SECRECY AND DEMOCRACY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000706820001-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 15, 2011
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: December 21, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/15: CIA-RDP90-00965R000706820001-1
SECRECY AND DEMOCRACY
Covert Action:
The Limits of Intervention in the Postwar World
by Gregory Treverton
i Basic Books, 293 pp., 519.95)
One of the more remarkable revelations
of last summer's Iran-contra hearings was
just how wrong the conventional wis-
dom was on the "problem" of covert ac-
tions in a democratic society. Far from
proving that rogue operations by Ameri-
can intelligence agencies were still out of
control, and therefore in need of greater
congressional and press oversight, the
sessions showed just the opposite. It
turned out that John McMahon, the
CIA's deputy director for operations,
and much of the rest of the professional
CIA bureaucracy either did not know of,
or were opposed to, the plans that took
shape in the National Security Council.
The problem, of course, was not an in-
stitutional bias on their part toward se-
crecy and covert action. It was the CIA's
unwillingness to cooperate that led its
own director to work around his bureau-
cracy and assist a group of political ap-
pointees in the White House in running
the operation themselves. As far as insti-
tutional arrangements for controlling the
CIA's covert operations are concerned,
our system (as it was modified in the late
1970s) worked perfectly well-recogniz-
ing, of course, that the system was never
meant to correct the bad judgment of
high officials in the White House.
I think, after reading Coc~ert .-lcrion, that
Gregory Treverton believes this, but he
does not altogether resist the temptation
to interpret the Iran-can:-.a affair as an
extension of the old CIA bogey. Draw-
ing heavily on the author's experiences
on the staff of the Senate Select Com-
mittee on Intelligence in the mid-1970s,
the issues and analysis in this book have
a slightly dated quality to them, concen-
trating on well-known covert actions of
the past, including Guatemala and Iran
in the early 1950s, the Bay of Pigs,
Chile in the early '70s, and support
for the non-Marxist factions in the An-
golan civil war. While the book discusses
the Reagan administration and the Iran-
:ontra affair, it was obviously begun be-
fore the imbroglio was revealed and
completed before the author had time to
incorporate the information provided by
last summer's hearings. His analysis of
the CIA and its limitations as an institu-
tion thus apply primarily to a period of
history that has been over tor some
time now.
Coaerr Act,on's historical account pro-
vides a useful and readable primer on
the uses and abuses of covert interven-
tion. The book argues that the CIA was a
victim of its own early successes. Owing
~o its origins in the wartime OSS, the
CIA always gave pride of place to covert
operations over the more mundane func-
tion of intelligence analysis. By 1952 the
Directorate of Plans (forerunner of the
current Operations Directorate) con-
sumed 74 percent of the CIA budget and
three-fifths of its personnel, nearly 6,000
people in 47 overseas stations-though
much of this effort was directed at espi-
onage rather than covert action. The ear-
ly 1950s saw two stunning successes, at
least in terms of the CIA's own objec-
tives, in Iran and Guatemala. Both had
common features: they were relatively
cheap and small scale, relying more on
psychology and wits than on brawn, and
they were kept low-key and relatively
secret (even though news of the Guate-
mala plans leaked out ahead of time).
B UT THE circumstances that led to
these successes were not repeatable,
according to Treverton. Most important
was the changing nature of the Third
World itself. The days when the United
States could get its way through simple
intimidation are now clearly over. In the
Iran of 1953, Ambassador Loy Hender-
son turned the tide against Mossadeq by
simply threatening to withdraw all
Americans living there; in Guatemala,
Arbenz grounded his air force because of
a single propaganda broadcast that led
him to believe his pilots had started to
defect. Already by 1961 the discipline
and control of the revolutionary Cuban
regime was evident when the expected
uprising against Castro failed to materi-
alize. While many Iranian emigres con-
tinue to believe that the CIA can pull
strings behind Khomeini's back, Ameri-
ca's inability to influence the internal
politics of revolutionary Iran has been
painfully evident for a decade now.
Covert operations are problematic for
other reasons as well. Policy-makers fre-
quently plan covert operations thinking
Newsweek
Time
U.S. News & World Report The IUb3Re.ftb& 33
Date 2/ Dec . 'S9
that they will remain small and deniable,
but such actions tend to acquire a mo-
mentum of their own. Dissident groups
in Third World countries are notoriously
difficult to control: we frequently have
to work with unsavory characters whose
purposes do not coincide with our own,
and who have a stake in misrepresenting
their goals to gain our support. There is
ample opportunity, moreover, for misin-
terpreted signals: witness the case of
Chile, where collecting information on
possible coup attempts in the military
may well have been taken by the actual
plotters as a signal of American backing.
These sorts of observations lead Tre-
verton to rules of thumb that "amount
to setting a higher threshold for the use
of covert action." He agrees with Cyrus
Vance that the language of the National
Security Act of 1947 authorizing covert
activities in areas "affecting national se-
curity" is too broad, and argues along
with Vance that they should be permit-
ted only in cases "absolutely essential"
to national security. Treverton comes
down squarely in favor of the remedy
from the 1970s, that Congress needs to
be a partner along with the executive in
the discussion and approval of intelli-
gence operations. He also concludes that
much of what traditionally has been
done covertly, such as financial support
for democratic groups like labor unions
and churches, can be and in many cases
is better done out in the open.
Yet settling for Vance's test that an ac-
tion be "absolutely" essential to Ameri-
can security begs precisely the questions
Treverton has raised in his critique of
covert operations. For the difficulties he
singles out as obstacles to effective co-
vert intervention in fact apply to foreign
policy as a whole, covert and overt. De-
fining priorities among competing inter-
ests and assessing the means of protect-
ing them are challenges that go far
beyond covert operations; you don t
solve them by affixing the label "abso-
lutely essential," or by making them
overt.
TAKE THE problem of expanding
commitment, which Treverton iso-
lates as a problem of Third World covert
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intervention. The inability to call it quits of the assistance was military, but deal-
an opportune moment has been the ing with the political sensitivities of the
at
central difficulty bedeviling the United Pakistani authorities and the different
States in two rather overt interventions, insurgent groups required a deft political
the Korean and Vietnam wars, as well as touch, and also the ability to provide un-
the more recent debacle in Lebanon. In conventional items such as Soviet-bloc
most respects, the problem is more se- military hardware, Like aid to the
vere in overt cases Only then are presi- the Afghan effort was one of Washing-
dents tempted to make high-minded ton's worst-kept secrets. Still, it bids fair
statements like the Truman, Eisenhower to be an undeniable success of two ad-
or Carter doctrines, that such-and-such a ministrations, substantially driving up
country or group is vital to the security the costs of Moscow's Afghan adventure
of the United States. Democratic politics as well as spurring the Soviets in their
inclines us toward trenchant distinctions reconsideration of the Brezhnev legacy
between friends and enemies, and a pub- in the Third World) and possibly paving
licly sworn friend tends to develop the way for a real Soviet withdrawal
strong domestic constituencies. from Afghanistan.
By contrast, an ally covertly supported Contrary to Treverton's assertion that
is much easier to sell out when the going operations like Afghanistan are becom-
gets tough, as Treverton admits occurred ing less common, they are a phenome-
in the cases of the Kurds in Iraq and the non new to the 1980s-a response to the
Montagnards in Vietnam. The same ap- expansion of the Soviet empire that took
plies to the problem that our allies' pur- place in the previous decade. Given the
poses are not our own: we did not declining utility of conventional military
choose to ally with Joseph Stalin during force in the contemporary world, sup-
the war for the lovely color of his eyes, port for democratic revolutions not just
nor were we particularly happy with the against Soviet client states but against
various Rhees, Diems, Marcoses, Sala- other oppressive Third World regimes
zars. and Chuns with whom we had very has the potential to become a very im-
open and explicit agreements But even portant instrument of American policy
democratic allies such as Israel have at in the future.
times led us down paths of their own
choosing. This is hardly a characteristic
unique to covert action: it is a staple of
international life.
i THE TRUTH IS that almost nothing
n United States foreign or defense
policy is,irsc,u:rv essential, including the
defense of NATO Europe. And yet there is
a large category of operations that are
quite important to our interests, which
have traditionally been run by the Oper-
ations Directorate of the CIA and which
cannot be carried out by any other gov-
ernment agency. The best illustration is
perhaps the most important CIA under-
taking of the 1980s, support for the At-
ghan -nuzanzdeen, which Treverton fails to
discuss at any length. (He also skips over
a number of important CIA successes
supporting democratic forces in Western
Europe in the late 1940s, as well as Edwin
Lansdale's help to Philippine Defense
Minister Ramon Magsaysav and other
Southeast Asian leaders in the early 50s. I
While the support operation in Af-
ghanistan was never truly covert, it was
quiet, so as not to embarrass the Paki-
stani government and embroil it unnec-
essarily with the Soviets. It was not a
program that could have been easily ad-
ministered by the military services or the
parts of the Defense Department con-
cerned with security assistance: the bulk
I T IS NEVER clear whether the focus
of Corer, Action is the generic category
of covert-type operations in American
foreign policy or the way they have been
implemented by one specific institution,
the CIA. If it is the latter, there is not
much to write about, since the agency's
Directorate of Operations was defanged
over a decade ago. Yet as an analysis of
the former, Treverton's book is less a di-
agnosis than a symptom of the disease
afflicting contemporary American for-
eign policy. In calling for more openness
as the cure for the problems of covert
operations, he fails to confront more im-
portant requirements for the conduct of
American foreign policy as a whole.
As a great power, the United States
must base its policy on a fairly broad
sense of national interest. Since the
United States is a very secure nation,
we don't need to spend much time de-
fending vital national security inter-
ests. Rather, we must assign a just
and prudent value to the vast majority
of our foreign policy concerns, which
are non-essential. A great power also
has to be able to see shades of gray
among friends and enemies, which can
be a similarly subtle enterprise. In the
Third World in particular, there are
only shifting and temporary conver-
gences in the interests of foreign pow-
ers and our own.
Assessing means is as problematic as
settling on ends. A great power has to be
able to accept setbacks and tactical re-
treats, and also be willing to stick to the
game over the long haul rather than suc-
cumb to swings between euphoria and
discouragement. Such a stable but agile
policy often means seizing opportunities
when they arise and betting on causes
that don't have an immediate payoff
Treverton rightly points to many of
these challenges to U.S. foreign policy
and its failures to meet them. But he
mistakenly attributes those failures to
covert operations when they are in fact
exacerbated by the open nature of our
policy-making process. It is the need to
mobilize public support that tends to en-
courage the simple, shortsighted strate-
gies; public opinion likes clear lines be-
tween friends and enemies, is seldom
tolerant of short-term failures, and often
fails to see the point of salting away cap-
ital to build toward long-term success
If American foreign policy is to evalu-
ate stakes and objectives prudently,
make tactical adjustments, and adhere to
principles consistently over the long
run, then what it may need is less rather
than more exposure to the influence of
domestic American politics. I do not
mean this in any narrow sense of ex-
panding the scope of responsibilities of
the Directorate of Operations of the
CIA, or stamping more "Top Secret" la-
bels on documents. Obviously American
foreign policy must rest on a broad pub-
lic consensus over our national purposes
But the question is whether the US
.
government as a whole, acting within
that consensus, can formulate and carry
out foreign policy with some degree or
buffering against the vagaries of domes-
tic politics. Vance's test of "absolute"" es-
sentiality-or Caspar Weinberger s six
conditions for military intervention-are
rules of thumb more appropriate for a
giant Switzerland than for the United
States as it has conceived itself in the
postwar period. Our failure to diagnose
ourselves properly spells trouble in the
future, not only for the United States
but for all the other countries that de-
pend on us as well.
FRANCIS FL'KL- A-MIA
Francis Fukuyama is a senior staff mem-
ber in the political science department or
the RAND Corporation.
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Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/15: CIA-RDP90-00965R000706820001-1