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1 [1] (June 11, 2018)

handle is hein.crs/crsmthzzbbu0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Cogesoa Resarc Servic 0 June 11, 2018 CIA Ethics Education: Background and Perspectives Baseline Approaches to Ethics Education In the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), there are two distinct categories of ethics education: One applies to all government agencies and the other to the conduct of activities in the intelligence community specifically. * The Ethics in Government Act (EIGA) (P.L. 95-521), enacted in 1978, established financial disclosure guidelines and restrictions on outside earned income for employees of all government agencies. The EIGA also established the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) whose mission is to provide overall leadership and oversight of the executive branch ethics program designed to prevent and resolve conflicts of interest. OGE oversees government departments and agencies including the CIA. Its focus is generally on records administration and training related to potential conflicts- of-interest, outside employment, interpersonal relationships, and gifts. The CIA's ethics program, mandated through the EIGA, includes ethics orientation for new employees and mandatory annual ethics refresher training for the entire workforce. The most recent OGE assessment of the CIA's ethics program was completed in November 2017. OGE does not have jurisdiction over the CIA's intelligence activities. * CIA officers also receive extensive ethics training specific to intelligence, which includes case studies of ethically challenging operational scenarios, to prepare them for the operational side of their jobs. This training includes familiarization with the legal authorities for the conduct of intelligence activities, principally Executive Order 12333, The Intelligence Community, as amended, and CIA's AR 2-2, Law and Policy Governing the Conduct of Intelligence Activities. However, while these baseline references spell out dos and don 'ts from a legal standpoint, there is little mention of ethics per se. Section 2.1, of E.O. 12333, for example, merely requires intelligence collection be done in a manner that is respectful of the principles upon which the United States was founded. Perspectives on Intelligence Ethics Some former employees and others with experience at the agency have been critical of CIA's ethics program as focusing too much on legal compliance in a reactive, ad hoc manner that falls short of a comprehensive approach to ethics education at the CIA. Legalism, or an ethical attitude that holds moral conduct to be a matter of rule following characterizes the ethical culture of the intelligence community, these critics have noted. Arguing that CIA's formal ethics program falls short of a more comprehensive approach to ethics education, former CIA officer Paul Ericson, in his essay, The Need for Ethical Norms, advocates for an established set of ethical norms or code of conduct: Although many of us have discussed the ethics of our profession, little has been done organizationally to capture these thoughts. Rather than possibly hamstringing future options by formalizing Agency dos and don'ts, we seem to prefer risking a repetition of behaviors which have jeopardized our organizational standing and credibility in the past. We can ill afford to allow this trade-off to continue. Others are skeptical of introducing training on morality into what is often viewed as the inherently amoral environment of covert action or clandestine foreign intelligence. As former Director of Central Intelligence William Webster once put it, In the United States, we obey the laws of the United States. Abroad we uphold the national security interests of the United States. This viewpoint conforms to the realist perspective of international relations, which holds a state's interests to be the preeminent driver of foreign policy, as a frame of reference for individual conduct. Subscribers to the realist perspective do not so much ignore personal morality as believe that it is not particularly relevant to relations between states. In the international context, the national interests of the United States provide a moral imperative of their own, they argue. The realists, or those skeptical of introducing personal morality into training on ethics and into the practice of intelligence, have also observed that an evolution of legal standards-such as those governing the treatment of detained combatants engaged in terrorism-while still short of a comprehensive approach to ethical considerations, has resulted in a demonstrable improvement in ethical behavior. They cite the Detainee Treatment Act (2005), the landmark Supreme Court decision Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (2006), and Executive Order 13491 (2009), Ensuring Lawful Interrogations as examples of policy that has come to define improved standards for the ethical treatment of detainees. Yet critics of realism and the legalistic approach to the practice of intelligence maintain that this approach contributes to an ends justify the means mentality that leaves intelligence professionals susceptible to making regrettable decisions in the midst of morally ambiguous situations. They also counter that the post 9/11 conflict with terrorism is distinguished in part by its adversaries: collections of individuals, rather than a state, who are www.crs.gov 7-5700

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