Loch K. Johnson

The Ties That Bind: Intelligence Cooperation between the UKUSA Countries

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The CIA and the media

To understand the role of most journalist‐operatives, it is necessary to dismiss some myths about undercover work for American intelligence services. Few American agents are “spies” in the popularly accepted sense of the term. “Spying” — the acquisition of secrets from a foreign government—is almost always done by foreign nationals who have been recruited by the CIA and are under CIA control in their own countries. Thus the primary role of an American working undercover abroad is often to aid in the recruitment and “handling” of foreign nationals who are channels of secret information reaching American intelligence.

Covert Action and Accountability: Decision-Making for America's Secret Foreign Policy

This study examines the way in which the United States decides upon and oversees the use of covert action—the pursuit of American foreign policy objectives through secret intervention into the affairs of other nations. First, the definitional nuances of covert action are explored, illustrating the ambiguities inherent in the term. Second, the magnitude of funding for covert action is estimated for the years 1947–86, revealing fluctuations in the attractiveness to policymakers of this “quiet option” as an instrument of foreign affairs. Third, the global targeting priorities for covert action are presented, again disclosing fluctuations but within a broad pattern of primary attention to small, developing nations. With this background, the study then turns to its main focus: the procedures by which the government approves of and reviews covert action. During the Ford and Carter Administrations, this decision process evolved into a complex matrix of checkpoints and overseers, including unprecedented legislative involvement. The Reagan years produced dramatic evidence, however, that these efforts at closer supervision of Americas secret foreign policy—the “democratization” of covert action—had fallen short of the goals espoused by reformers. The Iran- contra scandal of 1986–87 cast doubt on the effectiveness of the new oversight procedures and stirred further debate on whether the United States could maintain both a robust secret service and reliable safeguards against the abuse of hidden power.

Bricks and Mortar for a Theory of Intelligence

Intelligence may be thought of as three kinds of activities carried out by secretive agencies: first, the gathering, interpreting, and distribution of information (collection and analysis, for short); second, clandestine attempts to manipulate events abroad (covert action); and, third, the guarding against the hostile operations of foreign intelligence agencies (counterintelligence). This paper examines a core set of propositions about these activities that, taken together, point toward the outlines of a theoretical framework for understanding intelligence. The propositions and the evidence suggest that effective collection and analysis is, above all, a function of national wealth, but depends as well on focused targeting, all-source synergism, and good communication links (“liaison”) between intelligence officers and policy officials. Successful, sustained covert action also relies on national wealth, and is a function in addition of modest objectives, weak targets, and the support of well-armed local allies. Successful counterintelligence requires national wealth and technical sophistication, along with an attitude of serious attention to security matters (which usually rises only after a major security breach).

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

A Conversation with James R. Clapper, Jr., The Director Of National Intelligence in the United States

In this previously unpublished interview, James R. Clapper, Jr., the current Director of National Intelligence (DNI) in the United States, discusses his experiences as spymaster leading an Intelligence Community widely viewed as organizationally decentralized and criticized in the past for failing to work together harmoniously. Director Clapper argues that the Community has become much more structurally integrated, and that the Office of the DNI (ODNI) provides an opportunity for leadership that is more effective than outside critics have acknowledged. I conducted this interview in August 2014 at his office near Tysons Corner in North Arlington, Virginia. It was a time of rising unrest in the world, with elite Russian troops carrying out forays across the border into Ukraine, a Middle East terrorist faction known as ISIS gathering momentum in a march from Syria toward Baghdad, and with recurring violence that continued to plague the relationship between the Hamas faction in Palestine and the state of Israel.

The Making of International Agreements: a Reappraisal of Congressional Involvement

* An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1976 Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, Illinois. The authors would like to thank the Ohio University Research Committee for a grant to support the original data collection; the Department of Political Science, Iowa State University, for computer time and clerical support; Leena S. Johnson, Carol Gertner, Alison Jessen, and Debbie Nellis for their painstaking care in handling an almost overwhelming data collection and coding task; Thomas L. Brewer and Jorgen S. Rasmussen for helpful criticism of an earlier draft; and, the Department of State, Office of Legal Advisor, for responding quickly and courteously to several information requests. Any errors in this study, however, are the sole responsibility of the authors.

Political Alienation Among Vietnam Veterans

ETWEEN January 1965 and January 1972, 45,929 American servicemen lost their lives in the Republic of Vietnam through action by hostile forces.2 In the same period, U.S. military forces suffered 303,598 injuries from enemy action. A little over half of these men (153,291) required hospital care. Army personnel, mainly infantrymen, accounted for the majority of the killed and wounded. This paper examines the political attitudes of Army veterans hospitalized from wounds incurred while serving in Vietnam.

Intelligence and National Security at Thirty

The journal of Intelligence and National Security (INS) is now 30 years old. The first issue was published in 1986 under the leadership of the founding editors, historian Christopher Andrew of Cambridge University and military analyst Michael Handel of the US Naval War College. Two more issues would soon follow, making up the first volume of INS. An editorial in the inaugural issue pointed out that this was: ‘the first scholarly, interdisciplinary journal devoted to the past history of intelligence work, to the analysis of its contemporary functions and problems, and to the assessment of its influence on foreign policy and national security’. Indicative of official approaches to the study of intelligence at the time, the editorial set out the ambition of Professors Andrew and Handel: they would ‘attempt to lift some of the official veils which still pointlessly conceal the past history of intelligence’. The journal proceeded from two premises, the editors explained: ‘first, that its subject matter is a proper field for scholarly research; second, that any analysis of modern foreign or security policy which leaves intelligence out of account is certainly incomplete and possibly distorted’. At this time, Christopher Andrew and David Dilks had just recently published the edited volume, The Missing Dimension: Governments and Intelligence Communities in the Twentieth Century, popularizing the idea of intelligence as the ‘missing dimension’ in the analysis of significant historical events. In reviewing the book, Professor Robert Jervis of Columbia University in New York City observed that just as General Dwight David Eisenhower had complained that the US Army treated intelligence as a ‘stepchild’, so ‘intelligence has also been a stepchild to academics’. Here was a journal

Intelligence shocks, media coverage, and congressional accountability, 1947–2012

Recent research indicates that most lawmakers rarely engage in intensive intelligence oversight unless a major scandal or failure – a shock – forces them to pay more attention to the dark side of a government. Still, the question remains: what degree of shock is necessary to stir members of the Congress into taking a closer look at the clandestine activities of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the other fifteen organizations that comprise the US Intelligence Community? This report examines ten major intelligence shocks since the creation of the CIA in 1947 and explores the extent of media coverage associated with each. The findings suggest that the level of media coverage often corresponds with the degree of energetic intelligence oversight exercised by government officials: low oversight if a low level of media coverage, moderate if moderate, and high if high.