Why can't Uncle Sam spy?

The problem is red tape, turf battles and no spies on the ground, say experts.

By Anthony York

Sept. 18, 2001 | What's wrong with American intelligence? Not surprisingly, it's a question that is being asked everywhere in the wake of last Tuesday's horrific terrorist attacks.

There is no simple answer, say former law enforcement officials and experts in intelligence. But they point to three things: excessive bureaucratic oversight, which ties intelligence agencies' hands and prevents them from responding quickly; an over-reliance on high-tech surveillance and a corresponding failure to develop on-the-ground operations; and poor coordination, both between the FBI and the CIA and between those agencies and their foreign counterparts.

Efforts to address the first problem -- cutting through the bureaucracy that tangles intelligence operations -- have already begun. Law enforcement officials, led by Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller, are asking Congress to give the intelligence community more leeway in both international and domestic surveillance.

But the call to give more authority to intelligence operations has alarmed civil libertarians, who fear that America's latest crisis will, like so many crises before it, erode liberties guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits "unreasonable" search and seizure.

"Terror, by its very nature, is intended not only to kill and destroy," says Anthony Romero, executive director of the ACLU. "Terror is also designed to intimidate a people and force them to take actions that may not be in their long-term best interests. If we allow our freedoms to be undermined, the terrorists will have won."

There is an inherent tension between a constitutional system that strives to protect civil liberties, and one that also must work clandestinely to protect its citizens. But American intelligence agencies exacerbated this tension, and brought many of their current problems on themselves, by illegally spying on American citizens.

These activities were first revealed in December 1974, when New York Times reporter Seymour Hersh reported how the CIA violated its own charter by spying on antiwar protesters and others on the left during the Johnson and Nixon administrations. Similar revelations about the COINTELPRO operation at the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover led to even widespread mistrust of our intelligence agencies.

Within days of Hersh's story, President Gerald Ford appointed a commission headed by Vice President Nelson Rockefeller to look into the allegations. That was soon followed by two congressional committees, one headed by Idaho Democrat Frank Church, the other by Rep. Otis Pike, D-N.Y. In the months that followed, the Pike and Church committees shone the spotlight on an intelligence operation run amok with nobody to keep it in check.

Until the Church and Pike committees called for reform, there was no congressional oversight of American intelligence agencies. Pike and Church's investigations led to a series of reforms and legislative checks on those agencies, including the creation of the House and Senate intelligence committees.

Even ex-spooks acknowledge that America's intelligence agencies were out of control. "These were by and large problems of our own making," says Daniel Coulson, a former FBI commander who founded the bureau's counter-terrorism squad. "We did some things that were absolutely ridiculous, and because of that a tremendous cloud of suspicion grew over the FBI. Even now, I think that's part of the problem. People are concerned with how much authority you should give to the bureau."

But Coulson and others in the intelligence community say the reforms spawned by Church and Pike, while well-intentioned, were clumsy, bureaucratic and overly restrictive. And they say that Congress doesn't give intelligence agencies enough credit for how much they have changed since the mid-1970s.

"The bureau has changed the way they do business, in part because there is tremendous oversight," he says. "But I think that Congress doesn't fully appreciate the fact that the bureau did change."

One of the big changes to come out of the investigations of the mid-'70s was instituting a Department of Justice review of the legality of any FBI request to conduct surveillance. That, Coulson said, has created a labyrinth of bureaucracy, and has left the agency unable to keep up with terrorists and criminal organizations.

Next page: Enamored of high-tech spying, the CIA forgot to put agents on the ground