Executive Secrets
Page 22
To develop, implement, and monitor foreign and national security policy, Ronald Reagan continued with the aggregation of committees used by his predecessor. In National Security Decision Directive-2, National Security Council Structure, of January 12, 1982, (interestingly, signed a full year after inauguration), he created several “Senior Interagency Groups,” one for foreign policy, another for defense policy, and a third for “intelligence policies and matters,” charged to “advise and assist the NSC in exercising its authority and discharging its responsibilities.” The composition of these groups was primarily at the deputy secretary or undersecretary level. But covert action was not under the umbrella of any of the three committees.4
At the urging of DCI William J. Casey, Reagan created a separate, high-level covert action screening committee which was, in effect, a restricted subcommittee of the National Security Council. Called the National Security Planning Group (NSPG), membership included the vice president, the secretaries of state and defense, the president’s national security advisor (initially Richard Allen, although Reagan would eventually go through six advisors before the end of his second term), the DCI, and, remarkably, several purely political aides including the president’s chief of staff, the presidential counselor, and the deputy chief of staff.5 The director of the Office of Management and Budget, the attorney general, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs were relegated to the status of occasional invitees. Reagan himself often chaired the NSPG, a forum in which many decisions were made right at the table—a fact that should not be surprising given that the NSPG membership included within it the statutory members of the National Security Council. As such, NSPG meetings negated the need to call formal NSC meetings. A level below the NSPG was an interagency review group, composed of deputy heads of the relevant agencies and supported by an active staff, called the Policy Coordination Group (PCG).6
The NSPG was the locus of foreign policy initiatives in the Reagan White House, and—at William J. Casey’s insistence to ensure secrecy—it was the only group that was authorized to consider covert action programs. The group was determined to prevent leaks when covert action programs were on the NSPG agenda; no advance papers were prepared, no aides sat in on the meetings, all papers were collected at the ends of the meetings, and decisions were made by the principals without staff support. Despite this formalized structure, however, Reagan occasionally made key decisions—including those of supporting the Polish trade union Solidarity and the Afghan resistance—without convening the group, meeting instead only with William J. Casey and his longtime, close advisor and friend William Clark (who also had brief tenures as deputy secretary of state and national security advisor despite possessing not one whit of foreign policy experience).7
In revamping the White House’s national security mechanism, Ronald Reagan promulgated Executive Order 12333, designating the National Security Council as “the highest Executive Branch entity that provides a review of, guidance for, and direction to” covert action programs.8 The order further expanded the concept of covert action, employing the term “special activities” for generic, classic covert action, and gave authority for all special activity missions exclusively to the CIA unless the president designated in writing another agency to conduct a mission or program. (As of 2002, EO 12333 remains in effect, and so far no other agency has ever been so designated.) For the first time in any written policy document, EO 12333 also stated that special activities could be conducted from inside the United States so long as the intended target audience was foreign and such activities did not influence American domestic politics, media, or public opinion.9 This provision reflected the reality of modern worldwide communications and media capabilities, both as a tool of covert propaganda and political action and as a potential drawback. And in a gesture to the increasing intensity of congressional oversight and ramifications from Hughes-Ryan, EO 12333 directed that covert action programs be reviewed by the attorney general for consonance with pertinent laws and rules.10
Just prior to his second term, President Reagan signed a directive that in effect codified the covert action review and approval process that had been in place since the beginning of his administration. National Security Decision Directive-159, Covert Action Policy Approval and Coordination Procedures, of January 18, 1985, reached beyond the scope of the NSC and its staff and out to the various agencies having a role in any covert action program. It detailed step-by-step what was to be done and when. And when the Iran-Contra scandal highlighted weaknesses in the covert action process, Reagan signed NSDD-286, Approval and Review of Special Activities, on October 15, 1987, eliminating loopholes.11 The key difference between NSDD-159 and 286 was that the latter mandated that all covert action operations had to be conducted pursuant to a Finding and banned retroactive Findings. Most important, it also ordered that the “National Security Advisor and the NSC staff . . . shall not undertake the conduct of any special activities.” NSDD-286 also required that all special activities had to be “consistent with national defense and foreign policies and applicable law.”
NSDD-286 was further strengthened by the Intelligence Authorization Act of 1991, which required a Finding regardless of which agency had been assigned to manage the covert action program. Of equal significance, NSDD-286 required that a Finding be written and submitted to the Congress for “all CIA activities abroad, other than those activities that are intended solely for obtaining necessary intelligence.”12
COVERT ACTION UNDER REAGAN AND CASEY
One of the first covert action programs considered by the Reagan administration after inauguration was a response to a perceived crisis in Surinam, generated by a bloody coup against the elected government led by an army noncommissioned officer. Afraid the left-leaning rebels would institute a Communist state, or at least move closer to the hemisphere’s designated nemesis Fidel Castro, the Reagan National Security Council first reviewed possible actions in concert with the government of Netherlands, Surinam’s former colonial suzerain. During a succession of meetings of the NSPG’s subordinate element, the Crisis Pre-Planning Group, various options were analyzed, discussed, and rejected. When the program was briefed to Congress, the legislators were incredulous, questioning why the United States would waste time, money, and resources on a small, impoverished, barely populated country of absolutely no national interest to the United States. Ultimately, on January 4, 1983, the NSPG, chaired by the president, decided to forgo covert action in Surinam in favor of limited and (as it turned out) ineffective overt measures.13
Five months after taking office, in May 1982, Reagan signed NSDD-32, U.S. National Security Strategy (drafted by White House advisor Richard Pipes), which authorized a broad-ranging political action and propaganda covert action program to “ ‘neutralize’ Soviet control over Eastern Europe and authorized the use of covert action and other means to support anti-Soviet organizations in the region.” Included were such classic propaganda and political action techniques as covertly “sponsoring many demonstrations, protests, meetings, conferences, press articles, television shows, exhibitions, and the like to focus attention” on nefarious Soviet activities.14 The NSDD specifically noted that overt economic and diplomatic pressures were also to be brought to bear, with financial aid to Eastern European states “calibrated to their willingness to protect human rights and undertake political and free-market reforms.”15 This document also had a covert action element to it, which although still classified, clearly limns the all-important linkage of a covert action program to established overt policies and measures. It is important to emphasize that much of the impetus for these operations was to serve as a counter to massive Soviet KGB active measures operations being conducted throughout the European continent. According to former DCI Robert M. Gates:
The Soviets were all over the place secretly supporting opponents of continuing INF [Intermediate Nuclear Forces] deployments and then SDI [Strategic Defense Initiative], which they sought to discredit in all possible ways. They created
forgeries of documents purportedly signed by [Secretary of State George] Schultz, [DCI William J.] Casey, and senior U.S. military leaders in hopes of scaring the bejesus out of our friends and allies.16
With these instances of Soviet mischief, as well as KGB activities in Africa (accusing the CIA of creating AIDS), in South Asia (attempting to pin the assassination of the Indian prime minister on the United States), and the Third World (proliferating the “Baby Parts” story), the Reagan administration was not about to sit idly on the sidelines.17
Four months later, on September 2, 1982, Reagan authorized NSDD-54, United States Policy Towards Eastern Europe, which was the product of an interagency analysis of policies directed at the Warsaw Pact countries. Reagan’s long-term goal was to “loosen the Soviet hold on the region and thereby facilitate its eventual reintegration into the European community of nations.” The NSDD proposed to achieve this ambitious goal in Eastern Europe by “encouraging liberal trends in the region, furthering human and civil rights . . . reinforcing the pro-Western orientation of their peoples, lessening their political and economic dependence on the USSR . . . , undermining the military capabilities of the Warsaw Pact, and encouraging more private market-oriented development of their economies.” The policy was to “discriminate” in favor of those countries that were able to show movement away from the yoke of the USSR (or which had at least not obstructed Western policies) and demonstrate greater “internal liberalization,” including advances in human rights and a more market-oriented economy. The United States was to “employ commercial, financial, exchange, informational, and diplomatic instruments” to implement the policy toward states that evinced some degree of reciprocation, however limited. The precise measures included offering Most Favored Nation status, extensions of credit, and membership in the International Monetary Fund, as well as rescheduling debt payments, increasing cultural and educational exchanges, and providing “increased interactions” with scientific and technical “elites” and high-level “visits” from dignitaries and naval vessels.18
NSDD-54 was followed on November 12 of the same year by NSDD-66, Protracted Economic Warfare Against the USSR, which established new strategies for increasing the economic hardship in the Soviet Union by co-opting European governments as partners. The administration next adopted National Security Decision Directive-75, U.S. Relations with the USSR, on January 17, 1983, as its lodestar, a document stating that it was U.S. policy to “contain and over time reverse Soviet expansionism by competing effectively . . . in all international arenas—particularly in the overall military balance and in geographical regions” important to the United States; “promote . . . the process of change in the Soviet Union towards [a] more pluralistic political and economic system” while reducing the power of the “privileged elite”; and “engage the Soviet Union in negotiations to attempt to reach agreements which protect and enhance U.S. interests.” The implementation of these objectives required that the United States “convey to Moscow that unacceptable behavior will incur costs that would outweigh any gains,” while positive steps would likewise be rewarded.
NSDD-75 intended to “shape the environment in which Soviet decisions are made . . . in a wide variety of functional and geopolitical arenas and in the US–Soviet bilateral relationship.” The U.S. military was to be modernized, NATO to be “reinvigorated,” and Soviet adventurism in the Third World confronted with “U.S. military countermeasures.” The economic facet of the policy was to make sure that “East-West economic relations [did] not facilitate the Soviet military buildup,” and did not “subsidize” the Soviet domestic economy, while simultaneously permitting “mutual beneficial trade . . . in non-strategic areas, such as grains.” In efforts to disrupt the Soviet economy, intelligence analysts developed a list of manufacturing equipment, raw materials, computers, and other technologies to determine what the Soviets needed to obtain from abroad. Of critical import to the Soviets was the requirement for imported supercomputers, for the USSR (according to its own experts) was fifteen years behind the West in this regard and lacked any domestically produced supercomputer.19
Seeking to deter or prevent the Soviets from using Western (and especially American) high-tech materials to improve their economic situation, the Reagan administration initiated a comprehensive covert action program that involved the sabotaging of important materials sent legally or otherwise to the Soviet Union. Among these items were “doctored” blueprints or inaccurately printed operating/technical/repair instructions for Western-made civilian manufacturing equipment; damaged or degraded computer chips used in manufacturing tools; specially designed computer hardware with well-hidden flaws embedded inside; distorted information on offshore oil drilling and other means of oil extraction (seriously damaging the Soviets’ efforts to increase their domestic production for their own use as well as to earn hard currency); and “advanced designs” of computers and equipment that had already been discarded by American engineers.20 In some operations, “contrived computer chips were inserted into Soviet military equipment, flawed turbines were installed on a gas pipeline, and defective plans disrupted the output of chemical plants and a tractor factory . . . [;] the Pentagon introduced misleading information pertinent to stealth aircraft, space defense, and tactical aircraft . . . [and] the Soviet space shuttle was a rejected NASA design. . . . The program had great success and was never detected.” The Soviet–East European covert action programs contributed to undermining the legitimacy of the Soviet government in the eyes of its own citizens, thus accomplishing one of the programs’ collateral goals.21
The imposition of martial law in Poland, the outlawing of the Solidarity labor movement, and the ever-present threat of Soviet invasion (in circumstances similar to the Soviet invasions of Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968) brought about what must be considered as the CIA’s finest hour in terms of covert action programs. Interestingly, critics of covert action somehow always manage to overlook the outstanding successes of this program; and those who crucify covert action as “immoral” seem unable to grasp that these programs supported right against wrong, democracy over Communism, freedom over oppression.
Covert action in Poland during the 1990s prevented Soviet invasion and occupation, and brought democracy to more nations than just Poland. The Reagan administration believed strongly that a “free, non-Communist Poland . . . would be a dagger in the heart of the Soviet empire; and if Poland became democratic, other East European states would follow.”22 In the spring of 1989, Poland did indeed become the first of the Soviet satellite states to hold free elections as a newly democratized state, and in less than a year, all of Eastern Europe was free to determine their own futures. While the CIA’s covert action program cannot take full credit for this, without the covert action operations the end result may well have been longer in coming and, perhaps, not nearly as peaceful.
According to journalist Carl Bernstein of Watergate reporting fame, President Reagan met alone with Pope John Paul II in the Vatican on June 17, 1982, barely a month after signing NSDD-32. Bernstein writes that during the meeting the president asked the Holy Father to join with the United States to support covertly the now-underground Solidarity movement and, of even greater import, “a clandestine campaign to hasten the dissolution of the Communist empire.”23 Advising Reagan on the Polish program in the early years of the administration were Carter’s national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski (who also served in an advisory capacity to the CIA’s propaganda and political action specialists), DCI William J. Casey, current national security advisor Richard Allen, longtime Reagan advisor William Clark, Secretary of State Alexander Haig, former DDCI Lieutenant General Vernon Walters, and U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican William Wilson—devout Catholics all.24
The extensive research by Carl Bernstein on the Reagan administration’s support to Solidarity indicates that the circumstances surrounding the program were the best possible to achieve success, in that the U.S. government had only to provide covert sup
port at the margins, thus merely permitting “the natural forces already in place to play this out.”25 Never was the United States commitment to Solidarity in doubt. Both Bernstein and author Peter Schweizer (who has chronicled the Reagan policies directed at the collapsing of the Soviet Union) have detailed some of the covert assistance to Solidarity and the Polish underground, to include the provision of funds to sustain Solidarity; infiltration of a variety of communications equipment for the underground to maintain contact with the West; the receipt of information inside and the reporting of intelligence to the outside; provision of personal computers, fax machines (the first in Poland), and other means of desktop publishing to allow Solidarity to publish newsletters and other informative tracts; and the training of members in communications, computer skills, and other essential skills allowing them to survive while on the run.26 And as the martial law regime became more repressive, it became concomitantly more important for accurate news to be disseminated to the Polish citizenry; Solidarity would thus become the underground “town crier” with U.S. government assistance.