HALLOWEEN MASSACRE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP05S00620R000200470057-7
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 4, 2009
• Sequence Number: 57
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Approved For Release 2009/06/04: CIA-RDP05SO062OR000200470057-7
Halloween
Massacre
By Smith Hemp.ftme
WASHINGTON CIA Director
Stansfield Turner has accomplished
in less than a year what the Kremlin
has been unable to achieve in 30
years of Cold War: the shattering of
the morale of his own agency's top-
secret Directorate of Operations.
In his memo DDO-77-6855, dated
Oct. 7, CIA Deputy Director for
Operations William W. Wells inform-
ed the 4,500 officers of the agency's
clandestine services, which handle
covert operations such as espionage,
counterespionage and political and
Para-military operations, that they
faced a two-stage purge that will
reduce their ranks by nearly 20 per-
cent within the next'IS months.
In his memo, Wells admitted that-
"there is no easy way to accomplish
this reduction of personnel," and
conceded that among the spies to be
kicked out into the cold were "a
number of inci eiuals" who have
made "a vialuable contribution" to
the agency add the security of the
United States.
ACCORDING TO the Wells
memo, those to be forced out of the
CIA were lob? selected on the basis
of their past seven year's standing
rated by yebrly evaluation boards
conducted by the agency's Career
Manager nt Staff (CMS). These
boards are cotnpp"d of officers two
grades sedoft0 those being rated.
Undera d6hous point system de-
veloped by the CMS, a senior CIA
agent who Musa fbached supergrade
rank.and lived i1ptohis potential has
almost no way, Of avoiding vulnera-
bility to. the dense: the only three
ways an officer can acculate positive
points to wigebtifany negative ones
is by havingble promoted in fiscal
years I979.of177,or being evaluated
as having hloest potential" or
"may.deVdb) lW Potential," all of
which aril',unafely for any officer
much over 50.
The first 198t{A agents got their
pink Nips hi 0, itttpublicized Hallo-
ween Maeacse'of 00 31, and will
leave the agq{tcyip}tMerch I (two of
them. are tthrreatdfing class-action
suits). Another 822 clandestine oper-
atives will ' their .walking papers
by June 1; aabbe but by the end of
next year, pD6-778855, Wells
warns that. if.t re normal attrition
fate factored into Toner's planning
should lag, "additional employees"
of the Operatittj Directorate will be
fired in 1978. '
WELLS,?kCAREER CIA officer,
is not the villain-fA this weakening of
our country's security. Aiehitect of
a
Will flea' ca("Rusty = trW a ,3
loagtpne special assistant
to the 53-yedroid 31riner William
and Turner 1 port were urged
on by David aslaott'o the Nation)
Security Council a former Mondale
aide and staff member of the Church
Comptittee',[titbt cut up the CIA in
1975.
There is, bftnttfbe, sbmething to
be said for thinning out the senior
ranks of sof-fgganiration to avoid
ha delting Of t1tP bUreOucratic arter.
ies and to rankkf,~J100m at the top for
younger men. .'frIat officers of the Di-
rectorate tit l'ldaj*ftOd1 since 1984
havebeep Ably to rethe at 70 percent
of their PRY it age 50 after five years
of hazat+StlYr service would seem to
indicate that *any -burned-out
cases'' were anticipated.
Yet acc ' Ordft mat labs[ one CIA
sburoe Who being dismissed,
astEte,tttq next year's purge of the
Directorate of Operations could well
cause the collapse of some vital U.S.
spy networks in Europe and the
Middle East.
IN FAIRNESS to the Queeg-like
Turner, it has to be said that his two
immediate predecessors, William
Colby and George Bush, also were
committed to deemphasizing the
clandestine! services in favor of tech-
nological intelligence-gathering de-
vices such as satellites and elec-
tronic iateibepts.
In part, this was no more than
recognition of the advances made by
science in this area. But it was also
linked to a post-Vietnam, poet.
Watergate revulsion for covert opst-
atidns such as the "destabilization"
of the Allende regime in Chile.
But if the "cowboys" who gradu-
ated from Gen. "Wild Bill" DO-
novan's wartime Office of Strata c
Services into the CIA had their fau s
of excess, technology also has its li-
mits.
IN SHORT, what the United
States needs is a balanced intelli-
gence capability. It needs satellites
and electronic intercepts, historians
and physicists, psychologists and soil
exports.
But the United States also needs
tough, dedicated clandestine opera-
tives willing and able to go out into
the backalleys of the world to play
the dangerous and sometimes dirty
game forced on us by our enemies.
Admiral Turner and his coterie of
black-shoe Nary men may be right
in what they're trying to do. But
they're certainly wrong in the way
they're going about it.
If a cut-back is desirable, it ought
to be phased over a longer period.
And men who have given years of
brave and honorable service to this
country deserve something more
than a two-sentence pink slip telling
them their careers are at amend.
Berry's World
come the federal govemmenl' subsidizes
tobacco growing?"
Approved For Release 2009/06/04: CIA-RDP05SO062OR000200470057-7