A Commentary
Commentary on "Congress as a User of Intelligence"
James McCullough
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Editor's Note: The following is the text of remarks made by a
former senior CIA officer, James McCullough, while serving as a
panelist at a 20 March 1997 public conference at Georgetown
University. The conference was co-sponsored by Georgetown`s
Institute for the Study of Diplomacy and CIA's Center for the
Study of Intelligence (CSI). The subject of this event was
Congressional acquisition and use of intelligence. The
discussions centered around a monograph by L. Britt Snider, from
which Mr. Snider subsequently derived his article that appears in
this edition of Studies in Intelligence (see preceding article).
I'd like to pick up on something that [former Deputy Director of
Central Intelligence] Dick Kerr mentioned at the outset. I want
to focus specifically on the phenomenon of the President's own
finished intelligence being used by Congress to question and
attack the President's foreign policy initiatives--something that
makes the foreign policy processes of the US Government
absolutely unique.
In that respect, I'd like to question one line in Britt's
introduction [to his monograph]. Britt asserts that changes in
the political dynamics brought about by expanded
intelligence-sharing are now commonly acknowledged. I think it is
something of an exaggeration to say that the political dynamics
are commonly and widely acknowledged. I would agree that those
who are actually engaged in the intersection of policy and
analysis, primarily analysts and working-level policymakers, are
quite familiar with the consequences of basically full- and
real-time access to intelligence on the part of Congress. But I'm
struck by how little understood this phenomenon is by almost
everyone else: by the media, by the academic community, and
strangely enough by the senior echelons of our own foreign policy
structure in the executive branch.
When I was invited to be on this panel, I asked what you wanted
from me, and I was told to provide some anecdotes. So let me try
to make my point by giving you some personal experiences of my
own.
Anecdote #1: Congress, CIA, and Aid to Cambodia
The first one goes back a long time, almost to ground zero on
this subject--or even prior to ground zero: that is, to August
1974, almost two years before the oversight system was put into
place and the flow of intelligence to Congress was
institutionalized. I was then chief of the Indochina Branch in
the CIA's Intelligence Directorate. The Indochina war had entered
its depressing final months. I had just drafted a National
Intelligence Estimate on Cambodia that said the Lon Nol
Government was going to fall to the Khmer Rouge in a matter of
months, if not weeks or even days. The situation was hopeless.
It just so happened that at the time this Estimate was produced,
a vote was scheduled in the Senate on the next year's economic
assistance package for Cambodia. Everyone in the administration
knew the situation was hopeless in Cambodia, and nobody needed an
Estimate to tell them this. As a matter of fact, everyone knew
the Lon Nol Government was not going to survive long enough to
see any of this money if Congress were to approve it. But the
Ford administration nevertheless was making a full-court press to
win this vote in the Senate. Henry Kissinger felt very strongly
that the spectacle of the US openly abandoning an ally under
these circumstances would be disastrous in terms of our
credibility in the region.
While I don't know what transpired between the DCI--Bill
Colby--and Congress on Cambodia, or how much pressure Colby felt
himself under, what I do know is that the National Intelligence
Officer for East Asia, Bill Christison, received a call from
Director Colby and was told to take the Estimate right off the
presses, carry it downtown, and brief it to the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee. That seems so commonplace today. But let me
tell you, in 1974 it was a startling idea. [Such briefings] had
been given a few times in the past, but always at a time and
place of the administration's choosing. And this seemed like a
very strange time and place.
I remember Bill Christison puzzling over Colby's order. It wasn't
even clear exactly what "briefing the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee" meant--this was such a new concept. And
his instructions from Colby were very vague. But downtown Bill
Christison went. The "briefing" to the Foreign
Relations Committee consisted of about a 45-second encounter with
two staffers of the committee. Bill opened the Estimate and
showed them the Key Judgments. They looked at the first
paragraph, which said something like "it's hopeless in
Cambodia," and they said thanks, Bill, this is just what
we're looking for. They snatched the document out of his hand and
went out of the room. The next day the vote was held on the
Senate floor and the administration lost. The Cambodia aid bill
went down.
I don't know if that Estimate changed a single vote--maybe not.
It certainly didn't affect the outcome. Congress by now was in
open revolt on Indochina, and I don't think there was any chance
that the vote was going to be won. But the White House wasn't so
sure. Nor was Henry Kissinger. In fact, Kissinger was furious,
and poor Bill Colby got the full brunt of his wrath. Not only was
Kissinger furious; he was utterly dumbfounded, flabbergasted.
[His reaction was,] How could this be? This can't happen. This is
the President's National Intelligence Estimate. How could this go
to Congress? It can't happen.
Looking back, I think this episode may have been the rough
prototype for the system in place now, although at the time none
of us were smart enough to know that. In fact, I remember
discussing Kissinger's reaction with Bill Christison. I
distinctly recall telling Bill I bet this was the last time we
ever send a National Estimate down to Congress. So much for my
crystal ball.
That was anecdote number one. Kissinger's reaction was one of
utter surprise and consternation--an understandable reaction,
because this was essentially the first time that [Congressional
use of executive-branch finished intelligence to attack an
important Presidential foreign policy initiative] had occurred.
Anecdote #2: Congress, CIA, and Operations in the Gulf
By now I had become the Associate Deputy Director for
Intelligence, working for [then-Deputy Director for Intelligence]
Dick Kerr, who told me not to screw things up--which I
immediately proceeded to do. The first dominating international
event after I moved into this job and got my instructions from
Kerr was a decision to reflag Kuwaiti tankers and provide them
with naval escorts in and out of the Gulf. This immediately set
off a classic squabble between the White House and Congress over
the War Powers Act, with Congress saying, By God, you didn't
consult us, you've sent American troops in harm's way, we're
going to invoke the War Powers Act, and the White House saying
Oh, no, no, there's no danger here, what we've done doesn't
change anything and the Persian Gulf is as safe as it can be.
Who stumbles into this nasty little argument but the good old
CIA, doing what any proper premonitory analytic service would do:
it self-initiated a memo examining likely foreign reactions to
this US course of action. And the memo turned out to be
absolutely prophetic. It concluded that the Iranians would feel
obliged to react to this US intervention. It worried about the
threat from Iranian mines, it worried about the threat from
Silkworm cruise missiles the Iranians had recently installed, and
it concluded that the US was indeed moving into a dangerous
situation and that sooner or later there was going to be trouble.
I don't quite remember the exact mechanics of how this [CIA
analysis] reached the Hill, but reach it it did, where it was
greeted with howls of glee. The phone rang back in the DDI suite.
I don't know where Kerr was, and I am sure the phone call was
intended for him, but I had to answer it. It was a very angry
National Security Adviser--Colin Powell. As Yogi Berra said, it
was deja vu all over again. The circumstances of my first
anecdote immediately sprang into mind as I sat there and
envisioned sparks flying out of the receiver. It was the Henry
Kissinger of the 1974 episode, without the German accent. Not
only was Colin mad as hell; he was flabbergasted. He said, tell
me I'm dreaming. This can't happen. This is impossible. How in
the world could this happen? Unacceptable. This is impossible, I
must be in a nightmare. Wake me up.
The Need for Wider Awareness
I don't know exactly why, folks, but I think it's quite clear
that when this [blowback against executive-branch policy stemming
from intelligence-sharing with Congress] does occur, senior
policymakers are never quite ready for it, can't accept it, and
don't quite understand why it happened. I do not think this has
sunk in; I do not think it has been incorporated into everyone's
consciousness. And our senior policymakers are by no means alone.
I think the media do a miserable job of understanding this. When
something like this happens and it surfaces dramatically into
public view, they typically misunderstand it and misrepresent it.
Britt uses the example of the Haitian estimate of 1993, which was
a rather blatant instance of some people on the Hill making
selective use of material in a National Estimate to ambush an
administration's foreign policy position. How was it portrayed by
the media? Was it portrayed as a good example of historic changes
and events and decisions made in the mid-1970s that altered the
American foreign policy process in a very important way, giving
the Congress a lot more traction in foreign policy and making the
President's job of managing foreign policy a lot more
complicated? No. How was it presented by the media? How did it
resonate around the country for a couple of months or more? It
was "there they go again, those rogues at CIA are
undermining their own president in the field of foreign
policy." Well, whatever mistakes may have been made in the
way that Estimate was presented on the Hill, this was a
completely bogus interpretation, and the media completely missed
the larger, profoundly important point about how the American
foreign policy process had evolved in the past 15 years.
The media aren't alone. The academic community in some ways is
even more remiss, from my point of view. During my brief
fledgling career as a novice academic, I've come to the
conclusion that most university-level courses on the American
foreign policy process are absolutely mute on this subject
[intelligence-sharing with Congress, and the repercussions
thereof, as a major change in the US foreign policy process].
It's as if time was frozen in the 1960s. I think the current
scholarly literature on foreign policy processes has very little
discussion of this--almost none. I'm not aware of any Ph.D.
theses being done in this area, although I can think of some
wonderful case studies that could be the basis for doctoral
dissertations.
The media don't quite get it and the academic community doesn't
quite get it. I think Britt Snider's paper is very important
because it may be the first step for raising general public
awareness of how our processes have evolved and the
constitutional implications. So I really welcomed Britt's study.
Like Dick Kerr, I was a little skeptical, Britt, when you said
this morning you thought agreement could be reached on not using
intelligence in political settings for political purposes. You
were kidding about that, weren't you? That's a rhetorical
question.
I would be satisfied if we could just get people from the Hill,
the Executive Branch, and the Intelligence Community together in
the same room and agree on a description of the American foreign
policy process and of how the intelligence-sharing system with
Congress fits in. If everyone could reach a mutual agreement on
what happens, I think it would do a lot toward taking some of the
tensions and shock out of the relationship when this very unique
aspect of our system works its way through. Maybe national
security advisers wouldn't be so angry and shocked when the
inevitable consequences of sharing intelligence with Congress
surface. I think and hope, Britt, that your paper is going to be
a very important first step in educating senior policymakers and
the public at large.
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James McCullough, who served in the Directorates of Intelligence
and Operations, is a Senior Associate at the Walker Institute of
International Studies and Adjunct Professor of Government and
International Studies at the University of South Carolina.
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