Clandestine HUMINT and Covert Action - Controversies Remain

Controversies Remain

While the US has consolidated clandestine operations, there is still an argument as to what level of covert operation should be under military control, especially in military theaters of operations. In the Kennedy Administration, National Security Action Memorandum 57 spoke to paramilitary operations, which can be clandestine only until there are survivors, or at least evidence, from combat operations following a study by an interagency committee, "the Department of Defense will normally receive responsibility for overt paramilitary operations. Where such an operation is to be wholly covert or disavowable, it may be assigned to CIA, provided that it is within the normal capabilities of the agency. Any large paramilitary operation wholly or partly covert which requires significant numbers of militarily trained personnel, amounts of military equipment which exceed normal CIA-controlled stocks and/or military experiences of a kind and level peculiar to the Armed Services is properly the primary responsibility of the Department of Defense with the CIA in a supporting role."

Before long, however, the CIA was training Cuban guerillas. Part of the reason the Bay of Pigs Invasion operation failed was disagreement between senior military people and the CIA paramilitary staff about what was necessary for an invasion to work; there were also pure political issues that helped doom it.

Things were a little clearer when the military was putting covert advisors into Laos and then Vietnam. The Military Assistance Command Vietnam Studies and Observation Group (MACV-SOG), commanded by a military officer with a CIA deputy, did conduct both covert DA missions and sometimes-clandestine SR, and tried but failed to put clandestine espionage/SR teams into North Vietnam . MACV-SOG had additional challenges, as it was only informally under the command of the MACV commander. Its real chain of command went to the Special Assistant for Counterinsurgency and Special Affairs (SACSA) in the Pentagon, and then to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and either the National Security Council or less formal White House decisionmakers.

During the Nixon Administration, paramilitary operations were assumed to be assigned to the CIA unless the President ordered a different command structure, after review by the "Forty Committee" . Covert actions were defined not to include direct combat by the armed forces of the US, or cover & deception for the armed forces.