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Intelligent reform of US
intelligence
By Alexander Casella
After having scored both a mid-term election
victory at home and a UN Security Council resolution to
his liking on Iraq, President George W Bush commented
that he still had on his agenda one item of unfinished
business that he planned to complete before the end of
the year: obtaining congressional approval for the
creation of a Department of Homeland Security.
Then, on November 19, Bush's wish came true. By
an overwhelming majority of 90 to nine, the US Senate
voted to set up a Department of Homeland Security geared
specifically to fight terrorism. But, while the vote was
undoubtedly a political victory for the Bush
administration, it came nowhere close to "finished"
business. Indeed, not only will it take years for the
department to become operational, the vote underscored
the fact that, ultimately, improved internal security
will only come about once the American political
establishment comes to terms with the fact that
"homeland security" is more a state of mind than a
bureaucratic mechanism.
Ever since September 11,
the concept of homeland security has become an American
obsession. Overnight, a nation that for the past 150
years had never been exposed either to a war fought on
its soil or to violent spasms of social disruption had
to come to terms with the fact that violence was no
longer a product made only for export, to be consumed
abroad.
Throughout history, homeland security,
and its byproduct, internal intelligence, was one of the
pillars on which the ruling establishment of every great
civilization counted to preserve its hold on power. From
Rome to ancient China to Napoleon to Europe's
industrialized democracies, internal intelligence was
part of the apparatus of the nation state. Initially
conceived as an instrument either of internal repression
or as a safeguard against coups, or both, intelligence
was initially by nature a domestic concern. Thus, while
spying on the foreign enemy was a case-by-case activity,
geared to specific conflicts, spying on the enemy at
home was a full-time activity. By the early 20th
century, most industrialized countries had developed
somewhat similar security structures that clearly
differentiated between foreign intelligence-gathering
and homeland security.
Britain, in 1909, created
MI5, which was responsible for internal intelligence and
reported to the Home Office. Power of arrest rested with
the national police, better known as Scotland Yard,
while external intelligence was the domain of MI6, which
reported to the Foreign Office.
France had a
somewhat similar security structure. Its internal
intelligence agency, the DST (Directorate for the
Security of the Territory) reported to the Ministry of
the Interior, while its external intelligence service,
the DGSE, reported to the Ministry of Defense. The
"Renseignements Generaux", the general intelligence,
coordinated both agencies. In addition, the country had
a national police force that reported to the Minister of
the Interior, as well as a parallel militarized police.
This was the "Gendarmerie Nationale", which included
anti-terrorist forces as well as armored and
helicopter-borne units and was part of the Ministry of
Defense. The ultimate purpose of this structure was not
only to provide the country with a specialized internal
security force but also to ensure that the Ministry of
the Interior, through its control of the police and of
internal intelligence, would not acquire too much power,
and if need be, could be counterbalanced by the Ministry
of Defense.
The separation of internal
intelligence, external intelligence and police functions
was a pattern exclusive to industrialized democracies.
The Soviet Union, through the KGB, had amalgamated in
one agency the power of arrest as well as both internal
and external intelligence. Only the army retained a
separate intelligence apparatus, the GRU, but this was
purely of a technical nature. Likewise, Nazi Germany
merged into a single department - the Central Office for
State Security - the police, internal and external
intelligence and, as of 1944, even military
intelligence.
For obvious reasons, both
historical and geographical, the United States addressed
the concept of "state security" to suit its own specific
needs. With no enemies on its borders, and an internal
political system that did not lend itself either to
coups or to indigenous subversion, the US never
established, throughout its short history, a specific
internal intelligence apparatus. Indeed, intelligence as
such was perceived essentially as a foreign
battlefield-oriented task that was best left to the
armed forces. Likewise, the concept of state sovereignty
and the lack of a strong central authority precluded the
development of a centralized police force. It was
therefore only in 1908 that President Theodore Roosevelt
ordered an immigrated descendant of Emperor Napoleon,
Charles-Joseph Bonaparte, to create, within the
Department of Justice, a "Bureau of Investigation"
staffed with 34 agents. In 1934 that bureau was renamed
the Federal Bureau of Investigation, or the FBI.
Under the direction of its legendary head, J
Edgar Hoover, the FBI enforced prohibition, fought the
mob and, during World War ll and the subsequent Cold
War, expanded its role to include counter-intelligence
and the tracking down of Nazi and Soviet agents within
the US. While Hoover over the years became obsessed with
tracking down "subversion", including homosexuals, civil
rights leaders and "liberals" of all kin, the FBI
retained the corporate culture of a crime fighting
organization, so much so that in 1970 he prohibited all
FBI agents from having any contact with the CIA without
his specific authorization.
With the onset of
World War ll, President Franklin D Roosevelt realized
that the nation could no longer rely on the armed forces
as the sole source of foreign intelligence and thus
needed an independent full-fledged external intelligence
agency with an operational capacity. Thus, on June 13,
1942, he created the Office of Strategic Services (OSS),
America's first intelligence agency. Under its first
director, "Wild Bill" Donovan, the OSS recruited most of
its agents among the Ivy League Eastern establishment
and was soon referred to as "Oh So Social". While social
they indeed were, the OSS proved to be a swashbuckling
and courageous lot, parachuting behind German lines in
France and altogether making a good show of itself. Off
the battlefield, its representative in neutral
Switzerland, Allen Dulles, secretly negotiated the
surrender of the German armies in Italy, thus saving
thousands of Allied lives.
In Asia the OSS did
less well, though not for want of trying. Here the main
obstacle was not the Japanese but the US Navy. Not only
did naval intelligence refuse to share with the OSS its
intercepts of Japanese communications, it ultimately it
succeeded in excluding the OSS from the Pacific theater.
The only exception was Vietnam, where in 1944 an OSS
team led by Major Archimedes Patti parachuted into the
North, linked up with Ho Chi Minh and undertook to train
his forces to fight the Japanese. While Patti's glowing
reports on the Viet Minh to Washington were never
followed up on the policy level, and the US finally
decided to throw its lot with the French, the OSS
mission made a profound impression on Ho Chi Minh and
can probably rate as one of the great missed
opportunities in history.
Whatever its
successes, the OSS was never a full-fledged intelligence
service, and with the onset of the Cold War, the need
for such an institution became imperative. Thus, in
1947, President Harry S Truman created the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA), tasked with both the
collection of intelligence abroad and the conduct of
clandestine operations, if required. The emphasis on
"foreign" intelligence was stretched to the limit, with
the CIA prohibited from collecting information both on
resident aliens and legal immigrants.
While both
the FBI and the CIA had their share of failures and
successes during the Cold War, they operated in an
environment in which the enemy was identified, cautious
and predictable. Ultimately, it was a white man's joust
in which each contestant knew the limits that were not
to be overstepped. And as the years went by, the tools
of spycraft became increasingly technical. Aerial or
satellite reconnaissance, communications intercepts,
global positioning systems and cruise missiles
increasingly replaced the scholar-spy or the stealthy
assassin. The US by far led this revolution in spycraft.
Increasingly human intelligence (or, in the jargon,
humint) took a backseat to techno spying. By the
time the Soviet Union imploded, a development that no
one in Washington had foreseen, the US had the most
comprehensive intelligence-gathering network on the
planet.
On the eve of September 11, the US had
13 intelligence agencies and 104 government departments
with an intelligence responsibility. The resources to
support this system were massive. With 9,800 agents at
its headquarters and 18,000 in the field, including 40
foreign posts and 456 satellite offices in the US, the
FBI presence was pervasive. While figures for CIA
personnel are unconfirmed, the agency in 1997 had a
budget of US$26.6 billion. The National Security Agency,
responsible for communications intercepts, has a staff
of 25,000 and a yearly budget of $5 billion. In addition
to the Big Five (CIA, FBI, NSA, INR - State Department
Intelligence and Research - and DIA - Defense
Intelligence Agency), there was a plethora of security
services spread throughout government.
Thus the
Secret Service, responsible for the security of the
president, was part of the Department of the Treasury,
while the Coast Guard came under the Department of
Transportation. Not only did these various agencies not
share data but also they used incompatible or outdated
computer systems. Thus it was only in 1999 that the FBI
set up an automated fingerprint system.
Visas,
for one, were granted by consular officers from the
State Department and accepted at entry points by the
INS. However, there was no crosschecking with the FBI or
the CIA. The failure of the system was highlighted by a
minor incident that occurred on March 11, 2002. That day
the Huffman Aviation School in Florida received a letter
from the INS informing that a certain Mohamed Atta had
been approved for a student visa to study flying. There
was only one problem. Six months earlier, Atta had been
at the controls of one of the aircraft that was flown
into the World Trade Center. His visa request, however,
had continued to make its way through the labyrinth of
the computer system of the INS, unchecked by anyone.
While this incident was essentially a technical
glitch, it reflected a number of long-term trends that
in the eyes of professional observers have conspired to
lead to the intelligence breakdown that resulted in
September 11. It is clear today that even with the
wisdom of hindsight, no single measure could have
prevented the attack - if only for the fact that there
was no precedent for suicide hijackings. Where the
breakdown occurred was in the mindset of the American
political and military establishment. September 11 was
not an isolated event, but the last of a long sequence
which started with the US and Saudi support of the
anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan and never considered
the possible long-term implications that might result
from the fueling of the most extreme form of Islamic
fundamentalism.
The breakdown might in part have
been prevented had it not been for a fossilization of
the whole US intelligence apparatus. Here technological
breakthroughs, especially in satellite imagery and
intercepts, actually worked against the system. At the
turn of the last century, the British had an institution
called "the consular service of the Levant". Its
diplomats, throughout their whole career, rotated
exclusively between London and the countries of the
Middle East. Proficient in the local languages and
dialect, having established personal contacts over
decades, they became the ultimate area specialists, the
prototype of the scholar-diplomat who combined
experience with a sensitivity for their area which
reached far beyond factual analyses.
As such,
they represented the exact opposite of the US foreign
service/intelligence officer. Washington was always most
wary of "area specialists" who were accused of being too
close to their subjects. The last of their breed were
the China specialists who in 1946 predicted the victory
of Mao Zedong, much to Washington's chagrin, and were
hounded out of office when their unwelcome predictions
came true. The same fate befell the handful of CIA
officers who early on concluded that the Vietnam War, in
the current context, was unwinnable.
As, over
the years, the technical intelligence of the US
establishment expanded dramatically, the analytical
capacity of the system, not to say the footwork and that
special intuition that distinguishes the art of
intelligence from craft of spying shrank accordingly.
The end result, in the aftermath of September 11, was
that the FBI had to advertise for Arab language
interpreters; at the time, it had but two. And the CIA
conceded that not a single agent had infiltrated the
Taliban: too dangerous, too uncomfortable, too
long-term.
As the pieces of the pre-September 11
jigsaw puzzle fall into place, it is clear that there
was mounting evidence that something was being planned
against the US by Islamic fundamentalist groups. On the
minus side, the evidence was scattered, piecemeal, often
uncorroborated and, last but not least, there was no one
to read it. But even if there had been, the only measure
that could in theory have been taken was a complete
overhaul of airport security and the armoring of
aircraft cockpit doors. Given their cost and the
disruption that would ensue, none of these measure would
have been accepted by either the US population or
Congress based solely on often-speculative intelligence
reports. Planning for the unforeseen is not what
democratic government is all about. Thus one cannot
escape the conclusion, that for the US to tighten it
overall internal security, September 11 had to happen.
Whether the nascent Department of Homeland
Security will achieve its aim is still a major question
mark. Administratively, it was set up to bring within
one department the functions of border security,
immigration, emergency preparedness, science and
technology, information analysis, Secret Service and
Coast Guard. Each of these, however, will continue to
operate as autonomous agencies. Overall, the department
will indeed be in a position to "analyze information" on
domestic security provided by the FBI, CIA and NSA. In
addition, it will be able to gather its own information
through such services as the Coast Guard and the Secret
Service. This should bring it into collision with the
FBI as a rival domestic intelligence-gathering agency.
Several observers feel that ultimately what is
needed, and what the Bush administration has shied away
from, is a top-to-bottom restructuring and rethinking of
the whole US intelligence apparatus. This would entail
following in the footsteps of other industrialized
democracies and creating a domestic security agency
separate from the FBI, which would become an exclusive
law-enforcement office. The military would retain
control of technical intelligence, which would then be
centralized in a Central Analysis Agency that would
replace the CIA, from which the "Clandestine Service"
would be detached to form an independent entity.
The Cold War saw a standoff between figuratively
two elephants. The issues were predictable; the rules of
the game known and abided by; and both elephants knew
where not to overstep. Today, while the elephant that is
now supreme has no more enemies of his size, he is
confronted with having to swat a swarm of mosquitoes.
The mosquitoes will never kill him, or even seriously
hurt him - but they can make life miserable for him.
Alternatively, the chance that he will be able to swat
all the mosquitoes, even at a considerable cost, is to
say the least doubtful.
(©2003 Asia Times Online
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