Christopher R. Moran

An INS Special Forum: Implications of the Snowden Leaks

In 2013, the National Security Agency (NSA) in the United States became embroiled in controversy – again. Its questionable use of wiretaps (Operation MINARET) and its improper reading of international cables sent and received by Americans over decades (Operation SHAMROCK) had been revealed by the Church Committee in 1976; and in 2005 theNew York Times disclosed that the NSA had been wiretapping selected American citizens without a warrant, contrary to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. In this most recent scandal, the NSA hired Edward J. Snowden to help with some of its computer work. At the time of his hiring in 2013, Snowden – a 29year-old high school dropout from suburban Maryland and a former CIA computer specialist – was under contract as a data specialist with the giant defense firm Booz Allen Hamilton. In his short stint with the NSA, Snowden reportedly stole some 1.7 million classified documents from the agency’s computers.He leakedmanyof these documents over the next year toAmerican and British journalists, as a protest against what he viewed as improper surveillance methods used by the NSA against American and British citizens. The stolen documents also revealed that the NSA had been wiretapping the communications of some leading US allies, including the cellphone of German Chancellor Angela Meckel. She was not pleased to learn about this intrusion. ‘Surveillance Revelations Shake US-German Ties’, observed a New York Times headline. Nor were other Europeans happy about the revelations of widespread NSA surveillance against them. Before releasing the first of his documents, Snowden fled the United States in search of a safe haven, first to Hong Kong and then (when other options fell through) to Russia. The leaks revealed that the NSA had been gathering ‘metadata’ (the records of telephone numbers dialed and the duration of calls) on about a third of all the telephone calls made by American citizens, both

Intelligence and the Media: The Press, Government Secrecy and the ‘Buster’ Crabb Affair

Abstract This article explores the official cover up of the mysterious disappearance of naval frogman Lionel Buster Crabb in 1956. Existing histories of the affair have tended to focus on the manner of Crabbs death, advancing a series of plausible and suitably implausible explanations. Using recently declassified sources, this article, in contrast, seeks to use the Crabb affair as a window onto government secrecy and relations between the press and the intelligence services. It is argued that the affair was a climacteric for the intelligence community and its relationship with Fleet Street, rupturing long-standing taboos about secret service work and bringing to the fore a brand of investigative journalist determined to make front-page news of intelligence shortcomings and failure.

From Confession to Corporate Memory: the Memoirs of CIA Director Richard M. Helms

This article seeks to challenge the orthodoxy about memoirs by retired spies. It does so by examining the making of A Look Over My Shoulder, the 2003 memoir of Richard Helms, the second longest serving Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director. An exploration of the genesis of the Helms memoir is revealing of the motivations for autobiographical writing by intelligence veterans, as well as the procedures for the ‘vetting’ of texts by the CIAs Publications Review Board. In a departure from the existing literature on the subject of official memoir-writing, which suggests that secret organisations are hostile to former employees producing books, it is shown that the CIA did not hinder Helms, but assisted him. Drawing upon declassified materials and private papers, it is argued that the Agency aimed to mould the book as a quasi-official history for the purpose of improving public understanding about the CIA, intelligence, and US foreign policy. With journalists, renegade writers, and populist historians producing sensationalist and lopsided accounts, the CIA realised that there was more to gain by contributing to history than to remain silent while it was being compiled. To this end, they worked with Helms in turning a confessional into a piece of corporate memory.

The Last Assignment: David Atlee Phillips and the Birth of CIA Public Relations

In recent years, scholars of international history and intelligence have argued that, since the 1990s, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been engaged in public-relations campaigns to promote its image. As evidence of this, they point to the CIAs willingness to provide more briefings to the media, its greater engagement with Hollywood, and the appearance of CIA staff historians at academic conferences. Drawing on recently declassified documents and unpublished correspondence from the private papers of CIA officers, this article will argue that efforts by the CIA in the realm of opinion-forming began much earlier than the existing historiography dictates. In the 1970s, embarrassing revelations about CIA domestic operations prompted a host of loyal veterans, most notably David Atlee Phillips, to speak out in favour of the intelligence community as an indispensible, effective, and honourable arm of government. They did this by speaking at universities and by writing memoirs. It will be suggested that the Agency itself was initially reluctant to support the veterans, mindful of the need for secrecy, meaning that the frustrated veterans were required to operate in a strictly private capacity. By the end of the decade, however, attitudes at Langley had changed and perception management was finally put on a formal institutional footing. In charting the birth of CIA public relations, this article provides a fresh vista on the Agencys broader attitudes and policies towards secrecy and openness during the cold war and into the twenty-first century.

Turning Against the CIA: Whistleblowers During the ‘Time of Troubles’

Edward Snowden is not the first – nor will he be the last – disgruntled US intelligence officer to spill the beans. Using newly declassified materials, private papers and interviews, this article explores how the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) dealt with whistleblowers and disillusioned staff in the 1970s, a period often described as the Agencys ‘Time of Troubles’. It will be argued that ugly revelations by former employees caused more distress to the CIA than disclosures that emerged in the press and on Capitol Hill. At Langley, there was genuine shock that supposedly trusted insiders would write tell-it-all books and betray the Agencys code of ‘never celebrate successes, never explain failures’. Focusing on the CIAs attempts to manage three intelligence apostates – Victor Marchetti, Phillip Agee and Frank Snepp – it will be shown that the Agency invariably made a rod for its own back. As well as ham-fisted efforts to spy on them and steal manuscripts, the CIA constitutionally frogmarched certain whistleblowers off to court, provoking widespread criticism that it was an enemy of free speech. By looking at how the CIA responded to the challenge of leaks in the 1970s, this article places into long-term perspective the contemporary struggle between intelligence agencies and rebellious insiders who use electronic media to promote transparency.

Delayed disclosure : national security, whistle-blowers and the nature of secrecy

The significance of Edward Snowden’s revelations has been viewed primarily through the prism of threats to citizen privacy. Instead, we argue that the most dramatic change has been a decline of government secrecy, especially around national security. While the ethical aspects of state secrets and ‘whistle-blowing’ have received recent attention, few have attempted to explain the dynamics of this growing climate of exposure. Our argument is largely technological and we ground our analysis in the changing nature of intelligence work, which is increasingly merging with ‘big data’. But we also identify a related cultural change: many intelligence contractors are at best agnostic about the national security state. Meanwhile, the Internet itself provides the perfect medium for the anonymous degradation of secrets. Because the main driver is technology, we suggest this trend is likely to accelerate, presenting national security chiefs with one of their biggest future challenges.

James Bond, Ian Fleming and intelligence: breaking down the boundary between the ‘real’ and the ‘imagined’

Abstract This article looks to answer the question of why the James Bond novels and films should matter to scholars of intelligence and national security. We argue that Bond is important because, rightly or wrongly, and not without inaccuracy, it has filled a public knowledge vacuum about intelligence agencies and security threats. On another level, this article explores the unexpected yet important interactions between Bond and the actual world of intelligence. We contend that the orthodoxy dictating that Bond and spying are diametric opposites—one is the stuff of fantasy, the other is reality—is problematic, for the worlds of Bond and real intelligence collide, overlap and intermesh in fascinating and significant ways. In short, Bond is important for scholars because he is an international cultural icon that continues to operate at the borders of fiction and reality, framing and constructing not only public perceptions but also to some degree intelligence practices. Core narratives of intelligence among not only the public but also policymakers and intelligence officers are imagined, sustained, deepened, produced and reproduced through and by Bond. We conclude that Bond and intelligence should be thought of as co-constitutive; the series shapes representations and perceptions of intelligence, but it also performs a productive role, influencing the behaviours of intelligence agencies themselves.

Note on Teaching Intelligence

Over the last decade, intelligence has become one of the most widely taught subjects in higher education. In response to this, a sub-discipline has emerged within Intelligence Studies devoted to thinking about how the subject is actually taught. One of the most common arguments to come out of this literature is that there should be more practitioner involvement in the university teaching of intelligence. However, it is rarely specified what exactly intelligence professionals bring to the classroom, save the largely self-evident point that because they have ‘walked the walk’, they are uniquely qualified to teach the subject. Drawing on student questionnaires, as well as interviews with serving and retired intelligence officers, this article attempts to probe a little deeper and identify the specific benefits of incorporating practitioners into the university teaching of intelligence. It is argued that practitioners ‘put a face on the profession’ and help to remove some of the mystique and misperceptions that surround intelligence work. It is claimed that practitioners, especially with their ‘inside stories’, give added meaning to academic theories and make the subject more exciting. Finally, it is argued that practitioners enrich the broader ‘student experience’. In UK higher education, now under a new fees regime, students are looking for departments to go the extra mile not only in terms of their teaching, but also in areas like careers advice and support. In this context, intelligence professionals are enormously valuable.