I have been following spying and the intelligence business for a long time. And there are two kinds of spying: fictional spying (fake spying?) and actual spying. They are quite different. Actual spies do not drive Aston Martins and hang out with gorgeous babes in sexy dresses. It makes them conspicuous and being conspicuous makes you ineffective. And, in spite of the fact that Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, actually worked in Intelligence during World War II, James Bond was a terrible spy. With that I leave the realm of fictional spies and focus exclusively on spying in particular, and the intelligence business in general, as it is conducted in the real world.
Real world spying goes back thousands of years. And even if we narrow our focus to the US, which I intend to do, there were spies during the Revolutionary War and the Civil War. But these efforts were not organized and institutionalized to any extent. George Washington, for instance, would designate an underling to create a pretty informal network of agents. When the Revolutionary War ended Washington moved on and whatever network had been built was allowed to fall apart.
In the US this behavior changed, at least temporarily, with World War I. The US did not have an elaborate intelligence operation during the War but various efforts were undertaken. And to some extend this continued on after the War. This consisted primarily of talking the international telegraph companies into providing whatever government intelligence group existed at the time with copies of diplomatic telegrams. All of these were encrypted so the bulk of the effort consisted of trying to crack the various codes used.
This change in behavior arose in large part due to the famous Zimmermann telegram. The British intercepted a telegram from a German official named Zimmermann who was trying to get the Mexicans to enter World War I on the German side. This had a substantial effect on the US decision to enter the war. And this incident also convinced a number of government officials that having some kind of intelligence operation was a good and important thing to do.
Then Henry L. Stimson became Secretary of State in 1929. He famously opined that "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail" and set things back in the US almost to zero. So before World War II intelligence was not a big deal and, to the extent it existed, it certainly had no clout.
In the mean time J Edgar Hoover got himself put in charge of the FBI. He was a consummate political operative. So he spent a lot of time and effort playing the politics game. He famously collected dirt on politicians and then blackmailed them into providing the FBI with a nice budget and leaving him in charge and giving him a free hand to run the FBI as he saw fit. But blackmail was not the only card Hoover played. Blackmail was the "stick" part of his strategy. He also had a "carrot" component. He would provide politicians with dirt on their enemies and adversaries. So being in Hoover's good side could prove very beneficial.
And one of the things Hoover did with his power was make sure the FBI was in charge of "domestic" intelligence. If it happened inside the borders of the US then the FBI had primary jurisdiction. And his success at playing the political game meant that the manifest failures of the FBI to do anything about the mob (presumably their primary focus) or communists (the intelligence part of the FBI's portfolio) didn't matter. Politicians loved him and/or feared him so he went on his way. And there's a lesson in all this.
Another thing Hoover was good at was the public relations side of things. There were innumerable movies made featuring intrepid FBI agents busting crime and, when World War II got underway, breaking up numerous spy rings. It was mostly complete fiction (or a great deal of exaggeration) but the public didn't notice. So it worked. The FBI's reputation with the general public was generally high.
And that brings us to World War II. This was the real start of large bureaucratic intelligence organizations in the US. And the poster child for all this was "Wild" Bill Donovan and the OSS. Serious analysis of the track record of the OSS (see for instance, "The Secret War" by Max Hastings) indicates it was none too good. They were good at making noise. But blowing up the odd train was often very hard on the locals and produced little short term benefit and no long term benefit at all.
And the OSS was terrible at providing consistent, reliable, useful, intelligence. The best source of intelligence turned out to be operations like the one at Bletchley Park. The work was terribly hard and terribly unsexy but also terribly important in the end. So why was the OSS so celebrated and, more importantly supported by astute politicians like Roosevelt? Because it served an important purpose.
It was great for PR. This was especially important in the early and middle part of the War. And the best way to explain this was with something that was not an intelligence operation. I'm talking about the Doolittle air raid on Tokyo early in the War. The raid itself did almost no damage. And we lost a bunch of planes and trained pilots at a time when there was a real shortage of both. But Roosevelt was able to say "see -- we are doing something". And, in the case of the Japanese, they severely over-reacted. So from a strategic military sense the operation was a big success.
Most OSS operations were decidedly less successful. But in the period before D Day in June of '44 it allowed Roosevelt to say "see -- we are doing something". Now the Germans did not over-react so the strategic military "benefit" of these OSS actions was negative. But look at France after the War. The French Resistance was always a pretty small operation that was generally ineffective. But after the War a lot of French could claim, whether it was true or not -- and usually it was not, that they had been on the side of the good guys and not a dirty collaborator. This helped heal a lot of wounds after the War.
Donovan always ran an effective PR operation. He hoped it would be enough to allow him to stay on after the War but he came up short. But the people who ran the intelligence organizations that rose from the ashes of the OSS and can be traced back to the "National Security Act" of 1947 did pay attention to how Hoover and Donovan had conducted themselves and tried to do better. They paid careful attention to the political side of things.
And let's be clear about something. There is something sexy about the intelligence game to politicians. It's called "plausible deniability". Going back to "The Prince" by Machiavelli, powerful people know or quickly find out that their power is limited. Even dictators don't have complete power. There is always something they want to be able to do that for one reason or not they can't do. And often the problem is that there is some kind of accountability that's getting in the way. So there is always appeal in an "off the books" operation or organization. A term of art is "unvouchered funds". You can spend money and you don't have to tell anybody what it was spent on.
So in the same way that Hoover would provide untraceable dirt on an opponent or adversary to a politician intelligence organizations provide a way to go "off the books" when it comes to something a politician wants done. And, oh by the way, as these intelligence organizations are going about their entirely legitimate business they might, just might, find out dirt on a politician.
The intelligence services were very popular with both politicians and the public in the '50s. At one time the head of the CIA was the brother of the Secretary of State. And the two got along very well together. The CIA could (and often did during that period) meddle in ways that the State Department, which was accountable to both the US public and the rest of the world, couldn't. The State Department had and frequently asserted total "plausible deniability". To quote Sergeant Shultz, a character on the old "Hogan's Hero's" TV show: "I know nothing - nothing!".
And the CIA saw it as part of its job to be the fall guy. "It was the CIA's fault, not that politician or very important person." The CIA put out the word that they were willing to play patsy but they expected something in response. And, in exchange for services rendered, they got a fat budget and little oversight.
And this all worked fine until the Vietnam War blew up. The intelligence community was made to shoulder a great deal of responsibility. And in general, their scope of action was reduced as were their budgets. And then the Soviet empire, the great villain in the intelligence melodrama, fell apart. In the aftermath the whole justification for giving the intelligence community a lot of money and freedom seemed to no longer exist. It was lean pickings for a long time.
Then 9/11 came along. And the intelligence communities showed how well they could play the politics game. If you have only weak cards in your hand and everyone knows it you are in for a tough night. But if someone deals you some good cards and you play them well things can change for the better in a second. And one result of 9/11 was to hand the intelligence community some very nice cards. And they took full advantage of them to massively improved their situation.
A case could be made that 9/11 was an intelligence failure. But that was not the story the Bush Administration wanted to tell and the Intelligence community smelled opportunity (some decent cards for a change) and pounced. The Bush Administration was extremely interested in "off the books" and "plausible deniability". So the NSA in particular said "if you give us a lot more money, a lot more authority, and a lot less oversight we will promise you this will never happen again".
This narrative supported the idea that 9/11 was not a Bush Administration screw up. And it was not an intelligence screw up. It was those bad old laws that are hamstringing us. This was total baloney but the Bush Administration and the Intelligence community quickly locked arms and sold the hell out of this "new and improved" narrative. And it worked.
The result is that the intelligence community got a lot of money to play with. It got a lot of authority to play with. And it got essentially no oversight. As an executive, what's not to like about this situation? So starting in about 2002 the intelligence community has been riding high. The heads of the various organizations have tons of money and little restraint on how they spend it. The fact that this has delivered very little doesn't matter as long as the PR keeps working.
And it kept working just fine during the Obama Administration. Their authority got dialed back a little. But this was okay because various excesses that tend to result from too much money and too little oversight was damaging the reputation of the intelligence agencies with the public. So a little pull back was good for keeping the gravy train rolling for a long time. And it wasn't totally one sided. The intelligence community did get Bin Laden. So the Obama people were happy with the intelligence community and the intelligence community was happy with the Obama people.
But then to a certain extent greed set in on the part of the intelligence agencies. Hillary was likely to be pretty compatible with them. But one of the techniques that worked with Obama was to scare the shit out of him in the briefings. Being inexperienced he is not as able from his own experience to sort through what he is being told and figure out what was real and what was scaremongering. I think by the second term he could do a better job of sorting the wheat from the chaff but the intelligence communities were well entrenched by then.
But Hillary had been in government for a long time. So she had been around the intelligence block a few times and was in a much better position to detect scaremongering. Trump on the other hand was a total greenie. He should be easy to manipulate so from an intelligence community perspective he looked like far the better candidate. Well, that has not worked out as well as they thought it would.
What they did not count on was that Trump trusts Alex Jones of "Info Wars" fame and various other people like him who peddle conspiracies for a living. And it should be noted that they make a very comfortable living doing so. Now if the intelligence community doesn't tell Trump what Alex Jones is telling him then they are suspect ("fake"). And if the do tell him what Alex Jones is telling him then why does he need them when he already has Alex Jones? So Trump is not the intelligence community's friend.
The standard vehicle for coopting the President is the PDB, the President's Daily Briefing. That's the vehicle they used to get to Obama. But Trump doesn't even get them. He lets Vice President Pence receive them. And Pence has very little policy influence on Trump or the people that surround them. So that's what's been going on with the "foreign" part of the intelligence community. What about the "domestic" part, the FBI? That question now pretty much answers itself.
I have not been a fan of James Comey for a long time. But I am not part of the FBI establishment. They love him. Why? Because he obviously would take a bullet for them. Whatever flaws the man has, and I think he has many, he is fiercely loyal to the FBI. And the FBI is fiercely loyal to him.
A lot of people in the FBI have, for a lot of reasons (most of them bogus in my opinion), not liked Hillary Clinton. So when Comey misbehaved with respect to the Email "controversy" that lost him few if any points within the FBI. And conservatives are generally pro "law and order" and that stand is good for the FBI as an institution. So if Trump is a true conservative he should be good for the FBI. But what is becoming obvious to even the most politically conservative FBI agent is that he is not their friend.
And my point is that these people, both the "foreign" and the "domestic" arms of the intelligence community know how to play the politics game and they are very good at it. If Trump has people experienced in politics and governance around him they could tell him "don't mess with the intelligence community". But he doesn't. And even if he did he is poor at taking advice from experts. So he has done a lot of things to make all parts of the intelligence community unhappy with him.
And, as I said, they know how the game is played. And you can watching them play it right this very minute. There are very careful to be reserved and diplomatic and temperate in public. Except Comey, that is, who got fired and is pissed. But still the habits of a lifetime in the trenches are evident in his actions. He has been very careful to go only so far and no farther. But that "only so far" has included calling Trump a liar in public.
The usual way these people operate is in the shadows. So you are seeing a steady drumbeat of leaks. And, with the exception of a very small fry who was obviously freelancing it, no one has been caught. Expect the leaks to continue. Expect no one of significance to be caught. Expect the leaked information to be devastating.
One final observation. The FBI's remit includes organized crime and drug rings. They have a tool called RICO. RICO means that if you can prove something is the "ill gotten gain of a criminal operation" it can be seized. If they choose to, and at some point they very well may, they can go after Trump for a variety of financial crimes. If they succeed they can begin seizing assets. And these assets don't have to be closely linked to the crime. They can sweep up all kinds of assets. In drug cases they have seized cash (obviously), cars and boats (also assets with a pretty direct connection to the crime), but also homes, even if no criminal business was transacted in the home and even if the home is in the name of an ex-wife, oh, and businesses, even if the business was a legitimate front unconnected with criminal activity.
So, if the FBI got mad enough at Trump, and if they were successful, they could turn him into a pauper and throw him into jail. And if the rest of the intelligence community is mad enough at Trump they can feed all kinds of evidence to the FBI. Some of it might not be usable in court. But it could point the FBI in the direction of evidence that they could use in court. Is it likely to come to this? At this point the answer is no. These organizations are mad enough at Trump to make life uncomfortable for him but not mad enough to try to do what I am suggesting is possible.
But who knows what the investigations that are already under way will turn up? The intelligence community is definitely mad enough at Trump to impede efforts he might undertake to derail these investigations. And who knows what Trump will do from here? I certainly don't.
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