Revision notes on Covert Action for Vigilant State. Topics covered:
- Why study covert action?
- Definitions
- Risks, drawbacks and dilemmas
- Morality
- Measurement
- Culture and Propaganda
- CIA and covert action
- A range of literature summaries (including Saunders, Koch, Lucas, Wilford, Laville...
Public perceptions: covert action = ‘dark side’ of intelligence. Overwhelmingly
dominates media coverage. Popular understandings of intelligence stem largely
from their perceptions of covert action.
Controversy: covert action often involves questions of sovereignty, international
law and civil liberties, given that it often involves meddling in the affairs of foreign
states.
Insight: informs us of global reach of US power. What can it tell us about
hegemony and its maintenance/decline? Do covert action successes and American
power track each other?
US Foreign Policy: useful vantage point onto US FP. Are drivers of covert action
the same as those of US foreign policy more widely (idealism, corporatism?). Is the
US imperial, and does covert action illuminate US imperialism? Published memoirs
of CIA operatives have been censored on grounds that they portray US as imperial
- anathema to US politics, given that the USA was established as a reaction to
precisely this.
Presidents: Insight into executive branch of US (since covert actions all signed off
by President). Do Presidents seem overawed by intelligence, and submit to CIA
wishes? Nixon (Watergate), Ford, Carter, Reagan (Iran Contra) fought tooth and nail
to prevent revelations reaching the public sphere. What does it tell us about their
relationship with US ‘values’, the constitution etc.
Democracy: ultimately taxpayer-funded, so do citizens have a right to know about
it, even if ‘after the fact’?
Definitions
Covert action = contested concept, used as an umbrella term for a series of activities.
Inherently operational, implying the influencing and changing of the world, rather than
simply analysing it. It is involved with the intelligence cycle, but not central to it. Perhaps
the most crucial aspect of covert action is plausible deniability - it is axiomatic that a
successful covert action cannot be linked to its sponsors. The President/sponsor must be
able to plausibly deny their agency. In an age of whistleblowers, is this criterion possible
any more?
Not necessarily clandestine, but requires plausible deniability, includes: propaganda,
political action, paramilitary, coup d'état, intelligence support. Political action very
common, but expensive. Part of the reason the US intelligence budget is now $50bn+.
The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) came to become the CIA. Originally wartime
intelligence service during WWII – coordinated covert action – became a CIA and OSS
tradition. Headed by William J Donovan during the war – known as the “Father of
American Intelligence” and “Father of Central Intelligence”.
Gobson: Fundamentally about three things:
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