Standing Intelligence Agencies and Our Republican Heritage
CCA Response, October 4, 2023
Dear Substack reader, this was a response to Hillsdale College’s CCA on Intelligence Agencies, October 1-3, 2023. All of it happened before the recent Israeli conflict. I might rethink some of my assumptions given what has happened with Hamas and Israel.
Still, I remain, at heart, a small-r republican and small-l libertarian.
Yours, Brad
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The response: Let me begin with a few personal things. First, my sincere thanks to my great friend Dean Mark Kalthoff for inviting me to speak on this topic and for this CCA, “U.S. Intelligence: History and Controversies.” Second, my equal thanks to my excellent colleagues Mark Moyar and Jason Gehrke. Third, a thank you to Matt Bell, Tim Caspar, and Doug Jeffrey of the CCA office.
Fourth, and critically, I must state, unlike my colleagues, I’m absolutely no expert on any of this. I’ve never studied American intelligence agencies, institutionally or otherwise, and much of what I heard this week was new to me. This is not to suggest that I don’t have strong opinions, but my opinions are backed by astonishing ignorance rather than by earned expertise.
What little I know comes from reading too many Tom Clancy novels (I’ve read all but one (the most recent one) under his name; they keep coming out, even though Clancy died years ago). I know as much about the fictional Jack Ryan and Jack Ryan, Jr., as I do about very real Andrew Jackson or Russell Kirk.
Additionally, my maternal grandfather worked as a civilian in intelligence during World War II. Frankly, though, he never talked about it, even with my grandmother, and I don’t know if he was working for one of the military branches or for OSS. How romantic to imagine him at OSS, however, perhaps a commando behind Nazi lines.
Ok, my thoughts on the presentations.
First, we met a number of fascinating and eccentric characters this week. Not only the speakers themselves but those they described: William “Wild Bill” Donovan, Jack Taylor, Sterling Hayden, the Georgia Cracker, Tony Mendez, Yuri Nosanko, Richard Helms, Edward Snowden, John Brennan, and Mrs. Faddis.
And, then, of course, there are the missions with such intriguing names as “Crossfire Hurricane.”
We also encountered a number of ideas about the role of intelligence. Here, however, we have to divide the presentations in two—divide them into the first three presentations and the last three presentations. Indeed, there might have been a slight case of whiplash involved.
The first three speakers really had nothing but good to say about U.S. Intelligence, making the OSS and the CIA seem almost “cute and cuddly,” or even “warm and fuzzy.” It was, indeed, at times, a lovefest for all things CIA.
We were told that while James Bond wasn’t quite real, he might have been. He just wouldn’t have been alone. Rather he would have a trail of magician-like special effects artists backing him up in the field, making sure the camera pen was safe. These artists were a type of “Q” from the James Bond films, but made in Hollywood rather than in Pinewood Studios (the British equivalent of Hollywood). Not just the camera pens, but masks, truth drugs, and primitive cell phones. “We too wanted to create illusions and delusions,” Jonna Mendez said.
We were told that intelligence is necessary for the military; we were told that “Espionage is an instrument of statecraft”; we were told that intelligence was a necessity to predict the future; we were told that the CIA is never political (neither Republican nor Democrat); and we were told that the CIA never operates on American soil.
In the second three talks, though, we were reminded that the “CIA is a bureaucracy” and that we have done our best to turn the CIA into just another agency; that “People who defect are not necessarily all there [mentally]”; that the CIA deals more with blackmail than with money; and that the CIA has become politicized and that there’s a “liberal corporate line” at the agency. We were also told that the CIA, overall, has had more failures than successes. One example? It couldn’t predict 9/11—despite all the extant evidence—and it took nearly ten years to hunt down Osama Bin Laden.
Whom to believe?
I will admit, I was more convinced by the second half of the panelists rather than the first half of the panelists. After all, on January 20, 2021, Former CIA chief John Brennan—publicly in a news interview--openly declared war against all libertarians. I will admit, I took this rather personally.
Second, I don’t want to be too cynical. Despite all its failures and assassinations and propaganda (or, the “narrative” as one speaker called it), the CIA has done some good. Under President Reagan, for example, CIA director William Casey forged an intense alliance with Vatican intelligence and helped undermine the Soviet Union throughout Eastern Europe in the 1980s.
I will admit, again though, that I’m hard-pressed to come up with a myriad of other examples of CIA successes. Did it better our situation in Vietnam, Cuba, or Chile? In Gulf 1 or Gulf 2? Again, perhaps in Afghanistan in the 1980s (or am I sounding too much like my hero, Jack Ryan?) it did serve us well.
Third, I think it’s well worth remembering (whether this guides us or not, I’m not sure; indeed, I’m rather torn on this), that America has a tradition of being neutral in the world and of fearing standing armies (remember, we were told that espionage is critical to our military; thus, there’s a direct connection of the standing army to the intelligence services).
Why not consider the intelligence agencies as standing armies?
In his Farewell Address, President Washington spent a considerable amount of time extolling us to be open in our commerce with all nations, but, equally, to avoid alliances with foreign powers. “Observe good faith and justice towards all Nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all—Religion and morality enjoin this conduct; and can it be that good policy does not equally enjoin it? It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and, at no distant period, a great Nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a People always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence.”
To me, this does not sound like Washington—despite his own spy service—would countenance recruiting those who would betray their own countries and who might, as the one speaker put it, be off mentally. It doesn’t sound like we need to “create a narrative” for propaganda.
Further, Washington said, “the Great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign Nations is in extending our commercial relations to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop.”
This tradition seems to be tied up in the largely forgotten American revolutionary principle that standing armies are dangerous to a free people.
From the earliest origins in the colonies, Americans had considered themselves to be citizen-soldiers. The greatest expression of this fundamentally republican belief, constitutionally, of course, is found in Article I of the U.S. Constitution, which restricts all Congressional expenditures for land forces to a mere two years, as well as in the Second Amendment and its guarantee of the “right to bear arms.” In the years leading up to the passage of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, Americans, by and large (the Quakers excluded, of course), saw violence and the protection of one’s family and community as a sacred duty, not just a right.
Many Americans read the radical works of English philosopher James Harrington and the newspaper editorials of Cato that followed and summarized Harrington’s argument a half-century later. Not atypical was the American revolutionary pamphlet of Demophilus: “The Militia is the natural support of a government, founded on the authority of the people only.” Or, again, from a revolutionary pamphlet signed anonymously: “But what shall I say of a standing army? Under the best discipline they are a nuisance to society; and serve to introduce a system of laws repugnant to civil liberty. Are they not rendered useless by a navy? Are they not a doubtful good, which may either establish or overturn the constitution of the country?” An equally popular revolutionary argument ran as follows: unless in a declared war,
a standing army may be fatal to the happiness and liberty of a community. They generally propagate corruption and vice where they reside, they frequently insult and abuse the unarmed and defenceless people: When there is any difference between rulers and subjects, they will generally be on the side of the former, and ready to assist them in oppressing and enslaving the latter.
Let me stress again, personally, I’m torn about much of this. We live in a very dangerous world, and we need an effective form of intelligence.
However true this is, though, it is equally true that our republican heritage fears entangling alliances as well as a standing army. If we fear a standing army, why not fear a standing intelligence agency? Perhaps, given that the Constitution makes no explicit provision for the CIA, the FBI, or the NSA, we too should restrict the budget of each to two years at a time, just as we do with the army. This, however, is just a humble suggestion.
Granted, I’m not immune to the romantic stories, the intelligence successes, and the anti-Nazi commandos we heard about this week, but I remain a small-r republican at heart.