Covert action is an intelligence activity involving the use of military or political operations undertaken in a manner that disguises the identity of those taking the action; usually employed in situations where openly operating against a target would jeopardize the operation’s success. Although covert action is lawful, such action may not be ethical. While covert action is not a new tool of the state, its use and abuse returns two recurring questions: What are the ethical uses of covert action? Does intelligence work qualify as a profession? (Burgos, 2009, p. 1).
Intelligence officers are defined as skilled subject-matter experts who study and evaluate information from many sources. From the information, they develop useable assessments
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In order to adequately evaluate the ethical uses of intelligence or covert action, it is necessary to begin by determining whether intelligence officers are professionals. This point is essential. As in the medical and legal professions, a code of ethics is central to the discipline, serving as a guide to assist intelligence officers in understanding what actions are ethical or unethical. Some intelligence officers engage in or assist in the planning of covert action and the question remains: What are the ethical limits in what the president can direct intelligence officers to do when engaging in covert action? (Burgos, 2009, p.2).
The more prominent definitions of CA are predominantly American, dating back to the celebrated 1948 National Security directive 10/2 which authorised the CIA to engage in: propaganda, economic warfare, preventive direct action, including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition and evacuation measures, subversion against hostile states, including assistance to underground resistance movements, guerrillas and refugee liberation groups, and support of indigenous anti-Communist elements in threatened countries of the free world. More
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The veracity and integrity of these sources may differ, though there are generic questions to be posed about the agendas and intentions of those who provide us with information about CA. One question is whether we know more about CA than intelligence gathering and analysis. A second is whether we know more about certain kinds of CA than others, especially the more dramatic. Some covert operations have been easier to discover because they failed. For many governments the concept of
Guilford, CT: Dushkin/ McGraw-Hill, 1997. Chiatkin, Anton. A. Treason in America. Washington DC: Executive Intelligence. Review, a review of the book, Divine, Breen, Frederickson, and Williams. America Past and Present.
Introduction Today, electronic surveillance remains one of the most effective tools the United States has to protect against foreign powers and groups seeking to inflict harm on the nation, but it does not go without a few negative aspects, either. Electronic surveillance of foreign intelligence has likely saved the lives of many innocent people through prevention of potential acts of aggression towards the United States. There are many pros to the actions authorized under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) pertaining to electronic surveillance, but there are also cons. Looking at both the pros and cons of electronic surveillance is important in understanding the overall effectiveness of FISA. 1.
On July 6, 2005, a federal judge ordered Judith Miller, journalist for the The New York Times, to jail. Miller was involved in the exposure of Valerie Plume as a CIA operative. In questioning, Miller invoked reporter’s privilege by refusing to disclose the identity of her sources, fueling fire to a heavily debated ethical issue in the field of journalism (Pinguelo, “A Reporter’s Confidential Source…Revealed?”). Successful journalism tells the truth to a public who has the right to know it. Journalists have the responsibility to tell us a story laden with facts and the more important responsibility of revealing the source of their information, right? Not necessarily. The right of journalists to keep their sources private has been a long-standing debate. The ethics in this debate are blurry. On one hand, it may be extremely important to the issue at hand that the source of information be known, as an argument could lose credibility otherwise. On the other hand, the source has the right as an American and an individual to remain anonymous. Isn’t it enough that he or she came forward with information at all? Judith Miller’s case garnered public attention and is just one example of many instances that raise the same, consistently debated question- how far can journalists go in protecting their sources and under what circumstances does withholding the identity of a source become unethical for either party involved? The answer to this question is obscure, but solvable. Journalists should have the right to protect to identity of a source unless the information they possess is for the greater good of the public or the situation at hand.
‘The wink and the nod’ that was all somehow acceptable to your primary sponsor caused many a dictator to adopt these methods to take and maintain power. Only recently have internal CIA documents become available, allowing researchers to begin to look inside the CIA itself. Partial as these releases are, they supply valuable insight into the machinations of this secretive organization. These documents outline the beginning of the Terror; let's hope we are seeing the end of it.
In times of great terror and panic, the citizens of a nation must decide what they value most: their right to privacy or the lives of the innocent. Government surveillance is criticized, however there are times in a nation’s history where, in order to ensure the safety of their citizens, they must surveill the country for potential hazards that might exist in the world. The government-issued program, COINTELPRO--a series of illegal projects during the twentieth century organized by the Federal Bureau of Investigation--while heavily criticized for its unconstitutional grounds--was justified because it benefitted the nation during a period of upheaval. COINTELPRO is popularly condemned by historians and professors such as Brandeis University Professor of Sociology, David Cunningham, who asserts that the FBI counterintelligence program was only a form of repression that allowed for the government to suppress matters that they consider bothersome (234). This however was not the case.
Prados, John. Safe for Democracy The Secret Wars of the CIA. Chicago, IL: Ivan R Dee, Publisher, 2006.
In order to transform a local police agency into an intelligence-led organization, they go through several steps. The first, after strict training and funding is to task and coordination processes. The second is to make and develop the intelligence products to be used in the operations. Next is to begin the use of standardized training for all the people to be involved. Since some local agencies cannot afford to train every employee in this...
“President Bush has stated that about a hundred detainees were held under the Central Intelligence Agency secret detention program, about a third of whom were questioned using “enhanced interrogation techniques. The CIA has a way of very publicly blowing their cover seeming to pop up wherever turmoil, and political problems arise. The CIA exists to prevent threats, its operations involve covert actions or spying through various means to gather critical intelligence data. The CIA dates back to 1947. The qualifications and skills are above average. The job of the CIA is to anticipate and quickly assess rapidly evolving international developments and their impact, both positive and negative, on US policy concerns. When researching the career of
Earley, P. (2014). CIA Traitor Aldrich Ames — The Story — Crime Library. Retrieved April 10, 2014, from http://www.crimelibrary.com/terrorists_spies/spies/ames/1.html
Weiner, Tim. Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA. New York: Doubleday, 2007. Print.
Nedzi (D-Mich.), Luclen N. “Oversight or Overlook: Congress and the US Intelligence Agency.” A Congressman talk to the CIA senior seminar, November 14, 1979, https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/vol18no2/pdf/v18i2a02p.pdf (accessed January 7, 2014).
?Espionage.? 2000-2004. The War to End All Wars. Michael Duffy. Original Material. Primary Documents Online.
Many people have always wondered what the word ethics mean. To me ethics is the feeling of right and wrong. Many people have their own way of defining ethics and but this is what ethics mean to me. Ethics to other people might mean following the laws and some may say ethics is determined by what society is believed is right and wrong. For example Edward Snowden, a 30 year old man was born in North Carolina in 1983 (Edward snowden.biography, 2013, para. 1). Edward Snowden was a security guard that worked for the National Security Agency (NSA), after three months Edward Snowden started to collect NSA files and fled to Hong Kong and leaked the files. China started to print out report of the files that Edward Snowden has leaked to China about the NSA spying on U.S citizens. The reason that Edward Snowden left the United States (U.S) and leaked the NSA files is because he believed that what he had done was ethically correct and did not want people’s rights to be taken away.
Terminal F: An Edward Snowden Documentary follows the journey of Edward Snowden, the man who leaked secret information on how the NSA gathers intelligence, as he tries to find safety from the United States government. The documentary begins in June of 2013 when Snowden first leaked the information. When his identity was exposed, the media and the government began a hunt to find out where he was staying. After analyzing the video interview he had done about the NSA information, it was found that he was staying in a hotel in Hong Kong. The United States government immediately set to work to try to extricate him back to the country. However, by working with members of the WikiLeaks team he was able to make passage to Moscow, Russia because
The world erupted in outrage following revelations by Edward Snowden regarding the extent of surveillance perform by the National Security Agency. Privacy becomes one of the hottest topic of 2013 and was chosen by the world’s most popular online dictionary, Dictionary.com, as the Word of the Year. However, the government is not the only one that conduct data gathering and surveillance. Employers often monitor their employees, and businesses collect data on theirs customer. The morality of these practices is a topic that generates heated debate.