By Cliff Montgomery – July 31st, 2009
The House Intelligence Committee last month stated that the Pentagon has clouded the distinction betweenordinary intelligence collection–which is overseen by congressional intelligence panels–and “clandestine”military operations, which have no such oversight.
In short, the Defense Department (DoD) has improperly designated a number of its intelligence activities as’clandestine operations’. Such an action deprives congressional intelligence panels of their legally-mandatedoversight powers.
“In categorizing its clandestine activities, DoD frequently labels them as ‘Operational Preparation of theEnvironment’ (OPE) to distinguish particular operations as traditional military activities and not as intelligencefunctions,” stated the House panel in a study of the Fiscal Year (FY) 2010 intelligence bill.
“The Committee observes, though, that overuse of [this] term has made the distinction all but meaningless,”added the intelligence panel.
“Operational Preparation of the Environment” (OPE) is a little-known and rather poorly-defined concept. OPEhas variously been portrayed as covert action, as unconventional warfare, as foreign intelligence collection oras a prelude to every one of these activities. The definition appears to depend upon little more than who isusing the term at that moment.
Perhaps tellingly, the phrase cannot be found in the otherwise authoritative DoD Dictionary of Military andAssociated Terms.
The U.S. Special Operations Command briefly mentioned OPE in its 2006 Posture Statement. It was notmentioned in subsequent statements.
Some experts assert that OPE essentially is human intelligence collection.
OPE simply is “the ability of Defense to get into an area and know it prior to the conduct of military operations,”Gen. Michael Hayden, former CIA Director, told Congress during his confirmation hearing in 2006.
“An awful lot of those [OPE] activities…are not, in terms of tradecraft or other aspects, recognizably differentthan collecting human intelligence for a foreign intelligence purpose,” continued Hayden.
“They look very much the same. Different authorities, somewhat different purposes, mostly indistinguishableactivities,” he said.
Yet others say that OPE is much closer to covert action.
“There is often not a bright line between [covert action and] military activities to prepare the battlefield or theenvironment,” wrote National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair in a penned response to congressionalquestions on OPE, which was completed shortly before his confirmation in early 2009.
Regardless of its actual definition, “DoD has shown a propensity to apply the OPE label where the slightestnexus of a theoretical, distant military operation might one day exist,” stated the House Intelligence Committeestudy last month.
“Consequently, these activities often escape the scrutiny of the intelligence committees,” continued the panelreport.
“In the future, if DoD does not meet its obligations to inform the Committee of intelligence activities, theCommittee will consider legislative action clarifying the Department’s obligation to do so,” the Houseintelligence study weakly threatened.
