BOOK REVIEW: The Spy and the State: The History of American Intelligence
By Jeffrey P. Rogg / Oxford University Press
Reviewed by: Jason U. Manosevitz
The Reviewer — Jason U. Manosevitz is a seasoned Intelligence Community officer with a wide range of experience in intelligence analysis, program management, and executive-level service.
REVIEW — How should we optimize intelligence for today? Everyone agrees—we are witnessing vast geopolitical upheaval, immense technological advancement, and tectonic shifts in threats to U.S. interests. The conditions are ripe for major changes in U.S. intelligence. In writing The Spy and the State: The History of American Intelligence, Jeffrey Rogg suggests that studying U.S. intelligence history can inform where we should go. There is just one hitch: writing a comprehensive work on U.S. intelligence is a hazardous task.
We already have dozens of books covering U.S. intelligence history. Understandably, most works in this genre paint with broad brush strokes and necessarily have some selection bias in their focus. In The Spy and the State, Rogg concentrates on intelligence-civil liberty issues, covert action, intelligence-related political scandals, and the politics of controlling intelligence organizations. This comes at the expense of examining intelligence collection, operational adaption of technology, how analysis informs national security decisions, the pros and cons of intelligence partnerships, and intelligence funding and policies.
The Spy and the State validates something intelligence scholars and practitioners have often observed. When U.S. national security threats grow acute, security concerns eclipse civil liberties. And when intelligence scandals or overreach erupt, intelligence reforms adjust intelligence policies to reflect public attitudes. Readers will find Rogg’s review of pre-modern intelligence a well-researched refresher on the iterative development of U.S. intelligence organizations and the politics surrounding them. These early chapters provide an important reminder of the enduring, imprecise divide between U.S. foreign intelligence collection, counterintelligence, and domestic law enforcement.
The treatment of recent U.S. intelligence history in the latter part of the book will draw the most attention. Rogg emphasizes how intelligence has become wrapped up in domestic political debates. The assertion that the CIA, FBI, and NSA indirectly cooperated to build a post 9/11 “American intelligence state” which “the American people may have to get used to” comes off as politically charged. It also ascribes a level of policymaker intent and IC collaboration that does not exist. The final chapter introduces the idea of an Intelligence Revolution, which is described broadly as changes in intelligence that are transforming states and societies. This is an intriguing notion and it will be interesting to see where Rogg takes the Intelligence Revolution concept. But readers will grapple with how it fits with the narrative that The Spy and the State offers.
Rogg previously taught at the Joint Special Operations University in Florida. He is on the boards of the International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence and the Society for Intelligence History. With this work he steps firmly to the intelligence scholar’s podium, and we can anticipate hearing from him for years to come. He sees recurring tensions with intelligence in a democratic society and believes that cultivating informed citizens will help balance liberty and security in response to 21st century challenges.
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The Spy and the State is divided into four parts. The first covers intelligence in America’s fight for independence through the civil war. The second moves to the tentative institutional developments in foreign intelligence and domestic counterintelligence during the two world wars. As a major inflection point, the third section addresses the creation and evolution of permanent U.S. intelligence organizations and the Cold War period. The post-Cold War period leading up to today rounds out this historical journey.
Beginning with President Washington’s use of spies, The Spy and the State examines the U.S.’s post-independence political debates about intelligence. This includes using “special agents” in secret negotiations for territory, information gathering abroad, and foreign partnerships. Rogg reminds readers of Congress’s key role in providing appropriations for the Contingent Fund, which was used to support intelligence activities. He also describes early tensions between the Executive and Legislative branches over control of foreign affairs. The Spy and the State covers how the Polk Administration asserted Executive branch power in foreign policy by secretly supporting Santa Anna’s return to power in Mexico. Rogg sees this as the U.S.’s first covert action and also as failure because Santa Anna quickly became a thorn in the U.S.’s side, rather than a political ally.
Coming out of the Civil War period, The Spy and the State sketches out how espionage evolved from temporary endeavors to semi-institutional structures. Rogg traces how the creation of the Bureau of Military Intelligence, the Office of Naval Intelligence, and the Secret Service signaled a major transition in U.S. intelligence, moving away from direct presidential control to national security institutions, such as the War and Navy Departments. Rogg criticizes this period, however, for having no formal procedures for guiding the coordination, oversight, and management of intelligence. He writes that intelligence at the time was disorganized and unprofessional. The Spy and the State also highlights that the U.S. failed to resolve key distinctions between foreign intelligence and domestic law enforcement, which came at the expense of civil liberties and led to periodic political scandals.
With some institutions emerging, The Spy and the State argues intelligence became embedded in statecraft during the two world wars. Rogg stresses how domestic surveillance grew to be an FBI function and the murkiness among counterintelligence, domestic law enforcement, and politics. He points to intensifying bureaucratic competition among multiple budding intelligence organizations as well as escalating political and public intrigue surrounding intelligence. Striking similar themes to his earlier assessments, Rogg tells readers that intelligence continued to be uncoordinated among the many intelligence organizations that operated at the time. Unfortunately, he scarcely probes how intelligence was collected or how analysis informed decision making.
Transitioning to the U.S.’s first peacetime intelligence institutions, Rogg reviews the creation of CIA and NSA, adoption of covert action, and early questions about intelligence missions and capabilities. Problems with covert action and domestic surveillance take center stage as he stresses the weak control of intelligence organizations, political scandals, and tensions in intelligence-civil liberty issues. The Spy and the State briefly covers the operational mistakes in MKULTRA, the Bay of Pigs, COINTERPRO, MCCHAOS, SHAMROCK, and MINERET and the implications of having secret intelligence in a democratic society. Rogg, however, does not balance his distress about covert action failures with the successes of early covert action and signals intelligence that led policymakers to increasingly rely on them as foreign policy tools.
The Spy and the State retells how Congress sought to reassert itself with the Executive branch through standing up formal congressional intelligence committees in the wake of several political-intelligence scandals in the early 1970s. As part of its efforts, Congress passed several laws, such as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, 1980 Intelligence Oversight Act, and the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. In doing so, Congress simultaneously gave the IC guidance, restricted its actions, and checked the Executive’s use of intelligence organizations.
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Most readers will likely focus on The Spy and the State’s last section, dealing with contemporary intelligence history. Rogg’s scrutiny of the use of intelligence in decision making following 9/11 is limited. However, he raises alarm bells with NSA’s Terrorist Surveillance Program, the explosion in CIA’s lethal use of drones, and the killing of Anwar Awlaki, a U.S. citizen who was living abroad and supporting terrorist organizations. Here Rogg extends his points on the blurry line between foreign and domestic intelligence. He casts the FBI’s use of National Security Letters as a way to get information without warrants, which he sees as overreach. The Spy and the State argues that FBI investigations into U.S. political figures through Crossfire Hurricane exacerbated concerns about intelligence’s role in a democracy and fed perceptions of elements of the USIC interfering in U.S. elections.
Like most of the book, Rogg is only able to scratch the surface of the issues he raises. Readers may find themselves asking what he means by an “American intelligence state” built by the CIA, FBI, and NSA. Other than a review of the CIA, FBI, NSA, and ODNI, there is no discussion of the broader IC or the development of new intelligence organizations, such as DHS’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis, DoD’s Under Secretary of Defense Intelligence and Security, Treasury’s Office of Intelligence Analysis, or DoJ’s Office of National Security Intelligence. The lack of attention to institutional developments here stands out because Rogg pays significant attention to the development of intelligence organizations for much of the book.
In the concluding chapter, Rogg shifts to introduce broad ideas about growing technological developments giving government more surveillance capabilities than ever before. He raises a point about how authoritarian governments watch their own people and how private companies are now able to surveil ordinary citizens in extraordinary ways. He floats the concept of an Intelligence Revolution, which he attempts to distinguish from a revolution in intelligence (which about how intelligence organizations adapt to technological advancement). The points he raises on how private companies have more data on U.S. consumers than ever before and on rapidly advancing intelligence technological capabilities are important. These issues would have benefitted from a discussion of how IC legal authorities evolve to encompass new capabilities and ensure civil liberty protections.
Taken as a whole, The Spy and the State has some strengths—it offers some great historical refreshers on the development of some U.S. intelligence organizations. The work’s attempt at examining the intersection of U.S. intelligence and politics is topical and Rogg’s effort to show that this has been a theme throughout U.S. intelligence history suggests that it’s a perennial problem. Nonetheless, the work takes such a general look at a subset of issues that readers are left with less than a solid understanding of what would help guide consideration of how to optimize intelligence for today’s world.
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