"There is one thing no head of a country can know and that is: how good is his intelligence system? He finds out only by having it fail him." - R.A. Heinlein, The Puppet Masters
Richard Fernandez at Belmont Club has given some big civic-political issues some serious thought.
Money quote(s):
"Walter Russell Mead asks whether Pakistan is at war with the US. “The United States government believes it has evidence linking the Haqqani network, a terrorist organization which has repeatedly carried out attacks against US government personnel and positions, with the government of Pakistan.” Maybe before Haqqani the network of choice was “al-Qaeda”.
Today “war” is less to do with armies of millions marching across borders than with skilled operators backed by millions of dollars. What the Pakistanis might have done is take over the Saudi connection built during the anti-Soviet campaign in Afghanistan and turn it to their own purposes. Then they could wage “intelligence war” on the United States. The public wouldnt necessarily know. As the WMD Commission report concluded the man on the street would probably only find out when the attack was already under way.
Today, we mostly wait for foreign intelligence officers to appear on our doorstep before we even take notice. The lion’s share of our counterintelligence resources are expended inside the United States despite the fact that our adversaries target U.S. interests globally."
The U.S. really does have people, trained people, who consider these issues on a daily basis. Unfortunately, by all outward appearances, it would seem as if the leadership they report to don't take them all that seriously. (And that's the charitable interpretation.)
"The sum total of these foreign intelligence efforts is striking. During the Cold War, every American national security agency—with the possible exception of the Coast Guard—was penetrated by foreign intelligence services. Moreover, in just the past 20 years CIA, FBI, NSA, DIA, NRO, and the Departments of Defense, State, and Energy have all been penetrated. Secrets stolen include nuclear weapons data, U.S. cryptographic codes and procedures, identification of U.S. intelligence sources and methods (human and technical), and war plans. Indeed, it would be difficult to exaggerate the damage that foreign intelligence penetrations have caused.
Some of that juice is certainly going to manifest itself in lobbying and political influence peddling. Indeed, the most fertile ground for “intelligence war” will be in Washington DC itself. Here the potential leverage is greatest, mostly by affecting the form in which “policy questions” are posed. If the questions are phrased right so that all the answers lead nowhere then America might not even recognize it had an enemy at all, except for a bunch of people it has wronged and ought to feel sorry for. If intelligence operations were correctly designed then 9/11 might in memory become just another tragedy" (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)
A free and democratic political system is no guarantee against subversion and active measures by a foreign intelligence service. In some ways, all that freedom and openness actually makes us more vulnerable. It certainly makes us a dangerous adversary (and thus a target) for lots of unsavory folks.
"The most important function that Israel performed in the Middle East was to serve as a scapegoat upon which to vent political dissent within the repressive countries in the region. It was the “far enemy” that regional dictators used to distract their populations so that they would forget the “near enemy”."
Remember who are the "Great Satan" and the "Lesser Satan."
"The media (once called the “press”) was supposed to Americas defense against foreign political intelligence operations. The media is not only the open source world’s main “intelligence agency”, but also its main counterintelligence organ. But if it has performed poorly as the former, it has worked even worse in the latter role. While the blogosphere is full of screeds inveighing against the MSM’s spinning of the news narrative, relatively less has been written about what it does not choose to investigate. And yet it is in what it does not attempt to cover, rather than what it covers poorly where the media’s main failure may be.
Although we can deduce that a very active political intelligence war is probably being waged by foreign powers in Washington DC you almost never hear the press write about it. That is either because it does not really exist or simply because these questions are not asked. If history is any guide, the revelations will come from foreign correspondents who will run into foreign operatives eager to talk about what no one will believe exists. Or perhaps it will come from declassified documents far the future. Traditionally, it is sources from the other side rather than internal security investigators who reveal the presence of hostile operations.
It was the Venona transcripts, derived from signals intercepts for example, that ultimately showed Julius Rosenberg to be a spy and indicated that many of Joseph McCarthy’s accusations were in fact true. The public never learned the truth from the Government during the Cold War. They didn’t learn the truth from the media either."
Readers of the Cold War classic "The Spike" will recall the media itself being a priority target for subversion and compromise of a free society.
"The Fall of the Berlin Wall may have marked the collapse of the Soviet Union. But it may not have marked the end of the Shadow War. Is Pakistan at War with America? Who in the Middle East is America’s friend? Have the perpetrators of 9/11 been brought to justice? It is politicians who answer these questions and if foreign powers start supporting politicians, who’s to stop them?
Domestic counterintelligence is largely a function of the FBI. The problem with that arrangement is that many of the objects of foreign influence are the agency’s civilian superiors. Either the FBI becomes a law unto itself and watches the President or it becomes a plaything of the President and watches his political enemies.
Clearly the utility of the FBI as an agency able to fend off Senators, Congressmen or other high officials under the influence of foreign powers is limited. Therefore the ability to blow the whistle on an illegitimate (however you want to define this) agency of influence belongs in the political process itself, probably largely through the press."
What can America's counterintelligence organs, such as the FBI, really do to defend against high-level agents of influence such as Mr. Fernandez posits? Outside of Ludlum-esque fantasies involving assassinations and arranged "accidents," not too much. The American system for ensuring the (Constitutional) fidelity of its elected officials is the election itself, with vetting conducted on behalf of the people themselves by our press (and by opposing candidates).
"Political counterintelligence is what the “gatekeepers” do, but the lesson of the last decade is that they are probably not doing it too well."
Once upon a time, major cities would have newspapers (plural) that leaned Republican as well as Democrat, or neither. With all but Fox News, talk radio, and the blogosphere utterly in the tank for just one party, that party gets a pass on actual scrutiny. Witness the court proceedings no afoot in Georgia, deliberating over whether the presidential incumbent will even be on the ballot this time around.
Say what you like about "birthers," but if the media had done any due diligence four years ago (beyond paeans to the Democratic candidate's multiple biographies), this sort of thing would have no traction at all.
"The two party system is largely the guardian of legitimacy. Back in the day both parties were far more accountable to local leaders than they are today. The emergence of a permanent political and media class has meant that notions of “legtimacy” (sic) — they would call it bigotry — at the grassroots count for less and less.
This centralizing tendency has meant that it becomes easier for foreign shadow warriors to “capture the flag” due to the nodal nature of its structure. The best political counterintelligence activity is ironically reforming governance and bringing back the power to local levels insofar as possible. It is far harder for Middle Eastern potentates to capture 50 states than it is for them to capture DC."
9/19
