ARTICLE BY TOM LATIMER, HPSCI STAFF

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP01-01773R000400620010-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: C
• Document Page Count: 12
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 22, 2012
• Sequence Number: 10
• Publication Date: August 23, 1979
• Content Type: MEMO

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L? J1't1'1uL1N I T 1~
8LC #19-~
3 A1J 1?9
MEMORANDUM F-',%'?: Deputy Director for National Foreign Assessment
FROM: Director of Central Intelligence
SUBJECT: Article by Tom Latimer, HPSCI Staff
1. Att ;hed is a copy of an article written by Tom Latimer of the
HPSCI. It j:,.. a thoughtful piece. It also represents some of the
directions i-, which we are going to be stimulated by that Committee
2. I note on page 5--by the check I have put in the margin--a
warning sign that we are going to be probed in the area of crisis
management. The Committee feels it did a real service in stimulating
us last year on the question of indications and warning. They are
pleased that Dick Lehman has that moving in the right direction. We
have not, frwnkly, been hard-tasked from the crisis management are-,
3. On :-ge 7 in the bottom right, Tom makes a comment about the
fact that thze- principal- interaction between the Agency, the State
Department, he Defense Department and the White House has always been
with DDO. I is my perception that that is not the case today with
respect to coW and the White House, but that it is the case with respect
to State. I have talked to John McMahon about this some. I have no
desire to cu:--b the fine contact that does exist between DD0 and State.
That has its important functions. I would like to encourage you and
John, howeve-, to begin a program of ensuring that NFAC turns to DDO
in the condL:.:.r of periodic meetings with the desk officers in State.
This will rc; only help NFAC and State in getting to know each other
IT-IL' r\ lri % i
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14
better so that the analysts can truly support some of their principal..
customers, it will help both NFAC and DDO in ensuring close coordination
between them. I'm sure some coordination exists in many areas today
bif't I. suspect there are some areas in which 000 and NFAC do not really
exchange. 25X1
STANSFIELD TURNER
Attachment a/s
cc: DDCI
DDO
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STAT
 THOMAS K. LATIMER I
U.S. INTELLIGENCE AND THE CONGRESS
THE AUTHOR: Dr. Latimer is Staff Director of the House
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. He was Prin-
cipal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (Communica-
tions, Command, Control and Intelligence) from 1976 to
1977 and the Special Assistant to the Secretary and Deputy
Secretary of Defense from 1974 to 1976. This article is based
upon a paper presented at the 8th Annual Conference of the
International Security Studies Program' of the Fletcher
School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, and it will
appear in a forthcoming volume entitled Intelligence:
Deception and Surprise.
IN BRIEF
In the past five years Congress has gained an expanded role in overseeing the intelligence activities
of the. government. Congressional attention centers upon five concerns: investigation, oversight,
budget review, quality of analysis and legislation. By cstablishing guidelines and by overseeing the
activities, budget requests and quality of assessments of the intelligence services, Congress ensures
that intelligence analysts adequately anti~pa~etwcrises and that their eerz the Congress and themtellgencethcommurc
policy formulation: This closer relations p
is Here to stay, and it should be of ultimate benefit to the United States as a whole.
he question of what role the U.S. Con-
gress should play in the intelligence
and counterintelligence activities of the
government is a relatively new one. The Con-
gress always had some impact on intelligence
activities, beginning with the creation of the
Central Intelligence Agency by the National
Security Act of 1947. In the years since, both
the Senate and the House Armed Services Com-
rnitteees, as well as the Appropriations Commit-
tees of both houses, were briefed to some extent
on the CIA's operations and on the budget for
the CIA -: fiscal year.
In 1974 =ublic allegations of massive mis-
dees by `e Central Intelligence Agency, the
Federal Bu=eau of Investigation and other in-
0
telliaence agencies prompted the Senate and
rr
House to reexamine the role of Congress in
overseeing the activities of the nation's intelli-
gence services. In the process which has un-
folded over the past five years, the Congress as
exercised increased control over the intelligence
services, primarily in five separate but associ-
ated areas: investigative activities; oversight of
intelligence operations; budget authorization
and appropriation; substantive quality of inte.l.-
gence assessments; and enactment of lea sla-
tion.
The sudden reality of determined Congres-
sional investigation sent a shock wave through-
out the intelligence community, which had been
accustomed to dealing with, only a few, very
senior members of Congress and revealing very
little about its operations. Moreover, the mana-
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e intelligence services had taken for
the general acceptance by the Congress
the public that their word'. was necessary
d that they were performing-well. The glare
f publicity upon their previously clandestine
world, plus the hard probing of the Senate and
House Select Committees on Intelligence,
forced a dramatic chance in the relationship
between the intelligence agencies and the Con-
gress-__-That new relationship now has been
:corked out for the most part, and the result has
been a constructive one for the intelligence ser-
vices, for the Congress and for the public.
The Investigative Role of Congress
In the first phase of this developing new rela-
tionship, the primary emphasis was on the in-
vestigative role of Congress. Following allega-
tions in the press of massive illegal activities by
intelligence services, the Senate created a Select
Committee to Study Governmental Operations
with Respect to Intelligence Activities.' That
committee-known as the Church Committee
after its Chairman, Senator Frank Church-
spent fifteen months thoroughly investigating
and studying the intelligence activities of the
United States. In July 1975 the House followed
suit and established its own Select Committee
on Intelligence,2 known as the Pike Committee,
chaired by Representative Otis Pike. The Pike
Committee finished its work in February 1976.
Both committees recommended that perma-
nent, follow-on committees be established to
monitor continually the activities of intelligence
services?
In the cases of both the Church and Pike
Committees, allegations of misdeeds by the in-
tel?igence services were investigated thoroughly.
But both committees, in keeping with their
charters, went beyond the questions of abuses
and into issues involved in the very structure
and quality of the intelligence process. The
investigations initially met with considerable
resistance on the part of those being investi-
gated. From the prolonged struggle between the
committees, which wanted information, and the
intelligence services, which were reluctant to
provide certain information and adamantly op-
posed 'co providing other data, emerged several
important lessons for the Congress and the
Executive Bra-ich.
From the viewpoint of the Congressional
committees, it became very i-nportactt to be able
to ask precisely the right question of the right
ffi
i
l
o
c
a
in order to get the needed information.
Persistence was also discovered to be a neces-
sity. Within each element of the intelligence
services there are officials who believe that co-
operation with Congressional oversight com-
r:.ittees is not only necessary and inevitable, but
it can be a constructive factor in the operations
of those intelligence services. Persistence on
the part of the oversight committees tends to
encourage and to reinforce the efforts of such
officials in their internal bureaucratic struaa es
.
The Executive Branch also learned that the
Congress was serious about exercising its over-
sight responsibilities with respect to the intelli.
gence activities of the government One result
of that realization was a responsible effort on
the part of senior Administration officials out
side the intelligence comrnunity_~? In
President Ford's Administration and continuing I
into th
e presentto evolve prodhb
-ceures werey z
the oversight committees can gain access to the
information they seek while assuring the pro.
tection of intelligence sources from . unautho-
rized disclosure. Not all of those procedures
have been worked out to ever
yones satisfaction,
but both the oversight committees and the Ex-
ecutive
Branch are approaching the problem in
a spirit of comity which must emst if the Legis-
lative and Executive Branches of the govern-
ment are to work together in this complex area.
Congressional insistence on exercising its
constitutional role of investigating and oversee.
ing the Executive role in operating the clan-
destine intelligence activities of our government
is in keeping with the wisdom of the Founding
Fathers, who built into our Constitution mech-
anisms to check the concentration of too much
power in either branch. In the area of intelli-
gence operations, the checking and balancing
role of the Congress is especially important
because the part played by an informed public
is greatly constrained by the very fact that our :
nation's intelligence activities operate best
:t
when little information about those activities
is made public.
Despite the difficulty the American people
have in knowing whether or not the intelligence
. i
activities of their government are proper and
effective, the public attitude toward intelligence'
is an important factor in the way Congress ap.
proaches its oversight role. The Congress, in f
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There can be little doubt about the chilling
effect Congressional scrutiny can have on the
clandestine activities of U.S. intelligence ser-
vices. Proponents of more vigorous efforts in
the area of so-called "covert actions- of the
CIA' assert that enactment of the Hughes-Ryan
Amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act of
1974, which requires the appropriate commit-
tees of Congress be informed whenever the
President makes a determination that such a
covert action is necessary, has been followed by
a dramatic decrease in the use of such activities.
rhelps shape the image the publi has o l I
intelligence services. Over a ast fiv
ears that interactive process- seeivs to have
yielded several concerns shared by the Congress
and the public at large.
Congressional Oversight
One such concern is that while the intelli-
gence services should be invoked against for-
eign activities hostile to our nation's security,
they should not be used to violate the constitu-
tional rights of American citizens. This con-
ce.-n resulted in the establishment of restric-
tions on the activities of intelligence services,
first by President Ford a and then by President
Carters In addition, the Attorney General in
each of these Administrations issued volumi-
nous guidelines for the conduct of intelligence
activities to limit the danger that they would
infringe on the rights of American citizens.
That concern has also led to the enactment
of one piece of legislation, the Foreign Elec-
tronic Surveillance Act of 1978,6 which for the
first time requires the Executive Branch to ob-
tain a warrant in order to monitor electronically
an American citizen or permanent resident
alien for national security purposes. Prior to
the enactment of that .legislation Presidents had
relied on the inherent power of their office to
approve such surveillance without a warrant.
This concern has also led to proposals for the
enactment of an omnibus bill which would pro-
vide legislative charters for the major intelli-
gence services (the CIA, the National Security
Agency and the counterintelligence arm of the
FBI) and would also provide a list of particular
activities which would be proscribed for those
services.
Finally, concern over the need to guard
against any future violations of the rights of
Americans was a primary factor in the creation
of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
in 1976 7 as a permanent follow-on to the
Church Committee and the establishment of
the House Permanent Select Committee on In-
telligence in 1977.8 Both resolutions stated that
their purpose was to provide vigilant legislative
oversight over the intelligence activities- [and
also intelligence-related activities, in the House
version only] of the United States to assure that
such activities are in conformity with the Con-
stitution and laws of the United States."
Congressional Budget Review
Another c mcern which has evolved from the
examination of intelligence over the past five
years is over the amount of mon_ ey being spent
on intelligence. Public concern over this issue
is ne ss y muted because, for security rea-
sons, the debate is conducted in secret sessions
between the oversight committees and the Exec-
utive Branch and in executive sessions among
the committees themselves.
Nonetheless, a major impact by Congress
upon the intelligence activities of theWvern-
ment is via s. Both houses
of ongress recognized the importance of pro- -
viding their intelligence oversight committees
leverage over the intelligence services by giving
them control over the budgets of those services.
The res lutions establishina, both select coin- !
mittees provide t: no funds could be appro-
priated c out inteligence activities -un-
less su funds sb have been previously
au thorzze an in ea Ouse e select con-
mittees r e a rzzaaon ' annually
to their respective ouse or approv
It is through the annual budget review
process that the oversig t committees can de-
velop an ui ep un ers n g o ex ~io~v c
the taxpa ey is ezno s e r intelli-ge ce u e committees look at the
budget not only agency-by-agency but func-
tionally as well (i.e_, how much is being spent
on collection, processing and production). The
committees also examine the budgets from an
appropriations viewpoint (Le., how much is
spent on research and development, procure-
ment, operation and maintenance, personnel,
retirement, etc.).
In short, the Director of Central Intelligence
and the head of each agency in the intelligence
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ommunity appear before the oversight com-
mittees and the Appropriations Committees of
both houses each year to justify in detail the
amount of money being requested to operate the
respective agency for the coming fiscal year.
Both the Senate and House Select Commit-
tees on Intelligence examine the budge equest
for the National Foreign Intelligence Program,
which is developed by the Director of Central
Intelligence. According to Executive Order
12036, it includes the budgets for:
Committee on Intelligence shares responsibility
with the Armed Services Committee for review.
ing that part of the Department of Defense
budget which goes to those activities defined
by the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs
of Staff as "intelligence-related activities.- io
Intellia nce-related activities are those activities
within the Denartu ent of Defense but outside
the National Intelligence Program which in-
clude: responding primarily to operational
military commanders' taskng for tune-sensitive
information on foreign entities; responding to
national level intelligence tasking of systems,
the primary mission of which is support of
operating forces; training personnel for intelli-
gence duties (funds for training Defense De-
partment personnel are all contained in one pro-
gram in-the overall defense budget); providing
an intelligence reserve; or performing research
and development of intelligence or related ca-
pabilities.
(A) The programs of the Central Intelli-
gence Agency;
(B) The Consolidated Cryptologic Pro-
gram, the General Defense Intelligence Pro-
gram, and the programs of the offices within
the Department of Defense for the collection
of specialized national foreign intelligence
through reconnaissance, except such ele-
ments as the Director of Central Intelligence
and the Secretary of Defense agree should be
excluded;
(C) Other programs of agencies within
the intelligence community designated jointly
by the Director of Central Intelligence and
the head of the department or by the Presi-
dent as national foreign intelligence of
counterintelligence activities;
(D) Activities of the staff elements of the
Office of the Director of Central Intelligence.
In addition, the House Permanent Select
The intense scrutiny renich the oversight
committee;-. vvto -tee intelligence budget re-
quests enables them to carry out several of their
ke`y responsibilities. For one thing. it would be
extremely difficult, if not impossible. for an
intelligence agency to undertake any significant
action in violation of the law without expending
considerable funds for that purpose: The
thorough budget revieW, which includes visits }
to field operations, rules out any such possi-
bility. Secondly, it is through the budget re-
view process that the committees are able to
determine whether there is unnecessary dupli-
cation of collection, processing and production
of intelligence.
The House of Representatives, which tends to
delve into greater detail than does the Senate
in examining Administration budget requests,
includes the intelligencerelated activities of the
Defense Department in the responsibilities of
its Select Committee on Intelligence, both to
ensure that no unnecessary d_ apl,' ation of caps
bilities occurs bettveen~the operations of the
"national" program and those of the Defense
Department and to make certain that needed
capabilities do not "slip into the cracks.'
Substantive Quality of Intelligence
A third major concern which has engaged
the attention of the Congress over the past half-
decade is over how well our intelligence ser-
vices support U.S. policymale+s and the Con-
gress. That concern was reflected in the
language of both the Senate and House resolu-
tions which created the Senate and House Select
Committees on Intelligence- Both committees
were charged with the responsibility to "make
every effort to assure that the appropriate de-
partments and agencies of the United States
provide informed and timely intelligence neces-
sary for the Executive and Legislative Branches
to make sound decisions affecting the security
and vital interests of the Nation." Both resolu-
tions also charged their respective select com-
mittee to make a study and report back to each
house of Congress on "the quality of the ana-
lytic capabilities of United States intelligence
and means for integrating more closely analytic
intelligence and policy formulation." 11
The select committees have taken their re-
sponsibilities in this area very seriously. Each
has conducted its own independent series of
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studies on the quality of intelligence. Mention
of a fete of these studies will provide an indi-
cation of their scope and depth and a measure
of the concern of the committees over this issue.
One"such study was conducted by the Senate
Select Committee on Intelligence Subcommittee
on Collection, Production and Quality. It ad-
dressed the question of how well the U.S. in-
telligence community had analyzed the 1973
Arab oil embargo.12 One of the key findings
of that study was that certain public sources
had done as well or better in analyzing major
issues involved in the oil crisis than had the
intelligence community. The' study also con-
cluded that there had been ample data avail-
able to Intelligence analysts and that they
simply failed to analyze that data adequately.
The Central Intelligence Agency countered with
Its own classified assessment of how well it had
done on the oil problem. In the process, issues
were illuminated-which the management of the
Central Intelligence Agency might have over-
looked in the absence of such an outside study.
On the House side, one- of the first studies
the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
undertook was of the interaction between the
policymakers and their intelligence support
services-to determine how well that inter-
action is working, particularly in the vital area
of 'warning intelligence.' As defined by the
Select Committee's Subcommittee on Evalua-
tion, warning intelligence encompasses "the
range of intelligence collection, processing,
analysis and reporting of data which is iiitended
to provide our policyrnakers sufficient lead time
before an event occurs to develop our own
course of action- to either deter, alter or respond
to the impending development` is
WVarning Analysis and Intelligence Failures
Quality analysis in the warning intelligence
area certainly has to be considered one of the
primary functions of the intelligence commu-
nity. A major reason for the establishment of
tae Central Intelligence Agency in 1947 was the
perception that the Pearl Harbor tragedy could
have been avoided if the United States in 1941
had had a focal point for the correlation and
distribution of all of the then available intelli-
gence. The study of warning intelligence by the
Subcommittee en Evaluation revealed, however,
that in 1978-some thirty-one years after the
CIA was created-no focal point for warning
intelligence existed within the U.S. government.
Simply by opening up this subject for study,
the Subcommittee found itself a gathering point
for the many separate views on warning intelli-
gence which existed throughout the intelligence
and defense communities.
The Subcommittee study examined the warn-
ing process in detail, focusing on lessons
learned-and not learned-from past crises
such' as Pearl Harbor, the Korean War, the
Cuban missile crisis, the Soviet invasion of
Czechoslovakia and the 1973 Middle East Var.
The study found that after each "intelligence
failure" to provide timely warning. a major
effort was begun. to improve the collection of
data, and yet in virtually no case had - lack of
data been a major factor in the failure ade-
quately to anticipate the crisis. Improvements
in analysis and in the integration of analysis
with policy formulation have lagged far behind
improvements in the collection, processing and
dissemination of data.
As a direct result of the Subcommittee's
study of indications and warning and its revela-
tion of the absence of a focal point for warning
leadership in the intelligence community, the
Director of Central Intelligence assigned a
senior intelligence officer to provide such a
focus. That constituted a major first step in =
improving the nation's warning intelligence, but
the Subcommittee study pointed out that much
remains to be done. One such area of needed
improvement Is in crisis management, where
better management is required of the flow of
information which, during crises. threatens to
overload the system.
The thrust of the Subcommittee study was
that improvements can be made in analysis of .
warning intelligence, notwithstanding the like-
lihood that difficulties will always persist. The
study also concluded that an important hn- ,
provement in warning intelligence related to
the analysts asking the correct questions per-
tinent to a given crisis.
In fact, one former staff member of the
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Rich-
ard K. Betts, has taken this idea one step
further and suggested that the intelligence
analyst might perform a useful function by
-offering the policymaker difficult questions
thus serving as a "Socratic ate. . ? etts _
has observed that it is illusory to believe that
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telligerce analysis can be improved substan-
tially by altering the analytic system. Both the
Evaluation Subcommittee's study on warning
intelligence and Betts' analysis stress the im-
portance of policy-level interaction with the in-
telligence analysts in the warning process.
Betts places the heavier blame for failures on
the policymakee:
By the narrower definition of intelligence,
there have been few major failures. In most
cases of mistakes in predicting attacks or in
assessing operations, the inadequacy of criti-
cal data or their submergence in a viscous
bureaucracy, were at best the proximate
causes of failure. The ultimate causes of
error in most cases have been wishful think
ing, cavalier disregard of professional ana-
lysts and, above all, the premises and pre-
conceptions of policymakers 3s
Communication Between Analysts and
Policymaters
In the case of the 1973 Arab attack on Israel,
not only was there no intelligence warning, but
the very morning of the attack the CIA dis-
seminated an assessment that there would be
no attack, and the rest of the intelligence corn-
munity concurred in this assessment. Similarly,
policymakers were not alerted in 1968 to the
impending Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.
Richard Betts broke down the problem of
what he calls "strategic intelligence failures"
into three categories: 1)' attack warning,
2) operational evaluation, and 3) defense plan-
ning. We have been discussing primarily the
first category. Betts notes, however, that some
problems cut across all three categories, and it
is in that context that he attributes the ultimate
causes of error to policymakers.
Discussion on this point sometimes suffers
from a difference in perspective over precisely
what it is that a policymaker expects in the way
of support from the intelligence community.
In the area of warning intelligence, the policy
levels (that is, star: officers who brief, talk to
and prepare issue and decision papers for the
President, Cabinet and sub-Cabinet officers)
are usuall7 satisfied with a fairly general type
of warning such as: The odds that country X
will invade country Y within the next month
have risen fm one-in-ten to fifty-fifty in the
last two weeks because of the follo:ving factors.-
Too often outside observers and even intelli-
gence analysts themselves think that warning
analysts have failed in their mission if they are
unable to pinpoint the precise day, time and
place of an attack weeks in advance.
Two recent exam? _s show on the one hand
how poorly the intelligence community can do
in providi.*ig warning and conversely how well
it can perform. Triers is not much question
that the intelligence analysts failed to provide
the policy levels with adequate warning of the
Shah of Iran's domestic difficulties. A thorough
study of the performance of the intelligence
community with respect to the Iniaa crisis
was conducted by the House Per 2neat Select
Coin Intelligence Subcommittee on
policyrn
uuss.~~'he report went on to note, however, that
simplistic charges of 'intelligence failure' an
not accurately describe the situation. Such
charges blind us to the importance of user atti-
tudes in any warning process. In
Iran, loner standjty U.S. attitud- toward the
Shah inhibit 1'' llectioa
e po .cymakers' appetite for analysis of the
Shah s position, and deafened policymakers to
the.e warning implicit in co e current rote
ge ce. In short, the study concluded that in the
case of Iran, there was a failure "to which both
the irjtelligen a coazrtrmity and the -useg of
intelligence c
of Vietnam in February 1979, the policy levels
were provided adequate warning, according to
their own testimony before the Subcommittee
on Oversight of the House Permanent Select
Committee on Intelligence. The Chairman of
the Subcommittee on Oversight, Representative
Les Aspin, noted in a study following hearing
on this subject that "the intelligence community
provided sufficiently accurate, timely notice of
impending Vietnamese and Chinese actions 1
that policymakers could prepare options and
take certain actions in anticipation of hostili-
ties." 27 Representative Aspin went on to note
that "the policyrnakers' active efforts to find out
what the intelligence community knew kept
channels of communications open." He further
suggested that steps already taken by the Di-
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 rector of Central Intelligence to make differ- policy levels at the State Department, Defense
ences of opinion inside the intelligence com- Department and the National Security Council
munity known to policyrnakers should be -con- knew that they were receiving good warning
trued and strengthened.' and were looking for it. In the case of Iran the
Improving the Warning Process few warning signals that were sounded by in-
l6
p
y
v~cu.
lax Granted that warning intelligence is almost
the always burdened by doubt- by its
nature
------ y?a~~~ _L ruuiv co Lne tact that because they we ` -_,
perhaps y : re obstrlcted by the
certain steps can be taken to jx72 ve th Leal- long-standing U.S. attitudes toward the Snap.
it j-. warning intelligence. In his study on the Ultimately much depends upon the senior
'
performance o e. telligence community levels of the intelligence community having, in-
with respect to the China-Vietnam conflict, formed convictions and the courage of those
Representative Aspin points out that the Sit a convictions. Weakly sounded alarms, murky
tegic Warning Staff, a small CIA-chaired inter- consensus and rnr..f,,1i.. 1,e,~,.-.: --.~--
- --- -- -- - +-~ uautxc~y to ger a reception at the
olic
I
ion- h ~' T wa sw. ti~
Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Re- degree of prescience. cam rot an inordinate
search in Issuing warnings that China would But it can be improved. In evaluating cur
invade Vietnam. rent and past efforts at warning analysis by the
In recent years, Directors of Central Intelli. intelligence community, one needs to keep in
gence have made an effort to ingrate differ mind the relative lack of attention given to
ntana c views a ntowthe~text sofXNational analysis by the managers of intelligence since
g
r
b an an directly on recruitment and training policies
China-Vietnam because analytically they pre-' and practices. It has also directly affected the
sented substantially different problems for the perceptions of the rest of the intelligence
analysts as well as- for the policylmakers. agencies and the key users of intellly
~
s
permeated the Central in-
too far a contrast between the intelligence telligence Agency, impacting directly and in-
analysts' performance re
arding I
d
ce even further to allow the views on Td-the extent that an ctor of Cen
wax-ning of the Strategic Warning Staff or other telliaen e h ZZ_
his o more ' ortaat
analytic groups to surface to the policy level. than simply managing the CIA's destine
One impression left by the studies on Iran operations, e has tend to concentrate on his
and China Vietnam is that the performae of as contro er o
the in ce community in the warning area pity's bu pTe s. u-
is snooty- Of course, one oes
~ sh That attitude ha
-- - - -?-" ~.....,.wa vg, a.c~iLrat inteiugence
analytic products of the rote genre comma- traditionally have ou t of themselves as the
niry. Representative Aspin's comment was di- chief clandestine operatives o t e U.. gov
rected at the -desirability of expanding that erne ent rather
cti - ts
r
At first DIusa, ttie two case studies might Until recent years, CIA policy was that off
-Z? ? t
f
o con
zr:ti the thesis that the success or from the clandestine service rather than from E
failure of the warning process depends directly the analysis side of that agency were to deal
upon the degree of willingness of people at the with the State Department, Defense Depart
policy levels to interact with the intelligence ment and the White House. Thus, whatever
analysts. Certainly, that is an important factor, interaction there may have been with
rA
l
po
icy-
at least when the warning process works. makers, it came from the operations direct= ate
7-here is no way to compel policynakers to and not the analysis directorate, and there was
n teract with the intelligence analysts. How- precious lit erot
-
e.
action t~Z in the CIA be-
ever, it is a relatively rare occurrence when tween the analysts and the operators.
officials at'the =.--!-;--y levels deliberately refuse Even though some improvements have been
to listen to gcc'c, sound wanting intelligence. made in recent years in this regard
the Hou
,
se
In the case of tre China Vietnam conflict, the Subcommittee staff report on Iran revealed tl
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te
gence analysts, pnmaruy in the State De-
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/08/22 : CIA-RDP01-01773R000400620010-2
n co het the clandestine collection part planning. As
e Agency to respond to his plea for collec- to cast
on on such issues as "tvheL'ter Iranians were
w
focal to the concept of a monarchy as distin-
guished from a particular dynasty, to what
extent the Tehran urban masses provided an
exploitable tool to support or oppose a new gov-
e. met, etc_-
, Correct anticipation of the intentions of for-
eign decisionnakers will always be one of the
most- vexing tasks our analysts and policy-
makers face. Particularly difficult is the en-
deavor. of correctly estimating mistakes in
judgment on. the part of foreign leaders. For
example, one of the contributing causes of the
U.S_ failure- to anticipate the Japanese attack
on Pearl Harbor ovaSur lea-MM B that
such as outzia t attack on a es
wou! be an roerr judgment a apanese
le m -e.' arly, our esti-
mators failed to anticipate Khrushchev's deci-
sion to emplace strategic missiles in Cuba,
which proved indeed a mistake in judgment
that played a role in Khrushchev's ouster.
From the point of view of surprise, the Cuban
missile crisis is instructive. Although Khru-
shcher s intentions were not divined, once the
Soviets began to implement that decision, U.S.
intelligence collection assets were able to detect
evidence which led the analysts to make a cor-
rect judgment of Khrushchev's intentions and
to convey that intelligence judgment to the
President in a. timely enough fashion to' enable
him to develop and implement redressive
options.
In the entire attack warning area, U.S. intelli
gence has registered v p impra ements star
the last fifteen to -twenty years. Analysts may
still have difficulty in correctly anticipating
foreign decisions, but the ability to detect steps
in the implementation of those decisions and
to recognize those steps for what they are is
markedly better than in the past.
It is not to say that even greater improve-
ments are not needed. They can and must be
made. Perhaps continued Congressional atten-
tion to this area will assist the Executive Branch
in ritaking those improvements.
The Lessons of Experience
We should not leave this subject without
several observations on U.S. intelligence capes
a nation, we seem to have tried
the Vietnam tear from our memories.
Yet, one of the lessons learned by our armed
forces in that conflict was the operational,
battlefield use of modern intelligence. Wort
War It and Korean War veterans, by and large,
looked with disdain upon their intelligence
functions, giving little weight to their input
into command decisions. That attitude pre-
vailed during the first years of the Vietnam War.
It is one of the ironies of warfare that the U.S.
armed forces' understanding and use of modern
combat support intelligence began to peak
only after the political will to continue the war
had ebbed beyond the point of revival The cog
trast between the surprise of the Tet 1908
Communist offensive and the fully anticipated
attack of 1972 gives one measure of the dra-
matic way operational intelligence improved
during the course of that unfortunate war.
All three military services today are making
vigorous efforts to improve and to integrate
combat support intelligence with the opera-
tional commands in a fashion and to a degree
never before witnessed in our armed services,
and that effort is in no small measure due to the
operational experiences in Vietnam of the new
generation of general and flag lank officers in
the Army, Navy and Air Force.
Looking briefly at the intelligence role in de-
fense planning, again the improvements in re-
cent years have been dramatic, although they
may still fail to keep pace with the developing
threat. The U.S. governments knowledge of
the size and deployment of the major adver-
sary s armed forces is vastly improved over what
it was twenty years ago. Granted, there are
still deficiencies in certain areas., But in terms
of the trend over the past two decades, the
ability to assess the opposing military threat
has been rising steadily.
A legitimate question is whether U.S. intelli-
gence estimates of enemy strength are improv,
ing as quickly as the threat is developing. Here
again, major qualitative improvements could
be made in analysis if officials at the policy
levels would draw from the available intelligence
net assessments of U.S. military capabilities as
against Warsaw Pact capabilities. Some effort
in this regard has been made in recent years by
the Net Assessment office in the Deparnnent of
Defense, but more could be accomplished
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 1. Senate Resolution 21, U.S. Senate. 94th Con-
gress, 1s; session,12nuary 21, 1975.
2 House Resolut.icn 591, U.S. House of Representa-
tires. 94th Cc=g:-_-_s, 1st session, July 17, 1975.
3. "Recorrme:'_ca-dons of the Final Report of the
House Select Cc=ittee on Intelligence." House Re-
port No. 94.833, U.S. House of Representatives, 94th
Congress', 2nd session. February 11. 1976; and "Final
Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental
Operations with ?. spect to Intelligence Activities,"
Report No. 94-755, U.S. Senate, 94th Conte ess, 2nd
session, April 26, 1976.
4. Executive Order 11905, February IS, I9:6.
5. Executive Order 12036, January 26. 1978.
6. Public Law 95-511. 95th Congress. 2nd session
S50 USC 1S01). October 25. 1978.
7. Senate Resolution 400. Report Nos. 94-67-3 and
94-770. U.S. Senate, 94th Congress, 2nd session, Way
19, 1976.
8. House Resolution 653. Report No. 95-493, U.S.
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Congress can and should play a role in
sistin, that we do our best in a ,r??
operational support and int-Maorre ct,n for
defense planning. After all, the Constitution
assigns to the Congress the power "to raise and
support armies" and "to provide and maintain
a navy as well as "to declare var."
Today as never before, intelligence plays a
vital role in Congressional action in those areas.
Must we accept the fatalistic conclusion that we
develop and accept a "tolerance for disaster"?
Cannot measurable improvements be made in
the analysis process? The answer is that we
cannot Juiow until the management of the in-
telligence community, fully supported by the
President, stages an all-out effort to accomplish
major improvements and until those efforts are
given enough time to achieve results. The
Congress can assist this process by monitoring
and encouraging such efforts.
Legislation
The fifth area in which Congress has come
to exercise- control over the intelligence activi-
ties of the United States is in the legislative
arena. Two major pieces of legislation enacted
within the past year have already been noted:
the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of
1978 and the bill authorizing appropriation for
fiscal year 1979 intelligence and intelligence-
related activities of the U.S. government. The
latter marked the first time in the history of th
Other signiucant legislation has been intro-
duced into both houses of Congress and has
been the subject of hearings. Several pieces of
proposed legislation deal -with the effort to make
it a violation of law to disclose the identity of
an intelligence agent to anyone not authorized
United States that such legislation had ev
been enacted into law.
l
to receive such information. Other proposed
legislation would attempt to regularize by law
procedures ?whereby classified national security
information can be used in criminal trials in
a way that would protect classified information
on the one hand and the right of the accused .
to a fair trial on the other.
Finally, the Executive Branch, the oversight
committees of the Congress and interested segments of the American public for many months
have been discussing the enormously complex .
task of drafting an omnibus law which would
provide updated charters for the major com-
ponents of the intelligence community, and,
which would legitimize those activities which
are deemed proper for those agencies and pro-
scribe those activities judged to be inappro-
priate.
The Expanding Role of Congress
It is clear that the Congress is asserting its
newly expanded role in the intelligence activi-
ties of the government Senate concern over the
ability by the United States to monitor and
verify Soviet compliance with strategic arms
limitation treaties will continue to mean in- .
creased demands for substantive intelligence
support for that body of Congress, as well as a
keen interest by both houses in the budget
requests by the Executive Branch for systems
to maintain and improve that verification
Fapability. ----- -----
ave come to rely on intelligence to help them
reach decisions on the wide varietr of issues
involving foreign affairs, military matters, inter-
national economic developments and national
security in general. This closer relationship
between the Congress and the intelligence com- !
munity is here to stay, and it can and should
be of ultimate benefit to the American people
as a whole.
..tee . t \ L r rrt A I AeASO?1
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NOTES (co7ctzaued)
House of Reorestrtatives, 95L, Congress, 1st session,
July 14, 1.977.
9. Ikon-in tell igence gathering activities include
platting propaganda in news media, assisting foreigt
political leaders and parties, paramilitary actions such
as the secret war in Laos run by the CIA, coups, etc.
10. Department of Defense Budget Guidance Alan.
ucl 7710-141.
11. iae House resolution included- the intelligence-
related activities of the Defense Department within
the purriew of Its Select Contreittee on Intelligence.
whereas the Senate's resolution did not.
22. -U.S. Intelligence Analysis and the Oil Issue,
1973.-1974." Staff Report of the Select Cotrtmittee on
Intelligence, Subcommittee on Collection, Production
and Quality, U.S. Senate, 93th Congress, 1st session,
December 1977.
13. annual Report by the Permanent Select Com-
mittee on Intelligence,- Report No. 931795, U.S.
House of Representatives, 95th Cong:ess, 2nd session,
October 14, 1978, p. 6.
14. Richard K Betts, "Analysis, War and Decision:
Why Intelligence Failures Axe Inevitable,- World
Politics, Vol. 31, No. 1, October 1978, p. 61.
15. Ibid., p. 67.
16. "Iran: Evaluation of U.S. Intellig,ra a Perforce.
ance Prior to November 1978.` Staff Report of the
Permanent Select Committee on InteRIZeaee. Sub,
committee on Evaluation, U.S. House of Rrpc, nq.
tives (WVasbino on, D.C.: U.S. Coves=eat Pdtttag
Office, 1979).
17. Representative Les Aspic, Preys gam, Watch
26, 1979.
18. 'Iran: Evaluation of U.S. InteWgeaes Perform-
ance Prior to November 1978,' op. cit., p. 3.
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