COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT STAFF (CMS). Established in 1992 and headed by the executive director for intelligence community affairs (EXDIR/ICA), CMS superceded the Intelligence Community Staff (ICS) in providing assistance to the director of central intelligence (DCI) in coordinating and managing the intelligence community (IC). Specifically, CMS now supports the director of national intelligence (DNI) as the focal point for IC management of the National Foreign Intelligence Program (NFIP), program assessment and evaluation, and the management of collection requirements.
COMPARTMENTATION. Compartmentation refers to the segregation of information into discrete categories, with access to such information restricted on the “need to know” basis. Compartmentation of intelligence information usually occurs along lines corresponding to specific intelligence collection disciplines, such as signals intelligence (SIGINT) and human intelligence (HUMINT), with further compartmentation within each discipline to reflect particular programs or systems. Only individuals who have the need to know about the systems or programs and have received clearances for them are allowed access to the information. See also SPECIAL COMPART-MENTED INTELLIGENCE FACILITY.
COMPREHENSIVE TEST BAN TREATY (CTBT). Negotiated with the Soviet Union between 1994 and 1996, the treaty commits the parties to a total ban on nuclear explosions. To enforce this stipulation, the treaty establishes a global network of 321 internationally maintained monitoring stations to detect clandestine explosions and provides for on-site challenge inspections in cases of doubt. As such, the CTBT extends the limits imposed by the 1963 Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty’s (LNTBT’s) prohibitions on atmospheric, undersea, and outer-space testing. Over 165 countries have signed and over 90 have ratified the CTBT, but, according to its provisions, the treaty can come into force only when it is ratified by all nuclear capable states — a total of 44 countries. To date, the treaty lacks ratifications from nearly a dozen of those countries. The role of U. S. intelligence would be in verifying compliance with the terms of the treaty.
The United States has failed to ratify the CTBT, arguing that, in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, the U. S. may develop new tactical nuclear weapons, whose efficacy can only be assured through testing. The administration of President George W. Bush, moreover, has expressed little confidence that the treaty will actually thwart nuclear proliferation. Proponents of the treaty, on the other hand, argue that its implementation would curtail advances in nuclear weaponry; limit the development of more advanced weapons by countries vying to develop nuclear weapons technology; and establish an international norm against testing that would reinforce the provisions of the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT).
CONDOR (OPERATION). A network of Latin American secret police agencies that in the mid - to late 1970s coordinated attacks against their political opponents around the world. The plan called for the regime of Augusto Pinochet in Chile, along with other military governments in the region, to assassinate subversives, politicians, and prominent figures both within the national borders of the southern cone countries and abroad. On 21 September 1976, a bomb planted by agents of the Chilean secret police exploded under the car of Pinochet’s leading critic in the United States, Orlando Letelier, killing him and his American colleague, Ronni Moffitt. Until the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, the Letelier-Moffitt assassination was considered the most egregious act of international terrorism ever committed in Washington, D. C.
CONFEDERATE SECRET SERVICE. The secessionist Confederate States of America (CSA) had at least two intelligence organizations, the first being the Secret Service Bureau, organized in 1862 as part of the CSA Signal Corps. The head of the bureau, Maj. William Norris, eventually coordinated the activities of dozens of espionage and counterespionage agents who operated along the “Secret Line,” an underground link between Richmond and the Washington-Baltimore region. In time, Norris and his assistant, Captain Charles Cawood, sought to extend this network of intelligence outlets as far north as Canada. Arguably the most effective military intelligence establishment of the war, Norris’s bureau directed all espionage activity along the Potomac River, supervised the passage of agents to and from enemy lines, and forwarded dispatches from the Confederate War and State Departments to contacts abroad. A second Confederate secret-service unit was organized early in 1864. A prototype commando outfit, it was attached to the Torpedo Bureau of Brig. Gen. Gabriel J. Rains, but was neither as large nor as well administered as the agency headed by Major Norris.
CONGRESS FOR CULTURAL FREEDOM. Considered to be one of the more daring and effective Cold War covert actions by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Initiated as a conference of intellectuals in West Berlin in June 1950, the congress published literary and political journals and hosted dozens of conferences bringing together some of the most eminent Western thinkers. Its purpose was to demonstrate that communism, despite its rhetoric, was an enemy of art and thought. By doing so, it sought to negate communism’s appeal among artists and intellectuals, and, at the same time, to undermine the communist claim to moral superiority. The work of the congress was an integral part of the CIA’s strategy of promoting the noncommunist Left. The CIA’s sponsorship of the Congress for Cultural Freedom became publicly known in 1967, effectively ending this covert operation.
CONTAINMENT POLICY. Containment refers to the foreign policy strategy of the United States in the early years of the Cold War. The policy was first laid out in George F. Kennan’s famous long telegram. It was then made public in 1947 in his anonymous Foreign Affairs article “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” better known as the X article.
Kennan argued that the primary goal of the United States should be to prevent the spread of communism by “containing” it within its borders. The Truman Doctrine incorporated containment as one of its key principles. This led to American support for regimes, some of them quite authoritarian and repressive, around the world to block the spread of communism. After the disaster of the Vietnam War, Ken-nan asserted that his ideas had been misinterpreted and that he never advocated military intervention, merely economic support.
CONTRAS {contrarevolucionario). The Contras were the armed opponents of Nicaragua’s revolutionary Sandinista government following the July 1979 overthrow of Anastasio Somoza Debayle and the ending of the Somoza family’s 43-year rule. The label was commonly used by the press in the United States to cover a range of disparate groups.
The Contras comprised remnants of Somoza’s national guard, disaffected former Sandinistas, and various Amerindian groups that were alienated by the Sandinista modernization efforts. They were considered terrorists by the Sandinistas, and many of their attacks targeted civilians.
The United States played a key role in the development of the Contra alliance following President Ronald Reagan’s assumption of the presidency in January 1981. Accusing the Sandinistas of importing Cuban-style communism and aiding leftist guerrillas in El Salvador, President Reagan on 23 November 1981 signed the top-secret National Security Decision Directive 17 (NSDD-17), giving the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) the authority to recruit and support the Contras.
The Contra alliance came to an end in the 1984-1985 time frame, with each of the alliance partners making their own deal with the San-dinista regime. The ceasefire of 23 March 1988, under Costa Rican leadership, effectively brought the Contra War to an end. See also BOLAND AMENDMENTS; IRAN-CONTRA AFFAIR; NICARAGUA V UNITED STATES.
COORDINATION. Coordination is the process of acquiring interagency agreement on judgments, assessments, and other intelligence products intended for policymakers. Virtually all intelligence agencies coordinate their judgments and evaluations internally. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is required by law to coordinate its analytic products with select members of the intelligence community (IC) as well. In addition, all estimative products undergo a coordination process overseen by national intelligence officers (NIOs). The theoretical basis for coordination is that the director of national intelligence (DNI) must present a unified and common judgment to senior officials.
COPELAND, MILES (1913-1991). A former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) covert operative in the Middle East, who in 1949 orchestrated a coup d’etat in Damascus, Syria, that was supposedly to bring democracy to Syrian politics. Copeland later claimed to have planned a deception operation during the Suez Crisis of 1956, but his claim of involvement is in dispute. However, he was an advisor to President Gamel Abdul Nasser in Egypt before leaving the CIA for good in 1957 to become an oil company executive. He is now better known for his many books, most of which extol his own exploits as a CIA operative. See also RAINBOW (OPERATION).
CORONA (SYSTEM). CORONA refers to the first operational space photo reconnaissance satellite, approved by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in February 1958. CORONA satellites were designed to take pictures in space of the Soviet Bloc countries and return the photographic film to earth for processing. The intelligence community (IC) used the designator Keyhole (KH), followed by a number— KH-1, KH-2, KH-3, KH-4, KH-4A, and KH-4B — to indicate the specific CORONA version.
CORONA spacecraft were built from 1959 to 1972 by Lockheed Space Systems under Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and air
Force contracts spanning 145 launches. CORONA cameras were developed by Itek and used Eastman Kodak film. Resolution in early flight years was in the range of 35 to 40 feet. By 1972, CORONA delivered resolutions of 6 to 10 feet.
The CORONA program ended with a launch on 25 May 1972. President William J. Clinton signed an executive order on 22 February 1995 directing the declassification of CORONA imagery as well as its later iterations, ARGON and LANYARD. The order provided for the declassification of more than 860,000 images of the earth’s surface, collected between 1960 and 1972.
Recently released national intelligence estimates (NIEs) reveal that CORONA covered virtually all Soviet military developments and provided superb verification capabilities for the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) I treaty, including its antiballistic missile (ABM) provisions. It also allowed coverage of People’s Republic of China (PRC) missile-launching sites.
COUNTERINTELLIGENCE (CI). Counterintelligence is the analytic and operational process of identifying and neutralizing foreign intelligence activities against the United States. Counterintelligence has three facets: the physical security of information, from guarding buildings to compartmenting information on the “need to know” basis; identifying and catching American citizens who spy for foreign governments; and identifying foreign agents working against U. S. interests and either turning them into double agents or prosecuting them for espionage. Although responsibility for counterintelligence in the intelligence community (IC) is shared between the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) at home and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) abroad, virtually all American intelligence elements engage to some degree in counterintelligence activities. Congress has also mandated that the IC work to identify and help American companies neutralize industrial espionage perpetrated against them. See also NATIONAL COUNTERINTELLIGENCE EXECUTIVE; NEGATIVE INTELLIGENCE.
COUNTERINTELLIGENCE CENTER (CIC). Established on 1 April 1988 by William H. Webster, the director of central intelligence (DCI), the CIC was the second fusion center created to bring greater coherence to a specific intelligence activity. Housed within the Directorate of Operations (DO) of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the CIC brings together representatives of different agencies of the intelligence community (IC), including analysts, to plan, coordinate, and manage effective counterintelligence activities within the United States and the intelligence community. It also provides the CIA a venue for dealing with other intelligence agencies and foreign liaison services over counterintelligence matters. The CIC consolidated the Counterintelligence Staff, the Foreign Intelligence Capabilities Unit (established in 1983 to uncover attempts by foreign intelligence agencies to manage perceptions of U. S. intelligence), elements of the DO’s Office of Security, and other intelligence community elements.
COUNTER INTELLIGENCE CORPS (CIC). Established in 1942 as part of the army, the CIC played a significant intelligence role during World War II and the first decade of the Cold War. The CIC’s mission was to detect treason, sedition, subversive activity, or disaffection among service personnel. In addition, it sought to detect, prevent, or neutralize espionage or sabotage within the army or directed against the army. During the war, the CIC recruited over 50,000 informants within the ranks of the army, most of whom produced reports on the activities of their fellow soldiers. This activity soon became politically controversial and prompted the army to curtail the CIC’s domestic work.
The CIC also deployed operatives at all command levels to support tactical operations. These detachments identified Nazi sleeper agents and investigated suspected civilians and enemy personnel. CIC elements operated independently of army intelligence units. Former secretary of state Henry A. Kissinger was a special CIC agent.
At the end of the war, the CIC assumed new responsibilities. It served as the army’s chief agency in occupied Austria, Germany, and Italy, rounding up individuals with Nazi affiliations. The CIC also got involved in handling problems associated with displaced persons as well as black market activities. In fact, between 1945 and 1950, the CIC possessed greater resources than those allotted to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during the war or to the Central Intelligence Group (CIG) in 1946. The CIC’s part in fighting the nascent Cold War was to recruit former Nazis to provide positive intelligence on Soviet targets. During the first 15 years of the Cold War, CIC units were dispersed throughout the world in America’s expanding overseas commitments as part of the containment policy. The CIC was so dominant an entity that, throughout the 1950s, it tried to reconcile its intelligence mission abroad with that of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in order to avoid duplication and recruitment of the same assets. Despite its early prominence, the CIC was disbanded in 1961 and its assets merged into the newly formed army intelligence. See also GEHLEN ORGANIZATION.
COUNTERMEASURES. Countermeasures are actions taken by governments and their agencies to thwart the activities of hostile intelligence services. Countermeasures may include denial/deception operations or remedial actions that would stymie the adversary’s intrusions. In intelligence terms, countermeasures comprise both offensive and defensive counterintelligence actions.
COUNTERTERRORISM CENTER (CTC). Established in 1986 by Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) William J. Casey, the CTC
Was a response to criticism that the U. S. government did not aggressively operate to disrupt terrorist activities. Organizationally, the CTC is located within the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA’s) Directorate of Operations (DO), intended to combat international terrorist threats. A1990 director of central intelligence directive (DCID) gave the CTC an analytic capability by creating an Interagency Intelligence Committee on Terrorism (IICT) under the direction of the Community Counterterrorism Board (CCB), both designed to produce such analytic products as coordinated terrorism alerts and advisories for a government-wide audience. In 1995 and 1998, President William J. Clinton issued a series of directives that further defined terrorism as a crime and set up procedures to apprehend and punish terrorists worldwide. In 1997, the CCB established a Terrorism Warning Group to get warnings of impending terrorist attacks quickly to senior military and civilian policymakers. After the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, the analytic functions of the CTC were gradually integrated into the Terrorism Threat Integration Center (TTIC) and then into the National Counterterrorism Center, established in 2005. See also NATIONAL COUNTERTERRORISM CENTER.
COVER. Cover refers to the guise employed by intelligence officers and installations to disassociate themselves from intelligence activities. The U. S. government uses three types of cover. Official cover associates the intelligence officer with a government entity other than an intelligence agency. Nonofficial cover refers to an association with a commercial entity. Diversified cover is a combination of official and nonofficial cover that gives the intelligence officer flexibility to undertake intelligence operations. See also CASE OFFICER.
COVERT ACTION. A covert action is a secret government program in pursuit of foreign policy objectives by influencing events abroad in ways unattributable to the U. S. government. Covert action has long been a foreign policy tool in the repertoire of options available to U. S. presidents, even before the passage of the National Security Act of 1947, which set up the outlines of present-day U. S. intelligence. In the early days of the Republic, covert operations played significant roles in the country’s territorial expansion in North America and in overcoming adversaries in the wars of the 19th century. The 1947 act made covert action an essential part of the American intelligence repertoire by granting the National Security Council (NSC) the authority to direct “special activities” from time to time. Various successes in the 1950s thrust covert action into the forefront of American intelligence methods, but the spectacular failures of the 1960s soured the public’s support of such actions. In the 1970s, the White House and Congress imposed restrictions and procedural mechanisms on the conduct of covert operations, most of which remain in effect to this day. See also AJAX (OPERATION); ASSASSINATIONS; BAY OF PIGS INVASION; COVERT ACTION PLANNING GROUP; EXECUTIVE ORDER 12333; FINDING; 5412 SPECIAL GROUP; 40 COMMITTEE; HUGHES-RYAN AMENDMENT; MONGOOSE (OPERATION); OVERSIGHT; SUCCESS (OPERATION); 303 COMMITTEE.
COVERTACTION PLANNING GROUP (CAPG). The CAPG is an entity within the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that prepares and reviews covert action findings. Composed of the CIA’s associate deputy director of operations (DDO), senior CIA staff chiefs, and those individuals within the CIA with substantive responsibility for the proposed covert action finding and its implementation, the CAPG may stop covert action proposals if it deems them unfeasible, inappropriate, illegal, or contrary to American principles. See also COVERT ACTION REVIEW GROUP.
COVERT ACTION REVIEW GROUP (CARG). This Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) committee is comprised of senior CIA officials, including the deputy director of operations (DDO), who review covert action plans, pursuant to a finding, prepared by the Covert Action Planning Group (CAPG). The CARG has the authority to put a stop to a planned covert operation for any number of reasons, including impracticality, expense, adverse publicity, or possible damage to U. S. foreign relations.
CRATEOLOGY. Crateology refers to the science of determining the contents of a box or a crate from its attributes. Developed by U. S. intelligence in the 1950s, the methodology helps to interpret obscure markings on crates and determine their contents from their shapes and sizes. U. S. intelligence had determined during the Cold War that Warsaw Pact countries, and especially the Soviet Union, used the same kind of crates to ship known types of military equipment, such as aircraft wings or missiles. By identifying the type of crate and its markings, intelligence analysts could then make reasonable judgments about the crate’s contents. Because of the possibility of deception and the uncertainty associated with such judgments, however, intelligence analysts almost certainly tried to corroborate the information from other sources, such as human intelligence (HUMINT) assets. Crateology is a subfield of the Measurement and Signature Intelligence (MASINT) collection system.
CRYPTOLOGY. Cryptology is the science of designing communications codes and of finding the appropriate keys for decoding foreign communications, both of which have been, and are, central to intelligence work. Specially trained cryptologists seek to design unbreakable codes while also searching for the formulas that might give them clues in deciphering foreign messages. Cryptology is one of the oldest intelligence techniques, a discipline now practiced and managed by the National Security Agency (NSA) in the U. S. government.
Among the more notable successes in this are were the Purple decryptions of Japanese communications in the late 1930s and the VENONA Operation against the Soviet spies in the United States during the 1940s and 1950s.
CUBA. Liberated from Spanish colonial occupation by American forces during the Spanish-American War of 1898, Cuba has occupied a special position in American foreign policy because of its location in the Caribbean and proximity to the United States. Since Fidel Castro came to power in 1959, successive presidents have attempted to use American intelligence resources to influence developments in Cuba through such methods as fomenting insurrection in the country and trying to assassinate Castro himself. In addition, Cuba played an infamous role during the Cold War, as the country over which the two superpowers — the United States and the Soviet Union—nearly clashed with nuclear weapons. See also BAY OF PIGS INVASION; CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS; MONGOOSE (OPERATION).
CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS. The Cuban Missile Crisis was a confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union over the placement of Soviet medium-range nuclear missiles in Cuba. On 16 October 1962, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) informed President John F. Kennedy that U-2 aerial reconnaissance photos revealed Soviet missiles had been secretly moved into Cuba. The CIA’s National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC) had discovered the missiles, which it deemed capable of striking the United States, on 14 October 1962, and corroborating intelligence was received from a Cuban refugee on 20 September 1962 that he had seen a Russian missile on a truck in Cuba that matched the characteristics of a Soviet medium-range missile. On 27 October 1962, President Kennedy went on nationwide television and announced a “quarantine” of the island nation. President Kennedy’s action intensified fears that a full-scale nuclear war with the Soviet Union was possible, especially if Soviet ships on their way to Cuba defied the quarantine.
At the same time, the Cubans shot down a U-2 aircraft over Cuba, and agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) reported that Soviet diplomats were burning documents in anticipation of a rupture in relations. With each incident, the United States and the Soviet Union moved closer to nuclear confrontation. However, after intense diplomatic exchanges, Moscow backed down on 29 October 1962 and agreed to remove its missiles from Cuba, in exchange for an American pledge not to invade the island nation and to dismantle American Jupiter missiles that were stationed in Turkey.
CULPER SPY RING. See TALLMADGE, BENJAMIN; WASHINGTON, GEORGE.
CURRENT INTELLIGENCE. Current intelligence is processed and analyzed intelligence information on daily or ongoing international matters. Because of its emphasis on the current aspects of world affairs, current intelligence is highly perishable and must be delivered to the consumers in a timely manner. Moreover, policymakers tend to prefer current intelligence to long-term intelligence because it is immediate and more relevant to their daily needs. The president’s daily brief (PDB) and the senior executive intelligence brief (SEIB) are among the dozens of current intelligence publications available to intelligence consumers.
CURRENT MANAGEMENTACCOUNT (CMA). The current management account is the part of the National Foreign Intelligence Program (NFIP) that funds current intelligence activities. See also INTELLIGENCE BUDGETS.
CUSHMAN, PAULINE (1833-1893). A Union spy during the American Civil War, Cushman provided intelligence information to the federal Secret Service Bureau and military intelligence in Louisville, Kentucky, and Nashville, Tennessee. On a mission behind Confederate lines, she was captured and sentenced to death, but was left behind when the Union army forced the Confederates to withdraw. After the war, President Abraham Lincoln bestowed on her the honorary rank of major. Pauline Cushman later traveled around the country, touting her exploits as a Union spy.
World History
