CIA Covert Action Programs

CIA recruits and handles human assets, produces finished intelligence, and conducts Presidentially-directed covert action. Failed or morally dubious covert action programs have been well documented, most recently exemplified by the public discourse over CIA’s Rendition, Detention and Interrogation Program (RDI) and the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques”, such as waterboarding, on prisoners in CIA custody. Elements of effective covert action programs have been identified, along with attributes that historically lead to program failure. It is unclear, however, that these attributes are systematically considered and incorporated into current CIA covert action planning. In this paper, I will propose CIA adopt elements of military operational
Those outcomes, which characterize some but by no means most of the Agency’s covert action programs, often result from the policy decisions that follow the completion of the operations and are not necessarily inherent in them.”4 He related much the same view in his SAMS presentation when he suggested that covert action programs fail more often when “not coordinated with overt policies” or “started late in the policy initiative”. The strategic failure of a particular covert action program in some instances may therefore be due to a lack of operational planning integration either early on or, especially, in the transition period, as the covert action program terminates and US foreign policy takes
Henry A. Crumtpon, leading the CIA’s paramilitary effort from the Counterterrorism Center (CTC) in 2001, later authored a detailed description of the effort to develop a strategic plan for the toppling of the Taliban.5 Perhaps owing to the jointness of this covert action program – an effort he describes as involving the “interdependence of intelligence, covert action, and war folded into a broader policy strategy” - his description notably includes references to such strategic military thinkers as Thucydides, Clausewitz, and Sun Tzu. He also refers to a very Clausewitzian concept, adopted by the US Army in its Planning doctrine, the Center of Gravity (COG) – “a source of power that provides moral or physical strength, freedom of action, or will to act. An objective is always linked to a COG. In identifying COGs it is important to remember that irregular warfare focuses on legitimacy and influence over a population, unlike traditional warfare, which employs direct military confrontation to defeat an adversary’s armed forces, destroy an adversary’s war-making capacity, or seize or retain territory to force a change in an adversary’s government or policies.”6 Thus, a COG is that element or elements whose effective targeting can lead to