Everyone wants a larger State Dept

My thoughts on Obama's national security team:

Assuming things work out between Obama and Clinton at State and Bill Clinton wherever he is, then this looks to be a very good cabinet. And I think things will work out.

But what is even better news is that Clinton, Gen. Jones (the national security adviser), and Gates at the Pentagon all signed on to Obama's core idea of shifting resources away from the Pentagon and towards the State Dept. This is a great idea and people have been screaming about it for years. In one of the first workshops I did in grad school, the professor pointed at someone and said "imagine you are the State Dept. rep and you have to argue against all of the rest of us from DoD. OK, now in real life it'd be you against the rest of the entire graduate program." While the Pentagon's budget is over $500 billion and including the wars and future medical costs may rise over $1 trillion (and some idiots want to pin it to 4% of GDP), the State Dept had a measly $10 billion for FY 2008.

Despite almost universal agreement that the State Department is under-resourced, Pentagon budgets have continued to outpace State budgets in growth because of lots of Congressional pork.  Probably the largest pork item is the United States Air Force.  OK, that was an exaggeration, but stuff like the F-22 which is projected to cost at least $62 billion is equal to the State Dept budget for six years, and this is for an aircraft with no actual mission other than to defeat imaginary Chinese planes.  Unfortunately for the State Department, it's budget doesn't create jobs in Congressional districts because they invest in people rather than buying stuff, so Congress doesn't throw $5 billion (half the State Dept's budget) at the State Dept in unwanted pork projects like they do the Pentagon.

Because Obama hasn't appointed any intelligence people yet, the intelligence community hasn't really been a part of this "national security team" rollout.  However the CIA and the rest of the intelligence community will be the happiest of all due to the proposed enlarging of the State Deptartment.  When the State Department shrinks, CIA officers overseas have to pick up the slack from there being fewer Foreign Service Officers.  FSOs usually report back to Washington intelligence that is easier to collect (intelligence collecting isn't their main function), and that allows CIA officers to concentrate on targeting their collection on harder targets.  But that basic embassy/elite chatter that FSOs report on is still important, and when FSO positions are cut because the State Dept budget is cut, that means CIA officers have less time to spend on harder (and more interesting) targets and have to report gossip instead.

Bottom line: Obama's national security team looks good, and the intelligence community should be very happy.

Congress not told of covert action. Why?

Steven Aftergood has a post up at Secrecy News. Apparently, the U.S. intelligence community recently did a covert action without informing Congress, as they are legally mandated to do:

"The Committee was dismayed at a recent incident wherein the Intelligence Community failed to inform the Congress of a significant covert action activity. This failure to notify Congress constitutes a violation of the National Security Act of 1947."
"Despite agency explanations that the failure was inadvertent, the Committee is deeply troubled over the fact that such an oversight could occur, whether intentionally or inadvertently."
"The Committee firmly believes that scrupulous transparency between the Intelligence Community and this Committee is an absolute necessity on matters related to covert action."

At first glance it seems like this is fairly straightforward. The Intelligence Community (IC) did a covert action, they are legally required to inform Congress, and they didn't. However if you look at the text of the law that requires them to inform Congress it gets a little trickier, because Congress created some exceptions.

The National Security Act of 1947 says:

(c)(1) The President shall ensure that any [covert action] shall be reported to the congressional intelligence committees as soon as possible after such approval and before the initiation of the covert action authorized by the finding, except as otherwise provided in paragraph (2) and paragraph (3).

Paragraphs 2 and 3 that they refer to say that in extraordinary circumstances, the President can decide to only inform the chairmen and minority leaders of the intelligence committees and of Congress, and if the President doesn't inform Congress of a covert action ahead of time, he better get on his horse and tell them as soon as possible and explain why he didn't tell him sooner.

The tricky part comes in the definition of "covert action." Here's the definition the law uses (emphasis added):

(e) As used in this title, the term "covert action" means an activity or activities of the United States Government to influence political, economic, or military conditions abroad, where it is intended that the role of the United States Government will not be apparent or acknowledged publicly, but does not include -

(1) activities the primary purpose of which is to acquire intelligence, traditional counterintelligence activities, traditional activities to improve or maintain the operational security of United States Government programs, or administrative activities;

(2) traditional diplomatic or military activities or routine support to such activities;

(3) traditional law enforcement activities conducted by United States Government law enforcement agencies or routine support to such activities; or

(4) activities to provide routine support to the overt activities (other than activities described in paragraph (1), (2), or (3)) of other United States Government agencies abroad.

This means that if, say, the CIA undertakes what would normally be considered a covert action, for example, influencing a parliamentary election in a foreign country, but justifies doing so on the basis of improving diplomatic relations with the head of that country (this scenario happened in Nepal in the 1950s, as recalled by Duane Clarridge), the CIA could argue that they don't need to inform Congress because it does not fall under the definition of "covert action" due to its diplomatic motives. Whether they'd be correct or not would depend on your definition of "traditional diplomatic activities." If the CIA were to justify what would otherwise be covert action on the basis of counterintelligence activities it could get even more difficult to disagree with them because counterintelligence activities can be very wide-ranging, and counterintelligence should ideally permeate every aspect of intelligence activity.

I imagine that Congress added the escape clause for intelligence agencies for two reasons. First, they didn't want to be bombarded with notifications of what ambassador is spreading nasty rumors or other such trivialities. Second, because the Act was written in the context of the Cold War, activities such as counter-terrorism and counter-narcotics weren't very important - the target of the Intelligence Community was the Soviet Union. In contrast, now those activities are two of the core functions of the IC, and can also be justified as law enforcement actions, hiding them from Congress. This means Congress can be kept in the dark about a much larger portion of the IC's actions.

Perhaps it is time to amend that chunk of the National Security Act?

Torture doesn't work

The Intelligence Science Board just released a study on interrogation. The Intelligence Science board is:

The ISB comprises experts from private industry and academia representing a broad spectrum of expertise and experiences across many intelligence disciplines. The ISB provides linkages among the intelligence, business, and scientific communities, performs special studies, and assists the Office of the DNI in addressing and recommending solutions to priority national intelligence problems.

Anyway, this advisory panel just released a 374-page long study on interrogation called "Educing Information - Interrogation: Science and Art - Foundations for the Future." It's about what works, what doesn't, the history of interrogation, and even a little bit of epistemology thrown in there too. It brought together people from all over the US intelligence community - FBI, Defense Intelligence Agency, DHS, the different military intelligence branches, and three members from Counterintelligence Field Activity, the Pentagon counterintelligence outfit that has been collecting vast amounts of information on ordinary Americans in the name of protecting military bases. It was a little surprising that there was nobody from the CIA involved in this study, seeing as how the CIA are the ones that have actually had all the "practice" with interrogation recently.

The conclusions of this study are only surprising when contrasted with the actual behavior of the intelligence community - the study concludes (among many other things) torture doesn't work. Here's an excerpt:

And what are we to make of “public opinion”? Unfortunately, that is a relatively easy question. Prime-time television increasingly offers up plot lines involving the incineration of metropolitan Los Angeles by an atomic weapon or its depopulation by an aerosol nerve toxin. The characters do not have the time to reflect upon, much less to utilize, what real professionals know to be the “science and art” of “educing information.” They want results. Now. The public thinks the same way. They want, and rightly expect, precisely the kind of “protection” that only a skilled intelligence professional can provide. Unfortunately, they have no idea how such a person is supposed to act “in real life.”
Is there a theme here? Yes, a simple one. Prime time television is not just entertainment. It is “adult education.” We should not be surprised when the public (and many otherwise law-abiding lawyers) applaud when an actor threatens the “hostile du jour” with pain or mayhem unless he or she answers a few, pointed questions before the end of the episode. The writers craft the script using “extreme” measures because they assume, as our own government has, that police-state tactics studied for defensive purposes can be “reverse engineered” and morphed into cost-effective, “offensive” measures.
Though eminently understandable, such reactions are incredibly short-sighted and profoundly unethical. We don’t need just any answers, we need good answers. Our health and safety, and our posterity, depend on it.