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11. Enhancing Congressional Intelligence Committee Effectiveness

Author:
Carrie Cordero
Publication Date:
08-2019
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for a New American Security
Abstract:
In fall 2018, the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) initiated a foundation-funded project focused on bolstering bipartisan national security decision-making in Congress. As part of that effort, CNAS is focusing on challenges in conducting intelligence oversight. The project includes written reports, roundtables, engagement with congressional members and staff, and additional outreach bringing attention to the importance of bolstering meaningful and effective congressional intelligence oversight. The first paper in this series, Intelligence Oversight Priorities for the 116th Congress, was published in April 2019. This is the second paper in the series and intends to reboot the policy dialogue regarding steps the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) can take to enhance their effectiveness at overseeing the intelligence community’s activities and bolster public confidence in both their own activities and those of the intelligence community.1 The goal of this working paper is to provide a fresh assessment regarding whether the committees need significant structural reforms, assess which proposals previously generated are politically feasible, and identify areas for future research.
Topic:
Government, Intelligence, and Reform
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

12. A National Machine Intelligence Strategy for the United States

Author:
William A Carter and William Crumpler
Publication Date:
03-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
Machine Intelligence (MI) is poised to create profound changes to our lives, jobs, and economy. In breadth and scale of impact, MI will rival or exceed past technological revolutions while potentially altering centers of economic power and regional and global influence. Many countries are already making significant policy decisions to prepare for the impact of MI and are investing in MI research and development to outpace allies and competitors across economic and national security dimensions. If the United States wants to avoid being left behind in the “MI Revolution” we need to develop a coordinated national strategy that covers research and development, industrial specialization, and the social impacts of these technologies. This report offers a framework for determining which guiding principles should shape U.S. policy in response to the growth of MI applications in defense, education, health care, and the economy. The authors offer recommendations for how the United States can maintain a competitive advantage in MI and navigate the risks and challenges associated with it.
Topic:
Intelligence, Science and Technology, Artificial Intelligence, and Industrialization
Political Geography:
United States and North America

13. The Future of Strategic Intelligence

Author:
Robert Hutchings
Publication Date:
07-2018
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Fletcher Security Review
Institution:
The Fletcher School, Tufts University
Abstract:
We begin with a puzzle: the need for strategic analysis is more important than ever in this period of great flux and uncertainty, but the disdain for analysis of any kind has never been greater than under the administration of President Donald J. Trump. The very premise that leaders need reasonably objective intelligence analysis to inform their policy decisions – a premise that has guided every U.S. administration since World War II – is under assault. If we are to rebuild our capacity for strategic thinking, we need to go back to the beginning. When President Harry Truman created the strategic intelligence function at the end of World War II, he understood that the United States had been thrust into a global role for which it was not prepared. The world was simply too complex, and American interests too extensive, to operate on the basis of impulse or ad hoc decision making. Moreover, when Truman issued National Intelligence Authority No. 5 on July 8, 1946, instructing the Director of Central Intelligence to “accomplish the evaluation and dissemination of strategic intelligence,” he deliberately set up this function outside of the White House, the Department of State, and the military, so that strategic analysis would be kept at a critical distance from policy making. Yet Truman, like every president since, was ambivalent about the role of strategic intelligence and the degree of autonomy it ought to have. ​ The story actually begins earlier, when President Franklin Roosevelt, in a military order of June 13, 1942, formally established the Office of Strategic Services with William J. “Wild Bill” Donovan at its head, and directed it to “collect and analyze... strategic information” and to “plan and operate special services.” The cloak- and-dagger wartime operations of the OSS are the stuff of legend, as are the notable figures recruited to serve, including the poets Archibald MacLeish and Stephen Vincent Benét, the banker Paul Mellon, the psychologist Carl Jung, the philosopher Herbert Marcuse, the anthropologist Margaret Mead, and the movie director John Ford. Less well known is its role in strategic intelligence analysis through its Research and Analysis (R&A) Branch, led initially by James Phinney Baxter III, president of Williams College, and after 1943 by Harvard historian William Langer, identified in war correspondence as “OSS 117.”
Topic:
Security, Intelligence, History, and Military Strategy
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

14. The Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster James Jesus Angleton by Jefferson Morley

Author:
Jefferson Morley and Brian O'Keefe
Publication Date:
07-2018
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Fletcher Security Review
Institution:
The Fletcher School, Tufts University
Abstract:
In his new biography The Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster James Jesus Angleton, veteran journalist Jefferson Morley probes an enigma others have chronicled but none satisfactorily explained. Angleton, “a founding father of U.S. mass-surveillance policies,” joined the Agency’s predecessor, the OSS, in its early years and reigned as chief of its Counterintelligence Staff for an extraordinary two decades until his abrupt retirement in 1974.[1] His personal mystique and complicated tenure have given rise to a small but formidable contingent of biographies, novels, and film characters. What Morley adds to the intrigue is a refusal to be seduced by the beguiling charm of his subject, preferring instead to deliberately scrutinize Angleton’s expansive power, ideological intransigence, and lasting influence. ​ Morley’s timeline spans Angleton’s career, though he peppers his narrative with nods to formative experiences at Yale, post-CIA pursuits, and family affairs. The story unfolds chronologically through four tersely titled and equally distributed sections (Poetry, Power, Impunity, Legend), each of which is further demarcated under a dozen or more pithy subheadings (Mole, Oswald, Kim...). Readers might experience the rhythm as too serial for the genre, and while the chronological method is helpful in charting Angleton’s ascent, Morley rarely lingers long enough with a scene to breathe life into its cast. Save a few animated vignettes, the reader is less a participant in the sensory and internal worlds of Morley’s subjects than a recipient of his detective digging, sundry sources, and interpretive reflections... ​
Topic:
Security, Intelligence, History, Book Review, and Surveillance
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

15. Congress Should Lay Out the Welcome Mat for Whistleblowers

Author:
Johmn Milko and Mieke Eoyang
Publication Date:
01-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Third Way
Abstract:
Like any large organization, the United States government is susceptible to waste, fraud, and abuse. In order to help combat these inefficiencies, Congress has instituted a series of whistleblower protection laws to encourage employees to report such instances. However, these laws do not offer blanket protection to any and all whistleblowers. Legal protections for intelligence community (IC) whistleblowers are limited. But broadly, Congress benefits when whistleblowers are protected. The Whistleblower Protection Act (WPA), signed into law in 1989, protects government employees against retaliation for protected disclosures to specified entities. These disclosures include “the release of information that the employee reasonably believes demonstrates illegality, gross mismanagement, gross waste, abuse of authority, or a substantial and specific danger to public health or safety.” The definition of specified entities depends on the nature of the information disclosed. While non-classified information can be disclosed to anyone, classified information must be disclosed only to the United States Office of Special Counsel or the appropriate agency’s Inspector General.
Topic:
Corruption, Intelligence, National Security, and Whistle Blowing
Political Geography:
United States and North America

16. How buzz on Russia dossier undermines bilateral relations between Moscow and Washington

Author:
Andrei Korobkov
Publication Date:
11-2017
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Rethinking Russia
Abstract:
The buzz surrounding the so-called “Russian trace” in the U.S. elections, started by former presidential candidate from the Democratic party Hillary Clinton during her 2016 failed presidential campaign, continues to evolve. New accusations spring up, leading to new investigations. Started in mid-2016 by Clinton’s claims about the Russian hackers, who allegedly disclosed information contained on the Democratic Party National Committee servers, it increasingly targets the members of President Donald Trump’s inner circle, including some of his family members. Appointed to deal initially with a narrow set of issues, the Independent Prosecutor Robert Mueller, the former FBI Director, has to deal with the quickly expanding set of claims and accusations.
Topic:
Intelligence, Bilateral Relations, Elections, Domestic politics, and Donald Trump
Political Geography:
Russia, Eurasia, North America, and United States of America

17. The Ineffectiveness of American Covert Regime Change Operations During the Struggle Against Islamist Terrorism

Author:
Jason Cooley
Publication Date:
05-2016
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
American Diplomacy
Institution:
American Diplomacy
Abstract:
Following the September 11th terrorist attacks, the United States government embarked on a campaign to weaken the Islamic extremist organizations that were present in the world. Some of the steps that this lone superpower took to accomplish this objective could be easily detected. However, there were others that went undetected until investigative reporters wrote about them in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other reputable newspapers. Once these covert initiatives were exposed, certain parties began to conduct inquiries to ascertain whether or not they were helping the United States prevent terrorist attacks by Islamist networks. Two initiatives, which received a considerable amount of attention in the post-9/11 era, were the Central Intelligence Agency’s drone and enhanced interrogation programs. In 2009, the members of the United States Senate Intelligence Committee revealed that they would be conducting a thorough review of the latter. Approximately five years after this announcement, the committee released a report to the public that said sleep deprivation, waterboarding and other forms of torture did not lead to actionable intelligence. In other words, they did not produce any information that enabled the CIA to foil terrorist attacks which were on the verge of being carried out against the United States (Klapper and Dilanian 2014). A lot of the analyses of the CIA’s drone program were conducted by prominent academics like Fawaz Gerges. At one point in The Rise and Fall of Al Qaeda, this professor at the London School of Economics mentions how drone strikes often killed innocent civilians in Muslim countries. When civilians did perish, extremist organizations would see a rise in the number of recruits who were interested in executing terrorist operations (Gerges 2014, p.25).
Topic:
Intelligence, Regime Change, 9/11, and Islamism
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, Iraq, Middle East, North America, and United States of America

18. Drones in Our World, Part III: Non-Kinetic Solutions

Author:
Whitney Grespin
Publication Date:
05-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Diplomatic Courier
Abstract:
Drone strikes on militants capture the negative headlines, but increasingly UAVs are winning fans amongst war fighters and civilians by other means. From providing eyes in the sky to taking on high-risk life support missions, the use of unmanned platforms is growing with no slowdown in sight. There are five fronts where UAVs are supporting the troops in ways that exploit their capabilities beyond offensive missions: surveillance/reconnaissance, intelligence, logistics, chronological reach back, and perhaps most surprisingly, community engagement. While context specific intelligence analysis is inseparable from its acquisition via surveillance and reconnaissance missions, it is separable for the purpose of this discussion about UAVs and how they are challenging traditional practices. UAVs can be both tactical and strategic assets – they are not only informing today’s missions, and they do not solely provide data that informs theater level decision making. These systems are achieving both tactical and strategic objectives, and they are sometimes doing so with the same machine in the same mission.
Topic:
Intelligence, Science and Technology, Military Strategy, and Drones
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

19. Cyber Security: An Integrated Governmental Strategy for Progress

Author:
Franklin D. Kramer
Publication Date:
09-2010
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Atlantic Council
Abstract:
Cyber security has emerged as a critical challenge in an era defined by global interconnectedness and digital information. While there are multiple ongoing efforts that seek to enhance cyber security, an integrated governmental strategy to meet that challenge has only begun and has yet fully to take shape. All strategies demand recognition of risk and prioritization of resources, and cyber strategy will be no different.
Topic:
Defense Policy, Intelligence, Science and Technology, and Terrorism
Political Geography:
United States and North America

20. The Bush Administration is Weak on Terror

Author:
Stephen W. Van Evera
Publication Date:
10-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
MIT Center for International Studies
Abstract:
The U.S. public widely credits President Bush with toughness on terror. An August 2006 poll found 55 percent of Americans approving his handling of the campaign on terror and only 38 percent disapproving. Republican candidates are running successfully on the terror issue in this fall’s election campaign. In fact, the Bush administration is weak on terror. The administration wages a one-front war against al-Qaeda, the main terror threat, when effort on every relevant front is needed. Specifically, it has focused on an offensive military and intelligence campaign abroad while neglecting five other critical fronts: bolstering homeland security, securing weapons and materials of mass destruction from possible theft or purchase by terrorists, winning the war of ideas across the world, end- ing conflicts that fuel support for al-Qaeda, and saving the failed states where al-Qaeda and like groups can find haven. The administration has also bungled parts of the mili- tary offensive by diverting itself into a counterproductive sideshow in Iraq and by alien- ating potential allies. As a result, al-Qaeda and related jihadi groups remain a potent threat more than five years after the 9/11 attacks.3 Assessments by U.S. intelligence and other analysts actually indicate that the terror threat has increased since 9/11.4 The Bush administration’s toughness on terror is an illusion. Its counterterror cam- paign has been inept and ineffective.5 President Bush talks the talk of strong action but doesn’t walk the walk. And his weakness on terror is a putting the United States in great danger.
Topic:
Intelligence, Terrorism, Al Qaeda, and War on Terror
Political Geography:
United States, Middle East, and North America