The Craft of Intelligence Page 7
To be sure, with our form of government, and in view of the legitimate interest of the public and the press, it is impossible to erect a wall around the whole business of intelligence, nor do I suggest that this be done. Neither Congress nor the executive branch intended this when the law of 1947 was passed. Furthermore, certain information must be given out if public confidence in the intelligence mission is to be strengthened and if the profession of the intelligence officer is to be properly appreciated.
Most important of all, it is necessary that both those on the inside—the workers in intelligence—and the public should come to share in the conviction that intelligence operations can help mightily to protect the nation.
In our time, the United States is being challenged by a hostile group of nations that profess a philosophy of life and of government inimical to our own. This in itself is not a new development; we have faced such challenges before. What has changed is that now, for the first time, we face an adversary possessing the military power to mount a devastating attack directly upon the United States, and in the era of nuclear missiles this can be accomplished in a matter of minutes or hours with a minimum of prior alert.
To be sure, we possess the same power against our adversary. But in our free society our defenses and deterrents are largely prepared in an open fashion, while our antagonists have built up a formidable wall of secrecy and security. In order to bridge this gap and help to provide for strategic warning, we have to rely more and more upon our intelligence operations.
The Departments of State and Defense are collecting information abroad, and their intelligence experts are analyzing it, preparing reports and doing a good job of it. Could they not do the whole task?
The answer given to this question fifteen years ago by both the executive and legislative branches of our government was “No.” Underlying this decision was our growing appreciation of the nature of the Communist menace, its self-imposed secrecy and the security measures behind which it prepares its nuclear missile threat and its subversive penetration of the Free World.
Great areas of both the Soviet Union and Communist China are sealed off from foreign eyes. These nations tell us nothing about their military establishments that is not carefully controlled, and yet such knowledge is needed for our defense and for that of the Free World. They reject the principle of inspection which we have considered essential to a controlled disarmament. They boldly proclaim that this secrecy is a great asset and a basic element of policy. They claim the right to arm in secret so as to be able, if they desire, to attack in secret. They curtly refused the “open sky” proposal of President Eisenhower in 1955, which we were prepared to accept for our country if they would for theirs. This refusal has left to intelligence the task of evening the balance of knowledge and hence of preparation by breaking through this shield of secrecy.
The Berlin Wall not only shut off the two halves of a politically divided city from each other and limited the further escape of East Germans to the West in any appreciable number. It also tried to plug one of the last gaps in the Iron Curtain—that barrier of barbed wire, land mines, observation towers, mobile patrols and sanitized border areas stretching southward from the Baltic. When they put up the Berlin Wall, the Soviets finished sealing off Eastern Europe in their fashion, and it took them sixteen years to do it.
Yet there are ways of getting under or over, around or even through this barrier. It is just the first of a series of obstacles. Behind that first wall, there are further segregated and restricted areas and, behind these, the walls of institutional and personal secrecy which all together protect everything the Soviet state believes could reveal either strength or weakness to the inquisitive West.
The Iron and Bamboo Curtains divide the world in the eyes of Western intelligence into two kinds of places—free areas and “denied areas.” The major targets lie in the denied areas behind the curtains. These are the military, technical, industrial and nuclear installations that constitute the backbone of Communist power—the capabilities. These are also the plans of the people who guide Soviet Russia and Communist China—their war-making intentions and their “peaceful” political intentions.
Against these targets the overt intelligence collection work of the State and Defense Departments, though of great value, is not enough. The special techniques which are unique to secret intelligence operations are needed to penetrate the security barriers of the Communist bloc.
Today’s intelligence service also finds itself in the situation of having to maintain a constant watch in every part of the world, no matter what may at the moment be occupying the main attention of diplomats and military men. Our vital interests are subject to attack in almost every quarter of the globe at any time.
A few decades ago no one would have been able or willing to predict that in the 1960s our armed forces would be stationed in Korea and be deeply engaged in South Vietnam, that Cuba would have become a hostile Communist state closely allied with Moscow, or that the Congo would have assumed grave importance in our foreign policy. Yet these are all facts of life today. The coming years will undoubtedly provide equally strange developments.
Today it is impossible to predict where the next danger spot may develop. It is the duty of intelligence to forewarn of such dangers, so that the government can take action. No longer can the search for information be limited to a few countries. The whole world is the arena of our conflict. In this age of nuclear missiles, even the Arctic and the Antarctic have become areas of strategic importance. Distance has lost much of its old significance, while time, in strategic terms, is counted in hours or even minutes. The oceans, which in World War II still protected this country and allowed it ample time to prepare, are as broad as ever. But now they can be crossed by missiles in a matter of minutes and by bombers in a few hours. Today the United States is in the front line of attack, for it is the prime target of its adversaries. No longer does an attack require a long period of mobilization with its telltale evidence. Missiles stand ready on their launchers, and bombers are on the alert.
Therefore an intelligence service today has an additional responsibility, for it cannot wait for evidences of the likelihood of hostile acts against us until after the decision to strike has been made by another power. Our government must be both forewarned and forearmed. The situation becomes all the more complicated when, as in the case of Korea and Vietnam, a provocative attack is directed not against the U.S. but against some distant overseas area which, if lost to the Free World, would imperil our own security. A close-knit, coordinated intelligence service, continually on the alert, able to report accurately and quickly on developments in almost any part of the globe, is the best insurance we can take out against surprise.
The fact that intelligence is alert, that there is a possibility of forewarning, could itself constitute one of the most effective deterrents to a potential enemy’s appetite for attack. Therefore the fact that such a weapon of warning can be created should not be kept secret but should be made well known, though the means and mechanics of warning should remain secret. Intelligence should not be a taboo subject. What we are striving to achieve and have gone far toward achieving—the most effective intelligence service in the world—should be an advertised fact.
In addition to getting the information, there is also the question of how it should be processed and analyzed. I feel that there are important reasons for placing the responsibility for the preparation and coordination of our intelligence analyses with a centralized agency of government which has no responsibility for policy or for choosing among the weapons systems which will be developed for our defense. Quite naturally policymakers tend to become wedded to the policy for which they are responsible, and State and Defense employees are no exception to this very human tendency. They are likely to view with a jaundiced eye intelligence reports that might tend to challenge existing policy decisions or require a change in cherished estimates of
the strength of the Soviets in any particular military field. The most serious occupational hazard we have in the intelligence field, the one that causes more mistakes than any foreign deception or intrigue, is prejudice. I grant that we are all creatures of prejudice, including CIA officials, but by entrusting intelligence coordination to our central intelligence service, which is excluded from policymaking and is married to no particular military hardware, we can avoid, to the greatest possible extent, the bending of facts obtained through intelligence to suit a particular occupational viewpoint.
At the time of Pearl Harbor high officials here, despite warnings from our outstanding Ambassador to Japan, my old friend Joseph C. Grew, were convinced that the Japanese, if they struck, would strike southward against the soft underbelly of the British, French and Dutch colonial area. The likelihood that they would make the initial move against their most dangerous antagonist, the United States, was discounted. The attacks on Hawaii and the Philippines, and the mishandling of the intelligence we then had, greatly influenced our government’s later decision on how our intelligence work should be organized. While the warnings received before the attack from deciphered Japanese cables may not have been clear enough to permit our leaders to pinpoint Hawaii and the Philippines, they should at least, if adequately analyzed, have alerted us to imminent danger in the Pacific.
If anyone has any doubt about the importance of objective intelligence, I would suggest a study of other mistakes which leaders have made because they were badly advised or misjudged the actions or reactions of other countries. When Kaiser Wilhelm II struck at France in 1914, he was persuaded by his military leaders that the violation of Belgian neutrality was essential to military success. He relied too heavily on their judgment and disregarded the advice he received from the political side as to the consequences of British intervention.
In the days prior to World War II, the British Government, despite Churchill’s warnings, failed to grasp the dimensions of the Nazi threat, especially in aircraft.
Hitler likewise, as he launched into World War II, made a series of miscalculations. He discounted the strength and determination of Britain; later he opened a second front against Russia in June, 1941, with reckless disregard of the consequences. When in 1942 he was reportedly advised of the plan for an American-British landing in North Africa, he refused to pay attention to the intelligence available to him. I was told that he casually remarked, “They don’t have the ships to do it.”
As for Japan, successful as was the Pearl Harbor attack, later events proved that its government made the greatest miscalculation of all when it underestimated United States military potential.
Today a new threat, practically unknown in the days before the Communist revolution, has put an added strain on our intelligence capabilities. It is the Communist attempt—which we began to comprehend after World War II—to undermine the security of free countries. As this is carried on in secret, it requires secret intelligence techniques to ferret it out and to build up our defenses against it.
In the Soviet Union we are faced with an antagonist that has raised the art of espionage to an unprecedented height, while developing the collateral techniques of subversion and deception into a formidable political instrument of attack. No other country has ever before attempted this on such a scale. These operations, in support of the U.S.S.R.’s over-all policies, go on in times of so-called thaw and under the guise of coexistence with the same vigor as in times of acute crisis. Our intelligence has a major share of the task of neutralizing such hostile activities, which present a common danger to us and to our allies.
The fact that so many Soviet cases of both espionage and subversion have been uncovered in recent times and in several NATO countries is not due to mere accident. It is well that the world should know what the Soviets know already—namely, that the free countries of the world have been developing highly sophisticated counterintelligence organizations and have been increasingly effective over the years in uncovering Soviet espionage. Naturally, with our NATO and other alliances, we have a direct interest in the internal security arrangements of other countries with which secrets may be shared. If a NATO document is filched by the Communists from one of our allies, it is just as harmful to us as if it were stolen from our own files. This creates an important requirement for international cooperation in intelligence work.
Our allies, and many friendly countries which are not formal allies, generally share our view of the Communist threat. Many of them can make and are making real contributions to the total strength of the Free World, including one in the intelligence field, to help keep us forewarned. However, some of our friends do not have the resources to do all they might wish, and they look to the United States for leadership in the intelligence field, as in many others. As we uncover hostile Communist plans, they expect us to help them in recognizing the threats to their own security. It is in our interest to do so. One of the most gratifying features of recent work in intelligence, and one that is quite unique in its long history, has been the growing cooperation established between the American intelligence services and their counterparts throughout the Free World which make common cause with us as we face a common peril.
There is a fundamental question about our intelligence work which, I realize, worries a good many people. Is it necessary, they ask, for the United States, with its high ideals and its traditions to involve itself in espionage, to send U-2s over other people’s territory, to break other people’s coded messages?
Many people who understand that such activities may be necessary in wartime still doubt that they are justified in time of peace. Do we spy on friend and foe alike, and do we have to do it merely because another less scrupulous and less moral type of country does it to us? I do not consider such questions improper, frivolous or pacifist. Indeed, it does us credit that these questions are raised.
Personally, I see little excuse for peacetime spying on our friends or allies. Apart from the moral issues, we have other and far more important ways of using our limited intelligence resources. Also, there are other ways of getting the information we need through normal diplomatic channels. Of course, we have to take into account the historical fact that we have had friends who became enemies—Germany on two recent occasions, and Italy and Japan. Hence, it is always useful to have “in the bank” a store of basic intelligence—most of it not very secret—about all countries. I recall that in the early days of World War II a call went out to the public for personal photographs of various areas of the world, particularly the islands of the Pacific. We did not then have adequate knowledge of the beaches and the flora and fauna of many places where our forces might shortly be landing.
But the answer to the question of the need for intelligence, particularly on the Communist bloc, is that we are not really “at peace” with them, and we have not been since Communism declared its own war on our system of government and life. We are faced with a closed, conspiratorial, police-dominated society. We cannot hope to maintain our position securely if this opponent is confident that he can surprise us by attacking the Free World at the time and place of his own choosing and without any forewarning.
4
The Task of Collection
The collection of foreign intelligence is accomplished in a variety of ways, not all of them either mysterious or secret. This is particularly true of overt intelligence, which is information derived from newspapers, books, learned and technical publications, official reports of government proceedings, radio and television. Even a novel or a play may contain useful information about the state of a nation.
Two sources of overt intelligence in the Soviet Union are, of course, the newspapers Izvestia and Pravda, which translate into News and Truth. The former is an organ of the government and the latter of the party. There are also “little” Izvestias and Pravdas throughout Russia. A wit once suggested that in Izvestia there is no news and in Pravd
a there is no truth. This is a fairly accurate statement, but it is, nevertheless, of real interest to know what the Soviets publish and what they ignore, and what turn they give to embarrassing developments that they are obliged to publish.
It is, for example, illuminating to compare the published text of Khrushchev’s extemporaneous remarks in Soviet media with what he actually said. His now-famous retort to Western diplomats at a Polish Embassy reception in Moscow on November 18, 1956, “We will bury you,” was not quoted thus in the Soviet press reports, even though it was overheard by many. The state press apparently has the right to censor Premier Khrushchev, presumably with his approval. Later, however, what Khrushchev then said caught up with him and he gave a lengthy and somewhat mollifying interpretation of it. Consequently, how and why a story is twisted is at least as interesting as the actual content. Often there is one version for domestic consumption, another for the other Communist bloc countries and still other versions for different foreign countries. There are times when the “fairy stories” that Communist regimes tell their own people are indicative of new vulnerabilities and new fears.
The collection of overt foreign information by the United States is largely the business of the State Department, with other government departments cooperating in accordance with their own needs. The CIA has an interest in the “product” and shares in collection, selection and translation. Obviously, to collect and sort out such intelligence on a world-wide basis is a colossal task, but the work is well organized and the burden equitably shared. The monitoring of foreign radio broadcasts that might be of interest to us is one of the biggest parts of the job. In the Iron Curtain countries alone, millions of words are spewed out over the air every day; most of the broadcasts of real interest originate in Moscow and Peking, some directed to domestic audiences and others beamed abroad.