Secret and Sanctioned: Covert Operations and the American Presidency

by Stephen F. Knott

Today when we think of covert operations, we think of American-backed mercenaries circulating through jungle camps of Contra guerrillas, CIA agents plotting coups against governments in Chile and Libya, or the lethal cigars used in an attempt to assassinate Castro. In the public imagination, these kinds of operations--often seeming to go over the line, and always hidden from Congress and the American people--are a recent innovation, a rogue offspring of the Cold War, and perhaps even a violation of the democratic ideals on which this country was founded. But in this fascinating volume, Stephen F. Knott demonstrates that such covert operations have a long history in the United States, dating back to the Founding Fathers themselves.
In Secret and Sanctioned , Knott reveals that presidents have relied upon clandestine activities since the American Revolution. Indeed, many of the figures closely associated with American liberty were most active in carrying out covert operations. George Washington, for instance, was not only his own spymaster during the war of independence--corresponding with agents through letters written with invisible ink, creating fake businesses as cover for his spies, and misleading the British by planting false information--but he even went so far as to plan to kidnap King George III's son. Likewise, Thomas Jefferson once considered burning down Saint Paul's Cathedral in London and, as president, wielded clandestine agents freely, whether against North American Indians or North African Barbary states. (At one point, Jefferson plotted to overthrow the Pasha of Tripoli by backing the man's estranged brother, then abandoned the brother when the Pasha sued for peace.) Knott goes on to survey
the continuing tradition of clandestine activities in later administrations, from Polk to Lincoln and beyond. Their operations have a familiar ring, from covert support for disaffected elements in Mexico in 1846, to planting stories in newspapers to demoralize the South and influence foreign opinion during the Civil War, to the coordination of a coup in Hawaii to ensure annexation of the islands. And far from taking Congress or the people into his confidence, the chief executive has always jealously guarded his covert weapons from the prying eyes of Senators and Representatives, seeing such activities as a necessary tool of statecraft and a constitutional expression of executive power.
In the years following the Watergate scandal, Congress launched a series of investigations into covert operations that led many Americans to conclude that we had wandered far from the example of our Founding Fathers. In Secret and Sanctioned , Knott sets the record straight, showing that the clandestine activities of the postwar era did not mark a break in the American political tradition, nor a departure from our political principles, but followed in a direct line from the understanding of executive power held by Washington and Jefferson and many other American presidents.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

272 pages, Hardcover

First published April 25, 1996

Reviews

[Amanda · Rating 2 out of 5]

The history is good, the research is thorough (though cherry-picked), but the overall argument the author is making doesn't stand up. Also manages to make what should be an exciting topic fairly ponderous and dry.

[Liquidlasagna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Library Journal

Repercussions from abuses of power by back-to-back Democratic and Republican presidents (Johnson and Nixon) still echo through American life. If congressional assertion of control in response to the presidential misuse of the CIA was perhaps too extreme, then this volume attempts to present the other side.

Basing this work on his doctoral dissertation at Boston College, the author, now an assistant professor of political science at the U.S. Air Force Academy, presents a brief chronological treatment of covert operations by American presidents from George Washington through George Bush.

International law and morality are dismissed as constraints as Knott tries to refute Frank Church's Senate Report on Intelligence Activities (1976).

Historians will find little new here, and critics will remain unconvinced, but it is a readable effort that raises the issue of the proper role of the CIA and covert operations in the foreign policy of a republic.

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The wilde Amazone

Covert Operations of the the Founding Fathers

Stephen Knott starts this fast paced book by recounting the myth that covert operations in America began with the Cold War, and searches for the truth or falsity of this belief.

Then Knott recounts the history of covert operations in America, beginning during the Revolutionary war with George Washington. Knott points out how the founding fathers understood the value of secrecy and espionage run by the executive branch to maintain secrecy and deniability.

Knott explains how Washington created a contingency fund to pay for spies and secret diplomacy. Jefferson bribed Indians to gain territory and started to overthrow the Pasha of the Barbary pirates. Madison planned covert operations to gain Spanish Florida, to gain land, stop Indian attacks, and get Spain out of North America.

Then Knott describes the efforts of Joel Poinsett for President Madison in Argentina and Chile where he tried to incite independence from Spain, and cut down the influence of the British. Eventually Poinsett worked in Mexico on behalf of President Monroe. Andrew Jackson sent Robert Anthony to Mexico to try and get Texas, to help protect New Orleans.

During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln supported covert efforts throughout Europe and Canada supporting the Union through propaganda in newspapers.

Knott concludes the book by showing how during the nineteen-seventies, congressmen wanted to control covert operations and set up a congressional oversight in the belief that this is what the founding fathers would have wanted. But, as we have seen, the founding fathers believed in covert operations with no congressional oversight, because even then congress could not keep a secret. Knott's book is full of surprising anecdotes detailing the use of covert operations by the founding fathers.

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