Intelligence and National Security

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The Role of News Media in Intelligence Oversight

Claudia Hillebrand

To cite this article: Claudia Hillebrand (2012) The Role of News Media in Intelligence Oversight,
Intelligence and National Security, 27:5, 689-706, DOI: 10.1080/02684527.2012.708521

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 Intelligence and National Security
Vol. 27, No. 5, 689–706, October 2012

The Role of News Media in

Intelligence Oversight

CLAUDIA HILLEBRAND*
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ABSTRACT This article explores the role of the news media in overseeing intelligence
services and their work. As an informal mechanism, how do they fit into the wider
landscape of intelligence oversight? By drawing on examples of US counter-terrorism
efforts in the post-9/11 era, the article identifies three roles for the news media in
intelligence oversight: as an information transmitter and stimulator for formal
scrutinizers, as a substitute watchdog and as a legitimizing institution. Yet there is a
danger of the news media acting merely as a lapdog. Other limitations include the
impact of regulatory frameworks, government secrecy and the media strategies of
intelligence services. The article concludes that the news media play an important role
in the wider intelligence oversight landscape, but that their ability to scrutinize is
uneven and ad hoc and as a result the picture they produce is blurred.

Introduction
In the summer of 2002, a senior advisor to President George W. Bush
pointed out that journalists and other governmental observers live in a
‘reality-based community’ in which ‘solutions emerge from [the] judicious
study of discernible reality’. Yet, according to this aide, ‘[t]hat’s not the
way the world really works anymore. . . . We’re an empire now, and
when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that
reality . . . we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can
study too, and that’s how things will sort out’.1 What was suggested by
the official (thought to be Karl Rove, then Bush’s Deputy Chief of Staff),
is that scrutinizing the activities of the United States (US) government is a
pointless exercise, given that the scrutinizers will always be at least one
step behind the government’s activities. This understanding is in sharp
contrast to suggestions that news media coverage of governmental
activities is essential for ensuring a democratic society and that, ideally,

*Email: [email protected]
1
Ron Suskind, ‘Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush’, New York Times
Magazine, 17 October 2004.
ISSN 0268-4527 Print/ISSN 1743-9019 Online/12/050689-18 ª 2012 Taylor & Francis
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02684527.2012.708521
 690 Intelligence and National Security

the media should be a powerful political institution, a ‘fourth estate’, in

and of itself.2
This article seeks to explore what role the news media have in scrutinizing
and overseeing one particularly sensitive area of governmental activities,
namely the realm of intelligence. In the post-9/11 era, there is a growing
understanding that ‘[i]n every part of society, and in all our social
interactions, intelligence has a role to play in conditioning the political
and social environments in which we live’.3 Given the impact of intelligence,
intelligence oversight and accountability have become important require-
ments for democracies.
While scholars are increasingly paying attention to aspects of intelligence
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oversight, accountability and control, one under-explored dimension so far

is the role of the media.4 Certainly, media coverage is often mentioned,
usually with reference to the revelation of intelligence ‘scandals’ and leaked
information. Loch Johnson’s ‘shock theory’ of congressional accountability
suggests an important role for the media in setting off the ‘alarm’ in case of
major intelligence failures.5 Other scholars have addressed the topic in the
wider context of the democratic governance of the security sector, or with
respect to a particular country.6 Yet a systematic account of the media’s role
is still missing.
This is surprising given the numerous occasions in the post-9/11 era when
controversial, and sometimes illegal, dimensions of intelligence have been
revealed by the news media. Indeed, the previous decade suggests that the
media might have an ever-important role to play in scrutinizing the
intelligence services and their work. Many aspects of the US-led War on
Terror, for example, such as the detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib, the secret

2
Julianne Schultz, Reviving the Fourth Estate: Democracy, Accountability and the Media
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2008). The term ‘fourth estate’ is nowadays
attributed to the journalistic profession. More generally, the term refers to a societal or
political institution which wields some influence in a state’s politics but is not officially
recognized.
3
Robert Dover and Michael S. Goodman (eds.), Spinning Intelligence: Why Intelligence
Needs the Media, Why the Media Needs Intelligence (NY: Columbia University Press 2009)
p.1.
4
Loch Johnson (ed.), Strategic Intelligence Volume 5: Intelligence and Accountability
(Westport, CT: Prager Security International 2007); Hans Born, Ian Leigh and Aidan Will
(eds.), International Intelligence Cooperation and Accountability (London: Routledge 2011);
Hans Born and Marina Caparini (eds.), Democratic Control of Intelligence Services:
Containing Rogue Elephants (Farnham: Ashgate 2007); Daniel Baldino, Democratic
Oversight of Intelligence Services (Sydney: The Federation Press 2010).
5
Loch Johnson, ‘A Shock Theory of Congressional Accountability for Intelligence’ in L.
Johnson (ed.) Handbook of Intelligence Studies (Abingdon: Routledge 2009) pp.343–60.
6
Marina Caparini, ‘Media and the Security Sector: Oversight and Accountability’ in M.
Caparini (ed.) Media in Security and Governance: The Role of the News Media in Security
Accountability and Oversight (Baden-Baden: Nomos 2004) pp.15–49; Antje Fritz, Watching
the Watchdogs: The Role of the Media in Intelligence Oversight in Germany (Geneva: DCAF
2004).
 The Role of News Media 691

detention and extraordinary rendition policies, the abuse of powers by the

National Security Agency (NSA) and the controversial use of data provided
to US authorities by the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial
Telecommunication (SWIFT) would probably be little known among the
public if details about these counter-terrorism efforts had not been
investigated by media outlets.
Drawing on these examples, this research is concerned with the
question of how the news media fit into the conceptual framework of
intelligence oversight. The research is informed by insights from
literatures on media studies, intelligence oversight and democratic
governance. The article begins by briefly discussing the need for
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intelligence oversight in democracies and explores the main existing

mechanisms. The media’s roles in this respect will be analyzed, followed
by an exploration of challenges and limitations. Focusing on the post-9/11
era, the article will pay particular attention to the role of the American
elite press in the context of intelligence oversight. Overall, the news
media play an important role in the wider oversight landscape, but their
ability to scrutinize is uneven and ad hoc.

1. The Purpose of Intelligence Oversight

Many definitions of intelligence point to government secrecy as a defining
feature, maintaining that ‘[t]he connection between intelligence and secrecy
is central to most of what distinguishes intelligence from other intellectual
activities’.7 Given this secretive nature, intelligence services and their work
do not fit comfortably into a democratic framework and clash with the basic
requirements of openness and participation. Yet despite the purpose and
work of intelligence services being in sharp contrast to these requirements,
there is a broad consensus that intelligence services are useful, if not
necessary or essential, for ensuring safety and security.8 As a consequence,
democratic societies find various ways to square ‘democratic’ values and
intelligence, focusing on maximizing ‘the probability that intelligence is both
effective and conducted properly’.9 As part of the state apparatus, and often
close to political power, intelligence services ought to be held to account like
any other executive body. At the same time, the intelligence sector is
typically granted considerable exemptions from regulations, such as freedom
of information policies.
Strictly speaking, the term oversight refers to supervisory functions
whereby a person or organization oversees the performance or activities of
an individual or a group. As Farson and Whitaker maintain, the term
oversight is used broadly today, referring to the ‘scrutiny of government

7
Abram Shulsky and Gary Schmitt, Silent Warfare: Understanding the World of Intelligence,
3rd ed. (Washington DC: Potomac 2002) p.171.
8
See the contribution by Graeme Davies and Robert Johns in this Special Issue.
9
Peter Gill, ‘Theories of Intelligence’ in L. Johnson (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of National
Security Intelligence (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2010) pp.43–58 (p.52).
 692 Intelligence and National Security

action before, during, and after the fact, dealing with both matters of
propriety and efficacy. . . . Oversight is not accountability, but it may . . .
lead to it’.10 Accountability might ‘imply a wide variety of democratic
processes from transparency of government to answerability to voters . . . It
can, for example, be used to effect control, to provide explanations, to
provide assurance, and as a learning experience’.11
Furthermore, the landscape of intelligence oversight comprises four main
elements: executive (or internal), legal, judicial and public oversight. While
the first three formal oversight forums are addressed in depth in the
academic literature, public oversight is usually only marginally mentioned; if
at all. However, this fourth category contains a range of institutions and
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statutory mechanisms that feed into the wider oversight system, such as the
news media, think-tanks, civil society activists and Non-Governmental
Organizations (NGOs). Scrutiny by those institutions can lead to public
accountability, for example through elections, or ‘the public-at-large can
hold intelligence accountable’ in the sense that intelligence officials ought to
question themselves whether their actions would be justifiable to the wider
public.12 So it is surprising that little attention has been paid to the precise
role of these actors so far. This research seeks to rectify this shortcoming to
some extent by focusing on one feature of public oversight – the news media
outlets.
The Media’s Democratic Responsibility
Openness is an important requirement for democratic governance that relies
on an informed electorate. This means citizens have to be able to make
informed judgments and to participate in the political community. Crucially,
this requires the existence of a free media, a high degree of transparency in
government and decision-making as well as a general free flow of
information within society.13 More precisely:

[j]ournalists provide the information which a society needs to debate

current policies, public issues, societal threats, the potential failings of
its institutions as well as necessary reforms. In so doing, journalism
fulfils a major democratic function, which includes, as a crucial
10
Stuart Farson and Reg Whitaker, ‘Accounting for the Future or the Past?: Developing
Accountability Oversight Systems to Meet Future Intelligence Needs’ in L. Johnson (ed.) The
Oxford Handbook of National Security Intelligence (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2010)
pp.673–99 (pp.678–9).
11
Farson and Whitaker, ‘Accounting for the Future’, p.678.
12
Glenn Hastedt, ‘The Politics of Intelligence Accountability’ in L. Johnson (ed.) The Oxford
Handbook of National Security Intelligence (Oxford: OUP 2010) pp.719–34 (p.727).
Admiral Stansfield Turner, former CIA Director, emphasized that ‘(t)here is one overall test of
the ethics of human intelligence activities. That is whether those approving them feel they
could defend their actions before the public if the actions became public’ (as quoted in
Michael Quinlan, ‘Just Intelligence: Prolegomena to an Ethical Theory’ in P. Hennessy (ed.)
The New Protective State (London: Continuum 2007) pp.123–41 (p.124)).
13
Eric Louw, The Media and Political Process, 2nd ed. (London: Sage 2010) p.38.
 The Role of News Media 693

responsibility, the duty to make issues transparent and therefore to help

citizens to gain information about and exert oversight of the state’s
executive bodies.14

From this perspective, the media have an obligation to keep governments

in check and investigate their activities. This includes the realm of
intelligence. As Simon Chesterman pointed out, ‘[m]eaningful accountability
of intelligence services depends on a level of public debate that may be
opposed by the actors in question, proscribed by official secrets acts, and
constrained by the interests of elected officials’.15
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2. Three Roles for the News Media in Intelligence Oversight

If one accepts that the media’s main role is that of a ‘checking force’16
concerning intelligence, then the next step is to analyze the various means by
which the media can fulfil this role and to critically examine some major
challenges in this context. Three key roles of the media need to be taken into
account in this context.
The Media as an Information Transmitter and Stimulator for Formal
Scrutinizers
Probably the most common role of the media in this context is to transmit
and scrutinize information about governmental activities, including those of
the intelligence services, bringing issues onto the agenda for public debate. In
the context of intelligence activities, this can mean drawing public as well as
political attention to human rights infringements, potential abuse of powers
or lack of accountability. The post-9/11 era provides numerous examples of
this role. Crucial revelations by American media outlets concerning the
CIA’s secret detention policy and extraordinary rendition campaign; the
extensive use of warrantless wiretapping by the NSA; the release of pictures
showing American soldiers sexually humiliating and physically abusing
detainees at Abu Ghraib; and the use of the SWIFT database.
Concerning the Abu Ghraib images, on 28 April 2004 CBS released a
selection of the graphic photographs they had received and verified as
genuine. The abuse had taken place over four months prior and, in the
meantime, the Pentagon had conducted an internal report on prisoner
treatment in Iraq. An investigation by the US Army Criminal Investigation
Command had also passed almost undetected by the news media.17

14
Fritz, Watching the Watchdogs, p.1.
15
Simon Chesterman, One Nation Under Surveillance: A New Social Contract to Defend
Freedom Without Sacrificing Liberty (Oxford: OUP 2011) pp.80–1.
16
Gabriel Schoenfeld, Necessary Secrets: National Security, the Media, and the Rule Of Law
(London: W.W. Norton & Co 2010) p.264.
17
W. Lance Bennett, Regina Lawrence and Steven Livingston, When the Press Fails: Political
Power and the News Media from Iraq to Katrina (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 2007)
p.73.
 694 Intelligence and National Security

However, while in theory the Army’s investigations ‘pre-dated public

knowledge of the abuse in April 2004, . . . it was only after humiliating
photographs of detainees were widely disseminated that serious action was
taken’.18 The decision by CBS to broadcast the pictures was described by
Bennett et al. as ‘an important element of press independence’.19
On 16 December 2005, the New York Times (NYT) broke the story that
the NSA had eavesdropped the international phone calls and email
correspondence of ‘hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people within the
United States without warrant’, based on a secretive presidential order.20
While some information about the classified Terrorist Surveillance Program
was known, the journalists challenged the programme’s legal basis. A
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subsequent article shed light on the extensive collaboration between private

telecommunications companies and the NSA.21
Similarly, although some information was in the public domain about the
Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) covert activities after the 9/11 attacks,
Dana Priest of the Washington Post revealed in November 2005 that the
Agency was running a ‘covert prison system’ in several countries to hold and
interrogate terrorist suspects.22 She questioned the legal and moral
dimensions of the campaign and maintained that the CIA and the White
House ‘dissuaded Congress from demanding that the agency answer
questions in open testimony about the conditions under which captives are
held’. Since November 2005, several journalists have persistently investi-
gated these allegations. For example, Kyle Foggo, then CIA station chief in
Europe, revealed in a 2009 interview that prisons were located in Bucharest,
Morocco and an unnamed East European state.23
On 23 June 2006, the NYT revealed that, since 9/11, a financial tracking
programme, run by the CIA and overseen by the Treasury Department, had
examined international bank transfers, using the SWIFT database and raised
concerns about the legal authority of the operation.24 At the time, the data
was obtained using broad administrative subpoenas for vast amounts of
SWIFT records, not case-by-case court warrants, effectively amounting to a
carte blanche mandate with little judicial or regulatory oversight.
In the above named cases, substantial amounts of information came into
the public domain only after media investigations. Though certain
individuals already knew some elements of these, the stories provided
18
Chesterman, One Nation, p.89.
19
Bennett et al., When the Press Fails, p.61.
20
James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, ‘Bush Lets US Spy on Callers without Courts’, New York
Times, 16 December 2005.
21
Eric Lichtblau and James Risen, ‘Spy Agency Mined Vast Data Trove, Officials Report’,
New York Times, 24 December 2005.
22
Dana Priest, ‘CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons’, Washington Post, 2 November
2005.
23
David Johnston and Mark Mazzetti, ‘A Window into CIA’s Embrace of Secret Jails’, New
York Times, 12 August 2009.
24
Eric Lichtblau and James Risen, ‘Bank Data is Sifted by US in Secret to Block Terror’, New
York Times, 23 June 2006.
 The Role of News Media 695

substantial information, put the counter-terrorist measures into the broader

context of the War on Terror and challenged the legal and ethical footing of
the practices. That they hit a nerve can be seen by the fierce responses by the
Bush administration to the revelations. A couple of weeks after CBS released
the Abu Ghraib images, Seymour Hersh published two extensive investiga-
tory articles in the New Yorker, which a Pentagon spokesman angrily
dismissed as ‘outlandish’ and ‘conspiratorial’.25 The NYT’s revelations
about the NSA’s warrantless eavesdropping were also criticized for having
compromised national security and damaging intelligence capabilities. And
with respect to its story about the SWIFT database, then Vice President Dick
Cheney maintained that the news media just ‘take it upon themselves to
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disclose vital national security programs pointing to considerable tensions

between the press and White House’.26
In fact, critics within government often ignore the fact that media outlets
do not normally reveal such sensitive stories immediately, but carefully
weigh their potential damage to national security and discuss the material
with officials off-the-record. At the request of the Department of Defense,
CBS, for example, broadcast the Abu Ghraib images two weeks after they
received them. The NYT informed the White House in late 2004 that it was
about to publish an article revealing the NSA’s surveillance programme.
After the White House asked the NYT to postpone publication for more
than a year, the story finally made it to the NYT’s front page only in late
2005.27
Simon Chesterman pointed out that, referring to the cases of torture,
extraordinary rendition and eavesdropping, ‘public deliberation on the
legality of the practice clearly was never intended by the relevant officials’.28
The respective journalists therefore had to rely on information by insiders,
such as soldiers based at Abu Ghraib or intelligence officials involved in the
controversial programmes, such as the NSA’s former official Thomas Tamm.
Supporting this line of reasoning, Loch Johnson suggests that law-makers
rarely engage in intensive intelligence oversight, unless a major scandal or
failure forces them to pay attention to the dark side of government.29 Yet
even then it is not always clear under what circumstances formal
government oversight bodies decide to investigate a topic in more depth.
Only a few of the stories described above led to some form of inquiry by
legislators. The revelations about the SWIFT programme, for instance, led to
an inquiry into the legal authority of the programme by the Senate Judiciary

25
Seymour Hersh, ‘Torture at Abu Ghraib: American Soldiers Brutalized Iraqis. How Far Up
Does the Responsibility Go?’, New Yorker, 10 May 2004; Idem., ‘Chain of Command: How
the Department of Defense Mishandled the Disaster at Abu Ghraib’, New Yorker, 17 May
2004.
26
Sheryl Stolberg and Eric Lichtblau, ‘Cheney Assails Press on Report On Bank Data’, New
York Times, 24 June 2006.
27
Risen and Lichtblau, ‘Bush Lets US Spy’.
28
Chesterman, One Nation, p.86.
29
Johnson, ‘A Shock Theory’, p.344.
 696 Intelligence and National Security

Committee. During the inquiry, Chairman Arlen Specter (R-PA) asked:

‘Why does it take a newspaper investigation to get them to comply with the
law? That’s a big, important point’.30 The NSA’s warrantless wiretapping
did not yield major Congressional scrutiny. The press appeared to
insufficiently focus on ‘political accountability questions’.31 However, the
NYT coverage had externally initiated an ‘open discussion of the programme
and remedies for apparent violation of the law’.32 With respect to the Abu
Ghraib pictures, torture was little discussed in the American media until
then. However, the news media still framed the incidence as a case of low-
level abuse rather than torture or systemic institutional failure.33 The
revelations about the extent of the CIA’s web of secret detention centres,
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finally, led to a much lesser extent to major inquiries in the US (see the
following section) than in Europe where a few investigations by formal
inquiry bodies were initiated.
Though certainly focusing on (alleged) wrongdoings, media scrutiny can
also contribute, or trigger, a public debate on the content, objectives and
limits of intelligence work more broadly. A recent example in this context
refers to the increased use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles abroad by the CIA
and the covert policy of targeted killing. Journalists addressed the topic early
in the War on Terror and, from January 2009 onwards, closely observed
how the Obama administration increasingly embraced the use of drones as a
counter-terrorism tool.34 It is through media coverage, rather than formal
intelligence oversight mechanisms, that the public got at least some sense of
the scope of the CIA’s paramilitary activities in this context. Journalists
examined, for example, whether the extensive use of drones might set a
negative precedent worldwide, given that their extensive use could foster
conflicts, and so on.35 More recently, the NYT questioned on its front page
the legal basis of the use of drones for the targeted killing of Anwar Al-
Awlaki, a Muslim cleric and the first American citizen to be put on the list of
terror suspects the CIA is to kill.36 Al-Awlaki, a senior figure of al-Qaeda in
the Arabian Peninsula, allegedly inspired the 9/11 hijacker, Umar Farouk
Mutallab, who attempted to bomb a Detroit-bound airliner in December

30
Stolberg and Lichtblau, ‘Cheney Assails Press’.
31
Bennett et al., When the Press Fails, pp.46–7.
32
Chesterman, One Nation, p.86.
33
Bennett et al., When the Press Fails, pp.84ff.
34
For example, Thom Shanker and Carlotta Gall, ‘US Attack on Warlord Aims to Help
Interim Leader’, New York Times, 9 May 2002; Jane Mayer, ‘The Predator War: What are
the Risks of the CIA’s Covert Drone Program?’, The New Yorker, 26 October 2009; Greg
Miller and Julie Tate, ‘CIA Shifts Focus to Killing Targets’, Washington Post, 2 September
2011.
35
William Wan and Peter Finn, ‘Global Race on to Match US Drone Capabilities’,
Washington Post, 4 July 2011.
36
Charlie Savage, ‘Secret US Memo Made Legal Case to Kill a Citizen’, New York Times, 8
October 2011; Greg Miller, ‘Muslim Cleric Aulaqi is 1st US Citizen on List of those CIA is
Allowed to Kill’, Washington Post, 7 April 2010. Al-Awlaki had a dual American-Yemeni
citizenship.
 The Role of News Media 697

2009, and the Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan through his writings and
preachings.
Hence, news media might break stories that might have previously not
been an issue of public discourse or they might bring new insights to a story.
Crucially, the media tend to be less restrained in looking for stories on
intelligence than, for example, constitutional oversight bodies. By revealing
such cases, the media can potentially trigger a public debate on the content,
objectives and limits of intelligence activities.
The Media as a Substitute Watchdog
If formal oversight bodies are unwilling, or incapable, of conducting
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scrutiny, the media might be able to fill this gap.37 After Jane Mayer
published her influential article in The New Yorker on ‘Outsourcing
Torture’ in the context of extraordinary renditions in February 2005,
Senator John Rockefeller IV (D-WV) called for a probe into allegations of
detainee abuse and rendition claims to be conducted by the Senate
Intelligence Committee.38 He maintained that ‘Congress has largely ignored
the issue’ so far and, ‘[m]ore disturbingly, the Senate intelligence
committee . . . is sitting on the sidelines and effectively abdicating its
oversight responsibility to media investigative reporters’.39 Recently released
documents by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence suggest that
members of the Congress have been briefed several times on ‘enhanced
interrogation techniques’ since April 2002, but they appear to have
investigated the matter very little.40 It was largely the news media that
continued to reveal information about these counter-terrorist efforts.41 The
coverage, including Priest’s article on the CIA’s secret prisons, led to
inquiries in Europe but not in the US. Some have suggested, however, that
the ‘numerous news reports’ on the CIA’s programme led Bush to speak
publicly about secret detention in September 2006, hoping ‘to build
support for it on Capitol Hill, and in the public’.42 Only in March
2009 did the Senate Intelligence Committee announce that it would
enquire about the CIA’s secret detention and interrogation programme
and explore whether lessons could be learned.43 Yet, the review is still
37
See also Caparini, ‘Media and Security Sector’, p.39.
38
Jane Mayer, ‘Outsourcing Torture: The Secret History of America’s ‘‘Extraordinary
Rendition’’ Program’, The New Yorker, 14 February 2005.
39
Dana Priest, ‘Senate Urged to Probe CIA Practices’, Washington Post, 22 April 2005.
40
The document is available at http://s3.amazonaws.com/nytdocs/docs/53/53.pdf
41
See, for example, Jane Mayer, ‘The Black Sites: A Rare Look Inside the CIA’s Secret
Detention Program’, The New Yorker, 13 August 2007; Scott Shane, ‘Waterboarding Used
266 Times on 2 Suspects’, The New York Times, 19 April 2009.
42
See, for example, the comments of David Rivkin, former White House counsel’s office staff,
in Sheryl Stolberg, ‘President Moves 14 Held in Secret to Guantanamo’, New York Times, 7
September 2006.
43
‘Feinstein/Bond Announce Intelligence Committee Review of CIA Detention and
Interrogation Program’, Press Release of Intelligence Committee, Washington, DC, 5 March
2009.
 698 Intelligence and National Security

ongoing.44 Similarly, an (originally broad) investigation by the US Attorney-

General into whether the interrogation of detainees overseas violated US
law, initiated in 2009, was curtailed in June 2011. While it resulted in a
criminal investigation into the death of two men in US custody, other cases
will not be considered further.45
Media outlets can provide a channel for leaking information that might
not have been taken into account by formal oversight bodies, or when
individuals felt unable to approach formal oversight bodies and instead
approached journalists. A famous example of this is the public disclosure of
the ‘Pentagon Papers’ concerning the conduct of the Vietnam War – whistle-
blower Daniel Ellsberg turned to the newspapers after the Senate ignored an
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initial approach. Thomas Drake, a former NSA employee, allegedly

expressed his concerns about the waste of taxpayers’ money concerning
the NSA’s data-mining Trailblazer programme ‘to his bosses, to the agency’s
inspector general, to the Defense Department’s inspector general and to the
Congressional intelligence committees. But he felt his message was not
getting through’ and he decided to share unclassified information with a
reporter.46 The Trailblazer programme, which cost the NSA more than
US$1 billion, has since been closed down as a failure.47 Examples of internal
reports leaked during the War on Terror include the strictly confidential Red
Cross report on detainees at Guantánamo Bay and the classified Taguba
report on Abu Ghraib.48
Media channels might also be used by opposition politicians to stimulate
public interest in a particular topic or to point to flaws and misconduct by
government officials. The immediate danger, of course, lies in the fact that
the media can be used or abused for political purposes, for example by
causing political embarrassment, as further discussed in the section on the
media as a lapdog below.
Finally, reports of formal inquiry bodies are not always very illuminating
for the wider public and often written in a bureaucratic, ossified and
legalistic manner. Moreover, the release of official reports often goes
unnoticed by the wider public. In contrast, media outlets might provide more
detailed information, and present them in a sharper, more accessible way
than official reports. While there is a danger of sensationalism, the media’s
oversight process, by its very nature, is more directed at the wider public.

44
Report of the Select Committee on Intelligence United States Senate Covering the Period
January 3, 2009 to January 4, 2011 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office 2011).
45
Daniel Dombey, ‘Probe into CIA Detainee Abuse Closes’, Financial Times, 1 July 2011.
46
Scott Shane, ‘Obama Steps Up Prosecution Of Leaks to the News Media’, New York Times,
12 June 2010.
47
Scott Shane, ‘No Jail Time in Trial Over NSA Leak’, New York Times, 15 July 2011.
48
International Red Cross Committee, ICRC Report on the Treatment of Fourteen ‘High
Value Detainees’ in CIA Custody, Strictly Confidential Report, Washington, 14 February
2007; Antonio Taguba, Article 15-6 Investigation Of The 800th Military Police Brigade,
Secret Report, 2004.
 The Role of News Media 699
The Media as a Legitimizing Institution
A third key role for the media in the context of intelligence refers to its role
as a reassuring and legitimizing tool. By informing the public about the work
of intelligence services and related policies, they help legitimize the
intelligence services. While this is beyond their formal role, the media can
help in building and fostering faith in these public institutions through
demonstrating that intelligence performance is overseen, to at least some
extent, independently. Enhancing confidence in the work of intelligence
services can be essential in situations when they have to rely on public
support or cooperation for their activities. Broad public acceptance of
their mandate and work is also important for the services when it comes
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to negotiations about budgets or expanded powers in Congress, for

example.
No other oversight body is in a better position to build a bridge between
the agencies and the public. In this context, reporting of successful
operations of intelligence is an important feature, such as when the public
learnt about the operation that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden in
2011.49 Another example of the promotion of success was the coverage of
the uncovering of a Russian spy ring in the US in summer 2010.50 Moreover,
it is important to point out reform processes in order to demonstrate to the
wider public that learning takes place. By taking their role as overseers
seriously and scrutinizing the services’ work properly, the media suggest to
the public that the services are trustworthy and that they conduct their work
within the remits outlined in their mandate.

3. Limitations
While the article has so far focused on the potential of the media regarding
intelligence oversight, this section will discuss the limitations and challenges
that news media face when covering intelligence-related issues and which
frame their role in scrutinizing this sector.
The Media as a Lapdog
The term ‘lapdog’ refers to situations in which journalists fail to sufficiently
question government policies or simply transmit unsubstantiated claims by
government officials. In these cases, it becomes clear that the media act
‘within the existing institutional parameters that create specific opportunities
and constraints and shape actors’ preferences and strategic choices’.51 For

49
President Obama on Death of Osama bin Laden, available at 5http://www.whitehouse.
gov/blog/2011/05/02/osama-bin-laden-dead4; Leon Panetta, Interview with NBC Nightly
News, 3 May 2011.
50
Jerry Markon, ‘FBI Arrests 10 Accused of Working as Russian Spies’, Washington Post, 29
June 2010.
51
Ludger Helms ‘Governing in the Media Age: The Impact of the Mass Media on Executive
Leadership in Contemporary Democracies’, Government and Opposition 43/1 (2008) pp.26–
54 (pp.28–9).
 700 Intelligence and National Security

instance, the American elite press has been heavily criticized for insufficiently
challenging the official line in its pre-war reporting on Iraq and not
providing alternative views.52 In this period the US press arguably grew ‘too
close to the sources of power . . . making it largely the communication
mechanism of the government, not the people’.53
Moreover, the media were manipulated for propaganda purposes by the
Bush government.54 For example, the government would feed cooperative
journalists with certain information, only to later refer to that publication to
legitimize its actions. The work of Judith Miller, a now retired NYT
journalist, was particularly criticized in this respect. Her defence revealed a
particular ‘objective’ professional attitude: ‘My job isn’t to assess the
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government’s information and be an independent intelligence analyst myself.

My job is to tell readers of the New York Times what the government
thought about Iraq’s arsenal’.55
A particularly sensitive case where government officials misused media
channels to pursue a particular aim concerned CIA officer Valerie Wilson.
Journalist Robert Novak published a column on 14 July 2003, in which he
identified Wilson by her maiden name Valerie Plame. It was later discovered
that Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff had disclosed her identity in retaliation for
her husband criticizing the administration’s Iraq policy.56
Regulatory Frameworks
Having identified three major roles of the media in intelligence oversight, the
following section focuses on limitations. Crucially, the work of the news
media is regulated through several frameworks. The major premise, based
on the importance of openness for democratic societies, is the right of
freedom of the press. While this right guarantees, in principle, the absence of
interference in the work of media outlets from the state and embraces the
freedom of expression and communication, it is restricted – by legislation
and litigation – for reasons of national security. Secrecy laws govern the
protection of government secrets in most states (e.g., some components of
the Espionage Act in the US; the Official Secrets Act in the UK). Related to
this, states have an information classification policy to regulate which
documents are classified, the levels of classification and the eventual public
release of classified material. In some states, the intelligence realm is subject
to freedom of information laws regulating the public disclosure of official
documents, but more often it is exempted from them. Finally, the US

52
Jim Rutenberg and Robin Toner, ‘A Nation At War: The News Media’, New York Times,
22 March 2003; Frank Rich, The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth in
Bush’s America (NY: Penguin 2006).
53
Bennett et al., When the Press Fails, p.1.
54
Chris Tomlinson, ‘AP: Pentagon Spends Billions on PR’, 5 February 2009.
55
As quoted in Michael Massing, ‘Now They Tell Us’, The New York Review of Books, 26
February 2004.
56
Valerie Plame Wilson, Fair Game: How a Top CIA Agent was Betrayed by her Own
Government (NY: Simon & Schuster 2010).
 The Role of News Media 701

government sometimes provides specific formal regulations, such as the

extensive Media Ground Rules for Guantánamo Bay concerning reporting
by civilian news media deployed at Guantánamo.57
In addition, media outlets in several states undergo some form of self-
regulation. Self-censorship for national security reasons is a common
phenomenon.58 A formalized and unique procedure is the British Defence
Advisory (DA)-Notice System (formerly D-Notice System), which regulates
the media’s release of British national security secrets.59 No such formal
procedure exists in the US, but informal consultations and individual
interactions between editors and government officials concerning the release
of sensitive information frequently takes place as indicated above. More-
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over, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, ‘a group of about 20 (US)

journalists and officials met quarterly for dinner to discuss how a free press
should cover secret agencies’.60 The extent of such informal contact in the
US remains unclear.
Government Secrecy
As the overview of regulatory frameworks indicated, the high level of secrecy
concerning matters of national security restricts any role for the news media
in intelligence oversight. In general, more secrecy means less transparency. It
is therefore inherently problematic concerning the democratic requirement
of openness. Nevertheless, some level of secrecy is understood to be
indispensable for achieving certain policy objectives, in particular with
respect to the defence and intelligence sectors.61
Government secrecy can also have harmful effects on the relationship
between citizens and their government.62 It can be used as a blanket to
conceal abuse, corruption or incompetence. A high level of secrecy shuts out
dissenting perspectives. Overall then, secrecy prevents citizens’ engagement
in informed debates. If applied excessively, government secrecy can create a
‘parallel regulatory regime’.63 Yet by creating a culture of secrecy in the War
on Terror, the US government arguably diminished its accountability to
citizens as well as its overall democratic legitimacy.

57
On this, see Barry Leonard (ed.), Department of Defense Media Ground Rules for
Guantánamo Bay, Cuba (GTMO) (rev. Sept. 10, 2010) (Darby, PA: DIANE 2011).
58
Scott Shane, ‘A History of Publishing, and Not Publishing, Secrets’, New York Times, 2
July 2006.
59
On this, see Nicholas Wilkinson, Secrecy and the Media: The Official History of the
D-notice System (London: Routledge 2009).
60
Shane, ‘A History of Publishing’.
61
Schoenfeld, Necessary Secrets.
62
Thomas Ellington, ‘Secrecy and Disclosure: Policies and Consequences in the American
Experience’, in S. Maret (ed.) Government Secrecy, Research in Social Problems and Public
Policy Vol. 19 (Bingley: Emerald 2011) pp.67–90 (pp.76ff).
63
Daniel Moynihan, ‘Chairman’s Foreword’ in D. Moynihan and L. Combest, Secrecy:
Report of the Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy (Darby, PA:
Diane 1997) pp.xxxi–xlv (p.xxxvi).
 702 Intelligence and National Security

Moreover, governments can understand secrecy as ‘a source of power and

an efficient way of covering up the embarrassments, blunders, follies and
crimes of the ruling regime’.64 One of the most secretive and sensitive areas
of intelligence work is that of international cooperation. Concerning the
CIA’s in-house Public Relations Board, which aims at preventing the public
disclosure of classified information in order to avoid injuring national
security, the Board’s former chairman John Hedley maintained: ‘We always
have to be aware of material that discusses joint activities – something that
we might have done with the British for example. Liaison is something we
get really anxious about. The line we take is invariably: ‘‘We can’t talk about
this’’’.65
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To sum up, while the operational reasons for secrecy in a particular

context are clear, it always poses a challenge from the perspective of
democratic governance. The democratic process cannot be (fully) operable
under such circumstances. The American policy discourse on the War on
Terror has an impact on this debate. As Arkin stated, ‘(w)artime analogies
lend seeming legitimacy to the enforcement of secrecy’.66 Both the
administrations of Bush and Obama have demonstrated a tendency towards
increased government secrecy. A crucial example of the disregard for
transparency by governmental officials being the destruction of 92
videotapes covering interrogation sessions with two detainees by CIA
officials between April and December 2002. It is now known that at least 12
of the tapes showed the use of ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’, such as
water-boarding. In a lawsuit, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)
requested the release of certain information from the CIA, which would have
included the videotapes. Despite the judge’s order to ‘produce or identify all
responsive documents’ by 15 October 2004, followed by repeated demands,
the CIA did not even reveal the existence of the tapes.67 Rather, it destroyed
the videotapes in November 2005 and only publicly acknowledged this in
December 2007.68
Moreover, both administrations have demonstrated a tough stance
towards ‘leaks’ and journalists who claim their right to protect confidential
sources. The Bush administration used FBI probes to investigate
several journalists and polygraphing inside the CIA to identify alleged

64
Arthur Schlesinger, ‘Preface to the 1987 Edition’, in D. Banisar (ed.) Decisions Without
Democracy (Washington, DC: People For the American Way Foundation 2007) p.5.
65
Christopher Moran and Simon Willmetts, ‘Secrecy, Censorship and Beltway Books:
Understanding the Work of the CIA’s Publications Review Board’, International Journal of
Intelligence and CounterIntelligence 24/2 (2011) pp.239–52 (p.243).
66
William Arkin, ‘Waging Secrecy’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 41/3 (1985) pp.5–6
(p.5).
67
‘Opinion and Order Denying Motion to Hold Defendant Central Intelligence Agency in
Civil Contempt’, United States District Court Southern District of New York, Doc. 04 Civ.
4151 (AKH), Filed on 5 October 2011.
68
Hayden Statement to CIA Employees, 6 December 2007. See also Eric Lichtblau, ‘More
E-mail Files on Torture are Missing’, New York Times, 27 February 2010.
 The Role of News Media 703

whistleblowers.69 More surprisingly, ‘the Obama Administration has

pursued leak prosecutions with a surprising relentlessness. . . . [I]t has been
using the Espionage Act to press criminal charges in five alleged instances of
national-security leaks – more such prosecutions than have occurred in all
previous Administrations combined’.70 Only two of the five cases were
carried over by Obama’s Justice Department from the Bush years, one of
which concerns the NYT journalist James Risen. In his 2006 book State of
War, Risen discussed an alleged botched CIA programme which was aimed at
harming Iran’s nuclear ambitions.71 Prosecutors allege that a former CIA
employee, Jeffrey Sterling, provided Risen with top-secret information about
the programme. Sterling was fired in January 2002 and is, in an ongoing
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court case, indicted on ten counts related to leaking classified information.72

Before Congress, Acting Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence
Michael Vickers identified the unauthorized disclosure of classified informa-
tion as a crucial challenge for US Defense Intelligence in 2011.73 Given these
extensive limitations, reporting on intelligence services and their work is a
challenging task. In principle, many aspects of intelligence are easy to ‘sell’.
Yet, due to the overall secrecy regarding matters of national security, few
journalists have sufficient knowledge of intelligence. Media scrutiny therefore
relies to a great extent on such specialized, investigative journalists.
Moreover, any journalist working on intelligence-related topics depends to
a considerable extent on information provided by governmental authorities.
This makes the verification of the provided information difficult. Given these
restrictions, journalists are highly dependent on information provided by
informants.
The Intelligence Services’ Own Agenda
What further complicates the role of the news media in oversight is that
intelligence services, and governments as a whole, have their own media
strategies.74 Intelligence services use media channels to communicate with

69
Dan Eggen, ‘White House Trains Efforts on Media Leaks’, Washington Post, 5 March
2006; Mark Mazzetti and Scott Shane, ‘CIA Director Has Made Plugging Leaks a Top
Priority’, New York Times, 23 April 2006; David Johnston and Scott Shane, ‘CIA Fires Senior
Officer Over Leaks’, New York Times, 22 April 2006.
70
Jane Mayer, ‘The Secret Sharer: Is Thomas Drake an Enemy of the State?’, The New
Yorker, 23 May 2011. See also Shane, ‘Obama Steps Up’.
71
James Risen, State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration
(NY: Free Press 2006).
72
Charlie Savage, ‘An Opinion by Judge on Spy Law Creates a Stir’, New York Times, 4
August 2011; for ongoing coverage of the case USA v. Jeffrey Alexander Sterling see 5http://
www.fas.org/sgp/jud/sterling/4.
73
‘Advance Questions for Michael Vickers Nominee for the Position of Under Secretary of
Defense for Intelligence’, Senate Armed Services Committee, Hearing of 15 February 2011,
point 4c. Available at 5http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2011_hr/021511vickers-q.pdf4.
74
Shlomo Shpiro, ‘The Media Strategies of Intelligence Services’, International Journal of
Intelligence and CounterIntelligence 14/4 (2001) pp.485–502.
 704 Intelligence and National Security

the wider public.75 In the post-Cold War era, many Western intelligence
services have opened up to an unprecedented level. In the UK, for example, a
former head of GCHQ, Sir David Pepper, said in a BBC2 television
programme that he thought ‘it’s actually a healthy thing to do [an interview].
I think it’s very healthy in a society that people do understand what agencies
there are to protect them, what the powers are they have and what the
controls are’.76
A general concern for the agencies is that they can rarely publish success
stories without jeopardizing sources, methods or operations. Referring to the
CIA, in 1959 President Dwight D. Eisenhower emphasized that ‘[s]uccess
cannot be advertised; failure cannot be explained’.77 As a consequence,
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intelligence practitioners find themselves in a difficult position when media

outlets report on operational activities. As General Michael Hayden, CIA
Director between 2006 and 2009, later put it: ‘[W]hen the media claims
an oversight role on our clandestine operations, it does so in an arena where
we cannot clarify, explain, or defend our actions without doing further
damage to our sources and methods’.78 Indeed, despite numerous allega-
tions in American as well as European news media concerning the US
secret detention policy and the extraordinary rendition programme, for
example, the American intelligence community did not publicly respond to
such claims. A rather rare exception occurred in May 2011 concerning the
operation that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.
While intelligence officials tend to point out such challenges, Richard
Aldrich suggests that intelligence services have been very much concerned to
shape public perceptions in recent decades. In fact, ‘much of what we know
about modern intelligence agencies has in fact been placed in the public
domain deliberately by the agencies themselves . . . often using the medium
of the press’.79 From the media’s perspective, the immediate danger is that
they have to rely on the selected information provided. Intelligence services,
however, are likely to have good reasons for the release of a particular piece
of information at a particular point in time and under particular
circumstances.

Conclusion
The news media play an important role in the political life of contemporary
democratic societies. This article has shed light on those parts of the media

75
Arthur Hulnick, ‘Being Public about Secret Intelligence’, International Journal of
Intelligence and CounterIntelligence 12/4 (1999) pp.463–83 (p.480).
76
Sir David Pepper, BBC2 ‘Who’s Watching You?’, 1 July 2009.
77
As quoted in Arthur Hulnick, Fixing the Spy Machine: Preparing American Intelligence for
the Twenty-First Century (Praeger: Westport, CT 1999) p.176.
78
Hayden Statement to CIA Employees, 6 December 2007.
79
Richard Aldrich, ‘Regulation by Revelation? Intelligence, Transparency and the Media’ in
Dover and Goodman, Spinning Intelligence pp.13–36 (p.18).
 The Role of News Media 705

which refer to aspects of accountability and oversight of the intelligence

realm. Exploring American media coverage of counter-terrorist efforts in the
post-9/11 era, three key roles for news media have been identified. Firstly, a
crucial purpose refers to the transmission of information about govern-
mental activities to the public domain and by revealing information. By
doing so, media coverage can also perform as a stimulator for formal
scrutinizers. In several cases discussed in this article, journalists have
effectively woken up lethargic formal oversight bodies to questionable
intelligence activities.
The second role identified is that of a substitute watchdog. The illustrative
examples in this article suggest that, in some cases where formal scrutinizers
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appear to be inept or unwilling to investigate a matter, the news media are

capable of critically examining the abuse of powers or human rights by
intelligence agencies. Maybe more so than formal intelligence oversight
forums, they cover both domestic (e.g. with respect to the NSA’s
wiretapping) and transnational activities (e.g. the complex web of the
CIA’s extraordinary rendition programme). Due to rapid global commu-
nications, major news media outlets can draw on an increasingly wide range
of sources and information in near real-time. Given the increase of global
intelligence efforts, this is an important capability. Many formal oversight
bodies are restricted in their work by an explicit mandate to focus on
domestic issues.
Finally, the role of the media as a legitimizing institution was identified. In
a rather indirect and informal way, media coverage can contribute to the
legitimization of intelligence services and the related policies and activities.
Though this is a less obvious function of intelligence oversight, the general
idea of establishing scrutiny systems for the field of intelligence and national
security incorporates the aim of fostering citizens’ trust into their intelligence
services.
Overall, the research has shown that the media’s scrutiny functions
are practised in an infrequent, ad hoc and informal manner. The media,
thus, provide an uneven quality of intelligence oversight and, while
contributing to the scrutiny of intelligence, do not easily fit into existing
conceptual frameworks of intelligence oversight. This is partly the case due
to external factors, such as government secrecy and the intelligence services’
own media strategies, which severely restrict the work of journalists
covering intelligence topics. Yet the pre-war coverage by American media
outlets concerning Iraq also showed that the media can easily turn into a
‘lapdog’ which insufficiently challenges official policies and information.
Future research will have to further re-evaluate the complex relationship
between citizens, the media, the intelligence services, policy-makers and
formal scrutinizers in the post-9/11 era.

Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank the participants at the 2011 CIISS
Conference for their useful comments on an earlier version of this paper.
 706 Intelligence and National Security

Many thanks also to the editors of this Special Issue, and to Huw Bennett
and Ross Bellaby for their helpful advice.

Notes on Contributor
Claudia Hillebrand is a Lecturer in Intelligence and Counter-Terrorism in
the Department of International Politics at Aberystwyth University. Her
forthcoming monograph with Oxford University Press is entitled Counter-
Terrorism Networks in the European Union: Maintaining Democratic
Legitimacy after 9/11. The book is based on research supported by a Marie
Curie Early Stage Research Fellowship. Claudia is also co-editor of the
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forthcoming Routledge Companion to Intelligence Studies (with Robert

Dover and Michael Goodman). Her main research interests include
intelligence oversight and accountability; intelligence and police co-opera-
tion; counter-terrorism policing; and the nexus between security provision
and democratic legitimacy. More specifically, she has conducted research on
the European Police Office (Europol), international counter-terrorism
collaboration and investigations into intelligence misconduct and the CIA’s
extraordinary rendition campaign.