ETHICS AND INTELLIGENCE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01314R000100540003-3
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 19
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 31, 2004
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: April 1, 1978
• Content Type: BOOK

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FOREIGN AFFAIRS
April 1978
ARTICLE APPEARED
ON PAGE 624-642
E. Drexel Godfrey, Jr.
ETHICS AND INTELL,IGE TCE
he three-year public agony of the Central Intelligence
Agency may be coming to an end. Richard Helms has been
convicted, the President has issued a new set of regulations
restricting certain surveillance activities, and the torrent of public
exposes by "insiders" seems to be abating. What remains to be seen
is whether the trat}mas suffered since the sweeping congressional
investigations began in 1975 have made any significant impact on
the heart and guts of the Agency.
There are some suggestions, of course, that nothing much has
changed. When Mr. Helms returned from receiving a suspended
sentence, he was given a hero's welcome by an indulgent group of
ex-colleagues. Simultaneously the announced intention of Admiral
Stansfield Turner, the present Director, to reduce Agency opera-
tional personnel by several hundred was met by smear campaigns
so powerful that the President soon felt obliged.to publicly declare
his continuing support for the Admiral. These responses from
traditional intelligence officers may not be all that significant,
however. Angry reactions to reductions in force are not, after all,
new in Washington. Any pruning of career public servants can .
result in mid-level bureaucrats making high-level mischief.
The Helms case was quite another matter. Far from resolving
any of the deeper issues of recent Agency conduct, it did not even
address them. The case did, however, expose the persistent failure
of several administrations to establish appropriate congressional
arrangements for the exercise of intelligence operations. All post-
war Presidents have permitted Directors of Central Intelligence to
appear before congressional committees in the full knowledge that
they would be closely questioned about secret operations approved
and placed under tight security restrictions by the National Secu-
rity Council. A long tradition had been built up over the years with
the leaders of the Congress itself, that the facts concerning
political operations (or clandestine intelligence operations) should
be revealed only to selected members of Congress, and denied to
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ETHICS AND INTELLIGENCE
formal committees at least in open session.
From time to time efforts were made by individual Presidents,
or their staffs, to reach an accommodation with Congress that
would reduce the vulnerability of CIA officials, caught between
the professional obligation for secrecy and the legislative thirst for
candor. No true resolution of this dilemma was achieved until
President Ford declared for candor and so instructed Mr. Helms'
successor. By then, of course, Mr. Helms had presented the
testimony on operations in Chile, to a Senate committee, which a
federal judge subsequently found to be not only misleading but
false.
Not unnaturally many intelligence officials felt their ex-Director
had been victimized. In a narrow sense he had. Lacking a presi-
dential mandate to reveal the full nature of the U.S. involvement
in the Chilean elections, Mr. Helms opted to give testimony that
was less than truthful.
The irony of the case, however, is not that Mr. Helms was
forced to choose between two ethical imperatives, one honoring
his oath of secrecy, the other telling the truth. Far more significant
is the fact that because it focused on such a narrow issue-and one
where responsibility for the sorry turn of events could be laid as
much at the doors of a succession of Presidents and leaders of
Congress as to the Agency Director-the trial and judgment
ignored a whole range of ethical problems concerning intelligence
practices in a free society.
To some the here juxtaposition of ethics and intelligence may
appear to be a contradiction in terms. But at heart intelligence is
rooted in the severest of ethical principles: truth telling. After all,
the end purpose of the elaborate apparatus that the intelligence
community has become is to provide the policymaker with as close
to a truthful depiction of a given situation as is humanly possible.
Anything less is not intelligence. It may be useful opinion-in
some cases it may even be more accurate than prevailing intelli-
gence-but if it is, the opinion maker is lucky, or in the particular
instance possessed of more facts and sharper judgmental skills
than the professional intelligence officer. Even the CIA has long
recognized the centrality of truth telling. As a contributor to
Foreign Affairs observed several years ago, the motto of the CIA,
chosen by the doughty old Presbyterian, Allen Dulles, is "And the
Truth Shall Make You Free."'
' Chester L. Cooper. The CIA and Decision-'Making." Foreign A fairs, January 1972, p. 223.
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Even as the motto was being chosen in the mid-1950s, however,
the point was being lost and the purpose of the Agency corrupted.
Perhaps because of the personality of Mr. Dulles and his opera-
tional successes in Switzerland during World War II, emphasis on
activities having little or nothing to do with the pursuit of truth
grew to preoccupy the CIA. The Church Committee's excellent
report on intelligence activities makes it abundantly clear that
foreign operations won top priority under Mr. Dulles' leadership;
worse, foreign operations expanded from a tiny "psych warfare"
section of the clandestine collection division to absorb a major
share of the Agency's budget, its personnel, and skills. Operations
both foreign and domestic, with a host of concomitant and now
familiar malpractices, became the bread and butter of the Agency
during the 1950s and 1960s 2
To accept the approximation of truth as the purpose of intelli-
gence is one thing. To accept the methods by which truth can be
obtained poses ethical dilemmas. The truth, after all, is often a set
of facts, or concrete physical entities, or intentions, which the
party with whom they are entrusted will guard jealously as a
precious, not to say sacred, element of the national preserve.
Ferreting out the truth under these circumstances often requires
means and techniques not ordinarily employed in human inter-
course.
At this point the ethical absolutist is compelled to say: "Exactly,
an ethical society should renounce foreign intelligence altogether;
given the new Administration's emphasis on human rights, domes-
tic intelligence might best be scuttled, too." In this formulation the
argument that other nations will not cease intelligence gathering
activities simply because the United States renounces them, carries
little weight. Ethical conduct is a force of its own; powerful nations
lead by example; renunciation of intelligence gathering would be
an act of moral courage with untold beneficial international
consequences, etc.
But we are not all ethical absolutists. Value trade-offs are
probably the best that most people in an uncertain world will
accept. And it is because intelligence offers security that bizarre
methods to obtain it are acceptable to most. Foreign policy making
without an intelligence input of some kind would be capricious; in
the uncharted waters of world crisis situations it would be scandal-
ously foolhardy. It follows that the more ambiguous the interna-
tional situation, the greater the value of intelligence in the decision-
* Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with respect to Intelligence
Activities, U.S. Senate, 94th Conga, 2nd sess., April 14, 1976, seven volumes.
cOM
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ETHICS AND INTELLIGENCE
making process. Put another way, of course, this means that where
intelligence does not add to international security, but rather, say
to the obsessive comfort of knowing more about Ruritania than
even the Ruritanians, or where it merely facilitates the feeding of,
salacious tidbits about foreign leaders to inquisitive Presidents','
questionable methods to collect it are not acceptable.
The security returns of intelligence are probably inestimable,
and they are welcomed by both world superpowers and tacitly
condoned by almost all active participating nations on the world
stage. Satellites monitor the missile developments of the superpow-
ers; microwave telephone messages between foreign embassies and
capitals are intercepted for critical information. Without technol-
ogy of this kind in the hands of both the United States and the
Soviet Union, there would of course have been no SALT talks;
there would not now be any form of SALT agreement. Nikita
Khrushchev implied just this when he half seriously suggested to
President Eisenhower in 1958 that the two countries exchange
intelligence chiefs. Both leaders recognized that inspections in
each other's countries would probably be out of the question for
many years to come; each knew that in order to make any progress
on arms limitation he would have to rely on the safety of his own
intelligence monitoring system and avert his eyes to monitoring by
the other.
In a world where the two great powers can no longer guarantee
international stability and where weaponry is no longer the exclu-
sive currency of power, intelligence monitoring must sweep targets
other than the principal antagonist-e.g., China or the Middle
East. It must also be as concerned with economic and energy
considerations as missiles. But the principle governing the choice
of targets remains the same. Intelligence must promote interna-
tional security, or the ethical compromises necessary to accommo-
date the requisite collection methods cannot and should not be
stomached.
Intelligence monitoring substitutes for full faith and credit
between nations, and technology provides a pitiful but workable
substitute for the joyful conditions of a distant One World. The
tensions of the nation-state system are, in other words, held in
bounds not only by diplomacy and by mutual common sense but
by carefully calibrated monitoring systems.
Assuming, then, that intelligence can help toward security in a
dangerous international order, how can the intelligence function
be carried out at the least risk to other values in our society? To
put this most succinctly, how can a professional intelligence service
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operate so that officials within it perform their roles in an ethical
manner? Most public officials would prefer that this be the case;
certainly most private citizens expect nothing less.
The traditional easy answer, of course, is that in international
affairs a double standard operates. What is unacceptable human
behavior at home or in. one's own society can be forgiven in
dealings with foreign societies or with the representatives abroad
of those societies. War is the ultimate expression of this double
standard. But the assassination of foreign leaders in peacetime
stretches the standard furthest, beyond, as is now wholly agreed,
its breaking point. Under the shelter of the double standard, self-
justification usually takes the form of: "Someone's got to do the
dirty work"; or "Distasteful as the task was, it served the national
purpose." On examination both statements contain implicit asser-
tions by the makers of ethical standards. This, then, is the nub of
the matter.
Foreign intelligence is not, by and large, conducted by people
lacking the capacity to recognize ethical standards, but standards
are lowered to accommodate the perceived national purpose. Once
lowered, they can be more easily lowered a second time, or they
can be lowered further and further as routine reduces ethical
resistance to repugnant activities. This is the area of human
dynamics where yesterday's managers of the intelligence commu-
nity have been the most irresolute. Management rarely blew the
whistle on subordinates. When subordinates succeeded in opera-
tions of questionable morality, they were as often rewarded with
promotions as reprimanded for using dubious. methods.
A high management official of one intelligence agency-in this.
case the FBI -blurted out to the Church Committee an incredibly
candid confession of amorality. In response to questions as to
whether any supervisory official of the Bureau had voiced reser-
vations about the legitimacy of the infamous Operation Cointelpro
(active disruption of citizen groups) he answered:
We never gave any thought to this line of reasoning, because we were just
naturally pragmatists. The one thing we were concerned about was this: Will
this course of action work; will we reach the objective that we desire to reach? As
far as legality is concerned, morals or ethics, it was never raised by myself or
,/..anyone else. I think this suggests really that in government we are amoral .3 To disagree with this official's conclusion is easy; to refute the
implicit charge that government itself contributes to, if not insists
S Testimony of William Sullivan, Final Report, op. cit.. Book II, p. 141.
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ETHICS AND INTELLIGENCE
on amorality, is more difficult. Presumably, the official, like most
Americans, entered government service with some sense of ethics
and acceptable norms of moral behavior. He came to believe,
apparently, that the responsible intelligence officer should not
concern himself with such matters. They are, he said, irrelevant,to
the conduct of his government business.
Most professions, such as the law and medicine, have for
centuries provided themselves with fail-safe systems to ensure that
ethical norms are not compromised out of existence, or rusted
from misuse. Some of these systems work better than others, some
are susceptible to corruption themselves and a few are mere
shams, but the fact that they exist and generally are taken seriously
by the members of the, profession is critically significant. At the
very least, it means that there are limits to a professional's freedom
and that those limits are defined by ethical codes sanctioned by
colleagues.
A profession whose end purpose it is to root out the truth cannot
afford to resist asking where its limits should be set. However, the
intelligence professional has in the past operated under the simple
guideline, "don't get caught." Recently there have been signs that
suggest that the intelligence community is busily, if somewhat
ponderously, groping towards a limit-setting policy for its profes-
sionals.
The business of limit setting will not be easy, particularly for the
centerpiece of the community, the CIA, and specifically for its
large clandestine services element. It will not be easy because of the
grim ethos of clandestine collection and operations, developed
long before orbiting photographic satellites or sophisticated inter-
ception systems were ever conceived. That ethos is rooted- in a con-
cept as old as human society: the weak or the vulnerable can be
manipulated by the strong or the shrewd. Human intelligence
collection is a major preoccupation of the clandestine service.
Simply put,. this is the process of extracting from others informa-
tion or national assets they would not willingly part with under
normal circumstances.
In some cases the creation of appropriate circumstances is
relatively easy. This is where the source is a willing volunteer
acting out of his own sense of patriotism. Anti-Soviet emigre
Hungarians providing detailed information on Russian military
units occupying their country fill-into.-this category. The clandes-
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tine officer must provide the means whereby the emigre can
return to his country. By and large the clandestine officer can
content himself with the knowledge that the Hungarian is as
anxious to reenter his homeland illegally as he is anxious to have
him make the effort.
But the highest art in tradecraft is to develop a source that you
"own lock, stock and barrel." According to the clandestine ethos, a
"controlled" source provides the most reliable intelligence. "Con-
trolled" means, of course, bought or otherwise obligated. Tradi-
tionally it has been the aim of the professional in the clandestine
service to weave a psychological web around any potentially fruitful
contact and to tighten that web whenever possible. Opportunities
are limited, but for those in the clandestine service who successfully
develop controlled sources, rewards in status and peer respect are
high. The modus operandi required, however, is the very antithe-
sis of ethical interpersonal relationships.
Sometimes the information obtained by these methods can be
important. It is, "however, rarely of critical importance. At best it
may provide a measure of confirmation of some already suspected
development or fill in a missing piece of a complex mosaic of facts.
There have been occasions when controlled sources have been
successful in snatching internal documents off high-level desks in
their own governments, but even in these instances the "take" has
not been earthshaking. Perhaps the faintly disappointing record
of achievement. by clandestine operatives is explainable in bureau-
cratic terms. Well-placed officials with immediate access to critical
policymaking circles-and for the most part this means they are
part of the policymaking process--are generally well rewarded by
and well satisfied with their own governments. If they were not,
they would not hold powerful positions. The main targets for
clandestine collectors are usually second- and third-level officials
who may not be fully privy to policy developments.
Finally, there is the human consideration. Most controlled
sources are ambivalent about the roles they are obliged to play. On
the one hand, there may be gratification that their retainer fees
enable them to reduce some crushing personal debts, or to meet
other expenses incurred as a result of weaknesses or personal
misjudgments. On the other hand, they will almost certainly feel a
sense of guilt in betraying trusts they are expected not to betray;
they may also feel more than a little self-loathing that they have
.been too weak to resist being used by those who pay them or
blackmail them. How these feelings subconsciously affect what
they report and how they report is anybody's guess. It is at least
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ETHICS AND INTELLIGENCE
possible that the clandestine officer who "owns" a controlled source
may not have the extraordinary asset that his "tradecraft" teaches
him he should have.
Quality of information obtained aside, a fundamental ethical
issue concerning clandestine human collection remains. That issue
is the impact on the clandestine officer of his relationship with his
source. The former's bread and butter is the subversion of the
latter's integrity. The officer is painstakingly trained in techniques
that will convert an acquaintance into a submissive tool, to shred
away his resistance and deflate his sense of self-worth. Of course,
the source may be thoroughly cynical, even a venal merchant of
his country's privacy, and in that case the task of the clandestine
officer is less burdensome-although he may come to find the
relationship just as repellent as if the source had slowly and
resistingly been bent to compliance. Whatever the chemistry be-
tween the two individuals, collector and source, or perhaps more
pointedly, dominant and dominated, the biggest loser is the one
whose ethical scruples are most damaged in the process. Depend-
ing on the techniques he may have to use to bring the source
under control and maintain that relationship, the biggest loser
may be the clandestine officer.
Another prime concern of the clandestine services is the devel-
opment of methodologies and devices to thwart the defensive
measures of other intelligence agencies and other national political
systems. While much of this activity is purely technical electronic
engineering, a significant investment has also been made in such
exotica as "truth drugs," complex psychological warfare strategies,
bizarre bugging devices and the like. Some of these devices and
techniques have been used with profit and success by clandestine
officers operating overseas; others have proved impractical in the
field or have stalled on the drawing board as development costs
got out of hand. But the search for new ways to penetrate other
societies goes on. Today's drug experimenters (if there are indeed
any left) may become tomorrow's experts in long-range behavior
modification processes.
Whatever the state of these arcane arts, they have two things in
common. First, their purpose is almost always to facilitate the
manipulation of man by man. In this sense they are not dissimilar
in effect and impact to the process of controlled source develop-
ment. Secondly-, the practitioners of these arts and the "psych
warfare" experts are obliged by the very nature of their trade to
presume that they are operating in hostile environments. The end
point of their efforts, after all, is to bypass normal authority, or at
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the least, to use semi-legal means to overcome obstacles placed in
their path by the authorities of other nations. The professional
premise of the officers engaged in these practices, then, is the
constructive use of illegality. While revolutionaries around the
world have lived long and comfortably with this paradox, it is quite
another matter for sober and presumably accountable U.S. public
servants to be exposed to its temptations.
In this connection it is important to note that over the years
officers whose careers have primarily been spent in clandestine
activities have occupied the preeminent roles in the management
of the CIA. At least until recently, when heavy reductions in
clandestine staff were ordered by the current Director, Admiral
Stansfield Turner, roughly two-thirds of the highest executive
positions at any given time were filled by officers whose careers
blossomed in the clandestine services. Years of hardening in the
ugly business of source control and penetration of foreign capitals
have surely taken their toll. Little wonder that the CIA's top
leadership did not traditionally spend much time setting "limits"
on the Agency's activities. Little wonder that management devel-
oped a process of compartmentalizing what it recognized- to be
questionable activities. The most bizarre operations, such as Chaos
(to be discussed below) and human drug experimentation, have
been traditionally walled off even from other Agency colleagues
whose questions might have been embarrassing. Mr. Helms him-
self testified before the Church Committee that in many instances
the CIA's General Counsel was simply excluded from knowing of
the existence of particularly exotic activities and operations.4 The
inference is inescapable that he was shut off out of fear that he
would, as he had occasionally done in the past, advise that the
operations overstepped legal limits. Similarly, the Church Com-
mittee report makes clear that even the recommendations of the
Agency's elaborate Inspector General system could be, andsome-
times were, rejected by the Agency Director.5
Thus, a picture emerges of a highly compartmentalized bureau-
cracy whose direction has been largely controlled by officials with
long experience in the seduction of other human beings and
societies. Not immoral or even without ethical standards them-
selves, they had lost the habit of questioning where they should set
limits on their official conduct. And other officers who might have
been expected to remind them of these limits were kept in
ignorance. This state of affairs is particularly distressing when it
4 Final Report, op. cit., Book I,. p. 282.
S Ibid., p. 286.
,GONTINLMD
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involves an organization where high premiums are paid for
inventiveness, for "outsmarting the opposition."
In an organizational context where the edge of possibility is
bounded only by the stretch of the imagination, special arrange-
ments for limit setting are necessary. Each management level of
the clandestine services, from the most immediate and parochial
to the highest, should have an officer who plays the role of "nay-
sayer." His task would be to review operational plans for their
ethical consequences and occasionally to remind the imaginative
subordinate that daring and innovativeness must sometimes bow
to prudence. Every organization has informal "nay-sayers" seeded
through its ranks. In traditional bureaucracies they are almost
always negative influences, cruel stiflers of initiative and zeal. In
intelligence organizations, institutional "nay-sayers" could have
just the opposite effect: they could be critical to a rediscovery of
ethically acceptable limits of activity.
That element of the CIA whose job it is "to tell the truth," as
opposed to collecting the truth overseas, is the overt Intelligence
Directorate. It would appear at first glance to have the easier job.
But this is not necessarily so. For one thing, truth is rarely simple
fact; it is almost always a combination of fact and judgment and as
such almost always subject to second guessing. The intelligence
analyst has no monopoly on wisdom and prescience, but he does
have one advantage. He is not subject to the policy considerations
of the operating departments, such as State and Defense. He is, in
this respect, free to call the shots as he sees them, whether or not
they substantiate or confirm some fundamental premise of U.S.
policy. Ignoring the policy assumptions of the Administration in a
search for the most defensible judgment can be an unhappy affair,
as those analysts who toiled through the Vietnam years can testify.
While support from Agency superiors for the views of the analysts
was strong during the Johnson and Nixon Administrations, the
analytic product-that is, the truth as the analysts saw it-was not
always palatable to higher consumers. The "truth" more often
than not implicitly cast doubt on the outcome of the U.S. efforts in
Indochina. Reaction to such judgments at White House and
National Security Council levels was at worst unfriendly, and at
best indifferent.
Nevertheless, the obligation remains for the analytic component
of the CIA to produce what it believes to be the least assailable
version of a given situation and its consequences for the future
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course of events. In this lonely and sometimes scorned pursuit,
there are ethical pitfalls no less severe than those encountered by
the overseas clandestine collectors.
A case in point is the unusual episode surrounding the studies
of radical youth produced by the Agency at the demand of both
Presidents Johnson and Nixon in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
The original order for such a study coincided with one of the peak
points in protest against the Vietnam War, protests conducted in
Europe and the Far East as well as in the United States. When the
order was first relayed to the Agency by Walt Rostow, then
National Security Special Assistant to the President, it was accom-
panied by the hypothesis that the protest actions were so vociferous
and so universal that they must be orchestrated: by communists.
Dubious at best, this became the principal theme of the first study
and the several successive versions that were subsequently ordered.
The Agency undertook, in other words, to determine whether
communist instigation lay behind the worldwide protests.
The first edition of the study concluded that there had been no
discernible communist involvement in the student protests, with a
purely theoretical aside that, at least as far as U.S. student protests
were concerned, there were a variety of justifications for protest
that made communist intervention unnecessary. The study was ill
received by the White House. In effect, it was rejected out of hand
with the pointed question: "Are you sure of your conclusions?
Have you turned over every rock?" These injunctions were to be
repeated twice more as the Agency, confident of its original
judgments, tried to produce the evidence, or demonstrate the
absence of evidence, that would similarly persuade two reluctant
Presidents and a host of presidential advisors.
The costs to the CIA of "turning over every rock" were shatter-
ingly high. The dearest cost was the decision to expand greatly the
patently illegal "Operation Chaos," which had begun modestly
with the intention of collecting evidence for the analysts preparing
the first version of the student paper. To this end U.S. agents
under control of the Clandestine Services, counterintelligence
component were infiltrated into student groups within the United
States and abroad. Once again the operation was carefully com-
partmentalized so that few even of the most senior Agency officials
-were aware of its existence---including those responsible for the
production of the study. When the first study was rejected, Chaos
was built up into a sizable operation, with access to computer
technology and a network of overseas and domestic employees
keeping book on many thousands of U.S. and foreign students.
CO?trr'Ntre
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Not only was the Agency's legislative charter, which mandates only
overseas espionage, violated, but so too were privacy rights of
thousands of young Americans.
The second cost was a natural concomitant of the first. As more
and more "rocks got turned over," the pursuit of evidence became
an end in itself. A tendency developed among the collectors to
believe that if they hunted long enough and assiduously enough,
some communist involvement might be found, and if it were, the
President would be satisfied. In short, the collection effort lost
perspective. Had it found communist affiliations-say, in the
leadership of a particular student organization - it would not have
been of much significance given the overwhelming negative find-
ings elsewhere in the great majority of student movements. The
notion that an assertion can be converted to a truth if there is one
scrap of positive evidence to support it is dangerous nonsense-in
this case nonsense entertained by desperate Presidents and abetted
by officials who might better have said: "We have turned over
enough rocks, Mr. President." Thus, at the end of the unhappy
affair called Chaos, one side of the Agency was unwittingly
engaged in what was a corruption of the search for truth, to say
nothing of extensively illegal activities, while the other side of the
Agency was frenetically trying, under heavy Eire, to stick to its best
judgment.
In retrospect, it can be rationalized that all the actors in this
unhappy drama were victims of the curious political climate of
Washington as the Vietnam conflict ground to a conclusion. The
psychological ingredients were all there: bureaucratic weariness
with a clearly failing U.S. policy to which the Agency had already
committed much of its manpower energies for a decade was one.
Presidential frustration as various ways out of the dilemma were
closed off was another. When all is said and done, however, there
can only be one satisfactory explanation for the Agency's plunge
into massive illegal activities. Top management had the means, the
manpower and the mind-set to do the President's bidding and to
do it without arousing suspicion or inviting investigation. Only in
the waning days of Chaos (and the War) did complaints from
lower echelons of the Agency begin to be registered around
Washington. What top management lacked was the habit of limit
setting, the reflex that warns of dangerous consequences -not of
being found out, but of transgressing minimal ethical standards.
Presidents can perhaps be forgiven for obsessiveness, but for the
servants of Presidents, particularly those whose business is truth,
the first duty is to guard against those personal and institutional
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frailties that make a mockery of the search for truth.
Is it possible, then, to introduce, or better to revive, a sense of
ethics in the intelligence community? Certainly much can be
accomplished simply by strong leadership that sets an appropriate
tone. Presumably some efforts are being made in this direction
now. But rhetoric alone cannot do the job that is required. Some
specific prescriptions are offered in the following paragraphs.
The time would appear ripe, from the perspective both of his-
tory and the complexities of a world where energy resources, food,
supply and technological sophistication carry as much, if not more
weight than weapons superiority, for the intelligence community
to get out of political operations. The massive investment in these
activities in recent years has paid off only rarely in terms of
advancing U.S. interests. At times, as in the Congo, they have
done more to confuse and unsettle an already fluid situation than
to stabilize it. Some operations have probably cost the United
States goodwill for-years to come. Cost-benefit factors apart,
political operations are often, although not always, illegal activities
in which the greatest skill is to thwart the established authorities of
foreign countries. To live clandestinely, to manipulate others, to
distress the political ecology of another society-these are all
activities that induce an amoral view of life. While they may or
may not produce critical effects in the countries where they are
undertaken, they almost certainly will affect those who engage in
them. They are, finally, activities that have little or nothing to do
with intelligence.
It can be argued that there are occasions, or there may be
occasions, when political action of a clandestine nature may be the
only feasible way to produce a desirable circumstance beneficial
not only to the instigating country, but to a larger portion of the
world's peoples. One can imagine, for example, such operations,,
mounted in South Africa, that might have positive consequences
throughout the southern part of the continent. U.S. policy inter-
ests could be served at. the same time as the interests of South
Africa's neighbors. Indeed, there have been occasions when mas-
sive infusions of U.S. funds and skills have turned the tide in
tightly balanced and critical political contests. Support for the non-
communist parties in Italy and France in 1948 comes to mind as
does the far less obtrusive (and, one gathers, predominantly
European) support in 1975 for democratic elements threatened by
hard-line (and Soviet-supported) Communists in Portugal.
I,CQLTINUE1
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ETHICS AND INTELLIGENCE
The opportunity for U.S. intervention in political events of high
international significance would not be lost by the abolition of a
political operations capability. Private citizens recruited for the
occasion have carried out such tasks for Presidents before and
could again. On the other hand, there could be two salutory
consequences for the United States in abandoning political opera-
tions as an ongoing activity of the CIA. First, Presidents would
have to shoulder the burden themselves and create ad hoc arrange-
ments for each instance. This would almost certainly sharpen their
discrimination and force them to concentrate on interventions with
the highest chance of success and the least chance of exposure.
Second, the elaborate network of clandestine operators currently
in place could be drastically reduced. No longer would it be
necessary to nurture and maintain agents around the world on a
contingency basis. The temptation to indulge in operational mis-
chief of low or ambiguous priority for the sake of keeping agents
alert would be foreclosed.
Many of the arguments used to, question the efficacy and
suitability of political operations can be applied to the process of
human clandestine intelligence collection. The product is not all
that impressive; the moral damage to the collectors is high;
intelligence tends to be collected as an end in itself; and there is
always the risk of exposure. Nevertheless, intelligence must be
collected in selected areas and against specific subject targets.
Technology is now the workhorse of the collection business and it
should remain so. The present Director has in effect recognized
this evolution in collection methods; he has justified his reduction
of covert officers on this ground. Photographic and audio satellites
and other interception devices are immensely expensive, but they
have the advantage of doing only minimal damage to the ethical
standards of the operators and processors. As noted above, tech-
nological intelligence collection is in at least one highly significant
area -that of arms limitation control -tacitly accepted as essential
to security by both superpowers.6
Of course, even with the phasing down of clandestine human
collection, the need will remain for residual capability in certain
esoteric collection techniques. Atmospheric conditions in some
geographic locations may be so unfavorable that short-range
4 Harry Rositzke in "America's Secret Operations: A Perspective." Foreign Affairs, January 1975,
pp. 334-51. has presented a sophisticated view of the remaining need for clandestine human
intelligence and counterintelligence collection. And Herbert Scoville, Jr., writing from a consumer's
viewpoint (as I do) has laid l think the right stress on the predominant need for technological
methods today. "is Espionage Necessary for our Security?," Foreign Affairs, April 1978, pp. 482-
95.
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collection devices will be needed to supplement "stand-off" equip-
ment, such as satellites. There will always be the need for person-
nel skilled in the techniques of situating these devices. Similarly,
there must be those who can exploit the defector or the "walk-in"
source.
Counterintelligence is another field of clandestine intelligence
activity which probably cannot be dispensed with for some years to
come. But if counterintelligence is to survive, it should be orga-
nized on a purely defensive basis as a protection against foreign
penetration of the U.S. intelligence services and their technical
capabilities. It should be a small, lean component with a sophisti-
cated understanding not only of the technological capabilities of
major foreign intelligence services, but also of those countries'
political dynamics. Far from being walled off from other Agency
components as in the past, it should be a vital part of Agency life,
as much to gain from exposure to varying points of view as to
influence those points of view.
A vigorous reexamination of the entire collection function, both
in terms of techniques and targets, would be salutary at this point
in the intelligence community. Collection that goes beyond what
the satellite and the intercept station provide cannot be forsaken
altogether. Indeed, it should be improved with renewed emphasis
on (a) analytic collection and (b) the old-world expertise of the
open dialogue replacing the controlled source. Collectors with the
training to mine and exploit technical materials in archives and
specialized libraries or statistical centers could be the intelligence
pick-and-shovel men of the future.
For those tightly closed societies where access to such material is
almost completely denied to the United States, a different meth-
odology will be necessary. Third-country officials with some access
privileges in the host country must be assiduously cultivated, but
(breaking with past practice) in an open and reciprocal manner.
Collectors with substantive knowledge of their data targets should
be authorized to disseminate "trading materials" to their foreign
counterparts in exchange for hard-to-get data and technical mate-
rial. This will be a delicate business. Maladroit handling of such
negotiations could result in even tighter controls over information
by the host country. Needless to say, negotiations could not be
conducted in the target country without risking the expulsion of
third-country nationals. New expertise in content evaluation both
of the materials desired by the United States and the data to be
used as trading currency will have to be developed.
At the higher levels of intelligence collection-that is, gaining
Al 5
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ETHICS AND INTELLIGENCE _ -
insight into the sensitive complex of issues concerning political,
economic and military developments in a target country-empha-
sis should be on the old-fashioned method of diplomatic dialogue.
Reports that contribute to an understanding of social or economic
trends or that sort out shifting national priorities are almost always
more significant and useful than the one-shot item that reveals a
specific decision or records some finite act. "Think pieces" have
traditionally been the preserve of the ambassador or senior For-
eign Service official. Their quality has, however, been uneven;
they suffer from irregularity. Part of the problem is that few For-
eign Service officers stay long enough on a single posting to be-
come in-depth analytical experts. Only a few of the largest em-
bassies have enjoyed the luxury of having one such person on their
staffs for a number of years. What is being proposed here is that
CIA officers fill the roles of permanent in-country experts. These
would be senior officials, chosen for their substantive familiarity
with the political and economic cultures of the countries to which
they are posted. They would be expected to cultivate openly the
widest circle of acquaintances and to report selectively both to
headquarters and the ambassador. Clandestinity would give way to
substantive expertise.
The finely trained and highly skilled clandestine collection
officer with years of service in the field is likely to scoff at these
suggestions. It has always been the contention of the clandestine
collector that overt techniques could indeed uncover immense
amounts of data about the capabilities of a foreign nation target,
but that the intentions and plans of the same country could only be
unlocked by controlled penetrations. There is, of course, some
truth to this proposition. Final and critical decisions-e.g., to go to
war with a neighbor, to begin the development of nuclear wea-
ponry-are so tightly held and originate from such complex
motivations that they do not suddenly spring off printed pages
being turned by a lonely researcher. On the other hand, neither
have such decisions been revealed with any great degree of success
by penetration agents in the past.
Once the CIA has begun to turn itself around by the actions
suggested above, it will have taken the most painful steps. But
backsliding into old habits and behavior patterns will surely occur
unless other, less dramatic moves are made. The influence of the
clandestine service in the Agency remains strong and, given the
sheer weight of numbers, it will have a significant voice in internal
Agency affairs for years to come.
Something of the flavor of how that voice might express itself
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can be inferred from the hero's welcome given to Richard Helms
when he appeared at a reception of recently retired covert. officers
fresh from his conviction in federal court. The old methods of
compartmentalization and tightly controlled operations have be-
come a way of life not easily shaken in the insular bureaucracy of
an intelligence service. Radical rearrangements of traditional pro-
cedures must be considered.
At the least the Inspector General's function should be
strengthened, as the Church Committee has recommended. Spe-
cifically, this officer's role should be expanded beyond its tradi-
tional one of internal control and response to employee com-
plaints. One ex-Agency official who is a careful student of its
recent history has suggested the creation of an ombudsman
accessible to employees who felt they were being used in improper
activities.' This would be a helpful addition to the Inspector
General's staff, freeing him for the vital task of constructively
intervening in questionable plans and programs throughout the
Agency.
Similarly, the' Legal Counsel must be given more steel to put
under his velvet glove, particularly when his rulings are ignored or
overturned by the Director. Traditionally matters of legal propri-,
ety have. been referred to the Legal Counsel by other senior
officers when and if they chose to do so; in effect his role has been
passive. It should be a relatively simple internal matter to reverse
this pattern. President Ford followed up one Church Committee
recommendation by giving the Legal Counsel access to the Execu-
tive Oversight Board in the event that one of his rulings was
ignored by the Director. This is a significant step in strengthening
the legal review function in the Agency.
VI
A more sweeping structural change for the Agency has been
suggested from time to time. This would entail a complete divorce
of overt and covert intelligence activities. Overt functions (analysis,
reporting, estimates, etc.) would be aggregated under one organi-
zational roof and covert functions. (collection, operations, counter-
intelligence, technical development of human control devices, etc.)
under another. The objective behind such proposals has. usually
been to remove from the intelligence end product the taint of the
methods used. to obtain the raw data, in other words to strengthen
the dignity and credibility of the Agency's truth-telling function.
r See Harry Rositzke, CIA's Secret Operations, New York: Reader's Digest Press, 1977, Chapter
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There are merits to these suggestions, but perhaps the optimum
time for divorce has passed. Indeed, if political operations were
now eliminated and clandestine collection minimized, the tempta-
tion to breach ethical standards by the clandestine services would
be reduced significantly. Moreover, cutting the clandestine serv-
ices adrift would result in the concentration in one organization
of most of those officers-now at high positions-who have been
exposed to the highest ethical risks. Backsliding would be a great
temptation, managerial control an administrator's nightmare.
But the measures discussed above will amount to little more than
tinkering if not buttressed by a radical new personnel policy that
places a premium on ethical values. Beyond native intelligence,
recruitment criteria have in the past emphasized such psychologi-
cal factors as stability, intellectual curiosity and phlegm. Once
selected on the basis of favorable readings on these counts, the
candidate had, of course, to survive the polygraph test-a final
screening against the possibility of penetration by a foreign agent
or a duplicitous adventurer. To this battery a test of ethical values
should be added. I
Law enforcement agencies in a few communities have provided
something of a model in an area almost as contentious. A handful
of larger police departments have been including in their selection
procedures a "violence test" for rookie candidates.8 The tests are
basically psychological, designed to determine which applicants, in
the normal course of their duties, would resort too readily to
heavy-handed or bullying tactics. The results are not yet wholly
clear-in part, one suspects, because there is little or no reinforce-
ment of the desired value level as the new patrolmen become
acculturated by their older colleagues, who possessed badges years
before consideration of behavior patterns became a professional
concern.
An ethics test could be constructed from an array of situational
choice problems inserted into the Agency's selection instruments.
Such problems would present difficult ethical decision choices for
the test-taker in a variety of interpersonal and organizational
settings. To prevent the job applicant from tilting his answers
toward problem solutions he presumes the testers are seeking, the
questions would have to be scattered throughout the various
portions of the questionnaires used-psychological, intelligence,
6 The -hiachover DAP" test is one frequently used to detect overly aggressive personalities.
Sophisticated screening instruments are described in the publication Police Selection and Career
Assessment, issued by the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, National Institute of Law
Enforcement and Criminal Justice, U.S. Dept of Justice, 1976.
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etc. All ethics questions could.then be selected out of the various
test parts and reviewed separately. One hopes that a rough profile
of the applicant's personal ethical standards could be obtained by
this device, but at best it would probably do no more than single
out applicants with unacceptably low or hopelessly confused ethical
standards. Follow-up tests for those who enter the Agency and
have served for several years would be considerably more difficult
to design, but they are not beyond the skills of Agency psycholo-
gists.
Surely this is slippery ground. One man's ethical floor may be
another's ethical ceiling. Who is to define what the acceptable level
of ethical beliefs should be? How would Agency management keep
its ethical sights straight in a period of rapidly changing moral
values? The issues raised are immensely difficult, but dismissing
the concept will not solve the problem of the current low estate of
the Agency in the public mind. Tackling the problem head on
Would, if nothing else, constitute a clear signal of top Agency
management's concern to current employees, prospective recruits
and the general public.
V11
Finally, the real purpose of intelligence-truth telling-must be
placed at the center of Agency concerns. This is a harsh prescrip-
tion; it is certainly the most difficult objective of the lot. But it
must be the principal purpose of Agency leadership to establish
beyond question the capacity of its experts and its facilities to seek
out and find the truth, or the nearest approximation of the truth
possible. Public cynicism will have to be dispelled before this is
possible; it will take time. There are no easy paths to this objective.
Indeed, the present mood of the public toward the Agency
militates against its succeeding. The best graduate students do not
gravitate to the Agency; its name is suspect in much of academia;
business and professional groups are fearful of association.
Where such circumstances exist they must be met with new and
probably at first none too credible approaches. Insistence on being
primarily in the business of truth telling will not automatically
convince the skeptic that it is so. But CIA leadership that condones
no other competing role and that demands that ethical questions
be asked before internal Agency policies are decided upon will
have made a beginning in the long journey back to public account-
ability. None of these steps, of course, would avert the damage
that an unscrupulous President, intent on misusing intelligence
talents, could produce. Only loud, angry public resignations by
intelligence leaders could in such a case underscore a professional's
ethical commitment to truth.
E:Drexel Godfrey, Jr. is Director of the Masters of Public Administration
Program, Rutgers University/ Newark. He served in the Intelligence Directorate
of the Central Intelligence Agency from 1957 to 1970 and was for some years
Director of Current Intelligence. Prior to 1957 he was Professor of Political Sci-
ence at Williams, and is the author of The Politics of the Non-Communist Left in Post
War France and of The Government of France (First and Second Editions).
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