With the end of the cold war, covert action under Bush was transformed from operations against countries and political systems into operations against “transnational” issues: terrorism, narcotics, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and international organized crime.2 Indeed, National Security Review-29 (signed by the president on November 15, 1991) began by stating, “The end of the Cold War and collapse of Soviet Communism have already radically altered the international landscape”; it continued with an assessment that “[m]any new non-Soviet issues have assumed greater importance for the Intelligence Community in recent years, issues such as terrorism, narcotics, proliferation, economic intelligence, technology transfer, and others.”3
Upon taking office, George H.W. Bush retained the basic covert action oversight structure and processes of the Reagan administration, but he gave the committees different names. In National Security Directive-1, Organization of the National Security Council System, signed on January 30, 1989, Bush established his White House policy hierarchy, first by adding his chief of staff and his national security advisor, retired Air Force Lieutenant General Brent Scowcroft, as attendees of all meetings of the statutory National Security Council. The Treasury secretary was also to attend NSC meetings unless the subject was such that his presence would be inappropriate, and the attorney general was to “attend meetings pertaining to his jurisdiction, including covert action.”
The primary policy element was named the Principals Committee (PC), “the senior interagency forum,” composed of the same individuals expected to attend the NSC meetings and chaired by the national security advisor. The “senior sub-Cabinet interagency forum” (i.e., the group just below the Principals) was called the Deputies Committee (DC), but the only “deputies” included were the DDCI and the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs. The State Department was to be represented by the undersecretary for political affairs and the Defense Department by the undersecretary for policy. However, at the discretion of the national security assistant and with the concurrence of the secretaries of state and defense, the undersecretaries could be replaced by the deputy secretaries of each department. The committee was chaired by the deputy national security advisor, Robert M. Gates, a former DDCI. Below this, as the first-tier interagency coordinating committees, the president created Policy Coordination Committees (PCC) for the “development and implementation of national security policy for that regional or functional area.” PCCs were to have a representative at the assistant secretary level for each of the agencies represented on the DC.4
The interesting part of NSD-1 is that the responsibilities of each committee were not specifically delineated, including that of covert action. The charge for the Principals Committee was merely to serve as “the senior interagency forum for consideration of policy issues affecting national security [to review, coordinate, and monitor the development and implementation of national security policy].” Obviously, covert action programs fall under this rubric and so were a key element in the review and approval process for the president. The Deputies Committee was to “review and monitor the work of the NSC interagency process . . . and make recommendations concerning the development and implementation of national security policy.” The sherpas were the interagency PCCs.
BUSH AND COVERT ACTION
The majority of covert action programs run during the Bush administration remain classified, and while some programs, or elements thereof, have been discussed in the media, they have not been declassified or otherwise officially acknowledged. Thus, while this author is permitted to say little about the Bush years, the salient point is that the end of the cold war permitted President Bush to terminate a great majority of covert action operations, with Findings dropping in number from more than thirty to less than ten. The terror of global destruction through nuclear war with the Soviet Union was replaced with the serious (but not so deadly) menaces of terrorism, narcotics, and weapons proliferation. So for the Bush administration, as with all of his post–World War II predecessors, covert action remained a tool of statecraft for the dangers that still lurked in the shadows.
WILLIAM J. CLINTON
President Bill Clinton continued with his predecessor’s system when he signed Presidential Decision Directive-2, Organization of the National Security Council, on January 20, 1993. As before, the Principals Committee was composed of cabinet and agency heads from the foreign policy and national security community, while the Deputies Committee was composed of the number-two officials in the same agencies.5 Further, Clinton established a third, lower-echelon committee, the Interagency Working Committee for Covert Action (IWG), composed of senior (GS-15 to SES-2 grade and military equivalent) officers with responsibility for coordinating covert action programs in their respective departments. The group would meet as required in the Old Executive Office Building under the chairmanship of the National Security Council’s director for intelligence programs (initially George Tenet and, after his elevation to DDCI, E. Rand Beers, a detailee from the State Department). Once options for a covert action program were thoroughly explored at Langley and submitted by the DCI to the National Security Council, the IWG would meet to provide the initial interagency coordination for the program. If changes were required, the Agency would rework the options in line with the needs, criticisms, and/or suggestions of the IWG, and the proposal would again navigate its way through the Agency process and back to the IWG.
In the IWG, the Department of State was represented by officers from the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), joined by officers from the operational line bureau(s) in which the programs would take place (e.g., Near East and South Asian Affairs, Office for Combating Terrorism, etc.); the Defense Department was represented by “suits” from the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) and “uniforms” from the staff of the Joint Chiefs. The CIA’s permanent representative (this author) was a staff officer from the Directorate of Operation’s Special Activities Division, who served as liaison to the NSC’s director of intelligence programs and coordinated IWG meetings for the operational components executing the programs. The CIA line operations officers actually running the program and affiliated operations would brief the IWG on programs details, respond to questions, and modify the program as necessary.
CLINTON AND COVERT ACTION
Clinton had several characteristics in common with Jimmy Carter: both were governors of small southern states who came to Washington as outsiders, both placed in senior White House positions their “small state” political advisors who had no understanding of national-level politics, both were inexperienced in national security intelligence matters, and both were intrinsically hostile to covert action. Complicating the overall mission of the CIA, and covert action programs in particular, was Presidential Decision Directive-35, Intelligence Requirements/National Needs Process, of March 2, 1995, in which the intelligence requirements for the administration were arranged in five “tiers” of priority. Although the contents of PDD-35 remain classified, this seemingly straightforward document in actuality created confusion in the foreign policy and national security community. The requirements of PDD-35 impelled the CIA to undertake actions that the Agency knew in advance would cause problems almost immediately, while laying the foundation for more significant difficulties down the road.
Exacerbating the confusion over the priorities laid forth in PDD-35 was the downsizing of the CIA, with large numbers of experienced operations officers leaving and replacement hiring at low ebb. To accommodate this loss of personnel, the Agency began to close stations in small, usually Third World countries where there was little policy interest. These stations had originally been opened to recruit Soviet and other “hard” (i.e., difficult to recruit) targets because they were more accessible in these countries than in their home countries. Over the years, the record of hard target recruitments in these back-water capitals was slim, yet these stations expended increasing amounts of resources collecting intelligence reports on their countries’ internal politi
cal situations, which were of marginal interest, if that, to policymakers. (This situation had existed for years and reflected the DO’s chronic inability to forego the “numbers game” to focus instead on the quality of operations as opposed to the quantity of intelligence reports.) The Congress also had a major role in reducing the Agency’s overseas presence, although that didn’t stop members from hollering “intelligence failure” when something happened in a locale where the Agency had been forced to terminate its presence.
Because of the relative recency of the Clinton administration, there is an even greater paucity of officially acknowledged covert action programs than with his predecessor’s administration. To be sure, however, at least through 1996 there was little in the broad requirements of American foreign policy that covert action programs could facilitate. But there were exceptions to this generality.
Clinton entered office with three “transnational” covert action programs covered by Presidential Findings already underway—counternarcotics, counterterrorism, and operations to disrupt or otherwise thwart weapons proliferation programs. As his administration progressed, he expanded and added to each of these programs. In the mid-1990s the counternarcotics programs were highly successful in bringing down several Colombian narco-cartels or their leaders.6 The counterterrorism program was greatly expanded in response to PDD-35, in which terrorism was a “Tier 1B” issue. Per PDD-35, the intelligence requirements for terrorism included “collection [of] information on plans/intentions inside terrorist circles, [an] increase [in] Near East/South Asia and Islamic cultural and language expertise, [and an] expansion of analytic cadre.”7 Three months later, the president inked another Presidential Decision Directive, PDD-39, that mandated operations to reduce terrorist capabilities via an aggressive covert action program.8 And, according to testimony by Clinton’s second national security advisor, Samuel Berger, to a joint congressional committee investigating the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the president, beginning in August 1998, authorized a series of both “overt and covert measures” targeting Saudi extremist Osama bin-Ladin. (Importantly, Berger also informed the joint committee that “we do not have a rogue CIA.”) Of note, this authority was signed by the president after the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were car-bombed by bin-Ladin’s Al-Qaeda international terrorist organization.9
While “disrupting terrorist plans . . . and narcotics shipments” was nothing new, Clinton did chart new territory by authorizing the Agency to begin “fouling up financial transactions” of weapons proliferators—in effect, Clinton’s administration began the utilization of information warfare as a covert action tool. Other operations included use of developing technologies to sabotage “imports to and exports from rogue countries . . . to create dissatisfaction [and, hence, internal political unrest]” as well as clandestinely inserting “faulty parts” into equipment sold to “military research and development operations of hostile governments.”10 Collaterally, some of these operations also highlight the difference between classic covert action operations and special activities in what are seen as “representing [a] new type of clandestine activity”; in the words of the chairman of the House intelligence oversight committee at the time, “There are a large number of hidden activities going on to meet transnational threats, but I’m reluctant to call them covert action.”11 But whether covert action or “special activity,” they all required a Presidential Finding.
The record of the Clinton administration’s application of covert action for the most part was dismal. The only programs that were genuinely productive were those that had begun under other presidents; Clinton’s attempts to develop his own covert action programs were absolute failures. The counternarcotics program was perhaps the most effective of all of Clinton’s programs, when one looks at the damage inflicted on the most important Colombian cartels and the deaths of their leaders, but, again, this was a program begun under Reagan. Arguably, Clinton missed his opportunity to increase the effectiveness and scope of the counterterrorism program in the wake of the African embassy bombings and the attack on the USS Cole at port in Yemen. While he did sign the directive to “disrupt” bin-Ladin’s organization, in point of fact the CIA had already been disrupting terrorist attacks for a quarter-century; Clinton’s policy added little to the Agency’s capabilities. When George W. Bush was inaugurated on January 20, 2001, no one at the CIA shed any tears for the outgoing president.
CONCLUSION
Covert action is likely to remain an instrument of U.S. national security policy for the foreseeable future . . . covert action is an option that U.S. officials must be prepared to use in at least some situations, but only in an acceptable manner.1
Twentieth Century Fund
If nothing else, this work should prove beyond question that there is a great deal of misunderstanding about covert action, even by so-called intelligence and foreign policy “experts.” Likewise, the reasons underlying this degree of misunderstanding should be equally clear: (a) critics who don’t like covert action, for whatever reason, continue to write materials that are wrong, deliberately distorting facts or ignoring data that are contradictory to their personal opinions; (b) misinformed writers continue to assert that presidents use covert action because it avoids congressional oversight; (c) critics continue to cite programs that were conducted nearly a half-century ago as current examples of presidential abuse and ignore the significant reforms of 1974, 1981, and 1991; and (d) individuals continue to ignore successful covert action programs after 1981 and the history of covert action in early America.
And certainly it should now be clear that post–World War II presidents were the final approving authority for all covert action programs of any magnitude or significance undertaken by the U.S. government, often personally instigating large programs. And through it all, the CIA has been a faithful servant of the president, even when its professional staff disagreed with the programs and even when it was unfairly saddled with the blame for programs that became compromised or failed.
Beyond this, there can be no doubt that presidents will continue to use covert action, although the methodology it entails is changing because of modern technology. Concomitantly, much of what used to be done covertly can and should now be done overtly. To cite one example, support by the U.S. government to Boris Yeltsin and the Russian government during the 1991 coup was done with “telephones, televisions, and fax machines . . . [w]orking in broad daylight, the United States and its allies were able to do things that would have been unthinkably dangerous had they been done in the shadows.”2
Since presidents will continue to rely on covert action, the “objective” for the future “must not be to ban covert action but so far as possible to bring it within a democratic framework.”3 That Congress will continue to support covert action programs that are well conceived, well managed, and productive is without question, and the strict oversight it conducts of covert action programs will ensure that these programs remain within the requisite “democratic framework.” Congressional oversight should be viewed by the executive branch, and by the CIA, as a positive force in preventing bad ideas from becoming programs and in preventing bad programs from becoming disasters.
With respect to future operational factors, the Internet and satellite communications will have a major effect on covert action. For example, there may be less need for print propaganda because of international satellite TV broadcasting; propaganda disseminated on satellite TV will reach a larger audience, increasing both effectiveness and potential for unwanted replay back into the United States. Too, the Internet and information warfare will become highly useful tools, which will be used more and more frequently in covert action against our nation’s enemies.
Lastly, despite the justifications for and value of covert action outlined in this work, covert action will probably continue to be controversial, with detractors offering legitimate as well as contrived criticisms. But just as we know that all post–World War II presidents, whether avidl
y or reluctantly, relied on covert action as part of their foreign and national security policies, so too we can be confident that future presidents will do the same.
NOTES
PREFACE
1. The opening epigraph is lifted from the Introduction to National Security Decision Directive-286. The declassified text may be found in Twentieth Century, Need to Know, at 87, or at www.fas.org/irp/offdocs, the Web site for the Federation of American Scientists.
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