DIY or Off the Shelf? State Preferences for Covert Action Partners

• In Event: States and Other People's Rebels

Abstract

This paper investigates the choices that states make when deciding how to engage in covert operations. While scholarship on covert action has recently increased, it has not examined practical questions about how states engage in these hidden actions. One of the most important choices that states make is whether to partner with existing groups in their partner state or to attempt to create a group by inserting agents into the country to recruit participants. Each approach has potential strengths and weaknesses: existing groups have willing members but may have their own interests; agent-founded groups may be more oriented to the task at hand, but it may be difficult for the agents to successfully recruit participants in their target state. I expect that while states may be willing to use existing groups, they prefer to create them themselves. To test this hypothesis, I use WWII-era data. French officials rated more than 200 clandestine networks (groups that worked with Allied intelligence and special operations organizations) at the end of the war, and analyses show that agent-founded groups were rated as more important than existing groups that then partnered with the Allies. Qualitative evidence from OSS (US intelligence), MI6 and SOE (British intelligence and special operations), and Free France decision-making provides further support for my hypothesis.

Author

• Thomas M. Dolan, University of Central Florida