REVIEW & OUTLOOK
Unspooking Spooks
How America dismantled its intelligence capabilities.
Far be it from us to criticize those trying to close the barn door after the horse has left. But that's the only way to understand what the Bush Administration and Congress are doing with legislation designed to restore intelligence-gathering powers that are indispensable in fighting terrorism.
Had anyone done the same after the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center--or even October's attack on the USS Cole--several thousand American families would not now wear black as they mourn lost loved ones. Though there was existing counter-terrorism legislation on the Hill even before last week's attack, Congressional sources tell us it will now include provisions designed to remove impediments imposed on CIA, FBI and defense intelligence agents over the past quarter century.
The operative word here is "imposed." Because the "intelligence failure" so horribly on display last week is the result of political and legal attacks on our spymakers going back to the 1970s witch hunts of the Church committee. Americans need to understand that a key reason we don't have the intelligence we need to thwart terrorism is that we have spent many years actively discouraging good agents from getting it.
If we had to single out the moment that our nation moved from an intelligence to anti-intelligence footing, we'd say it came 26 years ago this week, when front pages across America featured a photograph of Senator Frank Church, the Idaho liberal, brandishing a special dart gun that ex-CIA director William Colby had brought to the committee hearings. In Senator Church's view, the CIA was a "rogue elephant on the rampage," and the image of the dart gun underscored the accusation that our agents were goon squads. That was the same year that CounterSpy magazine published the names of CIA agents around the world.
Our agencies have been reeling ever since. Jimmy Carter's CIA director, Stansfield Turner, slashed human intelligence and sacked dozens of the agency's most experienced officers. President Ford signed an executive order forbidding the assassination of foreign leaders. And a host of other restrictions went in, including those preventing the CIA from using cover as journalists, clergy or aid workers. It hasn't stopped. Last week we wrote about a 1995 directive that demanded that CIA informers not be too dangerous, even though those are the best sources on other dangers.
Over at the FBI, meanwhile, Congressional and media inquisitions led to similar administrative changes. Dedicated field agents who had spent their careers investigating groups such as the Weather Underground--with the tacit approval of several Presidents--suddenly faced the prospect of criminal indictments. The prosecutions were nixed, but President Ford's Attorney General, Edward Levi, handed down similar restrictions. Under the Levi guidelines, agents could not begin investigating suspect groups until after a crime had been committed. Agents tell us that such were the restrictions that they were not even allowed to collect newspaper clippings.
The street agents got the message, and though restrictions were eased during the Reagan years, counter-intelligence has never fully recovered. The best and the brightest left the Bureau for criminal work, where it was still possible to catch bad guys. As Attorney General John Ashcroft notes, it's easier today to get a wiretap on a suspected drug dealer than on a terrorist. And other requests by Mr. Ashcroft--such as his plea to allow wiretapping authority to be directed at a person (who may use several phones) rather than one specified line, or to monitor financial dealings of suspected terrorists--suggest just how out of touch the legal framework is. It speaks of the perverse incentives today that among the Bremer Commission's recommended reforms is having intelligence agents know they are insured against personal liability lawsuits.
Many years ago in this space we noted the ruckus caused when, after the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beruit, President Reagan said such attacks were harder to spot because of an attitude that "spying is somehow dishonest and let's get rid of our intelligence agents--and we did that to large extent." Former President Bush, a former CIA director himself, made the same point last week.
We only wish it hadn't taken 18 more years and the blood of thousands of Americans for some of our elites to figure out that there are greater evils in this world than U.S. intelligence agencies.
