The oversight system is, of necessity, adversarial but does not have to be hostile. Any system that divides power is bound to have debates and friction. But they do not have to be played out in an antagonistic manner. When antagonism arises, it is more often the effect of personalities, issues, and partisanship than the oversight system per se.
KEY TERMS
appropriated but not authorized
appropriation
authorization
executive order
Gang of 4
Gang of 8
global finding
hollow budget authority
no year appropriations
oversight
supplemental appropriations
U.S. person
FURTHER READINGS
The expansion of the role of Congress as an overseer has been matched by an increasing number of books and articles on the topic. This chapter also discusses executive oversight issues, which are covered in the first entry.
Adler, Emanuel. “Executive Command and Control in Foreign Policy: The CIA’s Covert Activities.”
Orbis
23 (1959): 671-696.
Barrett, David M.
The CIA and Congress: The Untold Story from Truman to Kennedy.
Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2005.
Best, Richard A., Jr.
Intelligence Estimates: How Useful to Congress?
Congressional Research Service Report RL33733. Washington, D.C., November 21, 2006.
_____.
Intelligence Issues for Congress.
Congressional Research Service Report RL33539. Washington, D.C., October 16, 2007 [updated periodically].
Cohen, William S. “Congressional Oversight of Covert Actions.”
International Journal of Intelligence
and Counterintelligence
2 (summer 1988): 155-162.
Colton, David Everett. “Speaking Truth to Power: Intelligence Oversight in an Imperfect World.”
University of Pennsylvania Law Review
137 (December 1988): 571-613.
Conner, William E.
Intelligence Oversight: The Controversy behind the FY1991 Intelligence Authorization
Act. McLean, Va.: Consortium for the Study of Intelligence, 1993.
Currie, James. “Iran-Contra and Congressional Oversight of the CIA.”
International Journal of Intelligenre and Counterintelligence
11 (summer 1998): 185-210.
Davis, Christopher M.
9/11 Commission Recommendations: Joint Committee on Atomic Energy—Model for Congressional Oversight?
Washington
,
D.C.: Congressional Research Service, August 20, 2004.
Gumina Paul. “Title VI of the Intelligence Authorization Act: Fiscal Year 1991: Effective Covert Action Reform or ‘Business as Usual’?”
Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly
(fall 1992):149-205.
Jackson, William R. “Congressional Oversight of Intelligence: Search for a Framework.”
Intelligence and National Security
5 (July 1990): 113-147.
Johnson, Loch K. “Controlling the Quiet Option.”
Foreign Policy
39 (summer 1980):143-153.
_______ “The CIA and the Question of Accountability.”
Intelligence and National Security
12 (January 1997): 178-200.
_______. “The U.S. Congress and the CIA: Monitoring the Dark Side of Government.”
Legislative Studies Quarterly
5 (November 1980): 477-499.
Latimer, Thomas K. “United States Intelligence Activities: The Role of Congress.” In
Intelligence Policy and National Security.
Ed. Robert L. Pfaltzgraff Jr. and others. Hamden. Conn.: Archon Books, 1981.
Pickett, George. “Congress, the Budget, and Intelligence.” In
Intelligence: Policy and Process.
Ed. Alfred C. Maurer and others. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press. 1985.
Simmons, Robert Ruhl. “Intelligence Performance in Reagan’s First Term: A Good Record or Bad?”
International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence
4 (spring 1990): 1-22.
Smist, Frank J., Jr.
Congress Oversecs
the
United States Intelligence Community.
2d ed. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1994.
Snider, L. Britt.
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of Intelligence.
Washington. D.C.: CIA, Center for the Study of Intelligence, 1997.
Treverton, Gregory F. “Intelligence: Welcome to the American Government.” In A
Question of Balance:
The
president,
the
Congress, and Foreign Policy.
Ed. Thomas E. Mann. Washington. D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1990.
U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
Legislative Oversight of Intelligence Activities: The U.S. Experience.
103d Cong., 2d sess., 1994.
CHAPTER 11
THE INTELLIGENCE AGENDA: NATION STATES
T
O SOME EXTENT a distinction between nation state targets and transnational issues is artificial: nation states are not of interest per se. They are of interest because of their activities. The nature of our interest in them varies with the state of our relations with them and by the nature of their activities. For example, the U.S. intelligence community is interested in Russia’s political system, its military forces, its energy policy, and so forth because it is an important international player, a rival, and a potential threat. In the case of Britain the United States does not have concerns about their political system, although we are deeply interested in who is prime minister and the policies he or she will follow. The United States is interested in the British military as an allied force rather than as a rival. There are also several small and remote countries in which the United States would have few, if any, intelligence interests at all.
Conversely, the transnational issues about which the United States is most concerned do not exist in the abstract. Weapons of mass destruction (WMD), terrorism, crime, narco-trafficking, and the like all occur in nation states—either with or without the cooperation of the host government. Even when dealing with nongovernmental actors, such as terrorist cells, they have to exist someplace. James Clapper, the undersecretary of defense for intelligence (2007- ) and the former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) put it succinctly when he said, “Intelligence is not just about things and not just about places. It is about things in places.” This is why the National Intelligence Priorities Framework (NIPF) that has been in place since 2003 was seen as such a breakthrough: It allowed policy makers and intelligence officers to identify the countries of interest and the activities in that country that were of interest and then give them relative levels of importance as intelligence priorities.
However, it is possible to make a distinction between the activities of interest that any state might undertake and those that only a few states would pursue. This rubric tends to divide into a set of “normal” state activities (political, economic, social, diplomatic, military) and activities that will tend to be covert and will often fall into the transnational category (WMD, support for terrorism). Even though there will be many aspects of the so-called normal activities that will be secret—especially plans and intentions or military research and development—the demands of these issues on the intelligence community will be very different from those activities that are more likely to be covert. With these distinctions in mind, in this chapter we examine current intelligence issues observing this separation: normal state-based activities versus transnational issues, keeping in mind that the two sets are not truly separable.
THE PRIMACY OF THE SOVIET ISSUE
To shed additional light on the distinctions, it is instructive to understand how the United States addressed the Soviet Union as an intelligence issue. First, the level of U.S. intelligence concerns about the Soviet Union were broad and far-reaching, embracing virtually every type of activity. Second, many of the forms and processes used to track activities in the Soviet Union continue to influence U.S. intelligence almost two decades after the end of the cold war.
A series of related Soviet issues—including the Soviet Union, Soviet satellites and developing-world allies, and communist parties in some Western nations—dominated U.S. national security and foreign policy from 1946 to 1991, when the Soviet Union ceased to exist. During this period, the requirements for intelligence on the Soviet issue were never in doubt. Although other issues might occasionally and temporarily supplant the Soviet issue, it remained in the top tier of matters of interest to the policy and intelligence communities.
A great clarity and continuity also existed in the policy that intelligence was expected to support. Inspired by the career diplomat George Kennan, the United States developed a policy of containment vis-à-vis the Soviet Union. Kennan argued, first in his famous “long telegram” from Moscow in February 1946 and then in his “Mr. X” article in the July 1947 issue of
Foreign Affairs,
that the Soviet Union was, by its nature, an expansionist state. If the Soviet Union were contained within its own geographic limits, it would eventually be forced to deal with the inconsistencies and shortcomings of its communist system and either change or collapse. Kennan viewed the struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union as largely political and economic. But others responsible for shaping policy, particularly Paul Nitze, the director of policy planning at the State Department (1950-1953), who played a key role in drafting the planning guidance document NSC-68 in early 1950, gave containment a more military dimension, as did the outbreak of the Korean War in June of that year. Still, this was a profound and extremely rare moment in any nation’s national security policy, when a largely intellectual argument that could not be tested or proven to any great degree became the accepted basis for the future development of national security. It also was important as a policy model after the cold war when, as noted, successive administrations sought to find a similarly coherent intellectual means of encapsulating their foreign policy.
THE INTELLIGENCE IMPLICATIONS OF CONTAINMENT. The containment policy included a role for intelligence analysis and operations. Analytically, the intelligence community was expected to know or be able to estimate
• Likely areas of Soviet probes or expansion
• Imminence and strength of the probes
• Overall Soviet strength—military, economic, and social
• Likely Soviet allies or surrogates
• Strength of U.S. allies or surrogates
• Signs of relative Soviet strength or weakness (signs of the contradictions predicted by Kennan)
This is a long list and an ironic reflection of Sherman Kent’s desire to know everything. In terms of intelligence operations, containment required
• An ability to collect intelligence on the Soviet target to enable analysts to fulfill their requirements
• An operational ability to help blunt Soviet expansion
• An ability to weaken the Soviet Union and its allies and surrogates
• A counterintelligence capability to deal with Soviet espionage and possible subversion
• A wealth of information on Soviet military capabilities both to support the development of appropriate U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) defenses and to help target Soviet forces and facilities in the event of war
Neither set of tasks, analytical nor operational, arrived full-blown with the acceptance of the containment policy. Both sets evolved over time as the United States dealt with the Soviet problem.
THE DIFFICULTY OF THE SOVIET TARGET. The Soviet Union was a uniquely difficult target for intelligence collection and analysis. First, it was a very large nation (spread over two continents) with a remote interior, providing the Soviet leaders with a vast amount of space in which to hide capabilities they preferred to keep secret. Moreover, large portions of the Soviet Union were subject to adverse weather conditions that impeded overhead collection. Second, it was a closed and heavily policed society, which meant that large areas of the Soviet state—even in its more developed regions—were inaccessible to foreigners, even to diplomats legally posted to the Soviet Union.