Say It Ain’t So: Ross’ Trilateral Intelligence Gambit Threatens US Security Interests

(Washington, D.C.): President
Clinton’s Middle East Special Envoy,
Dennis Ross, capped four days of feverish
shuttle diplomacy in the region with an
announcement that a new three-way
mechanism had been established to
facilitate security-related
intelligence-sharing between Israel and
the PLO. The Ross plan envisions making
the CIA’s senior official (or station
chief) in Israel the go-between and, it
would appear, quality control officer
for such sensitive information flows.

Such an initiative seems — in the
worst tradition of expediency-driven
Clinton foreign policy-making —
motivated principally by the desire to
permit Amb. Ross to show results from his
mission with respect to the security
issue, the precondition for Secretary of
State Madeleine Albright to make her own
foray into the Mideast. It is unlikely
significantly to improve the prospects
for “security cooperation”
between Israel and the PLO.⁽¹⁾
What it will likely do, however, is:
further politicize U.S. intelligence;
inhibit it from performing the sorts of
tasks required by American and allied
security interests; and compromise the
CIA sensitive “sources and
methods.”

Any foreseeable gains (particularly
the ephemeral ones which might, at most
be hoped for) to flow from the latest
Ross initiative cannot justify such
long-term and potentially grave costs.
Consider the following implications:

U.S. Station Chief Tel Aviv
as International Civil Servant

The Center for Security Policy has
long been concerned about the Clinton
Administration’s tendency to view U.S.
intelligence as just another vehicle for
advancing its policy, of — in the words
of Mrs. Albright — “aggressive
multilateralism⁽²⁾
These concerns have only been intensified
by the Clinton team’s persistently lax
attitude about information and personnel
security⁽³⁾ and its documented willingness to
politicize intelligence in the service of
its policy agenda.⁽⁴⁾

Even so, when it comes to dangerous
notions of intelligence-sharing and
-politicization, the present idea
arguably has the dubious distinction of
being in a class of its own. How
else to describe an initiative that
would: transform the chief CIA agent
operating from one of the most sensitive
outposts of freedom in a dangerous region
into a kind of diplomatic bureaucrat;
make him responsible for cooperating on
an ongoing basis in politically
supercharged interactions; and require
him to do so not only with an allied
government but also with an entity that
has been — and must remain —
an object of U.S. intelligence and
counter-terrorist operations?

This conclusion is only reinforced by
the early reporting about the Ross
intelligence initiative. For instance,
the New York Times yesterday
cited unnamed American officials as
saying that “the decision to give
the CIA station chief a central role was
motivated by the view that
intelligence-sharing and judgments about
it might prove most productive at arm’s
length from diplomats and political
leaders.” The article went on to
describe why there is, in fact, no chance
that this mechanism will actually operate
at “arm’s length from diplomats and
political leaders”: “By making
an American intelligence officer a judge
as well as a witness to what is actually
being shared, the central role to be
played by the panel could allow the
Administration to insist that its
judgment had nothing to do with politics.”
(Emphasis added.)

Cooperating With the PLO —
Instead of Penetrating It

The Clinton Administration’s notion
that the post-Cold War world is one in
which the United States can safely share
sensitive intelligence on such matters as
terrorism, drug-trafficking,
proliferation, etc. has already produced a
plethora of formal and informal liaison
initiatives with organizations that
remain part of the problem, not
the solution. The KGB and
Chinese, Syrian and Cuban intelligence
are among those who have been the
beneficiaries of such naive efforts.

It is human nature — and a special
weakness of American officialdom — to
regard those with whom we are cooperating
as less important targets for, if not
off-limits to, U.S. intelligence. This
seems especially ill-advised with respect
to the PLO, an organization that is
clearly still closely tied to not only
Palestinian terrorist cells (e.g., Hamas
and the People’s Front for the Liberation
of Palestine) but also the state sponsors
of those based elsewhere (e.g.,
Hezbollah). What is more, many of the
latter states with whom the PLO has ties
(notably Iran, Syria and Iraq) pose
threats to U.S. security interests quite
apart from their involvement with
international terrorism.

Consequently, the Ross intelligence
initiative puts the CIA Tel Aviv station
chief in an undesirable, if not
unworkable, position. He will be hard
pressed to maintain the kind of
aggressive effort to penetrate and
neutralize dangerous PLO or PLO-related
activities at the same time that he is
obliged to embrace and cooperate closely
with Arafat’s operatives. Given the
political pressure he will be under to
ensure the “success” of the
latter effort — which will, after all,
be deemed a lynchpin of the Middle East
“peace process,” one of the
Clinton Administration’s top foreign
policy priorities — it seems a safe bet
that his main task will go by the boards.

Compromising Sources and
Methods

At the very least, it is predictable
that the role envisioned for the CIA
station chief as conduit and judge
of Israeli-PLO security cooperation will
put at risk the means whereby U.S.
intelligence collects and evaluates its
sensitive information. The temptation
will always be present to “prime the
pump” — providing American data in
instances where the Palestinians and
Israelis are not forthcoming. This is of
particular concern since the PLO and its
friends will be very anxious to discover
the extent and ways in which the U.S. has
penetrated their secrets.

Under all circumstances, the mere
process of formally “judging”
the quality of PLO security information
will provide insights in this area.
Telling the Palestinians that their
information is incomplete or faulty in
certain respects can only provide clues
as to what the Americans and/or Israelis
know, which can, in turn, help determine how
they know it and facilitate corrective
action. As internationally recognized
terrorism expert Steven Emerson noted in
the Wall Street Journal last
week, Arafat & Company have already
proven adept at rolling up Israeli
intelligence operations in relinquished
areas of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Worse yet, such consultations — which
some officials are saying will be
“continuing” (and perhaps
permanent) — make the task of counter-intelligence
(CI) difficult, if not impossible. The
more frequent, to say nothing of routine,
the interactions become, the more
problematic will be the job of those
responsible for knowing what potential
adversaries understand about U.S.
intelligence capabilities, and the steps
being taken to defeat or suborn them.

The Bottom Line

Far from signaling a hopeful new
beginning for the Middle East “peace
process,” Dennis Ross’ intelligence deus
ex machina is just one more
indication that this
“process” has become ever less
capable of producing desirable outcomes
in the region. Instead, it is
now giving rise to two fundamentally
unsatisfactory ones: 1) a “final
status” resulting in a Palestinian
state that will be merely the starting
point for more demands for Israeli
concessions and, quite possibly, the
launching pad for the next war to
“liberate” Palestine of the
“Zionist entity.” Or 2) a
termination of the peace process under
circumstances that require Israel to
disarm Arafat’s forces and reestablish
effective control over territory ceded to
the PLO.

A brilliant analysis of this vexing
reality authored by Douglas J.
Feith, former Deputy Assistant
Secretary of Defense and NSC Middle East
specialist during the Reagan
Administration who serves on the Center
for Security Policy’s Board of Advisors,
is featured in the current edition of Commentary
Magazine.⁽⁵⁾
It argues persuasively that the second is
the better of two bad options — and that
U.S. and Israeli policy-makers should be
planning accordingly.

It is the height of folly to invest
still further American prestige — to say
nothing of embarking on
intelligence-sharing initiatives and
other measures that will jeopardize vital
U.S. security interests and capabilities
— in the further pursuit of a genuine,
durable peace that simply cannot be made
with those, like Yasser Arafat, who are
unreconciled to the Jewish State in
Palestine and opposed to peaceful
co-existence with its people.

– 30 –

1. For reasons
detailed in such Center for Security
Policy publications as Denial
Is No Basis For Securing A Durable
Mideast Peace ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=97-D_110″>No. 97-D 110, 11
August 1997), it is obvious to all but
those suffering from cognitive dissonance
that Yasser Arafat and his minions remain
committed not to peaceful coexistence
with Israel but to its ultimate
destruction. His intermittent posturing
— usually for Western consumption — as
a “partner for peace” is, by
his own admission, consistent with the
PLO’s “Plan of Phases of 1974”
which contemplates first the negotiated
acquisition of territory from Israel and
then the use of such territory for the
liberation of the rest of
“Palestine.”

2. See, for
example, the following Center Decision
Briefs: Will John Deutch Cure
What Ails the C.I.A. — Or Make Matters
Worse? ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=95-D_15″>No. 95-D 15,
13 March 1995); Before U.S.
Intelligence Can Be Reformed, The Clinton
Administration Must Stop Deforming It
(No. 96-D
44, 6 May 1996); Will the
CIA’s Guatemala Flap Throw Congress Off
The Scent Of A Real Intelligence Scandal
— Clinton’s Reckless Endangerment of
U.S. Sources And Methods? ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=95-D_22″>No. 95-D 22,
5 April 1995); and ‘No
Confidence’: Why Advocates of U.S.
Leadership, Engagement Want Clinton To
Disengage From Somalia, Haiti
(No. 93-D
90, 14 October 1993).

3. For example,
see The Clinton Security
Clearance Melt-Down: ‘No-Gate’
Demonstrates ‘It’s the People, Stupid’
(No. 94-D
32, 25 March 1994) and Good
News, Bad News for U.S. Intelligence:
State I.G. Clears The Gatis; Rep. Solomon
Asks FBI Investigation of John Huang
(No. 97-D 12,
23 January 1997).

4. One of the most
egregious instances of such intelligence
politicization was the CIA’s 1995 effort
to support the Administration’s
opposition to the deployment of ballistic
missile defenses by the permitting the
analysis associated with a National
Intelligence Estimate on the missile
threat to be driven by otherwise
unjustifiable assumptions. See It
Walks Like A Duck…: Questions Persist
That Clinton CIA’s Missile Threat
Estimate Was Politically Motivated
(No. 96-D
122, 4 December 1996).

5. See “A
Strategy for Israel” in the
September 1997 edition of that
publication.