Before the boys from the MIVD invaded my
life, I assumed covert intelligence operations were necessary for national (and
international) security. Throughout my
interactions with Sjors and during my correspondence with Mac and his group, I
presumed their work was necessary. I even considered the MIVD’s invasion of my
privacy as justified if they truly
thought I was a security threat. In fact, I often felt irritated because I
thought the group wasn’t doing their job competently. If these men were part of
the team designated to protect us from the next terrorist attack, I sure as
hell didn’t want them to be amateurs. In the words of Dr. Anneke Sibyl: “If I can see you doing it, you aren’t doing
it right.”
As I review the narrative in these pages,
I’ve begun to question this assumption. So I ask now: does the United States and its allies have the right intelligence
organizations and practices necessary to identify and counter existing and
emergent threats to national and international security?
I address this analysis at the United States
and its allies.
There’s no question the nature of the threat
has changed. In the past two decades,
the Cold War dynamic has given way to asymmetric threats arising from non-state
actors. Small groups with limited resources, united in ideology or criminal
enterprise, have wielded devastating disproportionate effect on civilian
populations and superior militaries. Al
Qaeda, AQIM, Al Shabaab, Boko Haram, and ISIS/ISIL (or DAESH) are a few
organizations whose names we know from their barbaric attacks on civilian
“soft” targets, their fanatical dedication to impose extremist ideology on the
rest of the world, and their frighteningly effective terror campaigns.
The success of these organizations reflects
their use of what is known in military circles as fourth generation warfare. That is, the battleground is broad and
dispersed, with no distinction between “civilian” and “military” targets. Such
groups use existing technology to recruit, directly attack Western culture, and
conduct highly sophisticated psychological warfare campaigns and terror
operations. To counter this fourth generation threat, intelligence
agencies must gain timely and actionable information about the plans and
personnel within these groups, while countering the ideological campaigns which
promote and support their activities. This requires a high level of dynamism
and reach, and a singular urgency because failure of intelligence means loss of
life.
Unfortunately, practices of intelligence
organizations often have unintended negative consequences, or “blowback” which
expose the U.S. and its allies to increased instability, international
hostility, and terrorism. Revelations about large scale meta-data collection by
the NSA have resulted in loss of public trust and support. Drone strikes have
resulted in civilian casualties, terror, and psychological harm, spawning a new
generation of people who distrust us and are, therefore, less sympathetic to
our efforts and more likely to harbor our enemies; imprisonment has radicalized
and networked people who would not otherwise be a threat; the morally repugnant
CIA torture program has damaged lives and cost the U.S. the moral high ground;
spy programs in “friendly” countries have cost the U.S. the trust and support
of our allies. These second- and third-
order effects of covert operations are particularly dangerous because they
undermine our ability to succeed against terror groups. We require the support
and collaborative efforts of global partners and we require the trust and
self-reporting of societies and groups that would otherwise harbor or breed
terrorists.
I argue that the existing intelligence
programs are ineffective in identifying and countering the threat, not because
they receive insufficient support and advocacy from lawmakers but because, even
in their best and most optimum functioning, they cannot be expected to
adequately address the threat. Indeed, they aren’t designed to do so.
Our current intelligence organizations and
methods were forged in the paradigms of the Cold War. In the state-versus-state
model, each group has a disincentive to escalate (since escalation would result
in deadly consequences for both), and there is a central power who can choose
to disregard or take offense from covert actions, control blowback from covert
operations, and with whom we can negotiate. An unsteady, “cold” equilibrium may
be reached with our opponent. The current paradigm has no such controls. Our
enemies have no national interest and no disincentive to escalate; there is no
“truce” that can be reached because the ideology of our enemies requires our
complete destruction. Terrorists are embedded parasitically in local populations
which they use for sustenance and human shields, and they leverage fear,
hostility, and superstition to radicalize indigenous populations. A traditional
war of attrition isn’t possible in this paradigm since collateral damage from
our covert action and attacks are used by terrorists as political motivation to
foment hostility towards the West and perpetually replenish their ranks.
In spite of this altered human terrain and
the severity of the unintended consequences of our actions, we seem reluctant
to reexamine our assumptions about using methods that were developed in a
different era for a different enemy.
Instead, we feel an increased urgency and a corresponding willingness to
bend the rules or trammel individual liberties. We “double down” on our intelligence
investment. After all, what’s the alternative?
How can we fight an expanding and dynamic enemy without a proportional
investment in intelligence personnel and technology?
Consider that the investments in intelligence
operations should be qualitatively different than those required during the
Cold War. In the Cold War, intelligence value was proportional to technological
improvements. Spy planes and satellites and signals interception could give
valuable information. But our enemies
now are more subtle and defeat our technology using simplistic, even primitive
methods. They operate in complex human,
sociological, cultural landscapes: environments that don’t loan themselves well
to technological solutions. Even the
largest and best-funded and technologically enabled intelligence service will
never be able to be in all places, understanding local context and countering
all threats. We can certainly manipulate or buy information or supporters to
obtain greater coverage. But instrumentalist relationships as fostered by
intelligence operators are not long-lived and will inevitably turn with
shifting political winds or when a higher bidder comes along.
What we need for long-term protection,
access, and information are genuine relationships and collaborations. We want
partners we can trust to look out for our interests, understand local human
terrain well-enough to identify and subvert threats, and proactively protect
us, even when we don’t know to ask for it. Unfortunately, practitioners of
intelligence operations are trained to lie and deceive as a matter of course.
If we want true trust partnerships with allies, these are not the men to create
them.
In reconstructing the events in this book, I
was struck by the bizarre contrast between the philosophy and practices of the MIVD
and those of the U.S. military capacity building mission, APS.
From its inception, APS was designed as a
“Transparent” mission. Ship deployment
schedules were unclassified, and military “partners” from dozens of countries
were encouraged to collaborate on an internet-based communications portal.
Staffs were comprised of mixed European, African, South-American, and U.S.
personnel. At its largest, the APS mission included multiple international
naval ships and training efforts. The objective of the mission was to “improve
the capacity” of local maritime institutions. There’s some evidence that this
occurred. But, more important than this, APS provided an excuse for like-minded
personnel in worldwide militaries to meet, work together, and build personal
relationships, collaborations, and lines of communication.
Unlike covert operations which are founded in
deception and which promote instrumentalist relationships, the transparency of
missions like APS foster trusting and lasting relationships. Naomi and I
understood this in Dakar in 2013 as we realized our best chance for security in
the event of an attack against our hotel rested with our trusted Senegalese
military partners. I haven’t been involved in the APS mission since I left
Naples in the summer of 2013, but the relationships and collaborations continue
and I’ve watched as our African and European partners identify enemies and fight
battles that would otherwise come to our doorstep. I receive calls and messages
from African Partners who share the “ground truth” of their situations with me,
including Cameroonian Special forces operators fighting Boko Haram in Northern
Cameroon. I suspect that the quality of actionable intelligence would be
improved if operators didn’t feel compelled to somehow trick it out of the
unsuspecting rubes; if relationships with our partners were frank and open and
collaborative, rather than coercive or secret.
Relationship building has traditionally been
seen as the role of the Department of State. But the Department of State is a
diplomatic, not operational, entity. Real, actionable, relationships are
created when the relationship is mutually beneficial to all operators.
Therefore I suggest that there needs to be a new breed of intelligence
operators – men and women who are trained in transparency, rather than
deception, who work openly and frankly to build long-term relationships and
collaborations with their counterparts in foreign militaries and law
enforcement organizations.
There is still a role for “traditional”
covert action as practiced by civilian organizations such as the CIA, and
military organizations such as the MIVD. In the asymmetric battlefield, there
is a need to infiltrate terrorist organizations and target bad actors. This
requires deception and ethically ambiguous action. But widespread use or misuse
of intelligence capabilities should be sharply reined in – not only because
such practices are unethical but because they are often ineffective in the
current threat environment, or even counter-productive to our security.
The MIVD’s illegal intrusive actions in my
life were frightening because of the insouciance of the practitioners. These men
were accustomed to deception and invasion and felt no hesitation in deploying
their methods and techniques against someone who obviously posed no real
threat. This was specifically in violation of Article 13 of the Dutch
constitution which protects the right of privacy (specifically, the privacy of
correspondence and the privacy of telephone). I was appalled by the casual
manner of the manipulation and coercive tactics used against Sjors, and the
damage and invasion of my personal life and career.
According to ethicist Dr. David Perry, proponents
of Intelligence operations suggest that the role of intelligence officers in
countering grave external threats is thought to excuse them from certain
ordinary moral constraints. It offends my sensibilities to know that the
actions of the MIVD which had such devastating personal and professional impact
cannot be justified under any claim of necessity. In fact, my role in assisting
the Dutch military in their capacity building mission, African Winds, a mission
that served Dutch interests, was cut short because of the illegal and pointless
interference by the MIVD.
In this analysis, I’ve avoided talking about
Sjors because our experiences represent a greater truth that needs to be told.
I will talk about him now. There are no words to describe what it meant to lose
him. I don’t know what became of Sjors, but not a day passes that he is not on
my mind. Time hasn’t diminished the peculiar way he lives in my heart. The pain
I feel is not only because I miss him, but because I hate what his organization
did to him.
The Sjors I came to know was an intelligent,
driven, patriotic, and remarkable man. Intellectually curious and ethically
evolved, he came from a heritage of men and women who sabotaged Nazi endeavors,
and smuggled and supported the displaced and the threatened. His intention in
joining the MIVD was a noble one. So,
how was it that he was twisted and manipulated and used? Why did his
organization deploy coercive methods against him, driving him to fear for his
children? The practices of intelligence organizations generally include an
element of coercion when it comes to agents or targets. It’s bizarre, tragic,
and ironic that they deployed these tactics on one of their own.
My concern about the disproportionate
emphasis we place on clandestine and covert intelligence operations, and the
massive latitude we give these groups, is that they are not as effective as we
expect them to be in securing our objective. Surely, these groups and their
practices deserve another dispassionate look before we accept the traditional
assumptions. At the very least, our criticism should be roused when the
procedures of national covert intelligence organizations harm its practitioners
or endanger or undermine the purpose they claim to serve.
