Tag Archives: CIA and covert operations

Destroy Emails: CIA

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A CIA plan to erase tens of thousands of its internal emails — including those sent by virtually all covert and counterterrorism officers after they leave the agency — is drawing fire from Senate Intelligence Committee members concerned that it would wipe out key records of some of the agency’s most controversial operations.  The agency proposal, which has been tentatively approved by the National Archives, “could allow for the destruction of crucial documentary evidence regarding the CIA’s activities,” Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Dianne Feinstein and ranking minority member Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., wrote in a letter to Margaret Hawkins,  (pdf) the director of records and management services at the archives.

But agency officials quickly shot back, calling the committee’s concerns grossly overblown and ill informed. They insist their proposal is completely in keeping with — and in some cases goes beyond — the email retention policies of other government agencies. “What we’ve proposed is a totally normal process,” one agency official told Yahoo News.

The source of the controversy may be that the CIA, given its secret mission and rich history of clandestine operations, is not a normal agency. And its proposal to destroy internal emails comes amid mounting tensions between the CIA and its Senate oversight panel, stoked by continued bickering over an upcoming committee report — relying heavily on years-old internal CIA emails — that is sharply critical of the agency’s use of waterboarding and other aggressive interrogation techniques against al-Qaida suspects in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks.

In this case, however, Chambliss — a conservative Republican who has sided with the CIA on the interrogation issue — joined with Feinstein in questioning the agency’s proposed new email policy, which would allow for the destruction of email messages sent by all but a relatively small number of senior agency officials.  “In our experience, email messages are essential to finding CIA records that may not exist in other so-called permanent records,” the two senators wrote in their letter, a copy of which was also sent this week to CIA Director John Brennan and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. …

Under the new proposal, only the emails of 22 senior agency officials would be permanently retained; all others, including all covert officers except the director of the National Clandestine Service, could be deleted three years after the employees leave the CIA “or when no longer needed, whichever is sooner,” according to a copy of the agency’s plan….

But the plan has sparked criticism from watchdog groups and historians who note the agency’s track record of destroying potentially embarrassing material: In 2007, it was disclosed that agency officials had destroyed hundreds of hours of videotapes documenting the waterboarding of two high-value detainees. The disclosure prompted a criminal investigation by the Justice Department as well as a separate National Archives probe into whether the agency had violated the Federal Records Act. Neither inquiry led to any federal charges.

The CIA has a history of destroying records “that are embarrassing” and “disclose mistakes” or “reflect poorly on the conduct of the CIA,” said Tim Weiner, the author of “Legacy of Ashes, a history of the CIA,” in comments filed with the National Archives by Open the Government, a watchdog group that is seeking to block the CIA proposal. He noted that during the Iran-Contra Affair, for example, those involved “fed so many records into the shredder that they jammed the shredder.” “It cannot be left to the CIA to determine what is a record of historical significance,” Weiner said.

Excerpts from Michael Isikoff,The CIA wants to destroy thousands of internal emails covering spy operations and other activities, Yahoo News, Nov. 20, 2014

What Putin and the CIA have in Common

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The West has made NATO’s military alliance the heart of its response to Russia’s power grab in Ukraine. But we may be fighting the wrong battle: The weapons President Vladimir Putin has used in Crimea and eastern Ukraine look more like paramilitary “covert action” than conventional military force.  Putin, the former KGB officer, may in fact be taking a page out of America’s playbook during the Ronald Reagan presidency, when the Soviet empire began to unravel thanks to a relentless U.S. covert-action campaign. Rather than confront Moscow head on, Reagan nibbled at the edges, by supporting movements that destabilized Russian power in Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Angola and, finally, Poland and eastern Europe.

It was a clever American strategy back then, pushing a wounded Soviet Union and opportunistically exploiting local grievances, wherever possible. And it’s an equally clever Russian approach now, offering maximum gain at minimum potential cost.  The parallel was drawn for me this past week by John Maguire, a former CIA paramilitary covert-action officer, who served in the contras program in Nicaragua and later in the Middle East. “At the end of the day, Putin is a case officer,” says Maguire. “He watched what we did in the 1980s, and now he’s playing it back against us.”..  [T]he real action was covert destabilization of major cities in eastern Ukraine. Since these cities are largely Russian-speaking, Putin could count on a base of local popular support.  Last week, Pro-Russian “demonstrators” seized buildings in Donetsk, Kharkiv and Luhansk. Some demonstrators said they wanted to conduct referendums on joining Russia, just as Crimea did prior to its annexation. It was a clever exploitation of local cultural and religious bias — the sort of “divide and rule” move favored by intelligence agencies for centuries…

If you look back at the way the United States worked with Solidarity in Poland in the 1980s, you can see why this form of clandestine activity is so powerful. The CIA’s primary ally was the Catholic Church, headed by a Polish pope, John Paul II, who believed as a matter of religious conviction that Soviet communism should be rolled back. To work with the church, the agency needed a waiver from rules that banned operations with religious organizations.

One thing Putin learned from watching the Soviet empire fall is that the most potent weapons are those that go under the radar — and are nominally legal in the countries where operations are taking place. All the nuclear might of the Soviet Union was useless against the striking workers in Poland, or hit-and-run guerrillas in Nicaragua, or mujahedeen fighters in Afghanistan. The Soviet Union was a giant beast felled by a hundred small pricks of the lance.

How can America and the West fight back effectively against Putin’s tactics?… The trick for the interim government in Kiev is to fight a nonviolent counterinsurgency — keeping a unified Ukrainian population on its side as much as possible.

The Ukrainian struggle tells us that this is a different kind of war. Putin has learned the lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan, yes, but also those of Poland and East Germany. An ex-spy is calling the shots in Moscow, using a dirty-tricks manual he knows all too well.
Excerpt, David Ignatius, David Ignatius: Putin steals CIA playbook on anti-Soviet covert operations, Washington Post, May 4, 2014