John Ehrman, Studies in Intelligence Vol. 53 No. 2 (2009)
A consistent theme in public discussions of the performance of US intelligence is how poorly Americans conduct counterintelligence (CI). Whether it is the former chief of the CIA’s Counterintelligence Center (CIC), Paul Redmond, famously observing that Americans are “too nice” to carry out CI properly or former National Counterintelligence Executive Michelle Van Cleave lamenting that the US government is failing at strategic CI or the legions of books and articles by scholars and journalists criticizing intelligence agencies for failing to catch spies and protect secrets, the conclusion is almost always the same.
“Our national CI program has failed to carry out its mission,” wrote George Kalaris and Leonard McCoy in Studies in Intelligence in 1988. In 2005, the WMD Commission echoed their conclusion when it reported that “US counterintelligence efforts have remained fractured, myopic, and only marginally effective.” While these criticisms often are unfair or exaggerated—the United States has had many CI successes—they do contain elements of truth. US counterintelligence efforts often are poorly organized, conceptualized, and executed, and CI remains a relatively neglected area of study in the Intelligence Community.
A large reason for this neglect is the absence of a theory for counterintelligence. This problem is not unique to CI, and students of intelligence have noted that the field as a whole suffers from a lack of strong theoretical work. Counterintelligence, however, seems to be worse off than the rest of the intelligence disciplines.
Recent intelligence scholarship, for example, has discussed theoretical issues relating to the definition of intelligence, the overall state of intelligence theory, obstacles to success in intelligence, and the politics of the CIA. These works, however, largely focus on intelligence in policymaking and barely mention CI, no doubt reflecting the interests and experiences of academic specialists and also the practical obstacles to research created by the secrecy and mystery inherent in CI.
Indeed, only two articles specifically on counterintelligence theory seem to have been published in the past fewdecades, and neither is a thorough treatment of the subject.
Theory is an important building block for intellectual disciplines, whether in intelligence or any other field. What follows is an effort to begin developing a theory of counterintelligence.
My purpose is not to present a fully formed theory but, rather, to take the first steps toward building one by considering what a theory would need to cover. Viewed that way, this article may be thought of as an answer to the question, “What are we talking about when we talk about CI?”
I begin with an explanation of the benefits a theory would bring to CI work, then define counterintelligence, break down its various aspects, and finish with suggestions for further research for building a theory. This structure reflects my belief that counterintelligence is primarily an analytic discipline, which in turn centers on the study of intelligence services.
Much of what I will put forward is based on my observations during a decade of work as a CI analyst and manager at the CIA, discussions with intelligence officers from the United States and other countries, as well as my classified and unclassified reading in the field.
