Conclusion
THE PRIMARY CONCERN of the men who drafted the Declaration of Independence was the consent of the governed. By the mid-twentieth century, under the pressures of the Cold War, the primary concern of the nation's leaders had become the survival of the governed.
The Invisible Government emerged in the aftermath of World War II as one of the instruments designed to insure national survival. But because it was hidden, because it operated outside of the normal Constitutional checks and balances, it posed a potential threat to the very system it was designed to protect.
President Truman created the nucleus of the Invisible Government when he signed the National Security Act of 1947, giving birth to the CIA. He has asserted that he conceived of the CIA primarily as a coordinating and intelligence-gathering aid to a modern President who needed concise, centralized information on which to base national policy. But by 1963 the intelligence apparatus had taken on dimensions which Truman said he had never anticipated.
"With all the nonsense put out by Communist propaganda ... in their name-calling assault on the West," he wrote, "the last thing we needed was for the CIA to be seized upon as something akin to a subverting influence in the affairs of other people ...
"There are now some searching questions that need to be answered. I ... would like to see the CIA be restored to its original assignment as the intelligence arm of the President, and whatever else it can properly perform in that special field -- and that its operational duties be terminated or properly used elsewhere.
"We have grown up as a nation, respected for our free institutions and for our ability to maintain a free and open society. There is something about the way the CIA has been functioning that is casting a shadow over our historic position and I feel that we need to correct it." [1]
In effect, Truman was lamenting the damage to national prestige caused by such special operations as the U-2 affair of 1960, the Bay of Pigs, and the episodes in Indonesia, Burma, Laos, Vietnam and elsewhere.
Yet the Plans Division, which conducts the CIA's special operations, was established in 1951 under President Truman. And it was under Truman that Allen Dulles came to Washington to be the first director of that division. Since Truman could not have been unaware of these events, the real question is whether the operational activities of the CIA have grown to a size and shape that Truman had not intended when he signed the 1947 Act.
Has the dagger, in short, become more important than the cloak? Certainly, in the years since 1951, secret operations have grown greatly in size and number. When they have gone awry -- and some have gone sensationally awry -- they have brought notoriety to the CIA.
Nevertheless, CIA officials have insisted that the majority of these operations have been successful. However, there have been a large number of known failures. There is only one logical conclusion, if one is to accept the CIA's claim to a high percentage of success: that the total number of secret operations has been much greater than is supposed even in knowledgeable circles.
As in the case of the Bay of Pigs, some of these operations have become so big that they cannot be practicably concealed or plausibly denied. In other instances, clandestine activity has turned loose forces which have proved uncontrollable. Around the world, the CIA has trained and supported elite corps designed to maintain internal security in pro-Western countries. But these police units have sometimes become a source of acute embarrassment to the United States, notably in Vietnam, where CIA-financed special forces raided the Buddhist pagodas.
Despite these wide-ranging clandestine activities, and despite the importance, the power and the vast sums at the disposal of the CIA and the other agencies of the Invisible Government, there has not been enough intelligent public discussion of the role of this secret machinery.
In general, critics of the CIA have been hobbled by a lack of sure knowledge about its activities. By and large, their criticism falls into three categories: that the CIA conducts foreign policy on its own, that it runs its affairs outside of presidential and Congressional control, and that it warps intelligence to justify its special operations.
There is a sophisticated notion that the problems raised by a hidden bureaucracy operating within a free society can be resolved by limiting the CIA to intelligence gathering and setting up a separate organization to conduct special operations. The argument is that when the two functions are joined, as they are now, the intelligence gatherers inevitably become special pleaders for the operations in which they are engaged.
There is little question that this has happened in the past and that it poses a continuing, basic problem. But the difficulty is that an agent who is running a secret operation often is in the best position to gather secret information. A CIA man involved in intrigues with the political opposition in a given country will very likely know much more about that opposition than an analyst at Langley or even the ambassador on the scene.
If the CIA were to be prohibited from carrying out secret operational activity and that task were to be turned over to another agency, it might be necessary to create another set of secret operatives in addition to the large number of CIA men already at work overseas. Such a situation would probably reduce efficiency, raise costs and increase the dangers of exposure. The Taylor committee grappled with the problem after the Bay of Pigs and came to the conclusion that the present arrangement is the lesser of two evils.
This problem, as important and complex as it may be, is secondary to the larger question of whether the CIA sets its own policy, outside of presidential control. While this accusation contains some truth, it, too, is oversimplified.
There are procedures which call for the approval of any major special operation at a high level in the executive branch of the government. The public comments of Eisenhower on Guatemala and Kennedy on the Bay of Pigs demonstrated that they not only approved these operations, but took part in the planning for them.
However, many important decisions appear to have been delegated to the Special Group, a small and shadowy directorate nowhere specifically provided for by law. But because the Special Group is composed of men with heavy responsibilities in other areas, it obviously can give no more than general approval and guidance to a course of action. The CIA and the other agencies of the Invisible Government are free to shape events in the field. They can influence policy and chart their own course within the flexible framework laid down by Washington.
In Costa Rica, for example, CIA officers did not see fit to inform the State Department when they planted a fake Communist document in a local newspaper. In Cairo, "Mr. X" slipped in to see Nasser ahead of the State Department's special emissary. In the Bay of Pigs planning, the CIA men selected the political leadership of the Cuban exiles.
Yet because of the existence of the Special Group and a generalized mechanism for approving operations, intelligence men have been able to claim that they have never acted outside of policy set at the highest level of the government. In short, even when a clear policy has been established, a President may find it difficult to enforce. Presidential power, despite the popular conception of it, is diffuse and limited. The various departments and agencies under his authority have entrenched sources of strength. They cannot always be molded to his will.
In his relations with the Invisible Government, the President's problems are compounded. He cannot deal with it openly and publicly. He cannot bring to bear against it the normal political tools at his disposal. He cannot go over the heads of the leaders of the Intelligence community and appeal to the people.
A President operates under a constant awareness of the capacity of disgruntled members of the Invisible Government to undercut his purposes by leaking information to Congress and the press. During the deliberations leading to the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy obviously realized the political dangers of canceling a plan to overthrow Castro which had been brought to an advanced stage by a Republican administration. Similarly, during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, White House officials suspected that someone high in the CIA was attempting to undermine the President by providing the Republicans with information.
This suspicion reflected the fact that the Invisible Government has achieved a quasi-independent status and a power of its own. Under these conditions, and given the necessity for secret activities to remain secret, can the Invisible Government ever be made fully compatible with the democratic system?
The answer is no. It cannot be made fully compatible. But, on the other hand, it seems inescapable that some form of Invisible Government is essential to national security in a time of Cold War. Therefore, the urgent necessity in such a national dilemma is to make the Invisible Government as reconcilable as possible with the democratic system, aware that no more than a tenuous compromise can be achieved.
What, then, is to be done?
Most important, the public, the President and the Congress must support steps to control the intelligence establishment, to place checks on its power and to make it truly accountable, particularly in the area of special operations.
The danger of special operations does not lie in tables of organization or questions of technique, but in embarking upon them too readily and without effective presidential control. Special operations pose dangers not only to the nations against which they are directed, but to ourselves. They raise the question of how far a free society, in attempting to preserve itself, can emulate a closed society without becoming indistinguishable from it.
The moral and practical justification for secret operations has been stated simply by Allen Dulles, who said the government felt compelled to "fight fire with fire." The implication was that the CIA could justifiably respond in kind to the unscrupulous practices of the Soviet espionage machine. It could mirror the opposition.
"Today," Dulles has observed, "the Soviet State Security Service (KGB) is the eyes and ears of the Soviet State abroad as well as at home. It is a multi-purpose, clandestine arm of power that can in the last analysis carry out almost any act that the Soviet leadership assigns to it. It is more than a secret police organization, more than an intelligence and counter-intelligence organization. It is an instrument for subversion, manipulation and violence, for secret intervention in the affairs of other countries. It is an aggressive arm of Soviet ambitions in the Cold War." [2]
A free society has difficulty in adopting such practices because of its moral tradition that the end does not justify the means. It must proceed with caution, alert to the danger of succumbing to the enemy's morality by too eagerly embracing his methods.
Special operations should be launched only after the most sober deliberation by the President, acting upon the broadest possible advice. This counsel should come not only from those within the intelligence community, but from responsible officials with a wider viewpoint. Operations such as those at the Bay of Pigs and in Indonesia involved the potential overthrow of a foreign government. They amount to undeclared war. They should be launched only when the alternative of inaction carries with it the gravest risk to national security.
If, nonetheless, it becomes necessary to undertake a secret operation, it is imperative that the long- range repercussions be weighed fully in advance. The consequences of failure must be faced. Was it worth running the risk of national humiliation in attempting to overthrow Castro? Was it worth running the risk of permanently alienating Sukarno by supporting his enemies?
Equal consideration must be given to the problems that would result from the success of a special operation. Is the United States prepared to assume responsibility for the economic and political conditions growing out of a successful CIA-supported revolt? How much is really accomplished, in such cases as Guatemala and Iran, if a pro-Communist government is removed, but the conditions which permitted Communism to make inroads in the first place are restored?
It is a delusion to think that the problems of United States foreign policy in a complex world can be resolved by the quick surgery of a palace coup. The intelligence and espionage technicians, who have a natural affinity for such activist solutions, should never be allowed to dominate the deliberations leading to secret operations. Nor should they be permitted exclusive control of the conduct of operations in the field.
Both Eisenhower and Kennedy directed that the ambassador be in charge of all United States activities in a foreign country. It is essential that this theoretical supremacy become a reality. An ambassador should never be put in the position of a William Sebald in Burma. If he is to maintain the respect of the government leaders with whom he is dealing, he must be kept informed about American clandestine activity. If circumstances dictate a covert policy that conflicts with the avowed policy of Washington toward a given country, the ambassador must know about it.
Congress should also be kept informed. Under the Constitution, Congress is supposed to act as a check upon the activities of the executive branch. Traditionally, the Senate has given its "advice and consent" to major commitments in the sphere of foreign affairs. But in its relations with the Invisible Government, Congress has all but voted away its rights. It knows relatively little about what goes on in the $4,000,000,000-a-year intelligence complex for which it appropriates the money.
The CIA subcommittees in the House and Senate are controlled by the most conservative elements in Congress, men who are close personally and philosophically to those who run the Invisible Government. These subcommittees are now heavily weighted with legislators whose field of competence is military affairs. They should be reorganized to encompass men with a wider view and expert knowledge of foreign affairs. Men such as Senator Fulbright (who foresaw the perils of the Bay of Pigs with such clarity) should not be purposely excluded from Congressional surveillance of the intelligence apparatus.
The shadowy subcommittees should be replaced by a joint committee, including men from both the House and Senate. There is no reason why secrets should leak in any greater degree from one formal committee than from the present group of informal subcommittees. There has not been any leak of classified data from the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy.
Although the need for greater Congressional control is apparent, both President Eisenhower and President Kennedy resisted it as an infringement upon their executive power. They established a veneer of outside control by creating advisory boards of private citizens. This produced an anomalous situation. Selected private citizens are privy to secrets of the Invisible Government, but the elected representatives of the people are denied any meaningful knowledge of the intelligence machinery.
Congress is not only ignorant of operations overseas, but it has been denied information about the increasing involvement of the Invisible Government in domestic activities. The mandate to gather and analyze intelligence has been broadened into a justification for clandestine activities in the United States.
Clearly, some foreign intelligence can be gathered at home, but no rationale has been offered for a broad spectrum of domestic operations: maintenance of a score of CIA offices in major cities; the control of private businesses serving as CIA covers (such as the Gibraltar Steamship Corporation and Zenith Technical Enterprises, Incorporated); academic programs (such as the Center for International Studies at MIT); and the financing and control of freedom radio stations, publishing ventures and of exile and ethnic groups.
There should be a thorough reappraisal by private organizations and by the universities of the wisdom of their ties to the Invisible Government. There is a real danger that the academic community may find itself so closely allied with the Invisible Government that it will have lost its ability to function as an independent critic of our government and society. The academic world should re-examine its acceptance of hidden money from the CIA.
These unseen domestic activities of the CIA have become disturbingly complex and widespread. To the extent that they can be perceived, they appear to be outside the spirit and perhaps the letter of the National Security Act. No outsider can tell whether this activity is necessary or even legal. No outsider is in a position to determine whether or not, in time, these activities might become an internal danger to a free society. Both Congress and the Executive ought to give urgent attention to this problem.
In a free society attention should be given as well to the increasing tendency of the American Government to mislead the American people in order to protect secret operations. For example:
U-2: "There was absolutely no-N-O-no deliberate attempt to violate Soviet airspace. There never has been." -- Lincoln White. State Department spokesman.
Bay of Pigs: "The American people are entitled to know whether we are intervening in Cuba or intend to do so in the future. The answer to that question is no." -- Secretary of State Dean Rusk.
Indonesia: "Our policy is one of careful neutrality and proper deportment all the way through so as not to be taking sides where it is none of our business." -- President Eisenhower.
Missile crisis: "The Pentagon has no information indicating the presence of offensive weapons in Cuba." -- Department of Defense.
Guatemala: "The situation is being cured by the Guatemalans themselves."-- Secretary of State John Foster Dulles.
Bay of Pigs fliers: "Unfortunately, at present neither CIA nor any other government agency possesses the slightest pertinent information on your son's disappearance." The White House.
Misleading statements related to covert operations have even distorted the electoral process, as was demonstrated in the presidential campaign of 1960.
It seems reasonable to suggest that there be fewer righteous declarations and less public misinformation by the government and, perhaps, more discreet silence in difficult circumstances.
The secret intelligence machinery of the government can never be totally reconciled with the traditions of a free republic. But in a time of Cold War, the solution lies not in dismantling this machinery but in bringing it under greater control. The resultant danger of exposure is far less than the danger of secret power. If we err as a society, let it be on the side of control.
"It should be remembered," Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1819, "that whatever power in any government is independent, is absolute also."