Introduction
The case study counterintelligence operation that I will be using is that of Aldrich Ames. During his time with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) he compromised hundreds of operations and passed top secret and other sensitive information to the KGB and the Russian, SVR. Because of this, it resulted in the deaths of numerous people because he exposed their true identities. The majority of US spies were compromises, and the U.S. essentially had to start over their network because of Ames in the Soviet Union.
Aldrich Hazen Ames was born in River Falls, Wisconsin on May 26, 1941. He was the oldest of the three children. In 1962, Ames joined the C.I.A., where his father worked as an analyst as well. Ames was first marriage
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Ames from a young age had shown some of these signs. The first being that "In his entrance-on-duty polygraph examination in March 1962, Ames admitted that in November 1961 he and a friend, while inebriated, had "borrowed" a delivery bicycle from a local liquor store, were picked up by the police, and subsequently released with a reprimand. In April 1962, he was arrested for intoxication in the District of Columbia."(wright.edu.) In 1965 he was arresting for speeding and reckless driving. From a young age, alcohol abuse indicted a security risk even if it was minor. People who are alcohol dependent, can usually function at work, but their home life and quality of work suffers. For Ames, his uncontrolled behavior while under the influence of alcohol was, at least in retrospect, a clear indication of potential security problems." …show more content…
The CIA and FBI created a task force that sifted through a lot of information. After ruling out other people, these agents began to monitor Ames every moment, without alerting him. The operation was a success overall because they caught Aldrich Ames. Ames confessed to everything as well later on. However, there were many failures along the way as well. The first being that many agents were killed because of Ames leaking there true identity. The second is that many sensitive information has been leaked for years. The third is Ames committed a lot of violations in handling classified information, but was never properly punished. What if the CIA made Ames attend alcoholic anonymous meetings? Could this have prevented him from committing espionage? The CIA and FBI can only learn from this investigation, trying to prevent another case like this from occurring
On July 6, 2005, a federal judge ordered Judith Miller, journalist for the The New York Times, to jail. Miller was involved in the exposure of Valerie Plume as a CIA operative. In questioning, Miller invoked reporter’s privilege by refusing to disclose the identity of her sources, fueling fire to a heavily debated ethical issue in the field of journalism (Pinguelo, “A Reporter’s Confidential Source…Revealed?”). Successful journalism tells the truth to a public who has the right to know it. Journalists have the responsibility to tell us a story laden with facts and the more important responsibility of revealing the source of their information, right? Not necessarily. The right of journalists to keep their sources private has been a long-standing debate. The ethics in this debate are blurry. On one hand, it may be extremely important to the issue at hand that the source of information be known, as an argument could lose credibility otherwise. On the other hand, the source has the right as an American and an individual to remain anonymous. Isn’t it enough that he or she came forward with information at all? Judith Miller’s case garnered public attention and is just one example of many instances that raise the same, consistently debated question- how far can journalists go in protecting their sources and under what circumstances does withholding the identity of a source become unethical for either party involved? The answer to this question is obscure, but solvable. Journalists should have the right to protect to identity of a source unless the information they possess is for the greater good of the public or the situation at hand.
In times of great terror and panic, the citizens of a nation must decide what they value most: their right to privacy or the lives of the innocent. Government surveillance is criticized, however there are times in a nation’s history where, in order to ensure the safety of their citizens, they must surveill the country for potential hazards that might exist in the world. The government-issued program, COINTELPRO--a series of illegal projects during the twentieth century organized by the Federal Bureau of Investigation--while heavily criticized for its unconstitutional grounds--was justified because it benefitted the nation during a period of upheaval. COINTELPRO is popularly condemned by historians and professors such as Brandeis University Professor of Sociology, David Cunningham, who asserts that the FBI counterintelligence program was only a form of repression that allowed for the government to suppress matters that they consider bothersome (234) This however was not the case. COINTELPRO was necessary because of the great social unrest, individuals posed threats to society, and creating operations that were beneficial to the United States.
After World War II American intelligence had the need to be transformed. The inexperience along with bureaucracy and poor coordination among American intelligence officers obligated the United States intelligence community to change dramatically in order to confront the new challenges that emerged after the end of WWII. From Early America through WWI the intelligence system of the United States of America was involved in operations in which they had to construct intelligence systems virtually from scratch (Andrew 1995). Human intelligence was already developed, but with certain limitations and other intelligence disciplines were underdeveloped and very seldom sophisticated. After WWI America recessed and settled in a period of peace. The United States faced no threat to its security from its neighbors, from powers outside of the Western Hemisphere (Lowenthal 2006). That caused a visible absence of intelligence activities, leaving America out of sight for any international conflicts; the United States of America focused and limited its activities beyond its own borders. In later years the Japanese attack to Pearl Harbor, America rushed to reactivate their military forces, moving from a passive country to full participation into a another international conflict; WWII. As a consequence, the United States engaged in activities that improved its intelligence system increasing its capabilities needed to address seriously the future threats of the Cold War.
“There is one evil I dread, and that is, their spies. I could wish therefore the most attentive watch be kept… I wish a dozen or more honest sensible and diligent men, were employed… in order to question, cross-question, etc., all such persons as are unknown, and cannot give an account of themselves in a straight and satisfactory manner… I think it a matter of importance to prevent these [Tory spies] from obtaining intelligence of our situation. ” – George Washington
“President Bush has stated that about a hundred detainees were held under the Central Intelligence Agency secret detention program, about a third of whom were questioned using “enhanced interrogation techniques. The CIA has a way of very publicly blowing their cover seeming to pop up wherever turmoil, and political problems arise. The CIA exists to prevent threats, its operations involve covert actions or spying through various means to gather critical intelligence data. The CIA dates back to 1947. The qualifications and skills are above average. The job of the CIA is to anticipate and quickly assess rapidly evolving international developments and their impact, both positive and negative, on US policy concerns. When researching the career of
In this paper, I will do a case study on the Bay of Pigs and why the United States tried to conduct this attack. I will find out what intelligence led to this invasion attempt as well as what intelligence failures were made which resulted in the failure of the invasion. I will discuss what impact the Bay of Pigs had on the United States Intelligence community and what changes was made. I will end this paper with any findings I have concluded to if the failure has any affect on how the U.S. conducts intelligence in today’s world.
... strategies, CIA run uprisings to out undesirable leader. Like previous overthrows, the Cold War regime changes occurred "only when economic interests coincided with ideological ones." The CIA is a dogmatic instrument used, but perceived as an independent immoral and dishonorable force during the Cold War, that lead regime in the fight against civil liberties and insurgence. In the regards to the CIA, Kinzer shines light to the similarities amongst the event and role of the CIA in the Chilean Coup against Salvador Allende in 1973. The CIA abided by the rules and did as they were told even, when personnel cautioned the intervention. Not only was the brutal dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet proof of this sentiment, but when the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence investigated the coup in years after, it found president Nixon, not the CIA, most responsible.
Reviewing the experiments five years later, one secrecy-conscious CIA auditor wrote: “Precautions must be taken not only to protect operations from exposure to enemy forces but also to conceal these activities from the American public in general. The knowledge that the agency is engaging in unethical and illicit activities would have serious repercussions in political and diplomatic circles.” Though many of the documents related to MKULTRA were destroyed by the CIA in 1972, some records relating to the program have made it into the public domain. And the work of historians, investigative reporters, and various congressional committees has resulted in the release of enough information to make MKULTRA one of the most disturbing instances of intelligence community abuse on record. As writer Mark Zepezauer puts it, “the surviving history is nasty enough.”
J. Edgar Hoover began a new phase of a counterintelligence program in August of 1967 known as COINTELPRO. The purpose of this particular program, according to Hoover, who was the Director of the FBI, was to expose and disrupt the activities of black nationalists, hate organizations or groups. Hoover obsessively used the vast resources of the FBI against black groups across the political spectrum, from the NAACP to the Black Panther Party. His justification was that African Americans who objected to segregation were communists. Given Hoover’s well documented antipathy towards black people, which was typical of a white conservative man with southern upbringing, his motivation was simply racism. The Black Panther Party was not originally on Hoover’s “Black Nationalist-Hate Group” list, but organizations such as SCLC, SNCC and the Nation of Islam were included. But the Black Panther Party became the primary focus of the program where they were the target of 233
knowledge of the CIA and who would later would be involved in the clash between the
In the 21st century, the world as we know it suffers from psychotic, demented, treacherous and, sophisticated crimes. This world would be corrupt without a tunnel of light if it was not for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, also known as the FBI, is a corporation that seeks fidelity, bravery and, integrity for the United States of America. The FBI researches shocking and concerning crimes the news reports about politics, war and, safety that we hear on the television about issues that are being reported to the people. These cases of transgression are missions the FBI analyzes, such as hacking information from double spies, locating terrorists, seeking pedophiles, cracking down unknown mobsters, gang leaders and serial killers, white-collar crime, public corruption, cyber-crime, counter intelligence and civil rights.
Throughout history there are multiple intelligence failures such as 9/11 and Pearl Harbor. These failures are due to intelligence collected which was either delayed or misdirected to the rest of the intelligence community. Both events had catastrophic consequences and yet these tragic events has allowed the intelligence community to develop better security like warning signals and combat readiness to protect the United States. Pearl Harbor is still considered one of the worst intelligence failure in the history of the United States to date. During the upcoming months before the attack the U.S Naval Fleet intercepted and deciphered vast amounts of encrypted messages from Japan’s Imperial Navy. Due to manpower and at the time Japan being perceived as not a threat intercepted messages were disregarded or were delayed in being read. “The United States did not perceive the Japanese ability to attack the United States Naval Fleet at all and thus to bring the U.S into war- a step in which logically appeared to be a gross strategic miscalculation, as it indeed was” (Grabo, 2004). But ...
The Central Intelligence Agency The CIA is one of the U.S. foreign intelligence agencies, responsible for getting and analyzing information about foreign governments, corporations, individuals, and reporting such information to the various branches of the U.S. government. The State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research and the Defense Department's Defense Intelligence Agency comprise the other two. Its headquarters is in Langley, Virginia, across the Potomac River from D.C. The Agency, created in 1947 by President Harry S. Trueman, is a descendant of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) of World War 2. The OSS was dissolved in October 1945 but William J. Jonavan, the creator of the OSS, had submitted a proposal to President Roosevelt in 1944.
In 1949 the Central Intelligence Act was passed. This new act ensured that the CIA would not be obligated to disclose the names and number of personnel employed nor their functions, official titles or salaries. In addition, the CIA director wo...
The Central Intelligence Agency’s main responsibility is stated in its Vision statement: “We will provide knowledge and take action to ensure the national security of the United States and the preservation of American life and ideals” (www.cia.gov). The CIA’s job is to provide pertinent, timely, and un-biased foreign intelligence. They also act as an unseen force by conducting undercover action as ordered by the President in order to preempt threats or achieve objectives of the United States. The CIA is the only intelligence organization that is not subject to cabinet prerogative, making it reliable in it is unbiased in its reports, because it has no political agenda. There are six main types of intelligence by which the CIA collects information. Human intelligence (HUMINT) is information gathered by field operatives through overt and covert techniques (www.cia.gov). Communications intelligence (COMINT) is acquired from intercepted foreign communications (www.cia.go...