With the beginnings of the Cold War in 1946 and 1947 State and military planners sought ways to support resistance to communist advances in Western Europe and, as noted above, a program of psychological operations was launched. Given limited resources, the program was necessarily limited in scope. George Kennan, then the head of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff, argued for much more ambitious programs of "political warfare" that were beyond the capabilities of the CIA as then constituted. Kennan's goal was also to ensure close ties between the State Department and those responsible for covert actions. At his urging, at the time of the beginning of the Berlin blockade, the National Security Council established (by Directive 10/2 which superseded NSC-4-A) a new office located for administrative purposes in the CIA, but headed by an official nominated by the Secretary of State and supervised by the State and Defense Departments.21 The office, which came to be known as the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC), was charged with the planning and conduct of covert operations, specifically including:
propaganda; economic warfare; preventive direct action, including
sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition and evacuation measures; subversion
against hostile states, including assistance to underground resistance
movements, guerrillas and refugee liberation groups, and support of
indigenous anti-communist elements in threatened countries of the free
world.22
Under the energetic leadership of Frank Wisner, an OSS veteran who had subsequently worked in the State Department, OPC launched a wide variety of projects. Wisner was allowed considerable flexibility in developing covert action projects and the close relationship of OPC with the State Department that Kennan had envisioned did not emerge.23 Wisner's initiatives were reflected in growing budgets and personnel levels. In 1949, OPC had 302 people and a budget of some $4.7 million; by 1952 it employed 2,812 (in addition to 3,142 overseas contract personnel) with a budget of $82 million.24
With the establishment of OPC in the summer of 1948, the DCI had two clandestine services, OPC devoted to covert activities and CIA's Office of Special Operations (OSO) devoted to human intelligence collection. It was not an easy relationship; OPC operated largely independently of the rest of the CIA, had more funds at its disposal, and cultivated a "can-do" attitude. OSO was more methodical in its approach and more constrained in its budgets and operations. There was an inevitable potential for undesirable competition and overlap. A major assessment of intelligence activities undertaken for the NSC by Allen Dulles, William Jackson, and Matthias Correa, New York attorneys and OSS veterans, recommended the merger of the two entities under the DCI; the recommendation was accepted by the NSC in July 1949 in NSC-50, although full implementation would be delayed.25
As the recommendations contained within NSC-50 were being considered, the international atmosphere continued to deteriorate. By 1948, most of Eastern Europe had been absorbed within the Soviet sphere. In 1949, the communists were victorious in China, and the West learned that the Soviet Union had acquired its own atomic weapon. In June 1950, communist North Korea launched an attack designed to gain control of the whole peninsula. The Truman Administration quickly endorsed a comprehensive anti-communist policy (described in another NSC document, NSC-68). According to an official CIA history, with the outbreak of the Korean War, "OPC's budget expanded dramatically and its focus shifted from essentially defensive psychological operations to active economic, political, and even military actions."26
The new DCI, Lieutenant General Walter Bedell Smith, made OPC a regular office of the CIA upon taking up his duties in October 1950; in August 1952, OPC and OSO were finally formally consolidated. Smith did have considerable hesitation in taking this step out of concern that covert actions, including paramilitary operations in support of U.S. forces in Korea, were overwhelming its intelligence collection and analytical functions. Given the imperatives of a wartime situation, he nonetheless acceded to a recommendation of the NSC (NSC-10/5) that CIA continue its anti-communist covert action program.
In the Eisenhower Administration, Smith's successor, DCI Allen Dulles, gave even greater emphasis to covert actions. Having served as head of the OSS in Switzerland during World War II, Dulles took a personal interest in a wide variety of specific covert actions. He was heavily involved in efforts intended to prevent communist or leftist takeovers in Iran and Guatemala. Although there has been intense historical controversy regarding whether or not these covert actions ultimately served U.S. interests, at the time they were considered major successes by the CIA in implementing the policies the Eisenhower Administration. Allen Dulles, described as the "Great White Case Officer" because of his affinity for covert actions, was retained as DCI at the beginning of the Kennedy Administration. He would preside over one of the great failures of U.S. policy, the aborted invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs in 1961, and had to resign a few months after the debacle.27
Even in the late 1960s, the Operations Directorate played a dominant role in the CIA. Robert Gates, DCI under President Bush, recalled that when he was a junior analyst at that time, the CIA "was totally dominated by the clandestine service. Its division chiefs (Near East, Soviet Bloc, etc.) were powerful figures in their own right and not afraid to run their own shows independent of both the DCI and the head of the clandestine service. . . ." Of the members of the Operations Directorate, he wrote, "Their culture, their ethic were CIA's in 1969. They ran the Agency bureaucratically and dominated it psychologically. And few questioned the rightness of that."28 Between 1961 and 1976 CIA conducted some 900 major or sensitive covert action projects in addition to several thousand smaller ones.29
The Carter Administration took office in 1977 with an apparent lack of enthusiasm for covert actions, in part a reaction to the abuses that had been revealed by the Church and Pike Committees (Vice President Walter Mondale having been a member of the former). DCI Stansfield Turner instituted sizable personnel reductions in the Operations Directorate, believing that the possibility of major increases in covert actions should be closed off, as he "did not foresee that as being something that the country would need or want."30 Even though it was widely agreed that the number of agents needed to be reduced, the reduction in force came as a shock to officials who had assumed that they could rely on job security. Perceived by opponents as reflective of a vacillating national security policy, the initiative became a political issue as opponents of the Administration charged that Turner was denigrating the need for human intelligence and covert actions. Nevertheless, as noted below, a determination to promote anticommunist elements in Eastern Europe and to limit Soviet military initiatives in the Third World led (with the encouragement of the National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski) to an increasing number of covert actions during the Carter Administration.
The advent of the Reagan Administration in 1981 brought a strong and public emphasis on rebuilding a covert action capability. The new Administration was willing, even eager, to conduct covert actions in key areas where it perceived threats from the Soviet Union and its surrogates or opportunities to injure communist
regimes and movements. Under the leadership of DCI William Casey, the CIA's Operations Directorate once again increased in size and importance. Casey, who had served in the OSS during World War II, took a personal interest in expanding covert actions to support the Administration's determination to counter Soviet influence throughout the world, but especially in Afghanistan and Central America. Some of these efforts were widely known, even if not officially acknowledged.
Covert action efforts came under great criticism during congressional hearings concerning the Iran-Contra affair when many concluded that the Reagan Administration had undercut its publicly announced policy of isolating Iran. Reagan subordinates made covert arms transfers to Iranian "moderates" and, through the involvement of NSC staff personnel, concluded covert monetary transactions to the Nicaraguan Resistance that the CIA could not legally undertake. In the aftermath of the hearings, new policies were issued regarding the administration of clandestine activities. The policy specifically precluded NSC staff from participating in "the conduct of special activities." In addition, procedures were established to ensure that any covert action would support national foreign policy objectives abroad. Further, to "the extent possible, they should be conducted only when we are confident that, if they are revealed, the American public would find them sensible."31
With the end of the Cold War, during the Bush Administration, the Intelligence Community faced significant reductions in budgets and personnel even though DOD and other agencies have faced deeper cuts. The Directorate of Operations was not exempted, especially as many of the former targets of clandestine intelligence collection have disappeared. Reportedly, the number of deployed, officially covered case officers has been declining at an average rate of almost ten percent a year over the last several years, large numbers of stations and bases have been closed, and those that remain have been reduced in size. These reductions have encouraged a shift from "global presence"--a station in every country that could reasonably be of interest--to "global reach"--withdrawing from many countries but attempting to maintain some sort of access along with a capability to reconstitute and expand a presence if necessary. Although the immediate effect may be in the area of clandestine intelligence collection, covert action capabilities are often affected by these drawdowns.32
Covert actions have been utilized by both the Bush and Clinton Administrations. DCIs William Webster, Robert Gates, R. James Woolsey, and John Deutch have not shared Casey's emphasis on covert action capabilities. Revelations of the treachery of Operations Directorate official Aldrich Ames seriously compromised the reputation of the Operations Directorate where he was assigned throughout most of his CIA career. On the other hand, covert actions played a part in U.S. military operations in Panama and in Desert Storm and Desert Shield. The Clinton Administration's efforts at peacekeeping in Somalia, Haiti, and Bosnia have been assisted by covert efforts by CIA. Press accounts indicate that CIA provided support to Kurdish groups opposed to Saddam Hussein and to some dissident Iranian elements although these efforts have been effectively countered by the Iraqis. The effort to bring together intelligence analysts in CIA's Directorate of Intelligence and clandestine officials in the Operations Directorate has been accelerated with the hope of keeping the latter better aware of current analytical and policy needs.33
Covert actions are ordinarily planned in CIA's Operations Directorate, reviewed within the agency, and by the DCI. They are further reviewed at the NSC-level prior to approval. NSC committees charged with reviewing covert action proposals have operated under a variety of names, e.g., 40 Committee, Operations Advisory Group, National Security Planning Group, etc. The extent to which covert actions have been considered by the executive branch in the larger context of policy has varied. In some cases, planning has been restricted to a small group directed by the President or the national security adviser. In others, planning has been much more formal, involving extensive coordination among the major agencies involved in national security policy. The extent of coordination depends on a given President's managerial style and the perceived sensitivity of the covert action under consideration. Given statutory requirements for findings that must be provided to Congress, the process has become increasingly formal in recent years.34
Endnotes
20
Stephen F. Knott, Secret and Sanctioned: Covert Operations and the American Presidency (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996) gives an extensive description of pre-1947 covert actions (and associated funding mechanisms); for the OSS, see Thomas F. Troy, Donovan and the CIA: A History of the Establishment of the Central Intelligence Agency (Frederick, MD: University Publications of America, 1981).
21
Kennan's role is further described in Wilson D. Miscamble, C.S.C., George F. Kennan and the Making of American Foreign Policy, 1947-1950 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), pp. 106-111.
22
National Security Council Directive on Office of Special Projects, June 18, 1947, FRUS: Emergence of Intelligence Establishment, p. 714. The document provided a definition of covert operations as "all activities. . . which are conducted or sponsored by this Government against hostile foreign states or groups or in support of friendly foreign states or groups but which are so planned and executed that any US Government responsibility for them is not evident to unauthorized persons and that if uncovered the US Government can plausibly disclaim any responsibility for them." Ibid.
23
Wisner's role is described in Evan Thomas, The Very Best Men: Four Who Dared: the Early Years of the CIA (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995).
24
Church Committee Report, IV, p. 31.
25
The Dulles-Jackson-Correa Report is partially reprinted as Report From the Intelligence Survey Group to the National Security Council, January 1, 1949, FRUS: Emergence of Intelligence Establishment, pp. 903-911. The DCI described the NSC's action on the Report in his Memorandum for CIA Assistant Directors, "Approval by the NSC of Much of the Dulles Report," 12 July 1949; reprinted in Warner, pp. 315-318.
26
Warner, p. xxiii.
27
See Peter Grose, Gentleman Spy: the Life of Allen Dulles (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1994). Much of the preparatory work for the Cuban invasion was undertaken by Richard M. Bissell, the head of the Directorate of Operations; see ibid., pp. 494, 519-533. Bissell's own account has been published as Reflections of a Cold Warrior: From Yalta to the Bay of Pigs (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996).
28
Robert M. Gates, From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider's Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), pp. 32,33.
29
Church Committee Report, I, p. 445.
30
Stansfield Turner, Secrecy and Democracy: the CIA in Transition (New York: Harper & Row, 1986), p. 201; earlier, in the Nixon Administration, DCI James Schlesinger had also made sizable reductions in the staffing of the Operations Directorate.
31
National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) 286, October/November 1987?, sanitized version reprinted in Christopher Simpson, National Security Directives of the Reagan and Bush Administrations (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995), p. 826.
32
IC21, pp. 193, 202.
33
See Gregory F. Treverton, "Intelligence Since Cold War's End," in from the Cold: the Report of the Twentieth Century Fund Task Force on the Future of U.S. Intelligence (New York: Twentieth Century Fund, 1996), pp. 126-127.
34
See Church Committee Report, IV, pp. 50-51; Mark M. Lowenthal, U.S. Intelligence: Evolution and Anatomy, 2nd edition (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1992), pp. 112-114.
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