CIA’s mission should follow its prime skills – Director R. James Woolsey mistakenly steers agency away from its real purpose

Bruce Fein The CIA is headed for irrelevancy or redundancy if it continues the reorientation recently charted or acquiesced to by its new director, James Woolsey.

According to the new thinking, the agency’s exertions should be directed substantially to counterterrorism, international drug trafficking, arms proliferation, international economics, industrial espionage and domestic law enforcement. But compared with sister government departments or agencies, the agency lacks any unique expertise or capability to discharge these important tasks.

The CIA’s prime mission should follow its prime skill — namely, analytical studies of foreign governments and politics, the cultivation of Western-style democracy abroad, human source intelligence collection, research and analysis and covert action. Achieving this mission would largely make moot the problems addressed by the agency’s recent redirection.

The FBI is best suited to combat international terrorism. FBI agents possess the experience, investigatory expertise and knowledge required to identify terrorists and build the evidence for successful prosecutions. The latter requires mastery of complex legal rules regarding searches, seizures, interrogation, hearsay and chain-of-custody evidence.

The FBI enjoys a worldwide network of agents and cooperation agreements with foreign and international organizations, such as Interpol. Its criminal jurisdiction extends to terrorism directed against U.S. citizens both at home and abroad.

If the CIA happens upon evidence of terrorism that could assist the FBI or foreign governments, it certainly should share the information. But nothing in the agency’s charter, historical experience or skills suggests that counterterrorism, in isolation, should be a primary mission.

The same can be said of international drug trafficking. The FBI, the U.S. Customs Service and even the military are dedicated to international drug issues. Why duplicate these exertions using scarce CIA resources? Its agents, moreover, are generally unschooled in law enforcement complexities.

Chemical, biological and nuclear weapons proliferation could threaten the United States and international peace, but the magnitude of the threat seems somewhat exaggerated. The CIA should pay close attention to those issues. But weapons proliferation concerns generally seem under the natural purview of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency or the United Nations. The CIA should provide information to assist ACDA and seek destruction of menacing weapons, plants, equipment or substances through covert action.

The CIA should help in identifying arms control treaty violations with clandestine sources and methods, as it did, for example, in the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. The agency should scrutinize any nation’s weapons capability in conjunction with evaluating its offensive and defensive military strengths and forecasting its foreign policy posture.

CIA tracking of weapons proliferation, however, should not, simpliciter, be a chief objective. Historically, arms control violations and proliferation have become problems not because of international ignorance of growing threats, but because of an unwillingness of the international community to act. Germany’s blatant World War II violation of the Versailles Treaty in collaboration with the Soviet Union is illustrative.

CIA preoccupation with international economics is for the most part a waste of resources. The Federal Reserve Board and the Treasury Department possess a wealth of expertise and experience to gauge international economic trends. Anything the CIA might contribute would be marginal to national security. Ditto with regard to industrial espionage. Any nation that must steal technology or business secrets to boost its economy is doomed for penury. Substantial KGB resources dedicated to economic espionage on behalf of the Soviet economy were virtually wasted. When the CIA puts an emphasis on industrial espionage, it is at the nadir of its agenda.

The CIA’s charter expressly bans the exercise of domestic “law-enforcement powers.” To relax that prohibition would seem improvident. CIA agents would need to master the criminal code and rules of evidence. They might be compelled to testify in court or reveal intelligence sources and methods to satisfy the Constitution.

A pair of bank scandals implicating foreign governments and personages — BCCI and BNL — have propelled the agency into domestic law enforcement commitments to mollify Congress. The CIA seems pledged to collaborate with the Justice Department, the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve Board and other law enforcement agencies in the gathering of evidence abroad to prove a violation of domestic law. Without amending the CIA charter, the contemplated partnerships in domestic law enforcement would be illegal. And an authorizing amendment would seem unwise. Schooling CIA agents in the criminal code and rules of evidence would distract them from their chief tasks of intelligence collection and analysis and the planning and execution of covert action.

CIA analysts are uniquely situated to pursue deep understanding of the domestic and international politics of every foreign nation. Their chief task should be understanding the prevailing political personalities and institutions of foreign countries and foreseeing changes likely to prompt friendly or unfriendly relations with the United States. For instance, CIA covert action helped save France, Germany, Italy and the Philippines from communism after World War II.

The CIA should not dissipate its resources seeking a new mission. Even though Soviet communism disintegrated in 1991, it is still important to use human agent sources, research and analysis and covert action change international affairs.

These tasks should predominate the CIA.