Book Project: Taming the Rogue Elephant: Principal-Agent Alignment and Democratic Oversight of Covert Action

Scholars have focused on the choice of covert action over overt use of military force. But covert action is not monolithic—it includes psychological, political, economic, and paramilitary activity—and current theories do not explain under what conditions each covert option is chosen. Congress regulates the CIA’s capacity to conduct covert action as part of its oversight of national security agencies. I categorize laws passed by Congress to regulate covert action along two dimensions: authority (prohibitive or enabling) and doctrine (substantive or procedural). I argue that these laws lead to a shift in covert action components that can best be explained through the interaction of principal-agent dynamics and the variation that exists in the perception that Congress’s laws are binding on the behavior of the executive and the national security agencies. To test this theory, I engage in process tracing of primary source documents of decision-making related to U.S. involvement in the Angolan civil war (1974-1989), the war in Yugoslavia (1992-1995), and the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan (2001-2016). The results suggest that covert actions are modified in response to legal regulations, but sometimes in unanticipated ways that attempt to evade these laws. Substantive, prohibitive laws can result in an escalation of the violence of covert action, contrary to the intent of Congress. But procedural, prohibitive laws can caution decision-makers and slow escalation. Third parties, especially those invested in but not actively participating in the conflict, serve as a vital conduit for this covert activity but ensure an attenuated relationship to the U.S.

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Works in Progress 

• The Agency of the Agency: Intelligence Organizations and Strategic Disclosures (with Keren Yarhi-Milo)

Intelligence agencies are idealized as objective sources of information for policy decisions. But these agencies also have their own bureaucratic interests that may differ from those of their executive principal. In what ways do intelligence services engage in disclosure of secret information to the public to influence policy debates within democracies? We theorize that intelligence agencies choose among four strategies: strategic disclosure, persuasion, rehabilitative disclosure, and policy-directed disclosure. Two main considerations shape this decision: First, whether the intelligence community perceives an imminent threat to its credibility among important audiences, including the public, elites, or allies. Second, whether that threat implicates the use of intelligence products in current policy debates. Several cases illustrate how intelligence agencies select between these strategy options: Iran NIE (strategic disclosure); CIA’s Team A/Team B competitive analysis (persuasion); CIA’s Family Jewels (rehabilitative disclosure); and NSA’s canceled THINTHREAD program (persuasion escalating to disclosure). In conclusion, we consider implications for civilian-intelligence relations and democratic backsliding.

• Public Intelligence Disclosure and the Creation of Audience Costs in International Crises (with Ofek Riemer)

Recent years have witnessed states’ growing use of official public intelligence disclosure (OPID) in international crises for various purposes, including resilience, legitimacy, and coercion. In particular, the coercive potential of OPID remains uncertain and underexplored. In this article, we build on audience cost theory to examine if and to what extent a leader is liable to pay a price in public opinion if they fail to eliminate a threat they have deliberately brought to the public’s attention. Fielding the classic “repel an invader” survey experiment in the United States and Israel—two national cultures that vary sharply in their attitudes toward government secrecy—we find that publicly disclosing intelligence and then backing down indeed generates audience costs, albeit less than an empty threat to use military force. While frequency does not reinforce this effect, our findings suggest that the type of intelligence being disclosed and its perceived value and sensitivity increases audience costs, with responses showing similar cross-national concerns for publicizing sensitive information. Ultimately, our findings suggest that OPID may serve as a credible step on the ladder of escalation short of threats of the use of force.

• Dangerously Provocative: Co-optation to Undermining of Women’s Groups by U.S. Intelligence Agencies (with Katie Whipkey)

This article examines how U.S. intelligence agencies, specifically the FBI and CIA, monitored and targeted women’s groups from the early 1900s to the 1970s as part of a broader campaign against Communism, the New Left, and other perceived anti-U.S. ideologies. Through a feminist analytical lens, this article explores how women’s groups were perceived to threaten the patriarchal structure during the first through second waves of the feminist movement, when views of those groups shifted from useful mouthpieces without agency to potential violent, subversive organisers. We theorise a spectrum of intelligence agency responses—from co-optation, passive surveillance, active surveillance, to undermining—and apply these engagement strategies to examine five cases: the Committee of Correspondence (co-optation), the National Organization for Women (passive surveillance), the Third World Women’s Alliance and the Women’s Liberation Movement (active surveillance), and the Sojourners for Truth and Justice and the Weatherwomen (undermining). By analysing these cases, the article highlights how the agency’s chosen engagement strategy depended on factors such as organisational tactics, ideological orientation, and suspected ties to global Communism. This study broadens our understanding of intelligence practices concerning potentially subversive social movements and explores the implications of these historical engagements for contemporary feminist and civil rights movements.

• A Matter of Proportionality? Eroding Customary International Law and Public Support for the Use of Force

Existing observational studies have been unable to adequately explain why states comply with international legal obligations, especially those deriving from nonbinding international legal principles. Existing studies suggest that customary international law should have no different effect than treaty law on support for the use of force in international relations. This article theorizes that information on customary international law should decrease support for potentially violative uses of force. This article explores morality and reputation mechanisms of compliance with international law, using mediation analysis. In sum, survey experiments fielded in 2017 and 2023 show there is a significant effect of customary international law restraining potentially violative uses of force abroad, but that effect has decreased over time. Specifically, when information on customary international law is paired with statements that international organizations may deem the use of force as a violation, respondents significantly decreased their support for the use of force. Finally, there is significant evidence that morality serves to fully mediate the relationship between customary international law and support for the use of force.