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Intelligence Analysis and Planning for
Paramilitary Operations
Loch K. Johnson*
I
NTRODUCTION
Paramilitary operations – “PM ops” in American spytalk – may be
defined as secret war-like activities.
1
They are a part of a broader set of
endeavors undertaken by intelligence agencies to manipulate events abroad,
when so ordered by authorities in the executive branch. These activities are
known collectively as “covert action” (CA) or, alternatively, “special
activities,” “the quiet option,” or “the third option” (between diplomacy and
overt military intervention). In addition to PM ops, CA includes secret
political and economic operations, as well as the use of propaganda. Often
used synergically, each form is meant to help nudge the course of history –
insofar as this is possible – in a direction favorable to the United States.
Since the creation of the modern U.S. “intelligence community” by way of
the National Security Act of 1947, PM ops have been conducted by the
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), known by insiders as “The Agency.”
2
This article offers a brief history of America’s paramilitary activities, with
special attention to the relationship between intelligence analysis – the
attempts by the CIA and its fifteen companion agencies
3
to understand
* Regents Professor of International Affairs, University of Georgia. The author
would like to express his appreciation to Louis Fisher for his helpful remarks on an earlier
draft of this essay and to Allison Shelton, a Ph.D. candidate in International Affairs at the
University of Georgia, for her research assistance.
1. See generally WILLIAM J. DAUGHERTY, EXECUTIVE SECRETS: COVERT ACTION & THE
PRESIDENCY (2004); LOCH K. JOHNSON, AMERICA’S SECRET POWER: THE CIA IN A DEMOCRATIC
SOCIETY (1989); JOHN PRADOS, SAFE FOR DEMOCRACY: THE SECRET WARS OF THE CIA (2006);
and G
REGORY F. TREVERTON, COVERT ACTION: THE LIMITS OF INTERVENTION IN THE POSTWAR
WORLD (1987).
2. In recent years, though, some outside observers have expressed concern that the
Department of Defense (DoD) may have slipped through the back door into this sensitive
domain, as part of its war efforts in the Middle East and Southwest Asia in the aftermath of
the 9/11 attacks against the United States. The concern is that DoD may be bypassing the
procedures for accountability currently focused on CIA covert actions. See Jennifer Kibbe,
Covert Action and the Pentagon, in 3 S
TRATEGIC INTELLIGENCE: COVERT ACTION 131-144
(Loch K. Johnson ed., 2007); and John Prados, The Future of Covert Action, in H
ANDBOOK
OF
INTELLIGENCE STUDIES 289-298 (Loch K. Johnson ed., 2007).
3. The other fifteen agencies include eight military organizations embedded within
the DoD: the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, National Reconnaissance Office,
National Security Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, and the Army, Navy, Air Force and
Marine Intelligence agencies; seven agencies embedded within civilian departments,
including the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and the Coast
Guard (both within DHS), Department of Justice (the FBI and the Drug Enforcement
Administration, Department of State’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Department of
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482 JOURNAL OF NATIONAL SECURITY LAW & POLICY [Vol. 5:481
contemporary world events and forecast how they will unfold – and the use
of paramilitary forces to achieve U.S. foreign policy goals.
I. T
HE METHODS OF CIA PARAMILITARY OPERATIONS
No covert actions have held higher risk or generated more criticism
than “covert” wars (as if any kind of military conflict can be kept secret for
very long). In addition to providing support to groups engaged in
insurgency fighting, the CIA has funded various PM training activities,
including counterterrorism operations. It has also provided military advisers
to pro-American factions fighting against common adversaries, and
transported arms, ammunition, and other military equipment overseas for
distribution to groups allied with U.S. interests, as when the Agency
provided Stinger missiles for Afghan rebels (the Mujahideen) fighting the
Soviet Red Army in the 1980s. Moreover, the CIA has given assistance to
the Pentagon’s unconventional warfare activities, known as “Special
Operations.” The Agency has supplied weapons, as well, to U.S. military
officials for covert sales abroad, including some of the missiles sold to
Tehran by the Department of Defense (DoD) during the Iran-Contra scandal
of 1986-1987. Further, the Agency has trained indigenous military and
police units throughout the developing world. In between covert wars,
America’s PM operatives spend much of their time in training activities at
CIA facilities in the United States. The operatives are responsible, too, for
the maintenance of their paramilitary equipment, and they support selected
CIA intelligence collection operations around the globe.
During the Cold War and since, America’s PM operatives have
disseminated weaponry to allied nations and factions in every corner of the
developing world. The Church Committee, a panel of inquiry into
intelligence activities led by Senator Frank Church, Democrat from Idaho,
in 1975-1976, discovered a wide range of CIA arms shipments to pro-
Western dissidents in a number of small nations. These armaments
included high-powered rifles with telescopes and silencers, suitcase bombs,
fragmentation grenades, rapid-fire weapons, 64-mm antitank rockets, .38
caliber pistols, .30 caliber M-1 carbines, .45-caliber submachine guns, tear-
gas grenades, and enough ammunition to equip several small armies. For
major PM operations, such as the one designed to assist the Mujahideen
fighters in Afghanistan, the amount of ordnance provided by the CIA has
been enormous, dwarfing the arsenals of most countries in the world.
4
Energy, and Department of Treasury. The sixteenth intelligence organization, the CIA,
stands alone as an independent agency.
4. On the findings of the Church Committee related to paramilitary operations, see
F
INAL REPORT OF THE SELECT COMMITTEE TO STUDY GOVERNMENTAL OPERATIONS WITH
RESPECT TO INTELLIGENCE ACTIVITIES, S. REP. NO. 94-755 (1976) [hereinafter CHURCH
COMMITTEE]; the Committee’s volume on ALLEGED ASSASSINATION PLOTS INVOLVING
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II. T
HE ASSASSINATION OPTION
An especially controversial aspect of PM ops has been the adoption of
assassination as a method to eliminate dangerous, or, sometimes, merely
annoying, foreign leaders. The CIA’s involvement in murder plots came to
light in 1975. In documents discovered by presidential and congressional
investigators (the Rockefeller Commission, led by Vice President Nelson
Rockefeller, and the Church Committee, respectively), the Agency referred
to its attempts at dispatching selected foreign leaders with such euphemisms
as “termination with extreme prejudice” or “neutralization.” At its
headquarters in Langley, Virginia, the CIA established a “Health Alteration
Committee,” which hatched schemes to eliminate foreign officials. Among
the prime targets for assassination were Fidel Castro of Cuba and Patrice
Lumumba of Congo.
5
A. Targeting Foreign Leaders
During the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, Castro attracted the
full attention of the CIA’s Covert Action Staff (CAS) and its Special
Operations Group (SOG, the home of the Agency’s PM operatives). The
CIA emptied its medicine cabinet of drugs and poisons in various attempts
to kill, or at least debilitate, the Cuban leader. All of these efforts failed,
however, because Castro was elusive and well protected by an elite security
guard trained by the KGB. The Agency then turned to the Mafia for
assistance: Chicago gangster Sam Giancana, the former Cosa Nostra chief
for Cuba, Santo Trafficante, and mobster John Rosselli. These
“godfathers” still had contacts on the island from pre-Castro days when
Havana was a gambling mecca. No doubt assuming the U.S. government
would back away from pending Mafia prosecutions in return for help
against Castro, the crime figures volunteered to assemble teams of Cuban
exiles and other hitmen, then infiltrate them into Cuba. None succeeded.
During the Eisenhower administration and continuing into the Kennedy
years, Lumumba, a dynamic Congolese political leader, came into the
CIA’s cross-hairs as well. From Washington’s point of view, his
transgression – like Castro’s – had been to develop ties with the Soviet
Union. In what some viewed as a zero-sum struggle with the Soviets
FOREIGN LEADERS: AN INTERIM REPORT, S. REP. NO. 94-465 (1975) [hereinafter ALLEGED
ASSASSINATION PLOTS] (subsequently published commercially by W. W. Norton &
Company); and A
NNE KARALEKAS, SUPPLEMENTARY DETAILED STAFF REPORTS ON FOREIGN
AND
MILITARY INTELLIGENCE, S. REP. No. 94-755 (1976). On the supply of weapons to the
Afghan freedom fighters, see S
TEVE COLL, GHOST WARS (2004); and, more generally,
T
HEODORE SHACKLEY, THE THIRD OPTION: AN AMERICAN VIEW OF COUNTERINSURGENCY
(1981).
5. A
LLEGED ASSASSINATION PLOTS, supra note 4.
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during the Cold War, Lumumba had to go. In 1961, Agency headquarters
forwarded to its chief of station (COS) in Congo an unusual assortment of
items in a diplomatic pouch to achieve this objective: rubber gloves, gauze
masks, a hypodermic syringe, and a toxic substance that would produce a
disease to either kill the victim outright or incapacitate him so severely that
he would be out of commission.
The COS began to plan how he could carry out the specific directions
to inject the toxic material into something that might make it into
Lumumba’s mouth – “into his toothpaste or food,” read the instructions.
6
The station chief informed one of his colleagues to be careful: there was a
“virus” in the CIA’s safe within the U.S. embassy compound at
Leopoldville, the capital of Congo. In dark humor, the recipient of this
hushed disclosure later said to investigators that he “knew it wasn’t for
somebody to get his polio shot up-to-date.”
7
The plan, though, was never
carried out, because the Agency experienced problems in gaining access to
Lumumba. Soon, though, a rival Congo faction, fearful of Lumumba’s
popularity, snuffed out his life before a hastily arranged firing squad. A
recent study suggests that the CIA may have helped to render Lumumba
into the hands of these assassins, achieving its goal after all.
8
The CIA has also been involved in the incapacitation or death of lower-
level officials. The most well known operation of this kind was the
Phoenix Program, carried out by the Agency in South Vietnam as part of
the U.S. war effort during the late 1960s and early 1970s. The operation’s
purpose was to subdue the influence of communists (the Viet Cong, or VC)
in the Vietnamese countryside. According to former Director of Central
Intelligence (DCI) William E. Colby, who led the program for a time as a
young intelligence officer, some twenty thousand VC leaders and
sympathizers were killed. Colby stresses that over 85 percent of these
victims were engaged in military or paramilitary combat against South
Vietnamese or American soldiers.
9
B. A Limited Ban on Assassinations
In 1976, soon after Congress revealed the CIA’s involvement in
international murder plots, President Gerald R. Ford signed an executive
order against this practice. The wording of the order, endorsed by his
successors, reads: “No person employed by or acting on behalf of the
6. Stephen R. Weissman, An Extraordinary Rendition, 25 INTELLIGENCE & NAT’L
SECURITY 198, 205 (2010).
7. A
LLEGED ASSASSINATION PLOTS, supra note 4, at 41 (testimony of Michael
Mulroney, senior CIA officer).
8. Weissman, supra note 6, at 198-222.
9. W
ILLIAM COLBY & PETER FORBATH, HONORABLE MEN: MY LIFE IN THE CIA 272
(1978).
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United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in,
assassination.”
10
While honored most of the time, when America is involved
in an authorized overt war – one supported by Congress – the executive
order has been waived. Indeed, former DCI Robert M. Gates observed that
during the first Persian Gulf War in 1991, the White House under President
George H. W. Bush “lit a candle every night hoping Saddam Hussein would
be killed in a bunker” during overt bombings of Baghdad.
11
Most recently, the United States has been involved in authorized overt
warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as against al Qaeda and its Taliban
supporters in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and elsewhere. Again, the executive
order against assassination has been waived in these struggles. Saddam was
regularly a target in the second Persian Gulf War that began in 2003; but, as
in the first Persian Gulf War, he proved to be an elusive target. Eventually,
U.S. troops discovered him hiding in a hole in the ground near his
hometown. He was arrested, tried by an Iraqi tribunal, and hanged – all
with the strong encouragement of the United States under President George
W. Bush. Saddam had ordered an assassination attempt against the
President’s father and mother soon after Iraq’s defeat in the first Persian
Gulf War, when the senior Bushes were visiting Kuwait to celebrate the
victory – an offense not lost on Bush their son. As George W. Bush relates
in a memoir, revenge was part of his motivation for invading Iraq in 2003.
12
Added to the current list of people to be captured or assassinated by the
U.S. military and CIA paramilitary forces are extremist Taliban and al
Qaeda members in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Recently Afghan narcotics
dealers, who are frequently complicit in terrorist activities, have been added
to the targeting list.
13
Since the end of the Cold War, the CIA (in
cooperation with the U.S. Air Force) has developed and fielded its most
deadly paramilitary weapon: unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), such as the
Predator and its more muscular counterpart, the Reaper. Both UAVs, also
known as drones, are armed with surveillance cameras, as well as Hellfire
or other missiles. These systems are controlled remotely from sites in
Afghanistan and Pakistan (for the takeoffs and landings), as well as from
locations in the United States (for the targeting and killing phases of flight).
Cruising at low altitudes, the UAV cameras identify targets, providing
instant “analysis” before the missiles are released by their remote operators
thousands of miles away.
10. Exec. Order No. 12,333, United States Intelligence Activities, 3 C.F.R. 200 (1981).
11. Walter Pincus, Saddam Hussein’s Death Is a Goal, Says Ex-CIA Chief, W
ASH.
P
OST, Feb. 15, 1998, at A36 (quoting former DCI Robert M. Gates).
12. G
EORGE W. BUSH, DECISION POINTS 228-229 (2010).
13. For an account of U.S. drone attacks in the Middle East and Southwest Asia, see
Jane Mayer, The Predator War, N
EW YORKER, Oct. 26, 2009, at 36-45.
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Targeting mistakes are made. The mistakes are compounded by the fact
that Taliban and al Qaeda terrorists often seek refuge in mosques, schools,
and other locations where innocent civilians may be inadvertently struck by
the UAV missiles, even though the CIA and the Pentagon take pains to
avoid “collateral damage.” Through mid-October of 2010, the drone
program had killed more than 400 al Qaeda militants, with fewer than ten
deaths of noncombatants – at least according to The New York Times,
although other sources believe that the incidental deaths of civilians has
been much higher in number.
14
One thing is certain: innocent civilians
continue to die, and sometimes the drones accidentally strike U.S. soldiers,
too. The drone attacks remain controversial and are unpopular among
many Pakistani citizens, who view them as a manifestation of America’s
violation of their national sovereignty – just as many Pakistanis criticized
the Navy’s surprise commando raid in 2011 that led to the killing of the al
Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, a city near the capital of
Pakistan.
The U.S. military is called upon for some assassination attempts, either
alone or in tandem with CIA operatives. During the Clinton administration,
for instance, the President turned down two proposed attacks by cruise
missiles, ready for firing from U.S. destroyers in the Red Sea and aimed at
bin Laden. In one case, bin Laden was surrounded by several of his wives
and children in an Afghan village, and in another by princes from the
United Arab Emirates (UAE) on a bird-hunting expedition. President
Clinton chose not to risk the deaths of these other individuals in an attack
against bin Laden. On another occasion, the United States fired cruise
missiles from a U.S. Navy cruiser in the Red Sea at a suspected al Qaeda
gathering in the desert near the town of Khost in Paktia Province,
Afghanistan. Bin Laden had already departed, however, before the
warheads struck the encampment.
The al Qaeda leader continued to evade U.S. assassination attempts,
lying low somewhere in the rugged mountains of Western Pakistan (many
experts believed) and protected by Taliban warlords.
15
Then, supported by
fresh intelligence collection and analysis, a Navy Seal Six commando team
stormed a walled, private compound in Abbottabad (just thirty-five miles
from Islamabad), in May 2011, and, under orders from President Barack
Obama, killed bin Laden. The al Qaeda leader had reportedly been holed
up in the Abbottabad hideout for five to six years, underscoring the
14. Unsigned editorial, Lethal Force Under Law, N.Y. TIMES, Oct. 10, 2010, at WK
7; Amitabb Pal, Drone Attacks in Pakistan Counterproductive, T
HE PROGRESSIVE, Apr. 15,
2011, http://www.progressive.org/ap041511.html (arguing that the civilian casualties have
been much higher).
15. On plots against Osama bin Laden, see G
EORGE TENET, AT THE CENTER OF THE
STORM: MY YEARS AT THE CIA (2007); MICHAEL SCHEUER, IMPERIAL HUBRIS (2004); and
Eric Schmitt & Thom Shanker, In Long Pursuit of Bin Laden: The ‘07 Raid That Just
Missed, N.Y.
TIMES, May 6, 2011, at A1.
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2012] PLANNING FOR PARAMILITARY OPERATIONS 487
difficulty of locating terrorists and other criminals on the run in foreign
lands.
16
C. Establishing Hit Lists
Exactly who should be on the PM “kill” list has been a controversial
subject. Originally, the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001
17
stipulated that only
those enemies involved in the 9/11 attacks were legitimate targets for
retaliation. Since then, and without further legislative guidelines, the target
list has widened. For example, a U.S.-born cleric by the name of Anwar al-
Awlaki, reputedly hiding in Yemen where he is considered an al Qaeda
recruiter, has been placed on the CIA assassination list – even though he
has never been convicted in a court of law. Further, it is unclear if he has
actually been involved in plots against the United States. If he has, al-
Awlaki could arguably be a legitimate target; however, if he has limited
himself to making speeches against the United States, al-Awlaki would just
be one of hundreds of radicals in the Middle East and Southwest Asia who
have advocated jihad against Western “infidels.” Regardless, in May 2011
he barely escaped a U.S. drone strike.
18
In an earlier drone attack in 2002, a
Predator missile struck an automobile in a Yemeni desert that carried six
passengers suspected to be al Qaeda affiliates. All were incinerated, and
one turned out to have been an American citizen – again, a person never
brought to trial. Such events raise serious questions about due process, and
the need to establish target bona fides beyond the shadow of a doubt before
Hellfire missiles are fired.
At present, the procedures for developing assassination targeting lists
lack clarity and sufficient oversight. Reportedly, the decision to add to such
lists requires the approval of the U.S. ambassador to the target country, as
well as the approval of the CIA COS, the director of the Agency’s National
Clandestine Service (the SOG’s parent department at the CIA), the Director
of the CIA (D/CIA), and the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), an
16. See Meet the Press, NBC NEWS (May 8, 2011) (reporting that national security
adviser Tom Donilon estimated that bin Laden had been at the compound for “six years”);
60 Minutes, CBS NEWS (May 8, 2011) (interview after the raid reporting that the President
referred to “five or six years”). For an example of reporting on the raid, see Elisabeth
Bumiller, In Bin Laden’s Compound, Seals’ All-Star Team, N.Y.
TIMES, May 5, 2011, at
A14. Even a high-profile fugitive within the United States can remain hidden for a long
time. For example, Eric Rudolph, who set off a bomb at the 1996 Olympic site in Atlanta,
remained on the loose until 2003, when he was accidentally apprehended in North Carolina
– just one state away from the scene of the crime.
17. Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required To
Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT) Act of 2001, Pub. L. No. 107-56, 115
Stat. 272.
18. See Ross Douthat, Whose Foreign Policy Is It?, N.Y.
TIMES, May 9, 2011, at A23.
In September 2011, al-Awlaki was killed by a CIA drone.
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office established in 2004. If the target is an American citizen, like al-
Awlaki, attorneys in the Justice Department must also approve. Further, at
least some of the members of the two congressional intelligence committees
are supposedly briefed on the targeting. Still, critics argue that a more
formal congressional review should take place, and perhaps the courts
should be part of this decision-making process, too. A special court, similar
to the one established in 1978 to review wiretap requests (the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, Court), could be set up to evaluate
requests for assassinations, especially when American citizens are the
prospective targets.
19
Even when the United States has decided to assassinate a foreign
leader, the task has proved difficult to carry out. Castro reportedly survived
thirty-two attempts against his life by the CIA.
20
Efforts to take out the
warlord General Mohamed Farrah Aidid of Somalia failed during
America’s brief involvement in fighting on the African Horn in 1993, and
Saddam Hussein proved impossible to locate during the 1990s. Osama bin
Laden remained elusive until May of 2011 – almost a decade after the 9/11
attacks. Dictators are paranoid, well guarded, and elusive, as are high-
ranking members of al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.
III. T
HE EBB AND FLOW OF PARAMILITARY OPERATIONS
Although PM ops were out of favor with some administrations in the
United States, others have spent enormous sums of money them.
21
As
depicted in Figure 1, support for these activities during the Cold War
accelerated from the very beginning of the CIA’s history in 1947, rising
rapidly from non-existence to high prominence during the Korean War.
22
From 1950-1953, the Agency’s paramilitary capabilities attracted a high
level of attention as a means to support America’s overt warfare on the
Korean Peninsula – the first major use of PM operations by the United
States in the modern era. Henceforth, whenever the United States was
19. This proposal is explored in Lethal Force Under Law, supra note 14.
20. A
DMIRAL STANSFIELD TURNER, BURN BEFORE READING: PRESIDENTS, CIA
DIRECTORS, AND SECRET INTELLIGENCE 98 (2005).
21. For reliable histories of paramilitary operations during the Cold War, see R
HODRI
JEFFREYS-JONES, THE CIA AND AMERICAN DEMOCRACY (1989); and JOHN RANELAGH, THE
AGENCY: THE RISE AND DECLINE OF THE CIA (rev. ed., 1987), as well as CHURCH COMMITTEE,
supra note 4; D
AUGHERTY, supra note 1; PRADOS, supra note 1; and TREVERTON, supra note 1.
22. In the figure, the “lows” and “highs” of PM ops represent not precise spending
amounts (data that remain classified), but rather levels of emphasis on this approach adopted
by the White House and the CIA. The estimates about these levels are based on a reading of
the open literature, augmented by the author’s interviews with CIA personnel over the years
since 1975. In the interviews, respondents were asked to assess the degree of emphasis each
Administration placed on PM ops during each of the years since 1947. The trend line is an
approximation, but one endorsed by the hundreds of individuals interviewed, from DCIs to
PM/SOG managers.
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involved in overt warfare somewhere in the world, the Agency would be
there as well to back up American troops with PM and other covert actions.
As John Ranelagh reports, covert action funding “increased sixteenfold
between January 1951 and January 1953,” and the number of personnel
assigned to the covert action mission doubled, with most of these resources
dedicated to PM operations.
23
The budget for covert action “skyrocketed,”
according to the Church Committee.
24
FIGURE 1: EBB AND FLOW OF U.S. COVERT AND OVERT MILITARY
ACTIVITIES ABROAD (1947-2011)
Source: This figure includes both expenditure levels for overt military activities (labeled “military
spending”) and the author’s estimates of the government’s emphasis on the use of PM operations (not
actual PM spending levels, which remain classified and would amount to only about 10-to-15 percent of
the overt military expenditures or less, even in peak years). The PM estimates are based on the author’s
interviews with intelligence managers and officers from 1975-2011, along with a study of the literature
cited in the footnotes to this article. The overt military spending levels (adjusted for inflation) are
adapted from Thom Shanker & Christopher Drew, Pentagon Faces New Pressures To Trim Budget,
N.Y.
TIMES, July 23, 2010, at A1.
In 1953, the CIA provided covert assistance to pro-American factions
that brought down the Iranian Prime Minister, Mohammad Mossadeq, and
replaced him with a more pliable leader, the Shah of Iran (Mohammad Reza
23. RANELAGH, supra note 21, at 220.
24. C
HURCH COMMITTEE, supra note 4, at 31.
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490 JOURNAL OF NATIONAL SECURITY LAW & POLICY [Vol. 5:481
Shah Pahlavi).
25
While propaganda and political operations proved
sufficient to achieve a transfer of power in this instance, PM capabilities
were on stand-by. The next year they would be put to use, as the Agency
succeeded with its plan to frighten the democratically elected Arbenz
government out of office in Guatemala through a combination of
propaganda, political, economic, and small-scale paramilitary operations.
26
These operations in Iran and Guatemala encouraged the Eisenhower
and Kennedy administrations to rely further on the CIA to achieve
American foreign policy victories abroad. William J. Daugherty notes that
the outcomes in Iran and Guatemala “left in their wake an attitude of
hubris” inside the Agency and throughout the Eisenhower administration’s
national security apparatus.
27
Over the next two decades, the CIA
mobilized its paramilitary capabilities in several secret military attacks
against foreign governments, offering support (with mixed degrees of
success) for anti-communist insurgents in such places as the Ukraine,
Poland, Albania, Hungary, Indonesia, Oman, Malaysia, Iraq, the Dominican
Republic, Venezuela, Thailand, Haiti, Greece, Turkey, and Cuba.
A. Vietnam and the Decline of PM Ops
The Bay of Pigs fiasco in Cuba in 1961 created only a short-lived blip
of skepticism about the use of PM ops, before the Kennedy administration
turned again to the Agency for secret assistance in dealing with foreign
headaches.
28
Throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, the CIA and its
recruited mercenaries abroad waged a hidden World War Three against
communist forces, most notably in the jungles of Indochina. For example,
from 1962 to 1968, the CIA backed the Hmung tribesmen
29
in North Laos
during a covert war against the North Vietnamese puppets, the Communist
Pathet Lao.
30
This struggle kept the Pathet Lao preoccupied and away from
killing U.S. troops fighting next door in South Vietnam. The two sides
fought to a draw until the United States withdrew from Laos, at which point
the Pathet Lao decimated the Hmung. The Agency “exfiltrated” a few
fortunate Hmung fighters for resettlement in the United States. Throughout
the war in Vietnam, CIA/PM operatives aided the overt military effort. At
times, covert actions absorbed up to sixty percent of the Agency’s annual
budget, with much of the funding dedicated to paramilitary activities.
31
25. See KERMIT ROOSEVELT, COUNTERCOUP: THE STRUGGLE FOR THE CONTROL OF
IRAN (1981).
26. See D
AVID WISE & THOMAS ROSS, THE INVISIBLE GOVERNMENT (1964).
27. DAUGHERTY, supra note 1, at 140.
28. P
ETER WYDEN, BAY OF PIGS: THE UNTOLD STORY (1979).
29. “Hmung” is pronounced with a silent “h” and sometimes referred to as the Meo.
30. See C
OLBY & FORBATH, supra note 9, at 191-202.
31. Author’s interview with a senior CIA manager, Washington, D.C. (Feb. 18, 1980).
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A precipitous slide downward for PM ops occurred in the early 1970s,
induced by a souring on the war in Vietnam, along with government
spending cuts promulgated by the Nixon administration, tentative overtures
of détente with the Soviet Union, and a domestic spy scandal in 1975 that
revealed the CIA’s assassinations plots and its attacks against the
democratically elected government of Chile (the Allende regime). These
revelations, especially from the Church Committee, raised doubts among
the American people and their representatives in Congress about the
propriety and value of PM and other covert actions. Public reaction
brought this approach to American foreign policy “to a screeching halt,”
recalls a senior CIA official.
32
Covert action across the board fell into a temporary decline during the
Ford and the early Carter years, but began to turn upward again during
latter stages of the Carter administration – ironically, since President
Jimmy Carter had campaigned in 1976 against the use of “dirty tricks” by
the Agency. The chief catalyst for Carter’s turn-around was the Soviet
invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.
B. The Golden Age of PM Ops
Under President Ronald Reagan, the CIA pursued major paramilitary
operations in a number of nations around the world, but with special
emphasis in Nicaragua and Afghanistan – indeed, the second most
extensive use of paramilitary operations in the nation’s history, surpassing
its emphasis during the Korean War. The Nicaraguan involvement ended in
the Iran-Contra scandal in 1986-1987, while, in sharp contrast, the
Agency’s support of Mujahideen in Afghanistan during the Reagan
administration is considered one of the glory moments in the CIA’s
history.
33
The Agency provided advanced shoulder-held missiles to the
Mujahideen, which helped turn the tide of the war and send the Red Army
into retreat. Most recently, PM ops have reached a third high-point in
emphasis, this time in support of America’s overt wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan, along with operations directed against al Qaeda and other
terrorist organizations, and in support of various liberation movements in
North Africa. As displayed in Figure 1, most of the time America’s
emphasis on CIA/PM operations has been in support of U.S. overt military
intervention overseas. The Reagan administration, however, provided the
32. Author’s interview with a senior CIA officer, Washington, D.C. (Oct. 10, 1980).
33. On the Iran-Contra Affair, see SENATE SELECT COMMITTEE ON SECRET MILITARY
ASSISTANCE TO IRAN AND THE NICARAGUAN OPPOSITION and HOUSE SELECT COMMITTEE TO
INVESTIGATE COVERT ARMS TRANSACTIONS WITH IRAN, HEARINGS AND FINAL REPORT, S.
REP. NO. 100-216 and H.R. REP. NO. 100-433 (1987); on the PM ops in Afghanistan during
the 1980s, see C
OLL, supra note 4; and GEORGE CRILE, CHARLIE WILSON’S WAR (2003).
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most conspicuous exception to this rule: during the 1980s, the United States
avoided major overt warfare but PM ops enjoyed a period of maximum use
– the Golden Age of CIA paramilitary operations – against adversaries in
Nicaragua and Afghanistan.
John Deutch, one of President Clinton’s DCIs, observed in 1995 that
“since the public controversies of the eighties over Iran-Contra and
activities in Central America, we have greatly reduced our capability to
engage in covert action.”
34
With the election of George W. Bush, covert
action at first remained at a modest level – until the 9/11 attacks. Then,
with three wars being fought simultaneously by the United States (in Iraq
and Afghanistan, and against global terrorism), PM ops enjoyed a dramatic
resurgence, directed chiefly against targets in the Middle East and
Southwest Asia. This rejuvenation brought reliance on paramilitary
activities up to the levels recorded during the earlier historical high-points,
in Korea from 1950 to 1953, and during the Reagan administration’s covert
involvement in Nicaragua and Afghanistan. President Obama has
maintained the high level of emphasis on the PM ops established by the
second Bush administration, even escalating the frequency of Predator and
Reaper attacks against the Taliban and al Qaeda in Southwest Asia, as well
as authorizing covert action in support of rebels attempting to topple the
Libyan regime of Colonel Muammar Gadhafi.
35
IV. PM
OPS AND THE ANALYTIC SIDE OF INTELLIGENCE
The primary mission of the CIA and its companion agencies is not PM
activities or any other form of covert action; it is to acquire information
about world affairs (“collection,” in spy vernacular) and then to make sense
of it (“analysis”), so that decision-makers will have a better understanding
of the global situations they face.
36
Further, decision-makers hope to have
accurate, timely information and prescient analysis to enhance the chances
for PM successes when this tool of foreign policy is adopted. Paramilitary
operations, though, bump up against the same dilemma that confronts every
effort to predict how a foreign policy initiative will play out in the world:
namely, the inability of anyone – intelligence analyst, academic expert,
34. John Deutch, DCI, The Future of US Intelligence: Charting a Course for Change,
Address at the National Press Club (Sept. 12, 1995).
35. See, for example, Mark Mazzetti & Eric Schmitt, C.I.A. Intensifies Drone
Campaign Within Pakistan, N.Y.
TIMES, Sept. 28, 2010, at A1; and, with respect to Libya,
Mark Mazzetti & Eric Schmitt, Rebels Are Retreating: C.I.A. Spies Aiding Airstrikes and
Assessing Qaddafi’s Foes, N.Y.
TIMES, Mar. 31, 2011, at A1. Whether the covert action
authority included PM ops in support of the rebels remained unspecified in The Times
reporting.
36. L
OCH K. JOHNSON, NATIONAL SECURITY INTELLIGENCE (2011); and MARK M.
LOWENTHAL, INTELLIGENCE: FROM SECRETS TO POLICY (4th ed. 2009).
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think-tank specialist, or media commentator – to forecast the future with
confidence.
A. The Limits of Analysis
“[T]he CIA Directorate of Science and Technology has not yet
developed a crystal ball[,]” Senator Church observed in 1975, adding that
“ . . . [t]hough the CIA did give an exact warning of the date last year when
Turkey would invade Cyprus [in 1974], such precision will be rare. Simply
too many unpredictable factors enter into most situations. The intrinsic
element of caprice in the affairs of men and nations is the hair shirt of the
intelligence estimator.”
37
When it comes to predictions, intelligence scholar
Richard K. Betts stresses that “some incidence of failure [is] inevitable.”
He urges a higher “tolerance for disaster.”
38
The bottom line: accurate,
timely information about the activities of America’s adversaries is often
scarce or ambiguous, with much more “noise” than “signal” in the mix of
gathered intelligence. Further, the situation in question may be fluid and
rapidly changing. Advises former intelligence officer Arthur S. Hulnick:
“Policy makers may have to accept the fact that all intelligence estimators
can really hope to do is to give them guidelines or scenarios to support
policy discussion, and not the predictions they so badly want and expect
from intelligence.”
39
This realistic sense of limitations is distressing news for Presidents and
cabinet secretaries who seek clear-cut answers as to whether PM ops will
succeed, not just hunches and hypotheses. Nevertheless, such is the reality
of intelligence. It bears repeating, though, that having intelligence agencies
studying world events and conditions is, however limited the results, still
better than operating blindly. As a well regarded CIA analyst has put it:
“There is no substitute for the depth, imaginativeness, and ‘feel’ which
experienced top estimators can bring to these semi-unknowable
questions.”
40
37. 121 CONG. REC. S35786 (1975) (speech of Sen. Church).
38. Richard K. Betts, Analysis, War and Decision: Why Intelligence Failures Are
Inevitable, 31 W
ORLD POLITICS 61, 87, 89 (1978). See also RICHARD K. BETTS, ENEMIES OF
INTELLIGENCE: KNOWLEDGE & POWER IN AMERICAN NATIONAL SECURITY (2007).
39. Arthur S. Hulnick, Book Review, 14 C
ONFLICT QUARTERLY 72, 74 (1994)
(reviewing H
AROLD P. FORD, ESTIMATIVE INTELLIGENCE: THE PURPOSES AND PROBLEMS OF
NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE ESTIMATING (1993)).
40. H
AROLD P. FORD, ESTIMATIVE INTELLIGENCE: THE PURPOSES AND PROBLEMS OF
NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE ESTIMATING 208 (revised ed. 1993).
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B. Mysteries and Secrets
Those who are engaged in the planning of PM ops will sometimes
benefit from wise intelligence analysis, but no one can ensure the success of
secretive warfare in addressing America’s foreign policy challenges abroad.
An important distinction made by intelligence practitioners is the difference
between “mysteries” and “secrets.” Mysteries are subjects that a nation
would like to know about in the world, but that are difficult to fathom in
light of the limited capacity of human beings to anticipate the course of
history - say, the question of who might be the next leader of Germany or
Libya, or whether Pakistan will be able to survive the presence of extremist
Taliban insurgents and al Qaeda terrorists based inside its borders. In
contrast, secrets are more susceptible to discovery and comprehension,
although even they may be difficult to uncover, such as the number of
nuclear warheads in China, the identity of Russian agents who have
infiltrated NATO, or the efficiencies of North Korean rocket fuel.
With the right spy in the right place, with surveillance satellites in the
proper orbit, or with reconnaissance aircraft that can penetrate enemy
airspace, a nation might be able to unveil secrets; but, in the case of
mysteries, leaders must rely largely on the thoughtful assessments of
intelligence analysts about the contours of an answer, based on as much
empirical evidence as can be found in open sources or through espionage.
Prudent nations attempt to ferret out secrets, but they can only ponder
mysteries – including how well CIA foreign mercenaries, like the Hmung,
will carry out PM operations under conditions of great adversity.
C. Intentions and Capabilities
Vexing, too, is the analytic task of trying to probe the intentions of
foreign adversaries, not only their military capabilities. One can use
satellites and reconnaissance aircraft to ascertain the number of enemy
soldiers, tanks, and missiles in the field (“bean counting”); however, what
are the enemy’s plans for the use of these weapons – his intentions? Here
the use of human agents (“humint”) can trump the value of spy machines.
A well-placed agent (“asset”) might be in a position to ask a foreign leader:
“What will you do if the United States does X?” As former CIA officer
John Millis has written: “Humint can shake the intelligence apple from the
tree, where other intelligence collection techniques must wait for the apple
to fall.”
41
Successful PM ops may well depend on good analysis; but,
41. LOCH K. JOHNSON, THE THREAT ON THE HORIZON: AN INSIDE ACCOUNT OF
AMERICA’S SEARCH FOR SECURITY AFTER THE COLD WAR (2011) (citing John I. Millis, Why
Spy? 5 (Unpublished Working Paper, June 1995)). See also John I. Millis, Staff Director of
the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Address at the Central Intelligence
Retirees Association (Oct. 5, 1998).
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beforehand, good analysis requires reliable humint and technical collection
capabilities (“techint”).
D. Some Case Examples
A look at a few cases provides a sense of how well, or how poorly,
analysis has managed to inform significant CIA paramilitary activities over
the years.
1. Korea, 1950
Although Agency analysts reported on the mustering of North Korean
troops along the North-South border that belted the Korean Peninsula, they
did not predict the North Korean invasion into the South on June 25, 1950.
Nor did they anticipate, once war was under way, the duration of the
conflict or its eventual stalemate at the 38th parallel.
42
Whether the CIA
warned the U.S. military in Korea that China would intervene remains a
controversial matter. The American commander in the theater, the
imperious General Douglas MacArthur, claimed that the Agency had
reassured him that the Chinese would stay out of the war. In direct
contradiction, President Harry Truman said publicly in November 1950 that
the CIA had warned of a Chinese march into Korea across the frozen Yalu
River.
43
Either way, Agency PM operatives were largely on their own in
support of overt U.S. fighting during this period, with little reliable strategic
analysis from the CIA’s fledgling Directorate of Intelligence (DI, home of
the Agency’s analysts).
2. Guatemala, 1954
Analysts in this instance provided reliable insights into the plight faced
by the United Fruit Company, an American corporation, in Guatemala. As
predicted, it suffered confiscation in 1953 at the hands of a reform-minded,
democratically elected president, Jacobo Arbenz. Based on the Agency’s
analytic reports and his own hunches, Allen Dulles, the DCI at the time,
figured that a paramilitary operation had only about a 40 percent chance of
success.
44
Policymakers in the Eisenhower administration were filled with
optimism about the CIA’s capabilities, however, in the wake of the
Agency’s bloodless covert action in Iran (sans PM ops) that managed to
overthrow the prime minister in 1953, allowing British and U.S.
intelligence to install their own choice of leaders, the Shah. Hoping for a
42. RANELAGH, supra note 21, at 186-189.
43. Id. at 215 (relying on The New York Times reporting at the time).
44. Id. at 266.
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repeat performance, the Administration green-lit the Guatemala operation,
despite Dulles’s unfavorable betting odds. As it turned out, the regime
quickly cratered, as the CIA’s covert action staff spread effective
propaganda against the Arbenz regime, while its paramilitary branch fielded
a limited number of mercenaries to scare the President and killed a few
palace resisters.
45
In the Guatemala case, analysis took a backseat to the
reigning brio at the time that favored covert action as a means for ridding
the world of left-wing leaders insufficiently subservient to Western anti-
communist expectations. The United Fruit Company was no doubt pleased
at the outcome at the time – a result also sought by the U.S. Congress; but
the impoverished citizens of that nation had to endure repressive regimes
after the CIA intervention. As the prominent journalist Anthony Lewis
concludes, “The coup began a long national descent into savagery.”
46
3. Cuba, 1961
A lack of communication between PM operatives and DI analysts left
the former with an unrealistic impression of how easy a paramilitary
invasion of Cuba would be. The failed Bay of Pigs operation might never
have been launched in the first place, had President Kennedy or PM
managers been informed about the deep-seated reservations of Agency
analysts toward any attempts to oust Castro – so popular in Cuba – by a PM
invasion operation. Analysts could have been pivotal in this case, but they
were ignored.
47
4. Vietnam, 1964-1973
During the Vietnam War, CIA analysts warned the Johnson White
House about the limited opportunities for military success, overt or covert,
in Indochina. The Administration discounted these warnings, however,
because the President was unwilling to face the prospect of an American
military defeat.
48
As officials in the Administration shunted aside the
perceptive assessments of the CIA’s Vietnam analysts in favor of self-
delusion, PM operatives found themselves caught in the same downward
spiral of defeat that seized America’s overt forces.
45. WISE & ROSS, supra note 26.
46. Anthony Lewis, Costs of the C.I.A, N.Y.
TIMES, Apr. 25, 1997, at A27.
47. THOMAS POWERS, THE MAN WHO KEPT THE SECRETS: RICHARD HELMS AND THE
CIA 115-116 (1979); WYDEN, supra note 28, at 99.
48. Thomas L. Hughes, The Power To Speak and the Power To Listen: Reflections on
Bureaucratic Politics and a Recommendation on Information Flows, in S
ECRECY AND
FOREIGN POLICY, 28-37 (Thomas Franck & Edward Weisband eds., 1974); FORD, supra note
40.
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5. Iran-Contra, 1980s
William J. Casey, DCI for the Reagan administration, cut out Agency
analysts from the planning for the highly secretive, extra-governmental
Contra operations in Nicaragua. The controversial PM ops went forward
without the participation of analysts in the CIA’s DI, resulting in the worst
paramilitary disgrace in the Agency’s history.
49
6. Afghanistan, 1980s
This PM op was successful, over the short term at least; it helped drive
the Soviet Red Army out of Afghanistan. Over the long term, however, it
led to the rise of the Taliban regime, which gave safe haven to al Qaeda at
the time of its 9/11 attacks against the United States. The PM operation
against the Red Army was driven chiefly by a senior lawmaker in the
House of Representatives, Charlie Wilson, Democrat of Texas, in cahoots
with a Special Operations officer who believed it would be possible to drive
the Soviet Army out of Afghanistan if only the CIA would vigorously assist
the Mujahideen with paramilitary support. Wilson managed to convince
DCI Casey and the Reagan White House to back a covert war against the
Soviets in Afghanistan, as skeptical analysts from the DI stood by largely
on the sidelines.
50
7. Afghanistan, 2001-2002
Two decades later, a PM endeavor to rout the Taliban regime in
Afghanistan and capture or kill al Qaeda operatives worked effectively. It
was based in part on analyses prepared by the DI and military intelligence
units that indicated how a combination of SOG operatives, DoD Special
Forces, overt B-52 air support, and the recruitment of indigenous Northern
Alliance anti-Taliban forces could result in a routing of the Taliban
regime.
51
Here is a model of cooperation between analysts and operatives
that led to an excellent outcome – that is, until the second Bush
administration shifted its attention to war-making against Iraq rather than
concentrating on closing the noose around fleeing Taliban and al Qaeda
warriors in Afghanistan.
49. WILLIAM S. COHEN & GEORGE J. MITCHELL, MEN OF ZEAL: A CANDID INSIDE
STORY OF THE IRAN-CONTRA HEARINGS (1988); HEARINGS AND FINAL REPORT, S. REPT. NO.
100-216 and H. R. REPT. NO. 100-433, supra note 33.
50. C
OLL, supra note 4; CRILE, supra note 33.
51. B
OB WOODWARD, BUSH AT WAR (2002).
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8. Iraq, 2003
Paramilitary support for America’s overt invasion of Iraq in 2003
helped to bring about a quick battlefield victory for U.S. overt forces, as
anticipated by CIA analysts. The Agency’s analysts failed, however, to
assess correctly how difficult the consolidation of U.S. control in Baghdad
would be after the initial success – significantly underestimating the long-
lasting opposition of insurgents, whom the Agency’s PM officers and assets
had to fight in tandem with U.S. uniformed soldiers for the next seven
years.
52
Even more significantly, most analysts in the intelligence community –
with the exceptions of some in Air Force Intelligence, in the State
Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), and in the
intelligence unit inside the Energy Department – wrongly accepted the
hypothesis about the existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction
(WMD). This acceptance contributed to the decision of the second Bush
administration to engage in overt and covert warfare against the Saddam
Hussein regime in March of 2003.
53
Thirteen of the sixteen U.S.
intelligence agencies went along with the notion, for example, that
aluminum tubing spotted in Iraq was for the construction of a nuclear
centrifuge, rather than for the launching of short-range conventional
rockets, and that mobile vans were biological-weapons labs, rather than (as
it turned out) merely sites where hydrogen was produced for inflating
weather balloons.
54
The Bush administration may well have unleashed the
Pentagon and CIA Special Operations officers against Iraq anyway, for a
number of reasons beyond the scope of this essay, but the faulty analysis
provided the White House with a compelling portrait of consensus among
intelligence analysts that Saddam Hussein was in hot pursuit of a WMD
program.
55
The tragedy of these analytic errors is that they fueled the Bush
administration’s rush to war in Iraq, diverting America’s attention from the
52. ROBERT JERVIS, WHY INTELLIGENCE FAILS: LESSONS FROM THE IRANIAN REVOLUTION
AND THE
IRAQ WAR (2010); BOB WOODWARD, PLAN OF ATTACK (2004).
53. This is not to say that intelligence analysts alone got it wrong in Iraq; some
academics, think tank experts, and media commentators also assumed the existence of a
WMD program. Still, the fact that two of America’s top allies, Germany and France,
opposed a Western invasion until more information could be gathered about the WMD threat
in Iraq should have given analysts – inside and outside the government – greater pause.
54. See J
ERVIS, supra note 52; and LOCH K. JOHNSON, THE THREAT ON THE HORIZON:
AN INSIDE ACCOUNT OF AMERICA’S SEARCH FOR SECURITY AFTER THE COLD WAR (2011).
55. As analyst-in-chief for the intelligence community at the time, DCI George Tenet
could have done much more to emphasize to the President the importance of considering the
viewpoints of the dissenting agencies – especially the Energy Department’s intelligence unit,
with its deep expertise on matters related to the construction of nuclear weapons. The
Executive Summary of the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraqi WMDs failed
even to mention the dissent.
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mission of tracking down the al Qaeda perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks
against the United States.
9. Assassination Plots, 1959-2011
The CIA’s managers banned analysts from deliberations on the
assassination plots hatched during the Eisenhower and Kennedy
administrations. Later, during the war in Vietnam, DI estimates that
underlay the Phoenix Program tended to inflate the significance of
eliminating suspected VC leaders and sympathizers. The Program killed
thousands of VC, but the war was still lost. In the case of al Qaeda,
analysis pointed to opportunities where bin Laden might be killed; but, in
the attempts that took place before the May 2011 success, the estimates
were either wrong about his location, as in the Khost miss, or the plans for
assassination were rejected by either President Clinton or U.S. field
commanders under Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush on ethical
grounds (a dimension to the plots largely ignored by analysts on the CIA’s
bin Laden Unit in their eagerness to eliminate the al Qaeda chief). As for
the UAV missile attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan in recent years,
collectors and analysts have sometimes wrongly identified targets, leading
to the death of noncombatants and a substantial setback in U.S. relations
within the region. Improvements in collection and analysis, however, have
reportedly diminished the number of targeting mistakes in 2011.
56
The assassination attempts against bin Laden illustrate the complex
relationship between intelligence analysis, on the one hand, and
paramilitary operations, on the other hand. In the murky world of
counterterrorism where accurate, actionable intelligence is rare, analysts are
often divided over what assessments they should pass on to decision-
makers. For example, in the lead-up to a 2007 plan aimed at killing bin
Laden during an uncommon gathering of al Qaeda leaders in Tora Bora,
Afghanistan, CIA and other U.S. intelligence analysts (as well as the
Afghanistan intelligence service allied with the United States) were of two
minds about whether bin Laden would actually attend the meeting. While
the Pentagon readied military force to wipe out the terrorists (including
plans for the use of widespread “carpet bombing” of the meeting site by B-
2 Stealth aircraft), intelligence analysts continued to debate the likelihood
of a bin Laden presence. Some believed he would be too cautious to attend.
Others concluded that he would take the chance, since Tora Bora was close
to his suspected place of refuge somewhere in the mountains just across the
border in Pakistan, and, moreover, here was an irresistible opportunity for
bin Laden to rally al Qaeda lieutenants for a new wave of suicide attacks
56. Mazzetti & Schmitt, C.I.A. Intensifies Drone Campaign, supra note 35.
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against the West. As the analysts continued to argue about the possibilities,
Admiral William J. Fallon decided to call off the mission out of concern for
the risks it posed to civilians in the target area.
57
The decision to attempt another assassination attempt against bin Laden
in 2011 was replete with uncertainty as well. President Obama recalls that
the intelligence regarding whether or not the al Qaeda leader was really in
the Abbottabad compound – though impressive in many details (an
“incredible job,” said the President) – nonetheless remained in the category
of “circumstantial evidence.” The President added that on the eve of the
commando raid, the intelligence was, at best, “still a 55/45 situation” in
favor of finding bin Laden in the compound, and his National Security
Adviser provided an even lower figure, saying that the intelligence was in
the realm of “50/50.”
58
The intelligence analysis, based on human and
technical sources, proved highly accurate and the mission resulted in
America’s greatest success in the struggle against global terrorism since the
9/11 attacks.
A summary of these important cases is presented in Figure 2. The
pattern suggests that, in the absence of participation by analysts, PM
operations have been prone to failure, as shown by the outcomes in Cuba,
the Contra operations in Nicaragua, and the assassination plots of the 1960s
– the three most conspicuous PM failures in the CIA’s history. Failure
occurred, too, when analysts were allowed to weigh in, but their
assessments were dismissed, as with the Vietnam War experience. Failure
also occurred, further, when analytic guidance was provided and accepted,
as in the case of the Agency’s optimistic estimate about the lack of a lasting
insurgency opposition to American uniformed forces after the initial Iraqi
invasion in 2003.
57. See Schmitt & Shanker, supra note 15.
58. See 60 Minutes, supra note 16; Meet the Press, supra note 16. Defense Secretary
Robert M. Gates, a former Intelligence Director, offered similar testimony on 60 Minutes on
May 15, 2011.
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F
IGURE 2: ROLE OF INTELLIGENCE ANALYSIS AND PM OPERATIONAL
FAILURE OR SUCCESS, CASE EXAMPLES (1947-2011)
Provided Guidance Provided
No, or Faulty, Guidance
Operational
Successes
Guatemala, 1954 (guidance
rejected); Afghanistan, 1980s
(guidance rejected); Afghanistan,
2001-2002 (guidance accepted);
Iraq invasion plans, 2003
(guidance accepted); UAV
attacks in SW Asia, 2010 (as
guidance improved, it was
accepted); successful
assassination of bin Laden, 2011
(guidance accepted, though with
considerable analytic uncertainty
still present)
Korea, 1950 (no guidance)
Operational
Failures
Vietnam, 1965-1973 (guidance
rejected); Iraq, 2003: WMDs, as
well as post-invasion
Invasion insurgents (guidance
accepted)
Cuba, 1961 (no guidance);
Contras, 1980s (no
guidance); assassination
plots, Castro/Lumumba (no
guidance); Phoenix (faulty
guidance); early
assassination plots, bin
Laden (faculty guidance);
UAV attacks in SW Asia,
2001-2009, a case of uneven
guidance accepted with some
operational successes and
some failures – with the
failures (civilian casualties)
especially harmful in terms
of local opinion regarding
America’s interventions
On the success side, sometimes PM ops have worked out well despite
skepticism from analysts. For example, the CIA’s Special Operations
managers rejected cautionary analytic estimates and, nonetheless, PM
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operations succeeded in Guatemala in 1954 and in Afghanistan in the
1980s. Some degree of success came in the Korean War – the communists
were eventually stopped in their attempt to take over the entire Korean
Peninsula – without the benefit of analytic warnings about the invasion
intentions of the North Koreans in 1950. On other occasions, analysts and
PM operatives have been aligned. Analysis predicted battlefield success,
and success came, in Afghanistan during 2001-2002, as well as with the
initial Iraqi invasion in 2003 – although analysts were disastrously wrong in
suspecting the presence of WMD in Iraq. Further, in the waning months of
2010 and into 2011, analysts have aided PM ops with more accurate UAV
targeting of Islamic extremists in Southwest Asia. And, with the
pinpointing of bin Laden’s location at the Abbottabad compound in 2011,
intelligence collectors and analysts, along with the Navy Seals team that
followed their guidance, enjoyed a remarkable success.
The outcomes in this brief survey of key PM cases are mixed;
nevertheless, as an overall conclusion, one can say that the incidence of
paramilitary failures might well have been lessened with a closer working
relationship between intelligence analysts and operatives. The chronic
dismissal of analysts from PM deliberations over the decades is cause for
concern, even if analysts sometimes produce flawed estimates. Recently,
with respect to U.S. intervention in Libya in 2011, the Obama
Administration reportedly authorized covert action in support of rebel
actions against Colonel Gadhafi, even though CIA analysts had little
information about the composition and motivation of the rebellious
factions.
59
V.
CO-LOCATION AND OTHER REFORMS
Within the human limitations faced by collectors and analysts,
intelligence managers have attempted to make some improvements in the
capacity of analysis to inform paramilitary planning. Reformers have long
believed that analysis could be enhanced by having a closer working
relationship between the Agency’s PM and other CA operatives (the doers)
and its analysts (the thinkers). The operatives enjoy “ground truth” about
foreign nations, since that is where they serve under official or non-official
cover. This gives them a certain inside knowledge, from cafe society to the
nuances of local slang. The analysts are experts about foreign countries,
too, and they also travel abroad, albeit for shorter periods of time. Their
primary knowledge comes from study; they typically have Ph.D.s that
reflect advanced book-learning and research on international affairs.
Though starkly different in their career paths and daily experiences, both
groups bring something to the table when a specific nation or region is the
59. Mazzetti & Schmitt, Rebels Are Retreating, supra note 35.
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focus of U.S. paramilitary attention. Yet, traditionally, operatives on
rotation back to Washington and in-house analysts have had offices in
separate locations at Agency headquarters, behind doors with combination
locks that bar entry to “outsiders.” This internal “stovepiping” at the CIA
can have unfortunate consequences.
For example, in the planning that went into the Bay of Pigs invasion,
PM operatives were enthusiastic and confident about the chances for
overthrowing Castro; the people of Cuba, they calculated, would rise up
against the dictator once the Agency landed its paramilitary force on the
island beaches. In another part of the CIA, however, analysts with
expertise on Cuba understood that an uprising was highly unlikely, given
Castro’s tight grip on the nation and his widespread popularity. As the
analysts spelled out in a Special National Intelligence Estimate (SNIE) in
December of 1960, the people of Cuba venerated their leader and would
fight an invasion force door-to-door in Havana and across the island. The
PM managers at the CIA could have benefitted significantly from rubbing
shoulders with their colleagues in the DI, receiving a stronger dose of
realism in their paramilitary planning – or perhaps ending it altogether – but
they were not made aware of the DI’s views. Nor was President Kennedy
made aware of the DI’s views on the remote chances for a PM success in
Cuba. The head of the Bay of Pigs planning, Richard M. Bissell, Jr., had
some corridor knowledge of the skeptical SNIE, but did not take it
seriously, and he never brought its findings to the attention of the White
House. Bissell didn’t want naysayers interrupting his plans to rid President
Kennedy of the Castro irritant, nor did he want obstacles in the way of his
own personal career ambitions to become Director of Central Intelligence
by demonstrating to the President his skill in toppling the Cuban dictator.
60
Yet, the end result of the operation was to ruin Bissell’s meteoric
intelligence career.
Aware of the physical and cultural distance between CA operatives and
intelligence analysts, John Deutch took steps as DCI in 1995 to improve
their cooperation at Agency headquarters. He moved several officers from
both camps into common quarters, where they sat cheek by jowl with one
another. This experience in “co-location” has been uneven. Sometimes the
doers and the thinkers have displayed personality clashes that get in the way
of sharing information. On other occasions, however, the experiment has
led to the achievement of its goal of blending in-country experience with
library learning to provide intelligence planners and policymakers with
deeper insights into world affairs. In 2009, CIA Director Leon Panetta
announced that there would be “more co-location of analysts and operators
60. See POWERS, supra note 47, at 111, 115-116; ARTHUR M. SCHLESINGER, JR.,
ROBERT KENNEDY AND HIS TIMES 453 (1978); and, generally, WYDEN, supra note 28.
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504 JOURNAL OF NATIONAL SECURITY LAW & POLICY [Vol. 5:481
at home and abroad” in the coming years, noting further that greater fusion
of the two groups “has been key to victories in counterterrorism and
counterproliferation.”
61
In 2010, Panetta unveiled the formation of a CIA
Counterproliferation Center to combat the global spread of WMD. In the
Center, which would report to Panetta as well as to a director for the
National Counterproliferation Center, operatives and analysts would work
side by side in the spirit of co-location.
62
As a further means for improving intelligence analysis and increasing
its usefulness for guiding PM and other covert actions, a wide range of
reforms have been introduced at the Agency in recent years. Among them:
taking steps to involve analysts throughout the intelligence community in
PM planning, not just DI analysts, and employing “blue team” and “red
team” drills designed to provide outside critiques of assessments produced
by analysts inside the intelligence community.
63
Intelligence managers are
also aggressively seeking to improve foreign language skills throughout the
sixteen agencies, to develop more spy rings in the Middle East and
Southwest Asia, and to place more U.S. intelligence officers under non-
official cover outside the U.S. embassies overseas in order to gain a better
understanding of local cultures and an improved chance of recruiting agents
who can infiltrate al Qaeda and other key targets. Most important, though,
will be the attitudes of PM managers toward the value of including analysts
in their planning stage: a willingness to consult with top intelligence experts
on foreign nations and organizations before the launching of a paramilitary
operation.
C
ONCLUSION
Frequently, PM activities have moved forward without much, or any,
guidance from intelligence analysts. These operations have sometimes
succeeded nonetheless, as in Afghanistan during the 1980s, and sometimes
they have failed, as with the Bay of Pigs. On other occasions, analysis has
informed PM activities. Again, at times the result has been some degree of
short-term success, as with Guatemala in 1954, or failure, as in Vietnam,
when policymakers rejected the DI’s guidance. Now and then, analysts and
operatives have worked closely together in the spirit of co-location to
achieve a smooth blend of thoughtful guidance that has led to stunningly
effective results on the battlefield. Afghanistan in 2001-2002 is the classic
illustration. Co-location seems to be a promising concept. This experiment
61. Quoted by Greg Miller, CIA Is Moving More Analysts from Langley to Global
Posts, W
ASH. POST, Apr. 30, 2010, at A18.
62. Kimberly Dozier, CIA Forms New Center To Combat Nukes, WMDs, A
SSOCIATED
PRESS REPORT, Aug. 18, 2010.
63. See A
NALYZING INTELLIGENCE: ORIGINS, OBSTACLES, AND INNOVATIONS (Roger Z.
George & James B. Bruce eds., 2008).
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is likely to continue, leading to a more frequent melding of mind and
muscle whenever the United States turns to the use of PM operations.
Whether the result is success or failure, one thing is certain about PM
operations: they come to light at some point. Hoping to avoid potential
embarrassments for the United States caused by the disclosure of
paramilitary PM, William H. Webster crafted a set of questions that he
posed to SOG and other CA managers throughout his tenure as DCI from
1987 to 1991. The objective was to weed out, in advance, activities likely
to discredit the United States if revealed. Webster’s litmus test for planned
PM operations included these questions:
• Is the operation legal (with respect to U.S. law, not necessarily
international law)?
• Is the operation consistent with American foreign policy, and, if
not, why not?
• Is the operation consistent with American values?
• If the operation becomes public, will it make sense to the
American people?
64
Within these questions are embedded principles that ought to be in the
forefront of their thinking as Presidents, national security advisers, and
intelligence managers contemplate the adoption of paramilitary operations.
64. Staff interview with Judge William H. Webster, former DCI and FBI Director, led
by General Counsel John B. Bellinger III, Aspin-Brown Commission, in Washington, DC
(May 10, 1995). Similarly, former national security adviser McGeorge Bundy has said that
“if you can’t defend a covert action if it goes public, you’d better not do it at all – because it
will go public usually within a fairly short time span.” Interview with McGeorge Bundy,
Athens, Georgia (Oct. 6, 1987). Former DCI Stansfield Turner has also written: “There is
one overall test of the ethics of human intelligence activities. That is whether those
approving them feel they could defend their decisions before the public if their actions
became public.” S
TANSFIELD TURNER, SECRECY AND DEMOCRACY: THE CIA IN TRANSITION
178 (1985).
