Giving Voice to Intelligence Professionals of Conscience Jean - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Giving Voice to Intelligence Professionals

• f Conscience

Jean Maria Arrigo 2013 Lynn Stuart Weiss Lecture Psychology as a Means of Attaining Peace through World Law

2

Lynne Weiss Stuart Jean Maria Arrigo

Intelligence Professionals

• f Conscience

Those who have grappled with moral issues in their national security work, either sooner or later, as the process of discovery unfolded for them, and taken some action commensurate with their resources.

3

Interviewee Premises

• Patriotism! Loyalty!
• The “hard reality”: inescapable conflicts
• ver resources; no third-party justice; you
• nly have the rights you can defend.
• The U.S. Constitution, the Geneva

Conventions, and Just War Theory as moral bedrock.

• “A soldier may be called to give his life for

his country but not his soul.” — H.W. Rood

4

Message from three “senior dissidents”

Covert operations damage national security (MacMichael), especially because

• f uncontrollable contractors and

mercenaries (Villanueva), and should be

• discontinued. The current (2012) program
• f 66,100 Special Operations forces in 100

countries points to disaster in US foreign policy (Wagner).

5

Key parameters for scope of action

• Access to knowledge
• Degree of autonomy
• Predictability/controllability of

environment/circumstance/risk

6

At the extremes:

“Senior Dissidents” (high on the parameters) versus “Throwaway Operatives” (low on the parameters)

7

“Senior Dissidents”

David MacMichael CIA historian 1980s U.S. counter- insurgency operations in Latin America

John Villanueva

Special Forces Intelligence contractor Iraq War

Harry D. Wagner

Head of PsyOps and Phoenix Program 1966-1968 Vietnam War

8

David MacMichael (1959)

9

10

10

Winter 1989

David MacMicha el, Editor

11

12

Mayor Harry Wagner 1964

13

14

14

15

.... ....

Basic research finding from oral histories of the moral development of intelligence professionals Understanding the epistemology of intelligence is prerequisite to understanding the ethics of intelligence — as in social psychology (with its ubiquitous deception experiments) and medicine (with its gold-standard double-blind studies).

16

Scientific Inquiry v. Intelligence Inquiry

S-1 The targets of inquiry are natural phenomena. I-1 The target of inquiry is the Adversary—or what- ever could empower us or the Adversary. S-2. Nature is consistent. I-2. The adversary is deceptive. S-3 Scientific inquiry must be open. I-3. Intelligence inquiry must be secret.

1 7

18

19

Scientific Inquiry v. Intelligence Inquiry S-4. Ignorance,

• mission, and error

have no epistemic roles. I-4. Ignorance,

• mission, and error have

indispensable epistemic roles. S-5. Scientific inquiries (at best) converge to the truth over time. I-5. Knowledge is critical preparation for action. Action at some point requires belief.

20

21

Distinguish the intractable moral conflicts arising from intelligence epistemology from the harms due to ideological commitments, corruption, careerism, ill will, etc.

22

Retired Operative on Spiritual Devastation

“It’s a black place, you know, of all the things that you saw, all the inequities that you were contributing and a part of, and all the hell that you created, either directly

• r as a result of what you did.

“It’s all the things that you saw, all the things that you learned you knew and didn’t admit to. “Your soul’s no longer clean. It’s now carrying a dark

• burden. And it’s black, it is ugly, it hurts, it’s unclean.

“It’s not something you can just let go of. It’s something that lives within you until you finally die.”

23

There is no comprehensive moral theory that is consistent across levels of analysis.

Moral Philosopher Charles Young 24 Dynamical social systems theory — social psychologist Robin Vallacher & multi-disciplinary colleagues, 1980s to present

Lessons from oral histories of“throwaway

• peratives” in black/deniable operations

In spite of new technologies, new conflicts, new terrains, etc. teams currently deployed in deniable operations can have disastrous political effects similar to teams deployed decades ago because of the dynamics of the “aggressive, roving behavior settings” of deniable operations.

(Derived from the ecological psychology of Roger Barker, 1950s-1970s)

25

“Throwaway” Operatives Ernest Garcia (1928-

2008) OSS

• Late WW II
• Early Cold War

Paul Mercier

(pseudonym) Special Operations

• Vietnam War,

Cambodia

Bill Dixon

(pseudonym) Logistical support for Special Operations

• First Gulf War
• 1990s counter-

narcotics

The epistemic framework of Mercier’sillegal collection operation in Cambodia in 1968.

27

28

History teacher and army buddy explains the throwaway status of medic Paul Mercier

[He’s] “more afraid of his own government than anything else. A lot of them take an oath. If they blab, they can end up dead or in Ft. Leavenworth…. Doc’s too old now, all gone by, …, discreditable …, a bum… But if it was something sensitive … they might shut him up.”

29

The incommunicability of deniable

• perations and the consequences to

“throwaway operatives” of the lack

• f narrative identity

—Organizational theorist Karl Weik,

Sensemaking in Organizations,

30

31 `

Ernest Garcia

(1928 - 2008) Chair of the National Association of Contaminated Veterans Ethics of Intelligence and Weapons Development Oral History Collection, Bancroft Library, University of Califronia Berkeley

Method and validation of a sample oral history of a covert operator

32

Ernest Garcia in 2005 with Nellie Amondson (my mother)

33

Post-War Black Operations in South America

October 21 & 22, 1995. Albuquerque, NM

On Torture Interrogation of Nazis and Terrorists

March 1, 1997, by telephone

Post-War Black Operations Revisited

June 1, 2001. Albuquerque, NM

Military Chaplains and Spiritual Problems of Covert Operators

December 1, 2003, by telephone

34

Interview Commentaries on the Oral History of Ernest Garcia Harold William Rood, PhD, Keck Professor of International Strategic Studies, Claremont McKenna College, November 8, 1995. Claremont, CA USAF Maj. Robert Stapleton (ret), Senior Vice- President of the National Association of Radiation Survivors, December 16, 1995. Ventura, CA

35

Additional Consultations for Ernest Garcia

Toni Garcia, wife of Ernest Garcia Norman Weissman, training filmmaker for the U.S. Navy and U.S. Army War College, March 7, 1999. E-mail correspondence. Robert Schulmann, Director of the Einstein Papers Project at Boston

• University. Email correspondence, March 19, 1999.

Constance Pechura, PhD, co-editor (1993, with D.P. Rall), Vet eterans ns a at t risk sk: The The he health e eff ffects o s of f must stard g d gas as an and d lewi wisi

• site. Washington, DC:

Institute of Medicine. June 1999. Student Pugwash USA, UCSD, La Jolla, CA. Bill Dixon (pseudonym), U.S. Navy logistical support for SEAL counternarcotics teams. Telephone communications, September 3 & 4, 1999 Edwin Moise, Ph.D, military historian, September 9, 1999.

Confetences with Ernest Garcis Mon Monit itor

• rin

ing g the he Et Ethic hics of

• f W

Weapon

• ns De

Develop

• pers:

:

• A. Lichterman [anti-nuclear activist

attorney] & E. Garcia [ex-covert operator]. Division 48 Conversation hour. American Psychological Association Annual

• Convention. August, 1997. Chicago, IL.

Meeting of the Southwest Oral History Ass’n, April 2005, Albuequerque, NM. Guest.

3

Oral history examples of damages from covert operations due to blowback and requirement of deniability

• Contractors
• Mercenaries
• Innocents in the way of operations
• Disposal of dead and problematic operatives
• Destruction of inanimate and animate evidence
• Corruption of factions of foreign governments
• Hit or miss experiments
• Unspeakable, instrumental atrocities

(Repeat) message from three “senior dissidents”

Covert operations damage national security (MacMichael), especially because of uncontrollable contractors and mercenaries (Villanueva) and should be rejected. The current (2012) program of 61,600 Special Operations forces in 100 countries points to disaster in US foreign policy (Wagner).

38

39

Mayor Harry Wagner 1964

40

David MacMichael (2011) & Wife Barbara Jentzsch

41

42

Lynne Weiss Stuart