Shades of Intelligence
Fair Play: The Moral Dilemmas of Spying
by James M. Olson
Potomac Books, 2006
(291 pages, $28.95, hardcover)
reviewed by Tristan Abbey
Before the attacks of September 11, the “ticking time-bomb” scenario—whether or not torture is morally permissible in averting an impending attack—was a purely academic question for most Americans. It is now something many religious Christians seriously debate.
A former operations officer in the Central Intelligence Agency, on the frontlines in the struggle against “expansionist, oppressive, and atheistic Communism,” James Olson admits that he “lied, cheated, manipulated, and deceived every day,” but explains, “I believed then and still do that all these actions were in the service of a noble cause—but no one could have had the kind of career I did without at least some second thoughts.”
Now a professor at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M, he argues that the American people should help determine the “moral limits” for the intelligence community. In Fair Play, he wants to give readers an accurate picture of “the world of intelligence” and raise practical ethical questions, which he hopes “opens some eyes and causes some hard thinking.”
Perilous Techniques
The book can be thought of as being divided into two sections. The first provides background for the analysis of ethical problems in the second.
In the first part, Olson chronicles his life to give the reader perspective on how one becomes an intelligence officer and what it means to be one, reflecting on his assignments and his family history (two of his three children are active in church ministry). He then discusses the history of how Americans have perceived intelligence work, arguing that “in periods of peril . . . we have turned to our intelligence agencies to protect us—and we have not always been fastidious about the techniques they have used.”
He provides a primer on the philosophical justifications for intelligence work. He begins with the story of Rahab, the prostitute who lied to protect Israelite spies and is praised in the Books of Joshua, Hebrews, and James. But other biblical passages, he writes, “seem to contradict indirectly Rahab’s pliable morality and make no clear exceptions for a greater good.”
He reviews Aristotle, Cicero, Machiavelli, Kant, the practitioners of realpolitik, and the theoreticians of utilitarianism, surmising how each would view espionage. He argues that Aristotle and Kant would object to intelligence operations in general, while Machiavelli would be “an unbridled champion” of intelligence. Cicero falls in between.
For the Catholic Church’s view, he relies on St. Thomas Aquinas. He argues that “intelligence is an indispensable adjunct of a state’s war-making capability and therefore legitimately comes under the just war theory” Thomas articulated.
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