Cold War Counterintelligence Ethics: Angleton to COINTELPRO

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 U.S. was formally 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 Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) counterintelligence program, run by James Jesus Angleton from inception in the 1950s to the 1970s, effectively had to be reconstructed by Director Colby, facing pressure from Congress and the public (Church Committee 1976, 171). The problem of ethics in counterintelligence is 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 the way 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 formally organized shaped the nature of counterintelligence at a time when the nation itself was buckling under the stress of paranoia, anger, frustration, and mistrust (Valentine 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 CIA 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). The tension between the CIA and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (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, and that the private sector must bear some of the burden and weight of protecting data and ensuring digital security in the face of 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 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 the business world. 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 U.S. counterintelligence enterprise support collaboration among the various United States Intelligence Community (USIC) members in an ethical and productive manner? To understand the issues and policies of counterintelligence today, it is worth examining and 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 so that the various agencies in CI can morally operate according to their mandate.

This research is beneficial to the academic community because it addresses a long-standing issue of ethics in intelligence work. Academics have often debated the matter but have not used comparative case study analysis to see why the problem of ethics must be addressed or how that problem can best be resolved. This thesis brings attention to the root of the issue by examining how and why a lack of ethical guidelines in CI prevailed.

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 suggests conflict between a class with power and a class without. The 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 the dominant class (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 fulfills one's duty to the 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 the 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. 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 toward utilitarianism, in which liberty is curbed only by the utility to the common good; the other toward 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 counterpart could be called conflict theory.

Utilitarian Ethics

Utilitarianism defines moral action as that which achieves the greatest common good (Carson 2010). However, it has no built-in framework for defining the "good"—unlike 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 a 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 those findings.