Paramilitary Covert Action: An Optimization of CIA and USSOF

Increasingly since October 2001, U.S. intelligence operations have resembled traditional military operations and U.S. Military operations have appeared to be historically intelligence operations. Informed elites categorized this apparent merger as the convergence of Title 10 Military operations and Title 50 Intelligence operations. Most often within this debate on convergence, the Department of Defense is accused of overreaching into Intelligence line of responsibilities by executing stealthy USSOF operations. Commonly but to a lesser degree, the CIA is accused of serving as a Geographic Combat Command conducting traditional military activities such as training and advising indigenous forces or conducting drone strikes. Decades of precedence, cloudy or outdated U.S. legal framework, contradicting statutory definitions, and the fact that current enemies are non-state actors each fuel the discussion. This study determines the risk of leaving the CIA as lead agency for Paramilitary Covert Action and reviews the case against USSOFs assumption as lead executor for Paramilitary Covert Action.