America's Military System - The 2nd American Affair

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1 AMERICAN MILITARY UNIVERSITY INTELLIGENCE AND AMERICA S ROLE IN GLOBAL AFFAIRS - The Function of Intelligence in American Foreign Policy Barbara A. Lacy Student # Intel The History of Intel Professor Robert Mead November 22, 2010

2 I want people in Latin America and Africa or in Asia to start to look to America, to see how we're doing things, to wonder what the President of the United States is doing, and not to look at Khrushchev, or look at the Chinese Communists. That is the obligation upon our generation. Senator John F. Kennedy, 1960 Presidential Campaign Speech "...we must consider that we shall be as a City upon a Hill, (and that) the eyes of all people are upon us.." John Winthrop, Founder of the Massachusetts Colony 1630 I think we're going to have to do a better job if we are going to meet the responsibilities which time and events have placed upon us. We cannot turn the job over to anyone else. If the United States fails, then the whole cause of freedom fails, and I think it depends in great measure on what we do here in this country. Senator John F. Kennedy, 1960 Presidential Campaign Speech ii

3 INTELLIGENCE AND AMERICA S ROLE IN GLOBAL AFFAIRS INTRODUCTION No event in the history of the United States of America, prior to December 7, 1941, equaled the Day that will live in Infamy for its impact upon the course of the nation and her approach to world affairs. America s place in the world had been changing throughout her short history and the conclusion of the Spanish-American War placed her for the first time among the ranks of those Imperial Powers, Britain, France and Spain, who had imposed their national will upon the global populace, governing international affairs amongst their far-flung possessions. The close of 1898 saw the supplanting of Spain as an Imperial power by a still young America. The close of 1945 would see the same thing happen to Britain as she ceded the last of her dominance in global affairs to the nation she had essentially founded 300 years prior. Arthur Herman writes in To Rule the Waves, (2004) By 1942 the resources of the global economic system were flowing to America s military-industrial complex and victory over totalitarianism would be the result. The United States Navy, like its Royal Navy ancestor, would grow to become the largest and most dominant in the world. It would take over the job of protecting postwar Pax Americana, which replaced Pax Britannica, and carry it into the cold war era and beyond (543). More specifically, America took on the role of Global Defender of Freedom or Keeper of the Peace and one of the most valuable tools, when properly employed, that she would use to gain the advantage needed to accomplish this new mission, and to hold that advantage for the next half-century and beyond, would be that of Intelligence. 1

4 A NEW RESPONSIBILTY America s intelligence gathering, analyzing and disseminating abilities were themselves initially patterned much after those of Britain. Just as America s Navy learned many lessons from its forbear, patterning much of its structure on that of the Royal Navy, so too Britain bequeathed many of her intelligence systems, methods and tricks of the trade to her protégé, first in WWI and later in WWII. Britain s well-established intelligence industry had much to teach America in the art and value of cryptography and code-breaking. The men and women of Room 40 and at Bletchley Park demonstrated the priceless value of code-breaking (ibid) as they decrypted reams of Ultra intelligence. Prime Minister Churchill ensured that Ultra s value was not lost even on President Roosevelt despite the president s early preference for the less functional HUMINT discipline. SIGINT had come into its own with the code-breaking of both Ultra and Magic and would soon come to surpass many of the earlier methods of Intelligence gathering (primarily some form of HUMINT). Without SIGINT, neither the War in Europe nor the Pacific War would have ended as decisively and could well have dragged on for years longer. And indeed, the Intelligence coalition between Britain and the United States was absolutely critical to this success. SIGINT had become one intelligence discipline that needed little outside advocacy to prove its worth even post-war and it both survived and ultimately thrived well after the guns ceased firing. V-E Day and V-J Day, marking the sequential victories over the Axis powers and the forces of evil, were landmarks in history, bringing an end to a world at war that had really begun decades prior, even before the First World War. The Treaty of Versailles marked the close of WWI, but did little to truly end the issues at stake, merely prolonging the inevitable fact that there remained in Germany forces that could only be stopped by a complete victory over them 2

5 that crushed any power they had to revive. Throughout the inter-war years, Germany was running its own complex game of strategic denial and deception, counter-intelligence and intelligence gathering, stretching loopholes in the Treaty of Versailles designed to eliminate its ability to create a military infrastructure and the machines needed for war. Although their reasons varied greatly, German politicians, soldiers and industrialists all shared an overwhelming desire to rearm and rearm they did, right under the nose of the Inter-Allied Control Commission designed to oversee the disarming and restructuring of German industry toward peacetime manufacturing (Godson and Wirtz 2002, 47). In spite of Germany s excellent efforts at cover, not all was hidden completely and the Allies, especially Britain, became aware that Germany was certainly cheating. Nevertheless, American presidential policy, with significant public support throughout the inter-war years, maintained a desire to remain blissfully (and deliberately) ignorant of foreign trouble. America labored diligently toward retreat into an isolationist state and attempted to maintain the same studied neutrality the nation had enjoyed throughout most of the 19 th century keeping her hands clean of the squabbles and quarrels of foreign powers. In contrast to Germany s continued martial expansion, the American intelligence industry built up through the needs of war, suffered greatly after the war and lost significant ability to keep the nation aware of what transpired outside her borders. The resources for both ONI (Office of Naval Intelligence) and MID (Military Intelligence Division) were cut drastically by Wilson s successor, President Harding, and MID s weekly intelligence summaries were abandoned to a fortnightly schedule due to the shortage of staff (Andrew 1995, 68). At the close of WWII, much of the populace, weary of war, tried again to take a similar course. America, including her new president, Harry S. Truman, who took office on the sudden death of President Roosevelt, was ready to close down nearly all wartime industry and turn the nation s attention to peacetime pursuits. This included shutting down most of the hard won, 3

6 albeit hastily built, intelligence systems, structures and organizations. The Army s special operations arm, the storied OSS, was one of the first casualties of peacetime restructuring and downsizing. However, something significant had transpired as the Second World War had progressed, resulting in a dramatic change in the global balance of power and with it America s role in world affairs. Because of this, there were some individuals who saw and understood that the road ahead, into the future, could not be kept free of threats and danger to national security without a viable, effective intelligence community. Isolation was not an option; furthermore, America became the dominate counter-power to any system or force in the world that threatened freedom and democracy. Where the Monroe Doctrine with its subsequent corollaries had granted America the right to protect her own backyard in countering European expansion in the Western Hemisphere in Latin America in particular America s new role after WWII became truly global in nature, covering Europe and Asia, the Atlantic and the Pacific. Consequently, she needed to know what the rest of the world was up to mostly those considered her enemies, but sometimes even what her friends were planning was valuable information in the pursuit of protecting peace. And so began the often troubled, yet continually progressive, fight to create an integrated, cooperative, true intelligence community both military and civilian to secure the nation s citizens and her interests both at home and abroad. THE FOUNDATIONS OF AN INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY Wary of the formation of a strong and organized peacetime intelligence community that he feared could become something of an American Gestapo (Andrew 1995, 156), President Truman was, however, acutely aware of the need for a reorganization of the nation s defense plan. He, like President Eisenhower after him, was strongly determined to do whatever was necessary to avoid the nation ever suffering another Pearl Harbor. Rapidly escalating events, 4

7 especially in the Soviet bloc of Eastern Europe, propelled President Truman to agree with a number of proposals from his administration that would ultimately create the needed foundations for a post-war intelligence capability designed to enable the nation to execute its newly declared policy of containment of the Soviet threat. Even before the war was over, indications were rife of trouble brewing with the Soviet Union and its determined Communist expansion policies so that numerous key military and political personnel came out of the war already wary of the Kremlin s intentions. Among these were the notable Generals Marshall, Patton, Eisenhower and Donovan each with his own sphere of influence. To these men and others, the concept of America turning her back on foreign troubles was no longer a plausible consideration. General Donovan, head of the OSS, in spite of his cold reception by President Truman, continued to lobby for the establishment of a centralized, peacetime intelligence system in the United States (ibid, 159). Donovan cited as his justification the fact that all major powers except the United States have had, for a long time past, permanent worldwide intelligence services, reporting directly to the highest echelons of their governments. He went on to point out that prior to WWII the United States had not had a foreign secret intelligence service and still did not have a coordinated intelligence system (ibid). The year 1946 turned out to be a pivotal one in starting the nation on the road to the formation of a more centralized intelligence system as well as reinstatement of the invaluable Anglo-American SIGINT collaboration, particularly with Britain. The collaboration this time, now had the United States with its global perspective and unmatched financial and military resources playing the role of senior partner (Ford, Rosenberg 2005, 38) once more underscoring the reality that America s position and responsibility in global affairs had indeed changed dramatically. In abolishing the OSS, President Truman had in mind to replace it with a coordinated foreign intelligence program that resulted, after the typical bureaucratic arguing, in 5

8 the creation of the NIA (National Intelligence Authority), a DCI (Director of Central Intelligence) and the CIG (Central Intelligence Group) a small analytical agency set up to collate and process intelligence collected by the rest of the intelligence community (Andrew 1995, 164). THE COLD WAR The Cold War solidified into a more directed threat in 1947 with the dual appeals of Greece and Turkey for U.S. aid in their struggle to maintain free governments and to strengthen and rebuild their war-torn countries in order to resist Soviet takeover. President Truman responded with an appeal to Congress for $400 million to help save the two countries from the jaws of Communism. Truman declared, I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures (ibid, 168). This became known as the Truman Doctrine and with amendments it has governed U.S. foreign policy to this day. With the commencement of the Cold War came the renewed need to further strengthen and organize intelligence gathering as well as covert action and the CIG was seen to be inadequate to the task. Once the inter-service rivalry between the Army and the Navy was reduced to a more tolerable level, the ground was prepared for a new law passed in February 1947, the National Security Act, which provided for, among other things, the creation of the Department of Defense. This linked the armed services together under one authority and set the tone for a greater exchange of information and capabilities. The National Security Act also created the National Security Council (NSC) that allowed for the establishment of a Central Intelligence Agency under NSC direction and opened up a post for the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI). This post was meant to be free of coercion from either the military or civilian divisions of intelligence and was designed to allow 6

9 oversight and coordination of all national intelligence activities, ensuring also that critical information found its way to the President in a timely manner. Thus, by the end of Truman s presidency, the basic foundations had been established for the creation of a coordinated Intelligence Community able to operate in both wartime and peacetime and to address the ever growing concern of the Soviet threat. Nevertheless, events soon thereafter showed that intelligence still had a long way to go when America was surprised yet again by an Asian nation implementing an unprovoked attack. This time it was not on American soil; North Korea had attacked its southern neighbor in Kim Il- Sung s military attempt at forced re-unification of the peninsula. Nonetheless, the action took Washington by surprise and did nothing to bolster confidence in the progress of coordination, analysis and timely dissemination of accurate intelligence to the White House. The problem here had been more a lack of attention to the growing signs of unrest and even military build-up in the region by Kim Il-Sung due primarily to an overall misconception on the part of the intel community that North Korea would never act on its own without some signal or support being given by the Soviet Union. Consequently, no real value was given to acquiring SIGINT data from North Korea, data which may well have revealed Kim Il-Sung s massing of 90,000 troops and 150 T-34 tanks at jump-off points north of the 38 th Parallel before the invasion began (Andrew 1995, 187). Even China, at that time, was considered more a puppet of the Kremlin than an autonomous threat until events proved otherwise. With the surprise attack, there was certainly no question about America s responsibility to support South Korea against this full scale invasion of the Communist North. When Eisenhower took over the presidency from Truman, Truman made certain Eisenhower was fully briefed on all aspects of current intelligence capabilities, something 7

10 Truman had greatly lacked when he was thrust into the presidency upon the sudden death of Roosevelt. Eisenhower also brought with him his own wartime experience with intelligence, especially the value of SIGINT and the fledgling IMINT discipline, experience which served him well in the escalating Cold War. By 1948, the Soviet Union had become a nuclear power, adding a new dimension to the threat and increasing the fear that had begun to grip the nation. The determination to never again have a repeat of Pearl Harbor was one of the driving fears behind the continued aggressive expansion of intelligence gathering capabilities. The development of the U-2 reconnaissance aircraft, able to take detailed photographs from an altitude well above the ceiling of the then current fighter aircraft and high enough to at times avoid detection at all, became a key tool in President Eisenhower s implementation of containment of the Soviet threat. Imagery from the U-2 flights he personally authorized over Russia revealed a great deal about the true state of Russia s missile development program and actually did much to help moderate fearmongering in Washington as it revealed that the much-touted vast missile-gap between the Soviets and the United States did not really exist. Where the Soviet Union was somewhat ahead on missile propulsion, America was ahead in warhead development and guidance systems (ibid, 242). THE EXPANSION OF INTELLIGENCE The policy of containment of Communism aligned well with America s new role as Peacekeeper and Defender of Freedom as did the Truman Doctrine s promise to support any countries or peoples desiring to resist or overthrow Communist rule in their land. President Truman articulated the concept of America s new role in his speech to Congress at the start of the Cold War, One of the primary objectives of the foreign policy of the United States is the 8

11 creation of conditions in which we and other nations will be able to work out a way of life free from coercion. This was a fundamental issue in the war with Germany and Japan. Our victory was won over countries which sought to impose their will, and their way of life, upon other nations. These guiding principles of national affairs, though, opened the door also to increased use of covert action in an attempt to direct events and determine the outcome of elections and other pivotal proceedings in foreign lands, especially during the presidencies of Eisenhower, Kennedy and Nixon. While covert action had been used with a certain degree of success during the war, in the post-war years its use became generally more fraught with failure and it sometimes achieved the opposite effect intended in the long run. Such was the case with Cuba where unsuccessful attempts to assassinate Castro along with the disastrous attempt to send in Cuban exiles trained by the CIA and armed with American weapons to overthrow Castro s regime proved to bring greater danger to America s shores than these actions averted. In the wake of these debacles, Russia felt bold enough to place MRBMs capable of carrying nuclear warheads on the island of Cuba, allowing Russia to have missiles, for the first time, within striking distance of America s shores. The judicious use of IMINT gained by the U-2 collection flights sent over Cuba revealed the secretive buildup Russia was conducting and allowed President Kennedy to confront Khrushchev with undeniable proof when the Soviet representative to the United Nations denied the missiles were offensive as opposed to defensive, claiming the United States had falsified evidence (Andrew 1995, 298). The resulting Cuban Missile Crisis was resolved through careful diplomacy, a sensible show of force in the naval blockade Kennedy set up to stop any further missiles being delivered and prudent restraint of covert action that could well have undermined everything in one fell swoop. Exceptionally close monitoring of the situation and a constant flow of intelligence reports to the President helped forward the decisionmaking process. The resulting agreement with Moscow eased the tensions in what was the 9

12 closest the world ever came to a nuclear exchange between the superpowers. The Cuban issue remained a thorn for many presidents thereafter, just as it had been for presidents since the early 19 th century, but at least a nuclear exchange would not be part of the problem. The Cold War carried on for another 28 years and took both America and the rest of the world on a path with many twists and turns, some good, some definitely less desirable. Technology continued to improve and satellite imagery replaced U-2 flights, dramatically increasing the available data on military build-up over the world. President Eisenhower s original Open Skies proposal became a point of fact as both Russia and the United States launched satellite after satellite with greater and greater capability to monitor martial pursuits. The revolution in satellite reconnaissance leaped further ahead with the advent of signals collection from space, giving the Intelligence Community not only eyes but ears in the sky as well (Ford, Rosenberg 2004, 44). Other countries followed when their technologies advanced sufficiently to allow them to launch their own space programs. New forms of INTs joined the arsenal as technology increased, including more advanced collection of COMINT, ELINT (primarily detection of activated radar) and ACINT (Acoustic Intelligence) to name a mere few. As Soviet submarines increased their numbers and ranges throughout the Atlantic and Pacific, the U.S. Navy installed sophisticated underwater listening posts to detect the acoustic signatures of roaming subs and the Sound Surveillance System Underwater (SOSUS) grew throughout the 1960s into a sprawling undersea intelligence network of its own, feeding increasingly valuable information to the Navy s anti-sub warfare and intelligence communities (ibid,43). CONCLUSION The availability of information continued increasing exponentially and the ranks of analys ts to evaluate it grew accordingly though not always fast enough to keep up with the 10

13 ever increasing influx of information. Vast new quantities of data would often outstrip the community s ability or willingness to analyze it all (Warner, McDonald 2005, 21). In fact, the rapidity with which the whole institution of intelligence advanced led to an irregular, ad hoc expansion of various components that often contributed more to undermining its benefits than to enhancing them. For every intelligence success (and there have been many), there were also failures often quite notable ones. These breakdowns in effectiveness invariably led to reviews and reports and a constant obligation to determine what can be changed, what can be improved, what can be amended to make this institution, the community of intelligence gathering apparatus and personnel, more effective, more efficient and more able to accomplish what the nation needed and expected it to do. Yet, with all its power, all its influence and all its ability, one thing must be understood about Intelligence and its associated disciplines, something that frequently seems to be lost when Presidents, administrations and other makers of policy and procedure set about to their tasks: Intelligence is not a crystal ball, it is not a cure-all. It is nothing more than a tool, albeit a powerful one. It can be used, like any tool, for good or for evil. Its greatest value is in how it is applied, not in its mere existence. Decisions still have to be made by Presidents, by diplomats, by Congress, by military and civilian leaders in countless posts of authority and responsibility. The role of Intelligence (and thus of the Intelligence Professional) is to provide the information and careful analysis necessary to make those decisions from an informed position and it would be hoped to make them with wisdom and discretion, so that America might indeed be Keeper of the Peace or as declared by the United States Navy, A Global Force for Good. 11

14 Images (U) Imagery of Cuban Missile Site at San Cristobal shown to President Kennedy, Oct 1962 Source: (U) Imagery of Russian MRBM site in Cuba, October 1962 Source: 12

15 (U) Modern Imagery of Iranian Qom Missile Facility Source: (U) Modern Imagery of Iranian Qom Missile Facility Showing Medium Security Compound with Bunkers Source: 13

16 References Andrew, Christopher For the President's Eyes Only - Secret Intelligence and the American Presidency from Washington to Bush. New York: Harper Perennial. Ford, Christopher, and David Rosenberg The Admiral's Advantage - U.S. Navy Operational Intelligence in WWII and the Cold War. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press. Godson, Roy, and James J. Wirtz Strategic Denial and Deception - The Twenty-First Century Challenge. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers. Herman, Arthur To Rule the Waves - How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World. New York: Harper Collins. Warner, Michael, and J. Kenneth McDonald U.S. Intelligence Community Reform Studies Since Monograph, Washington, DC: Center for the Study of Intelligence. 14