STUDIES IN INTELLIGENCE [Vol. 3 No. 1, Winter 1959]

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP78-03921A000300230001-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 134
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 26, 2004
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: January 1, 1959
• Content Type: STUDY

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CONFIDENTIAL'
STUDIES
INTELLIGENCE
JOB
'BOX NO. 3
ITLDER ro.
L ET, S HEREIN
n9 _g
DOC REV DATE BY
ORM COMP II 0131 TYPE
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JUST 22_ NEXT REV 2,0 / Ca AUllit HR 10-2
VOL. 3 NO. 1 WINTER 1959
CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
OFFICE OF TRAINING
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All opinions expressed in the Studies are those of the
authors. They do not necessarily represent the official
views of the Central Intelligence Agency, the Office of
Training, or any other organizational component of the
intelligence community.
WARNING
This material contains information affecting the National
Defense of the United States within the meaning of the
espionage laws, Title 18, USC, Secs. 793 and 794, the trans-
mission or revelation of which to an unauthorized person is
prohibited by law.
MOW
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CONTENTS
Page
Policing a Nuclear Test Ban . . . Herbert Scoville, Jr. 1
Official results and personal views on the conference
of experts in nuclear blast detection. OFFICIAL
USE ONLY
Papers from the Melbourne Conference:
The Assessment of Communist Economic Penetra-
tion Edward L. Allen 15
Intelligence mobilization for the economic cold war.
SECRET ?
On Processing Intelligence Information
Paul A. Borel 25
Taming and channeling the raw flood for an army
of thirsty consumers. CONFIDENTIAL
The Guiding of Intelligence Collection
William P. Bundy 37
Multiple bridges between the seekers and far-flung
finders of information. SECRET
The Monitoring of War Indicators. Thomas J. Patton 55
Progress and prospects in organizing for eternal
vigilance. SECRET
Techniques of Domestic Intelligence Collection
Anthony F. Czajkowski 69
The intelligence officer as salesman extraordinary
at home. CONFIDENTIAL
History's Role in Intelligence Estimating
Cyrus H. Peake 85
Fallacies in synthetic substitutes for the distillate
of human experience. CONFIDENTIAL
Soviet Intelligence Training . . . Sherman W. Flemer 93
Details on the institutions which award the doc-
torate in intelligence. SECRET
MORI/HRP
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The Early Development of Communications Intelligence
Wilhelm F. Flicke 99
Failures, successes, and fumbling techniques before
and during World War I. OFFICIAL USE ONLY
Communications to the Editors
In defense of Mr. Tidwell and on the future of mark-
ings analysis. SECRET
115
Classified Listing of Articles in Vols. I & II 119
CONFIDENTIAL
UNCLASSIFIED ARTICLES
Page
Agent Radio Operation During World War II
Scudder Georgia 125
Recollections of the hazard-happy Joe and his big
brother's devoted solicitude.
Critiques of Some Recent Books on Intelligence. . . . 133
The Zimmermann Telegram, by Barbara W. Tuch-
man Seymour Lutzky
Allied Intelligence Bureau, by Allison Ind
Benjamin Cain
Man Hunt in Kenya, by Ian Henderson
Peter F. Jethmal
MORI/H RP
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The story behind the East-West
experts' exploration of nuclear
test detection methods and
their agreed conclusions, preg-
nant with latent purport for in-
telligence.
POLICING A NUCLEAR TEST BAN
Herbert Scoville, Jr.
The East-West conference on methods of detecting viola-
tions of any international agreement to suspend nuclear tests,
held in Geneva from 1 July to 21 August 1958, was in effect, as
might be expected, a USSR-West conference. The Western
delegation, a single team with members from the United
States, the United Kingdom, France, and Canada, faced four
separate delegations from the USSR, Czechoslovakia, Poland,
and Rumania; but the Satellite delegates only presented
papers apparently prepared by the Soviets and made no sub-
stantive contribution to the discussions. The Soviets at-
tempted to broaden the scope of the conference to include
agreement to stop testing nuclear explosions, but the Western
delegations succeeded in maintaining the position that the
agenda was technical, not political, and that the decision on
halting tests was not a matter for consideration. Neverthe-
less the technical discussions were colored throughout with
political overtones, and several of the technical agreements
reflect Soviet political concessions.
The conference agreed first on technical methods which
might be useful in a detection system and on the capabilities of
each of these methods for identifying explosions under dif-
ferent types of conditions. Both sides agreed on the use of
acoustic waves, radioactive debris, seismic waves, and electro-
magnetic (radio) signals to detect and identify surface, atmos-
pheric, underground, and underwater explosions. For explo-
sions at very high altitudes (30 to 50 kilometers and above)
several additional methods of detection were discussed and
considered promising, but none were specifically recommended
for inclusion in the system, since experience with explosions
at such heights is lacking.
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After reaching agreement on these basic methods the con-
ferees agreed on the technical equipment which would be re-
quired to put them to effective use, and then consolidated them
into a recommended worldwide control system for policing a
nuclear test suspension, specifying in some detail its technical
requirements and disposition. This recommended system in-
cludes a provision for inspection of locations in which the con-
trol network has detected possibly natural phenomena that it
has not been able to distinguish from nuclear explosion
effects.
The Agreements
Acoustic Waves. It was agreed that with a sufficient distri-
bution of listening posts the acoustic wave method would be
effective in measuring and locating one-kiloton explosions in
the air up to an altitude of 30 or perhaps 50 kilometers. The
acoustic method is not applicable to underground explosions,
but under the oceans even small explosions can be detected by
hydroacoustic methods to distances of 10,000 kilometers. The
instruments which record these air or water pressure waves
can be expected to improve in precision and sensitivity, but
they will not always be able to distinguish between acoustic
signals from nuclear explosions and those from some infre-
quent natural events such as meteor falls, volcanic eruptions,
and submarine disturbances. Acoustic detection must there-
fore be supplemented by other methods, even to identify ex-
plosions which do not occur underground.
Radioactive Debris. It was agreed that analysis of radioac-
tive debris is effective in identifying and locating either fission
or fusion explosions, and three methods of collecting samples
were recommended. Control posts 2000 to 3000 kilometers
apart on the ground would detect one-kiloton explosions in the
air up to 10 kilometers high by sampling fallout 5 to 20 days
afterwards, but would be subject to considerable error in deter-
mining the place of explosion and to some error in determining
the time. If the approximate location of a suspected explosion
is known, however, an aircraft can collect samples two to five
days afterwards for a close determination of time and place.
Shallow underground and underwater explosions are also sus-
ceptible of detection, with less reliability, by these means.
Finally, inspection teams might collect samples from suspected
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sites of underground or underwater explosions, as well as
surface tests, and examine them for radioactive debris.
It was recommended that ground posts and existing aircraft
flights over international waters be used for routine sampling,
and that when other detection data indicated a need for air
samples over the territory of any nation, that nation's aircraft
should carry observers from other nations in the control or-
ganization in sampling flights over predetermined routes. The
debris method would become increasingly effective with pro-
longation of a period free of nuclear explosions and with the
perfection of sampling and analysis techniques.
Seismic Waves. Seismic waves provide the only method
for initial detection of nuclear explosions underground or
under waters not linked hydroacoustically with the oceans;
and seismic wave detection is less discriminating than other
methods. It was agreed that, given a sufficient distribution
of control posts and ordinary seismic stations, 90 percent or
more of five-kiloton seismic disturbances would be identified
and located within a radius of about five miles, but the identifi-
cation of one-kiloton explosions would require unusually favor-
able conditions and unusually quiet seismic stations within a
range of 1000 kilometers. It was noted that the range and
discrimination of this method would probably be increased
with improvements in apparatus and technique, but seismic
disturbances not positively identified as natural earthquakes
would probably still give rise to the greatest number of de-
mands for regional inspections?perhaps as many as 100 per
year, even if limited to magnitudes of five kilotons or greater.
Radio Signals. The radio signal caused by gamma radiation
from an explosion on or above the earth's surface provides a
detection means of great range and accuracy, but there is
difficulty at ranges greater than 1000 kilometers in distin-
guishing it from the electromagnetic emissions of lightning
flashes. The conference made reference also to a possibility
that the radio signal might be deliberately altered or elimi-
nated through shielding the explosion against gamma emis-
sions. It recommended further research to improve discrimi-
nation and develop automatic equipment for this purpose.
High-Altitude Explosions. The detection of explosions at
an altitude of 30 to 50 kilometers and above was discussed on
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a theoretical basis, but no recommendations were made. Three
methods were considered. The registration by earth satellite
instruments of gamma radiation and neutrons would detect
nuclear explosions hundreds of thousands of kilometers from
the earth, but there are difficulties in the possibility of shield-
ing the explosion and in uncertainties about background cos-
mic radiation. Light from the explosion itself and the lumi-
nescence of affected upper layers of the atmosphere would be
revealing, but would not be observable from the ground in
cloudy weather. Such an explosion would also create a mea-
surable increase in the ionization of the upper atmosphere,
but an unknown number of natural phenomena might produce
similar effects. The detection of explosions millions of kilo-
meters from the earth was not discussed.
The Control Network. The conference set up recommended
specifications for acoustic, hydroacoustic, seismic, and electro-
magnetic detection equipment, and for apparatus to collect
samples of radioactive debris both on the ground and in air-
craft. It recommended that all ground posts of the control
net be equipped for all methods of detection, except that
hydroacoustic equipment would be needed only on islands and
ocean shores and in ships. Ships could also collect debris
samples and might use the radio and aeroacoustic methods
with reduced effectiveness, but could not use the seismic
method.
The number of control posts required was determined largely
on the basis of the needs of the seismic method, since the dis-
crimination of underground explosions presents the greatest
problems. 160 to 170 land-based posts were recommended, 60
of them on islands, along with about 10 ships. The posts
should be as close together as 1000 kilometers in seismic areas,
but could be diffused to distances of about 1700 kilometers in
aseismic continental areas and of 2000 to 3500 kilometers in
aseismic ocean areas. It was suggested that each post might
require a personnel complement of about 30 specialists plus
supporting staff.
It was agreed that this system would effectively discourage
violations of a nuclear test suspension: it would provide goad
probability of detecting and identifying all explosions down to
one kiloton except those set off underground. It would detect
underground one-kiloton explosions but would be able to dis-
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? tinguish only a small percentage of them from earthquakes.
Without on-site inspection, in fact, it would be impossible to
positively identify deep underground nuclear explosions even
of high yields, since they could always be claimed to have been
earthquakes. If, however, the ten percent or less of five-
kiloton disturbances not identified as earthquakes and a num-
ber of lesser events taken at random were subject to site in-
spection, a violator could not feel secure against exposure no
mattter what precautions he took.
The identification by inspection of deep underground nu-
clear explosions would still be very difficult. All the radio-
active debris would remain confined in a small volume deep
underground, and surface evidence might be very difficult to
obtain. An inspection team would have to survey the sus-
pect area indicated by the seismic signals for signs betraying
the conduct of a test?recently used mine shafts or tunnels,
excavations, logistic support for tests, or instrumentation.
This task would of course be easier in completely deserted
areas than in inhabited ones where signs of human activity
would not be so suspicious. Finally, when suspicion of a con-
cealed explosion was very high and the location closely de-
termined, it might be necessary to drill many hundred feet for
a sample of the radioactive material in order to prove a vio-
lation.
The Soviet Attitude
These agreements were not achieved in smooth harmony, in
spite of an increasingly evident Soviet desire to avoid split
conclusions. Just before the opening of the conference there
was question whether the Soviets would even attend; but when
the seriousness of the Western delegation was evidenced by
the arrival of its members at Geneva, the Soviets also came
and the conference began as scheduled. Then the first two
days were spent in political maneuvers, with the Soviets at-
tempting to force the Western side to agree in advance that
if the conference were a success nuclear testing should cease.
The USSR's strong propaganda position resulting from its
unilateral announcement of test suspension while the United
States was engaged in an extensive series of tests made it
difficult to keep the Western insistence on a purely technical
conference from appearing too negative: Soviet propaganda
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could have exploited a breakdown of the conference in the
initial stages and its published proceedings to considerable ad-
vantage. Finally, in the face of Western firmness, the Soviets
requested a day's delay, obviously to obtain instructions, and
then acceded to the Western position. Thereafter the discus-
sions were almost entirely technical in nature, though shaped
in some respects to take account of political factors.
In general, the Soviets attempted to make detection appear
easy, while the Western delegates pointed out the practical
difficulties in detecting and identifying nuclear explosions.
Discrimination of natural events from possible explosions was
usually simplified by the Eastern group. The U.S. representa-
tives generally relied on the statistical use of experimental
data, while the Soviets drew upon simplified theories. On one
occasion, Semenov, a Soviet Nobel prize winner, amused the
Western scientists by saying that the experimental evidence
must have been faulty since it conflicted with his theories.
Specific evidence of Soviet desire for agreement developed
toward the end of the discussion of the first of the methods for
detecting nuclear explosions, that using acoustic waves. The
Soviets had presented theoretical data optimizing the ranges
at which explosions could be detected by this method and had
proposed draft conclusions citing these ranges. Overnight
three Western scientists prepared a statistical analysis, using
data from more than 200 experimental observations of nuclear
tests, which demonstrated that under practical conditions the
ranges would be very much shorter than those given by the
Soviets. The West proposed conclusions citing these short
ranges. After considerable discussion of the validity of the
analyses and their conclusions, the Soviets accepted the West-
ern draft with only minor modifications. This accommoda-
tion was the first real indication that they were prepared to
accept scientific facts at variance with their position in order
to reach agreed conclusions.
A Major Concession
A more important demonstration of Soviet desire for agree-
ment occurred in the discussions which followed on the use of
radioactive debris for detecting and identifying nuclear explo-
sions. Outstanding success in collecting good early debris
samples by aircraft and difficulties experienced in obtaining
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reliable samples by ground collection techniques had led the
West to propose the use of aircraft in addition to ground
sampling. The Eastern delegations, on the other hand,
strongly held that ground sampling was adequate and reliable,
and that the use of aircraft was unnecessary, unduly compli-
cated, and expensive. This position was obviously based on
Soviet political sensitivity to the use of aircraft for intelligence
purposes. Discussion on the relative merits of the two meth-
ods was protracted. Although the Western delegation pressed
for data to support the reliability of the ground detection sys-
tem, the Soviets never succeeded in substantiating their un-
sound technical position. Private attempts were made to re-
assure them that our emphasis on aircraft was not based on
desire for unrestricted overflight but rather on sound techni-
cal grounds, but they remained extremely chary of the inclu-
sion of any mention of aircraft as an important element of
the system.
The Soviets delayed agreement to any conclusions on this
subject for several weeks, apparently awaiting instructions
from home, and the conference proceeded to other subjects.
Finally, however, they again acceded, agreeing to the inclusion
of aircraft sampling as a basic element of the system and even
to the provision that overflight of national territory might
occasionally be required. Such overflights, to be sure, would
be made by the aircraft of the nation involved, but they would
have observers from other nations on board. This first major
political concession was strong proof that if the Western dele-
gation presented a sound technical position and held to it, the
desire for agreement would lead the Soviets to give way.
In the discussions on the use of seismic waves for detecting
explosions, the Soviets again tended to theorize and to simplify
the problem, particularly with respect to discriminating be-
tween the seismic signals from explosions and those from
earthquakes. In this case, the Soviet attitude may have been
due largely to lack of scientific experience in such discrimina-
tion. The presentation of the U.S. data on the Ranier under-
ground test in September 1957 was convincing to them and
won their gradual recognition of the difficulties involved.
After the differences in scientific views had been ironed out,
agreement was reached on the seismic method without the
raising of any major political problems. The Eastern delega-
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tons accepted the Western conclusions which stipulated that,
in order to identify 90 percent of the earthquakes and elimi-
nate them as possible nuclear explosions, at least five stations
should be so disposed with respect to any seismic disturbance
as to obtain a strong signal capable of determining the direc-
tion of the first motion. This agreement later became a major
factor in the discussions on the over-all detection system and
the number of control posts required.
Next came discussions on the electromagnetic method,
where the problem of discrimination between radio signals
from explosions and those from lightning flashes was a domi-
nant factor. The Soviets presented strong theoretical argu-
ments for reliable discrimination with the use of machine
methods, but no specific data to support their theory. In this
discussion, however, they appeared to be in a stronger technical
position relative to the West than in any of the others.
Technical Disagreements
A major difference of opinion developed at this time, and
continued almost to the end of the conference, on the possi-
bility of shielding out gamma radiation and thereby elimi-
nating the electromagnetic signal from nuclear explosions.
In the course of the discussion one of the U.S. scientists re-
ferred to success in shielding out the electromagnetic signals
in a shallow underground explosion. When quizzed by the
Soviets on how much earth was above the explosion the scien-
tist had to admit the explosion occurred 75 feet underground.
This amused the Soviets to no end; and although later experi-
mental data were presented to demonstrate that even explo-
sions on a tower could be shielded, they never fully accepted
the feasibility of shielding, and tended to ridicule the Western
position. Unfortunately the final record of the conference
does not completely clarify the technical facts on this subject.
This was a good example of how care must be used in selecting
evidence to present at a meeting of this sort.
Since neither side gave any indication of experience in de-
tecting tests at altitudes greater than 30 kilometers?this was
before the U.S. ORANGE and TEAK shots at Johnson Island?
high-altitude detection was discussed largely on a theoretical
basis. Both sides presented material on the possibility of
using gamma and neutron radiation, ionization phenomena,
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and optical methods. The Soviets pressed very strongly for
the use of sputniks equipped with gamma and neutron detec-
tors, while the Western delegation urged equal consideration
of the use of ionization phenomena.
The most violent session of the entire conference occurred
during an informal meeting arranged to iron out the final
wording of the conclusions on these methods. This meeting,
which had been intended to last for only a few minutes, started
at ten o'clock on a Saturday morning, broke up for lunch at
four PM, and finally continued until after eight in the evening,
with both sides refusing to make any concessions. The Soviets
exhibited great sensitivity to the Western proposal to use radio
techniques, either passive radiotelescopes or active systems,
probably out of fear of their intelligence potential. No agree-
ment was reached that day, and over the weekend the Western
delegation decided not to press further for its views. Instead
it agreed that the conclusions would give some preference to
satellite detection over ionospheric phenomena, but would
specifically recommend neither for the detection system be-
cause of the lack of experimental data. When the chairman
of the Western delegation made this concession at the opening
of the following session, Fedorov, chairman of the Soviet dele-
gation, was taken aback. He said plaintively that the Soviets
had spent all day Sunday preparing technical papers to refute
the Western position. He was almost unhappy that the West
had conceded since it prevented his delegation from presenting
these studies. Furthermore, in consequence of their wasted
effort, the Soviets were unprepared to proceed to the next item
on the agenda.
Discussions on the equipment to be used by the detection
system were almost entirely technical in nature and involved
no serious disagreements. The Soviets now for the first time
raised the possibility of using ships as platforms for detection
stations in ocean areas where suitable land masses were not
available. The usefulness of ships for acoustic and electro-
magnetic detection was seriously questioned by the West, and
in an informal session it was agreed that use of these methods
on shipboard would not be included in the conference conclu-
sions. When these conclusions were taken up for ratification,
Fedorov apparently had not been briefed that this item had
been eliminated from the text, and the conclusions were rati-
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fled without further discussion. Later, just after Fedorov
had unjustly chastised the Western delegation for not adher-
ing to previously agreed conclusions on some other matter, the
subject of shipboard detection again arose and Fedorov re-
ferred to these methods as an essential ingredient of the sys-
tem. When it was called to his attention that he had just
previously agreed to their elimination, he was considerably
embarrassed.
The final text of the conclusions restored a qualified men-
tion of the aeroacoustic and electromagnetic methods on ship-
board. On land, it was agreed, all four basic systems?acous-
tic, seismic, electromagnetic and radioactive debris collection?
would be used at every station. This collocation, found diffi-
cult by the West, was strongly endorsed by the Soviets and is
very likely their practice.
More Political Concessions
The major problem of the conference was the integration of
these various methods into a worldwide system capable of
detecting tests under all possible conditions. At Soviet in-
sistence, the discussion on all the basic methods had been
keyed to small-yield test explosions, down to one kiloton, de-
spite Western desires to include consideration of systems re-
liable only for higher yields. In designing the over-all system,
therefore, the conference initially used the one-kiloton yield as
a basic parameter.
The detection and identification of underground explosions
was the dominant factor in determining the number and dis-
position of the control posts. The initial Western attempt at
designing a system came up with about 650 stations for one-
kiloton worldwide control, as against 100 proposed by the So-
viets. The Soviet proposal was obviously inadequate for dis-
criminating between one-kiloton underground explosions and
earthquakes of equivalent energy, since five of the 100 stations
would never obtain clear signals of first motions from such an
event. The Eastern delegation then proposed the use of exist-
ing seismic stations as a supplement to the detection system,
but the ease with which seismic records could be falsified and
the signals from an explosion made to resemble those of an
earthquake rendered this solution impractical.
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At this point, the Western delegation suggested that a sys-
tem be designed with capabilities of good discrimination for
yields of five kilotons and greater, and the Eastern delega-
tions accepted this approach. By Western criteria such a
system required 160 to 170 stations, while in the Soviet design
it would have 130. Not unexpectedly, the Soviets agreed to
the Western figures just prior to the conclusion of the con-
ference. This acceptance of a system which would involve be-
tween 15 and 20 control posts in the USSR, each manned by 30
or more persons, constituted a second major Soviet political
concession at the conference.
Since at present it is not always technically possible to
identify a nuclear explosion by seismic means alone, inspection
of the site of an unidentified event suspected of being a nuclear
explosion is necessary in order to prove or disprove the occur-
rence of a concealed nuclear test. The 160-170 control post
system would leave unidentified some 20 to 100 events per year
of energies equivalent to five-kiloton yields or greater, and it
is clear that inspection would be required in such cases.
Furthermore, if the system is to have any capability for yields
of less than five kilotons, inspection of suspected sites of lower-
yield tests on a random basis would be required as a deterrent
to violations at this level. The Soviets early in the conference
referred to the need for inspecting sites of suspected nuclear
explosions but consistently deferred the inclusion of state-
ments to this effect in any of the agreed conclusions. Finally,
however, in the conclusions on the control system, they
agreed to such inspection. This acceptance of the principle of
inspection was the third and perhaps most important political
concession made by the Soviets in order to achieve an agreed
report.
Soviet Intentions
Before the conference, many members of the U.S. delegation
believed that the Soviets were attempting to establish a situ-
ation in which they could continue weapons development by
means of concealed tests and at the same time inhibit nuclear
testing in the West. The conference yielded no evidence to
support this thesis; in fact it had led all Western representa-
tives with whom the subject was discussed to change their
views. The Soviets fought strenuously on many points and
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attempted to minimize the difficulties inherent in establishing
an adequate test detection system, but these efforts appeared
aimed entirely at avoiding politically sensitive arrangements
such as large numbers of observers, overflight, and free access
to locations within the Soviet Union. On all of these points,
they ended up by making major concessions.
Furthermore, the Soviets strongly pressed for a high-sensi-
tivity system, one capable of reliably detecting explosions as
low as one kiloton. Had their objective been to design a sys-
tem susceptible of evasion, they would have given much readier
acceptance to the Western proposal to consider higher-yield
systems. In view of all these considerations, I believe that
the USSR has no present intention of carrying out a concealed
nuclear test in the event of a moratorium, and that it would
openly abrogate such an agreement before risking being
caught in a violation. Moreover, if the principle of inspection
is adequately safeguarded in political discussions and in the
terms of a suspension treaty, the system as designed is ade-
quate to deter any nation from conducting a concealed nuclear
test, at least with a yield greater than one kiloton. Without
on-site inspections such a system would not be capable of pre-
venting deep underground nuclear tests of even moderate
yields.
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U.H-37i7T1
organized
?
organized to support the eco-
nomic cold war and about some
of the methodological problems
it has encountered.
aCagf9
liiE ASSESSMENT OF COMMUNIST ECONOMIC
PENETRATION
Edward L. Allen
What the Soviets call "peaceful competition" with the West,
particularly Sino-Soviet Bloc trade and development aid to
underdeveloped countries, has presented a new challenge to
the West and, from our own professional viewpoint, imposed
new tasks upon economic intelligence. The increases in Bloc
trade have been spectacular. Since 1954, Soviet trade with
underdeveloped countries is up 500 per cent; total Soviet trade
with the West is up 100 per cent. Further, the Bloc last year
got 36 per cent of Egypt's trade, 33 per cent of Iceland's, 40
per cent of Afghanistan's, and nearly 25 per cent of Yugo-
slavia's. It succeeded in getting a substantial share of the
trade of Syria, Burma, Iran, Turkey and Ceylon.
U.S. Organization for Cold War Economic Intelligence
It became clear to us three years ago that the USSR and
other members of the Bloc had embarked upon a long-run
program of economic penetration. At that time, we revamped
our internal organization to provide the essential intelligence
support to government policy-makers. As the Bloc program
grew and the magnitude of the threat became clearer, we ex-
tended our list of consumers far beyond the executive branch
of the government. It was important to keep not only Con-
gress informed, but also influential business groups and the
public in general. The Soviet economic challenge, in the
words of our Director, Mr. Allen Dulles, had become the most
serious challenge our country has faced in peacetime.
The pattern of coordinated reporting is now well established.
Since February 1956, a working group under the Economic In-
telligence Committee has turned out a detailed report every
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SECRET Communist Economic Penetration
two weeks. This working group is composed of representatives
of the Department of State, CIA, the International Coopera-
tion Administration, the military services, and the Depart-
ments of the Treasury, Commerce and Agriculture. Addition-
ally, there is an analytical summary every six months, and a
special quarterly report to the President's Council on Foreign
Economic Policy. The full organizational structure support-
ing this intelligence effort is illustrated in the chart on page
22.
This organizational arrangement provides a mechanism for
combining the political, military and economic facets of Soviet
penetration activities. Although there is no rigid division of
labor between agencies, there are obvious areas of primacy of
interest. The Department of State, for example, bears the
primary responsibility for political analysis, while the Depart-
ment of Defense prepares all estimates on illicit trading in
Bloc arms.
On a broader basis, an annual National Intelligence Esti-
mate is produced which covers not only the magnitude, impact
and intensity of Bloc penetration activities, but also relates
these activities to the capabilities, motivations and internal
policies of the Soviets.
Characteristics of Bloc Aid Programs
We have found a number of common characteristics in the
Bloc aid programs for underdeveloped nations. First of all,
a. composite prescription is applied on an integrated basis?
a line of credit, technical assistance and training, and in most
cases a commitment to long-term trade. The provision for
payment by means of its own commodities has great appeal
to an underdeveloped nation, particularly one which is having
difficulty in marketing exportable products at adequate prices.
Secondly, the Soviet program is almost entirely a credit pro-
gram. Interest rates are low-2 or 21/2 per cent. Repayment
usually begins after the project is completed. Amortization
Is usually prorated over a 12-year period. Our Western inter-
est rates are higher, but our repayment terms are often much
longer, running from 30 to 40 years.
Third, the Soviet program usually covers only the foreign
exchange costs of a project, leaving the balance to be financed
from internal resources. Western development loans have
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Lommunist economic Penetration tt.Ke
assisted through various devices with some of the internal fi-
nancial requirements.
Fourth, Bloc economic credits are usually related to indus-
trial development. They are granted for sugar mills, cement
plants, and textile mills rather than for sanitation, sewage, or
housing development.
Fifth, these industrial programs are aimed at increasing the
public or socialized sector of the economy, rather than the
private or free enterprise sector. Thus the Russian-built
Indian steel mill at Bhilai is a government-owned plant,
whereas the American-built plant at Jamshedpur is a privately
owned expansion of Tata.
Finally, the aid-and-trade deals are independent of military
pacts. Non-Communist underdeveloped countries receive Bloc
military and economic assistance without entanglement in a
Bloc military alliance. This practice disarms many; it lends
at least surface credence to the Soviet line that "there is no-
body here but us peace-loving Russians" as the military and
economic technicians pour in.
Sources of Information on Bloc Economic Aid
We have encountered rather formidable difficulties in esti-
mating closely the magnitude of Bloc economic assistance to
underdeveloped countries. It is true that considerable infor-
mation is usually available from open sources regarding the
amounts of non-military assistance which Bloc countries
promise to deliver. Soviet agreements, in particular, are
widely publicized, especially when large lines of credit are ex-
tended: it has been trumpeted to the world that Afghanistan
received a $100 millions credit and Egypt a $175 millions credit
from the USSR. More important for our purposes, the actual
texts of many of the major agreements have been officially
released.
Even when no value figures are announced, information
available through attach?eports usually permits us to esti-
mate the approximate total cost and the foreign exchange
component of an economic assistance agreement. Reports ob-
tained through overt or covert channels from Western indus-
trial firms who have commercial contacts in underdeveloped
countries can also provide such data. The cost of the petro-
leum refinery Czechoslovakia is building in Syria, for example,
SECRET 17
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SECRET Communist Economic Penetration
was estimated in part on the basis of information obtained
from a Western corporation whose bid on the project was
rejected.
We are thus confident that our estimates on promised eco-
nomic assistance are fairly accurate. We believe we are with-
in 5 per cent of the correct total figure and no more than 10
per cent in error for individual countries.
The confidence we have in our estimates of Bloc performance
on assistance agreements is considerably less, and so far we
have published estimates of only the minimum amount of
assistance actually provided. Such estimates are of some
value, but they are an inadequate basis for answering several
pressing questions. In particular, they do not enable us to
determine the amount of indebtedness or the rate of loan
amortization of a country receiving credits from the Bloc.
The major difficulty in assessing the implementation of Bloc
assistance agreements is finding sources of raw information.
It is exceptional for officials in underdeveloped countries to be
candid in discussing Soviet projects with U.S. attaches. Debt
statements and ministerial reports of recipient countries are
occasionally helpful. But in general we must rely on de-
livery or shipping notices and clandestine reports on construc-
tion progress. Clandestine reports are also our most valuable
source on the numbers, competence, and activities of Bloc
technicians assigned to aid projects. We feel the need for
much more information on what success the Soviets are having
in getting accepted as the representatives of peace and pro-
gress and the real champion of underdeveloped countries.
Special Problems with Bloc Arms Deals
Estimating the value of military assistance encounters con-
siderably greater difficulties than estimating non-military
assistance. The publicity attending the signature of an eco-
nomic assistance agreement is notably absent in the case of
military agreements. The military estimates must be based
mostly on descriptions of individual shipments or other obser-
vations contained in many discrete military attach?nd clan-
destine reports. The resulting estimates of units of equip-
ment are converted to value terms by applying Bloc prices to
the items in question, if they are known. In some instances
we have had to use the U.S. prices for comparable items in
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Communist Economic Penetration SECRET
order to arrive at a value estimate. We consequently believe
that although our estimates in terms of equipment units are
reasonably accurate, those in terms of value may be in error
by 25 per cent or more.
The most troublesome consequence of our uncertainty
about value estimates is inability to determine with precision
the financial indebtedness to the Bloc of those countries re-
ceiving Bloc military assistance. A reliable determination of
the amount of cotton Egypt, for example, is shipping each
year in repayment for the arms it has received from the Bloc
would be significant intelligence. But especially in the case of
Egypt, the inaccuracy of our evaluations is compounded by the
fact that some of the arms delivered have been obsolete and
therefore sold at a discount, and some of them apparently have
been given without charge. Moreover, some small portion of
the arms shipped to Egypt and Syria have been sent on to be
used in other areas, and we are not certain who ultimately
will pay for these.
Sources of Information on Trade
Collection of data on Bloc external trade is considerably
simplified by the fact that most non-Communist countries
issue periodic reports on the value and pattern of their foreign
commerce and we therefore do not have to depend on Commu-
nist sources. Statements issued by Bloc countries, as well
as information obtained through clandestine collection, pro-
vide means of cross-checking sources. When there are dis-
crepancies between estimates made on the basis of official non-
Communist compilations and the statements of Bloc coun-
tries, we do not automatically assume that the Communists
are lying.
An early estimate of Soviet shipments of machinery and
transport equipment to underdeveloped countries in 1956, for
example, showed only about 20 per cent of the amount claimed
by the USSR. This discrepancy, we ultimately concluded,
probably resulted from inaccurate item classification in the
recipient countries. Underdeveloped countries often have un-
tidy or inexact customs procedures. Even when a standard
classification system is used, customs officials are frequently
lax in establishing proper criteria to be used by their oper-
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SECRET Communist Economic Penetration
ating personnel. Indian practices are particularly annoying
in this respect. In their official reports of commodity imports,
items accounting for as much as two-thirds of the value of im-
ports from the USSR have been listed in the unspecified "all
other" category. Since among the underdeveloped countries
India is a major Bloc customer, the errors in India's com-
modity reporting may have a considerable effect on our esti-
mates of total Bloc trade.
Other underdeveloped countries have similar bad habits.
Most of them publish trade data in a very leisurely fashion.
None is up to date in releasing statistics on commodities. No
country includes shipments of military items in its reports.
There is also the usual problem of re-exports involving third
nations, compounded in the Soviet case by the employment of
brokers and trading fronts for sensitive transactions. Finally,
countries which have multiple exchange rates, such as Egypt
and Argentina, present particular difficulties when we attempt
to evaluate their trade in terms of dollars.
New Tasks for Intelligence
There is a need for detailed performance information, be-
yond the question of volume and money value, on Bloc develop-
ment aid programs. Part of the Western effort in underde-
veloped nations is devoted to highlighting for these newly
emerging countries the dangers of dealing with the Bloc, to
pointing out the advantages of dealing with the West wherever
possible. So we not only need to report that country x re-
ceived a cement plant from the Bloc at a certain price, but
also to report the plant's reliability, relative efficiency, and
the quality of its product.
And it is not enough for intelligence to measure current
trends and performance in Bloc trade and aid. We
have, in addition, the important task of anticipating future
Soviet moves, of pointing out where economic, military or
political problem areas are developing which could present the
Bloc with opportunities for exploiting weaknesses. This must
be done early in the game if Western policy-makers are to
have an opportunity to move in first or to capitalize on some
action of the Bloc.
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Communist Economic Penetration SECRET
Both in the anticipation of future Bloc moves and in the
detailed analysis of Bloc development aid performance to date,
I believe that we in the intelligence field need to do a lot more
work.
Strategic Trade Controls
The other side of the economic cold war coin is the strategic
trade control program. We in CIA play a major role in pro-
viding the interagency committee structure of the U.S. Gov-
ernment with intelligence support for the development and
enforcement of international and U.S. security export con-
trols against the Sino-Soviet Bloc. This intelligence support
consists primarily in estimating the significance of certain
Western commodities, technology, and services to the war po-
tential of the Bloc.
U.S. unilateral controls, as you are aware, are broader than
the international ones, and require separate administration.
There are therefore two major interagency committees in-
volved in the control of strategic exports, one dealing with
problems of multilateral export controls and their enforce-
ment and the other with those of unilateral export controls.
The CIA participates in an advisory capacity at each level of
these committees up through the National Security Council,
as indicated by the dashed lines in the appended chart.
Reports on Bloc exports and imports are often useful in
pointing to economic strengths or weaknesses in the Bloc, but
one can easily exaggerate an apparent economic strength or
weakness by relying solely on commodity trade data. The
USSR, in particular, has sometimes exported machinery and
equipment known to be in domestic short supply (rolling mills
and agricultural machinery, for instance) when such exports
have been judged to be of net Soviet advantage. Similarly, in
reviewing Soviet purchases from underdeveloped nations, it is
prudent not to seize on every import of foodstuffs or industrial
raw materials as proof of economic weakness in respect to
that commodity.
Commodity studies of Bloc foreign trade will rarely reveal
anything more than specific short-term soft spots in the pro-
duction pattern. This type of information is useful for trade
control purposes, but it is inadequate as an indicator of the
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t?.1 Inter
for
-Agency Structure
Economic Defense
-
Inter-Agency Structure
for the Study of Bloc
Economic Penetration
Director of
Central Intelligence
Economic Defense
Advisory
Committee
U.S. Intelligence
Board
Deputy Director
for Intelligence
rn
7:1
?1
Executive
Committee
Office of
Research and Reports
Economic
Intelligence
Committee
Economic
Intelligence
Committee
Working Groups
Economic
Research Area
Working Group on Bloc
Economic Activities
in Underdeveloped Areas
Economic Defense
Intelligence
Committee
Services Division
State
_
Commerce
- - ? ? ? ? ?
Agriculture _
Army
_ _
Navy
? ? ?
Air Force
- ? ? ? ? ?
Defense
_
Intl. Coop Admin
?
4
State
Commerce
_ _ _
Treasury
Army
Navy
Air Force
_ _ _
Defense
CIA
Trade Controls
Branch
Trade Branch
USSR
Eastern Europe__
Far East
Statistics
_
Soviet Penetration
..,_
Controls
_
Transactions

_J
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overall capability of the Bloc to achieve its objectives in the
cold war. The real capability of the Bloc is revealed only in
a close survey of its economic structure and its production and
growth characteristics. The basic facts are the $180 billions
of current gross national product for the USSR and the an-
nual growth rate of about 10 per cent in Soviet industry, a
GNP of nearly $70 billions for the European Satellites and of
over $60 billions for China.
Institutional characteristics, in particular the bilateral na-
ture of Soviet trade, the isolation of the Soviet price structure,
and the inconvertibility of the ruble, may cause the USSR
serious problems in its future trade outside the Bloc. They
have not seemed, however, to be a serious constraint so far.
To determine Bloc economic weaknesses and strengths, and
to estimate the impact of the strategic trade control program
as a whole, we look primarily to Soviet domestic production
capabilities. The large and rapidly expanding production ca-
pacity of the USSR, complemented by the European Satellites
and to an increasing extent by Communist China, is an im-
pressive indicator.
23
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The bases for the aggressive
U.S. approach to documenta-
Ftion
ON PROCESSING INTELLIGENCE INFORMATION
Paul A. Borel
The cycle of organizational activity for intelligence pur-
poses extends from the collection of selected information to
its direct use in reports prepared for policy makers. Between
these beginning and end activities there lie a number of func-
tions which can be grouped under the term information proc-
essing. These functions include the identification, record-
ing, organization, storage, recall, conversion into more useful
forms, synthesis and dissemination of the intellectual content
of the information collected. The ever-mounting volume of
information produced and promptly wanted and the high cost
of performing these manifold operations are forcing a critical
review of current practices in the processing field.
Storing and Retrieving Information
Efficient and economical storage and retrieval of informa-
tion is by all odds the toughest of the processing problems.
Millions are being spent on it by the research libraries of uni-
versities, of industry, and of government. Even as we meet
here today, an international conference is under way in Wash-
ington at which new means of storing and searching for
scientific information are being discussed.
? For intelligence, storing and retrieving information is a par-
ticularly vexing problem. Our Document Division alone proc-
esses daily an average of some 1,500 different intelligence docu-
ments, received in an average of 15 copies per document. This
is exclusive of special source materials, cables, newspapers,
press summaries, periodicals, books, and maps. Since these
reports come from scores of different major sources, the daily
volume fluctuates and shows lack of uniformity in format, in
reproduction media, in length and quality of presentation, and
in security classification. As they come in they must be read
25
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On Processing Intelligence Information
with an eye to identifying material of interest to some 150
different customer offices or individuals.
We have a general library of books and periodicals, whose
operations approximate those of the conventional library. We
have several registers (in effect special libraries) through which
we handle special source materials, biographic data on scien-
tists and technicians, films and ground photographs, and data
on industrial installations. Most of these materials are sub-
ject to control through indexes of IBM punched cards.
We have a collection of two million intelligence reports mini-
aturized by microphotography. Short strips of film are
mounted in apertures on IBM punched cards filed in numerical
sequence. Access to these cards, from which photo reproduc-
tions can be made, is obtained through an organized index of
IBM cards now numbering eight million. Thus access to the
document itself is indirect, through codes punched into the
index cards to indicate subject, area, source, classification,
date and number of each document. The data on index cards
retrieved in response to a particular request is reproduced on
facsimile tape and constitutes the bibliography given the cus-
tomer. This system?which seeks to fit a given request with
the relevant "intelligence facts" on hand?we call the Intello-
fax system.
These then are our assets. I'll say no more at this time
about problems in connection with the general library, or
those of operating our registers, since they are in many re-
spects variations on the theme of our concern with the effec-
tive operation of the Intellofax system.
Demands made on our document collection stem from three
types of requests:
Requests for a specific document to which the analyst has
a reference or citation;
Requests for a specific bit of information in answer to a
specific question;
Requests for all information relevant to a subject which
may or may not be well defined.
Our major difficulties are almost all connected with the last of
these three, the one which requires a literature search. In
searching unclassified literature we rely on commercially pro-
duced reference aids, but in searching classified materials we
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use the Intellofax punched card index. This index we would
use to retrieve, for example, information responsive to a re-
quest for "anything you have on the movement of iron ore
from Hainan to Japan between 1955 and 1958, classified
through Secret, and exclusive of CIA source material."
Intellofax is a high-cost operation. Only 10 to 15 per cent
of the questions put to the information section of our Library
are answered by literature search; yet some 30 people are used
in the necessary coding, and another 50 to 60 in IBM and aux-
iliary operations exclusively in support of Intellofax. On the
other hand, some portion of this cost would be incurred in
operating any alternative system even at minimum level; and
Intellofax makes possible the organization of bibliographic ma-
terial in various forms and at speeds which would not be prac-
tical under a manual system.
Search results, however, are not uniformly accurate. We
recently tested the accuracy of the Intellofax system by hav-
ing a task team of three analysts from a research office con-
duct a controlled experiment. Five subjects, corresponding
to common types of reports produced by that office, were se-
lected. The test indicated quite conclusively that the system
does an efficient job of retrieving documents referring to spe-
cific objects or categories (trucks, factories, serial numbers),
but that it is less satisfactory in handling a more general sub-
ject, such as industrial investments in China. A comparison
with the analysts' own files showed very satisfactory Intello-
fax performance in retrieving documents placed in the system,
but some documents in the analysts' files were not retrieved.
Reruns with the same code patterns yielded consistent results.
The inaccuracies of the Intellofax system reflected in the
above and other tests can be reduced by revising procedures
and improving supervision, but they cannot be eliminated alto-
gether. In literature search a set of symbols assigned to in-
coming documents is used to provide the searcher with a
clue to the pertinence of any document to the request he is
servicing. This set of symbols is in the nature of an index,
but different people viewing these symbols may give them dif-
ferent interpretations. This makes the problem complex, for
the determination that there exists a meaningful relation be-
tween even two pieces of information depends on many differ-
IDENTIAL 27
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ent, often subtle criteria which elude unequivocal symbolic
representation.
The solution of the accuracy problem would appear to turn
on the ability to develop a master set of symbols, a Code, large
enough to cover an extremely wide variety of subjects and
areas and small enough to be contained on an index card, one
applicable to diverse documents containing fragmentary, fugi-
tive and often seemingly unrelated information, and at the
same time conducive to uniform application initially by those
coding incoming documents and later by those seeking to re-
trieve them. To prepare such a Code is a tough assignment
today. The job is not likely to be easier for some time.
It is relevant at this point to invite your attention to the
views on this subject of the Workina Party orwarlized last
25X1 year I Ito exam-
ine the possibility of establishing a common reference service:
25X1
, lbooks of referencel
and finalized intelligence reports. It would be impracticable
to try and include the welter of documents from which such
finished reports are built up; even if it were practicable, it
would be an immense task beyond our resources.1
I disagree. Not as to the difficulty of the task or its rela-
tively high cost, but as to its impracticability. I believe the
solution lies in a) selectivity in identifying those documents
to be held by the Center, and b) the organization of those
documents into discrete collections, each controlled by an
index suitable to its particular requirements. This is the ap-
roach we have taken, more by accident than by design. Such
an approach makes it possible to cope with small problems,
even though the big problem may still be unmanageable.
Reference Service and the Research Function
Where central reference services have been organized inde-
pendent of research offices, it soon becomes evident that the
functional line of demarcation between them and the research
units is not clear. This becomes important when it results in
25X1 11 Modern Methods of Handling Information, 15 Oct. '57
(Confidential), para. 6.
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duplication of effort or, worse, in non-use of reference mate-
rials by the researcher laboring under the misimpression that
he has all relevant documents in his possession. Today's re-
searcher, like his predecessor, feels insecure without files
which he can call his own. In such a situation we must have
a proper regard for tradition, but sometimes it is difficult to
distinguish tradition from inertia. Recently our Biographic
Register, receiving a report published by a research office,
found that failure on the part of the author to check the
Register files had resulted in some one hundred errors or
omissions.
It must be decided whether a reference service is to be
active or passive, dynamic or static. To take a simple case, a
passive approach to reference service would mean that refer-
ence personnel would merely keep the stacks of the library in
order, leaving it to research analysts to exploit the collection.
Under the active approach, on the other hand, reference ana-
lysts would discuss the researcher's problem with him and
then proceed, as appropriate, to prepare a bibliography, gather
apparently pertinent documents, screen them, check with
colleagues in other departments for supplementary materials,
make abstracts, have retention copies made of popular items in
short supply, initiate a requirement for supplementary field
service, or prepare reference aids. In CIA we aim at active
rather than passive reference service. How active we are in
a particular case is a function of the customer's knowledge of
our services, his confidence in us, and how pressed he is to get
the job done.
Once a separate facility has been set up to provide reference
services it is not long before it publishes. This comes about
for several reasons, the least controversial of which is that a
customer has made a specific request. Thus our science ana-
lysts may call for a compilation of biographic data on the indi-
viduals most likely to represent the Soviet Union at a forth-
coming international conference on the peaceful uses of atomic
energy. We call this type of publication a research or refer-
ence aid. Some are quite specific; others are more general,
being prepared in response to a need generally expressed. A
number of different customers may, for example, make known
that it would be very helpful to have a periodic compilation of
all finished intelligence reports and estimates for ready refer-
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ence. Or the need may be implied rather than expressed: the
reference analyst may note that over a period of time the de-
mand on him for biographic data about Soviet scientists is
heavy, many requests calling for much the same information
furnished earlier to others. The result: the production of a
major reference aid along the lines of our "Soviet Men of
Science." And naturally it isn't long until a revised edition
Is called for.
Criteria for determining when and when not to summarize
information holdings in a general reference aid are elusive.
It is similarly difficult to define the proper scope of the general
reference aid. How far can it go before the researcher con-
siders it an infringement on the research activity for which he
is responsible? This question has implications beyond those
readily apparent. Quite basic is the feeling among research
personnel that they and their mission are a cut above the ref-
erence officer and his role. A manifestation of this attitude is
the steady flow of competent people out of reference into re-
search, with only a 'trickle coming the other way. I doubt
whether the inconsistency of this position is appreciated in
view of the joint effort required by research and reference ac-
tivities to provide the soundest base possible for the research
?
effort.
In my view the legitimate limits of the reference aid can
best be arrived at in terms of the highest level of service ex-
pected of the reference officer. Stated simply it is this: to
make known the availability of services and information the
existence of which may be unknown to the researcher; and,
given a task, to make the preliminary selection of materials
to meet the particular need of a particular user. This may
involve bulk-reduction operations (such as abstracting) to
leave a smaller quantity of material containing everything
pertinent to the user's problem, or conversion operations
(such as translation) to get information in usable form. I
would even say that the reference function includes evalua-
tion, evaluation of the reliability of information. To the re-
searcher must be left the determination of its significance for
the present; to the estimator its significance for the future;
and to the policy-maker the indicated course of action.
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Machine Application to Documentation Problems
In processing intelligence information, increases in effi-
ciency may depend upon the adoption of techniques involving
automata. This is especially the case when savings of time
are sought. But as soon as you consider automation, that is,
the inclusion in your processing system of a machine as an
integral part of it, you are faced with the need to make de-
cisions different in nature from those made with respect to
the desirability of expanding staff or restricting functions.
It is a difficult problem to achieve an optimum balance be-
tween man and machine. Among the many considerations
involved there are two important ones which ought to be,
but seldom are, fully explored before you commit yourself to a
particular machine?you should accurately determine the net
gain or loss in terms of time, space, manpower, and money;
and you should be fully aware of the limitations of the ma-
chine and of its use by man. It is often more important to
know what cannot be done with the machine than to look
wholly to what can.
Nevertheless, I would again incline to disagree
In view of the great initial investment needed to launch
[a mechanized reference system], the very large and per-
sistent requirement for coding, maintenance and other super-
visory skill and the inevitable limitations of machinery when
applied to intelligence processes, we do not think the introduc-
tion of such a system merits further examination.
No one would argue that large investments should be made
in schemes unless they hold promise of relieving major prob-
lems. And the demands of a mechanized reference system
for special skills are admittedly both high and persistent.
However, these factors should be weighed in terms of the
relative costs, not only the cost of alternative ways to solve
the particular documentation problem, but also the cost of
not solving it at all. We take exception to the conclusion that
the limitations of machinery when applied to intelligence proc-
esses are "inevitable." We also believe it unwise to categori-
cally dismiss the introduction of machinery as not meriting
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further examination. Limitations there are today and will
continue to be. But those which are inevitable are fewer than
is generally supposed. Only by daring and risking will we
come to know how few are the real limitations of a mechanized
approach to documentation. This philosophy is yielding prom-
ising developments in the fields of microphotographic storage,
automatic dissemination, abstracting, and translation, all
fields of particular concern today.
Microphotography. Both Air Intelligence and CIA are test-
ing a system developed by Eastman Kodak known as Minicard.
This system in essence substitutes a 16 x 32 mm film strip for
the present CIA system of IBM punched index cards corres-
ponding to hard copy or film in the document storage 111e.
Self-indexing Minicard document images are read electroni-
cally, not mechanically as IBM cards are. The characteristics
of Minicard make possible a reduction of space requirements
by a factor of 4, and an increase in speed of handling by
a factor of 2. The new system is capable of a level of informa-
tion manipulation and a degree of coding sophistication which
gives promise of radically augmenting the contribution of the
Information fragment to the solution of reference problems
requiring a search of the literature. And, contrary to present
practice, the integrity of the file is maintained at all times.
Automatic Dissemination. Air Intelligence is testing a Doc-
ument Data Processing Set designed by Magnavox. This is a
general-purpose computer especially designed for problems
requiring close correlation. Requests for information form
the reference file against which incoming documents must be
compared. Up to 20,000 words specifying the subjects and
areas of interest, other qualifying data (such as evaluation or
type of copy desired), and user identifications are stored to de-
fine the requirements of 160 users. When a document is to
be disseminated, its subject and area coverage, previously coded
and punched into paper tape, is fed into the machine. The
machine searches its file of requirements and prints out a
list of those who have requested such a document, the total
number of copies needed, and the form in which it is wanted.
Speed and uniformity of performance rather than financial
economy is what the Air Force is after in this case.
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Automatic Abstracting. Army intelligence and IBM are
working on means for producing, entirely by automatic means,
excerpts of Army field reports that will serve the purposes of
conventional abstracts. At a recent demonstration the com-
plete text of a report, in machine-readable form, was scanned
by an IBM 704 data-processing machine and analyzed in ac-
cordance with a standard program. Statistical information
derived from word frequency and distribution was used by the
machine to compute a relative measure of significance, first
for individual words and then for sentences. Sentences scor-
ing highest in significance were extracted and printed out to
become the "auto-abstract." Adoption of this method of pro-
ducing abstracts of overseas reporting would require the use
of a flexowriter in the field. When the original report is
typed on stencil, a flexowriter tape would be produced simul-
taneously as a byproduct and would accompany the report to
headquarters. There tapes in sequence would be fed into a
computer and auto-abstracts printed out.
Mechanical Translation. The only successful Free World
demonstration of machine translation to date took place on
20 August 1958, when a continuous passage of 300 sentences
taken from Russian chemical literature was translated by the
Georgetown University research group, under CIA and Na-
tional Science Foundation sponsorship. An IBM 704 computer
was programmed with the appropriate grammatical, syntag-
matic and syntactic rules, and a Russian-English vocabulary
was introduced into its memory system. The machine alpha-
betized the text, determined the lexical equivalents of the
words, reconstructed the text, performed the necessary logical
operations, and printed out the English translation. Only
minor stylistic editing was required to make the product com-
pare favorably with a translation made by a linguist. The
rate of translation was about 24,000 words per hour. With
improved input equipment (reading machines) , rates up to
100,000 per hour are foreseen as possible. Research has al-
ready started on mechanical translation from Polish, Czech,
Serbo-Croatian, French, Arabic, and Chinese. Soviet research
in this field is considerably ahead of ours.
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Outlook
In closing this general review of aspects of the intelligence
documentation problem, we should look briefly at certain
trends which affect us all. First, channels for procuring pub-
lications and techniques for storing and retrieving the physi-
cal document are extensive and well developed. The immed-
iate outlook is for no basic change in ways and means in this
field, but rather an expansion and intensification of present
methods.
Second, the type of reference or information service coming
to be required will demand action primarily in preparing refer-
ence personnel to give assistance of higher quality than is
given today. Reference tools will need to be improved also,
but this is likely to follow if there is a more sophisticated
reference officer to create a demonstrable need for them.
The increase in amount and kinds of material available will
call for more intense exploitation of it by the research analyst;
he in turn will by necessity rely increasingly on the reference
officer for first-cut selection and evaluation. Reference offi-
cers will therefore need greater subject competence, more
language ability, and a wider training and experience in all
aspects of intelligence documentation. Already a number of
American corporations are using information specialists as
members of research teams. This approach deserves testing
in intelligence.
Third, in the field of literature searching, specialized
schemes will be developed to fit the needs of specialized users.
While general theory will continue to be developed, pragmatic
approaches to problems based on an analysis of the way users
employ services and exploit materials will play an increasingly
important role. Proved systems employed by reference cen-
ters will be simplified and adapted for use by the individual
analyst to enable him to control the literature he requires in
his immediate possession. The analyst in turn will provide the
central system with the means of subject retrieval in his spe-
cialized field as a by-product of the way he controls his files.
In this field, machines will long continue to play a secondary
role.
Fourth, the present and future demands for reference serv-
ice will lead to increased use of machines where these can be
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introduced without jeopardizing the performance of essential
intellectual operations. This fact and the increasing volume
of information which must be processed will bring about more
centralization. The problem then becomes one of insuring
that central reference is at least as responsive to research
needs as the reference facility which is an integral part of the
research area. The solution is to be found in an approach
which integrates the information-processing activities, wher-
ever performed, into a single system within which collection,
processing, and user components operate along well-defined
lines.
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contemplates the
tortured progress of a complex
organism in getting its food
from hand to mouth.
THE GUIDING OF INTELLIGENCE COLLECTION
William P. Bundy
In tackling the subject labelled "Procurement" in the pro-
gram for this conference, it seems most appropriate to discuss,
for an audience predominantly of researchers or intelligence
producers, not the whole range of collection activities, but
simply the link between the people who use raw intelligence on
the one hand and collectors of raw intelligence (or should I say
"procurers?") on the other. To make even this restricted
subject manageable, I have confined my illustration almost
entirely to the procurement of positive intelligence on the
Sino-Soviet Bloc, excluding other geographic areas and exclud-
ing also the effort in support of intelligence collection opera-
tions themselves.
The essential problem is of course simply one of communi-
cation between human beings. No one who has ever done
research on his own will have the slightest doubt that the
Ideal unit is one?a single person doing his own collecting and
producing with no intermediaries whatever. Or one might
grudgingly accept as a model Mark Hopkins' picture of the
true university?the collector on one end of a log and the
producer on the other.
If these be only dreams, I do still recall one actual large or-
ganization that seemed to me to approach the ideal. During
the last war I was at a place called Bletchley in England.
There, in three low brick wings of the same building, side by
side,?called, poetically enough, "huts"?were housed respec-
tively a final producer apparatus, an intermediate processing
apparatus, and a collection control apparatus. They were
within easy walking distance, and the people in them knew
each other by their first names and had been in their jobs
long enough to have quite a knowledge of each other's prob-
lems. The result was a tremendously efficient collection oper-
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SECRET The Guiding Of Intelligence Collection
ation, which balanced intelligence priorities and needs fully
against the need to maintain assets for stand-by purposes,
and all with what was?even by British standards?a mini-
mum of red tape. As I recall, the weekly so-called control
meeting used to take about an hour to dispose of all its busi-
ness, including discussion and action on new ideas. I had
never seen anything like it.
And I don't really expect to again. For that guidance sys-
tem had two great advantages unlikely ever again to exist in
combination in a large-scale effort. First, a relatively limited
focus, almost wholly military, within which the basic substan-
tive priorities were largely self-explanatory and seldom con-
troversial. And second, a single collection system, and that
of such a nature that its capabilities, though flexible in degree,
were limited and readily tested for possible expansion. You
knew pretty well what could be done, and if you didn't know
you could find out fairly quickly. In other words, both the
intermediate processor and the collector knew what the pro-
ducer wanted, and both the producer and the intermediate
processor knew what the collector could do. Where these
conditions exist, and where you have continuity of first-class
people, it would take a most imaginative management con-
sultant to contrive a system that could gum the works.
There are in intelligence today a very few areas thus hap-
pily self-contained. Map procurement, I think, is one. But by
and large we are now in a situation where the demands are
manifold, the priorities difficult to keep clear, and the collec-
tion capabilities variable, hard to appraise and extremely
limited relative to the demands. In these circumstances guid-
ance becomes one of our major problems, one testing the com-
petence, experience and knowledge of our people, and testing
also our capacity to devise administrative methods than can
assist the infirm and the temporary while not blocking the op-
erations of the sophisticated and imaginative professional.
The Hydra-Headed U.S. Consumer and Collector
The complexity of the problem of guidance is indicated by
the variety of consumers and of collection mechanisms in the
U.S. intelligence community. (I am using the term "con-
sumer" in the broadest sense, in order to avoid shades of dis-
tinction among the various stages of processing or intern-
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gence production and the various policy-making levels of con-
sumption. From the collector's standpoint the rest of us are,
in truth, all "consumers.") On the consumer side the prin-
cipal units are:
1. State
2. Army
3. Navy
4. Air Force
5. Joint Staff
6. AEC
7. CIA ORR?for Bloc economic and worldwide geographic
matters
8. CIA OSI?for basic scientific matters
9. CIA OCI?for current intelligence at the national level,
including indications, and for research in support of
current intelligence
10. CIA ONE?for national intelligence estimates (usually
via one of the other consumers)
On the collection side, the list is even more extensive. The
collection activities can usefully be broken down into two
categories: first, what I shall call "self-contained" systems,
such as the Foreign Service (including foreign aid and infor-
mation people) and the system of military attaches, which
work primarily for their own parent organizations, and second,
a larger number of "common concern" systems, service or-
ganizations which work primarily for others. Of these lat-
ter, some use technical methods of a classified nature, for ex-
ample the Atomic Energy Detection System and ELINT.
Others, who make use of unclassified technical methods or
simply "people and paper," include the following:
00/Contact (for domestic collection)
00/FBID (for foreign broadcasts)
00/FDD (for material that comes by subscription)
Publication Procurement
Map Procurement
OCR Liaison & Collection (representing government of-
ficials not directly connected with intelligence)
Clandestine Services
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In addition some "common concern" services are not com-
plete organizations, but make use of the facilities of one or
more of the others:
SovMat
Defectors and returned German scientists
East-West Exchanges
Trade Fairs
International Conferences
Graphics
It would be pleasant to report the hitherto undisclosed
existence of an IBM 704, or Hollerith Hurricane, that handled
all requirements and steered them effortlessly to the right
collectors. Alas, this is not the case! There is no central
mechanism that attempts to do a thorough policing and sort-
ing job on the requirements any one producer may choose to
levy on collection. Basic to our entire system, in fact, is the
principle that the individual producing agency?responsible
for its aspect of total intelligence production?may levy upon
any one, or upon all, of the collection facilities to meet its
needs.
Whether this right is, in a given case, any more effective
than Owen Glendower's ability to "call spirits from the vasty
deep" is, of course, another matter. But at least the require-
ment can be levied, and unless patently outrageous it will
reach the designated collectors. For almost all requirements
levied by one agency on the collection facilities of another, this
will be via the good offices of our CIA Office of Central Refer-
ence, which while not policing does fulfill an important func-
tion in registering, numbering, and transmitting requirements
for most of the non-technical forms of collection.
In this, as in many other respects, it is useful?and histori-
cally important?to keep in mind the distinction between
those collection systems that are organic parts of operating
and intelligence producing departments?the "self-contained"
systems?and those that exist for the benefit entirely of
others. Foreign Service reporting and the attach?perations
of the military services historically antedate the existence of
any overall intelligence framework. An ambassador today
hardly thinks of his reporting work as being the fulfillment of
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a "requirement," and indeed in the formal sense it seldom is,
for our senior department is understandably reluctant to tell
its top people abroad what they should look for, at least in
the political sphere, by the historic overt methods of diplo-
macy. As for the attach?ystem, the intimate ties between
the attach?nd his base are such that, armed as he may be
with an apparatus of guides and requirements, most of his
reporting is done, in practice, in accordance with a "felt neces-
sity" derived from daily cable exchanges.
Not so with the other collection systems?overt, clandes-
tine, and increasingly the various technical systems?oper-
ated as a matter of "common concern."1 These have no direct
base to report to (even those sharing CIA parenthood with pro-
ducing offices must and do serve other masters with at least
equal zest), and they must hence be governed by an unruly
flow of requirements from their many consumers, and must
make shift with this as best they can.
Agreed Objectives
To help reduce this state of potential anarchy to relative
order, the U.S. community has evolved a commonly agreed
framework for the overall intelligence effort at all stages?a
set of Priority National Intelligence Objectives. These PNIO's
have developed from a slow start. Originated in September
1950, largely on the initiative of the military services, they
consisted at first of a short statement of about eight cate-
gories of key importance. Along about 1953, this statement
seemed inadequate to cover the breadth of factors involved in
the cold war, and it was decided that the Board of National
Estimates, from its Olympian vantage point, should coordi-
nate an effort to set up a longer list with more clearly defined
categories. Substantively, the aim was to include political
and economic objectives in perspective with military-related
ones, and to separate the really crucial military-related objec-
tives from those of more routine nature.
Since that time, the Estimates Board has continued with
the assignment, revising the list annually in a far-from-per-
1 This term has a precise statutory meaning in our National Security
Act of 1947, from which many functional charters derive. It is used
here more broadly, to cover all collection work not done predomi-
nantly for the account of the collecting agency itself.
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functory exercise culminating in review at the top intelli-
gence level and circulation for information to top policy-
makers as well. The document now consists of three cate-
gories of priorities, With a total listing of about 50 items.
The PNIO's set priorities for all intelligence activity, produc-
tion as well as collection. Their greatest weight, however, is
almost certainly in the collection field, where they serve as a
basis for adjusting major priority questions, especially in the
guidance and direction of the "common concern" collection
systems.
But there are also many things the PNIO's do not do, things
that no document of the sort can well do. One is to forecast
what may turn out to be crisis areas at any given time. If a
Communist revolt breaks out in Ruritania, common sense dic-
tates a top-priority effort which in practice would be under-
taken irrespective of Ruritania's normal status as a third pri-
ority. The PNIO's cannot select the Ruritanias of the year
to come?or at least they haven't reached that point yet, in
spite of their being drafted in the Estimates shop.
More generally, the PNIO's are only statements of objec-
tives. In themselves, they are only a most general guide and
framework within which individual levies or major collection
projects can be judged. Many stages of translation are re-
quired before they can become anything like true guidance,
in any specific sense, for collection effort. One of those stages,
for certain areas of intelligence, is provided within the PNIO
framework itself, by a series of Annexes dealing with the
priority economic, scientific-technical, atomic energy, guided
missile, and international communism objectives, and in addi-
tion, in a crucial field which Mr. Patton will describe, one com-
prising the General Indicators List.
These subordinate annexes, drawn up by the several sub-
committees of USIB charged with the respective subjects, vary
greatly in bite and effect. Those on atomic energy and guided
missiles get pretty well down to cases, and I have no doubt
have a marked effect on the allocation of effort. The scientific
and technical one reads largely in generalities, but does use-
fully highlight some of the important technical breakthrough
issues. There is similar generality in the economic one,
though it too has useful specifics on the Soviet penetration
problem. Clearly any document of this sort runs a major risk
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!he Liuicling Ut intelltgence LO ection
of boring the collector with what seems to him largely boiler-
plate, and thus getting no effective impact.
So much for attempts to state objectives. When the effort
started, I find from the historical files, many powerful voices
were raised prophesying nothing but a waste of time. I think
it has not turned out so: certainly the blood on our Estimates
conference tables every year looks real, so somebody must be
getting hurt; and that is a good sign. Nonetheless, there are
clear limits to what can be done along these lines.
Generic Practical Problems
There are certain problems of a day-to-day nature in the
consumer-collection relationship common to most forms of
collection which it will be worth while to look at one by one.
They seem to be associated mainly with five steps in the
process of levying requirements:
I. Defining the requirement, or locating intelligence gaps.
2. Stating the requirement for the collector.
3. Selecting the appropriate collection system.
4. Servicing the return, including supplemental require-
ments.
5. Making specific evaluations and appraising the col-
lector's reporting.
I should say, by the way, that I shall be talking solely about
consumer-originated requirements, leaving out the handling
of requirements originated by collectors themselves for the
purpose of testing or developing a source, or to take advantage
of spot opportunities. This latter type of self-levy is common
and often very important today?particularly, for example,
when our overt collectors learn of projected travel behind the
Curtain by knowledgeable legal travellers?but it raises no
real machinery problem.
Defining the requirement. In the field of modern history
writing, and I am sure other areas of scholarship as well, it
Is a commonplace that the great bulk of writers choose a sub-
ject because the available materials are ample, rather than
ask what the key questions are and then seek out and work
on materials however slender. This is a natural human tend-
ency, and in scholarship the immediate cost may be no worse
than massive cases of publisher's indigestion. In intelligence,
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however, the tendency can be fatal, with the massive indiges-
tion falling to the policy-making reader, while the poor collec-
tor goes about his business with no help from the producer in
the middle.
Making the producer stress his gaps rather than his satis-
factions is of course largely a problem in education of the
individual, and toward this education the various priority
lists certainly make some contribution. Yet something more
intensive and specific is needed. In essence, the intelligence
analyst must be taught not to begrudge time spent in pointing
out gaps in information (and how they might be met) as an
essential pare of his job?and one to be done as early as possi-
ble. It seems to me that the difficulty in educating the
analyst varies directly as the amount of material available to
him. Our scientific analysts, having lived for years on a very
thin diet indeed, seem to become collection-minded very easily.
So too with our economic analysts in earlier years. But our
political analysts, and lately, with the flood of published ma-
terials, our economic ones as well, need fairly constant tending
and reminding of this aspect of their jobs.
We have a number of devices on this score that may be
worth mentioning. Our current intelligence office has long
had its men do a periodic four-month review of priority re-
quirements (called Periodic Requirements List, or PRL) which
for economic matters draws heavily on the Bloc economic
analysts in ORR and which is also now reviewed in draft by
State. In our estimative process, we have had for some years
a system of post-mortems, in which the estimate writers state
in broadbrush terms where they thought the available infor-
mation was inadequate to support good answers to key ques-
tions--or, more realistically, as good answers as they thought
might be obtainable by more or different effort. These are
then taken by each agency and, we hope, made the basis of in-
tensified collection.
Recently our Bloc economic analysts have instituted a prom-
ising procedure under which each division is responsible for a
periodic statement of its gaps in intelligence. These must be
stated not merely in general terms, but in terms of possible
avenues of approach to solution?target lists and so on. And
most broadly of all, our whole National Intelligence Survey
operation?with a formal research framework, bibliographies,
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etc.?serves to highlight excellently gap areas in our world-
wide? knowledge. Significant as these devices are, however,
we are surely a long way from erring on the side of overempha-
sizing the problem of gap-detention.
Informing the collector. Once you have your gaps spotted,
you must make perfectly sure that they cannot be filled by
some available materials. The analyst who reaches for the
requirement sheet before he has picked all the brains within
reach and made a truly conscientious search of the open liter-
ature and available reporting (using Mr. Borel's massive tools
as they should be used)?such an analyst is indeed a deplorable
species. But unfortunately, I am told, not non-existent or
even perhaps on the decline. Granted that the need has been
found real, however, it must then be stated precisely and in-
telligibly to the collector, and must ask him for something
within his potential capacity to provide. Thus this step may
In practice often follow the next one, the selection of a col-
lection method.
In the drafting of requirements we have increasingly
stressed the inclusion of as much background as possible to
make what is wanted absolutely clear to the field collector.
But the ultimate questions must, at all costs, be firm and
specific. A requirement that asks the production capacity of
a Soviet plant, without more, is of no use whatever to the
collector. Rather the requirement should seek feasible par-
ticular answers that bear on this desired conclusion. More-
over, great things can sometimes be accomplished if the re-
quirement can be pitched so as to elicit useful responses by an
untrained as well as a trained observer. You may not have a
returnee scientist, but only a layman, so it behooves the ana-
lyst to think in terms of a layman's capacity to remember
floor spaces, height of stacks, size of loading facilities, and so
on. And even if you have (and can personally brief) an expert
collector, you must still stress your precise gaps and go over
ways to meet them.
Choosing the collector. If our analyst is fortunate enough
to have one of the self-contained collection systems at his dis-
posal, we need shed no tears for him. If he is in State, he may
not be able to induce his department or the Kabul Embassy to
share his interest in a full count of the goats in Afghanistan,
but his only problem will be persuasion. A far more serious
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case is that of the Bloc economic analyst who, in pursuit of his
top-priority study of rocket-fuel inputs, finds that he lacks
any real dope about the most prominent known Soviet produc-
ing facility. To what collection agency shall he turn?
This, frankly, is a major problem with us. I am told that
something over 50% of the requirements that come through
our inter-agency machinery now arrive "cold"?that is, with-
out prior warning to the collectors or discussion of what they
can or cannot be expected to accomplish. Such a requirement
may often name multiple possible collectors, and each of these
may conscientiously accept the requirement, try to find out
more about it, and then make an effort to fill it. It would al-
most be better if they did not?and in practice we do find blan-
ket requirements increasingly queried. A consumer should
care enough about his need to do a lot of follow-up on it, and
only if such follow-up produces no indication of the best collec-
tion method is he entitled to call broadcast upon many collec-
tors.
This problem, like so many others, gets back in the end to
the individual analyst's consciousness of collection problems
and capacities, assisted and advised by requirements staffs?
to whose importance I shall return. That analysts are not
sufficiently collection-conscious is due to physical separation,
security precautions often largely legitimate, and not least to
personnel turnover. Perhaps a shade too to the academic tra-
dition of self-help and solo effort. In any case, the fact remains
that this particular link of collector selection is probably the
weakest one in our process at present. It is of course a far
from unique organizational problem. Perhaps its parallel
Eauld be found in the relationship between Production and
Sales in any manufacturing business. But it certainly is one
on which we can profit at this conference by a few shared ex-
periences.
.Servicing the return. Moving to the next stage, let us sup-
pose that the requirement, in usable form, reaches a collector
in the field (whether in an Embassy, in a clandestine station,
or within the semi-overt collection complex in the United
States) and that the collector is then able to do something
about it and assemble some information. At this point, there
arises the problem of servicing the return so that it can be
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most useful. This problem is not serious if there is no great
time pressure and if the source will be readily available for re-
interrogation, further visits to the target, or more search of
his files. In questioning returned German scientists we have
been able to work through several stages of refinement, so as
to be fairly sure of having tapped the collection capability to
the maximum.
In other cases, however, we have often had disastrous ex-
periences of misunderstanding and incomplete collection dis-
covered when the source was no longer available. In seeking
to avoid such failures we have found it useful, at major sta-
tions, to have a reports officer right on hand ready to put the
take into at least semi-finished form, set the product against
the requirement, and direct immediate follow-up to catch the
gaps. I suggest that this device may have more uses than we
have yet turned it to, perhaps including an area of concern to
all of us, the handling of legal travellers from the Bloc, in-
cluding Communist China.
Evaluating and appraising. From what might be called
specific "intermediate" or "field" evaluation it is only a short
step to the final major problem in the normal process, that of
final evaluation and appraisal, a subject to which I shall return
at the conclusion of this paper.
The need for specific evaluation may sometimes be voiced in
an urgent plea from the collector who has developed a -new
source and want's to know whether it is worth further culti-
vation. That type of evaluation raises not too much difficulty
with us. Provided he is not tackled too often, the consumer
does respond adequately. But in the more routine case of in-
formation collected in response to general requirements, our
collectors complain bitterly about the lack of steady evalua-
tion, and I suspect it is one of the parts of our process that
needs a lot of attention and perhaps a device or two.
In a community as far-flung as ours it is perhaps too much
to strive for any uniform system or form of evaluation, and
this we have never attempted. Moreover, there will always be
the problem of reluctance to criticize, or appear to criticize,
collection service under separate command. Yet this is just
the crying need, and felt by none more strongly than the col-
lector himself.
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Within what I have called the self-contained systems the
evaluation job appears, on my brief survey, to be extremely
well done. State and the military services appraise the report-
ing performance of their overseas posts quite rigorously.
State, for example, does it by despatches on a spot basis, by
periodic evaluation of its people from this standpoint, and by
an annual critique of each overseas post's intelligence per-
formance. And on all of these they may and do consult with
other major consumers of the take. The CIA collection serv-
ices, on the other hand, both overt and clandestine, find their
consumers, CIA producing offices as well as others, limited in
their evaluation efforts; and as a result the collectors are
never too sure of just where they stand with respect to ade-
quacy in their job.
In all of these five day-to-day problems, much depends on
the personal competence and savvy of our requirements and
liaison people. In our system, we maintain requirements
staffs at both ends of the line, at least in the CIA production
and collection services. In State and the military services
they stand, I believe, more in the middle, attached organiza-
tionally neither to the producing offices nor to the offices
charged with giving instructions to the collectors. What is
clear, in either set-up, is that they must have the broadest
possible knowledge of the capabilities of various collection units
or of their own particular one, and must be able to interpret
the collector to the consumer and vice-versa.
At the same time, I venture that the really good require-
ments officer should have a king-sized lazy streak in him, lead-
ing him to avoid interposing himself where he is not needed
and to permit, indeed urge or compel, the analyst to get to-
gether directly with the collection agency, as far down the
line as possible, so that he can make clear what his need
really is and tailor it to the capacities of the collector.
So far as organization goes, I have sought in vain, in talk-
ing to all I could get my hands on, for any generalized formula.
I do know I lhas a practice that our clandes-
tine services have always resisted, namely having consumer
representatives detailed directly to the collection shop and
actually in on the planning of operations. This practice pre-
vails to some extent in our military services' covert activities
In support of field commands and similar missions within the
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sphere of what we call "agreed activities," but it is not used in
the main CIA clandestine collection service. The advantages
and disadvantages of the two systems may deserve some dis-
cussion at this conference.
Problems of Clandestine Collection
All the problems I have just discussed are common in some
degree to all forms of collection. But there is a very great
difference between the guidance problems of the overt and
semi-overt systems and those of clandestine collection. Here,
I should say, is the ne plus ultra of guidance and requirement
problems, where all the types of problems, from basic alloca-
tion of effort to the attempt to meet specific requirements in
relation to available resources, are at their maximum. This
arises from the simple fact that clandestine assets cannot be
laid on the table for inspection.
In the U.S. community our most important coordinating
device is an Interagency Clandestine Collection Priorities Com-
mittee (IPC), on which all the major consumer agencies are
represented. This committee, founded in 1950, has as its prin-
cipal function the preparation of continuing guide lists of key
specific targets in the USSR, Communist China, and the Satel-
lites. (IPC's responsibilities are worldwide and may on occa-
sion lead to work on other areas, such as the (JAR, especially
where a Soviet element is present.) These lists are based on,
and under present practice stated in terms of, the basic First,
Second, and Third Priority Objectives set forth in the PNIO's.
The IPC lists have evolved a great deal over the years.
They were originally massive shopping lists, in which pistols
were doled out more or less indiscriminately to the mole, the
rat, and the badger on a sort of prima facie showing of rele-
vance to Soviet striking power or some other key aspect of
Soviet power and intentions. Particularly within the past two
years, however, they have become a far more meaningful selec-
tion which we believe really does take in virtually all of the
key physical targets of which we are aware. Moreover, the
frighteningly encyclopedic character of the lists has recently
been reduced by the production of special lists of installations
of absolute top priority, and admission to these lists is very
carefully screened indeed. The result is that today for the
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first time our clandestine collectors have a fairly reliable
frame of reference against which to judge the incoming spot
requirement of consumers. Moreover, the lists have become
of increasingly greater usefulness in a function they have al-
ways filled to some extent, that of providing a framework for
long-range planning in the development of clandestine assets.
Yet there obviously remain major defects and problems.
Although the IPC lists are pitched in terms of clandestine col-
lection, each important case has to be shaken out to be sure
there are not other forms of collection that can better take on
all or a part of the job. We have made great Progress in some
fields in deciding what should be gone after by the clandestine
route, but there have still been ghastly fiascos where great
clandestine effort was applied to obtain results that were avail-
able all the time through careful analysis of the open litera-
ture, and conversely I am sure there are many cases where
clandestine effort is not being pushed to the maximum in the
belief that other sources are of some use, when in fact they
are not. In this, as in so many matters in this field, the secu-
rity fears of the collector (not by any means only the clan-
destine collector) play a large part.
Naturally, the consumer's dream is a situation where he
could go to the collectors, get a full layout of their assets, and
go back and frame his requirements accordingly. This can
be done to some extent in areas such as East Germany, where
the clandestine assets are considerable and of a general char-
acter that can be presented without much security problem.
But in the key areas of the USSR itself and Communist China,
assets are so relatively few that they cannot be usefully de-
scribed without tending to pinpoint them in a way that does
clearly present major hazards.
The result is that in this area, above all, there is a premium
on use of the competent middleman, or Requirements Officer,
who can master the possibilities of an asset and then, by some
obscure process of osmosis and double-talk, get the consumer
to use his imagination and frame requirements that will elicit
useful responses. The premium on well-framed questions is
tremendous, sources are not easily accessible for a second
round, and often a great deal of collateral research is needed
to think of things that the particular type of source is really
in a position to observe and report. Thus the need for con-
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sumer and collector to be close together is nowhere more
acute, and yet nowhere is it made more difficult by the prob-
lems of security, physical distance, and the number of go-
betweens involved.
Apart from their intrinsic difficulty, these problems suggest
a larger question in the theory of clandestine collection?
whether in fact it makes the best sense to have a system of
consumer-originated spot requirements for clandestine collec-
tion. As a practical matter, virtually no spot requirement
can be met without a great deal of follow-up contact as direct
as possible between the analyst and at least the headquarters
of clandestine collection. The tail does wag the dog, more
than in any other form of collection, and it is a question
whether requirements work should not be done almost wholly
by laying out the general nature of the asset and then can-
vassing consumers to see what needs that asset can be brought
to serve. This of course should not mean that clandestine
planning and major direction would not continue to be done
within as strong an overall framework of priorities as possible,
but only that spot requirements would not be levied except
after more general statements supplemented by all the per-
sonal contact and consultation possible. This relates to the
organizational question I mentioned earlier, whether the con-
sumer might not have his people right in the requirements
shop of the clandestine collector.
Overall Evaluation
Last, and perhaps most important, I come to the problem
of overall appraisal of the collection system and top-level work
to set in motion major new developments and changes. Of all
human activities, I suppose intelligence may be about the
least susceptible to accounting methods or to attempts, at any
given moment, to figure out just how well or badly you may be
doing relative to the possible. Any businessman would despair
if he tried to get the equivalent of a department by depart-
ment profit-and-loss statement such as General Motors gets
from Cadillac, Buick, and so on; and he would succumb to total
frustration if he set out to take a measure of how the whole
vast holding company was really doing.
Yet though we may be rightly skeptical of quantitative or
even qualitative appraisals on an overall scale (I have earlier
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remarked the importance of appraisal in a more specific con-
text), we have become increasingly conscious over the past five
years of the need to draw back from the operating picture and
take stock to see if we are not leaving undone really big things
that we ought to be doing. For this purpose the ordinary
machinery of government has severe limitations. For two
years I had the dubious experience of chairing a working group
to inform our National Security Council, on a most discreet
basis, how intelligence was doing. The report has become
better over the years, but the amount of uncandour, ellipsis,
and just plain backside protection is still formidable. You
simply can't get people to confess their sins in front of others.
Within the structure of government the one device we have
found useful is the creation of a gadfly post at a high level.
Given a self-starting, inquiring, and energetic individual with
power to open all doors, this can be quite profitable. For the
large tasks of appraisal, however, we have found it most useful,
in many cases probably indispensable, to bring in groups of
more or less expert outsiders to advise us. They are a nui-
sance while in the inquiry stage, but they bring together people
from all corners of the community, put their work into greater
focus than it had, and on many occasions come up with ex-
tremely important recommendations.
Lastly, we have embarked during the past year on a signifi-
cant experiment in seeking to deal with our most serious col-
lection gaps. This is the creation, last March, of a Critical
Collection Priorities Committee, chaired by CIA's Deputy Di-
rector for Intelligence and with high-level representation from
all the main agencies. This committee, chartered to look into
any aspect of collection on key priority objectives and to rec-
ommend action, has taken as its first task the field of guided
missiles. Aided by the fact that the overall requirements in
this field had been built up with exceptional care and thorough-
ness by our guided missile committee, the CCPC has achieved
as a first step what may be the first single-document inventory
of all assets being employed on the guided missile problem.
Its work has great promise?which I can say the more easily
as I have no connection with it?and it may well be the fore-
runner to future exercises in really comprehensive collection
planning, though I doubt if the approach fits any but the most
cleanly focused substantive problems.
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The Guiding Of Intelligence Collection
A Look Ahead
? Let me conclude with a word on the future of collection
against the Sino-Soviet Bloc. I suspect that in terms of
method the future will see an increasing emphasis on the
technical collection methods, and that as to targets we should
be focusing more and more on Soviet scientific plans and pro-
gress. From my viewpoint as an estimator it appears that
our information on the Soviet Bloc economic picture, while of
course still far below what we would like it to be, has sorted
itself out tremendously in the last few years. On the political
side we must go on trying, but are not likely to succeed beyond
modest limits in getting advance knowledge of inner political
developments or changes in foreign policy and plans. And as
to military hardware, we are not in too bad shape on the con-
ventional weapons and forces.
It is in advanced weapons and scientific progress that we
find at once our most critical area and the one where our
present status is least good. Though our hopes lie in the ex-
pansion of technical collection systems, it is also true that in
this area we have a much greater number of opportunities for
getting at the fringes, and sometimes more, through contacts
with Soviet scientists, the expanded Soviet scientific litera-
ture, and a host of other sources that can be tapped through
the more orthodox overt and clandestine methods. Yet the
use of these methods, in turn, will require a degree of educa-
tion and training well beyond past needs. It is one thing to
train an agent to count the flatcars going through Brest-
Litovsk; quite another to train and give the right questions to
an agent in a low-level position in a scientific establishment.
From a guidance standpoint, this seems to me to present the
greatest challenge to our ingenuity, industry, and machinery.
The need is greatest, perhaps the response will be also.
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the U.S. strategic warning
watchtower still under con-
struction.
THE MONITORING OF WAR INDICATORS
Thomas J. Patton
To provide warning of any surprise attack against the
United States and its allies is our first national intelligence
objective, but one, it has been our experience, that cannot be
adequately served by the normal processes of estimative or
current intelligence. We have therefore found it necessary
to develop a somewhat specialized intelligence effort for ad-
vanced strategic early warning. This effort, which we have
termed "indications intelligence," seeks to discern in advance
any Soviet or other Communist intent to initiate hostilities,
whether against the United States or its forces, its allies or
their forces, or areas peripheral to the Soviet Orbit. It also
seeks to detect and warn of other developments directly sus-
ceptible of enemy exploiting action which would jeopardize the
security of the United States; and this effort has been ex-
tended in practice to any critical situation which might give
rise to hostilities, whether or not there is an immediate threat
of direct US or Soviet involvement.
We maintain a sharp distinction between this intelligence
early warning?a strategic warning in advance of military
operations, based on deductive conclusions about Soviet prepa-
rations?and operational early warning, tactical conclusions
from information on Soviet operations now obtained largely
by mechanical means. I like to think of the indications ac-
tivity as having four aspects:
First, it is the cultivation of a mental attitude which leads
to first assessment of all Soviet or Communist action in
terms of preparation for early hostilities.
Second, it is the development of a body of doctrine which
can serve as guidance for the collection of warning informa-
tion, for its physical handling, and for its evaluation. Basi-
cally this is the isolation of those actions which would be
most likely to constitute preparations for hostilities, whether
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deliberate or in response to the immediate international situ-
ation. It is the creation, through experience, of a body of
"common law" applicable to the selection, evaluation and anal-
ysis of information pertinent to warning.
Third, it is the development of new techniques and methods
for the collection, processing, evaluation, and analysis of in-
formation significant principally or solely for purposes of stra-
tegic early warning. These techniques and methods range
from finding new sources to analysis by electronic devices.
With the development of missiles and the consequent sharp
reduction in the time lag between an enemy decision to attack
and the attack, we must give this aspect of the activity in-
creased attention. The alternative would be a degree of abdi-
cation by intelligence to "operations," with a consequent loss
to national flexibility.
Fourth, it is the organization. of the intelligence community
at all levels so that it can process most rapidly and effectively
information from every source which could provide insight
into Soviet preparation for hostilities. This processing in-
volves every step from initial screening, or even collection, to
the reporting of conclusions to responsible officials of the ex-
ecutive arm of the government. This continuous process is an
integral part of, and yet different from, the current intelli-
gence and estimative processes. When a threat appears
great, as in moments of considerable crisis, the indications
process tends to coalesce with both the current intelligence
process and the estimative process, at least at the national
level.
Before treating these aspects in detail I shall outline the
organization and procedures for advance strategic warning
which have evolved in the United States. Far from perfected
and still evolving as they are, they will at least illustrate one
national effort to provide intelligence indications of threaten-
ing war.
The Watchers and Their Work-Week
The Director of Central Intelligence and the US Intelligence
Board, who have the ultimate national responsibility for this
warning, have in effect delegated the function to the USIB
Watch Committee. The Watch Committee is composed of sen-
ior intelligence officers at the general officer of senior colonel
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level representing the major intelligence agencies, and is
chaired by the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence. Al-
though it meets only weekly during normal times, or perhaps
daily during crises, its function is continuous, exercised
through frequent liaison and contact and through a constant
routine exchange of information and evaluations, formal or
informal.
Serving the Committee is a permanent staff in the National
Indications Center, the physical locus of Committee functions.
The NIC staff of 25 is composed of intelligence officers at the
colonel or naval captain level representing each of the major
intelligence agencies, assisted by administrative, communica-
tions, and graphics personnel. The Center itself is linked by
electrical communications to the major agencies. It receives
from the USIB agencies a flow of possible indications informa-
tion, both on a routine across-the-board basis and as evaluated
and selected for possible pertinence. It has a 24-hour intelli-
gence duty officer who is in frequent contact with duty officers
In other agencies and with members of the staff. Through
these contacts and communication links there is a constant
interchange of information and views, but formally the Watch
Committee functions on a weekly cycle which can be telescoped
during crises to a matter of minutes. The cycle is rather
elaborate, and while imperfect it at least aims at thoroughness.
It runs roughly as follows:
Friday to Monday noon: Screening and processing informa-
tion, in the NIC and in each member agency.
Monday afternoon: The NIC staff reviews available informa-
tion, compiles a preliminary agenda for the Wednesday
Watch Committee meeting, and teletypes it to member
agencies.
Tuesday: "Pre-watch" meetings in each member agency,
attended also by NIC staff members, at which available
information is reviewed and selected for the Watch Com-
mittee meeting. Final agenda and graphics are prepared
in the NIC.
Wednesday morning: Watch Committee meeting. All in-
telligence and operational information considered perti-
nent and its interpretation is reviewed, orally and graphi-
cally, in a two- to three-hour session. The Committee
drafts its conclusions at the table.
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Afternoon: Watch Committee members check its conclu-
sions individually with USIB members. The conclusions,
when coordinated through the medium of the NIC, are
then published as USIB views and transmitted to re-
sponsible government officials and other recipients around
the world. NIC prepares the draft body of the Watch
Report, a summarization of the evidence considered by the
Committee, and sends it by courier or teletype to USIB
member agencies.
Thursday morning: The draft Watch Report is reviewed,
updated, and commented on by USIB members and by
responsible analysts at the desk level in all major agencies.
Afternoon: The NIC staff, on the basis of agency comments,
prepares a final draft report and submits it to USIB mem-
bers for approval.
Friday morning: The printed report is disseminated to all
recipients; all concerned breathe deeply and plunge into
the cycle again.
This fairly exhaustive procedure is complex, sometimes pon-
derous and time-consuming. But in addition to the produc-
tion of the formal Committee reports, it has served another
very important purpose: it has accustomed all those involved
to the joint hammering-out of all the issues, including minor
or particular ones. This means that when time is pressing
and the issues really urgent we can arrive at joint evaluations
and conclusions very quickly. Upon occasion a Committee
conclusion has been passed to the White House less than an
hour after the Committee was summoned to meet.
Within most of our agencies, the normal internal intelli-
gence processes and organizations are relied on to flush out
and evaluate the information which is passed to the NEC or
utilized by Watch Committee members at their meetings.
Several agencies, however, maintain small internal groups
whose sole function is to screen out warning information and
seek or stimulate evaluations of it. They are parallel pieces,
by way of insurance, to the normal internal intelligence or-
ganization and process. In Air Force, for example, a 24-hour
indications center is maintained to serve USAF Headquarters
and to act as central for a net of small indications centers in
the major geographical air commands.
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Each of our major joint military commands outside the con-
tinental United States has a replica of the national Watch
Committee. These are responsible to the theater joint com-
mander, but forward their reports to Washington, where they
are regularly considered by the Watch Committee. Thus in
our national intelligence warning process the Watch Com-
mittee cycle has its concurrent parallels abroad dealing simi-
larly with local warning problems. In some instances the
timing of the process abroad has been adjusted to that of the
Watch Committee.
With these mechanics as a background, I return to the
four aspects of indications intelligence which I mentioned ear-
lier: mental attitude, doctrine, the development of techniques,
and organization. My remarks constitute an amalgam of the
experience and ideas of a small number of us who have worked
in indications intelligence for some years. Some of these
ideas have yet to be adopted throughout our community, but
our experience leads us to believe that in time they may be
more widely accepted.
Attitude of the Watcher
Ideally, for the purposes of indications intelligence, some or
all of the following assumptions must be made as basic work-
ing hypotheses, though each can be legitimately challenged in
any given situation:
The Soviets, together with the other Communist states, are
seeking an opportune time to initiate hostilities to achieve
their ends.
The attack will attempt maximum surprise, possibly during
periods of international calm.
The decision to initiate hostilities may be made without the
military capability which we would consider requisite.
Any estimates which argue from other assumptions may be
quite wrong.
If intelligence officers dealing at any stage with potential
warning information can be conditioned to these assumptions,
we feel that we have a greater chance of detecting that pattern
of developments which may attend preparations for an at-
tack. Intelligence officers need not be ruled by these assump-
tions, but they should be conscious of them when any possibly
relevant information is considered: for instance, military exer-
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cises should always be considered as deployments and as
changes in degree of military readiness or as rehearsals for an
impending attack.
We must instill and maintain this attitude in all personnel
dealing with potential warning information, particularly dur-
ing non-critical periods or during the fading days of a crisis.
This is a difficult task, especially in a large intelligence organi-
zation with a high degree of specialization and compartmen-
talization. There are two obvious alternative ways of going
about it. One is to wage a relentless educational campaign
among the body of our intelligence personnel. This method
faces some of the obstacles of a highway safety campaign or a
campaign against sin; and it is possible that in laying exten-
sive general stress on the warning problem we might overdo it
and give rise to unbalanced or unduly alarmist intelligence re-
porting and estimates.
The other approach, which I favor, is to develop a small
group of indications intelligence officers, either working to-
gether as a body or spread among various organizations but
maintaining close contact. Such officers would consider in-
formation from the warning point of view only, would provide
continuity in the development of doctrine, would serve as mis-
sionaries among both collectors and analysts, and would keep
pressing for adequate attention to fragmentary information
of potential but not necessarily apparent significance to warn-
ing. Such officers need not achieve great depth in any re-
gional or functional intelligence field, since they could rely on
experts for the necessary support. It has been our experience
that intelligence officers given this responsiblity become en-
thusiasts, if not zealots, of the indications hunt, and ex-
tremely sensitive to those visceral signals which in the last
analysis may well be the vital factor in our judgment as to
the imminence of a Soviet attack.
In the United States several intelligence agencies have made
use of this approach to a greater or less degree. Others de-
pend largely upon having their representatives in our National
Indications Center and upon the fact that our major joint
current intelligence committee, the Watch Committee, focuses
on indications of hostilities and does not spread its considera-
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The Monitoring Of War Indicators bELRET
tion to all matters of general intelligence significance. Al-
though it might appear that this specialization could develop a
predisposition to a too-frequent crying of "wolf," we feel that
the joint nature of the considerations which precede the for-
warding of our warnings tends to preclude the danger. In
practice, we have found that the nature of our system has
served to reduce the number of alarmist "flaps" which arise,
particularly outside intelligence circles, from undeliberated
interpretation of developments.
Doctrine of the Watch
In the development of a doctrine to guide and assist us to
provide warning of an attack, we have sought first to identify
in advance those actions which would constitute preparations
for hostilities. Such pre-identifications, useful to both ana-
lysts and collectors, we have compiled into Indicator Lists. An
indicator we define as a major action which the Soviets must
take before they are ready for hostilities, whereas an indication
is evidence that such an action is being or has been taken.
The distinction is an essential one which all of us tend to lose
sight of in common usage.
In isolating those actions which we designate as indicators
or potential indicators, we are seeking answers to several key
questions:
What are the essential steps the Soviets and their allies
must take in their preparation for early major hostilities?
Which of these steps represent a degree of national com-
mitment which would only, or most likely, follow their
decision to initiate hostilities?
In the light of the nature of information currently available
to us, or which can be expected, what sort of information
will we accept as evidence that these preparatory or im-
plementing steps are being taken?
How do we distinguish, during periods of crisis, between those
actions which are precautionary and those which are
preparations for deliberate hostilities?
What actions constitute evidence that the Soviet decision-
making process is in action, possibly considering the ques-
tion of hostilities?
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SECRET The Monitoring Of War Indicators
We have attempted to distinguish a series of preparation
phases representing progressive steps toward a decision to
attack or progressive commitment of the enemy state to war.
We group the indicators in four such stages as follows:
Long Range: Actions involved in the intensified achieve-
ment of specific military capabilities, offensive or defensive,
essential to the prosecution of general hostilities which
are either generally anticipated or deliberately planned.
Medium Range: Actions or developments which might ac-
company or follow a decision to ready the nation or the
military forces generally for any eventuality, or which
might follow a deliberate decision for war but precede for-
mulation, issuance or implementation of specific opera-
tional plans and orders.
Short Range: Actions which might follow or accompany the
alerting and/or positioning of forces for specific attack
operations or to meet an estimated possible US attack.
Immediate or Very Short Range: Actions which might ac-
company or immediately precede a Soviet attack (fre-
quently combined in practice with the preceding stage) .
These stages can, and have been, defined at greater length
or quite differently, but the purpose is the same?to arrive
at a listing which groups at one end those actions which may
represent long-range preparations for hostilities, but not nec-
essarily a commitment to them, and at the other end those
actions which, by their urgency and costliness, appear to con-
note a commitment of the enemy state to war. It also gives
us a sensing of the imminence associated with such indications
as we may detect, and of the phasing in time among them.
In our listings we attempt to give not only the major ac-
tions which constitute indicators, but also some of the con-
tributory indicators which, if noted in concert, would comprise
evidence of a major indication otherwise undetected. Our
phased approach also serves to isolate actions by which we
hope to gauge the extent and danger of Communist reaction
to a particular, perhaps seemingly localized, crisis.
Our proposed schedule of lists will include:
First, a general indicator list stating in broad terms the
major actions we would expect.
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The Monitoring Of War Indicators
Second, a series of functional lists in much greater detail.
There will be separate lists for Long Range Air Force
preparations, ground force preparations, political and dip-
lomatic activities, clandestine activities, civil defense, mili-
tary medicine, weather service, etc.
Third, a series of lists which address themselves to special-
ized sources, including the technical sources. These lists,
in effect, are an application of the preceding lists to in-
formation provided by individual sources, particularly to
changes in a routine take whose warning significance
might not be immediately apparent. One such list ad-
dresses itself to monitored changes in the conduct of
Soviet broadcasting. Another might concern radar moni-
toring. Another would cover observations our embassy
personnel in Moscow might make in the normal course of
their daily routine: closure of some subway stations, for
example, and an absence of fire engines from normal sta-
tions might provide confirmation for suspicions that late-
stage civil defense preparations were under way. A simi-
lar list for legal rail travelers would include actions ob-
servable from a train window which might fit into indicator
patterns.
Fourth, a series of target lists naming those installations or
outfits by whom or at which certain activity would be of
major significance, and those by whom or at which any
activity would have major significance. Examples of
the latter might be an elite Long Range Air Force unit or
an air transport unit suspected of a role limited to the
ferrying of nuclear "pills" to operational commands.
This is an ambitious program, reflecting primarily the pau-
city of available information, particularly information on the
major instruments of Soviet attack. When completed, it will
be a massive document. We also plan, however, a highly con-
densed one-sheet version of each list, perhaps in tabular form.
Such lists must be looked on only as guides, and quite often
they rapidly become obsolete. In some instances we have
failed so far to come up with anything really satisfactory?
most notably in the missile field. But when we have had suffi-
cient experience with our own missiles and with information
on Soviet missile operations, we expect to be able to list actions
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SECRET The Monitoring Of War Indicators
which would serve to indicate the operational readying of the
Soviet missile system.
Another aspect of doctrine is formulation of the answers to
these questions:
How early, or at what stage, and how often in a given situ-
ation do we inform officials of the executive arm of the
government?
What general criteria do we use to determine that a warning
situation exists?
Our first premise is that we should provide executive offi-
cials with the earliest warning possible. This means, in ef-
fect, a progressive series of warnings?from a generalized one,
perhaps conveying only our sense of uneasiness, through a
contingent one pointing out that if certain further actions
take place it may be that hostilities are imminent, to an un-
conditional one conveying our conviction that an attack is
forthcoming.
The criteria of a warning situation lie in patterns, in con-
figurations of Soviet or Communist activity which might be
consistent with some stage in preparations for early war.
Once an apparent pattern is detected, giving an indications
situation although not necessarily an alert situation, the
hypothetical patterns which we have constructed in the prepa-
ration of our indicator lists suggest further developments to
look for. If information on such developments is subsequently
received, we have then progressed toward an alert situation.
When we note apparent patterns of preparation we alert
our field collection, particularly to our need for information on
major indicators. When we receive information on the ac-
complishment /of one or more isolated major indicators, we
also alert the field, this time to our need for information on
those other indicators we might expect to see patterned with
them. In both instances we feel that we have the basis for
some form of warning to the government, even though we may
have no conviction that a pre-war situation exists.
The pattern approach is particularly applicable to the sur-
prise attack; it has limitations in situations of localized ten-
sion, where the buildup for a limited attack may be as com-
plete as it will ever be, but where there may have been no
political decision to make the attack. The indications effort
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ne monitoring
may suggest refinments in our collection, and it may assist in
narrowing the field we must search in order to detect evidence
of the decision; but it cannot go a great deal further. .Sub-
sequent developments are sometimes almost exclusively
matter for tactical or operational intelligence. Indications
intelligence is looked to, however, for warning of preparations
to broaden a localized situation or to cope with an expected
broadening.
Techniques and New Techniques
Our attempt to develop techniques has thus far been aimed
at facilitating the processing and analysis of information and
the detection of patterns, and at exposing areas requiring
further analytical investigation or more extensive collection
efforts. We have used extensively the more orthodox methods,
although despite their usefulness we have had to abandon
some because of their expense in time and personnel. To de-
scribe a few:
Card files of information extracted only for apparent or
potential indications significance?one item to a card in
three separate files, according to functional fields, date,
and the apparent axis or targets of Soviet/Communist
attack.
Running lists constituting highly condensed summaries of
apparently significant developments arranged according
to the apparent axis of attack.
"Shelf-paper" rolls of charts with summarized information
of apparent indications significance entered according to
date of activity, area and functional field, or in other ar-
rangements.
Highly condensed summaries of apparent current indica-
tions, negative and positive, bearing on particular situ-
ations.
Quarterly summaries of indications, including only selected
developments of apparent medium- or long-range signifi-
cance.
There have also been efforts, some only experimental, at
posting developments on display charts or boards categor-
ized variously according to area, functional field, date of
activity, and degree of imminence or hypothetical length
of pre-attack time remaining. Through the use of colors
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on; orsng inatcators
and other devices, such displays serve to call attention to
possibilities which need further investigation. The Air
Force, which has been the most active among our depart-
ments in the development of indicator techniques, de-
vised such an indicator display board for use in all Air
Force indications centers and is now experimenting with
other graphic means of calling attention to trends and
potential warning situations.
There have been a number of suggestions for the use of
electronic devices which could store information so coded and
weighted that when queried they would respond with a "tem-
perature" reading and a predicted area and time of danger.
We have been hesitant to plunge intQ this sort of thing, be-
cause the information fed in would in many cases be so uncer-
tain, and its weighting?which would reflect immediate judg-
ment as to its significance?even more uncertain. I do not
believe, however, that we should rule out this approach for-
ever. In many respects, our most important warning informa-
tion is becoming more and more fragmentary and more and
more of a technical nature. It is hard information, such as de-
tection of radar emanations, but difficult to evaluate, analyze
and record by our conventional methods. It may be that an
imaginative and judicious use of machines will enable us to
put such information quickly into meaningful patterns which
can contribute to our warning.
In developing these techniques we are merely seeking aids
to analysis and to presenting the situation. In no sense do
we believe that intelligence warning can be performed me-
chanically, although there are a surprising number of people
who believe that this is possible or that it is what we are trying
to do.
There is also a need for development of new collection tech-
niques for warning purposes. One thing that can be done is
to formulate a coordinated series of collection requirements
and reporting directives which would be put into effect only
during periods of alert or international crises, when certain
types of information would assume new significance. Another
is to direct a series of routine monitoring-type missions against
selected targets for indications purposes only, with a view to
detecting any changes from normal activity. The targets
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themselves might be of minor importance, but changes in their
activities might reflect far more important activities else-
where. A series of somewhat riskier pre-planned monitoring-
type missions could be reserved for periods of alert, when the
risks could be justified by the depth of our suspicions.
It may be possible to devise new technical collection systems
or adapt some now in use to the purposes of warning intelli-
gence. Electronic intelligence, for example, I understand now
produces chiefly information on capabilities, new technical
developments and order of battle. We must rethink it to see
if it can produce unique information on changes in day-to-day
activities which would be meaningful to indications intelli-
gence. Early in the development of any new collection device
Its possibilities for indications intelligence should be examined.
This is frequently done far too late.
There is also a need, presumably through communications
techniques, for reducing the time lags between collection of
information and its effective presentation for evaluation. Our
air defense has found it necessary to develop methods for
automatic or semi-automatic presentation, and even analysis,
of tactical air warning information. But intelligence warn-
ing information, although we have been able to cut down ac-
tual transmission times for a few highly select messages from
field collection points, is too often subject to completely un-
acceptable, even though understandable, delays.
Organizational Devices
I have touched in the foregoing sections on some of the or-
ganizational devices introduced in the National Indications
Center and member agencies in support of the Watch Com-
mittee's function, devices which range from the establishment
of the NIC itself and the USIB coordination mechanism to the
creation of small parallel indications staffs in individual
agencies. I believe that certain other organizational measures
might in some form or combination further facilitate our
warning efforts. One would be a sort of national directory of
intelligence assignments which would locate and fix respon-
sibility for analysis and reporting of potential warning infor-
mation for every segment of our intelligence coverage, no
matter how minor.
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Then there might be created a body of collection experts,
perhaps even supported by a collection coordination center,
which would work in harness with the Watch Committee and
the National Indications Center. This might assist, particu-
larly during moments of crisis when time is short, in the co-
ordinated search for missing elements of information or in the
rapid clarification of uncertain information.
Finally, we could organize against emergencies a thorough-
going phased national intelligence alert, making provision for
availability of intelligence personnel, extent of 24-hour staff-
ing, availability of administrative support (including com-
munications), comprehensive situation reporting by field col-
lection and by intelligence agencies, and the initiation of pre-
planned collection measures such as the assignment of new
priorities and targets and the activation of reserve or one-shot
sources. Such a total alert would be very difficult to arrange
and to keep current, but it could save precious hours.
There is such great change either present or impending in
methods of warfare and the balance of power between East
and West that the task of providing warning is increasingly
difficult. The two major factors in this increasing difficulty
are a) the accelerating compression in time between the enemy
decision to launch an attack and its launching and between
the launching and its delivery, and b) the concurrent reduc-
tion in the amount and variety of discernible pre-attack activ-
ity. It seems to me that now, as never before, we must sub-
ject our intelligence organization and processes for collection
and evaluation to continuing scrutiny, and must improve or
adapt them to cope with the changing conditions. We must
ensure that we are collecting and considering the proper in-
formation and that we eliminate every possible delay in the
processing of the potentially vital information. Furthermore,
in order to provide warning, no matter how contingent, at the
earliest possible stage, we must improve our understanding of
Soviet Bloc decision-making and strategic doctrine.
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CONFIMNIV
The intelligence officer turns
salesman to tap the potential of
big business and the suspicious
refugee.
TECHNIQUES OF DOMESTIC INTELLIGENCE
COLLECTION
Anthony F. Czajkowski
The process of getting intelligence information out of people
is normally associated with overseas operations, but it was
demonstrated during World War II that this clandestine ac-
tivity can usefully be supplemented by collection in the ana-
lyst's own back yard. Potential sources of intelligence within
the United States are myriad. US concerns have been active
in various parts of the world for many decades and their
records often contain information which a clandestine agent
would have little hope of obtaining, especially in war-time.
Representatives of industrial plants travel continually and
compile expert reports and evaluations on foreign economic
and financial affairs. The current increase in East-West con-
tacts has sent thousands of US citizens as travellers to coun-
tries of the Soviet Bloc. Scientists and academicians attend
international meetings and conferences, where they meet and
exchange information with opposite numbers from all parts
of the world. Refugees from the Soviet Union and its satellite
nations continue to enter the United States for permanent
residence.
For more than ten years the Contact Division of CIA's
Office of Operations, with its network of field offices through-
out the country, has been tapping this vast potential of infor-
mation on behalf of the intelligence community. Since 1948
over forty thousand individuals and companies have supplied
information ranging into every field of intelligence. Through
this collection operation the community has at its disposal the
expert analysis and commentary of the most knowledgeable
people in the academic, scientific, professional and industrial
fields.
MORI/H RP PAGES
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CONFIDENTIAL Domestic Collection Techniques
Getting information from these individuals calls for tech-
niques different from those employed in clandestine collection.
The contact specialist, as the domestic field collector is known,
has no control over his Source. The Source provides the in-
formation voluntarily, with no hint of pressure or threat,
because he has been convinced that he can be of singular
assistance to the US Government; but mere waving of the flag
does not automatically trigger the cornucopia of intelligence
plenty. US citizens, as a rule, know little of intelligence or-
ganizations and intelligence needs. A visit to a businessman
by a government representative arouses instinctive fear that
the company books are about to be examined for tax purposes,
that an anti-trust suit is pending, or that an investigation is
being conducted against a friend. Academicians and mis-
sionaries are apprehensive that their cooperation with US
intelligence will become known and hinder their future ac-
tivity in a foreign area. The alien, wise to the ways of intelli-
gence and security services, distrusts the contact officer (cre-
dentials are easily forged, he claims) or fears for the safety of
relatives still living behind the Curtain.
To convert the hesitant businessman or fearful alien into a
cooperative Source, the contact officer must have a wide
diversity of skills. He must be a salesman, selling his prospect
on the importance of the intelligence function; he must be an
intelligence officer, knowing the needs and the gaps in the
community's information; he must play the practical psychol-
ogist, handling dissimilar personalities with dexterity; and
finally he becomes a skilled reporter, putting the Source's in-
formation into a concise and readable intelligence report.
Locating and Contacting the New Source
Since the contact officer cannot hope to approach all the
commercial, banking, educational, and scientific institutions,
as well as all the aliens, in his area, he must learn to select
from among his possible sources. He obtains leads from trade
journals and directories, from established sources, from Agency
headquarters, and from other government agencies. Match-
ing these leads against his knowledge of current intelligence
requirements, he tries to pinpoint those individuals and com-
panies in his area which have the best potential for filling the
requirements.
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Domestic Collection Techniques
Once he decides or is directed by his field chief to "open up"
a new company, institution, or individual, his first step is to
brief himself on the company and if possible on the individual
he is to contact. At the same time he reviews intelligence re-
quirements in the prospective contact's field, making prelimi-
nary exploration of its potential for his purposes. He will
offer no pretensions to expertise in the Source's field of spe-
cialty, but will be able to win confidence and rapport by
recognizing the Source's professional interests and under-
standing his terminology. He cannot walk in cold on a new
Source and hope to establish the proper rapport for a con-
tinuing contact.
No security clearance is required for initial contact with a
US citizen. The existence of the Central Intelligence organi-
zation and its general purposes are public knowledge, and no
classified information is discussed in the initial interview.
Contact with an alien, on the other hand, must first be cleared
with the FBI as a matter of internal security.
In approaching a new company or institution, the contact
officer always goes to the top man, to the president, the chair-
man of the board, or whoever determines broad policy for the
company. Once cooperation is obtained at the highest level,
it is assured at all subordinate levels. The president will not
ordinarily have the information intelligence is seeking, but he
will designate the official in the company who does have it and
who will be the future contact. If a subordinate is contacted
first, experience has shown, an embarrassing situation can
arise when the president inquires why his company is being
"penetrated" by the US Government.
To interview the executive an appointment is of course nec-
essary, and executives have secretaries whose function it is
to keep unwelcome visitors away and screen phone calls to the
"boss." The secretary wants to know who is calling and why.
The contact officer gives her his name and identifies himself as
a representative of the federal Government who wishes to
speak to her boss on a confidential matter. Few secretaries
dare to block such a call except in companies which have fre-
quent contact with government agencies. The persistently
inquisitive secretary is told that the caller will explain his pur-
pose fully to the boss.
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CONFIDENTIAL Domestic Collection Techniques
Once he has been put through to the executive, the contact
officer identifies himself more fully by revealing his associ-
ation with US intelligence or, if pressed, with CIA. He out-
lines briefly why he desires a personal interview. Most in-
dividuals, when first approached, associate a government offi-
cial with one of the enforcement agencies, and the contact man
therefore seeks an early appointment.
The First Interview
Since the contact officer's objective is to convert the pros-
pect into a continuing and cooperative Source, he must take
especial care to make the best initial impression. Tempera-
ments and social customs vary in different parts of the coun-
try, and the officer must comport himself according to the
Source's taste. Whereas a ten-gallon hat and a string tie may
be acceptable in Texas or in Arizona, they cause raised eye-
brows in Boston and New York. It has become axiomatic that
the contact man should dress as conservatively as the most
conservative of his contacts for that day. Religious or fra-
ternal pins are better not worn. In calling on a missionary
or religious source discussion of religion is avoided. The in-
telligence officer cannot allow himself the liberty of drawing
racial, color, or religious lines.
When, promptly at the time of his appointment, the contact
officer arrives and is ushered into the Source's office, he im-
mediately shows his credentials and underscores his associ-
ation with CIA to emphasize that he does not represent the
FBI or any other federal agency. The Source is naturally
curious about the visit, and may even have been troubled since
the first phone call. The officer tries to put him at ease im-
mediately. The approach will vary, depending on circum-
stance, on the personality of the Source, and even on the area.
In the North and West, and to some extent on the West
Coast, the typical Source is a busy man who has sandwiched
this appointment into a tight schedule. The contact officer
must talk fast and convincingly, in a business-like manner, to
win his cooperation. In the South and the mid-West a certain
amount of pleasantry or chit-chat may be in order before
getting down to the issue at hand.
Whatever approach he uses, the contact man must accom-
plish three things during his initial visit?explain the intelli-
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Domestic Collection Techniques CONFIDENTIAL
gence mission, assess the potential of the company for his
purposes, and show the Source ho vi he or his company can be
of assistance to the cause of national security.
Private citizens have varying amounts of knowledge about
intelligence, and the first task is to orient the Source on Cen-
tral Intelligence purposes and its place in the federal Govern-
ment. The contact officer brings out the Director's advisory
function to the National Security Council headed by the
President, stressing how necessary it is for policy makers to
be well informed on conditions and events throughout the
world. He also explains that he represents all the intelli-
gence agencies in the Government, so that needless duplica-
tion in visits by other intelligence representatives can be
avoided. The Source can contribute to the welfare of the
country, he says, by making available whatever information
on foreign plants, research and development, or other matters
he may possess or acquire.
The assessment of the company's potential then follows
naturally. The Source is usually willing to cooperate but may
fail to see how any information he has will be of value to the
intelligence effort. The contact man then introduces ques-
tions on the company's foreign branches or affiliates, the ex-
tent of its foreign business, and the degree to which the home
office is kept aware of conditions in areas in which the com-
pany operates.
At this point the Source may become apprehensive that
any information he provides may boomerang against his in-
terests, through punitive action by another federal agency,
through revelation of proprietary information to a competi-
tor, or through embarrassment of his future dealings with
foreign companies or governments. The contact man con-
vincingly reassures him that a guiding principle of all rela-
tions with informants is Source protection. The name of the
Source is never connected with his information. Nor is data
provided by a Source ever turned over to another federal
agency for any regulatory or punitive action. Information
given by the Source is circulated only in intelligence channels
within the United States, and the Source need not have any
apprehension that his name or his information will get into
unauthorized hands. His cooperation with intelligence, as
well as the information provided by him, is kept classified.
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CONFIDENTIAL Domestic Collection Techniques
Conversely, the Source is requested to treat the contact as
classified and not to reveal to anyone the purpose of the visit.
It is pointed out that the need for security is mutual.
Further, since this confidential contact may be followed by
other visits in which classified requirements may be used,
biographic information on the Source for security assessment
is requested. Ordinarily, if the contact officer has laid the
proper basis for a continuing contact with the Source, whether
the top executive or one of his subordinates, he has no difficulty
in securing biographic data.
The officer cannot rely on his memory to retain the infor-
mation divulged during the interview. He inquires whether
the Source has any objection to note-taking?an inquiry which
is generally academic, for it adds to She Source's feeling that
he is doing something important if his words are taken down.
On biographic and technical data note-taking is naturally a
matter of course.
The length of the first interview is governed by the time
available to the Source and the contact officer's estimate of
the Source's intelligence potential. The experienced contact
man can assess the company's potential in a short time, and
if his assessment is negative he arranges for a graceful exit
as soon as possible. If he believes that the company does have
access to useful information, he explores the possibilities as
completely as time and circumstance allow. In this case, the
length of interview must be gauged by the Source's attitude
and his appointment book. It sometimes happens, on the
other hand, that the Source has time on his hands and rel-
ishes having the ear of a government representative into which
to pour all his ideas on what he thinks is "wrong with Wash-
ington." Here the contact officer politely steers the conversa-
tion to the purpose of his visit, creating the impression that
he himself is a busy man.
The first interview is terminated with the understanding
that the officer will probably return to explore the company's
Information further. If a return is actually contemplated,
he leaves a personal card which bears his name, his field office's
postoffice box number, and his (unlisted) office telephone num-
ber. The name of the Agency does not appear on this card.
About a week or ten days later he writes the Source to thank
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him for his cooperation, mentioning that he is looking forward
to another visit. The letter serves to remind the Source of
intelligence interests and gives him again the officer's name
and phone number, should he have misplaced the calling-card.
After the initial interview the contact officer must esti-
mate the future usefulness of the Source and his company.
Should he follow up or not? If after consultation with his
field office chief he decides that the company has insufficient
potential to warrant further expenditure of time and effort,
he sends a complete account of his visit, plus the biographic
data he has obtained on the Source, to Division Headquarters,
with a notation that further contact is not contemplated. A
copy is of course retained in the field office, for the guidance
of other contact officers who may some day obtain a lead on
the same company. If, on the other hand, he decides that the
company and the Source can and will supply intelligence in-
formation of value, he submits to Headquarters not only an
account of his visit but also a request for security clearance
on the individuals with whom he will be dealing. The secre-
tary, if she is witting to the intelligence contact, may also
have to be cleared.
Continuing Contact
How often the contact officer calls on a company depends on
several factors?the amount and type of information it has
available, its distance from his field office, his own work-load,
the Source's own preferences and schedule. If the contact
officer has determined that a company has information peri-
odically, he makes it a point to pay it several visits a year,
even though each visit may not produce intelligence. An
ideal Source is one who has been "trained" to such a point
that he will telephone when he has information of interest
or when a company official has returned from a trip abroad.
But the contact man is well aware that a company official
thinks in terms of his own daily business needs and tends
to forget intelligence needs. Like the salesman, the con-
tact specialist must periodically revive interest in his product.
Subsequent visits to a company are relatively easy to
handle. In a large company the contact officer utilizes as
principal Source the person designated by the president, but
also continually attempts to become acquainted with the
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head of every department in which foreign intelligence may
be found. This intelligence may take the form of reports from
managers of overseas branches or affiliates, contracts or neog-
tiations with foreign companies or countries, or interviews
with returning officials. Travellers abroad are an important
font of intelligence, and the officer tries to arrange for regular
immediate notification when such travel takes place.
When the contact officer learns that a cleared company
official is about to travel on company business abroad, he is
faced with the often difficult question of whether to brief
him, that is, to instruct him beforehand in specific intelligence
interests in the areas to be visited. The decision to brief, in-
volving security and psychological hazards, is an infrequent
one. Sometimes the business traveller is outraged at an at-
tempt to recruit him as a "spy." But if the officer has worked
with a Source for some time, considers him reliable, and is
confident that he will not interpret the briefing as a man-
date to engage in cloak-and-dagger activity, then he requests
the entire intelligence community, through his headquarters
channels, to provide questions for which the Source may be
able to obtain answers. If he decides that a specific outlin-
ing of intelligence gaps is not desirable, he reminds the pros-
pective traveller of the general needs of the community and
suggests that whatever is of interest to him as a specialist
in his field will be of interest to intelligence as well. In
either case the Source must be discreet enough?and not all
business travellers have been?to avoid advertising abroad
that he is out to get "inside dope for CIA."
After the traveller has returned, the contact officer seeks
an interview as soon as mutually convenient. If there was a
briefing, the same questions may be used in debriefing. If
the Source was not specifically primed with requirements for
the trip, community requirements may be obtained for the
debriefing. Formal requirements, however, are only guides to
the interview rather than limitations on it. The contact
officer tries to get as much detail as possible on all items of
interest the Source may have encountered. Since a detailed
interview takes time and the returned traveller is generally
preoccupied with business matters that have piled up during
his absence, a copy of the trip report which he must usually
write for his company may be helpful. This report, however,
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Domestic Collection Techniques
will deal exclusively with his company's business, and inter-
views will still be necessary to explore any other subjects or
areas on which the Source may be competent to report.
Mechanical aids are occasionally used to expedite the in-
terview process. Although the modern businessman is well
acquainted with the tape recorder or dictaphone and generally
has no objection to their use, the contact man makes it a
point to get advance permission for them. Some Sources,
suggesting that an outline of the type of information desired
be left with them, offer to dictate the answers as time permits
Into a tape recorder. Under this procedure the Source must
be reminded to specify which questions he is answering and
to spell out proper names.
Intelligence collected is not limited to the spoken and written
word, but often includes maps, flow charts, photographs,
graphics, floor plans, etc. These items are of most use to
intelligence analysts when they are obtained for permanent
retention, preferably in the original copy; but the Source
usually has only a few copies and may balk at providing any
for retention. Here the persuasiveness of the contact man
must again prove itself. If he cannot talk the Source out of
a copy, he tries at least to obtain the item on loan for 30
days so he can send it to Washington for reproduction.
Intelligence collection is essentially a one-way street, with
the Sources giving and the collector receiving, but occasionally
a Source requests reciprocity. The contact officer does have
such unclassified items as the FBIS daily report on foreign
broadcasts and translations of Soviet scientific abstracts at
his disposal for distribution to selected Sources, and this quid
pro quo helps to cement a cordial relationship. A greater
strain on the relationship with a firm occurs when the Source
requests specific information in return. A company may
be opening a new branch overseas and desire information as
to whether its proposed indigenous branch manager is pro-
Communist or unreliable in some other way. Or a firm may
request assistance in arranging for the immigration of a skilled
worker. Such requests are especially embarrassing when
they come from a company which has been thoroughly co-
operative and which may itself have provided covert support
to the Agency. The contact man extricates himself from
such situations by referring the requestor whenever possible
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to the appropriate federal agency. If that does not work,
he agrees to take the matter up with his Washington head-
quarters and throws on Washington the blame for inability
to comply with the company's request.
The many foreign specialists who visit US firms and insti-
tutions also have information of intelligence interest. These,
however, the collector cannot talk to directly; intelligence
policy forbids interviewing aliens in the United States on tem-
porary visits. If time and occasion permit, the contact officer
enlists the aid of an established Source within the firm visited
to act as a cut-out or middleman. He briefs the cut-out
on intelligence interests and encourages him to intertwine
intelligence questions into his conversations with the
visitor. The cut-out is also in a good position to assess the
visitor's technical competence and personal idiosyncracies.
Interviewing through a cut-out, even more than interview-
ing through an interpreter, is less satisfactory than a direct
encounter, but is preferable to creating an impression that
visitors are invited to the United States only for intelli-
gence exploitation.
University Exploitation
Thus far we have dealt almost exclusively with commercial
or industrial firms as sources of intelligence. Other fruitful
Sources are found in universities, research institutes and
hospitals, pharmaceutical houses, etc. The contact officer
often finds that he must approach these Sources somewhat
differently than he approaches industrial ones. In the indus-
trial firm he deals with Sources as officials of the company.
In universities and similar institutions he deals with pro-
fessors and researchers as individuals.
The basic approach is nevertheless the same. The president
of the university is the initial point of contact; the contacter
needs his blessing for the exploitation of university personnel
and records. Lesser officials and faculty members also tend
to be more cooperative when they know that the president is
aware of the intelligence collection activity and approves of
it. The deans of the schools, the dean of students, and de-
partment chairmen are worth cultivating, for most of the
day-to-day activity of the university filters through their
offices. They can, for instance, provide information on special
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research projects, foreign travel of faculty members, visiting
foreign scholars, foreign graduate students, and other points
of intelligence interest.
But the best Source is usually the individual professor who
has just travelled abroad, attended an international confer-
ence, or entertained a foreign visitor. Like the businessman,
the professor must be convinced that his information will re-
ceive the highest degree of protection.
The contact officer finds it rewarding to consult a Who's
Who or some other reference work to obtain personal data
and to determine the Source's professional stature and spe-
cific field of research interest. The Source is usually flattered
that his professional competence is known to a layman. At
the same time the officer must not pretend to knowledge he
does not have on a technical subject, for such a sham is easily
and quickly detected by the Source. Every man, and espe-
cially a professor, likes to talk about his work; and the inter-
viewer's manifested interest in learning more about a subject
of which he knows little usually kindles the academic spark.
As a novice in the subject, the contact officer has ample excuse
to ask for explanation and detail on each point made, even
though the information may appear elementary to the
Source. The officer must, however, take especial care to re-
cord faithfully this kind of data, for technical information has
little value unless it is accurate. This may require another
visit to the Source to verify the accuracy of the officer's report
after he has finished writing it.
A problem the contact officer may encounter in his visits
to a university is the lack of privacy. Few universities have
individual offices for all members of the faculty. Doubling-up
is frequent, and in some schools general faculty rooms or de-
partmental offices are used in common. The officer makes
every effort to arrange a meeting in private, soliciting the aid
of the professor himself in trying to find a private spot. Even
a quiet corner of the cafeteria or a meeting in the officer's
automobile is preferable to one in a room where the interview
can be overheard by other individuals. The professor is usually
impressed by the officer's insistence on a secure meeting, and
the confidential nature of the relationship is thus underlined.
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The Alien
Getting information from the alien involves techniques
vastly different from those used in dealing with US citizens.
For collection purposes an alien is defined as a recent arrival
for permanent residence in this country, as opposed to the
visitor or foreign student. In practice, alien Sources have
been refugees from eastern Europe, with a small sprinkling of
immigrants from the Far East. Initially the displaced per-
sons of World War II, driven or escaping from lands occupied
by the German military forces, were exploited for their knowl-
edge of areas which were under Communist rule after 1945.
The influx of Hungarians after the events of October 1956 pre-
sented another golden opportunity to collect current intelli-
gence on an inaccessible area. More recently the increased
travel between the Soviet Bloc and the United States and the
greater emigration of Satellite nationals to visit or rejoin rela-
tives here have given impetus to the alien exploitation pro-
gram.
Because techniques in contacting and exploiting aliens are
so different from those used in dealing with industrial or aca-
demic Sources, alien specialists with language ability and
particular adaptability and perseverance have been assigned
to field offices where alien concentrations are greatest. Adapt-
ability is needed because of the varied types of alien with whom
the contact officer must deal, ranging from a former min-
ister in an exiled government to the janitor in a munitions fac-
tory. Perseverance is required to spend the time and effort
needed to track an alien as he moves from one address to
another. The interviews must usually be conducted in the
evening or on weekends, since the alien in most cases cannot
be interviewed at his place of employment.
In addition to the difficulty of locating the alien, and the
odd hours involved, the contact officer faces the much greater
problem of eliciting the cooperation of the Source. The great-
est barrier is the alien's suspicion. He is likely to have
lived by his wits almost continually since 1938, and to have
been interrogated and reinterrogated by various intelli-
gence and security services, not always in friendly fashion;
his instinctive reaction is to have nothing to do with an in-
telligence agent. A second barrier is the language, for few
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Domestic Collection Techniques
aliens speak enough English to carry on a detailed interview.
The contact officer's language ability may overcome this
handicap, but he should be aware of the danger that a native
fluency may cause the Source to suspect him as the agent of
a foreign security service. Frequently the alien has greater
trust and confidence in a contact man whose crude working
knowledge of the foreign language betrays him as obviously
American. If there is no mutual language in which to con-
verse an interpreter must be obtained. Field offices main-
tain lists of cleared Sources who can act as interpreters, but
here again the alien may doubt the bona fides of the in-
terpreter. He may trust the contact man but be suspicious
of his co-national.
The contact officer tries to make an appointment with the
alien, by telephone if any, or by letter. Often, though, he
must knock on the door without previous appointment, hoping
that his prospect is at home. The scene that greets him
when he enters the alien's home is that of the entire family
arrayed behind the man of the house, who, they fear, is in
trouble. He realizes that he cannot possibly speak to the
alien in private, for any attempt to lead him away from the
family group confirms their suspicion that something is
wrong. He is forced to present the purpose of his trip to
the entire family in an effort to allay their fears. Most aliens
are quick to grasp the needs of an intelligence service but they
must still convince themselves that their caller is actually
a representative of the US and not a foreign intelligence serv-
ice. The officer tells them that if they have any doubt about
the authenticity of his credentials they should call the local
office of the FBI. He stresses very emphatically, however,
that he is not an FBI agent, but represents an intelligence
organization interested only in foreign intelligence.
Once the hard shell of suspicion and distrust is pierced, the
alien becomes a most cooperative source. He is flattered that
the US Government has sought him out and pleased that he
can contribute to the fight against Communism. He is useful
both in supplying information from his own knowledge and ex-
perience and in giving leads on co-nationals who may have ad-
ditional information. Aliens also correspond and send pack-
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ages to relatives abroad and the correspondence may be of in-
telligence interest, but the contact officer must first overcome
their fear that harm may come to a relative if they reveal
too much.
The officer is very often the federal Government's only
contact with the alien, who therefore tends to look to him
as a general father confessor, employment counsellor, psychi-
atrist and sounding board for pet ideas or pet peeves. His
immigration and citizenship problems, obstacles to the immi-
gration of his relatives, or his dissatisfaction with his em-
ployment he presents to the contact man for solution, since
in his mind an intelligence service is above the laws and
regulations established for ordinary citizens. The contact
officer is careful not to make any commitments, referring the
alien to the appropriate federal agency. He must also take
care not to involve himself in the politics of ethnic groups,
for most of them are split into hostile camps.
The matter of payment sometimes arises here. The vast
majority of alien Sources are happy to make available whatever
information they have as a contribution to their new country.
Occasionally, however, having spent a considerable amount
of time in preparing a detailed and important report, an
alien may express a desire for compensation. The contact
officer must obtain an evaluation from Headquarters before he
can make such compensation; and even with Headquarters'
approval he is treading on dangerous ground, for there is an
effective grapevine within the nationality groups, and his fu-
ture requests for cooperation from others may be met with
similar demands for payment. In general, an occasional
lunch or dinner should constitute the extent of financial out-
lay on an alien.
* * * *
This discussion of domestic collection techniques has of
necessity been cast in terms of averages and stereotypes.
Every contact specialist in the field could point out many ex-
ceptions to the generalizations here drawn and show the pecu-
liarities of dealing with Sources in his own area. The tech-
niques which have been developed remain individual and
flexible, varying with three variable factors, the collector,
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the Source, and the material to be collected. Each collector
applies those personal techniques, gained through experience,
which are called for in a given situation to extract the
greatest amount of raw intelligence from his Source; but his
methods are likely to fall roughly into the patterns outlined
above.
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The estimator must cure the
raw findings of the social sci-
ences in the light of history in
order to weigh soundly the
probabilities for the future.
HISTORY'S ROLE IN INTELLIGENCE ESTIMATING
Cyrus H. Peake
A major responsibility of the intelligence analyst is to make
estimates or forecasts of developments in the field or country
of his specialty. What can a knowledge of history contribute
to the accuracy of his estimates? It is frequently said that
history cannot instruct the contemporary generation because
it never exactly repeats itself. This negative viewpoint, held
even by some professional historians, is of little comfort to the
harassed analyst who is required to forecast economic trends
and anticipate uprisings, election-results, coup d'etats, and
even wars, when all too frequently he has observed that his
effort to forecast an economic or political development on
the basis of specialized knowledge provided by the methodology
of economics, social or political science, or some other par-
ticular discipline, has missed wide the mark.
The reason for his disappointments in relying on these
sciences, the historian might inform him, is that coming
events, like past ones, are brought to occur through the
decisions of men, men reacting to a complex milieu of inter-
woven economic, social, political, psychological and historical
forces. There are no simple direct cause-and-effect relation-
ships among these forces which might form the basis for a
precise logical calculation of their composite resultant. There-
fore the estimator has to be more than a specialist. He
needs to have a grasp of all aspects of a developing situation
combined with an understanding of the personalities of the
decision-makers involved.
There are two ways to acquire the broad and balanced sen-
sitivity needed by the estimator, one through long residence
in the area in question, with close observation and participa-
tion in its life and fortunes, and one vicarious, through
I
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thoughtful study of its history. The vicarious way is the
practical one for most intelligence analysts, and it has the
advantage of bringing a perspective which might be distorted
in on-the-spot experience. Particularly in reaching this per-
spective, there is really no substitute for a profound under-
standing of the past in general, as well as the history of the
particular nation or people with which the estimator is con-
cerned. Armed with such an understanding, he will be able
to protect himself against a number of fallacies to which
the functional specialist falls prey.
Capabilities and Intentions
He will be better able to resist the temptation to project
into the future simple cause-and-effect relationships and logi-
cal or rational deductions which have not been found valid
for human affairs in the past. He will be protected, for ex-
ample, against the assumption that an "objective" appraisal
of a nation's capabilities is the same as that held by the na-
tion's ruling elite, as well as the more fallacious assumption
that the rulers' intentions are necessarily formed and limited
by their capabilities.
Back in 1950 the opinion was widely held in the Washington
intelligence community that the Chinese Communists would
not enter the Korean conflict because their logistic capabilities
were patently inadequate to win it and because they would
want to devote their energies to consolidating politically and
economically the hold over China newly acquired through
military action. They ignored these inadequate capabilities,
however, and came to the aid of their fellow-Communists.
By hindsight, it seems clear that, aside from considerations
of national security, their objective of political consolidation
was served by the psychological effect on the Chinese people
of fighting in defense of the "motherland" against "imperial-
ist" America, and meantime the USSR was required to sup-
ply them with modern weapons and facilitate their develop-
ment of modernized armed forces. The limitations on their
capabilities need not have entered their calculations, since
these advantages could be gained without driving the UN
forces out of Korea, and the limited objective of forcing the
invader back from the Yalu involved appropriately limited
military requirements.
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Similarly bad estimating resulted from too much atten-
tion to the capabilities at the disposal of Hitler, Mussolini,
and the Japanese militarists. Their war goals were far more
ambitious than those of the Chinese in Korea, and many
prominent and responsible individuals in their countries knew
they did not have the capabilities to attain them. Yet with
the willfulness, wishfulness, or desperation of human rulers,
these men made the decision to go tO war.
Historically speaking, the intentions or objectives born of
men's ambitions, conceits, and hopes have more often in-
fluenced their decisions to go to war than an objective ap-
praisal of their capabilities. Intelligence should of course
estimate capabilities, but should use such estimates to deter-
mine whether courses of action would be successful or how
long they could be pursued, not as the sole determinant of de-
cisions on courses of action.
More Than Bread Alone
The estimator with historical perspective will be on guard
against the error of extending a narrow unilinear analysis
of a current situation into a general forecast, of automatically
extending, for example, the analysis of an economic situation
to cover the political and psychological future, on the mis-
taken assumption that economic laws determine the
course of human affairs. Karl Marx, the most successful of
the economic determinists in getting his theories tested in
practice, has been strikingly unsuccessful in getting them
confirmed by history. He theorized that Communism would
come inevitably to those advanced industrial societies where
capitalism was most developed; but approaches to Commu-
nism have taken best hold in the least capitalistic and indus-
trialized societies, Russia and China, and have been most suc-
? cessfully resisted in advanced industrial societies, both East
and West. And the nineteenth-century Communist prophecy
that the rich would become richer and the poor become poorer
in capitalistic economies has in the twentieth century proved
patently false.
Human motivation is no more exclusively based on economic
factors than on Freudian principles. Even economic
courses of action do not necessarily derive from economic
motivation, as witness those of the materialistic Marxist
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CONFIDENTIAL History In Estimating
states themselves, where "commercial considerations alone
are seldom the moving spirit of [foreign economic] policies."
And elsewhere history has repeatedly shown that man is
capable of denying himself immediate economic advantages
in order to maintain dignity and self-respect or to acquire
independence. In short, while everyone may have his price,
his price or what he prizes is not always primarily economic.
How is one fully to explain the historical lag in the eco-
nomic and technical development of areas such as pre-bol-
shevik Russia, pre-Communist China, and Latin America, all
relatively rich in natural resources, as compared with the
rise of modern industry in Japan or England, without a study
of historically developed political and social factors? Eco-
nomic factors alone cannot explain it.
The Elephant's Tail
The reading of history will keep the intelligence analyst
aware that the interpretation of a development in isolation
from the matrix of forces from which it arose can be used as
the basis for only the most limited and strictly qualified esti-
mate. Every development or issue or crisis has to be viewed
and appraised in broad context; it cannot be "scientifically"
separated out for sterile test-tube analysis.
The 1956 intelligence failure, for example, to gauge Nasser's
reaction to the withdrawal of Western financial support for
his Aswan dam project apparently arose from estimative
concentration on domestic Egyptian reaction to the US?UK
decision, with a view to Nasser's prospects for staying in
power. The State Department analysts who were asked to
consider this limited range of consequences 2 apparently did
not feel obliged to take into account the international as-
pects of the situation and the motivations of world position
and prestige which led Nasser to his dramatic seizure of the
Suez Canal in answer to this Western "humiliation." The
partial estimate that Nasser would be able to retain power,
correct as it was, proved confusing and embarrassing in the
light of subsequent events, if not definitely misleading. The
1Stanley J. Zyzniewski, "Soviet Foreign Economic Policy," Political
Science Quarterly, June 1958).
The question was not introduced at the National Estimates level.?
Editor.
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analyst as estimator should not voluntarily view developments
in isolation from their total setting, and should always relate
his findings to the whole configurative environment his-
torically considered.
World Views and the Man
A detailed knowledge of history will bring home to the ana-
lyst the need to place decision-makers at the focal center of
his thinking, rather than abstract concepts of the laws gov-
erning human affairs. The economic determinism of Karl
Marx and his intellectual descendants, the Providential guid-
ance pictured by Bossuet and others, the random chance of
chroniclers and some contemporary historians, the inevitable
progress of Turgot, Condorcet and Comte, the cyclic rise and
fall of nations, dynasties, and civilizations conceived by Vico
and others, the organic society of Spengler's biological analogy,
even Toynbee's excessively abstract challenge and response,
inner and outer proletariat, etc.?all these philosophies,
whatever their validity or appeal, throw into the future a
light too dim and uncertain to guide the estimator.
The estimator does, however, need to be aware of these
grandiose general concepts of the past, because one or more
of them may frame the historical thinking of the decision-
makers in his area; and a man's views of the past, whatever
they are, are important in determining his decisions for the
future. For man, endowed with memory and imagina-
tion, is capable of living simultaneously in the past, the present
and the future. And his views of the past, which condi-
tion his actions in the present, he tends in turn more or less
consciously to shape in such a manner as to justify his hopes
for the future.
An estimator who does not consider with attention the per-
sonality attributes and characteristics of the decision-makers
in his area and their views of the past has greatly reduced his
chances of making a valid estimate. But biographic research
needs to be an intimate and closely related part of economic,
social, and political research, since an individual cannot be
properly appraised apart from his time and milieu any more
than the events which arise from his decisions and actions
can be evaluated apart from the time and situation out of
which they emerged.
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Specific Parallels and Broad Trends
A grasp of the comparative history of civilizations,
social and economic orders, empires, states, and societies will
create in the analyst an imaginative awareness of the con-
stancy of change. He will learn to look for trends in the society
or state or institution he is studying, and for indicators
of the direction in which it is moving. Is the trend one of
flexible growth, enabling the organization or state to over-
come the forces opposing it, or is it approaching the rigidity
characteristic of economic, social, political or religious mo-
nopolies which suppress all competition and become inflexible
in the face of changing circumstances? An awareness of
trends and indicators of growth or senescence will help the
analyst estimate not only the decisions which will be made,
but the vigor of courses of action and the significance of events
consequent upon these decisions. In other words, he will also
be in a better position to assess decision-makers' capabilities
to carry out their intentions.
Here we should return in conclusion to the statement that
history never repeats itself and examine more carefully the
validity of historical parallels. It would of course be absurd
to suppose that any complex historical development is likely
to be repeated in every exact detail; but it would be equally
absurd to maintain because of this that developments
separated in time and space are wholly dissimilar in their
consequences and therefore cannot show parallel character-
istic trends. One danger in using historical parallels lies in
the tendency to jump to the conclusion that the end result
or consummating event capping two similar developments will
be logically the same. Another is the even more deplorable
practice under which an interpreter of current developments,
having made up his mind by other processes, searches the
past for a roughly similar development to prove his point.
This is a very easy and tempting thing to do: history is so
rich a storehouse of strikingly parallel developments that it
does not take long to find one to suit such a purpose.
If the analyst has a real grasp of history, however, he will
be on guard against this easy temptation and will be able to
utilize roughly similar developments of the past to stimu-
late reflection on the relative probabilities of a number of pos-
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History In Estimating CONFIDENTIAL
sible alternatives. He will be on the lookout not only for the
striking parallels, but also for wherein the complex of factors
and personalities entering into a current development differ
from those composing the historical ones. With the aid of
this process of detailed objective comparison and evaluation
of historical events he will arrive at his estimate of the most
probable outcome of a current development. In other words,
a knowledge of history aids the estimator to employ as "sci-
entific" a method as it is possible to devise for prognostication
In the realm of human affairs. The social sciences provide
the methodology, but history offers the only laboratory?un-
fortunately lacking the exact measurements and controls at
the disposal of the physical scientist?in which to test the
theories and findings of the social scientist. The intelligence
estimator, in utilizing the findings of the social and po-
litical scientist, needs to superimpose on them his own imagi-
nation, insight, and understanding in order to arrive at
useful and valid estimates; and this insight he will have
slowly gained through study of the past.
CONEIDENTIAL 91
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Your professional adversary is
not only a dedicated and disci-
plined Communist, but a learned
one, with a specialty in the area
where he faces you.
SOVIET INTELLIGENCE TRAINING
Sherman W. Flemer
The younger generation of Soviet intelligence officers now
operating around the world have received a professional
education probably =equaled anywhere. They were ener-
getic Party activists when the intelligence services spotted
them. They were already college graduates, in our termi-
nology, thoroughly grounded in the social sciences, history,
foreign affairs and languages. Beyond the college level they
had done graduate work in Party schools on the theory
of human social evolution?i.e., Marxist-Leninist ideology?
and had received some training in intelligence techniques and
revolutionary tactics. Then they had been selected for their
good characters, intelligence aptitude, and clean records from
among many with similar educational qualifications to attend
one of the intelligence institutes, where they spent at least
two years in full-time study of tradecraft, the organization
and methods of Soviet and foreign intelligence services,
and the area and languages of their planned operational as-
signments. Those that have been in the business for some
years have probably also taken a full-year refresher course by
now.
The older generation is dependent on refresher courses to
pick up what they have not learned by experience, for the in-
telligence institutes were not established until late in
World War II days. There are now two main ones for foreign
intelligence, run respectively by the military and civilian
members of the Soviet intelligence community?the Armed
Forces' Chief Intelligence Directorate and State Security's For-
eign Directorate. The missions of these two intelligence serv-
ices, and therefore the curricula of their institutes, consider-
ably overlap: the military service collects not only military
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Soviet Intelligence Training
but also scientific, technical, and economic intelligence. State
Security runs also a third main Soviet intelligence institute,
one training officers for the internal security services.
The Military Diplomatic Academy
The military school is called a Diplomatic Academy, in allu-
sion to the practice of using diplomatic cover for intelli-
gence officers abroad. It accepts candidates from all the
armed forces, but they must have graduated from secondary
school and a military academy, have had two years' command
experience and some intelligence service, and be Party mem-
bers. Their health, security, and service records must be
outstanding, and they must not be older than 32.
Recognizing that its matriculants from the armed forces,
for all their schooling, may not have the polish or profes-
sional scholarship expected of a military attach?the Academy
spends two years giving them as it were a B.A. in liberal arts,
with courses in music and literature, philosophy and logic,
psychology, and law, and some military science and military
history thrown in. Only then does it get down to serious
intelligence training, so its whole course lasts four years.
Beginning in the third year, the Academy's Diplomatic Prep-
aration Department schools the student primarily for his
cover duties, offering courses in diplomatic etiquette and at-
tach?bservation, collection, and reporting; but it also touches
on covert tasks, operational as well as informational report-
ing, and the organization of deep-cover operations. Another
Department teaches him about the organization of foreign
armed forces and their intelligence divisions, with emphasis
on the American. Meanwhile he is learning tradecraft in
classes of the Special Preparation Department. Here the
third year is devoted to subjects like intelligence history and
methodology, comparative organization, comparative tech-
niques, Soviet intelligence objectives, procedures under official
cover and under deep cover, and the organization of third-
country operations. Tradecraft proper comes in the fourth
year, with courses such as agent recruitment and direction,
operational techniques, communications?radio, photography,
secret writing, microdots?camouflage and concealment, and
counterintelligence evasion.
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Practical operational exercises are carried out in Moscow and
its suburbs after the techniques have been mastered in
laboratories and classrooms. Theoretical exercises are
also organized with the help of a spetsfond, a collection of
classified materials including sanitized operational case his-
tories; these are studied, analyzed, criticized, and debated
with a view to developing skill and ingenuity in the establish-
ment and operation of intelligence networks.
In preparation for his particular future assignment the
harried student?for he has been attending regular political
lectures and physical culture sessions on the side?is at the
same time pursuing courses in the Area Studies and Foreign
Language departments. He learns about the geography,
politics, economics, industry, agriculture, and the communi-
cation and transportation networks of the country where he
is scheduled to go and of its immediate neighbors. He learns
at least one foreign language, perhaps two, with the aid of a
system which divides language students into groups of no
more than five for study and instruction. Finally he grad-
uates?brain-weary, one imagines?and is assigned abroad in
an attach?ffice of one of the military services, or perhaps in
a foreign trade mission or a TASS bureau overseas.
The RaSh (Higher Intelligence School)
State Security, we noted, has separate institutes for for-
eign intelligence and internal security; the civilian counter-
part of the Military Diplomatic Academy is the RaSh. Can-
didates for the RaSh, like those for the Diplomatic Academy,
must belong to the Party or Komsomol, must pass a special
security clearance, must be physically fit and show particular
aptitudes for intelligence work. Educational prerequisites for
RaSh are higher, or at least broader, than for the Academy,
since the two-year RaSh curriculum offers nothing compar-
able with the Academy's first two liberal-arts years: candi-
dates for enrollment must be graduates of schools of higher
learning, i.e., the equivalent of M.A.'s, notably in foreign trade,
international relations, or foreign languages.
Our most recent detailed information on the RaSh cur-
riculum, dating from 1953, shows the first year, like the Acad-
emy's third, filled with the more general professional subjects
and a good deal of world-wide area study. RaSh seemed to
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offer no equivalent of the Academy's courses on individual
areas, apparently seeking to make its graduates area general-
ists rather than specialists; but area study nevertheless got
down to details, including even foreign customs and social
etiquette. Training in operational techniques was reserved
for the second year, except for those of countersurveillance,
a subject in which theoretical lectures were supplemented by
actual tailing practice wherein the student tried to evade
experienced teams shadowing him about the Moscow streets.
The second year was packed with tradecraft?Locks and
Picks, Flaps and Seals, secret writing, photography, audio-
surveillance, operational communications, and the spotting,
development, recruitment, handling, training, and indoctrina-
tion of agents. Three categories of agent motivation were
examined in order of preference?ideological, material, and
blackmail. Officers with experience in foreign operations gave
lectures on the organization and practices of the police and
counterespionage agencies of individual countries. In the
meantime, throughout the two years, the student was gaining
an oral mastery of at least one foreign language, together
with some reading ability. As in the Military Diplomatic
Academy, the language classes were restricted in size to five
students or fewer.
We have some glimpses of student life at the RaSh as of
1945-53. Students used cover names, but the married ones
were allowed to live with their families in Moscow. In addi-
tion to a subsistence allowance fixed on the basis of rank,
students were given free issues of civilian clothing. Radios
were furnished and foreign movies shown as an aid to learn-
ing languages. Students attended lectures from 0900 to 1300
every day but Sunday and spent the afternoons and evenings
doing homework, participating in exercises, and lis-
tening to Party political lectures or to special professional
presentations, frequently scheduled on short notice, by out-
side officials from State Security or the Foreign Ministry.
The Higher School ( Security )
State Security has a whole network of schools at various
levels to support the discharge of its responsibilities for coun-
terintelligence, domestic operations, investigation, and the de-
velopment of foreign-language capabilities. They include a
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oviet intelligence I raining
special school for security personnel in the Satellite coun-
tries and China, a school for sergeants attached to the State
Security staff, a variety of technical schools for all ranks, a
Higher School for Investigators, and the Leningrad In,-
?stitute of Foreign Languages. Here we shall consider only its
main staff institute, the Higher School, which operates under
law institute cover and is actually so accredited.
Except for its law courses, however, this school is pitched at
a lower educational level than the two foreign intelligence in-
stitutes, being designed to give advanced operational
training in internal security methods to officers who have
already had a good deal of practical experience. Neverthe-
less it requires graduation from secondary school and passing
a university-level entrance examination of its matriculants.
As in the foreign intelligence schools, these must be Party
or Komsomol members and meet high physical and security
standards. They must be under 35 years old and have one
or two years' experience with the security organization.
They continue to get their full pay during the three-year
course.
Aside from the law courses, a few general subjects such as
"Party History" and "International Politics," and professional
lectures on topics like "Anti-Stalinist and Deviationist Move-
ments" and "Ecclesiastical Milieux," the course names that
have reached us suggest concentrated work on security trade-
craft?self-defense without weapons, recruiting agents,
the guidance of networks, handling informers, field observa-
tion, surveillance, investigation techniques, radio direction
finding, documentation, recognition of false documents, search,
communications, operational records. Lectures are supple-
mented by seminar discussion sessions and by part-time as-
signment of individual students to operating security sec-
tions by way of practical training exercises.
The Product
Our information, detailed if somewhat dusty and remote,
thus enables us to reconstruct the bare bones of Soviet in-
telligence training, the skeleton of the deinosaurus. The
fearsome reptile's frame is a strong and massive one,
but what counts is the flesh that clothes and the spirit that
moves it. Education can enlarge a man's or a nation's capac-
SECRET
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SECRET Sovief Intelligence Training
ity to fulfill its creatively conceived ends, but training can
also crystallize its pattern of action into a series of =imagina-
tive automatic responses; and the individual and group capa-
bilities which constitute the Soviet intelligence challenge can-
not be measured by counting up curricula only. One must
somehow gauge also the inspiration, flexilibity, devotion to a
cause, self-discipline, and drive of the professional graduate.
This should be the subject of another article.
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A Nazi intercept officer traces
the development of illegal
listening-in in World War I,
ascribing to its successes a
monstrous influence on the
course of world history.
THE EARLY DEVELOPMENT OF
COMMUNICATIONS INTELLIGENCE
Wilhelm F. Flicke
For three thousand years history has offered examples of
great political and military successes due solely to methods of
spying on the transmitted thoughts of an opponent. Alex-
ander the Great, Caesar, Cleopatra, Napoleon, and Metternich
owed their successes to the extensive use of this kind of spying.
But in modern times the invention of the telegraph, tele-
phone, and finally radio communications has enormously in-
creased its possibilities and given birth to organized systems Of
illegal listening-in, to the intercept services.
France and Austria were the leaders in this field. As early
as 1908, during that period of strained relations with Italy,
Austria undertook to intercept all Italian radio traffic and
began regular cryptanalytic work on it. In 1911 the Aus-
trian service was put to work on military communications,
following move by move the Italian campaign against the
Turks in Libya. In similar detail it reported the course of
the Balkan wars of 1912-13.
France also maintained surveillance of foreign radio traffic
but had little opportunity for practice on military operations
before World War I began. Its principal success was in the
cryptanalytic field. Having solved the cipher used between
Berlin and the German ambassador in Paris, the French read
Berlin's telegram transmitting the 1914 declaration of war
and so garbled it before delivery that the ambassador could
make nothing of it. They gained some time thus while he was
asking for repeats.
Elsewhere the British had had some success with crypta-
nalysis; the Germans had done practically nothing; and the
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Russians hadn't given intercept a thought. German field
regulations did suggest that radio operators might listen in on
foreign traffic when they had none of their own, but this
suggestion had not been put into practice.
The War in the East
When the war broke out a few German operators began
to listen to Russian army traffic for fun, but didn't know what
to do with the intercepted messages; there was no regulation
covering this point. Radio was still a novel and mysterious
thing both in Germany and in Russia. In the Russian
army the idea had not even become general that its own radio
messages could be heard just as well by the enemy, and on the
German side the possibility of formulating tactics on the
basis of intercepted enemy traffic had not occurred to middle
and lower commands.
In the first month of the war, however, the potential of
military intercept was dramatically demonstrated at Tan-
nenberg, where Hindenburg's Eighth Army faced the First
and Second Russian Armies. The Russians were using plain-
text radio with abandon for operational orders. The chief of
the fixed German radio station at Thorn, on his own initiative,
began before the battle to monitor the Russian traffic and to
supply Hindenburg by motorcycle with copies of intercepted
messages. Later in the course of the battle the fixed station
at Konigsberg and the two heavy stations of the Eighth Army
staff joined in the work. The German command learned
through dozens of messages the strength and organization
of the enemy, his objectives and his immediate plans, and was
able to make its own dispositions and adjust its tactics ac-
cordingly.
After the war the role played by this intelligence in the
Tannenberg victory was minimized. Ludendorff, Hinden-
burg's chief of staff, acknowledged grudgingly that he ". . . had
received an intercepted enemy telegram which gave us a clear
picture of the enemy's moves for the following days." Hinden-
burg himself described the battle in such fashion as to give
the impression that he was in the dark about the enemy's
objectives and organization. The German Archives publica-
tion Der Weltkrieg admits that the German command "was
advised of the objectives of the enemy in a way rarely possible
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Communications Intelligence Development UrtIAL 01479
in wartime" but insists that "the critical decisions and
orders for the battle . . . were made independently" of this in-
formation.
The general has not yet been born who, after win-
ning a battle, would admit that he had won it thanks to a
well-functioning intelligence service. At Tannenberg the
contents of the intercepted messages played a decisive role
and developments without them would have been entirely
different. On the losing side, the Russian General Danilov
spoke of an "unpardonable negligence" in the Russian radio
service and declared that faulty communications had been the
chief reason for the catastrophe.
At any rate, the success at Tannenberg gave a fillip to the
German intercept work. Both the fixed stations and the
army radio units were instructed to perform intercept duty
when not engaged in their own traffic. Channels were set
up for forwarding intercepted messages to command head-
quarters. The Russians were now enciphering their orders,
but the Austrian cryptanalytic service was so far advanced
that it had solved the Russian cipher by 19 September. The
Germans did not begin regular cryptanalysis until the end
of 1914.
The Russians used the simple type of cipher, invented by
Julius Caesar, which substitutes a group of digits for each
letter of the alphabet. This type is solved by knowledge of
the relative frequency with which each letter occurs in a
given language; in a ciphered German text, for example, the
most frequently encountered cipher element will represent
the letter e. Another simple system replaces syllables, end-
ings, prefixes and other word elements with cipher; but these
elements also occur with regular frequencies in a given lan-
guage. Similarly full-word substitutions. More complex sys-
tems conceal these frequencies by varying the cipher element
substituted, by burying the meaningful ciphers among mean-
ingless ones, by transpositions?"box," "comb," "grille,"
"double box"?by reencipherment with additive sequences of
meaningless symbols. All of these can be solved; it is only
a question of trying enough alternative possibilities. For the
cryptographer the trick is to make the number of alternatives
enormous and then to change cipher so often that the
cryptanalyst can never catch up with him.
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During the German-Austrian operations on the eastern
front in late 1914 and 1915 the military intercept service came
into its own. Preparation for the joint operations was initi-
ated by a radio deception. Once before, in the late stages of
the Battle of Tannenberg, the Germans had tied up Russian
reserves on their north flank when preparing to attack on
the south by sending a garbled plain-text message referring
to the arrival of reinforcements in the northern area. Now,
after the Austrian defeat near Lemberg in September, it was
necessary to withdraw elements of the German Eighth Army
In East Prussia for the formation of a new Ninth Army to
support the Austrian front. This weakening of the defense
of East Prussia was successfully masked by referring in two
garbled plain-text messages to an unloading of reinforcements
which implied preparation for a new German offensive in the
north.
Meanwhile the Austrians had been heartened to learn
from intercepted messages that the Russians, contrary to
expectation, did not intend to pursue them beyond the
Wisloka, but they were worried by reports of strong enemy
cavalry forces between the Nida and the Vistula. The inter-
cept service found, however, that these were only a recon-
noitering cavalry corps under General Novikov. At 0840 on
24 September Novikov transmitted a full report on his recon-
naissance to the Russian High Command in Warsaw. While
the Russians were deciphering this message in Warsaw, Aus-
trian cryptographers were working on the same text, and
before noon laid it deciphered before the Austrian High Com-
mand. It was probably the first time in the history of war-
fare that the result of enemy reconnaissance was revealed so
swiftly to those against whom it was directed.
In the next few days intercepted messages showed that the
Russians were regrouping and shifting their main weight
north to the middle reaches of the Vistula. The German-
Austrian forces, in an effort to catch the enemy off balance
during this regrouping, mounted an offensive which for a time
went well. But Russian traffic now betrayed the fact that
enormous forces-94 divisions against the German-Austrian
52?were being assembled for an advance toward the heart
of Germany.
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The German and Austrian armies withdrew south to a line
based on Krakow and the Carpathians. Hindenburg, ap-
pointed commander in chief of the forces in the east, ordered
the Ninth Army, with all available reinforcements from East
Prussia, to undertake an encircling movement on the Russian
right flank. The movement began on 13 November. The Rus-
sians, their traffic showed, had no idea of the extent to which
their right was threatened, and on 19 November began their
general grand offensive. By this time their right wing near
Lodz was almost encircled.
At this climactic juncture the German communications in-
telligence failed. The Russians had captured the German
cipher key and deciphered enough messages to know that their
own traffic was being read; they now changed their cipher.
The German command had for the present to work in the dark.
New Russian forces came up from the Warsaw area, and the
German divisions which were supposed to encircle the enemy
found themselves encircled. In the resulting battle of Lodz
the annihilation of the German forces, fighting in ice and
snow without any supply, seemed almost certain. Indeed, the
Russians had already prepared transports to carry the rem-
nants to captivity.
But the Austrian and German cipher bureaus had been
working feverishly, and late on 21 November accomplished
the solution of the new Russian cryptographic system. Cur-
rent Russian messages revealed a relatively weak spot in the
ring encircling the German forces; a sector near Brezeziny
was held only by cavalry units. General Litzmann undertook
to break through this sector, and to everyone's surprise was
successful. The German troops escaped, leaving behind only
their heavy materiel. The feat won for General Litzmann the
nickname "Lion of Brezeziny"?a captive lion but for the
cryptanalyst.
All during 1915, particularly in the German break-through
and victorious advance from May to September, the inter-
ception of Russian traffic was of decisive importance. All Rus-
sian countermeasures were known in advance. Ludendorff
had become so accustomed to making his dispositions on the
basis of intercept results that he was impatient and nervous
if he did not get them. His first question was "Any radio-
grams?" If no messages of importance were handed him, he
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used to growl that they had not been paying enough atten-
tion and would they kindly do better. If a new cryptographic
system was not promptly solved, he called it a "damned mess"
and said the cryptanalysts had become "absolutely stupid."
This was the period of glory for the intercept services; it
is inconceivable under the strength ratios which obtained that
the summer offensive could have succeeded as it did without
their intelligence on Russian dispositions. Of course, the Rus-
sians were always changing their ciphers, but the Austrian
cryptanalysts were so well tuned to the Russian systems that
every new key was broken within a few days. And in this the
Russians afforded wonderful assistance: often they sent one
and the same message in the old key and the new one; or they
would send an inquiry in the old cipher and get the reply in the
new one; or they would send messages in plain text referring
to encrypted messages.
The consistent German and Austrian anticipation of Rus-
sian measures did not escape Russian notice. The cry of
"Treason!" ran through all Russia and the Russian army,
and a search for traitors began everywhere. Every Russian
officer with a German-sounding name was suspect, and many
of them were courtmartialled. The fury went to such lengths
that finally it had to be stopped by cabinet order of the Czar.
The real "traitor" was never found, and in that lay the great
tragedy for the Russians; for those summer days of 1915 de-
cided the campaign and decided it against them. And this
defeat was the opening act of the revolution of 1917.
The slowness of the Russians to recognize the insecurity of
their communications was amusingly illustrated as late as
the spring of 1916. To veil their withdrawal of two corps from
the Austrian front they had several stations carry on de-
ceptive plain-text traffic. But they announced this plan in
advance in transparent cipher, and prefixed to each of the
fake messages the warning "Do not be alarmed; this is just
deception."
Blitzkrieg in the West
When the war began the Russian plan on the eastern
front and the German plan on the western front both called
for what came later to be known as "Blitzkrieg." The Russian
armies were to fight decisive battles in East Prussia and then
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advance quickly on Berlin. In the west the German armies
were to dash through Belgium and northern France and
deliver a crushing defeat to the French army somewhere east
of Paris.
There is a certain irony in the fact that at the very time
when the Russians in the east were exposing themselves by
clumsy use of radio so disastrously that the course of the Bat-
tle of Tannenberg wrecked their entire blitz campaign, the
Germans in the west should be making the same mistake with
the same result, so that although the war continued for years
the fundamental idea had already been hopelessly wrecked.
In the east it was the Battle of Tannenberg; in the west it
was the Battle of the Marne.
Few battles in military history have had so much written
about them as the Battle of the Marne. There are many
names for it, of which one of the favorites among the French
is "Miracle of the Marne." People have sought and found all
sorts of explanations for the seemingly inexplicable bogging
down of the German advance, and German Lt. Col. Hentsch
has been made a scapegoat for recommending the "unneces-
sary" retreat. Glimpses into the archives of the French
Deuxi? Bureau provided by Polish Lt. Col. Szieszynski and
French Col. Calvel reveal what the "miracle" was.
The invading German forces relied heavily on radio com-
munications but devoted very little effort to making them
secure. Every transmitter attached to a particular army
had the same initial letter in its call sign, and call signs and
frequencies were never changed. Corrections and answers to
encrypted messages were often sent in plain text, and fre-
quently the signature of the commander was carried in clear.
Occasionally entire messages were sent in plain text.
The French had committed their intercept service in full
even before the beginning of the war. By mere checking of
call-signs they were able to identify the staff transmitters of
the armies, the staff transmitters of most of the cavalry divi-
sions, and the staff transmitters of some of the army corps and
infantry divisions. Enciphered messages were all quickly solv-
able because of references in plain text to their contents. In
the course of fourteen days the French service picked up some
350 messages from the cavalry corps under General von der
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Markwitz alone. These revealed not merely all this corps'
movements, plans and deployment, but those of the whole
First Army to its north, under von Kluck, and of the Second
Army to the south under von Billow.
The First Army had had to move north to avoid being out-
flanked by the French Sixth Army, and this had over-
extended the German line, leaving a gap between the First
and Second Armies which von der Markwitz' cavalry corps was
trying to fill. The intercepted messages showed where the
weak places were, and the French and English broke through
the two armies on 8 September, threatening to encircle von
Kluck and outflank von Billow. The Germans had to retreat.
Their attempt to gain a quick decision in the west had failed,
and in the resulting war of position the eventual superiority
of the Allies in materiel decided the entire campaign.
After the Battle of the Marne the French and Germans
continued trying to outflank each other to the north in the
famous "race to the sea." The focus of French reconnais-
sance lay in the intercept service, whereas the Germans had
to rely exclusively on patrols and scouts along the front, who
of course were able to make observations only after the enemy
units had already been committed. The French service recog-
nized the movement of the German Sixth and Seventh Armies
from the southern front to the extreme north and to the Aisne
sector respectively. With the help of the British intercept
service, which had now become active, it identified the forma-
tion of the new German Fourth Army in Belgium and antic-
ipated its 18 October offensive in time for countermeasures
which stopped it at the Yser. Then the attempt of the re-
deployed Sixth Army to break through toward Ypern was pre-
maturely betrayed in radio traffic and failed. These battles
ended the war of movement in the west.
Stabilized Fronts and New Devices
Late in 1914, after their experience in the east, the Germans
also began systematic interception of enemy radio traffic in
the west. Both sides now developed extremely great activity
in the invisible struggle between camouflage, concealment, and
deception on the one hand and interception, evaluation, and
cryptanalysis on the other. Of utmost importance for corn-
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munications security was attention to details. A German
message ordering a change of call signs sometimes gave the old
and new signs in parallel. Or when they changed signs Ger-
man stations might not break the sequence of message num-
bers. One German divisional transmitter could be recognized
by its habit of noting the sending time and word count at the
end of the message instead of at the beginning. Another
could be identified by its stereotyped greeting, "Can you hear
all right?"
The French were also leaders in the field of radiogoniometry,
that is transmitter direction finding. The principle is simple
enough: the way a directional receiving antenna faces to bring
in the strongest signal shows the point of the compass from
which the signal comes. The intersection of this directional
line with that from another DF receiver is the location of the
transmitter. The line from a third DF receiver should the-
oretically intersect the others at the same point; in practice,
it shows the margin of error. There were practical difficulties
in correcting for local and magnetic deviations of the radio
beam, in placing DF receivers at a sufficiently wide angle for
distant direction-finding, and in developing mobile equipment
of sufficient accuracy. The British and Italians, as well as
the Germans, were well advanced in this field also; the Rus-
sians had not got beyond modest beginnings by the end of
the war.
DF operations achieved their greatest importance in the
naval intercept service; the sinking of many a German sub-
marine could be credited to the British DF service. But the
course of raiding Zeppelins could also be observed by the Brit-
ish DF with great ease because of their low speed, the contin-
uous radio traffic verifying their bearings, and the fact that
they used a set frequency and a fixed system of call signs.
As the vulnerability of radio communications became gen-
erally recognized and as the war of position on both fronts
made possible the establishment of wire networks, the inter-
cept services began to devote most of their effort to tapping
telephone lines. Single-conductor telephone lines were still
in general use, with the return circuit through the ground.
Metal stakes driven into the ground as close as possible to the
enemy lines would pick up these ground circuits for monitor-
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ing in a dug-out connected by wire to the stakes. One such
intercept station might supply as much as twenty pages of
significant information a day.
In the east this activity was an important one-sided factor
from the summer of 1916 to the end of the war. German
and Austrian stations were located at intervals of about ten
kilometers along the entire front and could monitor all Russian
telephone calls as far as five kilometers behind the front. The
strategic exploitation of this source of intelligence was the
withdrawal of a large portion of the forces of the Central
Powers from the eastern front, since there was now no danger
of a surprise move by the enemy. Except for the intercept
service it would not have been possible to keep the front
stabilized with the remaining forces, whose strength ratio to
the enemy was in many sectors no greater than one to ten.
In the west the German and allied intercept services now
largely neutralized each other, with advantage to one side or
the other depending upon whether the intelligence was prop-
erly exploited. On one occasion the Germans, having learned
by listening to French artillery telephone calls the hour of a
planned French attack, made the mistake of passing the infor-
mation and appropriate orders to their own units by telephone
in plain language. The French in turn heard these calls
and made a completely successful attack several hours in ad-
vance of the original time.
In the half-year of battles before Verdun in 1916 telephone
lines were so badly damaged by the uninterrupted artillery
fire that new methods of communication had to be found.
Everywhere along the front they used "ground telegraphy"
instruments, which sent buzzer currents short distances
through the earth. Nearby interception was easier than for
telephone, but units which had been accustomed to intercept-
ing voice now had to learn Morse and sometimes cryptanalysis.
The English, on the other hand, invented an apparatus called
the Fullerphone, which they considered a secure combat-
zone communications device; but even it could be intercepted
under certain conditions.
The German intercept service achieved strategic significance
only once in the West. It learned of the preparations for the
grand Allied offensive on the Somme in the spring of 1917, pin-
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pointing the direction and areas of attack. For once the Ger-
man supreme command drew the correct conclusions and im-
mediately before the attack ordered a withdrawal to the "Sieg-
fried Line." The target was thus withdrawn from the
crushing superiority of the Allies, and the attack petered out
in empty space. The Allied intercept services had advance in-
formation of this German maneuver, but their command failed
to adjust its tactics accordingly.
The German command missed its greatest opportunity dur-
ing this same spring. The French army in its unsuccessful
attack on the Aisne and east of Reims had suffered such severe
losses that its morale was badly shaken. Intercepted mes-
sages revealed that there was mutiny in numerous army corps,
that individual soldiers and whole units were leaving the front
or deserting to the enemy. In this situation they could not
have resisted a German attack. But the incredible happened:
the German command, seeing in this situation a parallel with
the Russian front, expected the French power of resistance
to collapse without any further German action. It missed the
chance which was never to return. While the Germans
waited for capitulation Petain resumed command, the
crisis came to an end, and the French front stood firm again.
The scale of victory now tipped slowly in favor of the Allies.
The War at Sea
The naval intercept war was highly developed from the very
beginning. The British and the Germans used cipher and dis-
guise here far more than ashore. A message from a coastal
command station intended for a ship at sea would ostensibly
be directed to another coastal station while the warship stood
by for it on the same wave length.
Through mishap the Germans were long at a disadvantage
in this activity. The Russians had sunk the German cruiser
Magdeburg in the Baltic late in 1914. The Germans did not
know for years that a Russian diver had recovered the code
book from the radio cabin of the sunken vessel. The Russians
reconstructed the cipher system and passed it to the British.
Consequently, at the Doggerbank in January 1915, the Brit-
tsh were able to follow the movements of the German fleet and
sink the armored cruiser "Blucher."
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The British had also succeeded in solving the German cipher
used in submarine traffic, and could follow the movements of
the German submarines precisely from day to day. While in
Germany people were doubling and tripling security precau-
tions in connection with the movements of submarines in a
downright convulsive fear of English spies, the English had
only to listen to the radios of the submarines and their com-
mand stations. It was only this which made possible the
British blockade of the North Sea coast with meager forces.
The Germans were at a disadvantage too in the relative ef-
fort they devoted to the naval intercept service. It employed
at its height a few dozen cryptanalysts and evaluators under
the command of a naval lieutenant, whereas the British Ad-
miralty had several hundred commanded by an admiral,
handling an average of 2,000 messages daily. The British
were the first to create a technically exact and fast working
system of evaluation. Their DF stations were connected with
each other and with the central office by teletype. Every
reading was promptly registered at the central office on a
great orientation map. All intercepted call signs were carded
and systematized, so that the British were able to determine
the pattern according to which the German call signs were
changed and so to know in advance what sign a particular
German transmitter would be using today or tomorrow or next
week. The Germans never achieved, even during World
War II, such well organized collaboration among direction
finding, decipherment, and evaluation. People never got
away from petty preoccupation with their own interests and
rivalry with other units.
Nevertheless there were some German successes. Von
Spee's cruiser squadron had been pursued into the Pacific by
superior Allied naval forces. In their search for him the Eng-
lish used their radios with unconcern, with the result that he
was always posted on the movements of the enemy. On the
other hand, he was able to mislead his pursuers by radio silence
and occasional deceptive traffic from the little cruiser "Emden"
in Australian waters. His appearance at Coronel in Chilean
waters came as a complete surprise to Admiral Cradock, who
supposed him far away toward Australia. The German war-
ships struck so unexpectedly that the British armored cruisers
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"Good Hope" and "Monmouth" were quickly sunk, and several
other units were badly damaged. Allied shipping in this area
was almost completely paralyzed for a number of weeks.
The Diplomatic Front
Better known are the intercept activities on the diplomatic
front during World War I. Both the German and the Austrian
diplomatic ciphers were compromised, not through crypt-
analysis but by traditional cloak-and-dagger methods.
One Alexander Czek, a Belgian resident of Austrian and
English parentage, was employed at the heavy German radio
station in Brussels, one of the direct links for traffic from the
Foreign Office in Berlin. He began as a technician, but was
so capable and conscientious that he was soon entrusted with
operations and later came to be called on as an extra in the
cipher office. In the summer of 1915 the British Intelligence
Service began to work on him with the help of a young lady
of the Belgian liberation movement. He was finally per-
suaded that it was his duty to work not for the Germans but
for the Allies. He was unable to make off with the radio sta-
tion's code book, but saved the work-sheets he used when called
in for decoding. By the time he became suspect to the Ger-
mans, having been seen in company with members of the
liberation movement, he had enough of these work-sheets to
reconstruct the cipher. He escaped across the border and
turned them over to the British. It did not occur to the
Germans to change their cipher, and the messages from the
German Foreign Office could be read in London from about
the end of 1915 on.
The most famous use of this source of intelligence was to
expose publicly the negotiations early in 1917 for an affiance
of Mexico and Japan with Germany, an exposure which helped
precipitate the entry of the United States into the war. In
mid-January the German Foreign Minister, Zimmermann, sent
a message with instructions to undertake such negotiations to
his Ambassador in Mexico, offering to Mexico the inducement
of repossessing its lost territories in Texas, New Mexico and
Arizona. The message was transmitted enciphered through
three separate channels to the German ambassador in Wash-
ington for forwarding to Mexico City: by radio via New York,
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by radio via Stockholm and Buenos Aires, and by cable via
London, appended through trickery to a cable of the American
Ambassador in Berlin. At the Berlin Foreign Office they
thought themselves pretty sly to have devised this last method.
All three messages were intercepted and read in London.
The United States must be informed, but the source could
not be revealed. The British therefore ordered a fourth copy
of the message obtained in Mexico, and when it arrived after
five weeks showed it with the translation to the American Am-
bassador in London, acknowledging only that they had come
into possession of a cipher key. President Wilson was not
convinced of the authenticity of the message until the British
agreed to redecipher it in the presence of an American repre-
sentative.
On 1 March the President made the message public, giving
out that it had somehow been obtained in Mexico. There was
a storm of indignation in the United States and one of appre-
hension in Germany and Mexico. Von Eckhardt, the German
Ambassador in Mexico, cabled on 2 March in the same code:
. . . This was not revealed by me here. Treachery or indis-
cretion must have occurred in the United States. . . .
The exchange of messages seeking to fix responsibility lasted
through March, with von Eckhardt suggesting again that
secret messages were carelessly handled in Washington; and
Berlin was finally convinced of his innocence. But traffic con-
tinued in this code to the end of the war. The Germans re-
tained the firm conviction that ciphers of other nations were
capable of solution but not their own.
It was perfectly marvellous how the British intercept service
was able during the entire war to keep its work so secret that
not the slightest hint about it reached the outside. It even
went so far in camouflaging its work that it had inserted in
the British press violent attacks on the antiquated methods
of the Secret Service, to which it belonged. The press articles
pointed to the American intelligence service as much more
thorough and efficient, lamenting the fact that the Zimmer-
mann affair had been uncovered in Washington rather than
in London. The Austrian aristocrat whose son had made all
this possible tried to find him after the war. He applied to
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the British Secret Service and received the following reply
from its chief:
. . . / must inform you this is the first time I have ever
encountered the name Alex Czek . . . I cannot tell you
anything whatsoever regarding your son. . . .
The Austrian diplomatic code was betrayed similarly, if with
less dramatic results. Count Czernin, the Austrian ambas-
sador in Bucharest, was a diplomat of the old school, a
cavalier who not only knew his job but also knew how to live
agreeably. Once when spending an hour with a lady of his
acquaintance he left his briefcase, containing among other
things the cipher he used for dispatches to Berlin, in his cab
outside. Unfortunately the driver also found it necessary
to leave the cab for a time, and when the Count returned the
briefcase was gone.
Conscientiously Count Czernin informed Vienna and of-
fered his resignation. Emperor Franz Joseph in his courteous
fashion declined to accept it, calling the matter a regrettable
oversight; no real damage was done, since the Rumanian
police found and returned the briefcase with contents intact
after three days. In Vienna it never occurred to anyone to
change the cryptographic system. Not until 1917, when the
Austrians occupied Bucharest and found the photographic
negatives of Count Czernin's documents in the Prime Min-
ister's attic, did they realize that the Rumanians and their
Allies had been reading Foreign Office traffic since the war
began.
It seems almost incredible that the two powers which de-
veloped the intercept service to a high degree of perfection
during the war and whose military operations were based to a
very great extent on its results, which therefore knew very
well how vulnerable the communications of a country are
to penetration by the enemy, should have displayed such utter
unconcern about the security of their own communications.
You might think that possession of this cipher would have
given the Rumanians more advantage in the four-month Ger-
man-Austrian blitzkrieg against them. Actually it only made
them overconfident, feeling that the collapse of Austria was
imminent. In the military operations the Rumanians used
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their radios in a way that paled even the Russian practices
at Tannenberg. The German and Austrian intercept services
were overwhelmed by the flood of intercepted messages. The
strength, organization and all the intentions of the Rumanian
forces were written clear for the enemy to read. General
Falkenhayn crushed them in one swift battle after another.
The Rumanians, like the Russians two years before, were
convinced that treachery was involved. They replaced men
in various positions and court-martialled a number of high
officers, but for the most part did not change their radio prac-
tices. They did get the French military mission to help them
set up a new cryptographic system, but this was broken in
six days by two German cryptanalysts who had worked on
French systems before. If the lightning defeat of the Ru-
manians was a "judgment of God," as they used to say in Ger-
many and Austria, for their perfidious declaration of war, we
can see here what divine instrument was used in execution.
The Peace Negotiations
The intercept services continued to play their decisive
role even at the peace conferences. At the Allied head-
quarters in the Forest of Compiegne the French Deuxi? Bu-
reau deciphered all the telegraphic traffic of the German dele-
gation, even the famous instruction to "Try for milder terms;
if not obtainable, sign nevertheless." All the German cards
were on the table.
Earlier, at Brest-Litovsk, the German and Austrian dele-
gations had the benefit of three intercept sources. A large
radio intercept center was set up to monitor traffic inside
Russia. The teleprinter put at the disposal of the Russian
delegation for communications with Moscow was tapped, and
the fifteen cryptanalysts assigned had broken the Russian
cipher by the third day of negotiations. And microphones
were concealed in the chandelier of the Russian conference
room and in the walls of the living rooms of all the Russian
delegates. The Russians changed cipher once, after the ne-
gotiator for the Central Powers seemed to know so much that
they became suspicious, but the new code was broken in six
days. Thus at this conference it was the Russians who
found their hands hopelessly exposed.
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COMMUNICATIONS TO THE EDITORS
Dear Mr. Riposte:
Your reply to Mr. Tidwell's article in the summer issue of
Studies in Intelligence leads me to suspect that you are more
of a sabre man than a foils devotee. In your game of fenc-
ing with ideas you have applied the blade with gusto, but in
your enthusiasm I am afraid that you have neglected your
opponent's point and that it is now waving dangerously
over your head.
Just to be sure that you and I are fencing our own match
on the same mat I will recapitulate what I believe to be the
main points of "Kim or Major North." I will then explain why
I think you have exposed yourself unnecessarily.
Mr. Tidwell said that it is essential that America understand
people who live in alien cultures and that if American intelle-
gence personnel do not understand them, nobody else will.
He pointed out the natural, human difficulties that must be
overcome if we are to think our way into another culture, and
listed a number of additional, artificial barriers that we have
created for ourselves. He ,then suggested a number of
ways that might help to make it easier for our people to work
toward overcoming cultural barriers. His most important
point, however, was that we should recognize the need to
understand other cultures and to consider this understanding
as the goal toward which our personnel policies and opera-
tional procedures should be oriented.
Your use of the term "Procrustean" in this connection is
mystifying. Far from recommending uniform conduct, Mr.
Tidwell was recommending agreement on a common goal
toward which individuals would work according to their per-
sonal attributes and the needs of a given situation. ca va
sans dire.
You advocate asking Arabs about Arab plots. Mr. Tidwell
was suggesting ways in which it would be easier and more
profitable to ask Arabs about Arab plots.
You say that Germans were sometimes suspicious of persons
who spoke their language too well. The Germans are noted
as being somewhat power-conscious. He who controls the
?
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To The Editors
transfer point between languages, i.e., the interpreter, liaison
officer, cut-out, middleman, go-between, etc., wields tremen-
dous power. I don't blame the Germans for being suspicious
under the circumstances, but your argument is circular. He
would be even less suspicious of Americans if we stayed home.
Your comments about curved dictionaries are all too typical
of the difficulty that we have in thinking our way out of
American culture. It is very hard for us to talk about sex
without a snicker.
The best item I have saved for last. You say that our
people abroad have to act like the others in their cover or-
ganization. This is fine within reason. I have seen people,
however, who were perfect at maintaining cover, but so perfect
that they never did anything else. The real point is the
nature of their mission abroad. Do we send people overseas
so that they can play games at hiding their identities from
the Russians or do we send them overseas because we need the
information that we hope that they can collect? If our
cover organizations inhibit our doing our job then perhaps we
might consider changing our cover arrangements.
Mr. Tidwell's article attacked a problem that has come to
mind frequently in recent months. The same problem in
somewhat different context has been raised in the recently
published book, "The Ugly American." I think that he has
suggested some ideas that should be thought about seriously.
He may not have the right answers, but please, sir, do not
be a sabre-wielding Pangloss.
Sincerely yours,
R. E. BUTTALL
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AGENT RADIO OPERATION DURING
WORLD WAR II
During World War II the use of clandestine radio for agent
communications was widespread. Literally hundreds of
agent circuits were operated during the war. On the enemy
side they ranged in type from highly organized nets involving
German diplomatic installations to single operations in such
widely scattered places as Mozambique and isolated locations
In the United States. On the Allied side there was no part of
Axis territory where we did not have clandestine communica-
tions representatives?"Joes," as they were called. It was al-
most impossible to tune a communications receiver of an eve-
ning without running across signals which were so obviously
not what they were trying to seem that you wondered why
they were not wrapped up the first time they came on the air.
On both sides the signal plans (call signs, frequencies, and
times of transmission) and procedures used by agents were
for the most part of utmost simplicity. One service was also
easily distinguishable from another by their different char-
acteristics. The random contact times and frequent changes
in wavelength considered so essential today were represented
by uncomplicated regular patterns simple to reconstruct. In
many cases the rota?the cycle in which the plan repeated
itself?was of only a week's duration. Often only the list of
call signs was carried out to a 31-day rota.
The agent was generally given a reasonably good range of
operating frequencies, usually between five and ten, to help
protect him from detection and arrest, but he was often his
own worst enemy. Certain times and frequencies, because
they afforded better operating conditions either radiowise or
from a personal standpoint, became his favorites. Almost
nothing his base could say or do would convince an agent that
he was endangering himself when he abandoned even the
simple non-repetitive pattern of his signal plan in favor of the
convenience of operating day after day on the same frequency
at the same hour. It must be said, in all fairness, that in
some cases this practice was almost unavoidable because of
the agent's need to live his cover. In others, however, it was
stupidity, laziness, or complete incomprehension of the need
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Agent Radio Operation
for good radio security. Sedurity laxness was particularly
foolhardy of those who operated alone and without benefit of
"watchers" to warn when enemy personnel were approaching.
Four types of agent radio operators can be distinguished?
those who operated in metropolitan areas in concert with well-
organized watcher organizations; those who operated on
their own in cities; those who were with the guerrilla groups;
and those who worked alone in isolated rural areas.
The City Mouse
In cities a variety of techniques was employed to protect the
operator. In one case as many as five operators in widely sepa-
rated areas were geared to function as one station. All had
transmitters on the same frequency and copies of the traffic
for a given schedule. If the enemy approached the vicinity of
a particular operator, he would stop transmitting when sig-
naled by his watcher, and at the same time another operator
in a remote part of the city who had been listening to his col-
league would, with hardly a perceptible pause, continue the
transmission. As necessary, a third would take over from the
second and so on, much to the frustration of the opposition.
In another instance long-abandoned telephone lines were used
to key distant transmitters, whose remoteness from the oper-
ator greatly increased his security. These and other sophisti-
cated devices were employed successfully in target areas where
an extensive and highly organized underground was able to
create the conditions for them.
In the main, however, a less imaginative but equally effec-
tive means of protecting the operator was used?teams of
watchers strategically placed in the streets around or on the
roof of the building in which the agent was working his set.
When enemy direction-finding trucks or personnel with port-
able sets were spotted approaching, a signal would be sent to
another watcher either in the room with the operator or
close enough to warn him to stop transmitting. Usually the
warning was enough; but one agent was so intensely anxious
to get the traffic off that he repeatedly ignored the warnings
of his watcher on the roof above him. A string had to be fas-
tened to this man's wrist, with the roof watcher holding the
other end, so that he could literally yank the operator's hand
away from the key!
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Agent Radio Operation
Less is known about the singletons who operated in cities..
They lived lonely, frightened lives, particularly tense during
their transmissions. Frequently they had the feeling that the
enemy was just outside the door waiting for the right moment
to break in, and sometimes he was. The most grateful mo-
ment in the singleton's day came when he heard the base say
"Roger. Nothing more." Sometimes the base operator
would impulsively end with the letters GB ES GL?"Good bye
and good luck"?even though he knew it was against the rules.
The lone agents who survived owed their lives to a highly
developed sense of security and intelligent use of the resources
available to them. They went on the air only when they had
material they considered really important and they kept their
transmissions short. They either were or became such good
operators that they approached the professional level in skill.
Sometimes they were able to change their transmitting pro-
cedure from what they had been taught to one which enabled
them to reduce greatly their time on the air. They took ad-
vantage of unusual operating locations and moved frequently.
In addition, they undoubtedly owed something to good for-
tune: many who were caught were victims as much of bad luck
as of enemy action. One German agent in Italy who had
most skillfully and successfully evaded Allied apprehension
over a long period was caught only with the casual help of an
Italian woman. After watching with curiosity the efforts of a
DF crew in the street for some time, she finally approached the
officer in charge and diffidently offered the suggestion, "If
you're looking for the man with the radio, he's up there."
Some singleton agents who were unable to live alone with
their secrets were spotted because of their inability to keep
their mouths shut. Their compulsion to tell a sweetheart or
a friend or to draw attention to themselves by living or talking
in a manner out of keeping with their covers resulted in their
apprehension. And yet they sometimes got by with incredible
indiscretions. There was one case in which the base, having
taken traffic from a "Joe" in northern Italy, was about to
close down when Joe, in clear text, asked if it would take traf-
fic from "George," an agent who had been trained and dis-
patched from a completely different location. The base oper-
ator was flabbergasted, but took down the transmission and
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then asked the man in the field to stand by for a short mes-
sage, which was being enciphered, to the following effect:
"Where did you get that traffic and where the hell is George?"
The answer was prompt and again en clair: "From George,
he's on leave." For several days Joe continued to send in
George's messages, evidently prepared in advance, as well as
his own, until George showed up on his own schedule and re-
sumed business as usual. To the best of our knowledge these
two agents remained unmolested and free of control; they
were contacted regularly until Allied troops overran the area.
The Country Mouse
The radio operator with a guerrilla group came in for his
share of difficulties too. First of all, he usually arrived at his
destination by parachute. Often his equipment was damaged
in the drop. Many times he had to lug it over almost impass-
able terrain in a wild scramble to protect it and avoid capture.
Sometimes he never got on the air at all, and he and his team-
mates would be the subject of melancholy speculation on the
part of his comrades at headquarters until some word trickled
back as to what had happened to them. The radio man was
expected to do his share of the fighting when the situation
demanded it; and injured or sick, he was supposed to keep at
his radio as long as he was strong enough to operate it.
The singleton in the country usually had a specified mission
such as the retraining of an already infiltrated agent or the
transmission of information being gathered by specific
sources. He frequently could use some city-type methods of
operation, being protected by watchers as he worked in some
lonely spot, or had the advantages of the guerrilla type, in
that he was among friendly irregulars or in their territory.
Very often he had little privacy, let alone security, of opera-
tion, and his sole protection was the good will of the populace
of the area through which he was travelling. Frequently he
had to meet contact schedules in the open in broad daylight,
with interested indigenous bystanders looking on. Given
good will, however, this circumstanding was not bad; it pro-
vided volunteers to crank the generator and hold up the poles
on which his antenna was strung.
The country singleton was usually no worse off than his
counterparts in other situations, and sometimes much better
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off; occasionally he was treated as an honored guest. But his
status varied with the moods and political views of the so-
called friendly leaders of the area, and at times he was viewed
with suspicion or open hostility. The agent or agents he was
supposed to retrain often resented him and added to his diffi-
culties. He developed skills beyond those he had brought with
him: equivocation, tact, flattery, subterfuge, and downright
dishonesty became abilities essential to the doing of his job.
His one thought was to get it done and get out in one piece and
on to the next assignment.
Occasionally the agent operator interjected into his
otherwise anonymous transmission bursts of temper, dis-
pleasure or eloquent disgust. Usually these outbursts
were spontaneous profanity, unenciphered, directed at the
quality of the base signal, the base operator's poor sending,
or some other immediate cause of annoyance. They most
often came in the agent's mother-tongue, but a certain
group of German clandestine agents used to swear at their
base operators with great eloquence in beautifully spelled-
out English.
Not all such expressions of opinion were sent in the clear.
Over the years, enciphered messages have been generously
spiked with agent invective and profanity. One such mes-
sage received during the war, a marvel of succinctness,
spoke volumes on the subject of what makes an agent tick.
The agent in question had been trained as a singleton. It
had been planned, with good reason, that he should be dropped
several hundred miles ahead of the bulk of his equipment, of
which there was a great deal, and make his way to it later.
The operation went according to plan except in this respect;
all the agent's gear was dropped with him. In due time the
base heard him calling, established contact, and took a brief
but carefully enciphered message, which when decoded was
found to consist of one extremely vulgar French word. The
agent was never heard from again.
The Ingredients of Partnership
What kind of person made a good agent operator? His spe-
cial qualifications required that he be young or old, tall or
short, thin or fat, nervous or phlegmatic, intelligent or stupid,
educated or unlettered. His political views were of no conse-
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quence. If he had a burning resentment at having been
thrown out of his country, of having lost family or friends to
the enemy, so much the better?or maybe worse: uncontrolled
hatred could create security problems. He didn't even have to
like radio very much. About the only attributes he really
needed were: ability to put up with all the unpleasantness of
six weeks of radio training to get at least a nodding acquaint-
ance with the subject; a willingness or desire to go anywhere
by any reasonable means of conveyance?"reasonable" in-
cludes dropping fifty feet from a plane into water?and stay
for an unspecified period of time; and the abiding conviction, in
spite of feeling constantly that someone was looking over his
shoulder, that it would always be the other guy who got
caught. In short, he must come to like his work and take,
with the well-educated call-girl, the view that he was just
plain lucky to get such a good job.
At the base end of a clandestine circuit a good operator was,
In his own way, different from any other radio operator de-
veloped during the war. And he was proud of it. In the first
place he had to learn to live in a world of noise, an experience
which occasionally resulted in permanent psychoses or sui-
cide. The agent transmitter was and is a miserably feeble
communications instrument, capable under the best of cir-
cumstances of putting only very small amounts of radio
energy into the ether. Being illegal, it had to compete with
jammers, commercial telegraph, and broadcast stations, whose
signals often exceeded its power tens of thousands of times.
If the reader can picture himself surrounded by the brass sec-
tion of a large orchestra playing one of the lustier passages
from Wagner while he is trying to hear and identify a differ-
ent melody coming from a piccolo played by an asthmatic
midget in the balcony, he will in some measure approximate
the auditory frustrations of the base radio operator search-
ing for and copying some of the typical agent signals.
Yet this small group of men not only took pride in their
work, but because they understood the problems of their un-
seen friends on the other end of the line, went out of their
way to make sure that their agents got the best service pos-
sible. Frequently they would become so concerned about a
certain agent that they would get up during off hours at what-
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ever time of day or night their particular Joe was scheduled
to come on, to make sure that he would be properly copied,
even though the base operator assigned to that watch was
thoroughly competent. And the regular operator never re-
sented this interference with his watch; he probably had done
or would do the same thing himself.
The devotion and skill of these otherwise apparently un-
dedicated and average men was equal to almost any demand.
Sometimes as many as five operators would voluntarily con-
centrate on one agent transmission, piecing together the
fragments each made out, so the man could get off the air as
fast as possible. They learned to recognize the agent's signal
as he was tuning up, in order to shorten the dangerous call-
ing time. They managed to make sense of the spastic tappings
of obviously nervous agents and through their own efforts
and example frequently instilled confidence in them. If they
did not accept with good grace the often unwarranted criti-
cism leveled at them by the agent, at least they did not reply
in kind.
They recognized their special friends by the way they sent
their characters and were in many cases able to tell when
the agent was in trouble or had been replaced at the key by
an enemy operator. In many instances they developed a
sixth sense which enabled them to hear and copy signals
correctly through prolonged bursts of static or interference,
and they developed shortcuts which further reduced the
agent's time on the air. Many of these shortcuts became the
foundation for more efficient and sophisticated methods of
operation.
Their patience was truly marvelous. When necessary, they
would sit day after day listening for a man who had never been
contacted or who had disappeared for months. That he might
be without equipment, drunk, or dead made no difference to
them. As long as his schedule was on their contact sheet, he
was real and they looked for him. If he showed up they nearly
always established contact.
Not every man assigned as radio operator to this type of
base station made the grade. Some tried and just didn't have
It. These nobody criticized, and other useful duties were
found for them; but those who didn't take the work seriously
?
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were not tolerated and soon left the station. The good ones
came from all walks of life. Unlike the agents, they were
trusted nationals of the country operating the station. They
were draftees, professional communicators, amateur radio op-
erators, philologists; but almost without exception they had
imagination, skill, and a deep (if frequently unrecognized)
love for both radio and that type of radio work in particular.
They were in short a new breed, the clandestine intelligence
service radio operator.
?
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CRITIQUES OF SOME RECENT BOOKS ON
INTELLIGENCE
THE ZIMMERMANN TELEGRAM. By Barbara W. Tuchman.
(New York: Viking. 1958. Pp. 244. $3.95)
On January 17, 1917, the German Foreign Secretary, Arthur
Zimmermann, abetted by British decoding experts, placed a
steaming hot potato into the hands of Admiral William Hall,
the director of British Naval Intelligence. The shrewd jug-
gling of this gift by Admiral Hall and its impact on the Ameri-
can public, poised on the brink of entry into World War I,
are the focal themes of this novelized but scholarly and doc-
umented account of a famous diplomatic interception. Zim-
mermann's secret telegram to the German minister in Mex-
ico, made public in The New York Times on March 1, 1917, has
frequently been cited as one of the causes for American in-
tervention in the war in Europe. Zimmermann told his min-
ister that Germany would shortly begin unrestricted subma-
rine warfare, and that if the United States were to declare
war Germany would seek an alliance with Mexico and sound
out Japan. Mexico would have the prospect of recovering its
"lost territory in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona."
At first glance the six weeks' delay in releasing news of such
a blatant German proposal seems curious: the American pub-
lic, wavering between a deep desire to remain at peace and a
strong urge to come to the aid of the Allies, would be decided
by proof of the German intent to dismember the United
States. But to Admiral Hall, as he held the decoded message
in his hands, the problem was not so simple. A decoded enemy
message of such portentous content would require the great-
est assurance of authenticity before it could be believed, and
giving such an assurance involved revealing how it was ob-
tained and thereby jeopardizing a rich source of future infor-
mation. The way the Director of Naval Intelligence did man-
age to make use of the intelligence while keeping his source
secure is from the professional point of view the most intri-
guing aspect of the story.
The source was straightforward communications intercep-
tion. The British had obtained, by combining the results of
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three distinct intelligence operations, a major part of the
German diplomatic code. Since September 1915 the cryptog-
raphers of Room 40 in Whitehall had been engaged in success-
ful decoding of Berlin's messages to all German embassies in
the Western Hemisphere. The value of such a source was of
course immeasurable. Hall considered its value so great that
for two weeks, while he worked out his own solution to the
problem, he didn't reveal the existence of the decoded mes-
sage to his own government. His solution rested partly on
knowledge of the routes German telegrams took to reach
their destinations in the Western Hemisphere. It was de-
termined that many messages were sent to the United States
in the guise of Swedish diplomatic cables, and the German
embassy in Washington used commercial lines to forward
telegrams to Mexico City. Hall's operatives penetrated the
telegraph office in Mexico City and obtained a copy of the
Zimmermann telegram. The slight changes that occurred
during transmission would give some credence to the story
he was creating that the telegram was discovered in America.
Once he had the copy of the telegram as received in Amer-
ica, Hall permitted an American official to use the recon-
structed German code key and personally decode the German
message, thereby establishing the authenticity of the message
in the eyes of the U.S. Government. To establish a plausi-
ble source for the telegram in the eyes of the American pub-
lic and of the Germans, Hall went further. When Count von
Bemstorff, the German Ambassador to the United States,
embarked on his return trip to Germany after the break in
diplomatic relations, a mysterious trunk, reputed to be full
of Swedish diplomatic papers, was found in his baggage. Ac-
cording to the story released to the newspapers, it was taken
into custody by the British when the Danish liner, Frederik
VIII, docked at Halifax. The Swedish diplomatic seal had
already been broken, British authorities told the press, before
the liner reached Halifax. The bait was swallowed, and the
source of the Zimmermann telegram became, as far as the
Germans and the American public were concerned, Von Bern-
storff's mysterious trunk.
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Admiral Hall's coup cannot, of course, be considered the
immediate cause for the U.S. entry into World War I. Mrs.
Tuchman analyzes with great insight most of the major fac-
tors affecting the decision to go to war. She chooses with
discrimination from the vast amounts of historical data those
elements that most vividly characterize the atmosphere in
which the Zimmermann telegram played such a significant
role.
From the historian's point of view her book represents
sound scholarship and balanced judgment, for all its popular
form. As a case study in intelligence operations, The Zim-
mermann Telegram presents in detail the complex prob-
lems of an extraordinary case and their successful solution.
ALLIED INTELLIGENCE BUREAU. By Colonel Allison Ind.
(New York: David MacKay. 1958. Pp. 304. $4.95.)
Colonel Ind describes in dramatic detail the principal ac-
tivities of the AIB, an agglomeration of British, Australian,
Dutch, and American clandestine services which performed
in the World War II Pacific theater roughly the same func-
tions as the OSS in other theaters of war. His book shows
how clandestine operations in the Pacific were developed pretty
much by ear, without the benefit of counsel from experienced
men in the field. The magnificent daring of those who un-
dertook the work cannot be overstated, and their exploits
make exciting reading; but Colonel Id's account?pardon-
ably, perhaps, coming from the AIB's "deputy controller"?
is apt to lead the reader to attach more importance to the
value of this segment of intelligence in the advancement of
the war than it actually had. There was comparatively little
In these operations that is instructive for today's professional
intelligence officer.
The first half of the book is devoted to the work of the
Australian Coast Watchers in the southwest Pacific islands.
The members of this service gave a magnificent demonstra-
tion of selfless courage and daring. Colonel Ind does ? not
cover the organizational and recruitment phases of the Coast
Watchers, perhaps because these have been well reported by
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Eric Feldt, the brave and able Australian officer most respon-
sible for the effective functioning of the service.' The perils
and privations of a white bushman on a fetid jungle island
occupied by a vicious enemy whose strength and movements
he observes and reports make suspenseful anecdotes of adven-
ture. The situation was basic, dangerous, and cruel; but it
was not attended by any of the complex nuances of sophisti-
cated espionage operations.
From the tradecraft point of view Colonel Id's chapters
on operations in the Philippines are the most useful ones.
These required well-rehearsed cover and organized partisan
resistance. Fragments of the story have been published from
time to time, but to my knowledge this is the first history
available to the general public covering the whole organization
and all its activities.2
The final major section of the book, "The Commandos,"
deals with the several isolated operations of the so-called
"Services Reconnaissance Department," an outgrowth of the
British SOE. They were a small group of able, courageous,
and experienced British saboteurs who pumped adrenalin into
their systems while pleading for action. It is a great pity
they were not used more freely. In their anxiety to ply their
specialties in the theatre they staged a splendidly shocking
show by planting dummy limpets on our own shipping in
Townsville harbor, and it was touch and go for a while as to
whether they would be expelled unceremoniously from the
area. Finally they were permitted to destroy shipping in
Singapore harbor, some 3,000 miles away, and they accom-
plished their mission with fine finish.
Stylistically, Colonel Id's book is one for a lover of vivid
phrase and brilliant color. The casual reader may find it too
dazzling, kaleidoscopic to the point of vertigo.
Eric A. Feldt, The Coastwatchers. (New York and Melbourne: Ox-
ford University Press, 1946. 264 pp.)
'Colonel Ind was largely responsible for an official documentary
account, Operations of the Allied Intelligence Bureau, GHQ, SWPA,
published under "restricted" classification in 1948 as Vol. IV of The
Intelligence Series, GHQ, FEC. Most of this material is now desig-
nated for official use only.
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MAN HUNT IN KENYA. By Ian Henderson, with Phillip
Goodhart. (New York: Doubleday. 1958. Pp. 240. $3.95.)
Also under title THE HUNT FOR KIMATHL (London:
Hamish Hamilton. 1958. 21/?.)
Man Hunt in Kenya is a fascinating and well-written book
about the last important operation against the Mau Mau re-
bellion in Kenya. Its British title is more precise; Dedan Ki-
mathi was the undisputed leader and guiding spirit of the lar-
gest and most dangerous Mau Mau gangs, and this story shows
how he was also a master of bushcraft of the highest order.
The fact that it took 10 months to capture Kimathi even in
the Mau Mau's dying days in 1956 gives some indication of the
problem the security forces set for themselves when they
elected to make an all-out effort to get him one way or another.
Phillip Goodhart, British Member of Parliament for Becken-
ham, who prior to his election had been covering the Mau
Mau revolt for the London Daily Telegraph, has written a
three-chapter Background for the book, and apparently col-
laborated with Ian Henderson, its principal author?and
actor?throughout its preparation. But the Background does
not make clear to the unfamiliar reader the origins of the
mass rebellion, the character of its heyday in 1953, and its
dwindling course to the end of 1955.
One might argue that the main reason the Mau Mau revolt
got out of hand was a collapse of British intelligence in the
Kikuyu reserve. Its system of African informants had pretty
much broken down. Only a handful of Europeans?among
them notably Ian Henderson of the Kenya Police?knew how
to speak Kikuyu and had any meaningful contacts with the
tribe. It had been known since 1950 that, in addition to the
overt political resistance centered around Jomo Kenyatta and
his Kenya African Union, a secret society was at work among
the Kikuyu; but it is doubtful that Kenya officials really had
any indication of the seriousness of the Mau Mau oathing or
of how widespread it had become. In 1953, after the outbreak
of the Emergency, everyone was taken aback by estimates that
90 per cent of the million-odd Kikuyu had taken some kind of
Mau Mau oath. The British have relied successfully for cen-
turies on a system of indigenous informants and infiltration
agents, usually supplemented, however, by officials with a firm
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grounding in the language and culture of the indigenous peo-
ple. This combination had been allowed to deteriorate in
Kenya, and the Government had lost intimate contact with
what was going on in the Kikuyu Reserve.
At the height of the nightly Mau Mau raids for food and
vengeance on Europeans and Africans alike, a period studded
with incidents like the Lan i Massacre of March 1953, when
some 150 loyal Kikuyu men, women, and children were wiped
out in a single night because the local chief was friendly to the
Kenya Government?during this time a retired British Army
colonel argued most persuasively with me that one Russian
saboteur could have brought the Colony to its knees in two
weeks. It certainly was true that communications, water
supplies, radio stations, etc., were all woefully unguarded.
Why the Mau Mau failed to strike at these vulnerable spots re-
mains one of the mysteries in what must be counted among
the strangest rebellions in the history of the British Empire.
Later in 1953 the security situation began to improve. The
introduction of British troops and the strengthening of the
Kenya Police and Provincial Administration began to reduce
the Mau Mau gangs in number and put them on the defensive.
Operation Anvil, the massive operation in April 1954 around
Nairobi directed by Sir Richard Turnbull, now Governor of
Tanganyika, led to the detention of some 30,000 Kikuyu, thus
strangling a crucial Mau Mau source of money and supplies.
Most important of all, the Kenya Government organized an
effective group of tribal policemen known as the Kikuyu Guard.
It was the Kikuyu Guard's denial of food and support for the
Mau Mau gangs that began to tell. No longer were large
gangs able to run roughshod through the Kikuyu reserve
stealing and plundering. The years 1953 and 1954 also saw a
prodigious collection of intelligence from detainees at the
various screening centers. The processing of this intelli-
gence gave the Kenya Government details on the people in-
volved with Mau Mau gangs, a catalog of the bestial Mau Mau
oaths, and frequently step-by-step outlines of past rebel oper-
ations.
By the beginning of 1956 the movement had about run its
course, and the security situation had improved so radically
that a major action to eliminate Kimathi, the last important
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Mau Mau leader still at large, was all that was needed. The
natural leader of this operation was Superintendent Ian Hen-
derson, whose record during the Mau Mau revolt was truly
outstanding. In 1954 he had made repeated unarmed trips
into the forest to negotiate surrender terms with Mau Mau
gangs. These talks were abortive, but they demonstrated the
man's skill and bravery, and won for him the George Medal.
Born and raised in Kenya, Henderson was in fact about the
only British official who could have led the Kimathi operation.
Henderson's book is particularly vivid in portraying the in-
credible Alice-in-Wonderland world in which most of the hunt
was conducted?the primitive jungle lore of tracking and sur-
vival, the thin irrational , line between friend and foe, the
minglings of bestiality and childish magic. In the almost im-
penetrable forest wild game was as much of a problem as any
offensive action by terrorists, and Henderson suggests by in-
direction that the only effect of the much-vaunted RAF bomb-
ings of the forest was to make the wild beasts even more dan-
gerous than usual. He gives us a good picture of what life is
like in the middle of a tropical rain forest: the Aberdare Range
rises to over 13,000 feet and when the sun is not shining it
can be extremely inhospitable.
The importance of witchcraft both to the Mau Mau and to
the Government teams of ex-terrorists is well illustrated.
Two puff-adders falling out of a tree on the back of a col-
laborator, though they glided away harmlessly, were such a
bad omen that they threatened to stop one whole operation.
Kimathi's insistence on praying to the Kikuyu god Ngai while
facing Mt. Kenya under a wild fig tree meant that one could
pinpoint for ambush the dozen or so fig trees to which he
would go.
Ironically, Henderson had had to leave the jungle hunt to
be presented to Princess Margaret at a tea party at Govern-
ment House in Nairobi on the very day Kimathi was captured,
and was called away from that elegant atmosphere to inter-
rogate Kimathi at Nyeri. Contrasts like these are introduced
into the story with a minimum of flamboyancy, and with the
traditional British understatement which characterizes the
whole account.
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One aspect of the operation that still defies full comprehen-
sion is Henderson's success in inducing Mau Mau terrorists
to change sides and go back into the forest to hunt down their
one-time friends. Time and again Henderson converted or at
least recruited individual terrorists and sent them armed and
supplied with government weapons and provisions to seek out
the gangs they had just left. Although some leniency was
promised them in return, there was never any suggestion that
they would not still be liable to prosecution for the crimes
they had committed. One of my strangest impressions from
this period I got during a visit to the Athi River Detention
Camp in 1954, where several Mau Mau detainees described in
some detail to our party their individual roles in the terrorist
movement and their participation in several murders. Their
psychology is a mysterious one to the Western mind, and
Henderson's success in handling them is fascinating and con-
fusing.
The direction and control of the Kimathi operation re-
mained in the hands of the European officers; but it is obvious
that no European, not even Henderson, would ever have been
able to live and fight in the forest with the same skill as the
Mau Mau terrorists. Ultimately, therefore, success in wiping
out the last remnants of the Mau Mau gangs rested in the
hands of these ex-terrorist recurits. Dedan Kimathi emerges
as one of the masters of self-preservation. Henderson shows
how extremely knowledgeable as trackers and hunters the
last few Mau Mau terrorists had become. As masters of the
African bush he rates them higher than the Wanderobo, a
tribe of hunters who are excellent in the forest and have tra-
ditionally been regarded the finest hunters in East Africa.
I would agree with Henderson that "Kimathi was hardly a
political figure, but he was a criminal of the first rank." Good-
hart's assessment that "if the Kikuyu are the Germans of
tribal Kenya, Kimathi was their Hitler" is patently overdrawn.
Still, his stature as a leader, even in 1956, and the possibility
of his dying a martyr were reason enough for mounting the
operation against him. With his death on the gallows at Nai-
robi Prison the last active spark of the Mau Mau rebellion
was gone. Much of the credit for this accomplishment must
go to Ian Henderson, and he has written a first-rate book
about it.
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