ENCYCLOPEDIA OF Espionage, Intelligence, and Security Volume ...

Covert OperationsTwo members of a U.S.-led covert operations team stand in front of a downtown store in Kandahar, Afganistan in March, 2002. AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS.with much knowledge about their country’s participationin covert operations, particularly during the Cold War.Some scholars have interpreted this information aboutcovert operations as evidence of an aggressive Americanhand played in foreign policy, while others regard theUnited States as the most effective nation to bear theburden of world security and political stability.The Purpose of Covert OperationsFor reasons that will be discussed below, most examinationsof covert operations focus almost exclusively onU.S. covert operations, undertaken most prominently bythe Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Virtually every populatedregion has been the target of U.S. covert operationsduring the postwar era. This is particularly true of places inwhich the ruling regime is neither unreservedly hostile,nor unequivocally friendly, to the United States. Even ahostile regime that has failed to fully consolidate its power,such as Cuba in the period 1959–61 and Iran exactly 20years later, may provide a promising area for covertoperations.Areas of focus in covert operations include the following:support, training and indoctrination, manipulation(including ”dirty tricks“), and other covert activities. Supportincludes political advice to friendly parties, intelligence-gatheringoperations, monetary disbursements toindividuals working in the service of U.S. interests, financialand technical help for pro-American political parties,and assistance to other private organizations such as laborunions and companies whose interests align with those ofthe United States.Training and indoctrination areas of activity may includethe dissemination of propaganda, which often mustbe covert in order to be effective. (An example from thelate 1970s is the proliferation of editorial pieces in westernEuropean dailies that favorably compared the U.S. neutronbomb with the Soviet SS-20.) Also under this headingis the training of individuals, groups, and forces in avariety of techniques and areas of expertize.Covert manipulation activities include economic operations,which can be designed either to destabilize theeconomy of a hostile power—in which case the actionwould qualify as a “dirty trick”—or to bolster the economy278 Encyclopedia of Espionage, Intelligence, and Security