ED:

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP78-04308A000100100005-1
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: November 17, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 21, 2000
• Sequence Number: 5
• Publication Date: October 29, 1958
• Content Type: LETTER

Approved For Release 2000/08/2. rDP78-0430. A000100100005-1
1!I
29 October 1955
Our lunch of yesterday, in addition to pleasantly nourishing
my physical and social being, provided food for thought.
The problems raised by your proposal with reference to the
CSO go quite aways beyond the issue of whether or not the ME Staff
will have its Friday afternoon. Some pretty fundamental problems
of role and coordination get involved.
Let's take the clearly practical side first. As matters stand
now, there are at least three kinds of people who might be inter-
viewing the JOT's during the two weeks they are in the CSO. Your
plans contemplate interviewing everyone of them at least once. If
I understood you correctly, you are thinking of getting a second
interview during the week following the course. The JOT office
personnel will certainly be talking to these students during this
week, and very likely during the preceeding two weeks. The J
Staff represent the third source of interviewers. While, in
principle, there is nothing wrong with multiple interviews, pro-
vided they are extremely closely coordinated, the short time span
here leads me to believe that the net result will be confusion
in the minds of the JOTts and greater uncertainty concerning the
meaning of what the JOT's are reporting. Further, as a purely
practical matter, the full report of training preceeding the CSO
will not be in CSO instructors' hands until the course is half
over.
In terms of the entire program, my understanding of the roles
to be played by the A&E Staff, the Schools, and the JOTP office
are as follows:
a. The A&E Staff will be responsible for the assessment
of the JOTts, not as a short-range proposition, but as a con-
tinuous one running throughout the program. This Staff would
also serve as the means of coordinating the information that
was being received from the instructors to the end that a
final report containing recommendations might be given to
C/JOTP in time for his office to make the necessary decisions
during the week following the CSO.
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h. The role of the schools was to (1) provide the JOT
with knowledge which would help him make a decision in his
own best interests, and in addition, provide, through the
A&B mechanism, observations which might be relevant to the
final decision C/JOTP must make. The ARE role was implemented
at the outset of the program by providing a maximum of two
days for making its followups after initial assessment. The
Staff is using but one of these days, the final half day
being planned midway in the CSO. The reason for picking
this time was that it was the latest time that would permit
a report to C/JOTP at the beginning of the break.
This conception is clearly and basically different from
yours, at least as I understand it. It has implications for the
specific role each person plays in his contact with JOT's. It
has implications for the kind and amount of material that should
be available at certain times in the program. What is wanted is
a maximum number of independent judgments and a minimum amount
of confusion to the JOT's. Some of the questions which concern
me are:
a. The danger that some highly gifted individuals, and
who are most appropriately placed on the DD/I side, will con-
sider themselves second-class citizens. The A&E Staff has
taken the position with the JOT's that its role is to help
them find the best possible placement for each one of them
within the limitations imposed by the number that can go
to the DD/P, that in its advisory role to the C/JOTP, the
A&f, Staff would make its recommendation with this principle
in mind.
h. The danger of confusion brought about by well-nigh
simultaneous interviewing covering much the same ground.
Without extremely careful coordination among the three
offices concerned, this can lead to erroneous evaluation
of the information received.
major point in the ARC conception of the program was, that
JAL as training and assessment progressed, decisions would become
clear for more and more people, and that towards the end of the
program there would remain very few about whom there was serious
question, either in my Staff's mind, or in the mind of the C/JOTP.
The questions concerning these few would be decided by how they
reacted to the material presented in the CSO. I should hasten
to add that my feeling that there would be few concerning whom
there were questions by the time they reached the CSO is not based
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on any feeling that the material to be presented is not a highly
important part of the program. It is based rather on the belief
that those suited for the DD/I will have been already identified,
and that those clearly unsuitable for the DD/P will also have
been identified. The large majority will work through their
on problems of adjustment as they hear the material in the CSO2
and proceed to the DD/P much in the way the vast majority of those
who have taken preceeding Operations Courses have.
Jhile this note clarifies, I think, the sources of my feeling
of confusion at the moment, it does, I believe, clearly point to
the necessity of getting some basic decisions from the Director of
Training, or rather in my view, finding out whether there are to
be changes in basic decisions that were made at the outset. I'm
planning, therefore, to take this problem up with . Zatt so that all
of us can then bend our efforts to making the program a success.
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WLI