Association of Former Intelligence Officers From AFIO's The Intelligencer 7700 Leesburg Pike, Suite 324 Journal of U.S. Intelligence Studies Falls Church, Virginia 22043 Web: www.afio.com, E-mail: [email protected] Volume 23 • Number 1 • $15 single copy price Summer 2017 ©2017, AFIO GUIDE TO THE STUDY OF INTELLigENCE ing against his foreign handlers. Counterintelligence in the US is, therefore, a law enforcement function and falls under the FBI’s purview, which is empowered to arrest and prosecute American citizens. All too often, however, as with other serious crimes, prosecution can prove even more difficult than finding the spy, and any number have gone free. Counterintelligence, The FBI is not the only player in the spy vs. spy game. The military has a strong role as well. EO-12333 Homeland Security, and states also that the secretary of defense shall “conduct Domestic Intelligence counterintelligence activities in support of Depart- ment of Defense components outside the United States in coordination with the CIA, and within the United by Gene Poteat States in coordination with the FBI pursuant to pro- cedures agreed upon by the Secretary of Defense and “Counterintelligence means information the Attorney General.” gathered and activities conducted to protect In the broader sense, then, counterintelligence against espionage, other intelligence activities, can readily be seen as just as difficult, and at times sabotage, or assassinations conducted for or more frustrating and consequential, than conven- on behalf of foreign powers, organizations or persons, or international terrorist activities, but tional intelligence and espionage. Further, failing to not including personnel, physical, document or catch the spy can be disastrous, even have war-winning communications security programs.” consequences, under the right circumstances, as when Mikhail Gorbachev told President Ronald Reagan that – EO-12333, 4 December 1981 had the US and the Soviet Union gone to war in 1980, the Soviets could easily have won. Gorbachev was Introduction1 basing his assessment on the advantage the Soviets had gained over the US – by knowing where all our he stuff of great spy novels is not about the spy, ballistic missile submarines were at all times – from it’s about finding and catching the spy, which the US naval codes provided by the traitor John Walker, is counterintelligence, or more specifically, a former Navy chief, over a period of 20 years. The T Walkers, Aldrich Ames, and Robert Hansen were not counterespionage. Interestingly, James Fennimore Cooper wrote The Spy: A Tale of the Neutral Ground (1821), only spies, they were traitors. A spy is a patriot who the very first “great American novel,” shortly after the works for his own people and nation against a foreign Revolutionary War. His novel was based on the true adversary, whereas a traitor works against his own exploits, trials, and tribulations of Enoch Crosby, one people and nation for a foreign power. of George Washington’s wartime counterespionage agents. The complexity of the plots in spy vs. spy thrill- Counterintelligence in War ers tells us just how difficult, tricky, and controversial counterintelligence actually is. Sometimes it takes the Historically, Americans have always had a prob- smallest, seemingly insignificant detail – and even the lem with the “dirty business” of intelligence and right nose, hard work, or just plain dumb luck – to find counterintelligence. We forget, however, that George and catch the spy. Washington was credited, by none other than Major Counterintelligence doesn’t end with uncovering George Beckwith, chief of British intelligence at the and finally catching the foreign spy – or the American end of the Revolutionary War, with having won the war traitor. It ends only when there is enough hard evi- by simply having outspied, rather than outfought, the dence to arrest, successfully prosecute, and convict the British. It was Washington’s intelligence that told him spy – or to turn him (or her) into a double agent work- when to fight, and when to avoid a fight, and it was his counterintelligence that kept British spying in check and helped him interdict Benedict Arnold’s treachery 1. It is impossible to adequately treat the history and importance of counterintelligence in such a brief article. A short bibliography is by capturing the chief British spymaster, John André. therefore included. For those more interested in the subject, a com- The British made a serious counterintelligence mis- prehensive graduate-level course in counterintelligence is taught at the Institute of World Politics (http://www.iwp.edu) in Washington, DC. take that could well have altered the outcome of the Summer 2017 Intelligencer: Journal of U.S. Intelligence Studies Page 51 war – they never even considered turning Nathan Hale Germans focused on recruiting ethnic German-Amer- into a double agent rather than hanging him, which icans to support their sabotage program. should always be a first consideration. By the time of The British very effectively used the Bohemian the War of 1812, both intelligence and counterintel- National Alliance, which included over 320,000 Czech ligence had been forgotten. The Civil War saw neither and Slovak émigrés living throughout the US, and side with good military intelligence, which probably organized under the leadership of Emanuel “Victor” accounted for the heavy casualties on both sides. Alan Voska, all of whom spoke flawless German and hated Pinkerton, Lincoln’s early chief of intelligence and a Germany, in highly successful counterintelligence former railroad detective, did have a good sense of and propaganda operations against the German counterintelligence, however, and succeeded in jailing spies in the US. Voska had placed his agents inside the first effective Confederate spy, Rose O’Neal Green- virtually every German diplomatic establishment, how, and then went on to keep the city of Washington including the German Embassy, their covert sabotage virtually free of Confederate spies. organization, and their wireless station handling A single intelligence operation is credited with German diplomatic traffic. Voska even had one of his the lopsided win in the Spanish-American War when counterintelligence men on board a German ship that the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) tapped the contained a bomb-making factory, interned in New undersea cables running into and out of Havana, York harbor. On their part, the Germans unsuccess- enabling them to read the Spanish war planners’ fully tried to use Indian Sikh organizations, operating mail in real time. There was little need for counter- out of Berkeley, California, (where else?) and seeking intelligence during this war except during the brief independence from the detested Britain, in several period when Lieutenant Colonel Teddy Roosevelt’s covert political and paramilitary operations against crack “Rough Riders” deployed to Tampa, Florida, the British. During this time, Wilson was concerned heavily populated with Spanish immigrants working only with the plight of poor suffering Mexican peons in the cigar factories. To keep his plans for the Cuban during a series of Mexican revolutions and had sent invasion secret, Major General William Shafter, com- the US Army off to chase after the elusive Pancho Villa. mandant of the Cuban invasion forces, pulled off an One of the greatest British intelligence operations unusual operation. Shafter employed Mabel Bean, of the war was their placing their agent, Sir William the 16-year-old daughter of the local postmaster, to Wiseman, into the heart of the Wilson White House. keep an eye out for any strangers circulating in the Sir William would become an incredibly effective agent Cuban community. Mabel knew virtually everyone in of influence in the White House for the British intelli- Ybor City, the cigar manufacturing suburb of Tampa, gence that bypassed all normal diplomatic channels. spoke fluent Spanish, was well known and recognized In 1916, the Germans finally made the fatal mis- as she bicycled and chatted with the locals. She had take of using ethnic Irish Americans – who intensely no trouble in keeping up with everyone and everything disliked the British – to sabotage a large depot stocked going on in the Cuban community and reporting with American munitions, destined for England, at the back to Shafter. Mabel’s successful counterespionage Black Tom port in New Jersey just opposite the Statue forays led Shafter to invite her to the many parties he of Liberty. The massive explosion killed three men and arranged for his officers waiting to invade Cuba, where a child and blew out every window in Jersey City, with she was the belle of the ball. damages estimated at $14 million, and finally forced World War I found America intelligence and Wilson to go into the counterintelligence business, counterintelligence capabilities again completely if not into intelligence. Britain’s intelligence and withered away; still with no laws on the books regard- counterintelligence in the US, along with the sinking ing espionage; and, when pressed by the US military of the Lusitania and Zimmerman’s Telegram, finally to get back into the intelligence business, President dragged America into the war. Woodrow Wilson suggested that, if needed, the US Once in the war, America quickly passed the could get its intelligence from our allies, the British Selective Service and Espionage Act of 1917. The Act and French. Meanwhile, British and German intelli- defined espionage as the unauthorized transmittal of gence and counterintelligence activities against each national defense information to a foreign power or agent other inside the US were rampant. The British were with intent to harm the US or to aid a foreign power. The trying to get America into the war – on their side of problem for counterintelligence, however, was that course – and at the same time working against German there had to be two eyewitnesses and it was up to a jury intelligence efforts to keep us out of the war.