September 11 and the "Failure" of U.S. Counterintelligence: An Historical Perspective

The devastating terrorist attack of September 11, 2001, and recent revelations of May-June 2002 about pre-September 11 FBI (and CIA) intelligence reports, have raised questions about the failure of U.S. intelligence agencies to have anticipated and thus prevented this planned attack. Seeking to reassure the American public, Attorney General John Ashcroft in June 2002 affirmed that the FBI would henceforth shift its focus from law enforcement to intelligence--becoming more proactive and aggressive to anticipate (rather than prosecute) acts of terrorism. The Attorney General also announced an expansion of FBI survcillance authority to include monitoring the Internet, libraries, and religious institutions on thc premise that such investigations would further this proactive stance.

Attorney General Ashcroft's contentions, first that the FBI's culture needed to be changed to"anticipate" rather than prosecute, and second, that the FBI had been unduly restricted from monitoring locations (web sites, mosques) which could have helped uncover the plans of terrorists distorts both the FBI's history and the underlying basis for this recent intelligence failure.

Dating from 1936, the FBI had adopted an intelligence role--that is, FBI agents were authorized to anticipate"subversive" activities to avert acts of espionage and sabotage. Based on secret executive directives--including directives authorizing" clearly illegal" investigative techniques--FBI agents intensively monitored pro-communist individuals and organizations. Amounting to political profiling, the premise of these investigations was that monitoring communists and communist sympathizers would uncover planned acts of espionage and sabotage. Consistent with this anticipatory function, FBI agents employed illegal investigativc techniques--wiretaps, bugs, break-ins, mail covers and intercepts--even though such actions would negate prosecution. The objective, after all, was not to indict and convict spies but to anticipate and prevent spying.

As I have documented in my recent book, Chasing Spies: How the FBI Failed in Counterintelligence But Promoted the Politics of McCarthyism in the Cold War Years, the resultant (and intrusive) intelligence investigations did not uncover all Soviet espionage activities during the World War II and early Cold War years. In part, this failure resulted from Soviet agents' awareness that they were being monitored and their adoption of safeguards to preclude discovery. In part, this was because the recruited Americans avoided any direct links with the American Communist Party. Concurrently, this political profiling focused invariably on individuals who either sought to influence the political culture or were radical labor union activists. Reflecting this political orientation, one target of FBI intelligence investigations (dating from 1942) centered on whether Communists had infiltrated the motion picture industry, even though none of these private employees had access to classified records or military technology. Hollywood employees, however, could influence the popular culture--and this became the catalyst to the inception and duration of an intensive investigation which ended in 1956 when FBI officials concluded that Communist influence in Hollywood was"practically nonexistent at the present time." Unable to use the acquired information identifying those Hollywood directors, producers, writers, and actors who were Communist Party members (confirmed through break-ins to photocopy the membership records of the Los Angeles section of the Communist Party), FBI officials leaked this information to the House Committee on Un-American Activities to ensure the sucess of that committee's October 1947 public hearings into Communist influence in Hollywood. Shrouded in secrecy seemingly required by national security considerations, FBI investigations in time also expanded beyond Communist Party members to include Democratic presidential nominee Adlai Stevenson, syndicated columnist Joseph Alsop, influence peddler Henry Grunewald, folk singer Pete Seeger, and even Hollywood actor Rock Hudson. Critics of the FBI, moreover, were dismissed as"subversives" bent on aiding and abetting the" communist conspiracy."

This history raises three questions of contemporary relevance.

First, the quest for absolute security inherent in proactive intelligence investigations did not and will not advance legitimate security interests. FBI agents neither anticipated Soviet espionage activities nor the September 11 terrorist attack--the latter despite having broad authority under"domestic security/terrorism" guidelines issued by Attorney General William French Smith in March 1983 to"anticipate or prevent" crimes of violence and to initiate investigations whenever individuals or organizations"advocate criminal activity or indicate an apparent intent to engage in crime, particularly crimes of violence." The July 2001 recommendation of the FBI's Phoenix office to monitor Middle Eastern men enrolled in flight schools might seem prescient in hindsight. Nonetheless, none of those who aroused Phoenix agent Williams's suspicions were involved in or had advance knowledge of the September 11 terrorist attack. Furthermore, while the number of terrorist cases which FBI officials referred to the Justice Department for prosecution in the first six months after the September 11 attack increased sixfold, from an average of 10 to 59 per month, Justice Department prosecutors declined to file charges in 60 of 98 terrorist referrals (citing a"lack of evidence of criminal intent" or no evidence a federal crime had been committed) and reached no decision (during this time period) on the remaining 256. Both the Cold War and recent failures document that simply monitoring advocacy does not lead to uncovering plans to commit either espionage or terrorist acts.

Second, while broadbased and intrusive intelligence investigations did not uncover Soviet espionage activities, they did lead to the uncovering of massive amounts of derogatory political (Communist affiliations or"sympathy") and personal (illicit sexual activities) information. This information did not simply repose in FBI files. Increasingly after February 1946 (when FBI officials launched an"educational" campaign to"influence public opinion"), this information was purposefully leaked whether to members of Congress (Congressman Richard Nixon, Senator Joseph McCarthy, the House Committee on Un-American Activities, the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee), prominent Americans (governors under a special code-named Responsibilities Program, former Republican President Herbert Hoover), and reporters (Chicago Tribune Washington bureau chief Walter Trohan, New York Herald Tribune Washington bureau chief Don Whitehead)--but on the strict condition that the recipient not disclose the FBI's covert assistance. Commentators have recently focused exclusively on the FBI's notorious COINTELPROs of 1956-1971 to the neglect of these earlier absive practices.

Third, this past history poses the perils of secrecy--both in precluding an informed understanding of the failures (or limited capabilities) of the nation's intelligence agencies and at the same time of efforts to shape public opinion and create a"politics of McCarthyism."