New Book: Intelligence Oversight in Times of Transnational Impunity

We are pleased to announce the publication of our collective volume Intelligence Oversight in Times of Transnational Impunity: Who Will Watch the Watchers?, co-edited with Didier Bigo and Emma Mc Cluskey, published by Routledge.

Abstract

This volume, derived from the GUARDINT project, examines contemporary challenges in intelligence oversight within a context of growing transnationalization of intelligence activities. Drawing on empirical case studies and theoretical analyses, the contributions question the effectiveness of democratic surveillance mechanisms in the face of mass surveillance scandals revealed since 2013. The book explores structural limitations of national oversight institutions confronted with surveillance practices that largely transcend state borders, while proposing avenues for rethinking forms of accountability in this domain.

The chapters analyze tensions between security imperatives and democratic guarantees, document avoidance and opacity strategies deployed by intelligence agencies, and examine citizen and legal initiatives aimed at holding these institutions accountable.

My chapter: A sociogenesis of intelligence oversight in the United States

For my part, I have published a long chapter in English on an emblematic case study: that of the US intelligence agencies’ response to the New Left in the 1960s and 1970s.

This research, which has kept me busy for the past three years and involved a research trip to Boston to unearth archives that were inaccessible from France, is particularly interesting for several reasons: in addition to the relative availability of archives on the computerization of state surveillance in response to the social movements of the time (in contrast to the situation in France), and beyond the truncated and often fantasized interpretation of this case in the dominant history within intelligence studies (which must therefore be challenged), the power of opposition to intelligence and computer surveillance during this pivotal period is both particularly abundant in the diversity of its participants and the repertoires of action mobilized, but also poorly understood. Through its vitality and radicalism, however, it provides a counterpoint to the contemporary situation. This historical precedent therefore seems to me to be a fertile source of inspiration for a renewal of criticism of intelligence.

Furthermore, this case is also fundamental in that it shows how the response to these scandals—through the parliamentary commissions of inquiry set up in the mid-1970s and the subsequent legislative reforms—contributed to the lasting disqualification of radical criticism of intelligence. Thanks to what Bourdieu called the “clarity of beginnings,” this sociogenesis thus supports the hypothesis that, during this historical sequence, the impromptu development of a tactic that has since been tried and tested many times in these matters, which consists of proliferating standards that purportedly guarantee civil liberties in order to “internalize” the scandal and depoliticize opposition by giving it new technical (often legal in this case) objectives.

In doing so, while allowing the state to preserve a facade of liberalism, the balance of power was shifted to the detriment of the most radical actors, who were furthest removed from the political and administrative sphere, and the powers of the executive were expanded. Following on from previous reflections on the repression of hackers in the 1980s, this case study allows me to contribute to the genealogy of authoritarian liberalism, and more specifically to the neoliberal reaction to the emancipation movements of the 1960s.

After an introduction that anchors this history in a series of political and theoretical issues, the chapter is divided into three parts:

• The first part looks at the expansion of the surveillance capabilities of the services in the 1960s: the context of crisis in the face of the rise of the New Left, the free rein granted by the political sphere, and new technologies that made it possible to streamline surveillance work in collaboration with a community of researchers in computer science and the social sciences. To do this, I will draw on some recent historical work and, above all, numerous declassified CIA and NSA archives to which I have had access.

• The second focuses on the scandal, retracing the course of sensational disclosures about computer surveillance programs (against the backdrop of more well-known scandals such as COINTELPRO). While remaining attentive to the diversity of the methods used, I follow, for example, the paths of two “former” members of the services in their protest movements: Christopher Pyle, who revealed the CONUS Intel program in Ramparts magazine in 1970 before taking part in congressional investigations, and Philipp Agee, who shortly thereafter set up an association of former CIA agents who were particularly vocal in their denunciation of their former employer and the “techno-fascism” of US intelligence, notably through their publication Counterspy. I also draw on archives from MIT and Harvard on student protests against programs combining computer research and counterinsurgency warfare in the early 1960s (but this material would deserve a much closer look, following the work of Jill Lepore).

• The third part traces the reactions of the political, administrative, and media elites, particularly that of Senator Frank Church, to this particular manifestation of the broader crisis of governmentality that marked the era, and seeks to show the depoliticizing effects of the creation of institutions dedicated to controlling the services. These effects became apparent as soon as Ronald Reagan came to power and have continued to be felt ever since, despite numerous disclosures by whistleblowers from within the services.

Access the book in open access

Full references:

• Bigo Didier, Cluskey Emma Mc Cluskey and Tréguer Félix (eds.), 2023, Intelligence Oversight in Times of Transnational Impunity: Who Will Watch the Watchers?, New York, Routledge.

• Tréguer Félix, 2024, " From Radical Contention to Deference: A Sociogenesis of Intelligence Oversight in the United States (1967-1981)," Intelligence Oversight in Times of Transnational Impunity: Who Will Watch the Watchers?, New Intelligence Studies, D. Bigo, E. McCluskey, and F. Tréguer eds., Routledge, pp. 15-69.