[Originally published in the Rutland Herald and Barre Times-Argus.]
According to the CIA’s official website, “The mission of the National Clandestine Service is to strengthen national security and foreign policy objectives through the clandestine collection of human intelligence (HUMINT) and Covert Action.”
The lack of targeted focus of the CIA’s clandestine collection efforts in the past has never been widely discussed outside intelligence circles, but given today’s realities, particularly the slowing availability of resources and the threat of terrorism, it certainly should be.
During the Cold War, the only critical requirement for the National Clandestine Service was to provide its customers with intelligence on the “capabilities and intentions” of our enemies. Human intelligence gathering was the only collection method that worked against these requirements, as they were essentially immune to technical collection.
We needed to target Soviet military research and development. We knew that if we waited until a new weapons system hit the test pads (and was finally vulnerable to technical collection), the United States would be unable to develop countermeasures for at least seven years. Thus, to be safe, we needed to know what systems were being developed in Soviet military design bureaus. Finally, of course, we needed to penetrate their decision-making apparatus for intelligence on their intentions.
It is an unfortunate fact that only a relatively small percentage of Cold War NCS officers actually worked on the recruitment of Soviet citizens who could report on our most important requirements. Much lip service was paid to the importance of the Soviet target, but with far too few exceptions, many of the NCS’ geographic area divisions and their personnel were doing other, far less meaningful things.
There were two reasons for this reality.
First, every administration hedges all its bets. If a potentially bothersome or embarrassing issue pops up in some obscure part of the world, they expect the intelligence community to be on top of it. This translates into a tasking system within the community, including the NCS, that tries to cover everything in anticipation of that one potentially unpleasant and embarrassing surprise.
Second, an NCS Cold War case officer in Latin America knew that the odds of recruiting a significant Soviet were very low and that he would more likely be viewed as successful if he were to run propaganda operations or recruit local politicians and local Communist Party members, none of which, however, would get us remotely close to our critical national need for intelligence on Soviet military research and development and intentions.
What we can learn from these realities is the probability that at any given time, only a relatively small proportion of NCS officers are working on targets that are critical to our national goals. There are simply far too many other targets available. From there, it is fairly easy to stipulate that those who are not working such goals are not performing critical functions and might better be retargeted.
If we were really worried about terrorism, why were we active in Iraq where there were no terrorists before our 2003 invasion, and in Afghanistan today where there are few if any terrorists, only insurgents?
The present-day equivalents of our Cold War requirements are all connected with the ability of terrorists to attack us with weapons of mass destruction. We cannot afford to have a nuclear weapon detonated in one of our major cities.
Effective operations against the terrorist target will include the recruitment of anyone who supports terrorism: foreign supporters, terrorists’ lines of communication, document support, travel support, terrorist funding mechanisms — anything or anyone who can give us insight into terrorist plans and intentions.
Our intelligence commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan support only our ongoing military operations there, not our struggle with terrorism. They certainly are an injudicious use of manpower if our major target really is terrorism.
Intelligence organizations are, by their nature, omnivorous. They will slip into and fill any empty space and easily justify it in terms of their overall mission. The enormous size and meaningless tasks of the NCS commitment in Vietnam were a perfect example. But these are different times. International and domestic realities have created an environment in which selective intelligence targeting will become increasingly important.
If terrorism truly is our existential intelligence problem, policymakers need to learn to focus their requirements better. They must learn to differentiate between terrorism and insurgencies and to shy away from unconnected, less important activities.
If, because of overly broad White House tasking, the NCS feels it has to know about an impending coup in every obscure Third World country, it will be less likely to learn of an impending terrorist attack on the homeland.
Haviland Smith is a retired CIA station chief who served in Eastern and Western Europe and as chief of the counterterrorism staff. He lives in Williston.
