CIA Turns to Boutique Operations, Covert Action Against Terrorism, Drugs,
Arms

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer

CIArun agents who had infiltrated terrorist groups in recent years aided in
intelligence gathering that helped prevent two attacks in the past seven
months against U.S. embassies abroad, new CIA Director George J. Tenet told
Congress earlier this year.

Tenet declined to provide details of the operations, including where they
occurred. But in making even that minimal disclosure, he was signaling that
while covert action remains a primary activity at the CIA in the postCold
War period, there has been a departure from the spy service's often
criticized history of clandestine operations directed at influencing foreign
government policies or attempting to remove political leaders, according to
agency officials.

Reflecting new threats that face U.S. policymakers, major covert actions are
now being aimed at disrupting terrorist plans, stopping narcotics shipments
or fouling up financial transactions of missile makers, sources said.

For instance, computer hacker technology has been used to disrupt
international money transfers and other financial activities of Arab
businessmen who support suspected terrorists. Military research and
development operations of hostile governments, such as North Korea, Iraq and
Iran, have been sabotaged by having European, Asian and other suppliers sell
them faulty parts that will eventually fail.

Other tools permit "spiking" exports and imports to and from rogue countries
such as Libya and Iraq with extraneous matter such as putting water in oil
to create dissatisfaction with consumers.

"In the past five to seven years, the sophistication of the new tools of
covert action have helped bring about a sea change in operations from the old
days," according to a senior intelligence official. He added: "These
operations are easier to do and provide incremental successes. A shipment is
stopped, another is sabotaged, we take down a terrorist cell; things like
this are happening now every week."

Rep. Porter J. Goss (RFla.), the first chairman of the House Permanent
Select Committee on Intelligence to have served as a CIA case officer, said
such operations, particularly in the area of counterterrorism, represented a
new type of clandestine activity. "There are a large number of hidden
activities going on to meet transnational threats," he said, "but I'm
reluctant to call them covert action."

Tenet, who spent much of his last two years as the No. 2 man at the agency
studying covert operations, has mandated that intelligence collection and not
covert action will be the principal requirement for the Directorate of
Operations (DO), the clandestine side of the agency. In naming Jack G.
Downing, a highly respected DO officer to take over the embattled DO, Tenet
told reporters recently he was turning to "a world renown operator" who can
"run quality operations that generate unique information" on which action can
be taken.

As the CIA approaches the 50th anniversary of its founding this week, the new
approach marks an important shift in emphasis away from the type of covert
actions for which the agency became famous and infamous.

"Covert activities involving exile groups or arming guerrilla fighters take a
lot of time and attention and divert resources from developing a base of
agents who could be gathering intelligence on our hardest targets," one top
agency official said. He added that often the exiles in traditional covert
activities directed at a country "can't be controlled, people get locked into
political positions and often the payoff is negligible or can't be measured
at all."

The agency has been sharply criticized for its operations against Iraq leader
Saddam Hussein by Iraqi exiles and former agency operatives disappointed in
how things turned out.

In addition, new CIA and Justice Department investigations into past agency
operations in Central America are expected to be released shortly,
guaranteeing more criticism for the agency's cooperation with drug dealers
who were also aiding Nicaraguan contra operations and for training Honduran
special forces that later committed human rights violations.

Agents recruited for intelligence gathering rather than paramilitary
operations are "more disciplined," the official said, "and are not the same
kind of people as exiles. They relentlessly gather intelligence on which we
can act, giving us the option of using some new tools."

Intelligence Chairman Goss said, "There has been an evolution in the tools
and equipment," pointing out that in the 1960s CIA covert action included
trying clandestinely to affect elections, influence third country political
and labor leaders and university students without showing U.S. involvement.

Today, Goss said, these formerly covert activities are now openly undertaken
by U.S. scholarship and travel programs or national endowments run by
Republican and Democratic parties and openly financed by the U.S. government.
That was inconceivable 20 years ago, Goss said.

"Covert action is a term of art," he said, adding that "I can't answer for
what it will be in the year 2010."

There still are traditional, smallerscale covert operations underway against
Iran and Iraq that include placing propaganda in local newspapers or a
country's television network, leafleting and beaming in radio broadcasts from
secret mobile transmitters and supporting exiles.

Some are underway because members of Congress want something done against
such antiAmerican countries. One CIA official noted that House Speaker Newt
Gingrich (RGa.) has made wellpublicized demands that efforts be made to
take stronger steps to undermine the Iranian government.

Such pressures worry intelligence veterans.

"Little, dumb covert actions to get Congress off your back are bound to
fail," said a former topranking CIA officer with experience in Afghanistan
and Europe. He was referring to the Bush and Clinton administrations' covert
action programs directed at Iraq's Saddam Hussein over the past six years.

"Covert action is not a miracle worker," he added. He was particularly
critical of exiles from Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq who worked the halls of
Congress trying to gain support for their own groups and their efforts to
regain power.

"We tried to work with exiles overseas . . . Libyans, Ukrainians. These never
went anywhere," he said. "Exiles in $600 Hickey Freeman suits work Capitol
Hill; we were looking to give money to guys in the field who do the
shooting."

Iraq, according to another senior intelligence official, is a good example of
the danger of the old approach. When the operation failed, 1,000 or more
Iraqis associated with the CIA program had to be evacuated to avoid arrest by
Saddam Hussein's forces and possible death.

For most of the agency's history, covert actions were directed against the
Soviet Union or communist governments and groups around the world. They
attempted to influence another nation's government or policies through
nondiplomatic means without disclosing U.S. participation.

In the late 1950s, CIA officials promoted the agency's role in overturning
the Guatemalan and Iranian governments and fostered the impression even
among top policymakers and nonprofessional CIA directors that the agency
could get rid of whatever leaders or government it wished.

Subsequent inability through years of covert actions to topple Cuban
President Fidel Castro or Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, while provoking
criticism and fingerpointing within successive administrations, did not
prevent the agency from being described as the source of coups and guerrilla
activities worldwide.

Controversy over CIA covert operations in Central America in the 1980s still
rages. Within the next month, a CIA inspector general report is due on
allegations the agency trained a Honduran military unit that committed human
rights violations. And later this year, the CIA and Justice Department's
inspectors general are to deliver their reports on allegations the agency
operatives supporting the Nicaraguan contra rebels at the same time aiding
Central American drug dealers who brought narcotics into the United States.

At his Senate confirmation hearing in May, Tenet reflected the view of many
active and retired officers when he called covert action to change another
government's policies "a critical instrument of U.S. foreign policy," but
only one instrument among many.

"It should never stand alone, it should never be the last resort of a failed
policy," he said.

_ Copyright 1997 The Washington Post Company