The Need for Virtue Ethics in the Counterintelligence Community

CI Final

Abstract

This thesis describes the need for an ethical standard in counterintelligence (CI) so as to facilitate collaboration among the various CI agencies and the private sector. It conducts an analysis of the formation of the counterintelligence program under Angleton, the use of CI within the Federal Bureau of Narcotics under Anslinger, and the use of CI in the Phoenix Program and the FBI’s COINTELPRO. This analysis is used to highlight what went wrong with counterintelligence and how those problems can be prevented in the future. It uses a combination of conflict theory, structural functionalism and critical theory to explore the dimensions of counterintelligence from a comparative case study approach. The aim of this qualitative research is to provide an ethical framework that could be used to help the counterintelligence enterprise collaborate more effectively with the private sector in the future. The suggested ethical framework is one of virtue ethics, with character education becoming a part of agent training, and the development of a character-based culture rather than a Cold War-based culture being implemented in the CI community.

Introduction

Intelligence and counterintelligence operations have always been a part of the American Republic (Federation of American Scientists 1996). General Washington was aware of the threat of foreign espionage and the need to counter it (Wettering 2000, 165). The need to deceive those whose intention is to deceive one’s nation is in fact an ancient one, identified by Sun Tzu thousands of years ago (Select Committee on Intelligence 1986). Practicing deception while remaining free from the corrupting influences of deceivers has proven to be a challenge, however (Valentine 2016, 45). The circumstances under which counterintelligence in the US was formerly developed and pursued in its infancy, childhood, and adolescence could be said to have predicted what that program would become in its adulthood. Abuses, errors and mistakes were so rampant that the CIA’s counterintelligence program, run by James Jesus Angleton from inception in the 1950s to the 1970s, effectively had to be reconstructed by Colby, facing pressure from Congress and the public (Church Committee 1976, 171). The problem of ethics in counterintelligence was one that to this day has yet to be adequately answered. However, by understanding what counterintelligence was in the beginning, one may be better situated to understand what it is today and why its policies are what they are. By learning from the mistakes made in the past, a better foundation can be set in place for the future.

Both Angleton and the era in which the counterintelligence program was formerly organized shaped the nature of counterintelligence at a time when the nation itself was buckling under the stress of paranoia, anger, frustration and mistrust (Valetine 2016, 23; Wettering 2000, 165). To some degree, the nation has never recovered from the stresses of the post-war climate that birthed the counterintelligence program in America (Valentine 2016, 9). When Director Colby dismissed Angleton from his position as head of counterintelligence at the CIA, Colby inherited a Staff that was by that time a full-grown adult. Facing political, social, and economic pressures, the CIA was compelled to reorganize, and as the Church Committee reported, it was “an end of an era in CIA counterintelligence” (Church Committee 1976, 171). Yet, the consequences of that era remained. The structure that Angleton had created and the nature of counterintelligence itself had already come into being, much like Frankenstein’s monster. Victor Frankenstein rejected his own creation, but that did not mean the creation ceased to exist. In fact, the creation went on to destroy the creator.

Such an ominous analogy may be appropriate, at least according to Wettering (2000), the retired Central Intelligence Agency operations officer, who oversaw clandestine operations in Europe and Africa for more than three decades. Director Colby certainly felt as much in the 1970s, when it became apparent that the child the federal government had reared into adulthood was not exactly what the state had hoped for. The Church Committee noted that by 1976 the issues facing the counterintelligence program were “how best to protect the United States, including the proper degree of compartmentation of CI information, methods of operation, approaches to security, research priorities, extent of liaison cooperation, and emphasis on deception activities” (Church Committee 1976, 172). One dominant issue the Senate uncovered was the lack of cooperation among the various agencies on the counterintelligence front (Wettering 2000, 270). Tension between the CIA and the FBI had been high since the former’s birth, and while the two agencies could boast of a collaborative spirit in the 1970s, the lack of any substantial counterintelligence office in the FBI meant that the bulk of the work was coordinated by the CIA.

William Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, has gone so far as to warn that the challenge of counterintelligence is no longer one the government can address on its own, that the private sector must bear some of the burden and weight of protecting data and ensuring digital security in the face of snooping foreign actors (Nakashima 2020). An additional consideration put forward by Tromblay (2017) is that technology has developed rapidly in the last two decades alone, and the counterintelligence program has been slow to cross the generational divide between itself and the digital natives of the 21st century who have grown up using technology. In response to the rise of new, global technological advances, the counterintelligence program has appeared much like a member of an older generation attempting to catch up on what members of younger generations take for granted. Tromblay (2017) calls it the problem of counterintelligence’s reactionary orientation—a characteristic of the program that was defined by the circumstances of its birth. Moreover, with so much data now in the hands of private industry, there is an increased need for counterintelligence to work more closely with private industry. Intelligence operations have always included work within private industry, but in many cases this work was compromised by conflicts of interest (Valentine 2016, 40).

Research Question and Purpose

The research question is: How can the US counterintelligence enterprise support collaboration among the various USIC members and the private sector in an ethical and productive manner? To understand the issues and policies of counterintelligence today, it is worth examining identifying the mistakes and lessons that can be learned from the past when the counterintelligence program formally began under Angleton. The purpose of this study is to propose a standardized ethical framework for guiding the counterintelligence program as it works to collaborate with the private sector in the 21st century.

Research Design

A comparative case study approach is used in this research. The case study analysis focuses on three areas in particular, 1) the use of counterintelligence in the CIA under counterintelligence Chief James Jesus Angleton; 2) the conflation of counterintelligence without counterinsurgency in the FBI’s COINTELPRO and the Phoenix Program, and 3) the use of counterintelligence by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN).

Because there is no standard ethical framework in counterintelligence, it presents a problem because of the risk of subjective or questionable morality seeping into counterintelligence activities (Valentine 2016). To understand the problem, this research design is appropriately qualitative, as the subject is exploratory in nature. The aim of the research is to explore by way of comparative case study analysis the counterintelligence program under James Jesus Angleton, CI in the Phoenix Program and the FBI’s COINTELPRO, and CI in the FBN. Scholarly articles, Senate reports, memoirs, independent research, biographies, and analysis have served as the sources of information.

The purpose for this approach can best be understood in the light of Erikson’s model of human development, which enables psychologists to understand the adult by examining the age-related conflicts that must be overcome before the child can proceed successfully to later stages of development (Shriner and Shriner 2014). By examining the early stages of counterintelligence under Angleton, one may gain insight in understanding the policies and issues of counterintelligence today by examining the early days of the counterintelligence program as it grew through its infancy, childhood and adolescence stages of the post-war/Cold War era (Valentine 2016, 10). This study will explore how conflicts of interests and relationships and a lack of ethical standards led to problems in counterintelligence. The comparative case study approach is a robust one because it allows for triangulation of research. The appropriate model for this approach is that of George and Bennett (2004), which uses a structured-focused research design.

It is helpful to first define the concepts, theories and systems of ethics that will be discussed in this study.

Conflict Theory

Marxism is the root of conflict theory, but Ralf Dahrendorf promoted conflict theory by comparing it to structural functionalism and arguing that societies have two orientations or ‘two faces” (Ritzer and Stepinsky 2017,120). One face suggests cooperation, consensus and agreement; the other face suggests conflict between a class with power and a class without. Conflict between these two faces is what explains, according to this theory, the actions of individuals and institutions.

Counterintelligence

Bellaby (2012) defines counterintelligence as “any action or activity that is knowingly designed and intended to encourage an audience of some sort to believe in something which is untrue” (147). Typically, counterintelligence (CI) is associated with misleading or duping an adversary so as to prevent that adversary from gaining a crucial advantage over one’s own position. CI is as important in the private sector as it is in the public sector today, as information has become a vital resource in the digital age.

Critical Theory

Critical theory stems from the post-Marxist view that the revolution predicted by Marx failed to occur because of cultural factors and institutions that prevented the class without power from fulfilling their Marxist mandate. This theory explores the reasons and ways the culture of those with power is used to prevent those without power from rising up to challenge those with power (Horkheimer 1972). The theory assumes that Marx was correct in predicting a worker uprising.

Duty Ethics

Kant put forward the concept of deontology, also known as duty ethics. The concept is that morality is determined by the extent to which one does one’s duty of state (Messilbrook 2013). Duty can be dictated by an authority, and that is why counterintelligence has been described as a duty in the past (Pfaff and Tiel 2004). The line between duty to state and personal ambition, however, has been crossed innumerable times throughout the history of counterintelligence (Morley 2017; Valentine 2016). This makes deontology a complicated framework with serious limitations in terms of utility and application.

Ethical Egoism

Ethical egoism is the notion that the ends justify the means and so long as one can identify a personal benefit to what one does, it can be morally justified. Essentially, it goes against the notion of Kant’s deontology by advocating subjective desire over external duty (O’Neill 1989). However, Sheppard (2012) explains that the world of deception that runs through counterintelligence aligns with the “general tenor of ethical egoism” (19). Sheppard’s (2012) suggestion implies that an unhealthy subjective character animates the CI community.

Lockean Ethics

Locke’s view was that liberty is the fundamental law of nature and that the state should preserve liberty insofar as it is able (Pettit 1997). Lockean ethics as a system does not exist other than in the advocacy of freedom for action. This is a problematic ethical framework because it can branch off in two directions at once—one way to utilitarianism in which liberty is curbed only by utility to the common good; the other way to ethical egoism in which the ends justify the means.

Structural Functionalism

Structural functionalism is a theory that explains social organization in terms of how relationships and institutions work together to bring stability and functionality to a community (Ritzer and Stepinsky 2017). Rather than identifying the problematic nature of these relationships and how oppression may figure into the equation, this theory identifies the positive aspects of these relationships. Its inverse theoretical approach could be called conflict theory.

Utilitarian Ethics

Utilitarianism defines the moral action as that which has the greatest common good (Carson 2010). However, it has no framework for defining the “good”—unlike in the system of virtue ethics, which associates the “good” with transcendental ideals that form a person’s character as they are pursued in thought and action.

Virtue Ethics

Also known as character ethics, virtue ethics is not unique to the West but was embraced equally in the East for thousands of years. In the West, it dates back to Aristotle; in the East, to Confucius (Slingerland 2011). The basic idea of virtue ethics is that actions are deemed moral if they contribute to the cultivation and development of one’s character. Character and reputation go together as individuals in society judge one another based on reputation, which serves as the indicator of the person’s character. A state that has tarnished its reputation through bad faith interactions signals an untrustworthy character and thus risks exclusion from a larger network of international collaboration (Mattox 2002).

Chapter Outline

This thesis first provides a review of literature that focuses on four themes: the problematic nature of deception, the role of ethics in CI, the need for a framework for analyzing the work of CI in the past, and the lack of clarity and collaboration in the CI community. The third chapter discusses the methodology used for this research. The fourth chapter presents the findings and the fifth chapter discusses the findings.

Literature Review

The aim of this examination of the literature is to fill the wide gap that remains in counterintelligence research regarding an appropriate ethical standard that can guide and foster an ethical culture, as called for by Bellaby (2012) and Valentine (2016). The purpose of this review is to identify the lessons that have been learned and presented by researchers on this topic, and to identify an appropriate theoretical framework for assessing the way forward. The research question for this study is: How can the US counterintelligence enterprise support collaboration among the various USIC members and the private sector in an ethical and productive manner? The ultimate purpose of this study is to propose a standardized ethical framework for guiding the counterintelligence program as it works to collaborate with the private sector in the 21st century. Therefore, the themes this review examines are: 1) the problematic nature of deception in intelligence work; 2) the role of ethics in counterintelligence; 3) a framework for analyzing the past; and 4) the need for clarity and collaboration in counterintelligence efforts among the various agencies, organizations and actors.

The Problematic Nature of Deception

Deception is at the core of counterintelligence: yet, it is a problematic core because of the corruption associated with deception in ethical systems. Mattox (2002), for example, observed that the practice of deception “is subject to limitations imposed by the demands of morality” (4). Mattox (2002) makes the good point that intelligence professionals must “act in good faith even with those who are their adversaries” (4). Yet, this point is not supported by all researchers, including Cohen (2016), who argues that there are no moral limits on military deception. Mattox (2002) makes the better argument for numerous reasons: first, he supports his argument with a moral framework that is justifiable based on long-term results, which Mattox (2002) calls the limitation of long-term negative effects. When deception is used cautiously and morally, the adversary is more willing to accept it as a norm of state conflict; moreover, the adversary, who may become a state ally in the future, will not hold any ill-will on this account (Mattox 2002). But when moral limits are off, as Cohen (2016) suggests should be the case, there is no foundation for future trust. Cohen’s (2016) argument fails because it is based on a zero sum game approach to statecraft: Cohen (2016) does not anticipate the reality of the very real possibility of and need for collaboration and partnership with states that are adversaries today but potential allies in the future. Cohen (2016) implicitly views the entire act of counterintelligence from the standpoint of ethical egoism, which is highly problematic both from a rational and ethical standpoint but also from a political standpoint (Lyons 1976). Part of the reason for Cohen’s (2016) problematic position is cultural: Cohen (2016) comes from a Jewish traditional of revolutionary behavior in which dominance is always the end goal (Jones 2008). Other cultures, both Western and Eastern, have tended to promote a position of statecraft that is in line with the doctrine of mutual beneficence put forward by Adam Smith in Wealth of Nations. Both Western and Eastern cultures developed the first and most fundamental ethical framework in virtue ethics, with Aristotle summarizing the framework in ancient Greece and Confucius summarizing the framework in ancient China thousands of years ago (Hursthouse 2016). Cohen’s (2016) position is not rooted in such a tradition but rather in the tradition of elitism that has tended to characterize some nations’ approaches to statecraft in the modern era.

Without imposing moral conditions on counterintelligence, the possibility of developing trusting relationships in the future is lost. Cohen (2016) has no answer to this because his view is colored by a zero sum game mentality, which is that all that matters is winning. Cohen’s (2016) view aligns well with the former motto of the Mossad, “Thou shalt make war by way of deception,” (Ostrovsky and Hoy 1991, 1). The fact that the Mossad abandoned this motto after other states expressed their displeasure with it proves the point that Mattox (2002) makes: states must be conscious of the moral limits of deception. The Mossad stepped back from their overt effrontery in terms of waving their no-limits-to-our-deception in the face of the world; but of course Israeli intelligence never stopped in terms of practice, which is why nations that support a multi-polar world, like Russia, Syria, Iran and China, are often at odds with Israeli aims (Kent 2019). Israel, like the US, is focused primarily on a zero sum game strategy (Kent 2019). Mattox (2002) at least approaches the issue of moral limits to deception from a practical, universal, political and diplomatic position that has utilitarian, deontological and even virtue ethics elements to it. The opposite position of Cohen (2016) can only be accepted from an ethical egoism point of view, and ethical egoism is the most relative and least effective ethical position, as pointed out by Lyons (1976).

Unfortunately, morality within the realm of modern counterintelligence is often the first casualty, as history shows (Valentine 2016). The official beginnings of counterintelligence under the leadership of James Jesus Angleton have illustrated the extent to which the art of deception can create problems within the intelligence community (Morley 2017, 69). Within this community itself there is no standard ethical framework applied, but there should be (Bailey and Galich 2012, 77). To make matters worse, in counterintelligence, there is even less emphasis on ethical cohesion, as Valentine (2016), Unkefer (2013), and Pfaff and Tiel (2004) point out. If there were a more unified, standardized moral framework applied throughout counterintelligence, it is likely that its history in the US would be less fraught with conflicts of interest, human failings, ulterior motives, problematic relationships, and questionable tactics. The reason such a framework has not been applied is that it is viewed as restrictive and inapplicable in the world of counterintelligence. In the American intelligence field, the position like that of Cohen (2016) has prevailed. This position is bad for counterintelligence because of the problems that arise. Valentine (2016) details these problems very well in his work on abuses within the CIA, FBN and FBI. Unkefer’s (2013) memoir of counterintelligence in the FBN supports Valentine’s claims and shows how dangerous and corrupting the lack of moral limits on deception can be. Their work provides ample support for moral limitations to deception. Yet, this support is slow in coming because opponents of such a view argue that the system works as is. Indeed, Unkefer (2013) admits as much, reluctantly—but he does also raise the question of whether the ends justify the means. It is a question that needs to be asked and that goes back to the issue of whether ethical egoism is a sufficient moral framework for counterintelligence. Valentine (2016) makes the best argument for why it is not: the damage to American ideals, America’s reputation, American diplomacy and politics, and American culture is too great.

Counterintelligence has often been linked with the idea of national security, yet as Nolan (1997) shows it is dangerous to think of counterintelligence as a security exercise because it is literally nothing of the sort. Writing from the standpoint of private industry, Nolan (1997) states explicitly that “while security seeks to protect a firm's assets by a combination of policies, procedures and practices, counterintelligence, properly understood, aims to engage and neutralize a competitor's collection efforts through a variety of imaginative, flexible, and active measures” (53). The point of concern, here, is not only the degree to which those “imaginative, flexible, and active measures” lead to the problems both for the agency and for the field it aims to serve (Nolan 1997, 53). There is also the matter of confusing counterintelligence with security, which is precisely what has happened in the past and is currently happening under the Trump Administration with its 2020-2022 National Counterintelligence Strategy. The fact that counterintelligence has been conflated with security is part of the problem: it has led to a kind of self-deception with the government. It is no secret that self-deception weakens one’s ability to engage in counterintelligence effectively (Unkefer 2013), and even the ancient art of war practiced by Sun Tzu suggests as much. American policy on counterintelligence has not been developed with the important warning from Nolan (1997) in mind. Instead, it has been formulated with a view towards removing all moral limits and constraints on counterintelligence and recommitting itself to the pursuit of victory in the zero sum game policymakers wish to see the nation playing.

Deceptive Policy

It is helpful to consider how self-deceptive American policy has become to illustrate the important points that Nolan (1997), Mattox (2002) and Valentine (2016) make. For instance, the strategic objectives of the 2020-2022 National Counterintelligence Strategy of the United States (2020) are: 1) to protect the nation’s critical infrastructure, 2) reduce threats to supply chains, 3) counter the exploitation of the US economy, 4) defend American democracy against foreign influence, and 5) counter foreign intelligence cyber and technical operations (4). These objectives differ from the 2018-2022 National Counterintelligence and Security Center Strategic Plan. Under Director William R. Evanina, integration of CI and security activities was a top priority and theme of the 2018-2022 strategy, but the strategic goals were quite distinct: Goal 1 was to “Advance our Knowledge of, and our Ability to Counter Foreign and other Threats and Incidents”; Goal 2 was to “Protect US Critical Infrastructure, Technologies, Facilities, Classified Networks, Sensitive Information, and Personnel”; Goal 3 was to “Advance our Counterintelligence and Security Mission and Optimize Enterprise Capabilities through Partnerships”; Goal 4 was to “Strengthen our Effectiveness through Stakeholder Engagement, Governance, and Advocacy”; and Goal 5 was to “Achieve our Mission through Organizational Excellence” (National Counterintelligence and Security Center Strategy 2018-2020 2020, ii). The difference reveals the issue of mission creep—the gradual blurring of lines, blurring of objectives, expansion of meanings, and taking liberties with original mandates. It should be considered, after all, that the official responsibility of counterintelligence is to “collect information and conduct activities to identify, deceive, exploit, disrupt, or protect against espionage, other intelligence activities, sabotage, or assassinations conducted for or on behalf of foreign powers, organizations, or persons or their agents, or international terrorist organizations” (National Counterintelligence and Security Center Strategy 2018-2020 2020, 2). The conflated, mixed, broad, and somewhat vague strategic objectives that have been developed for the counterintelligence community in the year 2020 reflects the same conflated, mixed, broad, and somewhat vague strategic objectives that plagued the CI community’s Phoenix program, which Valentine (2016) has called the “blueprint” for all current intelligence action (50). Tromblay (2017) has concurred with the assessment that the intelligence community is overstretched and overtaxed and that counterintelligence is being tasked with too many objectives that are foreign to its mission. The issues identified by Tromblay (2017) are that “the U.S. government has attempted to partner with the private sector on counterintelligence (CI) awareness and response, [but that] these efforts have been plagued by a limited concept of which industry sectors are at risk, inconsistency in programs, and redundancies across agencies” (1). Overall, there is a lack of reconciliation between vision and mission and what is being asked of CI. It appears that policymakers are either unclear about the limitations of counterintelligence work or are not interested in these limitations and seek a more expansive use of counterintelligence, i.e., to use deception to bolster security—against the warnings of Nolan (1997). In either case, it is an effort in self-deception that will likely only lead to more problems for the CI community.

To summarize the problem, the area of action for counterintelligence may be one thing in terms of a mission, but the strategic operations and integration of counterintelligence with security and other state-sanctioned actions has refueled and threatens to perpetuate the same problems that led to the Church Committee’s (1976) conclusion that the CIA had created a counterintelligence monster (172). While it is acknowledged that the CI community should work more closely with private industry to engage effectively in its official mission (Nakashima 2020), the reality of how this collaboration is to take place, ethically and practically, is a problem that remains to be addressed. The risk of not addressing it puts the CI community in danger of operating outside of its scope and engaging in the precise problematic misinterpretation of counterintelligence warned against by Nolan (1997). Nolan’s (1997) warning is important to consider, but it has been largely ignored because the framework of ethical egoism has been adopted from the beginning under Angleton, who worked closely with the Mossad from the start of CI operations (Morley 2017). Morley (2017) does an excellent job in identifying the close relationship between Angleton and Tel Aviv, a relationship ignored by most other researchers. Understanding this relationship is important because it reveals the cultural influence that Israeli intelligence had on Angleton. Rather than rooting CI in the strong moral foundations of the West (virtue ethics, deontology or utilitarianism), Angleton adopted the ethical egoism framework of the Mossad, and that has made all the difference.

The Role of Ethics

One of the problems encountered in studying counterintelligence is how to approach it from an ethical point of view (Pfaff and Tiel, 2004). Defining an ethical framework is essential in approaching the subject, yet problematic at the same time because counterintelligence has not been approached in the same way by those who practiced or continue to practice it. Bailey and Galich (2012) make a very effective argument for why a more traditional and defined ethical framework is needed in CI. Pfaff and Tiel (2004) explain that currently there is a lack of ethical focus in CI, but Bailey and Galich (2012) get to the root of the matter: no agencies in CI appear to be interested in setting moral limitations to the practice of CI. While various theoretical assumptions have been applied to critical studies of the CI community in the past, none of these studies have actually gone so far as to recommend an ethical framework. Erskine (2004) addressed the utilitarian ethics of CI (360); Pfaff and Tiel (2004) argued that every ethical approach to CI is rooted in Lockean or deontological ethics (1-2); Mattox (2002) approaches the topic from the standpoint of virtue ethics, arguing that if leaders do not “act in good faith even with those who are their adversaries” the potential risk of damaged reputations can undermine the diplomatic strategies of the state and create greater problems than before (4). Each of these studies is effective in illustrating the short-comings of ethical application in CI, but none of them present a way forward or a solution to the problem. Each highlights a part of the problem, but none of them proposes a sufficient solution. The problem is real: to support the point of Mattox (2002), Lieberthal and Jisi (2012) explain that the alliance among China, Russia, and Iran (all considered counterintelligence targets in the 2020-2022 National Counterintelligence Strategy of the United States) has come about as a direct response to the perception of these states that the US has acted in bad faith and cannot be trusted. What is the solution? None of these studies by themselves provides a holistic solution because the problem ultimately is cultural. To understand that point, one has to consider the traditional purpose of ethics in the West and in the East and how that purpose differs from the modern approach to ethics from the standpoint of egoism.

Researchers consistently suggest that ethics matter in all aspects of statehood, no less in counterintelligence than in any other sphere (Bellaby 2012; Erskine 2004; Bailey and Galitch 2012; Pfaff and Tiel 2004). Because, however, there has been no standard ethical framework used in counterintelligence, a need for consistency in application of an ethical system to CI must be assumed. Bailey and Galitch (2012) make this point most effectively by explaining the code of ethics in the intelligence community and identifying its weaknesses and problem areas. However, having a code and implementing a code are two different things, and this is where culture comes into play. The Mossad changed its motto to appease the world, but it did not change its tactics. In short, its words changed, but its actions stayed the same: the same culture remained. The culture in the US is what must be addressed, as Valentine (2016) deftly shows.

With power as the main impetus, other drivers of human action, such as virtue ethics, duty ethics, utilitarianism, and ethical egoism, may be used to explain the problems that arose within the counterintelligence program from the 1950s to the 1970s. Relevant theories include conflict theory, structural functionalism, and critical theory. Conflict theory was posited as a response to structural functionalism, and critical theory arose out of the failure of conflict theory to fully account for the failure of the Marxist prophecy (Horkheimer 1972, 246). Horkheimer (1972) fills the gap in cultural studies left by other researchers who failed to draw the connection between media, the state, and the cultural aims of the elite. Coming from a Jewish cultural background himself, Horkheimer (1972) understood the role that the elite play in the formation of culture in the modern US and describes better than anyone else in the field how the ethics of the people have been formed by an elitist group in power. However, by itself critical theory is an inadequate theory because social action is more than a quest for liberation. In other words, Horkheimer (1972) represents only one type of culture—a non-traditional culture that is neither in line with traditional Western or Eastern values but rather one that has had its own values and traditions predicated on its own special place in God’s eyes and in relation to the rest of the world. Equally inadequate by itself is structural functionalism, because it does not consider the role that conflict plays in society. Obviously with different cultures and values clashing at different levels of society there will be conflict. With a focus on how ethics play a part in decision-making, structural functionalism, conflict theory and critical theory can help to explain the complex culture of CI in America. There is no one researcher who makes this point, but various researchers have made valid arguments in defense of their own theoretical positions.

Framework for Analyzing the Past

Because of the confusion regarding culture, cultural values, and ethics, there is no consensus on how to analyze the past, as Pfaff and Tiel (2004) show. Nonetheless, there is a need for a framework for analyzing the past, because only with such a framework can one begin to understand the mistakes and the lessons that can be learned from the past. To decide on that framework, one has to decide on what values are most important—but this is the crux of the matter. Before one can rightly consider the role that ethics should play in the field of counterintelligence, one must decide on the cultural perspective from which to judge. Morley (2013) illustrates how Angleton was influenced by Israel’s culture of statecraft. Though he does not emphasize the point, it is necessary to do so. That influence is what is at the heart of America’s lack of moral restraint in counterintelligence. The lack of moral restraint has been well documented (Valentine 2016). The cultural influence responsible for that lack has not received much focus from researchers like Valentine (2016), Morley (2013) or Pfaff and Tiel (2004). Whether they have intentionally turned a blind eye to it or have simply passed over the influence of culture on the matter is unknown. What is known is that, as Bellaby (2012) states, counterintelligence is “any action or activity that is knowingly designed and intended to encourage an audience of some sort to believe in something which is untrue” (147). Trafficking in untruths can be highly risky if not approached with a firm ethical framework in place.

For example, what are acceptable counterintelligence actions and what unacceptable counterintelligence actions? Mattox (2002) asserts that there should be moral limits on CI, but does not go into considerable detail to explicitly state what those limits should be. Again, the issue of delineation is avoided because it is an issue of culture at root, and cultural conflicts exist throughout American society from top to bottom.

Erskine (2004) provides an initial step towards thinking about CI from a more traditional ethical perspective, one that is realistic, consequentialist and deontological—but, again, the same problems emerge. Duty is relative to one’s cultural imperative and one’s perceived objective. Erskine (2004) is not unrealistic either in appreciating the ambiguous moral nature of CI as he states that “not only is deception intrinsic to clandestine collection, but it is also central to counter-intelligence activities such as the deployment of ‘double agents’ and the sending of false messages when it is we who would rather keep our secrets to ourselves” (372). Erskine’s (2004) approach towards suggesting an ethical framework for examining the past is helpful, but it does not provide any conclusive answers. More to the point, in terms of the danger posed by an unethical approach to counterintelligence, is Bellaby’s (2012) assessment of the underlying reason for the failure within the counterintelligence program in the past: the application of widespread deception represents a danger for one’s own nation because “lying can damage society as it chips away at, and could destroy the social bonds of trust and as a result breaks down the moral and social relationships that hold a society together” (149). This danger is highlighted by Valentine (2016) who cites the Phoenix Program, initiated in Vietnam as a template for corruption within the intelligence community and one that is still promoted to this day (40). A further problem, identified by Bailey and Galich (2012) is that there has never been a standardized ethical framework used within the counterintelligence program and that, just as freedom of religion can quickly lead to freedom from religion, freedom of choice with regards to ethics can quickly lead to freedom from ethics. Those who analyze the past tend to do so without committing themselves to an ethical perspective. Cohen (2016) is alone among researchers in that his perspective is obvious even if not explicit: his is elitist and ethical egoism is the framework. Other researchers, from Erskine (2004) to Bailey and Galich (2012) avoid making any explicit statements on ethical egoism. It is almost as though they are trying to avoid a confrontation. To call out the purveyors of ethical egoism in policymaking in the CI community would be akin to throwing down a gauntlet and inviting blowback. Realizing that is why it is important to keep conflict theory in mind when addressing these points.

The ethical framework used to analyze the past must be realistic, however, as Erskine (2004) argues. That is one of the best points that Erskine (2004) makes. CI is by nature morally ambiguous. The fact is that deception is part of the trade in counterintelligence: “intelligence professionals around the world are taught and encouraged by their leaders and agencies to use unethical tactics or ‘tradecraft’ (e.g. lie, deceive, steal, and manipulate) in order to obtain [crucial] information” (Coyne et al. 2013, 27). There is no way to avoid this fact and negotiating with it from an ethical standpoint puts or removes limitations on human behavior. Those limitations, moreover, can be the difference between a successful counterintelligence operation and a failed operation (Unkefer 2013). This reality may be why researchers like Bailey and Galich (2012) and Erskine (2004) have been reluctant to provide an ethical framework for the CI community. Regardless, their studies indicate the need for one.

To prove the need for such a framework, it is helpful to draw upon Valentine’s (2016) work, which is factual rather than theoretical like the work of Erskine (2004) and Mattox (2002). Valentine’s study of the CIA from its inception is unique among other researchers, as he was given special access to CIA agents by Director Colby, and much of the information given him by agents was considered “safe” as the agents assumed Valentine was in the CIA and was not going to publish what was being told to him. Valentine’s reporting provides a unique but personal look into the history of intelligence in the US. It differs from other studies, such as that of Bellaby (2012) and Pfaff and Tiel (2004), which are scholarly-oriented rather than historically-oriented. Valentine’s work serves as an historical record of errors, mistakes and problems within the intelligence and counterintelligence enterprise resulting from a lack of ethical imperatives. Pfaff and Tiel (2004) indicate that essentially they all combine aspects of deontology and Lockean ethics, in that the practice of deception is perceived as a duty to the state, one that must be practiced in order to safeguard the state’s own secrets and to prevent foreign actors from acquiring truthful information that might compromise a mission in the field. Yet, deontology and Lockean ethics have not safeguarded the intelligence community from errors and abuses (Pfaff and Tiel, 2004; Valentine, 2016).

The Need for Collaboration and Clarity

Not only has a need been identified for collaboration between the CI community and private industry, but there is a recognized need that the globalized world has changed the way in which nations must interact: more collaboration and less intrigue is required. For example, Godson and Wirtz (2000) state that “the breakdown of the traditional barriers to national sovereignty—increases the information and economic channels” that international players must navigate, foster and maintain (432). Godson and Wirtz (2000) further point out that “foreign denial and deception affects the quality of life in the United States by causing policymakers to waste scarce public resources and to fail to anticipate strategic threats” (435). This point raises the question of whether deception should have any part in statecraft period. Kent (2019) explains that to boast of openly deceiving by engaging in counterintelligence is to put one’s own national reputation at risk: that is one reason the Israeli Mossad changed its motto, which used to state, “By way of deception, thou shalt conduct war” (86). Nations thus openly admit that engaging in deception is a bad look. Both Kent (2019) and Godson and Wirtz (2000) help to make the problem of morality in CI even more complicated by asking if deception should have any part in policy. They represent one side of the ethical spectrum and Cohen (2016) represents the other side. Kent (2019) and Godson and Wirtz (2000) represent the absolutist side of the discussion; Cohen (2016) represents the relativistic side.

The absolutist side of the discussion has a much better argument than the relativistic side. The reason for this is that there is an escalation problem involved, from a practical standpoint. As Bernardi (2013) states, “Usually, information control generates an escalation of counterintelligence measures, because information control on the part of one State invites other governments and agencies to counteract, by means of countermeasures against espionage and deception” (50). When one nation deceives, another will follow. Angleton faced the problem of escalation his entire career (Morley 2013). This is why the absolutist position of Kent (2019) makes sense, practically speaking. It may be better simply to focus on collaboration and clarity than on attempting to deceive. Ironically, it is in this context that the Intelligence and National Security Alliance (2020) has identified a “need to clarify the role of CI in the era of globalization” (1). Yet the culture of deception has spread all over the globe. Developers, technicians, production personnel, IT personnel, business development personnel, human resources personnel, and facility personnel are all potential targets of foreign actors and foreign collectors of intelligence (National Counterintelligence and Security Center n.d.). Private industry is at risk because it possesses intellectual property that foreign actors covet and business activities can be exploited. Cyber operations are also at risk, as is confidential information, which can be mishandled by employees. Counterintelligence operations could be used to deliberately leak false information to known foreign actors, but doing so runs the risk of escalating a larger conflict among nations, as Bernardi (2013) notes. Bernardi (2013), like the others, highlights the problem but does not point to a solution. From an ethical standpoint it is difficult to determine where the line should be in terms of using deception. Thus, one must step back to the standpoint of culture and perhaps even to absolutism in order to establish the conditions necessary for collaboration and clarity, as Kent (2019) proposes.

Summation

Since counterintelligence came to maturity in the US in an era of conflict, it is helpful to approach the subject from the standpoint of conflict theory and the theories developed around it, all of which focus on the ways in which power is sought and used by groups in order to obtain or maintain possession of vital resources or maintain a balance of relationships that ensure stability and order in a system. This approach allows the research to explore the ways in which power drove the initiatives of counterintelligence policies during the 50s, 60s and 70s. However, the literature shows that the problem of ethics in counterintelligence has had no easy solution and that the art of deception is such that it fosters a gray zone of disinformation, conflicts of interest and corruption. The outcome of this situation was that counterintelligence suffered from a poor culture and various other issues, resulting ultimately in the dismissal of Angleton and an attempt to restart the program. As the program now tries to address the issues of the 21st century, it appears that guidance could be used to help steer the counterintelligence program away from the same errors and policies that derailed it in the past. The literature suggests that a need exists for this problem to be addressed, and to help respond to that need a theoretical approach to the problem should be defined.

Methodology

There is no standard ethical framework in counterintelligence, which presents a problem because of the risk of subjective or questionable morality seeping into counterintelligence activities (Valentine 2016). To understand the problem, this research design is qualitative because the subject is exploratory in nature. The aim of the research is to explore by way of comparative case study analysis the counterintelligence program under James Jesus Angleton, CI in the Phoenix Program and the FBI’s COINTELPRO, and CI in the FBN. Scholarly articles, monographs, Senate reports, memoirs, independent research, biographies, and analysis will serve as the sources of information. Data was analyzed using content analysis, with themes drawn from the literature and arranged and organized to give a clearer understanding of how ethics might be better utilized to guide the integration of the counterintelligence enterprise with the private sector in the 21st century. Concepts of ethics were operationalized by defining them in accordance with accepted scholarly practices. Potential biases were addressed by bracketing them out at the beginning, as recommended by Johnston, Wallis, Oprescu, and Gray (2017). The case study analysis focuses on three areas in particular, 1) the use of counterintelligence in the CIA under counterintelligence Chief James Jesus Angleton; 2) the use of counterintelligence in the Phoenix Program and the FBI’s COINTELPRO, and 3) the use of counterintelligence by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN).

Research methods for obtaining data are important because they determine the kind of data that is collected. For instance, a survey can supply quantitative data using a 5 point Likert scale that allows the research to statistically analyze the results and test for correlation or describe the averages and so on. A focus group method can allow a researcher to obtain qualitative data that focuses on common themes and concepts found among the responses of the various participants in the focus group when a question is put out for group discussion. Experiments allow a researcher to test a hypothesis and look at specific variables and how they relate. Interviews allow a researcher to obtain in-depth data from a single participant by asking questions that can lead to more questions and more answers and so on. Each method is helpful depending on what the researcher is attempting to do, and so they all have their place in meaningful research (Walliman 2017). The difference between quantitative and qualitative research is that the former is typically conducted to test a hypothesis whereas the latter is typically conducted to develop a hypothesis. This study is exploratory and is therefore not aiming to test a hypothesis but rather to compare findings from three different case examples of counterintelligence activities.

The comparative case study approach relies heavily upon secondary data analysis—i.e., data that has already been compiled. For this study, three works in particular will serve as the starting point: Unkefer’s (2013) memoir of working with the FBN, 90 Church; Morley’s (2017) biography of Angleton, The Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster James Jesus Angleton; and Valentine’s (2016) collection of research on the Phoenix Program as well as the FBN. Analysis of these works will then be followed up and complemented by analysis of relevant archival data, gathered by using snowball sampling—i.e., reviewing sources identified in the original data and using those sources to gather additional sources and so on. Secondary data analysis is typically used in literature reviews and systematic reviews to provide a foundation for further research or to compile past information from decades of previous research into one research article, and it can be of equal importance in case study analysis (Walliman 2017). It can be used for either qualitative or quantitative research, and the data can be interpreted in terms of quality and characteristics of the archival data or in terms of statistics. It can also be used by researchers who do not have time to conduct an experiment or field work on their own so they use data from previously conducted studies and incorporate it into their own study. For the purposes of this study, secondary data will be compiled thematically with a view towards evaluating counterintelligence case examples from the standpoint of ethics and outcomes to determine how ethics might best be applied to bolster counterintelligence for the future.

The ethical perspectives from which these counterintelligence cases will be assessed will be 1) virtue ethics, 2) duty ethics, 3) utilitarianism, and 4) ethical egoism. These are the four main relevant ethical systems typically utilized in ethics discourse to discuss actions and their morality in today’s world (Pojman and Feiser 2012). As Pojman and Fieser (2012) note, “moral principles concern standards of behavior; roughly speaking, they involve not what is but what ought to be” (3). The goal of this study is to identify what the ethical framework ought to be for the counterintelligence community going forward.

This method is conducted by creating a set of parameters for the searching of a database. The search will have to have inclusion and exclusion parameters so as to determine what data will be included in the study and what data will be excluded and this should be explained in the write-up. The data is then obtained from the database and analyzed accordingly. The advantages of secondary data analysis and archival studies are that it is a good way to review what information is available in either published or unpublished form (Walliman 2017). It allows data to be aggregated to one source and examined and that information presented for others in a systematic or at least logical and orderly way.

The limitations of this method are that it is not generally going to provide any new insight on a subject or advance a research issue. It is generally used for building a case for future research or to show where the focus in the past has been or why studies on a subject so far have been inadequate (Walliman 2017). Since the aim of this study is exploratory in nature and intends to focus the issue of the application of ethics in counterintelligence, this limitation is not seen as negative.

Purposive sampling will also be used in conjunction with snowball sampling to obtain data. Purposive sampling is acceptable for qualitative research because in qualitative research one is exploring a problem rather than attempting to test a hypothesis (Marshall 1996). Qualitative research is about collecting data so as to formulate a hypothesis, whereas quantitative research is about already having a hypothesis and obtaining a random sample that is representative of the population and testing that hypothesis with the sample. Generally, in quantitative studies, the researcher wants to have a randomized sample and if the test is experimental a controlled trial might be conducted. However, purposive sampling can be used depending on what the aim of the study is: if the study is looking at a narrower population, such as how particular intelligence agents applied a system of ethics in their counterintelligence work, purposive sampling within a particular agency would make sense even if the study is quantitative (Walliman 2017). Thus, there is no one size fits all model for what kind of sampling process should be conducted: it all depends on the design of the study and the data collection methodology being used (Lang and Altman 2016). In a qualitative study, one might conduct a focus group or interview or case study, all of which will likely use a purposive sampling approach because it gives the researcher a better focus on people who represent the population and a chance to understand in more detail what this population is like based on interviews with people from that population. Then that data can be taken to develop a hypothesis, which can then be tested quantitatively with, for instance, a survey of the wider population using a random sample approach to test for statistical significance of the null hypothesis (Marshall 1996).

The qualitative researcher gains more direct insight into a specific population through purposive sampling. What is given up by not using random sampling is access to a wider population. The trade-off is worth it though because in order to understand one group, it requires narrow up-close examination and exploration (Walliman 2017). If the field is opened up at random, the researcher will not have the same opportunity to study up close a single group or population, but may have one participant from this group and another from that group, which makes the data less reliable and can impair the validity of the findings because the approach is not focused.

Purposive sampling can work well with quantitative researchers, depending on the nature of the study, but in general quantitative research will focus on testing a hypothesis with the wider population and using a randomized sample from a population instead of their own judgment (Palinkas et al. 2015). The key to quantitative research is to be as objective as possible and to remove as much subjective bias as possible, whereas in qualitative research it is accepted that the researcher is going to be personally involved in making judgments and that the work will have a higher degree of subjectivity. This does present a limitation in terms of randomization. However, the characteristics of the study are such that randomization with regard to data collection is not of primary importance, since no theory or hypothesis is being tested.

Circumstances under which a qualitative researcher might decide to use random sampling instead of purpose sampling might be one in which the researcher already has a hypothesis formed and wants to explore whether the hypothesis can be significantly applied among the general wider population. So in that case the researcher might conduct random sampling to obtain a small pool of participants for a focus group or for interviews or for questionnaires. This happens when companies want to test a new product: they may randomly select participants from a specific population for a focus group; but they will likely be conducting a mixed-methods approach and collecting both qualitative and quantitative data (Wisdom and Creswell 2013). Random sampling can be used when the researcher is wanting to create a reliable and valid data set and may be interested in triangulation of sources (Creswell and Creswell 2018).

In conclusion, this research study uses the comparative case study analysis approach. The purpose of this method is to explore by way of comparative case study analysis the counterintelligence program under James Jesus Angleton, including the literature of the past and present. The goal of the research is to identify what the ethical framework ought to be for the counterintelligence community going forward. The data will be analyzed using content analysis and organized thematically. The framework by which the data will be analyzed will be the ethical frameworks of virtue ethics, duty ethics, utilitarianism, and ethical egoism. Sampling methods will be purposive and snowball.

Findings

Angleton’s CI Program

Angleton headed the CIA’s counterintelligence program for two decades. Created in 1954, the CI program was highly influenced from the beginning by Angleton (Morley 2017). By 1974, when Angleton was relieved of his duties by CIA Chief William Colby, the Agency was under fire for having been caught spying on American citizens, a clear violation of its charter (Morley 2018). Angleton had gone far beyond his mandate in the view of Cleveland Cram, the senior operations officer tasked by Colby with reviewing the CI program under Angleton’s twenty year tenure. Cram produced a 12-volume report, each volume running hundreds of pages long, detailing the abuses that occurred under Angleton’s watch. The report was classified confidential by the CIA and never made public; however, some of the primary sources used by Cram to assist in the writing of the report were made available to Morley, a biographer of Angleton. The sources were obtained from Georgetown University’s Booth Family Center for Special Collections (Morley 2018).

Though there are many focal points that could be examined, including the role that Angleton played in handling Oswald’s file in the lead-up to and the aftermath of the JFK assassination, Morley (2018) focused on one situation in particular, emblematic of the problem inherent in Angleton’s CI program: what to do with two KGB defectors whose stories contradicted one another in the 1960s. Angleton was concerned with Soviet disinformation; British allies in CI were concerned with Soviet penetration and cited the treachery of Sir Anthony Blunt, the Western intelligence operative who defected to the Soviet Union and served as a prime example of the extent to which the CIA had been penetrated. The so-called Ring of Five, which included Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, Don Maclean, John Cairncross and Blunt, were all exposed as traitors to the Crown (Cram 1993, 5). The British thus placed much more emphasis on penetration; Angleton less so—until Golitsyn arrived and insisted that the Soviets had penetrated the CIA at the highest levels (Central Intelligence Agency 2011, 39).

From the beginning of his work at the head of CI, Angleton had a close working relationship with the Mossad and traveled monthly to Tel Aviv; this relationship began even before the CI program had been created, in fact—when Angleton was CIA chief of foreign intelligence (Morley 2017, 74). An intimate relationship between the two intelligence agencies existed throughout the duration of Angleton’s tenure. Angleton’s blindness to the risk of working closely with the Mossad would later lead to his critics, including Clare E. Petty, asserting that he was “either a giant fraud or a [double] agent” (Cram 1993, 8). In the game of using deception to confuse adversaries, the US under Angleton was played badly, and no event indicated this more than the Golitsyn vs. Nosenko debacle of the 1960s (Morley 2017).

Golitsyn defected from the Soviet Union in 1961; Nosenko followed in 1964. Angleton was partial to the claims of Golitsyn and disbelieved Nosenko, while critics of Angleton dismissed Golitsyn and clung to Nosenko as the source of true information. Golitsyn enjoyed relative freedom and attention; Nosenko underwent imprisonment and isolation for four years until his release and settlement in a Washington suburb. Golitsyn claimed that the KGB had infiltrated the CIA and that Soviet deception against Western allies was being used to bring Communism to the West (Central Intelligence Agency 2011, 40). With Golitsyn, Angleton developed the “Master Plan” thesis that described this idea more fully; critics later referred to this thesis as the “Monster Plot” out of disgust for its detrimental effects on the CI community (Central Intelligence Agency 2011, 39-40). Consistent with the “Master Plan” thesis, Golitsyn accused Nosenko of defecting so as to provide cover for a Soviet mole in the CIA (Morley 2018). Angleton believed Nosenko, not Golitsyn, to be a double-agent. Angleton’s critics argued that the truth was just the opposite. Nosenko’s release in 1968 and subsequent quiet life free of scandal appeared to have validated Angleton’s critics. The effect of this confusion in the CI program under Angleton was a total breakdown of trust within the CI community (Cram 1993). Agent was set against agent, analyst against analyst under Angleton.

As Morley (2018) notes, Angleton and Reuven Shiloah, founder of Israel’s Institute for Intelligence and Special Tasks, better known as the Mossad, had a “special relationship.” Angleton identified deeply with Israel, and succeeding Mossad Chief Meir Amit viewed Angleton’s “identification with Israel [as] a great asset for Israel” (Morley 2018). The relationship was so pronounced that Morley (2018) has referred to Angleton as an Israeli recruit. It was to Angleton that Amos Manor, chief of Israel’s Shin Bet, passed Khrushchev’s secret speech in 1956. The document made Angleton a star in the intelligence community and solidified the relationship between Israel and Angleton (Morley 2018).

Angleton’s belief in the mole thesis proposed by Golitsyn was in part based on his own experience with moles. He had been best friends with the British diplomat Kim Philby, who defected to the KGB in the 1950s. Angleton’s pre-conceived notions led him to believe Golitsyn foremost. Agent John Hart, who wrote The Monster Plan, one of the sources used by Cram and passed on to Morley, stated condemningly that Angleton’s handling of the affair “did not conform to any generally accepted sense of the term ‘methodology’” and that an “improvement of intellectual standards” in the CI program was needed (Morley 2018). What went unsaid was any mention of an improvement in the agency’s ethical standards. A standard ethical framework had not been established under Angleton and has not to this day. Instead, Angleton focused on developing a network of tenuous relationships, many of which proved to be false.

The final view of Angleton’s CI program can be summed up appropriately by Raviv and Melman (1990): “Admiration for the Jewish state became an obsession with Angleton, who fell captive to the magic of Israeli intelligence” (90). This suggests that rather than put CI at the service of the US, Angleton placed himself at the service of Israel’s Mossad. The extent to which the Mossad used Angleton can be seen at the very least in the development of Israel’s nuclear arsenal, which occurred under Angleton’s watch. Angleton, who had worked relatively closely with the FBI, failed to facilitate the FBI’s investigation into the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation, from which nuclear material was diverted illegally to Israel (Morley 2018). In short, Angleton was compromised by a conflict of interest that saw his loyalty to one state override his duties to another. In other counterintelligence operations, loyalty to a group or to an idea has led to similar outcomes. The Phoenix Program and the FBI’s COINTELPRO are examples this.

The Phoenix Program and the FBI’s COINTELPRO

Though proponents of the Phoenix Program have hailed it as wildly successful, conflicts of interest plagued the Program from the start, according to members of the Intelligence community, including Captain Sidney Towle, who saw the effects of the Program first hand and witnessed how agents would abuse their authority out of personal spite for adversaries (Valentine 2014). A mixture of counterintelligence and counterinsurgency, the Phoenix Program was a vast gray area of application that consisted of identifying suspected adversaries and removing them. The adversary in this case was, ostensibly, the Viet Cong Infrastructure (VCI). The blurring of lines between counterintelligence and counterinsurgency helped to push CI in a new direction that is today commonly accepted by the state apparatus, though deplored by individuals like Nolan (1997). The Program was described by Drosnin (1975) as “the only systematized kidnapping, torture and assassination program ever sponsored by the United States government.” Abuses ranged from murder of suspected VC to suspects being named, tortured and killed simply as a result of personal animosity or local quarrel among individuals who wanted to act on a grudge and thus made false accusations, knowing that the accused would effectively be eliminated (Valentine 2016).

A top secret report published by Vietnam Veterans Against the War showed that Phoenix was part of a broader campaign in the CI community to expand the operations of CI drastically, using PSYOPS to reinforce CI objectives. Former Captain in the US Army David Curry, former Naval Intelligence officer Joe Miller, former Air Force Intelligence officer Pat McCann, former Army Security Agency officer Bill Branson, and former First Lt. US Army Barry Romo (1990) all testified to the “personally and politically destructive” forces that such a campaign entailed. Under Operations Plan JERICHO, set in the Philippines in the 1980s, a Phoenix-style program was approved by the Army Chiefs of Staff: “Operations Plan JERICHO is the mandate for a program of community counter-intelligence (COINTELPRO) and psychological operations (PSYOPS)” that Curry et al. believed would be “morally corrupting for the protagonists” (Curry et al. 1990, 20.). Like the Phoenix Program, it blurred the lines between CI, PSYOPS, counterinsurgency, and government-sponsored terror. By the end of the 20th century, CI was no longer simply about disseminating false information to confuse or mislead the adversary: it was now part of a broader strategy to attack and undermine the adversary’s culture and social organization. This strategy did not originate with Phoenix. It was evident, as well, in the FBI’s COINTELPRO, which began in 1956. It is still evident today in the 2020-2022 National Counterintelligence Strategy of the United States, which uses the goal of “national security” as the catch-all for steering CI further into the realm of psychological warfare, counterinsurgency, and defensive covert operations. The Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (1976) found that “officials of the intelligence agencies occasionally recognized that certain activities were illegal, but expressed concern only for ‘flap potential.’ Even more disturbing was the frequent testimony that the law, and the Constitution were simply ignored” (13). Agents in CI, whether acting in the Phoenix Program or in the FBI’s COINTELPRO, believed themselves and their conduct to be above the law and outside the purview of normal ethical guidelines by sheer virtue of the fact that they were engaged in what was termed counterintelligence. The pervasive attitude was that being in CI gave them carte blanche to do whatever they saw fit in order to destroy the adversary. From the beginning, the CI community had leapt from engaging in deception to seeking the destruction of the adversary.

The FBI’s COINTELPRO was initiated with a similar objective to that of the Phoenix Program, the goal being to infiltrate American organizations like the Black Panthers and the KKK, assume positions of leadership within these organizations, and co-op them. COINTELPRO tactics included:

“Anonymously attacking the political beliefs of targets in order to induce their employers to fire them;

“Anonymously mailing letters to the spouses of intelligence targets for the purpose of destroying their marriages;

“Obtaining from IRS the tax returns of a target and then attempting to provoke an IRS investigation for the express purpose of deterring a protest leader from attending the Democratic National Convention;

“Falsely and anonymously labeling as Government informants members of groups known to be violent, thereby exposing the falsely labeled member to expulsion or physical attack;

“Pursuant to instructions to use ‘misinformation’ to disrupt demonstrations, employing such means as broadcasting fake orders on the same citizens band radio frequency used by demonstration marshals to attempt to control demonstrations and duplicating and falsely filling out forms soliciting housing for persons coming to a demonstration, thereby causing ‘long and useless journeys to locate these addresses’;

“Sending an anonymous letter to the leader of a Chicago street gang (described as ‘violence-prone’) stating that the Black Panthers were supposed to have ‘a hit out for you’. The letter was suggested because it ‘may intensify . . . animosity’ and cause the street gang leader to ‘take retaliatory action’;

“From ‘late 1963’ until his death in 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr., was the target of an intensive campaign by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to ‘neutralize’ him as an effective civil rights leader. In the words of the man in charge of the FBI's ‘war’ against Dr. King, ‘No holds were barred’” (The Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities 1976, 10-11).

The idea of a CI program unconstrained and engaged in a “no holds barred” approach to its operations reveals the extent to which counterintelligence operations were without ethical guidelines or framework. FBI Assistant Director William Sullivan testified that “never once did I hear anybody, including myself, raise the question: ‘Is this course of action which we have agreed upon lawful, is it legal, is it ethical or moral.’ We never gave any thought to this line of reasoning, because we were just naturally pragmatic” (The Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities 1976, 14). Pragmatism alone guided the FBI’s COINTELPRO in the words of Sullivan. As the Select Committee pointed out in its findings in 1976, the question raised by intelligence officers “was usually not whether a particular program was legal or ethical, but whether it worked” ” (The Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities 1976, 138). It was often the view of CI agents that “in intelligence, the stakes involved and the interest of national security may permit a more tolerant interpretation of moral-ethical values” (The Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities 1976, 144). Sullivan stated that officers typically had a “war psychology,” meaning that they operated under the assumption that, indeed, no holds are barred (The Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities 1976, 144).

The point made by Sullivan was that agents in CI acted without asking moral questions in the same way a soldier fires upon the enemy without asking whether what he is doing is just or unjust: he fires because he has been told he is at war. This culture of war is one that helps to explain the pathology of CI agents under Angleton, in the Phoenix Program, and in COINTELPRO. It explains the transgressions made by Angleton’s CI department during Operation CHAOS, in which the recruiting and training of double agents in the domestic anti-war movement led to illegal spying on domestic citizens (Valentine 2016). Operation CHAOS was itself an outgrowth of that same war culture: just as Phoenix led to abuses in Vietnam, Operation CHAOS led to abuses at home. The problem of blurred lines: the mandate to deceive became viewed as a mandate to do much more. There was no oversight, and Director Colby was essentially forced to scapegoat Angleton only after Nixon’s “plumbers” were arrested and the Watergate scandal erupted (Valentine 2016). So long as operations could be justified via the “we are at war” argument, the only thing that mattered was efficiency. Mark Felt, another Assistant FBI Director, testified that “his job was to ensure that Bureau programs were being operated efficiently, not constitutionally” (The Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities 1976, 155). Efficiency was the order of the day. Were CI methods efficient? That was the subjective question those engaged in counterintelligence asked themselves. There certainly was no objective moral or ethical standard by which they could judge the virtue of their actions.

This same question of what “worked best” was the one asked routinely by agents of the FBN, as former FBN agent Dean Unkefer (2013) shows. The FBN was guided similarly to the FBI and CIA by a wholly pragmatic approach to drug enforcement, and its use of CI was no different from that of the FBI or the Phoenix Program. If a lie or deception got the job done, FBN agents considered it a good one, regardless of how immoral, corrupting, messy, deadly or extra-legal the outcome.

CI in the FBN

To make cases, FBN agents routinely acted as drug buyers or dealers (Unkefer 2013; Valentine 2006). They infiltrated mob rings, mafia families, and entire communities; they used deception to ensnare drug traffickers for decades. Agents cut heroin and gave it away to informants in exchange for secrets and loyalty; they kept and divided drug money amongst themselves and used it both to buy off other actors and fund lavish lifestyles (Unkefer 2013). In many cases, their deception led to startlingly violent conclusions. In any event, the agents were guided not by a standard of ethics but rather by a pragmatic sense of duty: their duty was to stop drug traffickers by any means necessary. Skimming off the top was their just reward, many agents felt, for doing the dirty work the American government demanded of them yet was disinclined to remunerate to any substantial degree (Unkefer 2013).

It was partly this any-means-necessary approach that eventually led to the undoing of the FBN (Valentine 2006). The other reason for the FBN’s undoing, as Valentine (2006) shows was that it was incredibly effective in achieving its goal. Its pragmatic, typically amoral and unethical approach to infiltrating and destroying the drug trade, eventually caused its agents to run afoul of the CIA, which organization worked closely with drug traffickers for its own intelligence and CI purposes (Valentine 2006). The CIA pulled more weight in the hierarchy of government, and thus when the CIA saw its own operations threatened by the FBN’s aggressive but effective tactics, the CIA initiated an assault on the FBN by way of an ethics committee. Essentially, what led to the FBN’s success was also what led to its downfall: agents were turned one against another as an ethics probe turned the bureau inside-out, brought charges and convictions against several agents, and eventually dismantled the bureau altogether (Unkefer 2013; Valentine 2006).

A conflict of interest existed at the structural and functional levels of the FBN as well. Henry Anslinger, who headed the FBN from 1930 into the 1960s, had to satisfy multiple stakeholders, all of whom held contradictory desires (Valentine 2006). The established, well-connected families, whose accrual of wealth during the robber baron era had made them powerful, looked to Anslinger as a kind of gatekeeper. The drug trade was still licit in China when the FBN was created, and these families made millions partaking in that trade, using channels and working with actors who also participated in the illicit trafficking of drugs into the West (Valentine 2006). Anslinger was essentially appointed to his role as head of the FBN because he had married into one of these established families. He would make sure that while the war on drugs was prosecuted, their interests abroad would not be interfered with (Valentine 2006). At the same time, Anslinger had to appease the prohibitionists tasked with overseeing his performance. If he did not produce cases, he could not justify the request for funding or legitimate the need for his own job. Cases were thus encouraged to be made against addicts and lower level distributors, but the major traffickers were essentially off limits (Valentine 2006). This in turn led to a culture within the FBN of wherein agents had to deceive and lure addicts and low level dealers, flip them into becoming informants (often through blackmail), and engage in illegal activity themselves both to ensure their covers were not blown and to exact a degree of street justice in lieu of the prosecutors and judges (perceived to be on the take) supporting their work with convictions (Unkefer 2013; Valentine 2006).

Under Anslinger, CI in the FBN was used in a similar no-holds-barred manner to that of the CIA under Angleton. Because the degree of deception used by case-making agents in the FBN went beyond their legal mandate, reports were routinely falsified (Unkefer 2013). Angleton also falsified reports in attempts to prevent “moles” in the CIA from obtaining accurate data (Morley 2017). Deception was used in this regard, not just against adversaries, but against the State for which these agencies were working. Deception ran in both directions and only the agents practicing the deception knew the truth of the matter. When FBN agents began making bigger cases against major traffickers, thus threatening the relationships within the trade fostered by the well-connected families and the CIA (which also relied upon these traffickers for intelligence and for covert operations) a crackdown on the FBN ensued (Unkefer 2013; Valentine 2006). The justification for the crackdown was the agency’s use of deception against the State. The no-holds-barred approach eventually came back to bite the FBN just as it did Angleton’s CI unit. Anslinger had done his best to ignore criminal activity of allies of the established families that he answered to, particularly in the 1934 case of the Transportes Aereos Centro-Americanos (TACA) “Honduran Guns for Drugs” scandal, in which various agencies “protected drug smugglers to ensure national security, as well as to protect corporate profits” (Valentine 2006, 33). Anslinger had to walk a tightrope between fulfilling his mandate and looking the other way when his work threatened to interfere with the affairs of groups with special interests, groups to whom he himself owed his career and fortune (Valentine 2006). Conflicts of interest at the top contributed to the FBN’s demise.

Discussion

The culture of deception utilized by the Mossad undoubtedly played a part in the development of the CI culture under Angleton, as the latter was highly influenced by Mossad agency personnel, as Morley (2017) has shown. However, the frame of reference used by the Mossad was not consistent with that of the American intelligence officer: the Mossad’s mission was to use deception to aid Israel; by working closely with the Mossad, Angleton potentially made himself an unwitting asset and pawn in the CI maneuvers of Israel. Angleton’s apparent obtuseness with respect to the true nature of the Ring of Five and the problematic nature of the Soviet defectors in the 1960s is best understood if one considers that Angleton relied on information from his Mossad associates—associates who offered little intelligence on these matters, save a passing reference to Philby’s dubious loyalties (Morley 2018). Angleton simply had not established a clear frame of reference for the CI program in America and relied upon foreign actors, with a dubious reputation themselves. In terms of an ethical standard, his own egoism served as the frame of reference, and, like many other agents at the time, his dependency upon alcohol did not support ego as a suitable reference point (Morley 2017, 74). Angleton lacked an objective framework outside himself: there was no ethical framework employed at all; ethics were supposed, but assumption led to later unwelcome revelations and a great deal of insecurity, confusion and contradictory narratives when the Church Committee began investigating Angleton’s work of the previous two decades.

The same problem occurred for Anslinger and the FBN. Anslinger had no ethical reference point, no ethical standard that was used to establish a clear and acceptable code of conduct with respect to CI. The Phoenix Program likewise suffered from such a lack of an ethical framework, and the FBI’s COINTELPRO along with the broader umbrella Operation CHAOS suffered in the same way. In each of these cases one sees CI agents going beyond the mandate of operating to deceive the adversary; killing, torture, rape, trafficking, falsification of reports, spying on domestic citizens—all of this resulted from the lack of any moral or ethical constraints. Time and again, agents from each of these cases viewed what worked “best” as the criteria for judging the virtue of one’s actions. These agents believed themselves to be at war, across the board, whether they were in the FBN, engaged in Phoenix, working in COINTELPRO or attempting to ferret out moles in the CIA. Because they considered themselves at war, they believed all was fair. They had a subjective ethical approach to their work that in the end undermined their missions and sabotaged their own aims.

Ethical Perspectives

Though the CI activities described herein were typically viewed as guided by pragmatism, the ethical perspective that best explains them is Ethical Egoism: an ends-justify-the-means approach to CI activities was routinely used to justify any and all forms of policies, programs and extra-legal initiatives. Beginning from the standpoint of Lockean ethics, it can be seen how agents assumed they were at liberty to conduct themselves as they best saw fit in a time of war. Each agency or unit saw its actions as being part of a broader war. The relevance of the Cold War to this viewpoint is important to consider, as the Cold War mentality undoubtedly shaped them in this thinking. However, the license to engage in actions both unconstitutional and immoral was never granted them. Whether agents ended up being prosecuted for crimes or not, their mission was corrupted or undermined by a lack of self-imposed constraint. Since they saw no impetus to impose such constraints, it can be concluded that some external and objective standard was needed—and yet none existed.

One could argue that the activities of the agents aligned with their own personal sense of duty ethics: agents in the FBN believed it their duty to prosecute the war on drugs and nothing was off limits in CI that facilitated this prosecution; the same belief existed for agents operating under Phoenix and COINTELPRO but with respect to Communist adversaries and anti-war activists, respectively; the same belief existed for Angleton but with respect to himself and possibly to his Israeli friends in the Mossad.

On the other hand, it could be argued that the agents were acting in a manner consistent with utilitarian ethics. They frequently alluded to a pragmatic course of action and that their measure for evaluating the virtue of their actions was efficiency and perceived effectiveness. However, even the utilitarian framework insists upon something of an objective standard with respect to the concept of the common good. It is hardly the case that among the CI community there existed a sense of an objective common good: such a concept was not even alluded to by agents like Sullivan or Felt in their testimony before Congress.

Individual agents may have possessed their own personal ethical codes, consistent with the traditional system of virtue ethics—but unless codified at the institutional level and mandated throughout the organization, such personal codes come up short in the larger picture. In each of the cases examined, there was never any evidence of an organizational system of virtue ethics being fostered for agents to follow. On the contrary, in many cases the opposite was found: agents abused alcohol, sold or used drugs, took part in torture, engaged in illegal acts of violence, and failed to uphold the constitution that as federal officers they were sworn to protect and serve.

The only ethical framework that best and most fully explains the operations and actions of agents in the CI community in each of these cases is Ethical Egoism. It is at the heart of Anslinger’s moral dilemma with all of his diverse stakeholders that needed to be satisfied. It is at the heart of Angleton’s approach to CI in general. It is at the heart of Phoenix, COINTELPRO and Operation CHAOS. It represents the ethical system embraced by agents throughout the intelligence community if not actively promoted as an official ethical framework by their organizations.

Structural Functionalism, Conflict Theory and Critical Theory

Why should Ethical Egoism come to be the dominant ethical system of the CI community from the beginning on? CI in the US cannot be understood outside the context of the Cold War. Angleton assumed control of the CIA’s CI division at the outset of the Cold War. Phoenix and COINTELPRO were both Cold War era programs. Anslinger headed the FBN beginning in 1930 but brought the Bureau into the Cold War era.

Even as Kennedy sought to curtail the Cold War in the 1960s, Angleton refused to believe that a peaceful conclusion was possible. Angleton operated under the assumption that Soviet Russia had a master plan to spread communism throughout the world, and he accepted those whose story agreed with his primary assumption. The problem here is that it put him at odds with the Commander in Chief, who wanted de-escalation and détente. Should not the head of CI have been predisposed to suppress his own assumptions in order to facilitate the objectives and directives of the President? Clearly a conflict existed in the early 1960s between the White House and the CIA, which was engaged in clandestine operations around the world, particularly in Cuba. Kennedy’s threat to smash the CIA after the Bay of Pigs fiasco emphasized the degree to which the Agency and the Kennedy Administration were at odds with one another. Conflict was not wanting between the two. The assassination of Kennedy shifted things to some extent, but the refusal of Johnson to run for a second full term gave way to the Nixon Administration, which ushered in its own host of problems. Before long, the intelligence community was at the forefront of a major Senate investigation, again finding itself in conflict with the objectives and directives of the federal government.

Who or what interests should CI serve? That is a basic and fair question that any existing government has a right to ask. In the case examples used herein, it is often apparent that CI programs serve their own interests, regardless of whether or not those interests align with the broader interests of the American public or the American government. If there is to be conflict, so be it—but counterintelligence work is to go on, unobstructed; such has appeared to be the overall theme. It is acknowledged by the government that CI is critical to national security, but just how CI should assist in security matters has never been adequately established. One reason for this is that there has been no proper oversight or management of the CI community. The intelligence community operates essentially autonomously. Without proper accountability there cannot be the type of enforcement necessary for effectively implementing a code of conduct or ethical framework. This is the primary challenge facing any serious application of an ethical standard to the CI community.

From the standpoint of structural functionalism, the problems run deeper. CI is situated within a larger intelligence and covert operations security apparatus. This is why CI is often linked with the topic of national security today. Counterintelligence is and has been coupled with counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, and covert operations; the international business and finance community is a large stakeholder in the intelligence community; governments around the world are as well. CI is thus part of a complicated and integrated network with social, economic, and political factors to consider. Not all actors in CI look at the macro-environment in which they operate, but individuals like Anslinger and Angleton did have to consider that environment. Their considerations, perspectives, and interpretations of that environment are what led them to make the decisions they made: for example, Anslinger with respect to TACA; Angleton with respect to the Golitsyn vs. Nosenko controversy. The Phoenix Program was born out of a Cold War mentality in which a kind of covert “total war” was condoned by the heads of the intelligence community in Vietnam.

A similar approach was taken with COINTELPRO and Operation CHAOS. These were actions taken out of consideration for preservation of the status quo arrangement between established families, governments, and institutions. To preserve that status quo arrangement, the intelligence community went on the offensive. The CI community was literally along for the ride, without oversight, without constraints, and without any special regard for what its mandate actually was. The heads of CI had their own interests to consider as well. The evidence shows that both Angleton and Anslinger looked the other way when perceived allies engaged in criminal activity. Each had interests in terms of personal relationships and careers to consider, and those interests conflicted with the mission mandated them by the State. This was also true for agents in the Phoenix Program. Anslinger especially had to navigate a complicated set of relationships. Viewing these cases from a structural functionalism perspective is helpful in understanding the Lockean approach to ethics adopted by the CI community and how that approach drifted into Ethical Egoism.

From a conflict theory perspective, the CI community emerges as conflicted community pulled in different directions at once as various stakeholders vie for control of informational resources. Conflict theory is the idea that groups are in conflict in society over resources and power: the dominant group controls the resources and wants to prevent the other group from obtaining power and status in society. Angleton was certainly concerned about controlling information as head of the CIA’s CI program. Anslinger was more concerned with managing outcomes and satisfying stakeholders, whether it was Treasury Secretary Henry Morganthau or the Mellons and Roosevelts (Valentine 2006). The point is that conflicts of interest were par for the course and there was not institutionalized way, no organizational code of ethics in place, no recourse to oversight until public scandals forced the Senate to take action, for the CI community to adopt an objective ethical framework considering the internal and external conflicts with which it was faced. The CI community was and has always been reactionary rather than proactive in this respect.

Conflict theory posits that there are finite resources and groups are in a struggle for power over those resources. As a result there is usually a group that has power and consolidates by controlling the levers of justice, politics, business, and so on; and there is a group that does not have power that struggles to obtain it. In each of the cases analyzed, those engaged in CI acted on behalf of “national security” and used their power to prevent challengers to national security, i.e., the status quo, from upsetting the established order. It is helpful to understand CI from the perspective of conflict theory. This is a community that is organized on the principle of survival: as Anslinger well understood, it is not just the State in the abstract sense that is being served by CI but rather the groups that have power—the established families, the international businesses and cartels, the political factions, and the power brokers. Deception is used in different directions because ultimately the CI community serves the interests of diverse stakeholders who are at times in conflict with one another. But in a democratic society can this type of service be justified to citizens who believe their government should serve their interests first and foremost? When analyzing the CI community from this standpoint the lack of an ethical framework appears deliberate and Machiavellian.

From a critical theory perspective, a deconstruction of contemporary culture is in order. Valentine approaches the topic of CI like a deconstructionist, intent on interpreting the actions of the intelligence community at the intersection of culture and power. Rather than seeing it in terms of a conflict paradigm, Valentine sees CI in terms of a power paradigm. Phoenix, COINTELPRO, Operation CHAOS, the work of the FBN and Angleton’s CI program are all limbs of the same controlling body politic. That body politic is external to the Constitution the way a deity might be said to be external to the world created: the Deity made the world and set it in motion but is not bound by the laws of mechanics that keep it in motion. The Constitution in other words is there to serve the body politic, not the other way around. If the Constitution does not serve it in its needs, then it need not be observed. This, too, explains the thinking of the CI agents in the cases herein discussed. From this standpoint, the question that remains is whether citizens of the US should accept that they are governed or ruled by such a body politic and submit, or whether they have a right or even the means to protest and demand a change. Assuming the latter, it stands to reason that the body politic is not free of censure. To bring the body politic into conformity with the rule of law, it is imperative that a standard ethical framework be applied throughout the CI community. It is also assumed that such would better serve the interests of the common good than the current ambiguous approach to ethics serves the interests of the body politic. Ultimately, the power of the body politic is tenuous; but if the consent of the people is given to the body politic out of respect for an apparent alignment of interests, it may be supposed that a more harmonious global society can be the outcome.