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Intelligence, U.S. Foreign Relations, and Historical Amnesia

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Intelligence, U.S. Foreign Relations, and Historical Amnesia Intelligence, U.S. Foreign Relations, and Historical Amnesia Calder Walton1 of the Cold War and postwar U.S. foreign relations seem “It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards,” to be saying that these codebreakers abruptly ceased their the Queen remarked. work in 1945. In reality, signals intelligence continued to play a role —Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass in U.S. foreign relations during the Cold War, just as it had done during the Second World War. Failing to incorporate pies, poisonings, Russian election meddling, signals intelligence into the history of postwar U.S. foreign disinformation, FBI scandals, international terrorism, relations is like playing a piano with one hand tied behind weapons of mass destruction, mass surveillance, your back: you might produce a tune but never the full Scyber espionage, and data harvesting: the use and abuse score. of intelligence is one of the most contested and scrutinized subjects in contemporary news and current affairs. It Intelligence: Still a Missing Dimension of Major generates almost daily news headlines across the globe. Published Works For anyone on social media, it often seems as if barely an hour passes without another spy scandal breaking. Such To start, it would be useful to establish what I mean scandals are the subjects of many heated dinner-party by “intelligence.” The best definition I know is that it is conversations on university campuses. information acquired from secret sources against the wishes By contrast, for a student of history who is eager to and generally without the knowledge of its originators or understand the similarities and differences between possessors. This information is processed by collating it clandestine operations today and those in the past, there with other material, then validated, analyzed, assessed, are yawning gaps in the literature and the classroom and finally disseminated to consumers.5 Intelligence when it comes to intelligence, U.S. foreign relations, and should thus be distinguished from political or diplomatic international relations. These gaps exist even in some of reporting, which is not subject to validation, analysis, and the latest and most authoritative publications, as well as assessment by a dedicated independent agency. the history classes of major U.S. universities. Intelligence Intelligence is concerned with understanding the is either wholly missing from them, reduced to passing intentions and capabilities of enemies. In the spy world, comments and historical footnotes, or, when it is addressed, professionals like to distinguish secrets (hidden but taken out of context. As far as intelligence and U.S. foreign knowable information) from mysteries (hidden and relations are concerned, we are living in the United States unknowable information). Intelligence does not necessarily of Amnesia.2 mean secret information: today there are enormous The terms “signals intelligence” and “National Security efforts to obtain “open source intelligence” from publicly Agency” (“NSA”)— the Western world’s largest and best- available data. Likewise, simply because an assessment funded clandestine agency— do not appear in authoritative is stamped with the seductive words “Top Secret,” it is histories of U.S. foreign relations, spanning thousands of not necessarily more important or accurate than reports pages of scholarship.3 Consider Diplomatic History itself: lacking those words (although there is a tendency by some a search on its website for “American foreign relations” policymakers to conflate “secret” and “important”). On produces 2,177 results, while a search for “National Security the contrary, agencies today operate in a saturated world Agency” produces a meager 35. However, when “American where consumers drink from a firehose of information. If foreign relations” is combined with “National Security an intelligence assessment fails to deliver something extra Agency,” there are, bizarrely, zero results.4 This means that for a consumer—something s/he cannot read in the New no current articles in Diplomatic History expressly link the York Times—then its value should rightly be questioned. NSA with American foreign relations. Traditionally, intelligence was seen as a “missing Search terms are clearly imperfect, but these results dimension” in the history of diplomacy and international do reveal a broader historical amnesia about major parts relations in the twentieth century.6 It is not missing today to of U.S. intelligence. Anyone reading some of our most the extent it once was. Some chapters of U.S. foreign affairs esteemed works about U.S. foreign relations is left with are obviously impossible to discuss without including an the mistaken impression that signals intelligence broadly, intelligence dimension: Pearl Harbor, the CIA and MI6’s and the NSA in particular, did not play a significant role coup in Iran in 1953, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Gulf of in postwar U.S. foreign policy. This means that important Tonkin Incident, and 9/11 are all clear examples. However, chapters of U.S. foreign affairs are not only incomplete but outside crisis moments like these, major parts of intelligence are likely distorted. No history of the Second World War still tend to be missing from the historical landscape of U.S. would now fail to mention the role of signals intelligence in foreign relations. The curtain is raised at specific moments; the Allied war effort and the successes of British and U.S. secret agencies appear during foreign emergencies like codebreakers in cracking Axis codes. However, key studies these; but thereafter they vanish, exiting stage left. This Passport April 2019 Page 33 means that their ongoing role as everyday contributors to presidential elections by promoting its favored candidates U.S. statecraft, not just emergency actors, is omitted and and undermining those hostile to the Soviet Union. For thus misunderstood. example, the Kremlin secretly offered to subsidize Hubert Consider the role of the President’s Daily Brief (PDB) Humphrey’s Democratic election bid in 1968, when he in U.S. foreign policy. One magisterial thousand-page was running against the veteran anti-communist, Richard study of U.S. foreign policy discusses the PDB only once, Nixon. Humphrey politely declined the offer.12 The KGB also in relation to 9/11.7 However, PDBs (and their differently attempted unsuccessfully to meddle in Ronald Reagan’s named successors) were given to all U.S. presidents from election campaigns, with Moscow— correctly—fearing the 1960s onwards. Some, like Nixon, generally ignored him more than any other Western politician. The KGB them, while for other presidents the PDB was the first tried to find Kompromat on Reagan, but when it failed to document they read each morning. The problem with do so, it settled for spreading disinformation (“fake news,” addressing intelligence in isolation, at specific moments, is in modern parlance) about him within the United States, that there is no proper context about its use and abuse; that promoting public protests under slogans such as “Reagan is revealed only by examining its broader prior and later means War!”—all of which, to Moscow’s disappointment, development. To understand catastrophic failures of U.S. had minimal impact.13 intelligence like Pearl Harbor or 9/11, A greater appreciation of the we need to appreciate how they differ long history of KGB active measures, from moments when intelligence Discussing CIA covert action while which involved a spectrum of was successfully collected and failing to discuss its foreign equivalent political warfare activities, from successfully informed U.S. foreign in the Cold War, KGB active measures, “influence operations” at one end to policy. I am not aware of any existing produces a lopsided and misleading view assassinations at the other, and their published study of U.S. foreign of U.S. foreign affairs. It is the historical impact on U.S. foreign policy during relations that points out that on the equivalent of the sound of one hand the Cold War, would help correct outbreak of the First World War, the clapping. the frequently reported claim that U.S. president, Woodrow Wilson, had Russian active measures today are a weaker grasp of intelligence than “unprecedented.” They may appear his eighteenth-century predecessor, George Washington. new, but in fact, President Putin, a former KGB officer, This deficiency was overlooked by Wilson’s contemporaries has merely adapted older KGB active measures for the and has been by subsequent historians. Taking a long-term modern age, harnessing new digital cyber technologies perspective reveals deviations from norms. for older Cold War ends. He has spread disinformation In addition to approaching intelligence in a to undermine public confidence in Western governments, chronological vacuum, many histories of U.S. foreign promoted conspiracy theories to make it seem that nothing relations fail to provide its international and comparative can be trusted and everything is a sham, and driven context. Histories of U.S. foreign relations, which largely wedges between members of Western strategic alliances overlook the role played by America’s largest secret agency, like NATO. All these measures are straight from the the NSA, often do mention the activities of America’s foreign KGB’s Cold War playbook. A valuable and policy-relevant intelligence-collection agency, the CIA.8 They usually do so subject of research at present would be to study how the with reference to CIA “covert action” conducted in foreign United States and its Western allies countered Soviet active countries. Inexplicably, however, these same studies measures in the past— or failed to do so. habitually fail to mention parallel—and often much larger- scale—Soviet covert action, which the KGB called “active The Broader Problem: The Decline of Political and measures.” Diplomatic History Discussing CIA covert action while failing to discuss its foreign equivalent in the Cold War, KGB active As readers of these pages will doubtless appreciate, measures, produces a lopsided and misleading view of there has recently been a vigorous debate about the decline U.S.
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