Secret Operations Quotes
This quotation comes as a major surprise to most people who perceive modern CIA as the MAJOR U.S. spying and covert action organization. It is a marvelous case study of agency “mission creep”.
Intelligence agents tend to prefer covert activities to the less dramatic, non-exciting, activity of gathering and analyzing intelligence. Most national intelligence services tend to enlarge their portfolio to include covert activities regardless of what the national leaders intended. Because of the secrecy, they can often get away with this.
Dulles was writing about the World War II Abwehr, the German intelligence service.
The United States is the only nation that overtly defines covert activity in its legal system. It makes these very subtle distinctions which seemed to many intelligence leaders like Lowenthal a distinction without much of a difference and an attempt by our democracy to make moral and legal distinctions so the dirty parts of the business of espionage seems consistent with an open democracy.
Kellis was the first of the Central Intelligence Agency whistle blowers. The President acted promptly on the letter and appointed General Jimmy Doolittle to conduct an investigation which confirmed the Kellis letter.
Hunt was in operational charge of the “Plumbers” and the illegal Watergate conspiracy, burglary and cover-up operations. He had denied participating in illegal activities, but admitted to “clandestine” activities which were against the law such as breaking into offices and stealing the contents. His “logic” was that if the President authorized something, it could not be against the law. The courts of course disagreed, and Hunt with most of the other Watergate Conspirators was convicted. Hunt’s argument was resurrected during the George W. Bush administration, when the Vice President and a few Bush appointed lawyers in the government took the position that torture of criminal suspects or wartime adversaries which was against the law, could be legally used if the President authorized it. They pointed out that Abraham Lincoln acted without authority of law on several occasions in the crises of the Civil War. However, Lincoln in all cases, went to Congress to obtain the authorization. The Bush people were surreptitious about their law breaking and publicly insisted that the did NOT brak the law, If it were not for leaks to the press, it would not have been known that the administration was breaking the law.
