procedures Group and then as the Office of Special Projects. Not to slight the State Department, however, Truman also directed that it establish an office dedicated to psychological warfare. Concerned like others in the administration about a Communist victory in the coming Italian elections, Forrestal believed the CIA to be the ideal U.S. government mechanism to influence the elections through covert political action while keeping the U.S. hand hidden. Although neither the DCI nor the Agency’s legal advisor was particularly keen for the assignment, Truman agreed with Forrestal, personally authorizing the CIA’s first covert operations.16
NSC-4/A provided the foundation for peacetime covert action as well as a clear assignment of that role to the CIA. The U.S. Congress quickly appropriated the funds for the Italian program, indicating approval of and support for the program, as well as an implicit acknowledgment of the CIA as the U.S. government agency best suited to conduct these types of operations. And appropriately, the covert program supported overt diplomacy, one element of which was Truman’s threat to reduce or terminate Marshall Plan aid to Italy if the Communists won (a message that was not lost on the citizens of this war-devastated nation).17 Interestingly, in later years and after other covert action programs approved by his successors were recorded as public failures, Truman denied responsibility for the CIA’s eventual dominant role in covert action programs.18
An intelligence collection unit, the Office of Special Operations (OSO), was already in place and at work in Italy under the auspices of the Central Intelligence Group (CIG), the CIA’s predecessor organization. It was thus no great leap of administrative logic to place within the OSO’s Rome unit a subcomponent to devise and conduct political action operations against the PCI and in support of pro-democratic, pro-West factions. Initially named the Special Procedures Branch but soon changed to the Special Procedures Group (SPG), it adopted Soviet intelligence tactics such as bribery; recruitment of newspaper editors; co-opting of labor unions; the purchasing of politicians; and the printing of election-oriented posters, leaflets, and other materials. Support was an ecumenical exercise, with all non-Communist parties in Italy from the Left-of-Center to the Right receiving funds or other assistance.19 The labors paid off in the May 1948 elections with the preferred party, the Christian Democrats, winning 54 percent of the vote and blocking the PCI from playing any role in the Italian government.20 With the electoral victory in Italy, U.S. policymakers became convinced that “covert operations were both practical and necessary to thwart Communism.”21 This belief was manifested many times over during the cold war, as some propaganda and political action programs ran for literally the entire length of this ideolog
ical conflict.
Interestingly, the United States again provided covert support to democratically oriented Italian political parties in the 1960s; again these efforts met with positive results, effectively countering Communist subversive efforts.22 At the same time, of course, the Soviets were funding the PCI, and they continued to do so well into the 1980s. Even though the PCI publicly announced a severance with Moscow following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the suppression of the Polish labor movement Solidarity in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the only real change in the relationship was the method of payment: in something of an ironic twist, the Soviets began laundering the PCI monies through privately owned businesses.23
THE THIRD PHASE: NSC-10/2
Truman retained policy control of covert action programs in the White House, but this did not necessarily mean close supervision of actual operations. More important to him was the creation of covert action operational capabilities and the initiation of covert action programs to support overt diplomatic actions and foreign policy programs intended to contain the worldwide Communist threat, as urged by George Kennan. There was no mechanism in the White House for periodically reviewing the programs; once begun any “quality control” had to be done at the CIA. Part of Kennan’s impetus for expanding covert action methodologies was derived from his assessment that programs set up under 4/A were not working well, particularly with respect to the bureaucratic divisions of labor in the covert propaganda/psyops operations. Specifically, the Department of State had serious concerns regarding the “psychological and political warfare” programs run out of the Pentagon, which coincided with “sentiment for a more encompassing program of covert activity” within the White House.24