Spoiler alert, WBUR News ran a story called “Can A Computer Catch A Spy” that centers on this false premise:

Grimes suspected [Aldrich Ames] for a reason no algorithm would have divined: He just seemed different.

I call BS on the idea that humans in the CIA caught a spy by seeing something algorithms could not. Not only are algorithms incredibly able to divine different, they’re fast becoming a threat and we want them to overlook differences more often than find them.

Algorithms typically can see differences more often than we can, or want to, see them.

The story later admits this point itself by claiming computers are much faster than humans at making connections from random piles of data, forcing us to address some uncomfortable findings.

And then the story goes on to reverse itself again, claiming that algorithms can’t make meaningful connections without human assistance.

Bottom line is it’s a mess of a story, flip-flopping its way around the question of how to find a spy when he’s staring you in the face.

The lesson of Aldrich Ames was to question why humans had refused to “see” things that later seemed such obvious warning signs. So the next question in this context should be whether humans will detune computer algorithms in the same way humans are prone to ignore signals.

Fast forward to today and there’s a competition ending December 15 on new thinking in how to find insider threats:

The Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence (OUSDI), in cooperation with WAR ROOM, is pleased to announce an essay contest to generate new ideas and elevate thinking about insider threats and how we respond to and counter the threat.

See also: Insider Threat as a Service (IaaS)

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) use of information warfare is often discussed and sometimes cited, yet is not clearly linked to any present day debates about authorization regarding “cyber” active-defense (offense). This becomes confusing as the intelligence community may be in competition with the military over emerging demand for modern hacking capabilities, particularly in cases outside the U.S. government’s own systems.

The clandestine nature of ongoing intelligence missions makes it difficult to expose and examine fully any examples, which unfortunately means the most current relevant trade craft goes un-examined while debates rage about who should be doing it. Perhaps an investigation of history would help here with direction.

A case easily can be made that information warfare options today are a derivation of 1930s experimentation and 1940s deployments, which means the CIA creation story might be extremely relevant to today’s Title 10 / Title 50 debates.

It thus is increasingly important for American “cyber” policy-makers to spend the time to consider international political winds of the 1930s, as this was when purpose and scope for information gathering was established for dissemination and covert operations against foreign adversaries.

Take for example Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) initiated steps around central intelligence operations in the aftermath of his U.S. presidential campaign victory, with an eye on tensions spreading in Europe and Asia.

During the 1932 U.S. presidential campaign William Hearst allowed his expansive media empire to circulate Hitler’s writing and spread white nationalist’s ideology in America.

Hearst defended his actions by expressing he had fear of socialism and was a believer in the false depictions by Hitler. To put it briefly, FDR won the Presidency in spite of an American media giant’s attempts to stir up Nazi sympathizers and groups of “devoted nationalist followers to threaten and beat up leftists”. 1

Later Hearst admitted a change of heart so by 1938 he had reversed position on Hitler, allegedly because the Nazi Kristallnacht facts being reported by his papers. However for FDR the information warfare die already had been cast by 1932; foreign military intelligence operations were correctly identified in undermining American stability. FDR after winning the election was immediately faced with how to put in place national security measures to counteract dangerous information warfare threats to global democracy.

A rarely referenced event in this context, yet still very important to this history of information warfare, is the 1934 establishment of a Federal Communication Commission (FCC). Overtly the FCC is described as a means to break up monopolization in American communications. It also should be seen in direct and stark opposition to what American and British officials had heard reports of in Nazi Germany. Hitler’s volksgemeinshaft meant a total centralization of communications under a state propaganda ministry, which manifested in April 1934 using the Reich Radio Company. 2

The 1934 move towards decentralized regulated communications not only was a reaction to Hearst’s role in 1932, but also appears to have been a reasonable means to neutralize future national security disaster (prevent broadcast subversion and manipulation by foreign military intelligence or domestic collaborators). How better to defend both U.S. communications infrastructure and content against powerful yet naive Nazi sympathizers? This is where the story of the CIA really begins, as FDR not only began exploring how to initiate U.S. offensive capabilities with the latest technology, he first had used authority to block foreign information attacks.

The parallel to modern debates is interesting because critics of offensive hacking often point to American infrastructure having a weak defensive posture. Here we see FDR’s creation of offensive capabilities after he pushed through improvements to defense long before with creation of the FCC. It begs the question whether a “cyber” equivalent to the FCC today would placate critics of offensive operations. The FCC also long predated deterrence theorists of WWII and after, where offensive capabilities may be proposed as an alternative to improving resilience to attacks.

During the summer of 1940, at a time when there was no American clandestine service organization in operation, FDR sent a special envoy to London. The President wanted to know whether unusually lackluster resistence to violent Nazi incursions in Europe was related to information warfare measures. FDR asked his envoy to assess whether “demoralizing propaganda and internal subversion by Nazi sympathizers” had been undermining national security of states targeted by Hitler. 3

The President obviously needed to curtail the influence of German military intelligence service information campaigns, and measure the effects of domestic espionage and sabotage. The insights gathered from his first envoy to Europe led FDR to dispatch another one the following year to assess strategic options for American military campaigns in the Middle East.

The result of information gathering by these special envoys came in June 1941 with the Creation of an Office of the Coordinator of Information (COI) led by Colonel William J. Donovan. Donovan was an internationally-renowned and highly-decorated WWI hero who had been on both trips and had written a “Memorandum of Establishment of Service of Strategic Information”. FDR charged him with building the clandestine operations group to report directly to the President.

Harpers Magazine a couple months later in August, a little over a year after the fall of France, wrote publicly about Nazi military intelligence using radio broadcasts to undermine resistance. 4

“…announcers would tell their listeners daily: Your leaders are corrupt. Your British Allies are cowards and traitors. The Fuhrer has said time and again: ‘Germany wants nothing of France.’ French listeners! Force your government to make peace!’ Together with such appeals went terrifying proofs of the omniscience of the German Intelligence. On one occasion two French generals sitting down to dinner in the Maginot Line heard on the radio an exact description of the menu.

During this time the “America First” campaigners had pushed a similar line of “make peace” to spread Hitler’s power (and they still continued even through WWII despite sedition charges and conviction of members of “America First”). 5 Because the State Department, Army, Navy and FBI were collecting information in a decentralized fashion, FDR found they didn’t address his need to protect America from the “Firsters”.

When Japan bombed Pearl Harbor months later and Germany declared war on America a dramatic elevation of task was imminent for the COI. The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) began calling for measures of “subversive activity” to undermine German resistance. FDR’s concept of COI was set on a course to answer this call with a specific duty in operations. by the summer of 1942, a year after it was first setup with several hundred civilians reporting directly to the President, COI moved under JCS and was rebranded the famous Office of Strategic Services (OSS).

The JCS issued an OSS mission statement, which echoed FDR’s earlier emphasis: prepare studies and research, plan and execute subversive activity, and operate and train an organization to collect information via espionage. 6

The OSS was formalized into a military outfit because an acute need was perceived by Donovan for strategic analysis of vast information collections. Any initial propaganda functions of the COI were removed, per FDR’s requirement those capabilities not fall under military leadership, handed instead to an Office of War Information. The OSS now sought ways to operate along with other long-established Allied services such as British Military Intelligence, as well as Churchill’s newly formed Special Operations Executive (SOE), in recommending and executing methods to prepare for invasions and lower resistance to military campaigns.

FDR by this time seemingly had built almost a decade of political groundwork for American foriegn intelligence operations. Donovan’s leadership brought to the table a stellar reputation. Despite these huge advantages, the initial steps for OSS as a military service provider were far from easy. Detractors soon demanded trust come from evidence of extensive field expertise and experience with clandestine services, which few Americans could have possessed at its start.

A high bar for staff within the OSS maybe was a reflection of British reputation at the time, given its many decades of running global spy networks and sabotage operations. Orde Wingate, for example, was only classified as a junior intelligence officer in the late 1930s when he pioneered “Commando” tactics to undermine Arab resistance. The British also tended to exhibit overconfidence and unfairly dismiss other services.

Collaborations fumbled so badly, for example, that the September 1939 invasion by Nazi Germany meant Poland was already occupied by the time reports of breaking German Enigma would be taken seriously by the British. 7 In many ways these failures had laid the groundwork for an American brand of centralized intelligence service to emphasize extremely rapid study and more open collaboration.

At the very least, without having yet built an espionage organization or a methodology for collaboration, OSS initially was built by Donovan as the coordinated path for longer-standing foreign intelligence services to funnel into American military objectives. Arguably this sharing emphasis was a wise move at the time to rapidly train and expand his staff. After WWII a highly-collaborative style confronted Donovan with an image problem, however. Some questioned in public whether the British training the OSS meant it was theirs to drive, and not something uniquely American.

In fact, Donovan quickly proved not only a uniquely American capability of the OSS, he also proved it to be an independent intelligence service provider very useful for military leadership. The first real opportunity to show what OSS could do in active war efforts was Operation Torch of 1942. Churchill and FDR had agreed in July of that year to a joint invasion of French North Africa controlled by the Vichy regime.

The U.S. Fifth Army called the OSS to aid with a November invasion plan in areas of Morocco, while the British called in their SOE for an Algerian front.

Torch symbolized more than just the test of OSS. It was the first American-led entry into the European war, and was described by General Eisenhower as a test of the Allies bringing “an unprovoked attack upon a neutral country.” 8 Psychological methods were a major consideration as the U.S. military wanted to ensure positive morale for landing forces, as well as lowered resistance from occupied areas, not to mention keeping political support at home.

Here’s an example propaganda leaflet that was titled “Cleaning in Africa” and dropped by the British during Operation Compass (Desert War) in Libya after 1940 (click to enlarge):

The small invasion force of 10,000 troops was believed to depend heavily on a welcome response by the French, while also maintaining secrecy to prevent Axis forces being allocated into the region. These essentially sat in opposition to each other, since secrecy hampered the ability to precisely time local support. General Eisenhower, along with military chiefs, decided the complexity of this would be dealt with best by their newly established OSS using its independent capabilities for sabotage and information warfare.

Success of the OSS during Torch is debated by historians and beyond the scope of this article. Suffice it to say that being overly optimistic meant the U.S. military was faced with significant casualties; resistance falsely was predicted to be minimal (it was fierce) and subversion was ineffective (secrecy made landing coordination improbable). Even the goal of avoiding any build-up of Axis forces did not happen, if we consider mission scope to include the coming Tunisian campaign.

Instead of OSS successes, it was Hitler’s sudden violation of the armistice from 1940 — invading unoccupied parts of France — that brought unexpected relief on American forces. A Vichy authority in Algeria opened the door to negotiation with Eisenhower, signing a cease-fire that stopped resistance and Allied casualty counts.

This cease-fire was the most expedient path to set in motion transition to much larger landing forces, although it risked the Allies dealing with a known Nazi collaborator. French Admiral Darlan signed with American leaders only for a guarantee he would preserve authority over his concept of a French North Africa, as his trust in the erratic Hitler evaporated.

The OSS service, despite these non-optimal results in Torch, became seen by U.S. military commanders as an essential ingredient to future campaigns. A reputation spread for the service being a quick study of foreign data and providing useful analysis. This not only was recognized by Americans, it also led to British clandestine operations increasing in wake of Torch, represented in territorial competitions that would soon emerge. Just three years after Torch some asked whether FDR’s vision and Donovan’s execution had led America to surpass British capabilities in special operations and gathering secret intelligence. 9

After the war ended in 1945 the military operation of OSS led out of “room 109” was shut-down by then president Truman and restarted shortly afterwards without Donovan, renamed as the Central Intelligence Group (CIG). Two years later the CIA was named. 10

Three lessons can be learned from this sequence of events that ended in the creation of the CIA.

First, America before the 1930s was in grave danger as it lacked any mechanism to respond in-kind to active information warfare measures taken by foreign adversaries to undermine a political system. A rush to correct this disadvantage was felt by the U.S. presidential election winner of 1932, given no capabilities on par with German military intelligence methods that had been generating Nazi sympathizers. Moving early and quickly was essential to later success of information warfare.

Second, America in the 1940s benefited from establishing its own brand of professional spy service (information collection and analysis group) to support its military campaigns heading into neutral third-party states, to reduce resistance, minimize casualties, and maintain domestic support.

Third, the expansive global role the U.S. was holding after WWII meant it felt pressure to maintain a centralized collection of data to continue warding off apathy in the face of veiled yet serious threats to democracy.

Donovan perhaps said it best when in 1945 he advocated for creating the CIA because “America cannot afford to resume its prewar [America First] indifference…the greatest nation in the world cannot rely upon physical strength alone”. 11

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Endnotes

1. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/05/william-randolph-hearst-gave-america-first-itsnationalist-edge/481497/
2. David Welch, The Third Reich: Politics and Propaganda, (New York: Routledge, 1994): 38
3. https://www.nps.gov/articles/wild-bill-donovan-and-the-origins-of-the-oss.htm
4. https://harpers.org/archive/1941/08/u-s-international-broadcasting/
5. http://www.ajcarchives.org/AJC_DATA/Files/1944_1945_5_USCivicPolitical.pdf
6. Thomas F. Troy, Donovan and the CIA (Frederick, MD: University Publications of America, 1981), Appendix F, JCS 67: 429.
7. https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-man-who-invented-the-commandoswingate-ofpalestine/
8. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe (New York: Doubleday, 1948): 86.
9. Bickham Sweet-Escott, Baker Street Irregular (London: Methuen & Co, 1965): 126.
10. https://www.stripes.com/news/us/birthplace-of-cia-american-spycraft-make-national-register-of-historic-places-1.451217
11. “Donovan: Father of US Intelligence”, CIA YouTube Video, 26 Jul 2012.

Useful analysis of information warfare attacks on NATO can be found in the breakdown of a campaign in Lithuania. “Eugenijus Lastauskas, head of the Lithuanian military’s Strategic Communication Department” is quoted in DefenseOne:

• September 26 & 27 operatives hack kasvyksta.lt, a genuine news organization, to post a fake story as training for a bigger attack in October
• October 17 operators again hack kasvyksta.lt to post a false story about purported U.S. plans to move nuclear weapons to Lithuania
• False emails, purporting to be from known journalists, are sent to Nausėda’s office and other officials asking for official comment on the false story
• The false story is circulated widely across Russian social media channels
• October 18 operatives again hack legitimate media outlets to deface them with the false news
• Journalists outside of Russia also targeted with email campaigns made to look like requests from members of the Lithuanian government

And then the icing on the cake:

…attackers even drew up a fake tweet from U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pomepo ‘congratulating’ the Lithuanian president on the news of the move of the nuclear weapons…

What is the response by the United States?

The American government now is debating the appropriate organizational structure to defend against latest formats of attack.

It is becoming increasingly clear that information warfare is a different phenomenon from traditional warfare: in information warfare, there are no sideliners, everyone is a target, and everywhere is the battlespace. Thus, any attempt to put the burden on just the Departments of Defense and State to counter information warfare efforts is likely to be fraught with complex authority issues about which domestic department or agency is charged with various information warfare tasks.[9] Here, the Department of Homeland Security, Central Intelligence Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and various domestic intelligence agencies will undoubtedly have roles to play. The challenge is to precisely identify those roles.

[…]

An information warfare directorate within the National Security Council could help tease out answers by relying on expert briefs from the defense community, think tanks, corporations, and academia. In turn, the directorate could provide careful summaries to the National Security Council’s core members, allowing them to truly begin to enumerate the pragmatic policy options. Ideally, after frank debates among principal National Security Council members, resolutions for action should emerge and shape presidential policy.

It may be illustrative to note that in the 1930s FDR took quick action to research how best to respond to Nazi military intelligence campaigns, after he had watched American newspapers as well as European institutions fall victim to information warfare.

His rapid response helped slow Nazi collaborators in “America First” from expanding their influence campaigns before Germany formally declared war on America, and also led to the formation of a government team that eventually would become the CIA.

The man chosen to lead the CIA would say at the time “America cannot afford to resume it’s [America First] prewar indifference”.

Given how the current occupant of the White House literally returned to the apathy of “America First”, and has aligned with Russian interests more than American values, we are in very different times than when FDR appointed “Wild Bill” to direct what had to be done.