IC21: The Intelligence Community in the 21st Century
Staff Study
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
House of Representatives
One Hundred Fourth Congress
IX. Clandestine Service
Executive Summary
The purpose of this study is to present ideas about the future
roles, organization, and management of a clandestine service as
they were developed by the Study Group in the course of its
"Intelligence Community in the 21st Century" (IC21) study. The
body of the paper consists of explications of twelve principal
"findings" concerning this clandestine service. Some of these
findings represent radical departures from the status quo. Others
simply reaffirm and revalidate existing arrangements that have been
under question.
While this study stands on its own, its observations and
conclusions are compatible with the other IC21 studies. Moreover,
when looked at in the context of the Committee's examination of the
Intelligence Community (IC) as a whole, the following findings and
recommendations have been extracted from this study for inclusion
in legislative proposals to reorganize and better direct the IC in
the future:
Findings
The U.S. requires a clandestine service of the highest
professional standards and competence.
Clandestine collection must be focused principally on
select, high priority national and military requirements.
Yet, it is necessary to have at least a minimal
clandestine presence in most countries (a "global
presence") so as to maintain a broader base-line
contingency capability and to respond to transnational
collection requirements.
Clandestine operations require an extraordinarily high
level of management attention, expertise and
coordination.
Recommendations
There should be a single US clandestine service (the
"Clandestine Service,") under the Director of Central
Intelligence's (DCI) direct supervision.
For intelligence collection tasking and requirements
purposes, the Clandestine Service should respond to the
regular community-wide collection management process.
The Clandestine Service should be managed by a Director
who is a career intelligence professional.
The Clandestine Service should have a two-star
professional military intelligence officer as a Deputy
Director responsible for support to the military and for
coordination, as appropriate, with the military services,
regional commanders and the Office of the Secretary of
Defense.
The Clandestine Service should have organic to it the
administrative and technical support mechanisms that are
critical to its unique functions and essential to its
success.
The personnel system should ensure the recruitment of
highly qualified junior employees, the development of
talented clandestine operators and managers, and the
aggressive removal of marginal and unsuitable employees.
The military cadre of the Clandestine Service should
consist of military clandestine operations officers
having a viable military career track within that
specialization and of the same high professional and
personal qualifications as the civilian cadre.
The DCI needs to reaffirm and reiterate throughout the
IC, his designation of the Clandestine Service's role to
lead the IC in its conduct of foreign clandestine
operations, i.e., espionage, counterespionage, covert
action and related intelligence liaison activities
abroad.
The Clandestine Service Chief of Station should act as
the US government's on-site focal point for the
deconfliction of all intelligence and law enforcement
activities abroad with an appeals process functioning
through the Ambassador and/or a Washington-based
interagency mechanism.
There are numerous other findings and recommendations within
this study that will be pursued by the Committee in other ways,
particularly through the annual authorization and regular
intelligence oversight process.
CLANDESTINE SERVICE
Definition of Terms: "HUMINT" and "Clandestine Service"
The terms employed in this study reflect some of its findings.
The most important example of this is the use of the terms "HUMINT"
and "clandestine service." Originally, the Study Group had
characterized this part of the IC21 study as being about HUMINT.
The term is, however, a particularly ambiguous one, the use of
which frequently masks if not perpetuates intellectual sloppiness.
Properly speaking, HUMINT refers to a category of intelligence,
that which is reported by a government information collector who
has obtained it either directly or indirectly from a human source./1/
As such, the term hardly begins to encompass the subject under
consideration: the proper mission, management and organization of
the entity or entities responsible for foreign clandestine
intelligence operations (i.e., espionage, counterespionage, covert
action and related foreign liaison activities). Such an entity is
a "clandestine service."
A clandestine service does much more than simply collect
"HUMINT" clandestinely, that is secretly exploit agents for the
purpose of collecting intelligence. A clandestine service also
works in liaison with other spy services to run all types of
operations; it taps telephones and installs listening devices; it
breaks into or otherwise gains access to the contents of secured
facilities, safes, and computers; it steals, compromises, and
influences foreign cryptographic capabilities so as to make them
exploitable by US SIGINT; it protects its operations and defends
the government from other intelligence services by engaging in a
variety of counterespionage activities, including the aggressive
use of double agents and penetrations of foreign services; and it
clandestinely emplaces and services secret SIGINT and MASINT
sensors. It also has the capability of using its techniques and
access to run programs at the President's direction to influence
foreign governments and developments, that is, "covert action."/2/
The unifying aspect of these activities is not some connection to
HUMINT; rather, they are highly diverse but interdependent
activities that are best conducted by a clandestine service. The
terms "HUMINT service" and "clandestine service" can be used
interchangeably only in ignorance or with a willful disregard for
the actual meaning of the words.
A final note on the use of the term "clandestine service."
When referring specifically to an existing clandestine service,
such as the CIA's Directorate of Operations (DO) or the
clandestine element of the DoD's Defense HUMINT Service (DHS), this
is done so by name. In discussing an ideal or future organization
performing those missions, we have used the term "Clandestine
Service" or CS as a proper noun.
Background: Clandestine Operations and a Clandestine Service --
How Important Are They? Do We Need Them? Will We Need Them?
There is no more beleaguered element of the Intelligence
Community than the clandestine service -- the organization
currently known as the CIA's Directorate of Operations (DO)./3/
It has been the subject of ceaseless critical scrutiny and even
vilification from the press and more than occasionally from
Congress since the Congressional hearings of 1975 and most recently
since the arrest of Aldrich Ames, a DO employee, in February 1994
as a Soviet (and later, Russian) agent.
The tenor of much of the recent reporting is exemplified by a
statement in the U.S. News and World Report that the DO is at the
center of a system of "incompetence, corruption, cover-ups, and ...
failures."/4/ In Congress, there has been no reluctance on the part
of some to make public accusations of DO malfeasance, ineptitude
and even illegality. Recent examples are false charges of DO
involvement with assassinations in Guatemala and of costing
taxpayers billions of dollars by passing on Soviet/Russian
disinformation that was used to justify supposedly unnecessary US
defense programs. The political and editorial mood is such that
charges of this sort, although they frequently prove to be
overstated if not outright wrong, find immediate acceptance and
make the public even more receptive to subsequent further
"revelations." It would appear that the the current DCI, John
Deutch, has been, at least to some degree, influenced by these
stories and allegations, since he has publicly lamented the DO's
"tremendous deficiencies" and reportedly put on his daily calendar
a standing objective of "reinventing the DO."
Ironically, however, the DO of the last few years appears to
be at least as and possibly more successful than it ever has been.
It has made significant advances in penetrating the great majority
of hard target countries and a wide variety of terrorist and
proliferation organizations. It has dramatically redefined and
focused its activities on high-priority national intelligence
issues. Its Office of Military Affairs, under an Assistant Deputy
Director of Operations for Military Affairs (ADDO/MA) (created
after Desert Storm had shown weakness in support to the military),
received strong kudos from its military customers. In response to
a perceived need to tighten up its bureaucracy, the DO has also
dramatically reduced personnel (to the point that it is two years
ahead of its Congressionally-mandated goals), closed down a sizable
fraction of its stations and bases in the last four years, and
drastically cut back on the number of personnel in the field. It
has opened up some of its operations and brought in outside experts
at an unprecedented level to the point that seniors from the
Directorate of Intelligence, FBI, the military and DoD civilian
organizations serve in positions up to and including the division
chief level.
These positive assertions -- standing in such stark contrast
with the negative general assessment that recent accusations have
fed -- are sustained by what little objective data there is
available to assess the relative value of the DO's product. The
Committee is aware of three studies attempting to develop hard data
on the utility of the intelligence produced by the intelligence
disciplines: the Strategic Intelligence Review (SIR) process of
1994, a survey of National Intelligence Daily (NID) citations, and
the 1995 Comprehensive Capabilities Review undertaken by the
Community Management Staff.
The twelve SIRs prepared at the DCI's request and under the
auspices of the National Intelligence Council in May 1994,
identified 376 intelligence "needs" and rated the value of the
contribution of the various intelligence disciplines (HUMINT,
IMINT, SIGINT, MASINT, and open source) in meeting those needs. An
example of such a need is "International terrorist organization X's
plans to attack US persons, facilities, and interests." In
aggregate, the SIRs clearly identify HUMINT as the most important
source of intelligence for the subjects treated./5/ Specifically,
HUMINT was judged to make a "critical" contribution towards 205 of
the 376 intelligence needs identified. That is more than half
again as much as the next greatest contributor (SIGINT) and more
than twice that of the third (open source).
Within several important specific subject areas, HUMINT's
contribution is particularly strong, such as in reporting on the
transnational issues that are now among the highest priorities of
the IC: terrorism, narcotics, proliferation, and international
economics. In providing information on terrorism, HUMINT garnered
the grade "of critical value" almost 75 percent of the time it was
given. In narcotics, HUMINT was graded critical more than the
other intelligence disciplines put together. In collecting
critical intelligence on the proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction and their delivery systems, HUMINT's contribution was
over 40 percent. Finally, in international economics, its
contribution was over one third. Similarly, in several more
traditional areas of foreign political intelligence and regional
developments, HUMINT was rated the most important source for
covering the Near East, South Asia, Europe, and Africa. In
summary, it would appear to be safe to conclude from the Reviews
that what they term as HUMINT is unsurpassed as a source of
critical intelligence to the national policymaker./6/
Another effort at objectively assessing the usefulness of
intelligence coming from the various collection disciplines is a
study that was done of the intelligence sources used in the
preparation of the NID for January 1993. Not surprisingly, open
source and Department of State reporting were the most frequently
cited sources of information. They were followed by the various
types of intelligence reporting in the following order: DO
reporting, SIGINT, imagery, and Defense Attach� reporting. By
issue, the DO was the most important intelligence source in the
areas of weapons proliferation, economic security, Europe, Africa,
Latin America, terrorism, counternarcotics, and Somalia. Although
this is, of itself, a good reflection of the value of the DO's
product, it does not capture it all, since the NID does not
typically reference much of the DO's best reporting that is
disseminated only within highly restrictive "blue border"
compartments.
Finally, in late 1995 the DCI's Community Management Staff
(CMS) prepared a Comprehensive Capabilities Review that is probably
the best effort yet at objectively assessing the collection
capabilities of the various parts of the intelligence community.
In this case, the CMS worked from the specific intelligence issues
as categorized and prioritized by Presidential Decision Directive
outlining intelligence priorities. In this review, too,
clandestine operations elements had a strong showing. In the
crisis capability category, the clandestine HUMINT collection
capabilities were rated as being of approximately the same value as
SIGINT. Against the category of transnational issues, the DO's
capabilities were unquestionably the strongest in the intelligence
community, being half again those assessed as belonging to SIGINT.
Against "rogue" states and other top priority target countries, the
DO played a secondary role to SIGINT. It is worth noting that in
this review the assessment of the DO's production was only of its
"HUMINT" reporting and did not include the reporting that results
from the DO's clandestine technical operations.
The demonstrable value of CS reporting and its more than
respectable showing in relation to other types of intelligence is
further highlighted by its relative low-cost, except in comparison
with open source collection: at a single digit percentage of the
National Foreign Intelligence Program budget, clandestine
operations cost a small fraction of what is spent on IMINT and an
even smaller fraction of what is spent on SIGINT. This is not
always understood and, in particular, is lost on the public. Even
Roger Hilsman, a former intelligence officer, referred in a recent
Foreign Affairs to the "enormous cost of fielding secret agents."/7/
The fact is that US espionage under even the most sanguine
projections has little prospect of ever costing more than a
fraction of what is spent on technical intelligence collection
programs.
Even if we accept the current value of a CS and its relatively
low cost, the IC21 study, of which this is part, is looking to the
future. For that reason we must ask whether it will also be useful
in the future. Although it is difficult to foresee the
geopolitical situation of ten or fifteen years from now, there are
several characteristics of good clandestine operations that point
to their probably being particularly well-suited to meet many post-Cold
War national intelligence requirements. Although the details
are much debated, the IC, the executive branch, and Congress are
all in basic agreement that the most important intelligence
requirements will fall in the following categories: the
transnational issues of terrorism, narcotics, weapons
proliferation, and economic competitiveness; hostile states;
strategic threats; support to the military; and "hot spots." Six
points are worth making here about how a good clandestine service
can be of particular value in satisfying such requirements.
First, transnational issues involve the linkage of individual
players around the globe operating in secret cooperation if not
alliance. These are notoriously difficult targets for
intelligence. But experience has shown that there are often weak
links in such organizations and good clandestine operators are
ingenious at locating and exploiting them. Thus, of all the
intelligence collection techniques, clandestine operations have a
comparative advantage in collecting on most transnational issues.
The Strategic Intelligence Reviews of 1994 and the Comprehensive
Capabilities Review of 1995 have amply documented this strength.
Moreover, there is no reason to suspect the clandestine operator's
capabilities will be less successful against these targets in the
future. This judgment assumes that the clandestine service is not
forced, for political reasons, to limit its ability to recruit and
run agents inside the frequently unsavory circles and governments
in which terrorist, narco-traffickers, proliferators and criminal
elements operate.
Second, so long as there are humans at the controls of foreign
governments making decisions in secret affecting our national
security, clandestine operations will be important and effective in
ferreting out the secrets. There is, of course, the intelligence
truism that espionage is uniquely well-suited among the
intelligence disciplines to discover plans, intentions, and
deliberations. That opinion is complemented by the less
understood, but equally true, argument that only a spy can actively
delve for intelligence. Technical intelligence collection requires
specific types of action on the part of the target--the visible
movement of troops, discussions of plans over accessible
communications links, the development of chemical compounds or
biological forms that can be detected, and such. A spy, however,
can even dig into the hypothetical to satisfy an intelligence
consumer, as, for example, when a well placed agent in a foreign
government is tasked to ask his leader, "What will we do if the US
does x?" Clandestine operations can, in short, shake the
intelligence apple from the tree where other intelligence
collection techniques must wait for it to fall.
Third, the same global developments that are making
intelligence collection less necessary in some cases -- the opening
of previously closed societies, political and economic integration,
and increasingly mobile and free populations -- are working to
facilitate the clandestine operator's task of getting to the
important secrets that do remain.
Fourth, counterintelligence will continue to be a challenge to
the US so long as there are hostile intelligence services, and
clandestine counterespionage operations (the running of
penetrations of those services) has been and gives every indication
of remaining the most important keyhole we will have in detecting
hostile intelligence activities. The overwhelming majority of
espionage cases opened by the Federal Bureau of Investigation over
the last thirty years has come from information provided by human
penetrations, most of them coming from the DO's large numbers of
penetrations of foreign services. Notwithstanding new executive
orders and Congressional interest in increasing interagency
counterintelligence analysis, analytic successes will be extremely
limited without the lead information and raw data originating from
clandestine operations.
Fifth, the CS will continue to have tremendous potential to
ensure the success of other intelligence collection disciplines.
In particular, the CS will be called upon to continue its support
of SIGINT. It is no surprise to those who understand cryptography
to learn that most cryptographic systems in use are exploitable
only if the codes are in some way compromised. Quite simply, brute
computer attacks on codes are usually unsuccessful. Arguably, a
clandestine service's greatest contribution to intelligence is the
compromising of codes. The proliferation of sophisticated
cryptographic systems ensures the growing importance of this role
of the CS.
And sixth, the CS's unique ability to develop clandestine
access to foreign facilities and locations will become increasingly
crucial to the whole intelligence community, the SIGINT and MASINT
disciplines in particular. This Committee has a strong record of
supporting clandestine technical operations and, over the last few
years, has been greatly encouraged and pleased with the development
of those capabilities in the CIA in conjunction with other elements
of the IC. The CS will undoubtedly continue to play an
increasingly prominent role in helping technical collectors gain
access to the media and materials they exploit.
In summary, we believe the importance of clandestine
operations is greater than is usually recognized and that there are
strong reasons to believe they will be both successful and
appropriate in satisfying intelligence requirements in the future.
That said, there remain numerous questions about how to define
further what the CS of the future should do, what it should look
like, and how it should operate. The "findings" that follow are
meant to address some important aspects of those questions.
Finding #1: The Clandestine Service should be small and
principally focused on select, high priority requirements to which
it can make a unique contribution.
The current Deputy Director of the National Intelligence
Council has advised the Committee that, from every corner, on every
issue, we hear the consumers say, 'We need more HUMINT.'" The
Committee has heard the same from almost every current and past
senior consumer of intelligence it has consulted -- from National
Security Advisors, Secretaries of State and Defense, and CINC's.
None of them has ever said they wanted or could do with less. In
this is recognizable the commonly held belief that human spies can
best fulfill the greatest (and most challenging) need of the
intelligence consumer, that is, advance knowledge of foreign
developments, or, as it is more usually called: plans and
intentions.
We share the belief that clandestine operations are frequently
the best means of getting that type of intelligence, but are
reluctant to embrace any call for an expanded CS. There is a
strong case for better, not necessarily more, HUMINT. The reasons
are several. Among them are that clandestine operations:
1) require a management and coordination process that, on a
large scale, becomes cumbersome and bureaucratic;
2) require a tight focus for long term planning;
3) must overcome the human tendency of clandestine operators
and managers to do that which is easiest rather
than most important; and
4) involve an element of risk and potential for
embarrassment greater than most intelligence activities.
First of all, a large organization running clandestine
operations is prone to intense and byzantine bureaucratization,
particularly in its headquarters element. A properly managed CS
will be steeply pyramidical in its management structure. Unlike
some SIGINT or IMINT activities, in which a first line manager may
supervise ten, twenty, or more collectors and producers of
intelligence, clandestine operations usually require a case
officer/first line manager ratio of no more than three or four to
one.
A typical station might have five clandestine operations
officers including the Chief of Station (COS). The most time-consuming
responsibility of the COS and his Deputy would usually be
the supervision of the three junior officers typically on their
first or second assignments. If a station is larger, branches will
be formed so that oversight of the operations remains equally
intense. At the headquarters, depending upon the sensitivity of
the activity, any number of hierarchical levels may get involved
with double-checking and, as required, approving the field's
operational activities. In its most simple form, the operational
chain of command at the headquarters is: a desk chief (usually in
charge of a small country), a branch chief (in charge of several
small or one large country), a division chief (in charge of a
continent or geographic region), and, ultimately, the director of
the CS. Deputies to these various levels may or may not also get
involved. Additionally, there are functional offices and staffs
within the CS that must be consulted according to their charters or
when their operational equities are involved.
For example, an operation in a European country to penetrate
a Near-East based terrorist cell may involve: one or more of the
desk, branch, and division level offices overseeing European
operations; the Counterterrorism Center element responsible for
operations around the world meant to penetrate the terrorist
organization; desk, branch, or division offices overseeing the
Near-East nationality of the terrorist in question; the
counterintelligence office double-checking the bona fides of the
source; an Office of Technical Services element responsible for
providing and servicing covert communications equipment the source
might use back in his home country; and the office responsible for
providing the case officer with cover for his travels.
Despite innumerable ideas at streamlining this sort of
process, most CS managers have concluded that they are largely
unavoidable and that, in a small, focused organization, they
actually serve to enhance the security and productivity of
operations. Moreover, in a small CS, working only cases that meet
a high operational threshold, such a process of double-checks and
coordination can work surprisingly quickly and smoothly, usually
within a day. Advances in office automation and communications
should speed this process even more in the next decade. However,
it is easy to see how a CS dealing with large numbers of marginal
operations will have to build a large bureaucracy to handle the
load, making the whole system sclerotic and unresponsive.
Second, clandestine collection requires long-term planning and
a focus that come best to an organization forced to plan
strategically the allocation of its scarce personnel resources.
Access and capability are two central concerns for all intelligence
collection managers. Some technical collection disciplines plan
mostly to develop generic capabilities -- an imaging satellite that
has a resolution of so many centimeters or a signals processor that
can scan and select from some minimum number of channels. These
capabilities are to some degree fungible -- sometimes by a simple
change in the daily tasking or, somewhat less immediately, by
shifting a satellite's orbit from over, say, Iran to North Korea.
Clandestine operations managers must concentrate more on building
target specific access, a process that, more often than not takes
months if not years. Examples are: placing a non-official cover
(NOC) officer or recruiting an agent in a company that can
plausibly get close to a covert weapons proliferation conduit;
finagling a way to get inside a terrorist safehouse to implant
listening devices; or buying a house from which to mount a
technical collection operation. Since clandestine collection is
relatively unresponsive to quick changes in direction, it must keep
a tight focus on its long-term objectives. Mistaken or unclear
priorities result in an immediate loss of attention to more
deserving issues as well as significant, lingering inefficiencies.
Third, some of the characteristics of clandestine operations
work to reinforce the tendency of human nature to direct attention
towards that which is most likely to succeed rather than that
which, if successful, can yield the greatest benefit. This
tendency can be difficult to detect and counter in a large CS since
the sheer volume of activity can mask the lack of quality
operations.
The raw material of clandestine operations is people. The
challenge to leadership of a CS is in motivating these people to
concentrate on the hardest objectives. This challenge is greatly
increased by the fact that in the CS great successes are rare and
failure is routine. Months of work can go into implanting a
listening device in an office of a high-level diplomat from a
"rogue" state who is close to his president, only to have him die
and be replaced by a nonentity. Weekend after weekend can be spent
attempting to win the confidence of an apparently disgruntled
hostile intelligence officer, only to find out that he has been
"dangled" before the case officer. Case officers can inflict on
their families innumerable, inconvenient early morning walks in a
park in the vain hope of being able to bump into and strike up a
friendship with a targeted code clerk who is known to take his
children for walks there on occasion. Frustrations can mount and
the desire to succeed or, at least, sense forward motion also
becomes more intense. Under such circumstances, the temptation is
great to lower sights and work an easier but less important target.
If given in to, this results in a system that measures success by
the numbers of operations rather than their quality -- a charge
that was frequently leveled against the DO, particularly in the
1980's when it was expanding in size. A small CS, under pressure
to produce results against the hard targets and constantly forced
to make hard choices on how to allocate limited human resources, is
less likely to fall for this expedient.
Finally, although clandestine collection is frequently less
expensive than some technical techniques, it tends to be much more
politically sensitive. Moreover, with the disappearance of a
Soviet or Communist threat, fewer and fewer friendly countries are
willing to accept the presence of a free-wheeling US CS as part of
the price of being allied with the US. Although this situation may
change in the coming years as global dynamics change, there is no
denying a complex calculus that must be done as part of the
risk/gain analysis that is crucial to the responsible management of
any clandestine operation./8/ A small, focused CS is more likely to
be careful in its application of this calculus.
Having made these arguments, it is only fair to note that the
DO's current personnel resource plans more than meet the
requirement that the CS be small. The degree to which the DO has
already drawn down and refocused its personnel resources has gone
almost totally unrecognized. Yet, the facts are stunning, even in
an IC that is seeing significant continuing reductions in personnel
across the board:
Since 1990 the DO has reduced the number of "core HUMINT
collectors" by over thirty percent.
Since 1992 it has closed large numbers of stations and
bases.
Large stations have been, on average, reduced in size by
over sixty percent.
The number of deployed, officially covered case officers
has been declining at an average rate of almost ten
percent a year for the last several years.
In overall personnel strength (including support staff),
the DO has already met its Congressionally mandated FY 1998
personnel reduction goals.
We believe these changes have been, on balance, healthy for
the DO and, barring significant changes in the international
environment, current personnel levels are appropriate for the
proper utilization and management of the CS into the next century.
Although the CS of the future will be challenged by a growing
demand from intelligence consumers for more clandestine collection,
the proper response, in most cases, is to strive for better quality
reporting and, as necessary, to reprioritize collection to satisfy
the most important requirements, rather than to make a net increase
in human resources to satisfy the requirements.
Along with the aggressive moves to draw down and redirect
personnel resources, there has been for some time a move towards
narrowing the focus of clandestine operations to "operations that
count." To do this, personnel resources in the DO have been
redirected to increase attention to "hard" targets. There have
been several "zero-based" reviews of the inventory of agents to
terminate handling of those who do not materially advance efforts
to penetrate hard or other high priority targets.
This finding is based on the "supply side" management of CS
personnel resources as the surest way to limit clandestine
operations to those operations satisfying truly important
requirements uniquely amenable to its techniques. The "demand
side," or "requirements" as they are called in the IC, also must be
worked. All intelligence collectors are faced with intelligence
requirements that massively overload the system. This is a long-
standing problem that many collection managers and outside experts
have identified as possibly the most persistent and troublesome of
all those facing the IC. Fortunately, in the National HUMINT
Requirements Tasking Center (NHRTC), set up in 1992 under the
direction of the deputy Director for Operations (DDO) in his role
as the National HUMINT Collection Manager, clandestine operations
undergo the most rigorous, formal requirements vetting process in
the community. (See the IC21 Intelligence Requirements Process
staff study for further details.) The NHRTC measures requirements
by importance and allocates them to the most appropriate, least
risky collection mechanism available./9/ The rule of thumb is that
clandestine capabilities are to be tasked with a requirement only
when these capabilities are uniquely able to satisfy them and the
requirement rises to a level justifying the risks that would be
entailed. The CS seems to have in place already much of the
requirements management process that the CS of the future will
need.
Finding #2: The DCI needs to reaffirm and, as necessary, expand
upon existing guidelines to ensure the role of the Clandestine
Service in leading the Intelligence Community's conduct of foreign
clandestine operations, i.e., espionage, counterespionage, covert
action and related intelligence liaison activities abroad.
There are two parts to this finding. They build upon existing
DCI and COS authorities.
First, the CS should have direct control of all US foreign
clandestine operations, that is, those that have been defined in
DCI Directives as espionage related. Those are, specifically, all
intelligence activities "directed towards the acquisition of
intelligence through clandestine methods." Clandestine operations
are compartmented on a need-to-know basis. It is crucial that
someone be cognizant of all operations in a country so as to
deconflict, guide, rationalize and validate them. When this
centralized oversight breaks down, there can be a needless waste of
effort and, more importantly, compromises of operational security.
There are numerous examples that have been cited of the
problems that have resulted when this principle is not understood
or accepted by all parties. One US intelligence organization
approaches a foreign target not knowing he has already been
recruited by another US intelligence organization - or worse, not
knowing that he has already been identified as working for a
hostile foreign intelligence service. A non-resident US
intelligence operative flies into town and meets his clandestine
asset in a hotel that the COS knows to be under surveillance and
audio monitoring by the host country. A US intelligence
organization expends a great deal of effort to meet and recruit a
target of apparent interest not knowing that the target's
supervisor, an individual whose access far exceeds the target's, is
already a US intelligence source. There is no shortage of such
examples. There is also reason to be concerned over some of the
proposed command and control structures that had been proposed for
some of the clandestine operations of DHS. These appeared to have
as their objective the circumvention of the COS's cognizance of the
details necessary to "conduct and coordinate" liaison as outlined
in DCI directives. These concerns have figured to some degree in
the development of Finding Twelve of this study, recommending, in
effect, a unified CS, jointly managing the operations of the DO and
the DHS (which had itself been created to better manage diverse
military intelligence operations).
The second part of this finding also revalidates and
reinforces the existing guidelines directing that the local head of
the CS, the COS, as the DCI's representative, be responsible for
the conduct and coordination of all US government intelligence
liaison activities in any way relating to espionage (that is,
clandestine collection activities) and counterespionage. The
designation of a single authority for the conduct and coordination
of such activities makes sense in that it ensures intelligence
policies towards a specific country are applied uniformly and
minimizes the chance that one US intelligence channel is played off
against others. It enables the Ambassador to have a single
reliable point of reference for all intelligence activities.
Additionally, it minimizes confusion on the part of the host
country such as has occurred in some countries where the sudden
warming of relations resulted in a rush of uncoordinated US
initiatives to establish liaison relationships. The establishment
in 1992 of the DCI's Special Representative for Foreign
Intelligence Relationships has improved this situation, but there
are still too many instances where there is less than total
adherence to the current directive.
Finally, the CS of the future, if it is to continue as the
President's main instrument for covert action, must also be
responsible for the use of information warfare capabilities in
situations other than war. Increasingly, covert action and
offensive information warfare techniques are converging. The US
government may wish in the future to employ some offensive
information warfare capabilities that are principally resident in
DoD and outside the CS as part of a covert action. In such cases,
the President (through the DCI and CS) and Congress should exercise
covert action-type control and oversight of those activities. To
this end, the CS must play a more important role in influencing the
development of these capabilities and ensuring their applicability
to covert action requirements. An executive order to this effect
should be promulgated and Congress advised if any legislative
assistance is required.
Finding #3: Overseas Coordination of Intelligence and Law
Enforcement - The Clandestine Service Chief of Station should act
as the US government's on-site focal point for the deconfliction of
all intelligence and law enforcement activities abroad with an
appeals process functioning through the Chief of Mission and/or a
Washington-based interagency mechanism. Also, without prohibiting
or preempting law enforcement liaison activities, the Clandestine
Service should have the authority to carry out liaison with any
foreign intelligence and/or security entity of operational interest
or utility.
As a corollary to Finding Two, there must also be a greater
degree of coordination between law enforcement and intelligence
overseas. Clandestine intelligence and law enforcement operations
can easily run afoul of each other./10/ It is essential that there
be a clearly understandable and practical mechanism to make sure
this does not happen.
Terrorism, narcotics, weapons proliferation, and international
criminal activities can be of interest to the intelligence or law
enforcement communities or both. The techniques of greatest
utility overseas also overlap. The CS's two most productive
techniques -- unilateral clandestine agent operations and liaison
with foreign security and intelligence services -- are also the two
that are of greatest utility to the law enforcement community in
its overseas activities. What complicates this is each community's
penchant for keeping its activities secret from the other. In the
case of the IC, it has concerns over protecting sources and
methods. Those concerns are heightened by the potential of having
those sources and methods exposed if intelligence provided to law
enforcement agencies becomes subject to "discovery." Law
enforcement agencies, on their part, are anxious not to jeopardize
ongoing investigations and violate restrictions on sharing
information on such activities as grand jury proceedings.
In practical terms what this can lead to is the CS and law
enforcement agencies working with the same liaison services or
clandestine agents (or "informants," as they are called by law
enforcement) in an uncoordinated manner and even in ignorance of
each other's activities. Most of the pitfalls of this have been
outlined in Finding Two. In the case of liaison, the lack of
coordination may:
- confuse the liaison service as to who speaks
authoritatively on which issues for the US government,
- put the liaison service in the advantageous situation of
being able to play one US agency against the other,
- allow the liaison service to "triangulate" sensitive
information by comparing the uncoordinated information it
receives from several US agencies,
- result in the utilization of the liaison service by one
agency in monitoring or even foiling a clandestine
operation being run by another, or
- any combination of the above.
In the case of clandestine operations, there can be confusion
on the part of the agent, reporting that will lead to "false
confirmations," and unwitting compromises of security.
There currently exist a number of memoranda of understanding
and informal agreements on how to deconflict these types of
activities overseas, and a more comprehensive understanding,
particularly applying to the FBI, has been under negotiation for
over a year between the DCI and the Department of Justice. The
FBI's being granted extraterritorial jurisdiction over some
criminal acts outside the US in 1986 and 1988 obscured some of the
demarcations between law enforcement and intelligence overseas.
The need for a firmer understanding has become more immediate since
1994 with the FBI's increasing the number of Legal Attaches and
liaison relationships overseas and its putting out mixed signals
regarding its possible intentions to expand its running of
"informants" ("agents" in intelligence parlance) overseas without
the knowledge of host governments.
Two recent studies, the report of the Commission on the Roles
and Capabilities of the US Intelligence Community (Aspin-Brown
Commission) and the Council of Foreign Relations' report of its
Independent Task Force on the Future of US Intelligence, have
concluded, generally speaking, that the balance of law enforcement
activities and intelligence equities overseas has tilted too far in
the favor of the former./11/ Moreover, it takes strong exception to
the expansion of FBI unilateral clandestine operations overseas,
ruling that such activities should not be allowed except in rare
circumstances where they are fully coordinated with intelligence
officials.
There is merit to the argument that national security
interests must not be sacrificed to further law enforcement
objectives. We are reluctant, however, to make any categorical
statement about the universal primacy of one over the other
overseas. Circumstances will be different in different cases and
good judgment will need to prevail. No matter what the policy
decision is, there needs to be a clear, well understood, and
practical system for deconfliction in the field and at the
headquarters level. For a number of reasons,/12/ it is most logical
to have the CS COS act as the focal point in identifying potential
operational problems and conflicts in the field. In practical
terms, this means the COS must be advised in advance of all
clandestine operations and liaison initiatives in his country of
responsibility. He should be empowered to make the initial
determination of how to resolve these problems, with the
understanding that his authority in no way extends to being able to
direct law enforcement investigations or prosecutions. The COS's
decision should be open to appeal to the Chief of Mission
(particularly on a policy issue) or a Washington-based interagency
mechanism (particularly for operational deconfliction or tradecraft
judgments), as appropriate.
For example, the FBI may have a US citizen confidential
informant who is in contact with a foreign relative with terrorist
ties and living in the Middle East. Any effort to approach,
recruit, or handle that foreign sub-source should be fully
coordinated in advance with the COS, who will be able to ascertain
this activity does not conflict with any other intelligence or law
enforcement activity. Of equal importance, the COS, being
knowledgeable of the operational and counterintelligence
environment, will be able to advise and even assist the FBI to make
sure the case is handled in a way that does not endanger the
security of FBI officials, the US citizen, or the foreign national.
This system should also have built into it an understanding
that the COS will not have unauthorized access to statutorily
restricted information such as that coming from grand jury
deliberations or from criminal wiretaps. Additionally, COS's must
be fully trained to understand the limitations that may be placed
upon their taking action on law enforcement information that could
later endanger its use in criminal proceedings (e.g., "Brady" and
"Jencks" concerns regarding discovery).
Also relevant to the interplay between law enforcement
and intelligence overseas is the question of establishing exclusive
liaison relationships, that is, having a law enforcement agency or
the CS claim exclusive rights to work with a specific foreign
security service. In most countries the distinction between
intelligence and law enforcement is not as clear as in the US;
indeed, they frequently combine the two functions in one or more
security services. Accordingly, there may be compelling reasons
for the CS and one or more US law enforcement agencies to have
official liaison with the same service. Circumstances will dictate
which US agency will have the most active liaison relationship.
Even when the overt reason for liaison is not overwhelming, it
is in the US's national interest to allow the CS to maintain
liaison with a foreign security service. The reasons are several.
Law enforcement agencies deal with foreign entities principally in
direct pursuit of specific law enforcement and prosecutorial
issues. Cooperation from foreign services can be limited on
occasion by the fact that law enforcement agencies, unlike the CS,
cannot in most cases promise to handle the information provided
under the statutes of classification that are designed to protect
intelligence sources and methods. Moreover, the IC has been
designed to employ collection techniques not normally available to
a legal attach� or official law enforcement agency representative
overseas. The information/intelligence collection technique most
readily available to a law enforcement official overseas is asking
questions of a foreign liaison service overtly and on the record.
That option is also open to the CS, although the host country
usually prefers it not be employed.
Most typically, the CS can collect intelligence from a foreign
liaison counterpart at almost any level of discretion and
reasonably promise him that the DCI's unique authorities to protect
sources and methods can be applied to make sure the information is
not used in a way that can later cause trouble for the foreign
country, the foreign security service, or the liaison counterpart
himself. Should those assurances be insufficient to get the
foreign security service's cooperations, the CS (not being
restricted by law enforcement's concern for evidentiary standards)
can employ appropriate clandestine techniques. These techniques
are among the most productive available to a CS. As an example, in
the recent past, the DO worked successfully around and outside
established channels in a foreign country to foil a terrorist
attack. Hundreds of lives were probably saved. In this case, an
official law enforcement to law enforcement agency relationship
would probably never have led to the unravelling of the terrorist
plotting.
In light of the rapid expansion of law enforcement agencies
into liaison relationships abroad, the executive branch should
promulgate an executive order to reflect the above finding and
advise the oversight committees of Congress of any need for
legislative support.
Finding #4: The Clandestine Service should service validated,
high-level military requirements and have the capability in the
event of deployment of US forces to surge to support low-level,
tactical requirements as appropriate.
The risk/gain calculus and high standards used in vetting
national requirements for clandestine collection (as outlined in
Finding One) should be the same for vetting requirements in support
of the military. Low-level military requirements do not usually
warrant the use of clandestine collection techniques. Generally
speaking, if uncovered, the level of political embarrassment for
targeting a country's military secrets are likely be at least as
high as for targeting its political secrets, since most governments
tend to be extraordinarily sensitive to any espionage activities
directed against their militaries.
Military clandestine collectors, not being major players in
the national intelligence arena and working mainly for their
commanders in their service, have traditionally specialized in low-
level types of operations that might be of operational utility in
tactical situations. Although this was acceptable in many parts of
the world and appropriate during the Cold War, the management of
DHS (into which the military collectors have been consolidated) has
made initial efforts at upgrading the quality of military
operations without abandoning a commitment to support the tactical
commander. This represented a major step forward; however, the
quality of most DHS assets still appears to fall well below the
appropriate threshold. This appears to result, at least in part,
from an as yet incomplete understanding or acceptance within the
DoD of the limitations and strengths of clandestine operations in
supporting the military.
This leads to the question of how clandestine operations can
satisfy the tactical needs of the commander in a deployment in a
hostile environment. The proper answer, although it would probably
be unsatisfying to most commanders, is that clandestine operations
will in many cases be of marginal value and may be inappropriate.
Clandestine HUMINT-type operations are usually poor at providing
immediate, on-the-ground support, that is, telling a commander what
he most wants to know: what is going on over the next sand dune or
has a SCUD just been launched?
Military commanders must be better educated on what
clandestine operators can and cannot realistically do for them.
This will result in the better utilization of the intelligence
product and wiser management of clandestine military resources. It
will also mean the CS can then justifiably be held accountable for
providing appropriate support to the military. For example, the CS
should be able to provide the military with across-the-board
support for strategic military planning against validated targets.
Depending upon the adversary, its priority, and the lead time
given, a successful CS should be able to provide order of battle;
foreign military doctrine; readiness, industrial capacity, and
logistics information; and information on the personalities at
play.
The major contributions of the CS to a commander's ability to
fight will have taken place months if not years prior to the firing
of the first weapon. As it has over the last several decades, the
CS must continue to collect technical data (e.g., manuals and
research and development documentation) and exemplars of the high
tech weapons and defensive systems the military will face in war.
These collection activities usually take place years in advance and
far away from the battlefield, but they are the crucial starting
points from which are designed smart weapons and the highly
sophisticated defensive and offensive weapons, such as those that
were used to such great effect against Iraq's Soviet equipment
during the Gulf War. Many, if not all, of those weapons could not
have been deployed with such confidence had the enemy weapons
systems not been so well understood. Additionally, a military
commander is justified in expecting a successful CS to have, if
necessary, played a role in compromising the telecommunications and
cryptographic capabilities of any potential enemy that is a
validated collection target.
Having noted the limitations of clandestine operations in a
battlefield situation, we note the irony that in several of the US
military's most recent deployments, clandestine HUMINT-type
operations provided much of the best intelligence available to the
military. This was not so much due to the capabilities of
clandestine collectors as it was a function of the limitations of
technical collection systems in environments largely devoid of
signals to collect and tanks and military vehicles to photograph.
In a low-tech military operations, clandestine HUMINT can, by
default, become the most important intelligence type and for that
reason it must be positioned to help the commander and protect
troops. It is partially in recognition of this fact and of the
difficulties in surging clandestine capabilities from zero, that we
have concluded in Finding Five that the CS should opt for a global
presence rather than a global reach. That is to say, the CS should
maintain a small presence in most parts of the world, even when
those countries do not meet the high standards of operational
interests that should guide most of its activities. It is entirely
too likely that the hot-spots into which US forces must be
introduced will not have been predicted and will be in a country or
region that would not otherwise have merited the CS's attention.
Finding #5: The Clandestine Service should opt for "global
presence" rather than "global reach."
A solution to the great pressures the DO has felt since 1991
with the drawdown of resources and personnel was to move from being
a service with a "global presence," that is, having a station in
every country that could reasonably be of interest, to having a
"global reach," that is, withdrawing from many marginal countries,
but trying to maintain some sort of access and capability that can
be, presumably, reconstituted and expanded if needed. Plans were
made and, as has already been stated, large numbers of stations and
bases have been closed since 1992. Many intelligence observers,
including this Committee, thought this was a reasonable adjustment
to a situation where resources in real dollars were likely to
continue to decline at a steep rate for the foreseeable future. In
the last year there has been a retreat in some quarters from this
pessimistic resource projection; but, more importantly, many have
re-thought the implications and practicality of a global reach
strategy.
After much deliberation and consultation with expert
practitioners of clandestine operations and intelligence managers,
we believe the CS of the future must strive for a global presence.
At the least, it ought not to reduce the number of its overseas
stations and bases below current levels. Two arguments are
particularly strong.
First, a global presence is essential to support military
requirements. Although this study strongly concludes that the CS
should concentrate on the hard targets and the highest level
national requirements that it uniquely satisfies, it also believes
the CS of the future must accept fully the responsibility to
support military operations to the degree it reasonably can. As is
argued in Finding Four, the CS must accept its responsibility to
support the requirements of the military not only for strategic
intelligence -- something in which it can excel -- but also for
appropriate tactical intelligence support in times and places of
military engagement -- a responsibility that often falls to it only
by default. Recent history has shown that it is increasingly
difficult to know in advance where the military might be deployed
and where the CS should begin building up capabilities in advance.
A second argument for a global presence is that the targets of
the CS are increasingly international and transnational and a
global presence is increasingly crucial to attack those targets.
Terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction,
narcotics, and international organized crime are all recognized in
a variety of NSC and Presidential directives as high priority
requirements of the intelligence community. These are also issues
on which the National Strategic Intelligence Reviews and the
Comprehensive Capabilities Review have shown the policymaker is
heavily reliant on HUMINT. The National HUMINT Requirements
Tasking Center has, it appears correctly, given detailed and high-
priority taskings to clandestine operators around the world to go
against these targets. With the mobility of populations,
fungibility of finances, internationalization of businesses, and
advances in communications and transportation, the whole world is
increasingly the playground of the targets of such operations. A
weapons proliferator can set up a front company in a sleepy Central
Africa capital and a terrorist cell can relocate to an obscure
provincial city in South America in a matter of days or weeks. It
is only by having a presence in those countries that a CS can have
a stable of agents to help mount unilateral operations or be able
to seek the help of a friendly liaison service. Under these
circumstances, the CS cannot simply write off large parts of the
globe.
Finding #6: The Clandestine Service should be under the direct
control of the DCI and form a separate organization.
It is the opinion of the great majority of high-level current
and former intelligence officials consulted that the Clandestine
Service, whether it remains part of the Central Intelligence Agency
or becomes a free-standing organization, must be under the direct
and proximate control of the President's senior intelligence
official, the DCI. We strongly concur.
In the first several decades of the CIA's history it was not
unusual for the DCI or the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence
(DDCI) to come from within the operational ranks. That not only
resulted in the DCI's being strongly interested in the DO's
activities, it also meant he had continuing personal insight into
the DO through his personal contacts. This situation has not been
the case for almost two decades, and, due to the controversy of the
DO, it is unlikely to be the case again in the near future. Until
recent years, though, the DCI made sure that the DDO was aware that
he reported directly to him and usually viewed oversight of the DDO
as being his most important responsibility along with being the
President's personal intelligence advisor. It has also been one of
the DCI's most demanding responsibilities. As Richard Kerr has
noted from his time leading the IC and as DDCI, easily two-thirds
of the issues the DCI must bring to the President and Congress have
a DO angle to them. This, he says, is because of the types of
information the DO collects, the problems inherent in DO
operations, and the fact that the DO is the sole action arm in the
Community -- "the DCI and the President depend on it not only to
collect intelligence but to act on it with foreign governments,
with liaison, and in other ways." The DDO's office was moved next
to the DCI's in 1973 because of the need for easier interaction and
more frequent personal meetings; and, as one former DDO has pointed
out, it was not by accident that the DDO's office suite has since
remained there -- "within shouting distance."
In recent years, however, the DCI has attempted to concentrate
more on his role as leader of the IC rather than as the director of
the CIA and overseer of the DO. Some have been more successful at
this than others. Former Director James Woolsey, for example,
started in this vein before being sucked into the Aldrich Ames
vortex. The effort to increase management attention to the IC at
large has inevitably led to strains on the DCI's time and to span
of control problems because of the significant increase in the
number of intelligence community officials reporting to him.
Recent DCIs have stated that these strains are manageable by proper
delegation to subordinates. The current DCI, in particular, has
increased his reliance on the DDCI and the CIA's Executive Director
to filter and oversee the activities of the DO. The current DCI
has indicated that, rather than directly supervising the DDO, he
looks to the Executive Director to be his "chief operating
officer," including the day-to-day management of the DO.
Additionally, he has stated that his DDCI is also responsible for
overseeing the DO. As described to one journalist, the DDCI "has
taken the overall supervisory role in directorate affairs, while
day-to-day responsibility for decisions on personnel, operations
and other issues goes to [the Executive Director]."/13/ It is not
clear, under this system, what the responsibilities are of the
current DDO. Interestingly, none of the three -- the DDCI, the
Executive Director, and the DDO -- have experience in clandestine
operations.
Although the IC21 studies recognize and, indeed, encourage the
expansion of the DCI's Community role, it makes little sense to do
that by attenuating the DCI's supervision and knowledge of the
activities of a CS. Moreover, as would be the case in the
military, it makes even less sense to create duplicative or even a
triply redundant operational management of a CS -- particularly to
the degree this process inserts inexpert judgment.
The following are a few of the arguments for the most direct
and proximate DCI control possible.
1) Most of the operations of the CS are, by all accounts, the
most tricky, politically sensitive, and troublesome of those in the
IC and frequently require the DCI's close personal attention. The
CS is the only part of the IC, indeed of the government, where
hundreds of employees on a daily basis are directed to break
extremely serious laws in counties around the world in the face of
frequently sophisticated efforts by foreign governments to catch
them. A safe estimate is that several hundred times every day
(easily 100,000 times a year) DO officers engage in highly illegal
activities (according to foreign law) that not only risk political
embarrassment to the US but also endanger the freedom if not lives
of the participating foreign nationals and, more than occasionally,
of the clandestine officer himself. In other words, a typical 28
year old, GS-11 case officer has numerous opportunities every week,
by poor tradecraft or inattention, to embarrass his country and
President and to get agents imprisoned or executed. Considering
these facts and recent history, which has shown that the DCI,
whether he wants to or not, is held accountable for overseeing the
CS, the DCI must work closely with the Director of the CS and hold
him fully and directly responsible to him.
2) For the President and the DCI to feel confident that the
benefits of having a functioning CS outweigh the risks, they must
feel confident that the reporting chain is direct and personally
accountable to them. Without this confidence, the CS will not be
trusted and it will inevitably come under an inexpert, risk-averse
bureaucratic review process, with each layer comfortable with
rejecting and questioning operational opportunities but reluctant
to approve them without going to the DCI anyway. The creation of a
doubly or triply redundant superstructure of non-expert operational
management between the Director of the CS and the DCI makes sense
only if an Administration's objective is to eliminate risk even if
the cost is having a CS that has little if any chance of succeeding
in its most important missions. If this is the case, the IC and
the taxpayer would be better off without a CS.
3) Many of the best clandestine operations develop quickly
and require an oversight and approval process that, for the
government, is uniquely adaptable and timely. The DCI's
authorities have been crafted so that he can meet these
requirements. Bureaucratic layers between the DCI and the Director
of the CS are impediments to decisiveness and effective
communication, particularly to the degree that they involve the
review of administrators who are not expert in understanding the
opportunities and pitfalls of clandestine operations.
4) The CS is the focal point for the conduct of most US
intelligence liaison activities overseas (see Finding Two) and is
the arm of the government principally tasked to carry out covert
actions -- that is those covert activities undertaken at the
President's request in furtherance of US foreign policy. In
effect, the CS, under the direction of the DCI, acts as a de facto
clandestine or covert arm of US foreign policy. This is hardly an
overstatement in several important countries where the political
leaderships have chosen, for a variety of reasons, to carry out
their more sensitive political discussions with the US President
through intelligence rather than Department of State channels.
Covert action and foreign political functions are activities very
different from intelligence collection, and it makes little sense
to have the IC management superstructure in the chain of command
for the DCI's management of these policy related activities.
Simply put, the DCI must be fully cognizant and directly in control
of these activities through the individual responsible for their
being carried out -- the Director of the CS.
5) As documented elsewhere in this report, the CS, despite
its relatively small size in the IC, provides a disproportionate
amount of intelligence of critical value to meeting national level
intelligence requirements (that is those of greatest interest to
the President and the NSC). When it performs well, the CS is
particularly important as a source of highly sensitive information
on the plans and intentions of foreign powers. In some ways the
CS's importance to the policymaker is analogous to the importance
of SIGINT and, most particularly, IMINT, in supporting the tactical
military intelligence consumer. The placement of the CS in the IC
should maximize the DCI's ability to exploit and task the
clandestine system directly./14/
6) Finally, organizational common sense dictates that if
there is to be anyone responsible to the DCI for the proper
administration of the CS, it should be the individual who is
realistically responsible for its actions: the Director of the CS.
If properly chosen and trusted by the DCI, the Director of the CS
can do this job better than anyone else. If a DCI finds himself in
the position of preferring to have someone other than his Director
of the CS oversee the CS, he should replace the incumbent with the
preferred individual, rather than create another layer of oversight
by putting him above the incumbent.
Having made these arguments, there is, nonetheless, a very
real requirement for an Executive Director with the authorities to
manage and deconflict administrative problems and act as an honest
broker in resolving differences so long as the very different
activities of the DO, Directorate of Intelligence (DI), Directorate
of Science and Technology (DS&T) are housed together in the CIA.
We have grave concerns, however, about the propriety of having the
Executive Director perform the role as defined by the current DCI,
that is, as the "chief operating officer" of the CIA. These
concerns go beyond the issue of properly managing clandestine
operations: it appears extraordinarily unwise to put one non-confirmed
official in the position of managing clandestine
intelligence collection, directing covert action programs, and
supervising and influencing the production of the nation's most
important all-source analytic organization. There should not be a
concentration of these authorities in the hands of someone other
than the DCI or a confirmed subordinate, particularly when there is
no assurance that the person is a qualified intelligence
professional.
Former Acting DCI, Richard Kerr, a career DI officer, proposed
to the Committee that, if the current CIA and IC structure are
maintained, it would make sense to have a career CS officer as the
Senate-confirmed DDCI who is putting in charge of the day-to-day
management of the CIA. At the least, such an arrangement would
likely provide more professional oversight of clandestine
operations and provide more accountability than the current
confusing situation. It is less certain that this would benefit
the CIA's other functions.
It is, of course, our belief that rather than modifying the
status quo, there are real advantages for the proper management of
clandestine operations (and all-source analysis) in
organizationally separating the two. The current situation has
resulted from the historic administrative expediency that the CIA
statutorily is the only agency into which the DCI could put
activities he wanted to control. There was no other managerial
logic behind it, and, indeed, until recently, great care was taken
to keep these two activities separate. Although there are strong
arguments supporting an increase in cooperation between operations
and analysis, such as currently advancing in the CIA under the
banner of "DO-DI Partnership" (see Finding Eight), there is no
reason the two activities must exist as elements of the same IC
entity.
The creation of a unified CS, built around what is currently
the DO, significantly revamped along the lines presented in this
report, and under a Director fully and directly responsible to the
DCI, would be in consonance with the arguments in this finding. It
would also facilitate the proposal to strengthen the CIA's role,
under the leadership of one of two DDCIs, as being first and
foremost the nation's and President's premier all-source analytic
organization (see Intelligence Community Management staff study).
Finding #7: The Clandestine Service (CS) should be led by career
CS officers.
It makes little sense to put non-specialists in positions
where the main job element is the provision of wise, expert
operational direction and oversight. This is true in choosing a
general, the head of a team of surgeons, or the leader of a large
legal defense team. It is also true in selecting the leadership of
a CS.
As pointed out in Finding One, the most difficult operational
decisions of the CS must be reviewed (and often made) by the CS
leadership. This requires expert knowledge of a widely diverse set
of skills and techniques unique to the CS. Additionally, managing
a CS means managing a higher level of risk on a daily basis than
any other job in the government. An unquestionable expertise in
the business is necessary to avoid the managerial extremes of risk-
avoidance and risk-blindness, the one hobbling the CS from taking
those risks most important to its success, the other leading to
mindless operational errors.
The current DO, for example, engages in several hundred
clandestine operational acts per day -- ranging from meeting
penetrations of governments to servicing clandestine technical
intelligence sites. Most of these acts, if discovered, would, at
the very least, involve major embarrassment to the United States.
A properly run CS has to have built into it the flexibility to
allow case officers to make split second decisions, but it must
also, when possible, look over their shoulders, making sure they
exercise proper judgment. This leads to a steeply pyramidical
organizational structure. In the field, this means that
operations are reviewed by one or two layers of management, and the
headquarters review process may also involve several layers and
offices.
The most sensitive operations may have to be reviewed all the
way up the chain of command by the Director of the CS and even the
DCI. A typical operational problem of this sort would be deciding
whether a case officer should unload a dead drop from a
extraordinarily promising but unvetted agent in a hostile country
a week prior to a high-level bilateral diplomatic event. Such a
problem might also involve high-level consultation outside the CS
(such as with appropriate authorities in the NSC or the Department
of State). First, though, it requires proper operational
evaluation in the form of an operational risk/gain analysis. This
requires a sophisticated understanding and appreciation of many
operational factors and the tradecraft to be employed:
surveillance, countersurveillance, operational testing, concealed
radio communications, covers for status and action, host country
counterintelligence capabilities, US operational history in the
country, and a frank assessment of the operational experience of
the CS officers and managers involved. Even then, making such a
decision is not mechanical, a simple matter of plugging in
percentages. As in playing chess or in plotting a move on a
battlefield, there are too many variables, and at some point the
manager must also apply the intuition and judgment that comes only
from having spent years working similar problems. If the
leadership of the CS is not the absolutely best available -- the
wisest and most experienced -- risks are needlessly increased,
opportunities are missed, and the US is not well served.
This finding, that the CS should be led by career CS
officers is not the same as advocating that its whole leadership
and management team should arise sui generis. In addition to
managing operations, the director of the CS must also manage an
organization. It is in this regard that the current DO has not
always distinguished itself. There is a role for consultants in
improving this situation and in making sure that the CS benefits
from good managerial practices that are developed elsewhere. The
long-term solution also involves changes to the CS personnel
system, particularly as it works to develop officers who show
potential for leadership. These officers should be targeted for
advanced management training (assuming they do not already have
significant backgrounds in the area) such as in graduate programs,
and should be required to serve rotational tours outside the CS
prior to advancement into the senior executive service.
Also, it is not impossible that there may be an extraordinary
occasion when an individual, having developed extremely useful
talents working in another intelligence or national security field,
may be the best candidate to serve in a management position in the
CS, perhaps even as its Director. In such a case, however, it
would be essential that the Director of the CS assemble around him
a management team on which he can rely for operational advice.
Finally, as a practical matter, recent history has shown that
DDOs (and even DCIs) are being held responsible for operational
decisions that are made during their tenures -- even at levels far
below them. While this tendency may now be extreme, there is no
denying, as has been strenuously argued in the Finding Six, that
the country and the DCI will be best served by having a Director of
the CS who can reasonably be held responsible (and accountable) for
the CS's activities.
Finding #8: The Clandestine Service should be closely linked to
all-source analysts on a selective basis.
The proposal to separate the CS administratively and
organizationally from the DCI's all-source analytic organization is
not meant to attenuate the close working relationships
("partnership") that have grown up between these two functions. An
increasingly close working relationship between the clandestine
collectors and all-source analysts can, in the coming years, result
in significant improvements to the value of CS reporting and all-source
analytic production, but only if it is carefully and
thoughtfully implemented in those areas where the expertise of the
relevant collection and analytic components are complementary and
lead to unquestioned mutual benefit. At least from the perspective
of the CS, the problems of a careful, limited partnership should be
manageable and are far outweighed by the advantages, not the least
of which is the improvement of two-way communications for tasking
and reporting./15/
The 1994 announcement of partnership between the DO and DI was
met with skepticism by many current and former employees of both
directorates. Part of the opposition was attributable to the
feeling on the part of many that too many other changes were
already underway at the CIA. Another major reason was that the
partnership went against a tradition of separation that, though
weaker than it had been, continues. In the early years of the CIA,
the division between the two functions was so sharp that one
directorate's employees were not free to visit areas belonging to
the other without escort. The division became somewhat less severe
in the 1970s and more so in the 1980s with a program bringing DI
analysts into some embassies and stations. At the headquarters
level, it was the hard-fought success of the newly formed centers,
particularly the Counterterrorism Center, that most accelerated the
interaction of DO and DI personnel./16/ In the DO, the value of DI
analysts in targeting/17/ reinforced the trend: for example, Office
of Weapons Technology and Proliferation personnel are integral to
DO offices working proliferation issues, and DI economists sit
side-by-side with DO officers to fine-tune the targeting and
exploitation of foreign economic targets.
These are examples of partnership that should be replicated
discretely, on a case-by-case basis where and as it makes sense.
It seems likely that the area and issue expertise of all-source
analysts will be of greatest benefit to the CS in its efforts to
develop hard target operations and work against arcane
technological and economic targets.
The arguments for partnership also justify closer interactions
between all-source analysts and the technical collection
disciplines. Nonetheless, the data (such as in the Background
section of this study), showing the key role clandestine collection
plays in satisfying the national level requirements that are the
DI's principal focus, indicate the DI would benefit most from
closer cooperation with the clandestine service. In this regard,
the partnership is analogous to the closeness that has developed
between SIGINT producers (via Cryptologic Support Groups) and
tactical military analysts due to SIGINT's frequently predominant
role in providing tactical military intelligence.
Finding #9: The Clandestine Service should manage the support
mechanisms that are critical to its functioning and essential to
its success and that exist exclusively to serve it.
As one former clandestine operations manager has suggested, no
corporate CEO would agree to be responsible for the success or
failure of his company without full control over his company's
finances, travel, communications, logistics, physical plant,
security, payroll and many personnel functions. Yet, that is
basically the situation that exists now with the DO since the
Directorate of Administration (DA) is responsible for much of the
DO's administrative support and the Office of Technical Services
(OTS) of the DS&T provides technical support to clandestine
operations.
The CS needs, to the degree possible, to manage the
administrative and technical clandestine operations support
mechanisms that are critical to its smooth functioning, essential
to its success, and exist exclusively to serve it./18/ In addition
to making these functions more responsive to the mission, their
merger in the CS may allow the service to take advantage of the
increasing commonality of skills required of categories of
personnel that are now spread between three different directorates
-- case officers specializing in technical operations, technical
operations support officers, and communications/computer systems
support officers.
If the CS does assume responsibility for its technical
operations support and large parts of its administrative support,
it is reasonable to expect that the number of people in these
activities could make up somewhere between twenty five and thirty-five
percent of the service. To house, manage, and offer career
development to these personnel, there would have to be a
strengthened deputy to the Director of the CS responsible for all
elements of support.
Finally, in regard to our proposal in Finding One that the CS
should be kept small, the incorporation of appropriate support
activities within the CS should not be considered a net
augmentation of its personnel, since this change simply
rationalizes the location of functions and offices that are
currently outside the DO but which exist to support it.
Finding #10: The Clandestine Service requires significant changes
to its personnel management and career development systems.
The outrage -- public and within the CIA -- surrounding the
exposure of Aldrich Ames as a Soviet and later Russian spy who had
managed to compromise many of the CIA's greatest and most carefully
guarded secrets, was magnified by his having been a marginal and
occasionally a problem employee whom the system had failed to
remove prior to his committing acts of treachery. The Ames case,
rightly or wrongly, has been the backdrop against which subsequent
allegations of DO mismanagement have been viewed. Calls for
radical change have come from many quarters, not the least being
from the current leadership of the CIA and from former DCI Woolsey.
Most of the changes that have been made to date have involved
efforts to reform defective systemic or process problems. There
have been so many changes in the complementary areas of personnel
management, accountability, personnel security, and
counterespionage that it would take several pages to list them.
Their number and the rapidity with which they have been promulgated
has stretched the ability of the DO to incorporate them and make
them part of the fabric of the CS. No doubt, some will turn out to
be more successful than others, and it may be that some of them
will result in unforeseen problems of their own. In this regard,
those seeking to change the DO must be cautious not to damage those
features of the "culture" that are not only good but essential to
any successful CS. Sociological studies have amply proved that,
just as in attempting to "improve" an ecosystem, efforts to improve
or reform seemingly discrete aspects of a culture will frequently
have unforeseen and unintended consequences.
For these reasons we are reluctant to recommend any but the
most necessary additional changes prior to giving those already
decided upon a chance to show their effect and be evaluated. There
is also the knowledge that change always causes stress -- even when
the intentions are welcomed -- particularly on an organization
that, to succeed, is so totally dependent upon employee job
satisfaction, motivation, and esprit de corps. Nonetheless, there
remain to be made several overwhelmingly logical changes to the
personnel management and career development system. Each appears
to have tremendous potential to improve the CS in the long-term
without running much danger of disabling the positive aspects of a
successful CS "culture." Moreover, most of these proposals can be
implemented incrementally and carefully monitored as they are put
into effect.
The CS of the future should:
1) increase the exposure of its officers to the rest of the
IC, the intelligence consumers, and Congress;
2) develop an enhanced program for recruiting new junior
employees;
3) be more aggressive in identifying officers who will be CS
managers and ensuring that they are qualified or will
receive training qualifying them to manage;
4) reduce the rapid turnover of personnel in field and
headquarters assignments; and
5) make fuller use of DCI authorities to remove marginal and
unsuitable employees.
The arguments in support of these proposals are, we believe, clear
and incontrovertible.
Increasing exposure to the rest of the government: An
unfortunate side-effect of the uniqueness of the DO's work has been
a belief that there is little advantage, individually or
organizationally, in having its employees work outside of it. The
DO has until very recently been content to be insular and isolated,
believing its role and the value of its product were self-evident.
Accordingly, DO officers felt that if the organization identified
the right thing to do and simply went out and did it, the consumer
would be happy and the DO would be largely immune from criticism.
This is clearly no longer true, if it ever was. But it was in this
way that the DO -- an organization filled with people priding
themselves on being able to go into a foreign country, figure out
its inner workings, and quickly learn which buttons to push --
became so willfully ignorant about how Washington, D.C. works and
inept in dealing with it.
The DO's isolation has hurt it at every level. Inside the IC
it has been viewed as elitist and deserving a comeuppance. For
this reason there was no absence of schadenfreude around the IC at
the DO's recent difficulties. Outside the IC, the consumers of
intelligence were largely ignorant of the DO's activities and
capabilities, most of them having never met a DO officer and seldom
seeing a raw DO report. Further, the DO's willful ignorance of
Congress was compounded by distrust and mixed feelings about
oversight (which, to be fair, has been fed by some Congressional
actions). An increase in the number of rotational assignments
within the IC, in consumer agencies and departments, and as
Congressional fellows would appear to serve well in opening up the
CS to the realities of Washington, D.C. This will be impractical
for most younger officers whose covert employment status must be
protected; however, it should not present insurmountable problems
for most mid-level officers whose cover may have already been
compromised to some degree.
The process for recruiting young, full-career employees
("career trainees" as they are called in the CIA) is in drastic
need of change. In the past, the DO operated in a buyer's market
when recruiting new employees. It had the luxury of being able to
pick and choose among literally thousands of applicants, many with
impressive qualifications, for each position it had to fill. As a
result, its new recruits were usually well-educated, highly
motivated, and highly qualified for the work. This situation has
changed dramatically for the worse over the last two years since
the Ames case. Despite the DO being significantly under its
authorized personnel ceiling, it is having tremendous problems
recruiting qualified new employees, although the number of
applicants remains high. The current climate of public opinion
being what it is, it appears unlikely that this situation will
improve on its own in the next several years. This is a problem
that will have disastrous effects on the CS of the future and
requires immediate action. The DCI and the DDO should prepare for
Congressional consideration a program of more aggressive and
enhanced recruitment of career trainees. The DCI should consider
reopening regional recruitment offices that were closed in the
early 1990's, establishing a program of incentives for highly
qualified recruits, and putting the recruitment process under the
direct leadership of a highly qualified senior executive.
Identifying and training managers: The existing personnel
evaluation system in the DO is arguably the best in the IC if not
the government. To our knowledge, no other element of the
government annually has every employee's personnel record and
evaluations reviewed cover-to-cover, annotated by all members of a
panel of more senior employees, and then serially rated in
comparison with all peers. Moreover, the DO, like the rest of the
CIA, is excellent in training its personnel in specific skills and
subjects, as, for example, in languages or tradecraft skills. Yet,
neither the personnel system nor training form part of a coherent
program of career development for managers.
Although it is extremely likely that a good manager of
clandestine operations will have started out as a good clandestine
operator, it does not follow that all good clandestine operators
make good managers. It is a universal observation of the experts
consulted that the DO does an outstanding job of evaluating and
promoting individuals who are good at what they do, but that it
does not have a good system to ensure they will be good at what
they will be asked to do next. To remedy this, the personnel
evaluation system should be modified to identify and train (if
necessary) mid-level officers entering the management ranks in the
management skills necessary for them to manage well through the
rest of their careers. This should include enhanced in-house
training as well as a program of external training, as necessary.
The CS should also revisit the possibility of setting up a
non-managerial "operations track" program whereby the truly exceptional
clandestine operator who cannot be or is not interested in managing
may serve out his career profitably in senior operations positions.
At the very least, such a system saves the CS from having some of
its management positions filled with individuals who are there for
the money and recognition rather than because of their commitment
and interest in the job.
Slow down the turnover of personnel: In the heyday of the
1980's when personnel resources were not under strain, the DO was
able to operate under a system where there was rapid turnover of
personnel at headquarters and in the field. In an organization
that is smaller and more focused on fewer but better operations,
continuity in leadership and operations will be increasingly
important as well as efficient. To the degree that cover
considerations allow, field tours should be lengthened.
Headquarters assignments also should be made with an understanding
that they will be filled for a minimum of two years at the desk and
branch level and for three years at the division level, unless
extraordinary circumstances demand otherwise. The current
situation of most desk and branch chiefs serving a year or less
while processing for field assignments or waiting for other
assignments is counterproductive and feeds the perception of the
field that it has no dedicated and informed personal support from
headquarters. Managers at the office and division level will also
manage better if they know that they will have to live with the
consequences of their decisions. Making changes of this sort will
fly in the face of the deeply ingrained attitude inside the DO that
the field is fun and career-enhancing, while headquarters is
stultifying and "dead-time." This is one of those areas of
"culture" that can be changed only at great risk, since it is
essential that a CS have the field as its unquestioned focus and
principal interest. The CS of the future should consider, however,
a system giving some sort of temporary monetary incentives (as
opposed to enhanced promotion rates) to officers distinguishing
themselves at headquarters, particularly if done over a two-year
minimum.
Finally, the CS must make fuller use of DCI authorities and,
if necessary, request new ones to enhance its ability to remove
marginal and unsuitable employees. Quite simply, the stakes are
too high not to do this. The CS must not only have the best system
for recruiting employees, it must have the best system for removing
those whom it no longer needs or wants. The current system in the
DO is the most aggressive in the civilian sector of government --
actually removing a handful of employees each year; however, as the
Aldrich Ames case proved, it is not vigorous enough. Moreover,
there is a consensus of opinion of those consulted that marginal
employees have a particularly demoralizing effect in a CS that is
so greatly dependent upon its employees' having an attitude of
absolute commitment to mission. Since the current DO has an
effective employee evaluation system allowing it to identify
marginal performers and there has been a significant increase in
attention to identifying unsuitable employees, the CS should
develop a program that allows it to act more systematically to
remove marginal and unsuitable employees. Considering the net
advantage to the CS's operations from the departure of such
employees and the danger posed by their being forced out without
pensions or other compensation, the Committee should consider
supporting the establishment of a program similar to the military's
"selective early retirement boards" whereby a employee can be
selected out and provided a package of financial benefits
facilitating the transition.
Finding #11: To facilitate the highest possible standards of
professional conduct, the Clandestine Service requires a system of
independent and professionally competent review and adjudication
regarding questions of professional judgment.
In the wake of the Ames case there has been a proliferation of
systems meant to ensure the accountability of DO personnel for
their professional judgments. These can involve internal DO
accountability boards, CIA-wide review boards, counterintelligence
reviews, and the Inspector General (IG). The processes are
frequently redundant in their charters, inconsistent in the
qualifications of their participants, and take upwards of a year to
reach their conclusions. In an organization that demands its
officers take risks, involves the use of highly specialized skills,
and by definition will have numerous false starts and failures for
each major success, it is essential to have a single independent,
authoritative, professionally competent, and timely system of
reviewing questions of professional judgment. None of the current
systems meets all these criteria.
Questions of professional judgment in the military, such as
accidental killings by friendly fire, running a ship aground, or
crashing an airplane are examined by a board of review consisting
of military officers who are technically knowledgeable and
professionally experienced in the activity under review.
Similarly, professional organizations exist to police the
activities of various highly specialized and recognized
professions, such as bar associations and medical boards. In all
these cases, it is the rationale that the members of such boards
have a strong interest in maintaining high professional standards
and, as experts, are qualified to sit in judgment. There should be
an analogous process for reviewing the professional competence and
judgments of individuals in the clandestine service, excluding
those issues involving possible fraud or criminal behavior that
must be left to the IG. At a senior level, this process would, for
example, be used to review operational decisions such as those
leading to the compromise of an intelligence source due to improper
handling, a COS's improper supervision of a first tour officer who
as a result commits preventable tradecraft errors, or a manager who
has improperly disseminated intelligence or operational
information. At lower levels, it can involve any number of issues,
such as the review of professionalism of employees who are
chronically late, sloppy in their work, or dishonest in their
dealings with their counterparts.
We envision a CS Professional Review Board (PRB) system and
offer the following as a possible outline of its organization. To
facilitate expertness while minimizing the likelihood of its being
subject to inappropriate influence, there should be at the top of
the system a Senior PRB, directed by a retired senior CS officer
(civilian or military) or one serving in his last active duty
assignment. Other members of the Senior SRB should be current
and/or recently retired senior CS officers having the requisite
professional knowledge and experience to judge CS seniors expertly.
All members of the Senior SRB including its director should be
nominated by the Director of the CS and approved by the DCI. The
Senior PRB will be responsible for reviewing all questions of
professional judgment and competence involving senior CS officers
and will, in any specific case, include only those members having
no personal interest or prejudice concerning the matter or
individual in question./19/
The Senior PRB should also oversee the activities of PRBs
reviewing activities at lower levels in the CS. These could be
similar to the newly created DO Divisional Accountability Boards
with the limitation that their purview should extend only to those
cases not involving senior CS officers. A member of the Senior SRB
should be an ex officio member of all PRB reviews, and the Senior
PRB should be authorized to examine all PRB decisions for fairness,
accuracy, and completeness. The Senior and divisional PRBs should
be given unimpeded and complete access to all information necessary
to carry out their duties. The process should be transparent to
the IG, and their findings should be shared with the IG to ensure
he is aware of any information developed that might bring the issue
at hand under the IG's purview./20/ PRBs should also have at their
disposal the investigative resources of the DCI's
Counterintelligence Center,/21/ where the Senior PRB should also be
housed with a minimal full-time administrative staff.
FINDING #12: Clandestine Operations and the Military: Civilian
and military clandestine collection operations should be jointly
managed within a unified Clandestine Service under the policy and
operational guidance of the DCI and with an active duty two-star
military intelligence officer as a Deputy Director of the
Clandestine Service responsible for ensuring appropriate support to
the military. Key to the success of the joint service will be the
development within the military of a clandestine collection cadre
that can function within the unified clandestine service at the
same professional level as the civilian cadre.
Background and Overview
Although the CS's strengths are predominantly in the area of
fulfilling national level collection requirements, we strongly
believes the CS must have support to the military as one of its key
roles. Clandestine capabilities in support of the military are
currently disjointed, poorly managed, and even dysfunctional. The
"Aspin-Brown" Commission, citing criticisms of the military's poor
management and minimal success in running clandestine operations,
has recommended that DoD should get out of the business of
clandestinely recruiting human sources and that it should become
the exclusive province of the CIA, "utilizing military personnel on
detail from DoD, as necessary." We concur with this judgment,
placing all clandestine collection capabilities in the CS, but
prefer a more active role for the military personnel assigned to
the CS than the Commission language implies.
The military services' record of running clandestine
operations has been mediocre. The newly created Defense HUMINT
Service (DHS) into which the individual services' clandestine
operations have been consolidated, has remedied some problems but
exacerbated others. Specifically, the creation of DHS has
alienated what little support there was for clandestine operations
in the services and with the CINCs while, at the same time,
bringing these operations more closely under the inexpert and
cumbersome oversight processes of the Office of the Secretary of
Defense (OSD).
The situation at the CIA also is of concern. The CIA/DO's
commitment to support the military has been inconsistent since the
end of the Vietnam War. The improvements made in the wake of the
Gulf War, although positive, are not deeply rooted, and the DO has
been reluctant to make further commitments to provide direct
support to the military since that might put it in bureaucratic
conflict or competition with DHS. At the same time the DDO, as the
National HUMINT Collection Manager, has not provided DHS with the
strong operational guidance it needs to develop a coherent long-term
strategy for deployment of its operational resources. In
short, radical changes are required for the CS of the future if it
is ever adequately to meet the challenge of supporting the
military.
To facilitate IC21 examination of this issue, the Committee
requested, in the classified annex to the FY 1996 authorization,
that the DDO (in his role as HUMINT collection manager), form a
joint task force of high-level clandestine operations officers from
the DO and DHS to look into the issue of improving and integrating
the two services' support to the military. That report, dated
November 13, 1995 and attached as an appendix to the classified
version of this study, gives an excellent analysis of many of the
current structural and managerial problems and provides some
proposed solutions. We are, in general, strongly supportive of the
task force's findings and believe that, if fully adopted, they
would result in numerous incremental improvements that would, in
aggregate, significantly improve some aspects of the existing
situation. Yet, the changes it proposes leave fundamental problems
untouched, probably as being politically and organizationally "too
hard." It is in no way a criticism of the study to acknowledge
that it had to restrict its suggestions to those that would not
challenge the charters of the DO and DHS, the cumbersome military
personnel system, or OSD prerogatives in overseeing one of its own
agency's activities. However, in the context of the IC21 study's
look to the future, we are not bound by these restrictions; indeed,
its purpose is to look beyond the current realities and address
fundamental problems that go to the very core questions of
organization, roles, and missions. The potential gain from
rethinking the whole organization of clandestine collection for the
military warrants the difficulties of taking on existing
parochialisms and mindsets.
We strongly believe there must be a single US CS into which
are integrated civilian and military clandestine collection. As
discussed in Finding Six, this new organization, the CS, should
exist as a discrete entity in the IC and come under the DCI's
direct control. It will devote the great majority of its resources
towards the national collection requirements that clandestine
operations are uniquely suited to satisfy. It would also, however,
have folded into it a permanent requirement to be more responsive
to the military in the formulation of national clandestine
collection plans and ensure greater support to the military
commander as needed when US forces are deployed overseas. Its
military cadre should be of a size necessary to meet the
requirement for clandestine collectors with the cover and expertise
of active duty military personnel -- perhaps ten to twenty percent.
The creation of this new joint organization would involve
tremendous changes and may meet strong institutional resistance,
particularly within the Department of Defense. If successfully
implemented, however, it would result in the rationalization and
enhanced management of all national clandestine collection
resources, tremendous synergy from the melding of talents and
varieties of access, economies of scale, and greatly improved
collection for all consumers -- national and tactical military.
In the following, we will discuss some of the critical issues
that must be addressed to bring the military into a joint CS:
building a cadre of military clandestine collectors, managing
support to the military, and the proper oversight of military
clandestine operations.
Personnel
On the civilian side -- that is, within what is currently the
DO -- many of the most serious challenges to creating a joint CS
have been addressed by other findings in this study. Finding Four
argues that the CS must better service-validated, high-level
military requirements and have the capability to support low-level,
tactical requirements as appropriate. This must become an
intrinsic part of every aspect of the CS's strategic planning.
Finding Five outlines the judgment that the CS must have a global
presence, particularly because military contingency collection
requirements are so difficult to predict in advance. Military
clandestine collectors could be instrumental in filling the
requirement to staff these "military contingency" locations.
To the degree that cover concerns can be met, career military
and civilian members of a joint CS should be able to serve
interchangeably in all clandestine service positions in the field
and at headquarters, and assignments should be based solely on
qualifications and relevant operational experience. These would be
deep "cultural" changes for a civilian clandestine collection
community that has grown accustomed to viewing most uniformed
clandestine operators as being a grab-bag of officers of varying
levels of talent, with limited training, and even more limited
experience.
The military services must meet the challenge of helping
produce this cadre of talented, well trained, and experienced
uniformed clandestine collectors. This will require some strong
direction from the very top of DoD, in OSD and at the Joint Chiefs
level. Without that sort of leadership, history shows us that the
services are likely to pay only lip service (if that) to supporting
the creation of a unified CS. In the best of times the services
have not seen fit to recognize clandestine operations as a bona
fide military career specialization and there is unanimity of
opinion that there have been definite career disincentives to
working in that area. Now the services and the CINCs, having lost
"ownership" of clandestine resources with the creation of DHS, are
even less enthusiastic. Several individuals have advised that the
military services have informally counselled their best HUMINT
officers that their careers will be jeopardized by accepting
assignments in DHS. Without commitment from the top, there will be
a continuation if not a worsening of the services' current
lackluster support for the development of a program to select,
train, and nurture career clandestine collectors.
There are numerous ideas on how to build a strong military
clandestine collection cadre within a unified CS. The following is
offered as an example that may have merit. First, the services
must work with the CS to recruit highly qualified individuals from
those on active duty, in ROTC programs, and in the service
academies. The selectivity of the military cadre must be equal to
that of the civilian. The services must then work with the CS to
develop covers, training programs and career tracks that will give
these recruits the military experience necessary to satisfy
military requirements expertly as well as a high level of
competence in clandestine operations.
Management of Clandestine Support to the Military
The designation of a Deputy Director of the Clandestine
Service for Military Intelligence (DDCS/MI) at the two-star rank
may be essential to the success of a unified CS. The position will
expand upon the position of Assistant Deputy Director of Operations
for Military Affairs (ADDO/MA) created in the aftermath of the Gulf
War. The ADDO/MA, with the strong support of the DDO, did an
outstanding job of increasing the CIA/DO's responsiveness to
military intelligence consumers. Moreover, this success (as is not
always the case) was widely acknowledged, particularly at the
regional unified commands./22/
An important element of the DDCS/MI's duties should be his
having direct control of CS support cells that are embedded in the
regional commands and other important DoD entities. These cells
should operate much like the National Security Agency's
"Cryptologic Support Groups" and act as the Community's single
focal point for the development and implementation of the
clandestine operations element of intelligence support doctrine.
Oversight of Clandestine Operations Involving Military Personnel
For this or any other military clandestine operations activity
to succeed it must be removed from the direct regular operational
oversight of OSD. The OSD guidelines and procedures developed in
1994 and 1995, and under which DHS now operates, have shown
themselves to be cumbersome, time-consuming and (some would argue)
subject to political manipulation.
Findings Six and Seven of this study discuss at great length
the reasons clandestine operations require nimble, informed
operational oversight. These reasons apply equally to operations
undertaken by civilian and military operators. The current system
in place in OSD ensures decisions on fast-breaking sensitive
operations are made only after months of "staffing" and at a
bureaucratic level far removed from anyone having direct knowledge
of the relevant facts. It is a formula for guaranteeing a risk-adverse,
bureaucratic, and mediocre CS. As proposed under this
finding, all clandestine operations carried out by the unified CS
would come under the operational and policy oversight procedures
set up by the DCI, using his authorities. The DDCS/MI will be
positioned in the CS to ensure that the operations do not run afoul
DoD regulations and guidelines and to facilitate any necessary
deconfliction. Also, there should be built into the system a
procedure whereby appropriate DoD officials are advised and
consulted regarding particularly sensitive operations involving
uniformed personnel.
Conclusion
Even if it is decided that, for bureaucratic or organizational
reasons, this finding is too revolutionary and difficult to enact,
we strongly recommend that DHS's give up its sideline of
clandestine operations and concentrate its efforts on its larger,
more productive and cost effective overt collection mission. It is
our belief that DHS' clandestine mission is unlikely ever to rise
above built-in limitations and justify the cost and risks involved.
Even if the military does not opt to participate fully in a joint
CS, we would like to see DoD detail to the CS a small number of
select officers. The potential advantages of a small program of
this sort should be sufficiently apparent to DoD to warrant its
approval, even if DoD is unwilling to participate in a full-fledged
joint CS.
------------------------------
FOOTNOTES
/1/The term HUMINT was coined as a contraction of "human
intelligence," a category of intelligence meant to contrast with
the varieties of technical intelligence known as SIGINT (signals
intelligence), IMINT (imagery intelligence), and MASINT
(measurements and signatures intelligence). As usually employed
now, any intelligence coming from a meeting with a human source -
clandestine or overt - can be categorized as HUMINT.
Nonetheless, overt HUMINT is also sometimes categorized as a type
of open source intelligence, which is now in some corners called
OSINT. To confuse matters further, any intelligence disseminated
by the CIA's Directorate of Operations, even that coming from
several of the traditional types of technical operations (e.g.,
from teletaps and audio operations) is sometimes lumped into the
HUMINT category. Also, the Department of Defense (DoD) sometimes
calls the reporting coming from the direct observation of a US
intelligence reporter "HUMINT."
/2/This study will concentrate on the intelligence
collection aspects of clandestine operations. It is this study's
assumption that any serious examination of covert action will
conclude that it would be inefficient and unwise to separate
covert action from clandestine intelligence activities such as
was attempted and abandoned in the early years of the CIA. Since
1952, the CIA's clandestine service (the Directorate of
Operations and its predecessor organization, the Directorate of
Plans) has been responsible for the full panoply of covert action
activities. These range from running agents of influence who can
clandestinely influence a foreign government's policies to
executing clandestine or, at the least, "plausibly deniable"
paramilitary operations meant to overthrow or harass foreign
regimes. Covert action also frequently involves the exploitation
of covert or clandestine cooperative intelligence relationships
with foreign countries to further US positions in a type of quiet
diplomacy. Experience has shown that the quality of a covert
action is usually directly proportional to the quality of
intelligence collection because the best agents of influence
frequently have the best access to intelligence and vice versa.
/3/For the purposes of discussion in this section of the
study, we will concentrate on the DO. Although the newly created
Defense HUMINT Service of the Department of Defense consolidates
most military clandestine operations, it is as yet an infant
organization running fewer operations globally than does the CIA
in many countries.
/4/John Walcott and Brian Duffy, "The CIA's Darkest Secret,"
U.S. News and World Report, 4 July 1994, p. 35.
/5/It must be noted that the Reviews are inconsistent in
their use of the term HUMINT. Frequently they use it in
exclusive reference to clandestine HUMINT and refer to overt
collection as part of open source collection. Yet, in other
instances it lumps clandestine and overt in the same "HUMINT"
category.
/6/As is discussed under "Finding Four" of this study, the
role of clandestine reporting is significantly more limited in
supporting the tactical intelligence requirements of military
commanders. This is most evident on a technologically
sophisticated battlefield where technical intelligence collection
techniques can be far more useful.
/7/"Does the CIA Still Have a Role?" Foreign Affairs 74,
no.5 (September/October 1995): 110.
/8/This calculus is frequently misstated even in the IC by
those who would weigh the potential intelligence benefit from an
operation against the cost of its assumed compromise. So, for
example, one would ask, "Assuming this will be compromised and be
used against us, is it worthwhile recruiting the army chief of
staff in country X?" Needless to say, few operations would be
justifiable under such a formulation. Similarly, no one would
ever drive to a grocery store or to work if that action were
being weighed against an assumed worse case scenario -- a fatal
auto accident. The proper calculus is to weigh the potential
intelligence benefit against the cost of a realistically
appraised possibility of compromise.
/9/NHRTC's guidance is binding on the clandestine and overt
HUMINT collection elements inside the IC, such as on the DO and
the overt and clandestine elements of the Defense HUMINT Service.
It is advisory in making its recommendations to the collection
elements outside the community, such as to the Foreign Commercial
Service of the Department of Commerce and in the Department of
State embassy reporting program. NHRTC's effectiveness in
validating and allocating requirements has been recognized and
further improved by its also providing guidance for open source
collection in the IC, such as by the Foreign Broadcast
Information Service of the CIA's Directorate of Science and
Technology.
/10/The other major issue between law enforcement and
intelligence is the use of intelligence information and
capabilities for law enforcement purposes. Since this problem
extends across the intelligence spectrum (not just clandestine
operations) it has been treated in the IC21 Intelligence and Law
Enforcement staff study.
/11/In its report Making Intelligence Smarter: The Future
of US Intelligence, the Council for Foreign Relations notes:
As a rule of thumb, foreign policy ought to take precedence
over law enforcement when it comes to overseas operations.
The bulk of US intelligence efforts overseas is devoted to
traditional national security concerns; as a result, law
enforcement must ordinarily be a secondary concern. FBI and
DEA agents operating abroad should not be allowed to act
independently of either the ambassador or CIA lest pursuit
of evidence or individuals for purposes of prosecution cause
major foreign policy problems or complicate ongoing
intelligence and diplomatic activities.
Similarly, the Aspin-Brown Commission report takes exception
with the law enforcement argument that the executive branch
should place law enforcement interests above other policy
considerations such as the impact on foreign relations and the
protection of intelligence sources and methods. To clarify
policy on this matter the Commission recommends the President
issue an Executive Order reaffirming transnational threats such
as terrorism, narcotics trafficking, organized crime and
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction are national
security matters. We concur with that recommendation.
/12/First, as indicated in Finding Two, the CS, as an
extension of its current role, is already the focal point for
clandestine and related liaison activities for the IC. There is
no such focal point within the law enforcement community:
overseas the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the Customs
Service, and Secret Service operate independently and do not even
share a single chain of command (the first two coming under the
Department of Justice and the last two coming under the
Department of the Treasury). Having the CS act as the focal
point for coordination avoids reopening interagency rivalries for
primacy within the law enforcement community. Secondly, the
scope of liaison and clandestine activities undertaken by the CS
will almost always eclipse in number and magnitude those of the
law enforcement agencies overseas. It is easier to keep the CS
COS informed as necessary on law enforcement activities than to
have a designated law enforcement official have to keep track of
the CS's activities. Finally, it is a central responsibility of
the CS to monitor the local counterintelligence and operational
environment overseas. That knowledge makes it the most
appropriate organization to act responsibly in providing expert
operational guidance, if necessary, on the conduct of activities
made known to it.
/13/Washington Post, 27 December 1995.
/14/Note, however, that for most tasking and requirements
the CS should be dependent upon a Community-wide collection
management mechanism that factors in the capabilities, costs, and
relative merits of all collection techniques.
/15/For the CS, the only significant problem could be the
unnecessary compromise of the principle of "need to know," that
is, compartmentation of sources and methods. This would appear
to be manageable if the partnership is done on a case-by-case
basis. The most frequently cited problem with partnership
for the analysts is in maintaining the objectivity of analysis.
That is an issue beyond the purview of this study, but, again,
with vigilance and attention, it would appear to be manageable.
/16/See the IC21 study on Intelligence Centers for more on
the benefits (and problems) involved in the development and
operation of organizations merging analytic, collection, and (in
many cases) policy and covert action functions.
/17/"Targeting" has become something of a term of art in
clandestine operations. Success in clandestine operations is
dependent on planning as well as serendipity. Targeting is meant
to maximize the advantages of planning so as to be able to
recruit fewer but better placed agents. All-source research is
the starting point for this process, as, for example, in
developing an encyclopedic database and study of a hostile
nation's nuclear weapons program and personnel. The DO has found
DI officers to be irreplaceable in helping with such work.
/18/Obviously, there are some administrative functions that
cannot be carried out efficiently within an organization as small
as the clandestine service and for which economies and
efficiencies of scale can be found by keeping them part
of the CIA or in the Infrastructure Support Office (see
Intelligence Community Management staff study).
/19/In cases where the Director of the CS's professional
judgment may be an issue, the DCI should have the option of
himself choosing the membership of a Special PRB.
/20/In DoD, the investigations and deliberations of panels
are not transparent to the IG. Indeed, there is no regular
sharing of findings with the IG, except when the panel believes
it has uncovered possibly fraudulent or criminal activity.
/21/The IC21 Intelligence Centers staff study, proposes that
this Center remain within the CS performing the same functions it
does at present.
/22/It is unfortunate that the ADDO/MA position and office
were abolished in 1995 and the responsibilities divided between
several new positions as part of the DO restructuring.
Characteristically, this was done without consultation with the
military consumers who, so far as we have been able to learn, had
been extremely pleased with support from the ADDO/MA and his
office.