Espionage: Does It Have a Future in the 21st Century?
Espionage: Does It Have a Future in
the 21st Century?
ARTHUR S. HULNICK
Associate Professor
Boston University
ESPIONAGE—THE USE OF SPIES or secret agents to steal information from enemies, adversaries, or competitors—is one of the oldest forms of intelligence gathering. There are
biblical stories about the use of spies, and the famous military philosopher Sun Tzu
wrote about the use of secret agents more than two thousand and five hundred years
ago in his treatise, The Art of War. In the twentieth century, especially during the Cold
War, both the East and West used spies to ferret out the secret plans of the other side,
and both argued that they had to use such tactics to avoid the possibility of a surprise
attack. Now that the Cold War is over, the United States and other countries, from
Great Britain to Indonesia, are facing threats from non-state actors, including terrorists, global criminal gangs, and proliferators of weapons of mass destruction. These are
tough targets for intelligence. Can traditional forms of spying work effectively against
these new threats to security, peace, and freedom?
In order to answer this question, a review of espionage as an intelligence tool is
necessary. Unfortunately, many people here and around the world do not really understand the capabilities and limitations of the secret agent. Spy fiction in its various forms
has masked the real work of spying by creating an image of secret agents as glamorous
adventurers who roam the world, using high-tech gadgets to outwit their adversaries.
The spies in these tales are rarely thwarted, and, when captured, escape to spy again. It
has created an aura of invincibility that is rarely deserved. In the debates about alleged
intelligence failures before the terrorist attacks on the United States on 9/11, and in
later reviews of the failure to find the anticipated weapons of mass destruction in Iraq
in 2003, members of Congress, the press, and political pundits blamed the intelligence
ARTHUR S. HULNICK is a veteran of thirty-five years in the intelligence field, including twenty-eight years
in the CIA. He is currently Associate Professor of International Relations at Boston University, where he
teaches several courses on strategic and business intelligence. Dr. Hulnick is the author of Fixing the Spy
Machine (Praeger, 1999) and a forthcoming book on homeland security entitled Keeping Us Safe (Praeger).
Copyright © 2003 by the Brown Journal of World Affairs
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failures on a lack of spies. These assertions demonstrate how little is known about the
real world of espionage, its limits, and its possibilities.
This is not an easy subject to discuss, especially for a veteran of the intelligence
profession. Because of secrecy requirements and the need to protect the sources and
methods used in espionage operations, there are limits to the details that can be shared
with the public. Despite this, a number of former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
officers have published books on intelligence, including the author of this article, and
all have been cleared by the agency’s Publications Review Board. A careful reading of
these works can provide real insight into the world of espionage without compromising the secret nature of such operations.1
AN UNPRECEDENTED DEFENSE
166
It was unusual and unprecedented for George Tenet, the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) and head of the CIA, to admit in public that the CIA had secret agents
active in Iraq and in the fight against terrorism. In a speech at Georgetown University
on 5 February 2004, Mr. Tenet even used the word “spies” to describe some of the
sources the CIA used to determine the state of Saddam Hussein’s arsenal before the
invasion of the country.2 He defended the CIA and the Intelligence Community against
charges that the intelligence books had been manipulated to justify the overthrow of
Saddam. In fact, the intelligence judgments made in 2002 were the best that could
have been reached given the nature of Saddam’s police state and the almost impossible
task of penetrating such a regime.
Some commentators seemed to think that all the CIA had to do was drop a
handful of officers into Iraq and that they would somehow discover the reality of the
situation. This assumption shows how little they understood about espionage. Espionage is a dangerous, slow, painstaking process that often yields information of questionable reliability. Yet, when a good source is obtained, the insights that source provides can be better and more useful than intercepted communications or overhead
reconnaissance, which are the more commonly used (and very expensive) high-tech
methods of spying.
Although the use of espionage has deep roots in U.S. history, from George
Washington’s use of secret agents against the British to female spies in the Civil War, it
was only in the twentieth century that espionage became an organized and established
part of the U.S. intelligence system. When William “Wild Bill” Donovan created the
Office of Strategic Services (OSS) as the United States entered World War II, he established America’s first modern organized spy service as part of the new intelligence agency.3
Modeled on British practices, OSS field units began to recruit, train, and operate net-
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Espionage: Does It Have a Future in the 21st Century?
works of secret agents to fight the Germans in Europe and the Japanese on the Asian
mainland. The techniques
and practices of the OSS
carried over into the peace- Some commentators seemed to think that all the
time organization that took CIA had to do was drop a handful of officers into
its place, the CIA. Many of
Iraq and that they would somehow discover the
the intelligence personnel
who had served in the OSS reality of the situation. This assumption shows
joined the new CIA when
how little they understood about espionage.
it was created in 1947; not
surprisingly the Clandestine Service of the CIA, its overseas operating arm, used the systems developed in
wartime to face the new enemies of the Soviet Union and world communism.
In fact, most intelligence services in existence today adopted the techniques used
by the British and Americans on the one side, or the Russian and Eastern European
services on the other. Now that the Cold War is over, and veterans of the two sides have
been able to meet and compare notes, it seems clear that espionage does not vary all
that much from service to service. In the twenty-first century, however, the techniques
that worked well in the Cold War may not be applicable against the new threat of nonstate actors, such as terrorists, organized crime groups, and independent arms merchants.
THE SECRET AGENT
Typically, the aim of an espionage operation is to recruit an agent, usually a foreign
person, to carry out the actual spying. The person who targets, recruits, trains, and
runs the agent is, in American parlance, the “case officer.” Other services have different
terms for this agent handler, but in most cases, the intelligence officer does not actually
do the spying personally, but rather has an agent do it. There are good reasons for this.
In most parts of the world, a U.S. intelligence officer cannot easily blend into the
society in which he or she is working, even with mastery of language and local customs.
The notion that Americans can somehow be made to look and act just like the foreign
targets works only in fiction. The system that exists also requires that intelligence officers have some kind of “cover” to explain why they are stationed overseas.
During the Cold War, U.S. and allied intelligence officers had to be concerned
about being caught at espionage by the target government’s security service. Therefore,
it was helpful to make sure that the officers had a cover that provided them the protection of diplomatic or official status. The use of non-official cover—the officers of this
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ARTHUR S. HULNICK
status were called NOCs—provided no such protection, and it also required some
kind of contact with a regular case officer for communication with CIA headquarters.
When the target countries were closed to Americans, such as North Korea, Iran, Iraq,
or China under Mao Tse Tung, then the case officers had to seek targets in countries
where representatives of the closed countries might be found. They then had to worry
not just about the host country’s security service, but also the security services of the
targets as well.
In the new world of terrorism and other threats, protecting the case officer becomes even more difficult. Terrorists do not honor the rules of law with regard to
diplomatic immunity or official status. If they identify intelligence officers or their
agents, the terrorists will likely try to kill them, or snatch them as hostages. Putting
intelligence officers at risk in this way is not an easy choice for an intelligence service, as
it has the potential to jeopardize entire operations and affect morale within the service.
Intelligence professionals understand that their operations are not risk-free, but they
certainly like to know that they have some sort of protection.
RECRUITING THE AGENT
168
The process of recruiting an agent begins with a determination, usually made at the
intelligence service’s headquarters about what kind of agent is needed. It has to be
someone with access to the information the service is trying to acquire who might also
be willing to cooperate. In order to find the right person, the case officer has to do a
great deal of searching to find people who have access to secrets and might be recruited
to do the officer’s bidding. Often, the case officer begins by recruiting a “principal
agent”—someone with the right ethnic background and language who fits into the
society or group the officers are trying to penetrate.4 The principal agent then can assist
in spotting and assessing likely targets. Of course, the relationship between officer and
principal agent has to be kept secret.
In order to maintain secrecy in clandestine operations, various kinds of secure
communications are needed. Increasingly sophisticated and secure devices have become available for this purpose in recent years, but some services still rely on the traditional “dead drop” to hide messages between agent and case officer. When FBI agent
Robert Hanssen was captured spying for the Russians in February 2001, he admitted
to the use of such dead drops, such as a message in a discarded soda can, to communicate with his Russian handlers.5 CIA spy Aldrich Ames used encrypted computer disks
when he spied for the Russians until 1994, but these, too, were hidden in cans.
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TRADECRAFT
Once agents are recruited, the case officer has to ensure that the new spies learn how to
hide their operations, how to communicate securely, and how to report the information they have been directed to steal. This is known in intelligence parlance as “tradecraft.”
Sometimes, the case officer will use a “safe house,” usually a secure apartment or office,
to meet with the agents, give them requirements, retrieve their reports, or deal with
their problems. The techniques described here are common to intelligence services that
run secret agents. Some services try to use blackmail to recruit agents, but experience
shows that such agents can never really be trusted, and thus their reliability is low.
In fiction, secret agents are attracted to the work of espionage because they are
paid huge sums, drive expensive cars, and live in luxurious quarters. The reality is quite
different. Secret agents are paid only enough to keep them in line. Giving them big
money and fancy cars only calls attention to them. The Russians made this mistake in
the Ames case, when they gave Ames a great deal of money which he spent on a big
house and a Jaguar automobile, thus calling unwanted attention to himself.6 It is much
better to promise agents a good payoff upon completion of an operation rather than
during the operation itself.
Once the agent has proven to be productive, and reports begin to flow back to
headquarters, then the utility of the operation has to be evaluated from time to time.
The agent who appears at first to be a good reporter may turn out to be passing only
low-level tidbits to the case officer, or may be fabricating information to make it appear
that he or she is really “in the know.” This may have been the case in Iraq where,
according to press reports, some sources lied to intelligence or fabricated information
about weapons of mass destruction.7
NOTHING GLAMOROUS
Clearly, there is nothing glamorous about espionage. It is painstaking and tedious work,
it can be dangerous, and it requires assigning good officers to terrible places, where
their tenure there has to be limited because of the toll it takes on officers’ health and
family. It is easy enough for members of Congress to cry out for more case officers and
more overseas assignments, but managing to recruit, train, and maintain a solid cadre
of case officers with the right language and area skills is difficult. The pay is lower than
in the private sector and the hardships are greater. As case officers marry and have
children, family demands make life overseas increasingly costly. Experienced officers
find it increasingly difficult to accept an assignment that places their families at risk. Of
course, assignments to the safer locations are very desirable, but often, that is not where
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the work has to be done.
Another important task for the intelligence service is to liaison with other services
tracking the same or related targets. Some former officers have criticized the CIA for
having too many people in liaison, but this can be quite useful and productive. For
example, the CIA learned from the Malaysian service about an al-Qaeda meeting in
Kuala Lumpur, something that would have been impossible for a lone CIA case officer
to discover.8 Foreign services have insights and sources that Americans cannot collect
on their own, so liaisons can be quite useful and productive, even though some of the
material may not be totally reliable. Of course, these relationships have to be kept
secret and the intelligence handled in such a way as to protect both the liaison service
and its sources.
LESSONS LEARNED
170
One of the great lessons learned from the recent intelligence crises surrounding 9/11
and the Iraq war is that the U.S. intelligence system needs to move away from Cold
War tactics and become more flexible, or “more agile” as intelligence expert Bruce
Berkowitz has written.9 At the same time, operations against closed or “rogue” states
may require techniques that have roots in the Cold War experience. In reporting about
the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, DCI George Tenet made clear
that there were real limits to contacting sources that might have told the CIA what it
wanted to know. Some of these sources lied to the CIA, just as they did to Saddam
Hussein. Others, fearing the power of Saddam’s police state, could not have been induced to talk under any circumstances. Finding sources in North Korea will probably
prove to be equally difficult if not impossible.
Going after terrorists or weapons proliferators who do not owe allegiance to any
state, but rather only to themselves, may require different techniques. An increasing
use of non-official cover for case officers may be useful because case officers no longer
have to worry about the host security services. One former CIA officer has suggested
that the agency set up small businesses to cover the operations of its officers. It may also
be possible to have officers overseas by themselves, now that sophisticated and secure
communications have rendered entire support stations unnecessary.10
Another new idea already in practice is to build closer relations between operations officers and the intelligence analysts who use their reports. Jamie Miscik, the
CIA’s Deputy Director for Intelligence (DDI), the analytic arm of the agency, said
publicly in 2004 that future analysts would be given more information about human
sources than they had received in the past.11 This might mark the beginning of a major
development in intelligence management. In the early days of the CIA, analysts and
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operations officers were kept separate by armed guards and barriers. Although such
barriers are gone, operations officers have still been reluctant to give analysts inside
data on agents in fear that the analysts would compromise the identity of the “spies.”
Operation officers and analysts ought to work more closely with each other, as
this is the best way to ensure that analysts understand the real nature of the reporting
agents. At the same time, analysts can provide operations officers with a better understanding of the requirements for intelligence collection, so that the agents can be targeted more efficiently. Both analysts and collectors are after the same thing: accurate
reporting. Having the two sides work more closely together will help achieve that goal.
BETTER RECRUITING
If the CIA is going to maintain its operational capability in the twenty-first century, it
has to do a better job of recruiting officers for its Clandestine Service, the other name
for the Directorate of Operations (DO). During the height of the Cold War, the CIA
had a series of offices around the United States whose main job was finding and recruiting officers for the CIA. The recruiters hit mainstream college campuses and other
likely sources for good prospects, maintaining a steady flow of new recruits. After the
collapse of communism—the “Main Enemy,” as we used to call the Soviet Union and
its associated states—the recruiting offices were closed. Attention shifted to downsizing,
offering early retirement or buy-outs to induce officers to leave the service. Later, when
rebuilding became a priority, the CIA decided that it could attract new recruits by
operating a centralized recruiting system out of Washington, with a few selected recruiters stationed at key locations. Now, almost all hiring for intelligence in the United
States is Web-based; applicants must apply on-line, with recruiters following up on
promising applicants. This is not good enough.
A number of intelligence managers have admitted that what they hope for is a
steady stream of applicants who have exactly the skills and talents they need. Experience over many years demonstrates, however, that this essentially passive system may
be leaving out some of the people the agencies want. Putting advertisements in major
newspapers assumes that the right people will see them and apply. A great many people
in this country, however, no longer read the papers, and a great many more understand
little about the CIA or intelligence. The CIA has ample experience recruiting foreign
agents, but seems to fall short in recruiting new officers for its staff. The agency ought
to resume the kinds of outreach recruiting it used to have by actively seeking out people
with the right skills instead of hoping that they will independently decide to apply.
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SECURITY HURDLES
172
The recruiting process is complicated by the security hurdles that new recruits have to
overcome. Of course, any intelligence service wants to be sure that the people it hires
are trustworthy, loyal, and of good moral character, even though some of them are
being hired to carry out the immoral act of espionage. To make sure new recruits are fit
for intelligence work, the CIA and most other intelligence services rely on stringent
background checks, polygraph interviews, and personal disclosures of information that
would be unacceptable in the private sector. Essentially, intelligence professionals give
up certain rights of privacy to enter the service. Usually, they have no recourse when
the service decides that there might be a problem and refuses to hire them. This is
another reason why a more focused recruiting system would be useful. Recruiters could
easily determine if some potential new hires would have difficulty passing the security
checks and thus avoid burdening the system with applicants who would have to be
turned away later in the hiring process.
Training is another important aspect of running an intelligence service. Intelligence managers have long understood that almost no one they hire is likely to have had
prior experience in espionage, so traditionally, the managers have anticipated that they
will have to invest a good deal of time and money in giving its recruits the skills they
will need to be successful. This often means a year or more of operational training in
addition to language training, which can take even more time. Even then, new case
officers must have several years of experience in the field before they become first-rate
professionals. The CIA has to be sure not only that it has recruited and trained the
right people, but also that its investment is protected by keeping the skilled operations
officers on board, despite the difficulty and danger of the work. Clearly, the CIA needs
a more flexible pay and allowances system for its officers than the traditional civil
service system copied by the CIA.
Intelligence operations are not cheap, yet CIA agents and administrators have
been told over the years that money is tight, and that professionals are supposed to “do
more with less.” This will not work. If the Congress and the White House truly want a
first rate intelligence service capable of penetrating the new enemies of the twenty-first
century, then they must give it the kind of support it needs to function effectively.
Intelligence must be America’s first line of defense; it is bound to be less costly than
going to war. It was a lesson Sun Tzu was trying to teach two thousand and five hundred years ago and it is still valid today. WA
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NOTES
1. Books by CIA authors who have served in the Directorate of Operations include: Robert Baer, See No
Evil (New York: Crown Publishers, 2003); Milton Bearden and James Risen, The Main Enemy (New York:
Random House, 2003); Duane R. Clarridge, A Spy For All Seasons (New York: Scribner, 1997); Fred
Rustmann Jr., CIA Inc (New York: Brassey’s, 2002).
2. George J. Tenet “Iraq and Weapons of Mass Destruction,” Speech delivered at Georgetown University, 8 February 2004 (Text provided by the Washington Post).
3. Richard Harris Smith, OSS: The Secret History of America’s First Central Intelligence Agency (Berkeley,
CA: University of California Press, 1972).
4. Fred Rustmann Jr., “Debunking the CIA Case Officer Myth,” AFIO Newsletter 25 no.1 and 2,
(2002).
5. David Wise, Spy: The Inside Story of How the FBI’s Robert Hanssen Betrayed America (New York:
Random House, 2002).
6. Pete Earley, Confessions of a Spy: The Real Story of Aldrich Ames (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons,
1997).
7. Walter Pincus and Dana Milbank, “Kay Says Evidence Shows Iraq Disarmed,” Washington Post, 28
January, 2004.
8. John Miller and Michael Stone, The Cell: Inside the 9/11 Plot and Why the FBI and CIA Failed to Stop
It (New York: Hyperion, 2003).
9. Bruce Berkowitz “Spying in the Post-September 11 World,” The Hoover Digest, 13 November 2003.
10. Thomas Patrick Carroll, Middle East Intelligence Bulletin 5 no.4, (April 2003).
11. Walter Pincus “CIA Alters Policy After Iraq Lapses,” Washington Post, 12 February 2004.
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