From: ACTIV-L%UMCVMB.BITNET Date: Tue, 1 Jan 91 21:56:30 CST Reply-To: cdp!christic%labrea.stanford.edu Subject: BRIEF HISTORY OF COVERT OPS ================================================================== /* Written 4:22 pm Dec 31, 1990 by christic in cdp:christic.news */ /* ---------- "BRIEF HISTORY OF COVERT OPS" ---------- */ ================================================================== A BRIEF HISTORY OF COVERT OPERATIONS By LANNY SINKIN and ANDY LANG Convergence Magazine, Christic Institute, Winter 1991, p. 12 The National Security Act of 1947 created the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council. The act set the stage for a new type of warfare--covert operations. This was not the intention of Clark Clifford, the bill's author. In August 1987 Clifford told columnist Philip Geyelin of the Washington Post that the Iran-contra scandal revealed that covert operations were out of control. ``We read of events taking place that surpass any nightmare we have ever had,'' he said, ``unbelievable acts that bore no resemblance whatsoever to the functions of the N.S.C. and the C.I.A. . . . a secret government operating in a democracy. ``. . . I don't think our forefathers had any concept of anything like that taking place. I know I had no thought at any time of such an organization taking place. . . . This operation constituted the grossest kind of violation of the tenets of our government.'' According to Clifford, the National Security Council was supposed to be an advisory group recommending policy to the President. The C.I.A. was originally formed to coordinate Government-wide intelligence gathering. Neither organization was authorized to conduct covert operations. But in the formative years of the Cold War, the idea of ruthless secret warfare against a hated enemy gained ground in the inner circles of the United States Government. The year after Congress adopted the National Security Act, State Department planning chief George Kennan outlined the new rationale for a foreign policy based on unprincipled self-interest. ``. . . [W]e have about 50 percent of the world's wealth, but only 6.3 percent of its population,'' Kennan wrote. ``In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security.'' ``To do so,'' Kennan added, ``we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction. We should cease to talk about vague and . . . unreal objectives, such as human rights, the raising of the living standards and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.'' Kennan's argument was rooted in an amoral pragmatism. The United States controlled most of the world's wealth. The poorer nations on earth were envious, and therefore threatened our security. The only solution was to create a permanent war machine--despite the absence of war. But Kennan was wrong about ``idealistic slogans.'' A permanent war machine could not be sustained without a permanent war psychology. Politicians had to condition public opinion to support an unprecedented expansion of America's military power, including nuclear weapons, foreign bases and the new instruments of covert warfare. ``It is not an army we must train for war,'' Woodrow Wilson said when the United States entered World War I. ``It is a nation.'' The Government therefore had to appeal to America's great national myth: We were not a nation like other nations, fighting wars only for markets, colonies or economic empire, but a messianic society destined to use military power for moral purposes. The Cold War was sold to public opinion as a dualistic struggle of spiritual light against darkness. By 1954 the Central Intelligence Agency was no longer the central clearinghouse for intelligence originally conceived by the authors of the National Security Act. Without any basis in statutory law, the C.I.A. was now used to overthrow unfriendly governments and assassinate foreign leaders. These were not ``moral'' acts, especially in peacetime, but the politicians now believed in total war against Communism without moral limits. This was the conclusion reached in 1954 by the Doolittle Commission, an advisory commission created by President Eisenhower to head off a public investigation of the C.I.A. ``We are facing,'' they said, ``an implacable enemy whose avowed objective is world domination by whatever means and at whatever cost. There are no rules in such a game. Hitherto acceptable means of human conduct do not apply. . . . We must learn to subvert, sabotage and destroy our enemies . . . by more effective means than those used against us. It may become necessary that the American poeple be made acquainted with, understand and support this fundamentally repugnant philosophy.'' Covert operations are by their very nature secret. Secrecy may be a military necessity in wartime, but after nearly 50 years of permanent war against Communism, secrecy has become a permanent instrument of foreign policy. It is no longer a means but an end in itself. Two generations of politicians and government officials have been trained to believe that the people have no inherent right to know about the covert policies that protect ``national security'' or their ``way of life'' against unseen enemies. The Iran-contra scandal should have irreparably damaged the reputation of America's spy agencies, and the end of the Cold War should have persuaded Congress that covert agencies no longer serve a useful purpose. But in the 1991 intelligence authorization bill Congress acted to institutionalize the President's power to conduct covert operations. Why has this happened? Despite the collapse of communism, the archenemy used to justify an economy and political system geared to conduct covert and overt war, the system now seeks new enemies. These enemies include the international drug trade, terrorism and regional conflict. Even if the armies now massed in the Middle East do not clash, the Bush Administration still intends to use the C.I.A. and its private subcontractors to wage secret warfare as a permanent instrument of United States foreign policy. And Congress approves. The time has come to declare that the covert element within our society is an aberration that belongs to the past. >>From Christic DataBank BBS, Washington, D.C., 202-529-0140<< ==================================================================