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Covert Intervention as a Moral Problem

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2012

Charles R. Beitz
Charles R. Beitz
Affiliation:
CHARLES R. BEITZ is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Swarthmore College, and the author of Political Themy and International Relations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), and Political Equality, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989).
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Abstract

Today's international community may well view covert action and democracy as mutually exclusive policies. This article examines the practice of covert action in American foreign policy in light of events of the mid-1970s and 1980s, focusing on the scandalous misuse of executive authority and lack of accountability associated with covert means. Often manipulative and sometimes anonymous, covert operations raise critical morality concerns in a democratic society. Whether “any form of accountability is likely to be sufficient to bring the unauthorized use of executive power under control” is the crucial issue to be addressed when examining the practicality of covert actions by the executive branch.

Type
Ethics and Intervention
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 3 , March 1989 , pp. 45 - 60
Copyright
© Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 1989

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References

1 An earlier version of this paper was presented at a faculty workshop on Ethics and Covert Action at Cornell University that was sponsored by the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs. I am grateful to the participants for their comments and suggestionsGoogle Scholar.

2 On the background, legality, and efficacy of covert action, see U.S. Congress, Senate Select Committee to Study …Intelligence Activities (the Church Committee), Foreign and Military Intelligence, Book I, Senate Report No. 94–755, 94th Cong., 2d Sess., Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, April 26, 1976, chapter 8. The best study is Treverton, Gregory F., Covert Action (New York: Basic Books, 1987)Google Scholar.

3 I have excluded from this list the covert activities carried out by the CIA during the Korean and Indochinese wars because these were operations in direct support of military activities rather than free-standing, peacetime initiatives like the othersGoogle Scholar.

4 For the details of these cases, see Treverton, op. cit., and Prados, John, Presidents' Secret Wars (New York: William Morrow, 1986)Google Scholar.

5 See Oseth, John M., Regulating U.S. Intelligence Operations: A Study in Definition of the National Interest (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1985) pp. 25–27Google Scholar.

6 For example, Tom Wicker, “Not Covert, Not Smart, Not Right,” in The New York Times, August 2, 1988, p. A19Google Scholar.

7 In fact, intervention is best denned simply as “coercive external interference in the affairs of a population organized in the form of a state.” The best recent discussion is McMahan, Jefferson, “The Ethics of International Intervention,” in Political Realism and International Morality, ed. Kipnis, Kenneth and Meyers, Diana T. (Boulder: Westview Press, 1987) p. 78Google Scholar.

8 For example, Michael Walzer's view in Just and Unjust Wars (New York: Basic Books, 1977) chapter 6Google Scholar.

9 Tovar, Hugh, “Covert Action,” in Intelligence Requirements for the 1980s: Elements of Intelligence, ed. Godson, Roy (Washington, D.C.: National Strategy Information Center, 1979) p. 69Google Scholar.

10 Quoted in Treverton, , Covert Action, p. 11Google Scholar.

11 There is a good discussion in Treverton, ibid., chapters 5–6Google Scholar.

12 William Colby advances one form of this argument in “Public Policy, Secret Action,” elsewhere in this journal. He says that covert action should meet the test of “self-defense.” His extremely elastic interpretation of this idea illustrates that the cautions set forth above about the ambiguities of the national interest also apply to self-defenseGoogle Scholar.

13 The locus classicus is Arnold Wolfers, “National Security as an Ambiguous Symbol,” in Discord and Collaboration (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1962) pp. 147–66Google ScholarPubMed.

14 Rubin, Barry, Paved With Good Intentions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980) pp. 54–90; Prados, Presidents' Secret Wars, pp. 92–98Google Scholar.

15 Eisenhower, Dwight D., The White House Years: Mandate for Change, 1953–1956 (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1963) pp. 162–64Google Scholar.

16 See the discussion in Cottam, Richard W., Nationalism in Iran (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1964) p. 230Google Scholar.

17 In addition to Colby's remarks in “Public Policy, Secret Action,” in this issue, See Nixon, Richard, 7999: Victory Without War (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988) p. 109Google Scholar; and Barrett, Michael J., “Honorable Espionage II,”Journal of Defense and Diplomacy, Vol. 2, No. 3 (March 1984) p. 14. (Barrett was assistant general counsel of the CIA at the time this article was written.)Google Scholar

18 Robert Goodin defines manipulation as “power exercised 1) deceptively and 2) against the putative will of its objects.”Manipulatory Politics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980) p. 8Google Scholar.

19 Ibid., p. 7Google Scholar.

20 Joel Rudinow makes a similar point in “Manipulation,”Ethics, Vol. 88 (1978) p. 347Google Scholar.

21 For example, by the Church Committee, Foreign and Military Intelligence, Book I, p. 131Google Scholar.

22 Prados, , Presidents' Secret Wars, pp. 315–21Google Scholar.

23 William Colby with Forbath, Peter, Honorable Men: My Life in the CIA (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978) pp. 113–14Google Scholar.

24 See, for example, the generally cautious assessment in Trevor Barnes, “The Secret Cold War: The C.I.A. and American Foreign Policy in Europe, 1946–1956,” part I, Historical Journal, Vol. 24 (1981) pp. 412–13; and part II, ibid., Vol. 25 (1982) pp. 660–64Google Scholar.

25 Covert Action, p. 222. Similarly, the Church Committee reported itself “struck by the basic tension—if not incompatibility—of covert operations and the demands of a constitutional system.”Foreign and Military Intelligence, Book 1, p. 156Google Scholar.

26 For a discussion of the new intelligence regime in the context of the broader adjustment of executive/congressional relations of which it was a part, See Sharpe, Kenneth E., “The Post-Vietnam Formula Under Siege: The Imperial Presidency and Central America,” Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 102 (1987) pp. 549–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar.