Hot Mess Express
The impact of the Cold War on the US Intelligence Community
The Cold War gave US intelligence services the purpose, funding, and attention to grow substantially, but at the cost of disorganization and misdirection. From 1945 to 1991, the US competed for influence and power against the Soviet Union around the globe. The nuclear and ideological aspects of the Cold War created a zero-sum mentality that drove policymakers to take a keen interest in intelligence and other capabilities such organizations could provide. The high-stakes environment begot an often-unproductive sense of urgency and a heavy focus on covert action to fight the influence of the Soviet Union. These factors muddled organizational and managerial progress but provided a technological focus that enhanced collections capabilities.
Organization
The post-World War II US Intelligence Community (IC) consisted of a shell of the former Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and disjointed military intelligence. It eventually grew to include the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the National Security Agency (NSA), the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), and included oversight from the National Security Council (NSC). Each formed to solve a different problem surrounding Cold War competition.
Due to the Soviet threat and the oncoming nuclear age, and despite heavy demobilization, US President Harry S. Truman felt it necessary to rebuild and reorganize. Intelligence was “the first line of defense in the atomic age.”1 The National Security Act of 1947 signed by Truman established the CIA “to correlate and evaluate intelligence relating to the national security,” but it had two significant issues.2 First, it included a catch-all clause that led to far-reaching justifications of covert action. The act also gave the CIA little authority, and the military services often refused to release their intelligence.3
With a hasty military mobilization into the Korean War, internal problems from demobilization crippled the IC. Before the formation of the DIA in 1961, the Unified and Specified Commands held sole responsibility for intelligence in their areas of responsibility.4 This structure failed when the United Nations forces under US command were caught entirely off-guard by China’s entrance into the war. As the Commander of the US Eighth Army put it, “We have lost, through neglect, disinterest and possibly jealousy, much of the effectiveness in intelligence work that we acquired so painfully in World War II.”5 Specifically, struggles with communications intelligence (COMINT) would lead to reorganizing the Armed Forces Security Agency into the NSA, which would grow to be one of the most successful US intelligence agencies of the Cold War.
Despite the additions of the DIA and NSA, the US still lacked solid intelligence on Soviet nuclear capabilities, as seen in the “Bomber Gap” and later the “Missile Gap” controversies. Imagery intelligence in the form of spy planes and satellites satiated this need. In 1962, the Secretary of Defense (SECDEF) established the NRO to manage national imagery intelligence (IMINT), manage Air Force satellite collections, and coordinate with the CIA to cut out several intermediaries. The Cuban Missile Crisis made it evident, however, that the NRO shirked much of its authority to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It would be reorganized in 1964 and again in 1988 to solve problems of roles and responsibilities. The organizational issues above only compounded the IC’s Cold War challenges.
Activities
The dynamic, high-stakes environment of the Cold War meant that competition took various forms, and so intelligence followed. There were three primary enduring outcomes in terms of US intelligence activities. First, several factors led to a heavy focus on technological means for collections. Second, covert action became a staple of the CIA. Third, intelligence sharing with allies against the Soviet Union grew while interagency coordination suffered.
A growing military-industrial complex, mixed with poor human intelligence (HUMINT) opportunities in the Soviet Union, led to a hyper-focus on technological means for collections. Soviet counterintelligence penetrated even the most mundane dissenters within its borders.6 Even in smaller authoritarian regimes, HUMINT fell to the purges of dictators like Manuel Noriega in Panama.7 Intelligence shortfalls plagued the US throughout the Cold War, including a failure to foresee the Soviet Union’s first nuclear detonation, overestimating Soviet bomber and missile capabilities, and missing the building of Soviet nuclear bases in Cuba until they were almost fully operational. Emerging technologies resolved each, providing everything from the seemingly mundane to the strategically indispensable. The U-2 spy plane disproved the “Bomber Gap” controversy. Electronics Intelligence (ELINT) collections from large antenna arrays and military flights provided a complete map of Soviet air defenses and command structure.8 NSA decrypts, cable-taps, and intercepts gave policymakers inside information on Soviet military capabilities, political decisions prior to nuclear arms negotiations, and countless nuclear intelligence.9 IMINT and signals intelligence (SIGINT) consistently outperformed HUMINT sources, in large part due to the Cold War environment. However, with the poor performance of HUMINT came a repurpose of the CIA.
Fear of total nuclear war, a perceived necessity of competition over the “third world,” and eventually war-weariness led to an extensive demand for measures short of war. The CIA provided the ideal mechanism for covert action from its onset. With several former members of the OSS within its ranks, many like Director of Central Intelligence Allen Dulles saw secret operations as inseparable from secret intelligence. It started, as did the Cold War, in Europe. Though CIA interference with Italian elections was relatively benign and probably unnecessary, it set a precedent. NSC 10/2 further established a means of maintaining “plausible deniability” in the White House.10 By the end of the Korean War, covert action dominated the CIA’s budget.11 Another Cold War context, the waning of former colonial powers, propelled the CIA to launch a coup in Iran in 1953. With success in its wake, the CIA turned to a coup in Guatemala to fight the influence of communism.12 These and many following operations could arguably fit within the “domino theory” philosophy of Cold War foreign policy. The invasion of Cuba in 1953, the plot to kill Cuban President Fidel Castro, the secret war in Laos, covert operations against Salvadore Allende in Chile, the Iran-Contra affair, and intervention in Afghanistan all took place to inhibit or reverse Soviet or communist influence.13 At least when it came to collections, however, the US was not alone in this cause.
The urgency of the Soviet threat and, simply, the geographical location of US allies created an opportunity for international intelligence cooperation on a grand scale. The UK-USA intelligence cooperation agreement started in 1948 and grew to include SIGINT organizations from all “Five Eyes” by 1956.14 Also known as “Echelon,” the anglosphere alliance allowed intercept stations all around the globe to coordinate collections aimed at the Soviet Union.15 Meanwhile, interagency cooperation suffered. Built on a culture of legal ambiguity and keeping undue secrets from other agencies, and justified by the high-stakes of the Cold War, the CIA’s relationship with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) suffered.16 Since the FBI held responsibility for counterintelligence, high-profile double agents like Aldrich Ames operated unimpeded.17
Conclusion
The IC started the Cold War without the requisite experience and structure necessary to handle its intended scale. The urgency of the Soviet nuclear and ideological threats drove its rapid growth. When that threat did not elicit proper attention, war with communist nations did. However, the IC lacked a clear and consistent vision. The CIA was supposed to coordinate all national means of intelligence, but most collections assets fell under a single separate authority, the SECDEF. It took several decades to clearly delineate the responsibilities of each agency and establish procedures for interagency coordination. The nature of Cold War economic competition, a growing military-industrial complex, and the difficulty of gaining HUMINT in an authoritarian regime like the Soviet Union drove a heavy reliance on technology for intelligence collections. The rapid change in technology, in turn, required several organizational and process changes. Looming behind all of this was the fear of full-scale war. Later, “Vietnam Syndrome” suppressed the American public’s desire for any war. Hence, the CIA embraced covert action as a measure to provide “plausible deniability.” While much of the above led to improvements in the IC, it never adequately addressed the issues of coordination and authority. As such, disaster struck only nine years after the fall of the Soviet Union on September 11th, 2001.
Michael Warner and J. Kenneth McDonald, “US Intelligence Community Reform Studies since 1947,” (2005): 7, https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/books-monographs/us-intelligence-community-reform-studies-since-1947/.
National Security Act of 1947, Pub. L. No. 80-253 Sec. 102 (July 26, 1947).
Michael Herman, Intelligence Power in Peace and War, (Cambridge University Press, 1996), 263, http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511521737.
Defense Intelligence Agency, “Defense Intelligence Agency: A Brief History,” (1996): 1-4, Accessed February 8, 2022. https://irp.fas.org/dia/dia_history.pdf.
David A. Hatch, and Robert Louis Benson, The Korean War: The SIGINT Background, (Center for Cryptologic History, 2000), 17, https://media.defense.gov/2021/Jul/15/2002763381/-1/-1/0/THE%20SIGINT%20BACKGROUND.PDF.
Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive. (Basic Books, 1999), 545-50.
Matthew M. Aid, The Secret Sentry: The Untold History of the National Security Agency, (Bloomsbury Press, 2010), 189.
Herman, Intelligence Power in Peace and War, 188.
Matthew M. Aid, "The NSA and the Cold War," Intelligence and National Security 16, no. 1 (2001): 31, 47, https://doi.org/10.1080/02684520412331306200a.
Christopher Andrew, “American Presidents and Their Intelligence Communities,” Intelligence and National Security 10, no. 4 (1995): 101, https://doi.org/10.1080/02684529508432327.
Richard H. Immerman, The Hidden Hand: A Brief History of the CIA. (Wiley, 2014), 43.
Ibid., 47-50.
Ibid., 53, 71, 78, 91, 130, 158.
Corey Pfluke, “A History of the Five Eyes Alliance: Possibility for Reform and Additions,” Comparative Strategy 38, 4 (2019): 301, https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1080/01495933.2019.1633186.
Ibid., 305-06.
Michael A. Turner, “CIA‐FBI Non‐Cooperation: Cultural Trait or Bureaucratic Inertia?,” International Journal of Intelligence and Counter Intelligence 8, 3 (1995): 263-66, https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1080/08850609508435284.
Ibid.