National Security Intelligence Read online

  Table of Contents

  Series page

  Title page

  Copyright page

  About the Author

  Figures and Tables Figures

  Tables

  Abbreviations

  Roadmap to a Hidden World Notes

  Acknowledgments

  1: National Security Intelligence The importance of national security intelligence

  Mysteries and secrets

  Central themes

  The intelligence missions

  The challenge of intelligence accountability

  This book's purpose

  The multiple dimensions of national security intelligence

  A holistic view of national security intelligence

  Intelligence as a cluster of organizations: the American experience

  Military intelligence agencies

  A flawed plan for U.S. intelligence

  Redesigning the leadership of American intelligence

  A revolving door at the office of the DNI

  A dream still on hold

  Notes

  2: Intelligence Collection and Analysis The intelligence cycle

  Intelligence collection and the “Ints”

  The ongoing quest for better collection and analysis

  Notes

  3: Covert Action Covert action as an intelligence mission

  The implementation of covert action

  The methods of covert action

  The ebb and flow of covert action

  A ladder of escalation for covert action

  Evaluating covert action

  Guidelines for covert action

  Notes

  4: Counterintelligence The proper focus of counterintelligence as an intelligence mission

  The motivations for treason

  Catching spies

  CI tradecraft: security and counterespionage

  Secrecy and the state

  Counterintelligence and accountability

  Notes

  5: Safeguards against the Abuse of Secret Power The evolution of safeguards against intelligence abuse in the United States

  A shock theory of intelligence accountability

  Key issues of intelligence accountability

  The roles played by lawmakers as intelligence supervisors

  The dynamic nature of intelligence accountability

  In search of guardians

  Notes

  6: National Security Intelligence National security intelligence as organization

  Security intelligence as a set of missions

  National security intelligence and the importance of accountability

  A citizens intelligence advisory board

  Citizen responsibilities

  Notes

  Suggested Readings

  Index

  End User License Agreement

  List of Tables

  Table 5.1 Type of stimuli and oversight responses by lawmakers, 1974–2016

  Table 6.1 National security intelligence: a reform agenda for the United States

  List of Illustrations

  Figure 1.1Basic human motivations and the quest for national security intelligence: a stimulus–response model

  Figure 1.2The U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) in 2016*

  *From 1947 to 2005, a Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) led the IC, rather than a DNI.

  Figure 1.3The CIA during the Cold War

  Source: Fact Book on Intelligence, Office of Public Affairs, Central Intelligence Agency (April 1983), p. 9.

  Figure 1.4The CIA's Operations Directorate during the Cold War

  Source: Loch K. Johnson, America's Secret Power: The CIA in a Democratic Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 46.

  Figure 2.1The intelligence cycle

  Source: Adapted from Fact Book on Intelligence, Office of Public Affairs, Central Intelligence Agency (October 1993), p. 14.

  Figure 2.2The relationship between a nation's sense of acceptable risk and its resources committed to intelligence collection and analysis

  Source: Adapted from Loch K. Johnson, Bombs, Bugs, Drugs, and Thugs: Intelligence and America's Quest for Security (New York: New York University Press, 2000), p. 136.

  Figure 2.3Frequency of NIEs by year, 1950–2005

  Source: Central Intelligence Agency, 2006.

  Figure 3.1Herblock on blow back

  Source: “I SHOT AN ARROW INTO THE AIR…” – a 1956 Herblock Cartoon, copyright by The Herb Block Foundation.

  Figure 3.2The ebb and flow of covert actions by the United States, 1947–2010

  Source: The author's estimates based on interviews with intelligence managers over the years, along with a study of the literature cited in the notes of this chapter.

  Figure 3.3A partial ladder of escalation for covert actions

  Source: The author's estimates, based on interviews with intelligence managers and officers over the years, along with a study of the literature cited in the notes of this chapter. Adapted from Loch K. Johnson, Secret Agencies: U.S. Intelligence in a Hostile World Order (New Haven. CT: Yale University Press, 1996), pp. 62–3.

  Figure 4.1Key recommendations in the Huston Plan, 1970

  Figure 5.1An example of a statement accompanying a presidentially approved covert action: the contra portion of the Iran–contra finding, 1981

  Source: “Presidential Finding on Central America, N16574,” Public Papers of the President: Ronald Reagan (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1986). The President approved the finding on March 9, 1981. Originally top secret, it was partially declassified during hearings into the Iran–contra scandal in 1987. The “purpose” section is succinct, leaving considerable leeway for the CIA to fill in the details during implementation. When Congress passed the Boland Amendments to prohibit further covert actions in Nicaragua, the Reagan Administration moved underground and created “The Enterprise” to carry on these operations without the knowledge of Congress.

  Figure 5.2Auth on the relationship between Congress and the CIA prior to 1974

  Source: Auth, Philadelphia Inquirer (1976). Used with permission.

  Figure 5.3The cycle of intelligence shock and reaction by congressional overseers, 1975–2006

  Source: Loch K. Johnson, “A Shock Theory of Congressional Accountability for Intelligence,” in Loch K. Johnson, ed., Handbook of Intelligence Studies (New York: Routledge, 2007), pp. 343–360; figure at p. 344.

  Figure 5.4A typology of roles assumed by intelligence overseers in the U.S. Congress

  Figure 5.5Illustrations of role migration and stability among intelligence overseers in Congress, 1977–2004

  Series page

  To Loch Lomond Bentley,

  RAF pilot,

  1913–1941,

  who paid the ultimate price in defense of the democracies

  Copyright page

  Copyright © Loch K. Johnson 2017

  The right of Loch K. Johnson to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  First published in 2012 by Polity Press;

  This second edition published in 2017

  Polity Press

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  Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK

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; ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-1304-8

  ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-1305-5(pb)

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Name: Johnson, Loch K., 1942– author.

  Title: National security intelligence / Loch Johnson.

  Description: Second edition. | Cambridge, UK ; Malden, MA : Polity, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016039810 (print) | LCCN 2016059847 (ebook) | ISBN 9781509513048 (hardback) | ISBN 9781509513055 (paperback) | ISBN 9781509513079 (Mobi) | ISBN 9781509513086 (Epub)

  Subjects: LCSH: Intelligence service–United States. | National security–United States. | BISAC: POLITICAL SCIENCE / Globalization. Classification: LCC JK486.I6 J64 2017 (print) | LCC JK486.I6 (ebook) | DDC 327.1273–dc23

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  About the Author

  Loch Kingsford Johnson is the Regents Professor of Public and International Affairs at the University of Georgia, as well as a Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professor. He is the author of more than 200 articles and essays, and the author or editor of more than 30 books, on U.S. national security. The books include, most recently, American Foreign Policy and the Challenges of World Leadership (Oxford, 2015); Essentials of Strategic Intelligence (ABC-Clio/Praeger, 2015, editor); A Season of Inquiry Revisited: The Church Committee Confronts America's Spy Agencies (Kansas, 2015); The Threat on the Horizon: An Inside Account of America's Search for Security After the Cold War (Oxford, 2011); and The Oxford Handbook of National Security Intelligence (Oxford, 2010, editor). He has published editorials in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Baltimore Sun, and elsewhere.

  Professor Johnson served as special assistant to the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (1975–76); as a staff aide on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee (1976–77); as the first staff director of the Subcommittee on Intelligence Oversight, U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (1977–79); as a senior staff member on the Subcommittee on Trade and International Economic Policy, Committee on Foreign Affairs, U.S. House of Representatives (1980); and as special assistant to Chairman Les Aspin of the Aspin–Brown Commission on the Roles and Missions of Intelligence (1995–96). He was the Issues Director in a presidential campaign (1976); served as a foreign policy adviser to President Jimmy Carter in his 1980 re-election campaign (coauthoring the Presidential Briefing Book on Foreign Policy used during the presidential debates); and is currently a consultant to several government and civic organizations.

  Professor Johnson has won the “Certificate of Distinction” from the National Intelligence Study Center in Washington, DC; the “Studies in Intelligence Award” from the Center for the Study of Intelligence in Washington, DC; the “Best Article Award” from the Century Foundation's Understanding Government Project; and the V.O. Key “Best Book” Prize (with Charles S. Bullock III) from the Southern Political Science Association. He has served as secretary of the American Political Science Association, and has led its Intelligence Studies Organized Group. He has also been president of the International Studies Association, South.

  Professor Johnson is senior editor of the international journal Intelligence and National Security, and he serves on the editorial advisory board for several other journals, including the Journal of Intelligence History and the Journal for Intelligence, Propaganda, and Security Studies. In 2008–09, he was named a Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar, and is now on the Phi Beta Kappa National Board for the Visiting Scholar Program. He has been a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Yale University and at Oxford University. In 2012, he was selected as the inaugural “Professor of the Year” by the consortium of fourteen universities in the Southeast Conference (SEC). At the 2014 Annual Meeting of the International Studies Association, he was awarded the “Distinguished Professor” prize, a recognition bestowed occasionally by the Intelligence Studies Section; and, in 2015, he was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Association for Intelligence Education.

  Born in Auckland, New Zealand, Professor Johnson received his PhD in political science from the University of California, Riverside. In postdoctoral activities, he was awarded an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellowship. He has also studied nuclear weapons policy at Harvard University and MIT. Professor Johnson has lectured at more than 140 universities and think-tanks worldwide. At the University of Georgia, he led the founding of the School of Public and International Affairs in 2001, the first new college at the university since the 1940s.

  Figures and Tables

  Figures

  1.1 Basic human motivations and the quest for national security intelligence: a stimulus–response model

  1.2 The U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) in 2016

  1.3 The CIA during the Cold War

  1.4 The CIA's Operations Directorate during the Cold War

  2.1 The intelligence cycle

  2.2 The relationship between a nation's sense of acceptable risk and its resources committed to intelligence collection and analysis

  2.3 Frequency of NIEs by year, 1950–2005

  3.1 Herblock on blow back

  3.2 The ebb and flow of covert actions by the United States, 1947–2010

  3.3 A partial ladder of escalation for covert actions

  4.1 Key recommendations in the Huston Plan, 1970

  5.1 An example of a statement accompanying a presidentially approved covert action: the contra portion of the Iran–contra finding, 1981

  5.2 Auth on the relationship between Congress and the CIA prior to 1974

  5.3 The cycle of intelligence shock and reaction by congressional overseers, 1975–2006

  5.4 A typology of roles assumed by intelligence overseers in the U.S. Congress

  5.5 Illustrations of role migration and stability among intelligence overseers in Congress, 1977–2004 196

  Tables

  5.1 Type of stimuli and oversight responses by lawmakers, 1974–2016

  6.1 National security intelligence: a reform agenda for the United States 211

  Abbreviations

  ATC air traffic control

  BENS Business Executives for National Security

  CA covert action

  CAS Covert Action Staff

  CASIS Canadian Association of Security and Intelligence Studies

  CE counterespionage

  CHAOS cryptonym (codename) for CIA domestic spying operation

  CI counterintelligence

  CIA Central Intelligence Agency (the “Agency”)

  CIAB Citizens’ Intelligence Advisory Board (proposed)

  CIG Central Intelligence Group

  COCOM combatant commander (Pentagon)

  COINTELPRO FBI Counterintelligence Program

  comint communications intelligence

  COS Chief of Station (the top CIA officer in the field)

  CTC Counterterrorism Center (CIA)

  D Democrat

  DA Directorate of Administration

  DBA
dominant battle field awareness

  DC District of Columbia (Washington)

  DCI Director of Central Intelligence

  DCIA or D/CIA Director of the Central Intelligence Agency

  DDI Deputy Director for Intelligence

  DDNI Deputy Director of National Intelligence

  DDO Deputy Director for Operations

  DEA Drug Enforcement Administration

  DHS Department of Homeland Security; also, Defense Humint Service (DoD)

  DI Directorate of Intelligence (CIA)

  DIA Defense Intelligence Agency

  DIAC Defense Intelligence Agency Center

  DNC Democratic National Committee

  DNI Director of National Intelligence

  DO Directorate of Operations (CIA), also known at times earlier in the CIA's history as the Clandestine Services and the National Clandestine Services

  DoD Department of Defense

  DS Directorate of Support

  DS&T Directorate for Science and Technology (CIA)

  elint electronic intelligence

  FBI Federal Bureau of Investigation

  FISA Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act

  FISA Court Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court

  fisint foreign instrumentation intelligence

  GAO Government Accountability Office (U.S. Congress)

  geoint geospatial intelligence

  GID General Intelligence Directorate (the Jordanian intelligence service, also known as the Mukhabarat)

  GPS Global Position Service

  GRU Soviet Military Intelligence

  HPSCI House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence

  humint human intelligence (espionage assets)

  IC Intelligence Community

  ICBM intercontinental ballistic missile

  IG Inspector General

  imint imagery intelligence (photography)

  INR Bureau of Intelligence and Research (Department of State)