STUDIES IN INTELLIGENCE [Vol. 17, No. 2, Summer 1973]

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP78T03194A000400010006-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 88
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 2, 2004
• Sequence Number: 6
• Publication Date: January 1, 1973
• Content Type: IS

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SUMMER 1973
CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
VOL. 17 NO. 2
AR.CHNAL RECORD
PLEASE 1tETU1tN TO
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SECURITY PRECAUTIONS
Materials in the Studies are in general to be reserved to US per-
sonnel holding appropriate clearances. The existence of this journal is
to be treated as information privy to the US official community. All
copies of each issue beginning Summer 1964 are numbered serially and
subject to recall.
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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 or any other
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 transmission or revelation of which
to an unauthorized person is prohibited by law.
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SENSITIVE INTELLIGENCE SOURCES
AND METHODSINYOLVED
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STUDIES IN INTELLIGENCE
EDITORIAL POLICY
Articles for the Studies in Intelligence may be
written on any theoretical, doctrinal, operational, ar
historical aspect o f intelligence.
The final responsibility for accepting or repecting an
article rests with the Editorial Board.
The criterion f or publication is whether or not, in the
opinion o f the Board, t/ie article makes a contribution
to the literature of intelligence.
EDITORIAL BOARD
HUGH T. CUNNINCHAM, Chairman
RICHARD LEHMAN LAWRENCE R. HOUSTON
BRUCE C. CLARAE, JR.
WALTER L.- PFORZHEIMEA
Additional members of the Board are drawn from
other CIA components.
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CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS ISSUE
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Lt. CoI. James Murphy and Dr. K. Wayne Smith were both members of the
National Security Council Staff at the time the speech was delivered.
25X1 veteran Agency word-watcher, autopsied some of the
more elegant examples in our first issue of 1972. The flow has apparently
not slackened in the meantime.
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ho delves into U.S. intelligence history, is ni the Office of
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CONTENTS
Page
The Studies in Intelligence Awards ..................................... iii
Making Intelligence Analysis Responsive to Policy Concerns .............. 1
Lt. Col. James Murphy and Dr. K. Wayne Smith
A request from the consumer.
Liaison Training ...............................
Trials, tribulations, and some lingering doubt'
Elegant Writing: Report Number Two .......... .
The pen is sometimes flightier than the words.
Donovan's Original Marching Orders ............ .
How it all began.
7 25X1
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Intelligence in Recent Public Literature ................................. 71
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A request from
the consumer
MAKING INTELLIGENCE ANALYSIS RESPONSIVE
TO POLICY CONCERNS
Lt. Colonel James Murphy and Dr. K. Wayne Smith
Should the intelligence analyst stay aloof from dssues that ~ seize
the policy makers he supports? .Here are two users o f finished intelli-
gence, both former members of the National Security Council staff, who
say "no:' They collaborated to write a speech on this theme which Col.
Murphy delivered be f ore a gathering o f intelligence o f f icers '(the Intelli-
gence Forum) in May 1971. An abridged text of the speech follows.
Let me begin with some observations about intelligence support :for the
preparation of National Security Study Memoranda-NSSMs for short. This
process is a systematized procedure by which the President directs the attention
of the bureaucracy to national security issues in which he has an interest or
needs to make a decision. It is a means of mobilizing the intellect and energy
of the government and focusing them on major foreign policy issues.
The personnel and informational resources needed to address these issues
are abundantly available. within the government, but they tend to be fragmented
among the various agencies including the intelligence community. The infor-
mation and expertise required for rational decision making are interagency in
nature. No single department or agency has a corner on the foreign policy
market, and that goes for the intelligence input as well.
Moreover, the NSSM process gives those who have the responsibility for
implementing and supervising the execution of foreign policy an opportunity
to participate in the formulation of those policies. And I need not remind you
that good intelligence information is essential, not only for making sound policy
decisions, but also as an essential ingredient for judging the performance of policy.
The NSSM process is founded upon several principles which have a direct
bearing on the intelligence response. The first is creativity. In a world of on-
rushing and complex change, we cannot be content with familiar ideas, or assume
that the future will be merely a projection o# the present and the past.
In March 1971, when the President wanted an analysis of the impact of
LAMSON 719 on the North Vietnamese logistic capability to support various
types and levels of warfare against South Vietnam in the fixture, we found that
the currently available intelligence data on supply flows was simply iriappro-
priate to measure the capabilities of the enemy. The data had been structured to
portray the magnitude of the enemy effort in terms of tonnage, and the results
of our interdiction operations in terms of truck kills, but without relation to the
effects on future levels of enemy activity.
Within the NSC Staff, a new analytical format was created by which the
existing data could be structured to indicate the implications for North Viet-
namese military capabilities. The CIA took this new analytical format and pro-
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duced an outstanding study that was of direct use to the President in assessing
the significance of LAMSON 719 and assisted him in making policy decisions
concerning our future role and presence in Vietnam.
We have found in the NSC system that the initial :focus on the broader
questions of national objectives and purposes stimulates discovery of new per-
spectives, and produces innovative approaches to the specific issues involved.
I urge you to resist the strong temptation to fulfill the immediate demands of the
moment with familiar standard operating procedures. Rather, reflect upor~ the
issues in their policy context to determine the logical relationships between the
informational requirements and the issues, and then decide what information
needs to be presented and how.
1"he second principle o f the NSSM process is the quest for accurate, complete,
and relevant factual information. Too often the process of policy making has been
impaired or distorted by incomplete information and by disputes within the
government which resulted from a lack of common appreciation of the relevant
facts. It is an essential function of the NSSM process to bring together all of
the agencies of government concerned with foreign affairs to elicit, assess, and
present to the President and the Council all the pertinent knowledge available
and necessary to make policy that is thoroughly grounded in, and relevant to~, the
facts. It is on this rock that the intelligence community sometimes founders.
information is your stock and trade, and the inventory is jealously guarded
and highly regarded by several proprietors. Sometimes, the search for :facts
degenerates into a squabble about who is right, rather than what is right. ][ see
enough documents from various intelligence agencies to know that rarely does
any one agency possess all the revelant facts. Indeed, it would seem to me that the
structure of the intelligence community is such that no one agency could possibly
have all the facts. However, even with this conceded, I still hear disputes about
who has the better information, and invariably each proponent claims than his
data are best. The assessment of LAMSON 719 turned at one point into just such
a hassle. The President, for whom we all work, couldn't care less about whether
one agency's or another agency's sources are better truck counters. The agencies
involved could have served the requirements of policy making better if they
had analyzed their own information for trends and sought to establish meaningful
correlations and ranges of estimates encompassing both types of data. .
It took some methodological head knocking, but we were finally able to
focus on what was right rather than who was right, and this was done by com-
bining intelligence resources into meaningful patterns and relationships conducive
to policy making. I realize that intelligence producers suffer peptic ulcers when-
ever they're asked for "the facts:' It is in these moments that they have to be
honest with themselves about the reliability of their sources, and the accuracy
and completeness of their information. Usually, the pieces of informatior,~ far
outnumber the assured facts.
`l'he phrase "true facts" is neither a linguistic nor logical redundancy to in-
telligence officers. Certainly policy makers, however, cannot "wait until all the
facts are in." That is the job for the historians among your grandchildren. The
challenge to intelligence is to be able to see through the glass darkly, here
and now.
'I"he intelligence community has a natural and understandable inherent
conservatism, sometimes bordering on reluctance to commit itself to decIlara-
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tions of fact. Indeed, a private jargon, little understood by the consumer, hedges
such statements. Estimated, believed, probably, possibly, may, and rr~ight are
examples of this special vocabulary. In fact, it reminds me of one of the first
meetings I attended in the Pentagon where I heard a distinguished Assistant
Secretary of Defense stand up and pound the table to insist that might was too
strong a word to use in a particular sentence under discussion! I don't know
what is weaker than might. But the policy maker must make decisions in a con-
text of nebulous visibility. The intelligence community must do all it can, even
at the occasional risk to its own credibility, to give the decision maker as much
clear insight as possible into the facts, and to make clear the hedges, risks,
and. consequences of error. Too often, the hedging seems self-protective, rather
than informative. And it is just as important for the intelligence community to
be forthright in identifying what we do not know, and. to assess the consequences
for policy of this ignorance. Risk and uncertainty are the environment of policy
making, and the intelligence community must share and seek to relieve some
of this burden. The "true facts" are that impossible dream. But relevant in-
formation and a rational, objective assessment of it remain the most essential.
intelligence responses to the NSSM decision-making process.
A third principle of the NSSM process is the provision of a full range of
feasible options. The President's leadership cannot consist merely in being con-
fronted with a bureaucratic consensus that leaves him no option but acceptance
or rejection of a single proposal, without any way of knowing what alternatives
exist. The NSSM system is designed to ensure that clear policy choices reach
the top so that various positions and alternatives can be debated fully. The
NSSM system ensures that all agencies involved receive a fair hearing before
decisions are made. Interagency participation begins with the working. groups
that draft the papers and continues right up through the review process, all
the way to the National Security Council itself. Legitimate alternative positions
reach the President without dilution. Differences are clearly identified anal de-
fended, rather than being. muted or buried in bureaucratic waffle and log rolling.
These features give the President confidence that his choices are genuine,
and enable him to put his own stamp on policy by the act of decision. I commend
to you this principle of a full range of options in the intelligence response to
the NSSM process. Much of the intelligence we all deal with is subject to varying
interpretations. It is not sufficient simply to forward information. The informa-
tion must be assessed and interpreted. We're all seasoned bureaucrats and well
aware of the pitfalls of bargaining for consensus. But differences of view are
legitimate, and the President should be aware of them and the impact on his
options for choice. Certainly where agreement is possible, it should be so stated.
But the ambiguity of many of the so-called facts leaves large openings for
varying but reasonable interpretations.
The significance of data to the policy maker must be made clear. The NSC
should be able to rely upon the intelligence community for these interpretations.
Moreover, the NSC should be made aware of differences and the reasons for
them. It is not enough simply to point out that disagreements exist. They must
be explained, not only in terms of the substance, but also in terms of the im-
plications for policy choices. If the intelligence community avoids this respon-
sibility, then others will move in to fill the vacuum.
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For years, the National Intelligence Estimates had epitomized this problem.
They hid as much as they revealed, if not more. In 1971, v~~ith some gentle but
persistent prompting by the NSC staff, some of the NIE's were truly outstanding,
particularly with regard to strategic forces. One reason is that these alternative
assessments and the areas of controversy were explicitly stated with accom-
panying rationale. This new feature has resulted in a quantum jump in the
value and utility of the NIE's for the policy maker. Reasoned alternatives give
the President a basis for rational choice, rather than intuitive chance, in his
policy decisions.
Crisis anticipation is the fourth principle of the NSSM system. The better
prepared we are in terms of foreknowledge and options, the more we can be
the master rather than the slave of events once a crisis breaks. Certainly, we
cannot anticipate fully the timing and course of a possible crisis. But we .can
take actions to help ensure that we have asked the right questions in advance,
that we have developed and explored our options, and have thought through
the implications of alternative responses. The intelligence community is often
the first to receive the tentative signals of impending crisis. While one flower
does not make a spring, its appearance should not simply be marked by a foot-
note. 'The intelligence community should develop a discriminating instinct for
crisis. I should add that this instinct should not be reined in by institutional
biases and values which dull the senses and force-fit data into preconceived
patterns.
I remind you of the Czechoslovak crisis and how stunned many were when
i# turned out to be something more than just another round of summer rna-
neuvers. 'his delicate instinct for crisis requires that the intelligence producer
have a reporter's nose for the news. He must be policy-oriented, be free to state
his opinions with their rationale, and not be constrained simply to writing copy
to fill out a daily bulletin. The intelligence producer must be .more than amiddle-
man between the collector and the consumer. He must evaluate his raw material,
assess the significance, and relate it to policy.
A fifth principle of the NSSM process is systematic anclysis. Policy cannot
be allowed to be merely the result of ad hoc piecemeal tactical decisions forced
as kneejerk reactions to the immediate pressures of events. A policy must be
considered in the whole context of the situation and our national interest. The
interagency nature of the NSC system assures that all relevant aspects o:F a
problem are considered in formulating policy choices.
Now. analysis is a systematic way of thinking, a manner of approaching
problems in an innovative, thorough and objective way. It requires the orderly
juxtaposition of facts and values in order to make reasoned judgments in decision
making. Analysis is not an occult science that produces immutable truth. It
is more of an intellectual art that seeks to illuminate problems and sharl,en
judgment. I will be the first to concede, on the basis of several years of painful
experience, that even good analysis does not necessarily bring on right decisions.
But I'm willing to take my chances that a decision rationally arrived at is more
likely to be right than an irrational one. Let me hasten to add that analysis does
not solve problems itself. It is not a substitute for imagination, leadership, or
wisdom. Tt brings out the bad news as well as the good. It does not make de-
cisions for you. But it does serve to discriminate between choices, separating
the knowable from the unknowable, the better from the ?worse, the patently
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wrong from the approximately right. The decision maker is thereby able to
focus his attention on the issues requiring the application of his experience
and values and the exercise of his judgment.
I sometimes- fear that the intelligence community shortchanges its own
analytical efforts and shuns participation in such efforts on an interagency basis.
Too often the so-called intelligence input is simply a dry catalog of information
lacking focus on the policy matters at issue. While the intelligence community
is not charged with makinb policy, it does have the responsibility to participate
in policy making. This responsibility does not stop with the mere reportage
of the estimated facts. The intelligence input should include an analysis of the
data in relation to policy options. That the intelligence community is capable
of providing these analyses oriented to policy making has been amply demon-
strated in its contribution of the NSC Verification Panel's work in preparing
the SALT negotiating options.
The most crucial area for intelligence analysis is in the muddy field of
enemy intentions. The usual response is to sidestep the issue, with the claim
that the intelligence analyst can only provide assessments of capabilities. Capa-
bility analysis is essential to policy snaking, but someone has to make an edu-
cated guess as to intentions. It is not enough to know what the enemy could
think. What he is more likely to think is even more important to the policy maker.
Analysis offers a systematic and rational method for seeing through that glass
darkly-even if only with one eye in a fog.
Finally, the IVSSM system provides a means by which. policy implementation
can be reviewed, coordinated, and supervised. Once more, the intelligence com-
munity can provide some of the eyes and ears to detect the progress of policy
implementation and the pitfalls and dangers that loom up along. the way. It is
false to claim that these are the tasks of the so-called "operators"-that the in-
telligence job is done when the policy decisions are made. The intelligence
function carries through the entire policy process from inception to conclusion,
which includes monitoring implementation.
Once again, too, this rnonitorship needs to be conducted with at least one
eye on the effect for policy. You must be not over-fascinated with information for
its own .sake. To be useful, information must be related to policy-past, present,
and future.
In summary, the intelligence response to the NSSM process has been a
reflection. of the strengths and weaknesses of the intelligence community itself.
In general, responsiveness in providing needed information has been good, though
prodding has sometimes been required to elicit that information in a form more
meaningful to the decision maker. I would say that the greatest improvement
needed in the intelligence community is for it to begin anticipating the needs
of the policy makers, and to take the initiative in providing information structured
to these needs.
Let me illustrate)
The other day I sat in an intelligence briefing on the results of some recently
acquired information. A fellow NSC policy analyst in the audience told the
briefers that over the past six months the intelligence community had been re-
porting agreat number of discrete bits of information regarding the quantita-
tive increase of the Soviet presence in Egypt. He reminded the briefers that
the Arab-Israeli confrontation was still a matter of national security interest,
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that there was at least continuing talk of possible agreements, and that U.S.
interests were involved. He suggested that, in light of the disconnected informa-
tion flow, it was about time we had an analytical summary that would bring
us up to date on the situation and reveal the implications for our policy. The
intelligence officer's supervisor was there and he agreed that this was "a good
idea" and that he would "see about doing it." Ladies and gentlemen, that ";good
idea" should have come from the intelligence community itself l
You read the newspapers. You know the issues. But do you see your oppor-
tunity? Expand your vision. Relate intelligence information and .requirements
to the needs of the policy makers. Don't ask me what is my need-to-know. Ask
yourselves instead what needs to be known. Analyze the issues! Analyze your
information) And analyze the meaning of the information in terms of policy
implications.
In conclusion, the principles of the NSSM process-creativity, factual in-
formation, afull range of options, crisis anticipation, systematic analysis, and
policy implementation-are good principles for gauging the intelligence re-
sponse. Iwas asked to say what was "wrong" with that response. I have given
you my views on how you can strengthen that response and magnify the value
of your essential contribution to the decision-making process. I want to finish
by saying that I already see many indications that the intelligence community
is aware of these problems, and that the kinds of actions I have recommended
are being taken.
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Military secrets in
an open society
Known to the intelligence community simply as the "Yale Report" is a
document of 627 pages whose proper title is Estimates o f Capabilities o f the
United States Combat Forces in Being [as of] I September 1951. In a way, it
was' a special sort of National Intelligence Survey of gross order of battle of
the U.S. military services in the early days of the Korean war. But to be more
explicit without some necessary background is likely only to add confusion to
that which these two lead sentences have initiated. Let me begin at the beginning.
There were many trials in the early days of the National Intelligence Esti-
mate-none much stickier than a reluctance on the part of our colleagues from
the service intelligence organizations to deal in what they called the "intentions
of the enemy." The most senior and often most articulate of the military repre-
sentatives who came to coordinate the NIE's had absorbed the old service doctrine
which held that a G-2 did not handle the matter of intentions-that this was
the Commander's job. I'm sure readers of this publication are familiar with the
doctrine and its rationale; in any case this is no place to rehearse it. Be it said
that our Director, General Walter Bedell Smith, whether or not he knew of
the doctrine, did not want it applied in the NIE's and indicated to us of the Office
of National Estimates that an NIE on the military stance of ?the USSR would
riot be complete until we had given the reader our best thoughts on how it
was likely to use its vast military apparatus.
NIE 3, published 15 November 1950, is entitled Soviet Capabilities and
Intentions, and the appearance of that word in the title was in itself no small
tribute to General Smith's powers of persuasion. The text of the paper skirted
the subject with a permissible discussion of "courses [of action] open to the
Soviet government," which on balance was about as far as a prudent man would
wish to probe into probable intentions.
Less than a year later (2 August 1951) the second NIE on the Soviet Union
went to press under the title Probable Soviet Courses o f Action to Mid,1952.
Here again there was among our military colleagues a desire to fight the problem,
and one suspects that had the estimate not been laid on by the Intelligence
Advisory Committee (the precursor of the USIB ), its completion might have
surpassed our powers. As things stood, the compliance which was accorded IAC
requests was not of the sort which made for an imaginative appraisal of possible
or probable strategic thinking in the Kremlin.
Matters became really difficult when the estimating machinery was asked
for an NIE on the "Likelihood of a Soviet Attack upon Japan:' If one were to
play this out according to the letter of old military intelligence doctrine, one
would reply with adead-pan listing of Soviet military strengths-in-being in
the Far East and some paragraphs on the logistic problems of their reinforce-
ment from garrisons in the West. That such a paper would be wholly nonrespon-
MORI/HRP
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live to the request apparently seemed to some of our colleagues a far less heinous
offense than getting into the business of Soviet intentions. hurthermore, to write
of these intentions as affected by Soviet knowledge of U.S. farces then deployed
in the Far East was to compound the heresy. To them, the entire matter of
"own forces" was not any part of the business of intelligence, and even though
"own forces" stationed in occupied Japan obviously constituted a major :item
in any Soviet calculations of the attackability of japan, we were supposed to
shut our eyes to the fact. Any reluctance on our part so to do merely under-
scored the impropriety of undertaking the NIE.
As the reader will have perceived, these were the hard days in the life of
the national estimators.
What's the Soviet Estimate o f the United States?
There were those on our side at our coordination sessions who in oral argu-
ment would try to make points by imagining out loud how the Soviet leaders
were estimating probable future developments in the policies and defense atti-
tudes of the United States government. Their plan and hope was that in trying
to depict the U.S. as they thought the Soviets would see it, they would stimulate
their inhibited colleagues into thinking and talking and ultimately writing what
they thought to be the likeliest lines of Soviet policy. If they could not be stifmu-
lated into positive action, at least they might be edgecl away from sinnple
obstructionism.
To the end of getting a discussion started, William Langer, the first director
cif the Office of National Estimates, took an oblique but nevertheless praise-
worthy approach. On 5 June 1951, he wrote a memorandum to CIA's Projects
review Committee (the institution which, among other things, passed on ap-
plications for funds for tasks to be done outside the Agency on a contractual
basis). Mr. Langer's statement of the problem read as follows:
ivlany National Intelligence Estimates deal with the probable intentions of the
Kremlin. It may be assumed that in deciding upon a course of action, the Kremlin is
influenced by its estimate of the U.S. power available to counter that course of
action and by its estimate of how U.S. policy makers are likely to use that power.
An NIE nn the intentions of the Kremlin cannot be written without ONE's having
ari estimate of the Kremlin's estimate of U.S_ capabilities and intentions. To procure
such an estimate is the problem.
l:n the next paragraph Mr. Langer indicated his requirement for an imaginary
Soviet estimate of U.S. military forces in being as of 1 September 1951, and
:mother such estimate regarding probable U.S. intentions with respect to the
world situation. He stressed the desirability of having they work done outside
the Agency and noted that informal enquiries had already indicated that a
group at Yale and perhaps another at Columbia could do the work during the
summer vacation. What they would turn up without access to classified materials
would have the virtue of showing what the Soviets could ,learn about the U.S.
with minimal intelligence effort.
The project received the committee's blessing, and with the end of the
academic year a group was organized in New Haven under the supervision
of a senior member of Yale's department of history, William H. Dunham. He
+?ecruited 15 peop]e from six departments of the university in addition to history:
i~iology, chemistry, classics, English, mathematics, and physics. All were trained
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researchers who already knew how to use a great library and who were quick
to adapt their general professional competence to the new and strange require-
ment. Afew of them, notably Basil Henning and Archibald Foord, had had intel-
ligence experience with the Navy during the war, and had a feel for the subject
matter and the need for spare factual prose. They and the rest of the team got to
the task in late June, and with a total outlay of 99 man-weeks of labor wound
it up as of 1 September 1951.
The U.S.: an Open Book
Confining themselves to unclassified printed materials fully within the
public domain, they uncovered what to us of the intelligence calling was a
bewildering array of factual information about the size and composition of the
U.S. military establishment, about major military units, their organization, train-
ing, state of readiness, and their weaponry and its performance characteristics.
In short, what they found out and wrote down in 10 weeks' time was a good deal
more than a very promising start on the military chapter of a National Intelligence
Survey on the United States.
The section devoted to the army, for example, totaling some 120 pages with
its appendix, begins with paragraphs on the state of mobilization, the army
field forces, continental commands, overseas commands, tactical organization
of the regimental combat team (the smallest unit under scrutiny) , the division,
corps, field army, and army group. The bulk of the material presented is devoted
to the order of battle of army units of the Zone of the Interior, Far Eastern
Command, ground forces in Europe, and other overseas commands. In the
appendix, the structure of divisions and RCT's in combat in Korea is cited down
to the level of specialized companies, along with their tables of organization and
equipment. The final pages are devoted to the geographical whereabouts of
a strange mix of some 251 army units ranging from the First Infantry Division
in Darmstadt and the Seventh Infantry Division in Korea to the 8111 AU signal
service in Okinawa and the 764 AAA gun battalion in the Canal Zone. For all
of them there is an APO number.
The dozen and a half pages devoted to army weapons hit the high spots of
the new automatic small arms and machineguns, mortars, recoilless rifles, artillery,
tanks, liaison aircraft, and helicopters.
In the pages on the Navy (about 80) , there is a listing of the civilians
and admirals in charge of the Navy Department in Washington, in the Naval
Districts, of the Atlantic Fleet, Naval Forces Eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean,
and the Pacific Fleet; there is a summary paragraph on overall manning strength;
and a section on ships in commission which includes, in addition to the larger
ships, destroyers, submarines, and destroyer escorts. (There was no effort to
enumerate minesweepers, patrol vessels, and so on.) After one section devoted
to ship modifications (notably of carriers to handle heavier aircraft) and another
to construction of new ships, there comes a long treatment of the naval air arm.
Here are discussed the then nine classes of combatant air units, with notations
about the types and numbers of aircraft in each, along with a good deal of
information about their deployment on carriers and shore stations.
Among the units one finds a note about Heavy Attack Wing 1 which the
report correctly assessed as the Navy's first component capable of delivering
the atomic weapon. (This was a datum to which the Navy had assigned a
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justifiable secret classification.) Then comes a round-ups of Marine Corps
aviation. There are appendixes devoted to the performance characteristics of
the planes being operated by both Navy and Marine Corps. The paragraphs
devoted to deployment of major ships, by class and name, to the Atlantic, "Medi-
terranean," and Pacific Fleets are followed by a discussion of principal naval
bases and naval air stations and facilities, a discussion of new weapons, and
development in undersea warfare. The launching of the :First nuclear-powered
submarine (well-publicized, to be sure) is noted.
Air Force Section Bulkiest
The section on the Air Force is the bulkiest (222 pages) . As with the
passages on the Army and the Navy, this one begins with the table of organza-
tion, both civilian and military, at the headquarters in Washington and at the
principal air commands within the continental U.S. and overseas. Then comes
a discussion of the 95-wing Air Force which, at that time, ,vas the strength to-
ward which the service was endeavoring to build, a discussion of numbers and
types of aircraft, the brief pages on personnel, a rather full treatment of the
13 commands in the Zone of the Interior-notably the Strategic Air Command,
'Tactical Air Command, and the Air Defense Command-arid the five overseas
commands. Then comes 100 pages about the aircraft: the operational inventory,
production and production schedules, and performance characteristics of bomb-
ers, fighters, transports, helicopters, trainers, liaison, and experimental models.
The report's final 150 pages come in five sections, one each devoted to
weapons (26 pages ), electronics (31 pages ), Atomic Warfare (12 pages ),
Biological Warfare (39 pages ), and Chemical Warfare (42 pages) . Of these
the one dealing with atomic weapons, in ~~hich the authors attempted to pene-
trate the country's first-ranking secret-thz size of the nuclear stockpile-and
those dealing with CW and BW seemed offhand the most dramatic.
Tlie Atomic Warfare section takes off from the official report of Henry D.
Smyth and estimates the U.S. stockpile of atomic bombs to lie between 600 and
2400, with the favored number about 1500 bombs of the Hiroshima yield (20,000
tons TNT equivalent) .
In the C W pages, due consideration is given the U.S. government's activities
in "producing and perfecting" the new nerve gases as well as continuing to
carry in inventory mustard, lewisite, phosgene, and others of World War I fame.
The extensive section on BW lists seven laboratories (under government
supervision) which were engaged in BW research and seven others (all asso-
ciated with private or state universities) which were doing }3W-related research
under government contract. Next comes a table occupying three pages which
lists the bacteria, viruses, and other pathogens in the arsenal or under con-
sideration, along with their targets (man, domestic animals, plants) and favored
methods of delivery. This is followed by long discussion of individual pathogens:
botulinus, tetanus, the organisms producing pneumonic plague, glanders, tu-
Iaremia, brucellosis, anthrax, and a group of specific viruses and rickettsiae.
Throughout, the need to know about such things for defensive purposes is
recognized, but the main thrust of the report is the U.S. concern with these
biological weapons as an offensive weapon. One cannot escape a feeling that
the U.S. had developed and was retaining a very considerably capability in this
field.
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To come back to the origin of the whole project: one would be justified
in assuming that the Soviet leaders had very precise notions as to the inventory
of U.S. foxces in being at the end of 1951, and were in a position to make con-
fident estimates as to the capabilities of those forces in any of several possible
war situations. How the Soviet leaders estimated U.S. intentions-which was
part two of the project-became a doubly stillborn exercise.
As matters turned out, it was much more difficult to obtain the services
of outside Sovietologists who would play at writing the Soviet estimate of
probable U.S. courses of action than of lining up a group like that at Yale.
We did enter arrangements for the "Intentions" study and furnished the authors
with a copy of the capabilities study just discussed, but the result was a dis-
appointment. It may have been that we had set our sights a bit too high. In the
end, it did not make all that amount of difference.
In the first place General Smith's concern to have National Intelligence Esti-
mates wrestle with the imponderables of an adversary's probable intentions,
which was forcefully communicated to his colleagues on the Intelligence Advisory
Committee, began to filter down to the troops, and the resistance we had met
in the early days began to melt. To our considerable surprise we were able for
example to finish the estimate of the likelihood of a Soviet attack upon Japan
with no more than the normal pains of doing coordinated speculative intelligence.
So by the time the Yale Report was in, reproduced in suitable quantity, and
ready for distribution, with the "Intentions" paper close behind it, they main
reason for the exercise had largely disappeared.
But this was by no means the end of the matter, and the use to which the
Yale Report was soon put was one which, to say the least, we had not anticipated.
This all began when General Smith received a very cursory and preliminary
briefing. The occasion was social-our director was having a small gathering
to honor some foreign colleagues. Over in a private corner of the room he asked
me of the progress of the work at Yale. I told him that the report was already
in, that I had rapidly gone over the conclusions with Mr. Henning on the
basis of which I would hazard two guesses: (a) that there was in the public
domain enough information to piece together an all-but-complete gross order
of battle of U.S. forces-in-being, and (b) that the voluminous study which
the Yale group had written was probably about 90 percent correct. I can only
guess that it was General Smith who conveyed the gist of my xemarks to Presi-
dent Truman, but of one thing we may be sure and that was that Mr. Truman
had got the word.
He got it just about the time he was working on a new Executive Order
aimed at giving greater protection to certain categories of classified information.
At the top of his list of secrets to be safeguarded were those concerning the
U.S. military, but he also recognized that the State Department, the FBI, and
the CIA also produced and disseminated material of similar sensitivity. On 24
September 1951 he issued an Executive Order (Number 10290) which set the
new pattern for safeguarding of these materials, a class of .stuff which was to
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be known as "security information." Paragraph 4 of the order undertakes a short
{and not wholly satisfactory) definition of the material at issue:
t;lassified security information. The term-as used herein-means official in-
formation, the safeguarding of which is necessary in the interest of national security
:ind which is classified for such purpose by appropriate classifying authority.
What the order was trying to get at was a separation of all classified govern-
ment utterances into two categories: those which directly affected the nai;ional
security-such things as intelligence, sensitive areas of international relations,
but especially military matters of an operational nature--and those which dealt
with other things. It was the President's intention to give tl~ie first broad category
the benefit of special protection. Needless to say the American press was fearful
of the consequences of the order and let its fears be known. Mr. Truman went
nut to meet it in his press conference of 10 days later.*
He started by reading a statement which began: "There has been considerable
misrepresentation and misunderstanding of the Executive Order issued on Sep-
tember 24, 1951, relating to the handling of information whaich has been classified
in order to ,protect the national security." At this point he interrupted himself
with an acl Zib. He said: "And right here I want to stop and tell you that
Central Intelligence had Yale University make a survey, and that survey found-
and they had no connection with the Government that 9?i percent of all of our
information was public: property."
Iie then continued with a close but not verbatim rendering of the document
before him until he got to its end when he added: ".. ,and remember that 95
percent of our secret information has been revealed by newspapers and slick
magazines, and that is what I am trying to stop:' **
The newsmen had awaited the question period with breath abated. When the
time came {and it came immediately after the sentence quoted above) the first
request was "Can you give us some examples of what caused this order?" Mr.
'I'ruman's answer began with reference to an article in Fortune magazine vvhich
had published a diagrammatic map showing seventy-odd places in the U.S.
where one or another phase of the atomic energy program was going forward;***
he then took up some aerial photographs of principal American cities ''`with
arrows pointing to the key points...." Naturally the newsmen were soon politely
asking about the impropriety of publishing information which had been released
by the Department of Defense or cleared by the Atomic Energy Commission,
or, as in the case of the air map of Washington, by the "Civil Defense Ac(min-
istration." After an unremunerative exchange, the conference came back to the
Yale Report and once again the President reiterated his sentence with the "95
percent' in it. In answer to the question "How far did this Yale Survey figure
*Mr. Truman came to the conference of 4 October 1951 with a mimeographed hand-out.
In his presentation he not only made some verbal departures from its text, but also interpolated
some trenchant ad fibs. T'he result is that comparative rarity, two slightly different official
texts. One is what Mr. Truman actually spoke, to be found in Public P?pers o f the Presidents
r>f the United St?tes: Harry 5. Truman, vol, for I Jan. to 31 Dec. 1951 (GPO, Washington., D.C.
1695) pp 554-560. The other is the unmodified text of the official handout, but witlh Mr.
`Ctuman's ad fibs. This is in the New York times, 5 October 1951.
**'I'6+is final clause may be a distorted echo of what I believe :I had told General Smith
about the Yale Report. On the other hand it may be something wholly Mr. Truman's own.
*""The Atom and the Business Man," Fortune, XXXIX, No. 1 (Jan. 1949) pp 53 and ff.
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in the decision to put out this order?" the President replied, "I didn't sign the
order until I got it."
The Aftermath
By all odds the most remarkable thing about this press conference was Mr.
Truman's unawareness of just how open the open society of America was. Like
a good number of other innocents (a lot of them in the intelligence community )
who gasped at the large amount of apparently classified information in the Yale
Report, he did not fully understand that practically all of it had been formally
or informally declassified at one time or another by the action of the Secretary
of Defense, or by one of the service secretaries, or by an official empowered
to speak for one of them. As Arthur Krock wrote in a column in the New York
Times (7 Oct. 1951) someone "in a position to know the background of the
President's lecture" suggested that the "boss had just got a bum steer:' It was up
to the White House Press Secretary, Joseph Short, to issue with stunning
promptness a statement of clarification. It ran in part:
The President has directed me to clarify his views on security information as
follows:
1. Every citizen-including officials and publishers-has a duty to protect
our country.
2. Citizens who receive military information for publication from responsible
officials qualified to judge the relationship of such information to the national
security may rightfully assume that it is safe to publish the information.
3. [Citizens who receive this sort of information from improperly qualified
sources should be most guarded in passing it along.]
4. The recent executive order does not alter the right of any citizen to publish
anything.
The statement did much to allay the fears of the press but not its curiosity
about the Yale Report and the CIA's interest. The university answered all queries
with "the project was completed for the Division of External Research of the
government. All details are confidential-so we cannot say who participated
[in it]";* the Agency answered with no comment whatever. In a short time overt
press and public concern about the Yale Report declined to zero.
Meanwhile, back in the South Building at the 25th and E Street campus,
we sat on a large quantity of the 827-page document. In a few days, however,
General Smith authorized the circulation of one copy to each of the IAC prin-
cipals. Some of their top staffers xead the document, and one of the purposes
behind the undertaking began to be realized, though perhaps not as fully as we
had desired. What filtered down to the intelligence officers who represented
their organizations at the meetings devoted to the coordination of the National
Intelligence Estimates was that a far less expert intelligence service than the
Soviet could know a very great deal about the inventory of American military
strengths. This was, after all, one of our principal objectives and to this extent
the enterprise had achieved a modest success.
As I have remarked earlier, the doctrinal objection to venture estimates
into the realm of the other man's probable intentions had begun to soften, even
before the Report and its counterpart dealing with the Soviet estimate of
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probable U.S. intentions were completed.* Thus we were not obliged to pursue
the somewhat devious attack which had prompted the study in the first place.
We had, of course, plenty of troubles trying to agree about how the Soviet
leaders saw the world scene and what they probably plarmed to do about it,
but the difficulties were the normal ones relating to substance, not those pro-
ceeding from a reluctance to violate what had once been basic doctrine. (And so
i.t has been ever since. )
13ut the Yale Report did cause a considerable stir in a direction we had
not anticipated. General Smith and Mr. Truman were not the only ones to take
cognizance of what anyone could learn about our armed services without half
trying. A lot of us whose experience in our government's service had been
confined to intelligence were not aware that our field was one of the few
relatively protected ones in the area of national security. I, for one, assumed
that since our ill-wishers were so successful in masking the details of their
armed establishments, the U.S. too made similar but less successful efforts.
:Indeed, as I look back on the scores of non-intelligence military briefings I
received in Washington and in the field, I cannot recall a single one designated. as
"tmclassified," though I will warrant that much of what was conveyed under
high security classifications had been or soon would be public property.
This essay is not the place to undertake a full discussion of what here i s an
important though peripheral issue: the issue of "secrecy in government" or-
and more especially-that phase of it which bears upon the security classification
of information regarding our military establishment. On the other hand it is
hard to avoid it altogether.
t`:lassi f ication and Declassification
Three aspects can be ticked off briefly: First, almost everything regarding
the U.S. military-whether or not committed to paper-gets classified at some
point in its life. Often this occurs for the best reason in the world, more often
for reasons not good at all. Second, the recent rule which establishes a system
of automatic step-by-step downgrading to one side, there is and has been a
tendency for the higher classifications to absorb the lower. Third, except for
the automatic downgrading matter noted above (which by the way came long
after 1951) there has been little-if any-formal rational across-the-board
effort to downgrade or declassify. This is readily explained in terms of the
staggering magnitude of the task. Thus there has been in years past the inevitable
tendency for formal classifications, once given, to stick. Thais was obviously the
case at the time of the Yale Report.
I use the modifier "formal" advisedly, for there are those who observe the
classification because that's what the book says to do, and those who don't.
In fact, there are and long have been two pretty well defined separate universes
within the security apparatus of our military.
There is the one universe inhabited by the normal run of people (military
and civilian) who know their service's regulations with respect to the formal
classification of a vast encyclopedia of information regarding military mati:ers.
For those under Army discipline in 1951, the publication Army Regulations No.
*This, the "Intentions" half of the exercise, came to us a month or so after the com-
pletion of what I have been calling the Yale Report. As noted earlier, it fell a good distance
short of our hopes, and we decided to file it without reproducing and circulating it.
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380-5 was the ruling text. In a good number of pages it endeavors to define,
in the abstract, the categories of military information deemed Top Secret, Secret,
and Confidential, and to give substance to the abstract definitions with a wealth
of specific illustrations. For those under the Navy and Air Force there were, of
course, similar publications.
By far the greater part of the people in the first universe made no effort
whatever to keep book on what formally classified matters-over-classified or
misclassified to begin with-had been down-graded or declassified as a result
of compromises, leaks, the simple passage of time, or conscious decision at the
upper echelons. As already noted, no one made nor does anyone now make
a systematic effort to keep this kind of book. In consequence there is an under-
standable tendency among these people to go on treating documents (and their
content) which were initially slugged, say Secret, as Secret irrespective of what
their classification has become in real life. This is the course of conscientiousness,
if not simple prudence. Those low on the totem pole who cavalierly take the
law in their own hands do so at the risk of crossing their security offices and
getting bad marks in their personnel jackets or worse.
When we in intelligence had good reason to seek information which lay
nominally within these operational security frontiers, we more frequently made
contact with these cautious and conservative interpreters of the rules than with
the others. Often our questions received diffident answers; sometimes we were
urged to take the matter up to higher echelons: well up, say, into that other
universe.
Who May Override Classifications?
This second universe is the one of the high civilian officials in the defense
establishment, and sometimes the high military themselves. We may assume
that these people too know all about the formalities which are owed classified
information, how it is to be issued, transmitted, and stored. With equal confidence
we may assume that of the many regulations regarding this sort of material, the
one they know the best is the one at the beginning of the publication which tells
them that virtually none of the preceding need apply to them. * To be sure,
common sense-if no higher law-indicates that things having to do with
communications systems, intelligence sources and methods, movements of forces
and diplomatic negotiations in train, sensitive military R and D, plans, and a
*Department of the Army, Army Regulations No. 380-5. Section I,3. Application.-b.
In the application of policies for the safeguarding of Classified Security In-
formation, consideration must be given to the fact that practical limitations will
often hamper the attainment and maintenance of absolute protection. Consideration
also must be given to the need for the dissemination of information to Congress,
the public, or other Government activities, other agencies of the Department of De-
fense, and Navy contractors as well as to the Army Establishment. Likewise, progress
in material development, commercial experience, and industrial capacity may lie of
greater value to national defense than the absohtte safety of a specific item of Classi-
fied Security Information. ,
( This text is quoted from the issue of Regulations of G June 1952. I have been unable
to locate a copy of those in force for the year in which the Yale Report was written, but I
am assured that the message of this paragraph appeared in earlier versions. The message,
furthermore, is in force today. See, for example Department of Defense Information Security
Program Regulation, July 1973 (DOD 5200 1-R ), para. I-604. )
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few other topics ought not to be made public. But to the people of this second
universe goes the right to disregard classifications when they conclude that the
national interest is better served by doing so. They have been known to project
this right beyond their departmental jurisdictions over into other territory,
including that of intelligence and diplomacy.
We must understand, however, that a Secretary of Defense (or a service
secretary) will be under a number of pressures to talk freely.. Some of these come
from the public, the news media, or the political realities o:E democratic govern-
ruent; some, and often t:he most insistent, from a legitimate inner urge to tell
fellow citizens and especially their representatives in Congress that he is per-
forming the vital defense functions with which he has been entrusted. Indeed the
commonest channel of declassification is probably through the Department
of Defense and the military services themselves, and its principal tributary is the
stream that runs between the Pentagon and the Hill. The civilian authorities
testify fully and frankly on the record, reserving for themselves the right to
review the transcript for secuity before it goes to the GPO and out to the world.
Their underlying philosophy is to delete a little rather than a lot.
Should one of these officials display an understandable reluctance to ;give
equal time to his nonsuccesses, he may be sure that congressional spokesmen
in the opposing party will not. Nor will these spokesmen confine their remarks
to off-the-record proceedings in committee. If they feel that they have a vrell-
documented case, they may make it on the floor for the benefit of the readers
of the Congressional Record. In the ensuing debate much more will be aired
than the simple non-success which the initiating official wished to play down.
In addition to this volume of nominally classified information issued through
one channel or another directly to the American public, there will be genuine
secrets which are released with a different audience in mind. This will be the
sort of information which the U.S. government may choose to convey to our
allies for one set of reasons, or to our ill-wishers for another. Such, for example,
would be one Cabinet officer's divulging to a meeting of allies the intelligence
sources behind some critically important U.S. estimates, or another's using an
open forum of foreign statesmen as the place to articulate the secret U.S. estimate
of the numerical strength of the Soviet operational ICBM force. In this case
his real desire was to have the message reach Moscow.
1'n the Name o f Public Relations
But revelation of the nominal secrets of the first universe do not stop here.
There is yet to be contemplated those which pour forth through the military's
own public relations bureaux whose functions are among the most vital. After
all, the armed services are in loco parentis for millions of the nation's sons and
daughters; they must try to induce them to enlist and-once enlisted or drafted-
they must do everything possible to lighten the burdens of service. They must
reassure families and the public at large that the troops are being properly
cared for, properly trained for a multitude of duties besides combat, and provided
with equipment which will assure their optimum performance with a maximum
chance of returning to civilian life in better shape than they left it. Rivalry
between the services results inter alia in each one's touti.n.g in public its new
weapons and new methods of bringing them to bear. The kind of reluctance
nne would normally associate with the publicizing of new military technology
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yields to the demands of a good public image, or morale within a given service,
and even to the demands of the contractors who have developed the new
machines of war.
The public relations divisions of the services are very large enterprises,
and their task is just what it sounds like. They are in continuous contact with
the news media-their news- and feature-people-with the magazines, and
technical journals; they are in close association with the host of privately-spon-
sored periodicals devoted to a score of milita~ specializations-the infantry, the
surface fleet, long-range aviation, and so on. These journals in turn carry the
advertisements of the contractors wherein are related in as full detail as is per-
missible-and beyond-technological triumphs which lie behind the accuracy,
reliability, simplicity, ruggedness, power, and so on of the military device at
issue.
Publications like the Army, Navy, Air Faroe Register; the Army, Navy, Air
Force Almanac; and the Stars and Stripes (several editions in different parts of
the world) which in the course of their business print a voluminous literature
of service order of battle could not be in business at all without an unofficial
but nevertheless full service support.
With these volumes of material relating to the military being given to the
media, the opportunities to guess at what is being withheld on security grounds
are manifold and inviting. Furthermore the odds are not exactly stacked against
a correct guess: if you tell a man that 2-I-1-I-X=5, he needs something less than
a graduate degree to divine that X=2. If he wishes to confirm his solution, access
to knowledgeable sources and the wiles of the practiced newsman or secret in-
telligence agent can usually do the trick.
More Releases than Leaks
The bulk of the materials which the Yale group had exploited belonged
to the general category of official and semiofficial releases from various com-
ponents of the defense establishment; what the group drew from the "news-
papers and slick magazines" was significant, but of far less importance. That
the group amassed this welter of data probably caused little surprise among the
relatively small number of witting officials in the Defense Department. A one-
time highly placed official of one of the services said to me that the only part
of the project that surprised him was that anyone should be surprised at its
findings. Offhand, he thought that there was virtually nothing regarding the
American military which was properly secret. He did except the areas which
I have noted earlier. That was abouk it; he seemed wholly relaxed that all the
rest was out in the open for all to see. Had he seen the Yale Report it would
have been old hat to him.
Maybe that reaction would have been the correct one, for in comparison
to what the Yale Report could have been, it was no great shakes. Some of its
shortcomings derived from the limitations built in to its terms of reference
which-it will be recalled-stipulated a tally of gross order of battle of U.S.
forces-in-being as of 1 September 1951. Othors derived from the scant amount
of time allowed for the completion of the study, which in turn obliged the project
supervisor to recruit staff where he could find it within the Yale community,
and largely without reference to any specialized talent it might possess in
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U.S, military matters. But suppose it had been otherwise: suppose that the terms
of reference had had no well-defined outer limit, and that the group pushed
on until it ran out of valid and relevant material; suppose that the ceiling on
available time and funds had been very considerably raised and that the staff
comprised two or three score top-drawer professional specialists. Could any one,
n.o matter how long a resident of that second universe, be wholly unshaken as
he contemplated the new study? I somehow doubt it, especially if the study
had been artfully packaged in two parts.
'Che first of these parts would be the bulk of the report, say a few thousand
pages which would deal with the unspectacular matters of the Yale Repport,
but do it more thoroughly and accurately. The second would be a systematic
arrangement of what the project supervisor would consider as unpleasant sur-
prises. It would show that as a result of the general relaxation of securit?~ on
matters which no one in the second universe cared about, a large number of
the true secrets of state which they did care about lay about in the open, all but
~tncloaked.
i'Vuclear Stockpile
1, case in point: Among 1951's secrets of state, few ranked in importance
with the size of the U.S. stockpile of nuclear weapons. There were no more than
a handful of Americans who knew how many A-bombs, as they were then called,
had been assembled and were ready to go. The section of the Yale Report called
"Atomic Warfare" nevertheless essayed an estimate. The man who composed it
vas a physicist whose principal focus of interest was not the viscera of the
atom nor the nature of nuclear explosions. Needless to say, his wartime ex-
perience was remote from the Manhattan District. With these limitations he
embarked upon a search of the open literature. Drawing principally upon the
well-known Smyth report,* an article by Sir John Cockcroft,** and a few other
articles in popular scientific journals and the New York Times, he made acal-
c:ulation regarding the probable rate of the production of plutonium and uranium-
235 between 1945 and 1951, and another as to the probable number of bombs
on the shelf. Those of us who read these conclusions in 1951. were consumed
with curiosity to know how well he had done. Of course, the few government
officers who were in a position to say could not give us a grain of satisfaction.
Now, twenty-odd years later, one such officer has received authorization to
give along-after-the-fact evaluation and to give it under the security classifica-
tion of this article. Interesting indeed are his comments.
Ln the first place he finds that the Yale professor's estimates were wrong
and wrong on the high side. He goes on to say that the error was wholly un-
necessary. He points out that fine Yale professor missed two bits of highly sig-
nificant public information: the first had to do with the power levels at which
the Hanford reactors were working. This had been picked up by a Soviet secret
agent working for the KGB control in Ottawa and was published in the Re,gort
*llemy D. Smyth, Atomic EtterRy for Military Purposes (Princeton 1945). This report
first appeared as a U.S. Government publication.
* *Sce Bulletin o f the Atomic Scientists (Nov 1950) p. 329.
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of the [Canadian] Royal Commission* which investigated the espionage ring.
The other appeared in none other than the AEC's semi-annual reports to Congress
of 1949 and 1950. With these data and a higher degree of expertise in isotope
separation and bomb design, the high-ranking secret of the stockpile could have
been penetrated to a nicety. The odds are heavily in favor of the Soviets having
done just that.
This case is a classic in its way. Once the atomic weapon was tested, then-
shortly after-used in anger, the single most important secret surrounding the
whole vast nuclear weapons enterprise was gone. Now everybody knew that
controlled large-scale nuclear explosions were possible. Professor Smyth was
an official spokesman for the U.S. government, and his report was a piece of
deliberate disclosure. If the U.S. government had tried to continue into peace-
time the security wraps which it had thrown around the Manhattan District
during the war, it would have found the costs prohibitive. It would have had
to cope with numerous powerful and angry groups (led by the nuclear scientists
and the media) who were claiming an unlawful abridgement of rights guaran-
teed under the First Amendment. The Smyth report is a classic example of a
libertarian government retreating to a prepared position and endeavoring to
hold the security line at that point. The government correctly reasoned that in
the absence of such a maneuver, uncontrolled leaks would be more hurtful
to national interests. From there on, a minor slip over at the AEC, a snippet of
significant information picked up by a Soviet secret operative, and the Russians
had the essences of the secret of the stockpile. With the publication of the snippet
in the unclassified Canadian Report it was almost anyone's in exchange for some
legwork and thought.
Biological and Chemical Warfare
How many other of the true military secrets of 1951 would have fallen in
such a constellation of circumstances? It is a guess, and not too risky a one at
that, that the U.S. stockpiles of biological and chemical warfare weapons could
have been known, although this was far from the intent of the Defense Depart-
ment. The Yale group had no trouble in finding a rich unclassified literature.
Oddly, it missed one of the documents in the BW area which was a rough BW
counterpart to the Smyth Report. This was the memorandum which George W.
Merck, a war department special consultant for biological warfare, wrote for
the Secretary of War, and which the War Department released to the press
on 3 January 1946.**
The Merck report tells of the history of the BW program, which began in
anticipation of a need for defense against biological weapons the enemy might
employ. It tells of the establishment of the early civilian. agency under Mr. Merck;
of how iritelligence regarding German BW capabilities which arrived in De-
cember 1943 made necessary a change in the purely defensive posture of the
program, and a change in the first administrative arrangements. The program
was broadened and put under the Chemical Warfare Service of the Army. The
*Ottawa [27 June] 1946.
**War Department; Bureau of Public Relations; Press Branch. "Biological Warfare";
8 mimeographed pages.
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SECRET The Yale Reporf
report goes on to explain that while the main objective in the U.S. BW program
was still
to develgp methods for defending ourselves against possible enemy use of biological
warfare agents, it was necessary to investigate offensive possibilities in order to
learn what measures could he used for defense. It was equally clear that the possi-
bility of retaliation in kind could not be disregarded in the event such agents were
used against us... .
The report tells in general terms of the activities of the program and lists
some of its "more important accomplishments." Needless to say, the most of those
mentioned were the spin-offs with a definite bonus in such agreeable areas as
pure science, public health, and plant pathology. Toward the end comes the
pregnant paragraph whose topic sentence is:
Steps are being taken to permit the release of such technical papers and reports by
those who have been engaged in this field as may be published without endangering
the national security,
If one may be permitted to do a bit of reading between the lines of the
Merck report, using something a good bit more substantial than pure intuition,
one perceives in a flash that the document was largely designed to forestall
fiiture embarrassments. None knew better than the Army of the hundreds of
civilian scientists once in the program who were returning to their peacetime
pursuits and who in the uncensored atmosphere of their laboratories would be
rf~(atively free to talk of their hitherto highly classified research. Biological war-
fare was a nasty expression, and clearly the Army was eager first to acknowledge
of its own free accord that it had indeed engaged in BW work, and second to
stress that its primary concern had been "defensive" anal "retaliatory," not
"c ~ffensive.'?
How the Merck report affected the substance of articles on BW that soon
began to be published one cannot say; it is difficult to believe that it did not
have an effect on the quantity of books and articles devoted to the subject. By
1951 any foreign intelligence service with a respectable publications procure-
ment enterprise. could have had a highly enlightening little library on the I3W
capabilities of the United States. As in the case of the A-bomb, even had it: so
desired our government could not have stifled these voices in peacetime without
risking a minor upheaval. Accordingly it did the only thing it could to mitigate
the worst of the bad effects which it perceived on the horizon. In all likelihood
it issued the Merck report with this aim in view. That it also gave the intelli-
gence services of our ill-wishers a long and exhilarating free ride was merely
one item in the cost-sheet of our blessings.
It is of more than passing interest that in an exercise c>f 1948 the combined
intelligence resources of the United States and the United Kingdom produced
relative to the Soviet BW and CW capabilities only the sentence that virtually
nothing was known. If there had been a requirement on the subject in 1951, our
intelligence community could have done only a mite better.
And for us who serve in the intelligence profession of our country this is
the nut of the matter. I am happy to report that I know no one among us who
would amend the Bill of Rights just to make things difficult for our opposite
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numbers in unfriendly lands, but some way or another no one should blame us
for the youthful pique we feel when we compare our lot to theirs. But pique
and our lament on the injustices of life to one side, it still seems objectively im-
proper that American intelligence endeavoring to construct, say a Soviet order
of battle or the probable performance of a Soviet weapons system still under
R and D should have to pick around in informational garbage pails for un-
matched molecules, while our Soviet counterparts endeavoring to do the same
for the U.S. parallels can get it by a letter to the GPO or a subscription to Aviation
Week and Space Technology.
Something exactly akin to this sentiment was what moved Mr. Allen Dulles
to say out loud, "Sometimes I think we go too far in what our Government gives
out officially and what is published in the scientific and technical field. We tell
Russia too much. Under our system it is hard to control it." * Something akin
moved Mr. Truman to sign and defend Executive Order Number 10290 whose
main point was to assure
that military secrets in the hands of these other [civilian] agencies should be pro-
tected just as much as when they are in the hands of the military departments.... It
would not make any sense to have a paper containing military secrets carefully
locked up in a safe in the Pentagon, with a copy of the same paper left lying around
on the desk of a lawyer in the Justice Department.**
This simple and commonsense thought was unfortunately obscured at the press
conference and in subsequent press coverage as a result of someone's having
"given the boss a bum steer."
The order, however, was in effect and stayed in effect for two years* * * and,
of course, had little visible effect. It did not affect what high officers of the
de:[ense and service departments (both civilian and military) might wish to
convey to the Congress, and on the record, and it seems to have done little to
stem the tide of purposeful and inadvertent leaks.
The Yale Report could have just as well been written under its protective
canopy in 1952 or 1953-or for that matter under subsequent executive orders
in any of the 20 years which have followed. In fact if it were tried again and
this time with greater expertise and a snore relaxed deadline, the results would
probably be far more of a shock to the intelligence calling, and of no more
consequence to the course of national policy.
*US News and World Report, 19 March 1954. p. 54.
**New York Ttimes, 5 October 1951, quoting President Truman.
* * *Superseded by Executive Order # 10501 of 1G Dec. 1953.
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No Foreign Dissem
Trials, tribulations, and
some lingering doubts
The oldest and probably the most consistently productive liaison the CIA
maintains with intelligence services of other nations is the relationship we and
our parent organizations before us have enjoyed Much
of our original skill and capability we owe to the training and advice of the
and since that time we ourselves have had the ex-
perience of setting up liaison with the intelligence services of other friendly
nations. We have thus learned to understand to some extent the concern ex-
pressed by some of the veterans when they contemplated the connection
between the older and more experienced and the new one
from across the sea.
The underlying uneasiness was genuine, and must be common to all intelli-
gence services when they consider establishing official connections with other
smaller and less experienced services. Will the result be the creation of a Franken-
stein's monster?
It may not be a monstrous moment, but surely it must be one of life's most
embarrassing ones when a Chief of Station in a small friendly country is suddenly
confronted with the fact that his Ambassador's office has been bugged with
techniques and equipment his own station has provided to the host government's
security service. At such moments does one rage, remonstrate, explain, excuse,
laugh, or boast? If so, to whom?
More important, should such experiences make us hesitate or refuse to
maintain liaison with other services? This question has been recurring regularly
for many years, and the answer always seems to be that on balance we benefit
from liaison with other services, and that although we use great caution in what
we teach and give to them, we must face the fact that even the simplest and
most basic of clandestine techniques can be used against us just as readily as
against a common adversary.
Very well, we establish liaison, but must we train the younger or smaller
services? If so, to what end do we train them? Is it simply to make them better
services? Is it to make them more friendly to us? Is it to enable us to carry out
joint operations with them, or to use their services against targets we otherwise
might not be able to attack?
One of the area divisions of the Clandestine Service recently made a de-
tailed survey of its liaison operations, and it is somewhat surprising to find that
the survey was not very helpful in answering some of the more traditional and
tiresome questions which bother us a11. It did reveal some interesting facts about
training, however. Perhaps one-fourth of the services we have trained, for in-
stance, rank in the category of "above average-very good," or "near profes-
sional" category. All the rest rank as fair, inefficient, or below. One of these
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lower category services has received large sums of money and large amounts
of training, but is nevertheless judged so low professionally that it is probably
not penetrated by the opposition because "it would not be worthwhile fo,r the
opposition to do so." The dry comment which followed this observation was that
"no lower classification seems possible."
'T'raining by itsel f will not necessarily make a better service. It can help, but
other factors weigh heavily, such as national pride, tenure, pay, recognition, and
public respect. These things we cannot supply. When poor services are trained by
us, they often remain poor services, and it therefore follows that when we do
set about training such a service we must aim that training carefully, and plan
it with great care and common sense.
The Agent and Liaison Training Branch (ALT) of the Office of Training
should participate in such planning, although of course the decision wh,E>ther
to train+is one which i:S the responsibility of the operating division. One of the
first questions that arises after this decision has been made is, where should
the training take place. Instructors from ALT, most of them operations officers
on rotation, have some strong opinions here.
Tt is obviously cheaper to send one or two instructors and a few hundred
pounds of training aids and material to the field than it is to bring a score or
more students to the U.S. and feed and lodge them for a month while we i`rain
them. In fact, ALT is at present geared to handle groups of a maximum of four
Trersons in the U.S., and larger contingents of trainees would require prohibitive
extra expense and effort.
Moreover, the value of training students in the atmosphere and locale of
their future operations can hardly be overstated. Street exercises are less artificial;
the problems encountered are real, and solving them is more than a mere aca-
demic exercise. It is sometimes even possible for the instructor to train his charges
by means of operations against real targets, thus not only providing the local
service with well-trained young operations officers, but giving them a leg up on
their own tasks as well.
The trainer must also teach with an eye to the local. realities which will
later confront his student. It does no good to train a man in the use of certain
types of public facilities or professional equipment and support if such things
are not within. his reach at home. One of the first tasks of an ALT instructor
when he is assigned a new program is to find out what the ,area is like and vvhat
equipment, money, and personnel are available to his trainees for their future
operations. If he fails to find out these things and adapt his training to them,
he may gravely mislead his students and waste a lot of their time.
Security is another factor. Training in the United States exposes safe sites,
administrative personnel, and other training personnel who are used in role-
playing or rabbit capacities in street exercises.
Finally, there is the problem of language. ALT can train in the major lan-
guages without the use of interpreters, but is often called upon to train in the
less common languages. These instances may require the use of interpreters,
translators, and equipment for reproducing training material in the language.
Such services are often difficult to get at headquarters, but are more readily
available in the field.
Un the other hand, there are some valid reasons for wanting the training to
lre done in the U.S. The element of reward is one of the most important of these.
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A trip to the U.S., all expenses paid, is a coveted prize in most countries, and
it is therefore not surprising that stations are often under great pressure to send
liaison students to the U.S. for training. Ideally, training should never be used
to camouflage a goodwill trip to this country. Purposeless training is at best a
waste of time and money, and at worst can be downright harmful. In the real
world, however, training is often the only way the travel can be rationalized to
the satisfaction of all concerned, and so long as we are not deceiving ourselves,
the device can be useful. The instructor should be told fully and frankly, how-
ever, if the training is a secondary reason for the travel, and the trainees them-
selves should also have at least a tacit understanding of the situation.
Training in the American environment may make it easier for the foreign
visitor to convince himself of the communality of interests. The prestige of the
student is also enhanced by training in the U.S. Although he might in reality
get more useful training at home than he can in the U.S., the fact remains that
the record of a course of instructian abroad weighs much more heavily in a
man's personnel file than a notation that he completed a course given locally
by an imported instructor. If our purpose in training is partly to assist certain
specific individuals in their careers, we should give serious consideration to
bringing them here for it.
Some other factors which tend to recommend training in the U.S. are the
availability of supplementary instruction in specialized subjects from other com-
ponents such as TSD, Commo, and Records Management, and the availability
of other training personnel for role playing or for teaming up with students in
practice operations. Such professional assistance is difficult to come by in
the field.
Weighing the pros and cons usually leads to the decision to train abroad.
More than two-thirds of all liaison training programs are done in the country
of origin. When the number of students is calculated, rather than the number of
programs, training abroad takes care of about 92% of all liaison trainees.
Training in the field is a demanding job. The instructor has many eyes
watching him with intense and often critical interest the eyes of the students
whom he must impress with his professional qualifications; the eyes of station
personnel, who quite properly expect that this training should render a net
profit to the station and the agency; and the eyes of the hierarchy of the host
service, who are watching closely to see how good the training is, how good the
CIA is, and what the CIA thinks of the host country and its service. The in-
structor has no back-up staff to fill in for him, or provide him with emergency
assistance. He often has been able to comprehend fully what the program ought
to be only after he has arrived in the field, when it is too late to make adequate
compensation for faulty planning at headquarters. The range of skills which the
instructor is expected to be qualified to teach is frighteningly broad, and
faltering in any one of these skills can undermine his presumptive authority
in others. No individual can know everything there is to know about this pro-
fession, of course, and instructors soon learn that maintenance of authority
sometimes requires them to gloss over the inevitable gaps in their professional
qualifications. As Satchel Paige used to say about pitching baseball in his later
years, "When you can't out-throw 'em, you gotta out-cute 'em:'
If it were merely a question of teaching young rookies the mysteries of an
unfamiliar art, the strain on the instructor would be minor, but in actual prac-
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tice he is often confronted by a class of students of quite disparate ages and
backgrounds, and often of equally disparate assignments within their parent
services. The same class may include near-illiterates and college graduates,
assigned variously as records management officers, criminal investigators, or
border patrol guards. The faces the instructor looks into may vary in expression
from rapt attention to disdainful challenge.
The selection of students is obviously a key factor in graining courses, and
among the many difficulties we encounter in this process there is one hardy
peremiial for which we have never yet found a solution. Ideally, for our pur-
poses, the station should make the choices, but for obvious reasons this pre-
rogative is in practice nearly always reserved to the chief of the service. 'Chis
i n. part explains (and often increases) the disparities of background and ass ign-
rnent just mentioned, since backscratching and politicking almost inevitably
enter the picture. An instructor may note inwardly early in the course that
Student X is a fathead, and upon discreet inquiry finds out that by wild conci-
dence Student X's uncle or cousin or brother-in-law happens to be Foreign
Minister or President of the Republic. The instructor is stuck: with him, however,
an. d must resign himself to the braking effect which Student X's underendowed
brain will have on the progress of the rest of the class. Not surprisingly, Student
Xes crop up in their most extreme form in the least developed countries, where,
moreover, the liaison relationship itself is in an early stage of development. It
is even quite likely that one of the major justifications for the training in the
first place has been the station's desire to accelerate the budding of this
relationship.
The tensions of such heterogeneous classes are often exacerbated by a big
cultural gap between instructor and students. How does the instructor from
the pragmatic, factual and often impersonal western culture create an intelli-
gence officer to satisfy his own standards out of the imprecise, abstract, emo-
tional and family-oriented son of some far eastern nation? In these cases, the
difference in language often signals a profound difference in thought patterns
and psychological orientation. The instructor must be acutely aware of such
differences, and of what he can accomplish in spite of them (or perhaps by
means of them) . He knows that there may be certain concepts he can never
get across because the culture and language of his students cannot cope vrith
them.
Having made the decision to train, the operating division should im-
mediately bring the Training authorities into the picture, because a great deal
needs to he done, and the sooner an instructor can be assigned (probably t:wo
instructors if the class is to exceed ten persons) , the better the preparations
anal the subsequent training can be. The instructor will need to consult at length
*The reverse is also true, of course. There are ideas and concepts in other cultures which
we can comprehend only dimly or not at all, often to our own disadvantage. One thoughtful
Vietnamese trainee who had just completed an exercise in agent acquisition commented to his
instructor that he had done things by the book in the exercise, but without real conviction.
"I do not believe," he said, "that a Vietnamese could ever successfully recruit a man with
tl3ese personality characteristics, although he may be an excellent target for an American. 'the
Vietnamese would he put off by the candidate's directness and his readiness to talk about
things which a Vietnamese approaches carefully and indirectly, if at all. On the other hand,
if you want to recruit a Vietnamese you will profit a great deal more by seeking ways to use
family influence on him than by searching for chinks in his ideological ;armor:'
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with the country desk to find out precisely what training is desired, and how
it is to be done. He will ask the desk bluntly whose idea the training is, because
it may make a great difference to his program if it has been offered on the
initiative of the case officer, the station, or even the headquarters desk, and
has perhaps been accepted somewhat reluctantly, rather than being urgently
requested by the liaison service because it discerns its own need and has
confidence in our ability to help.
The instructor will want to make sure that the field station is prepared to
furnish a site, blackboards, paper, pencils, duplicating facilities and other class-
room supplies. He will pay special attention to the subject of film projectors. He
will want to know if the station has one, and if it is in good shape.. Visual aids
to instruction are perhaps the most important auxiliary tool the instructor has,
and of these aids, motion pictures have the greatest impact and utility.
If it were only a matter of getting good projection equipment, the instruc-
tor's lot would be a happy one, but, alas, when it comes time to go to the film
library he flinches inwardly, because we are still training students with many
of the same films which were in use when the instructor himself was a trainee.
Most of these are excellent films, and of course-the basic techniques of clandes-
tine operations do not change radically with the passing years. As Allen Dulles
pointed out in his Craft o f Intelligence, Sun Tzu, in the year 400 B.C., wrote
down the basics of espionage, much as it is practiced today. In addition to
traditional techniques, however, one must consider the probable subconscious
reaction of the 1973 student to a training film in which a surveillance team
wears Dick Tracy hats and suits that are just a shade removed from the zoot
variety, and where television is so new that it is exhibited as the latest scien-
tific invention to be added to the arsenal of the clandestine operator. Will the
student attribute the same kind of senility to the other elements of the agency
which is training him?
It is easier to point out the problem than to solve it, for film production
costs more than the uninitiated can imagine. When one contemplates a pro-
fessionally produced film of about 20 minutes' duration, he may already be
thinking in terms of $100,000. In discussions of this situation, the suggestion
is almost invariably proffered, "Why not produce films with our own people
and technicians?" The answer is that our technicians, outstanding as they usually
are, are not organized or equipped for this kind of job; and contrary to their
own opinions, most of our intelligence personnel cannot act for sour apples.
Attempts to use them in past productions would by comparison make Howdy
Doody look like Sir John Gielgud-and we have seen from unpleasant expe-
rience that an amateurish training film is worse for our students than no training
film at all.
As if the hoary age of most of our films were not handicap enough, more
than half of our most useful films are restricted to showing for U.S. citizens, and
the instructor must therefore arrange to .have the same old reliables available at
the station, among which are "Walk. East on Beacon," "Ring of Treason," "The
Thief," `PNG," and perhaps half a dozen short reels on specific subjects such
as dead drops, surveillance and countersurveillance, and personal meetings.
Unfortunately, the solution to our film problems is largely one of finances, and
budgetary possibilities are not the same in 1973 as they were in 1953.
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Training programs are usually devised to give basic skills to new officers,
and the curriculum usually includes instruction in basic operations, security,
clandestine communications, agent acquisition and handling, observation and
description, surveillance and countersurveillance, and reporting. Not the least
important, and usually the most lacking, is knowledge of records management
techniques and the importance of records to the intelligence organization..
The programs are usually scheduled by the stations to begin on a Monday,
and the experienced training officer will try to arrive at the latest by the Thurs-
day just preceding the start of the course, for he needs time to adjust his inner
clock to the jet lag, and has a number of preliminary matters which must be
taken care of. He will make a special point to let the field know of his exact
arrival date, so that the case officer in charge of the liaison training wial be
sure to be on hand for Friday consultations.
He will first want to look over the training material which he has sent
ahead by pouch, to see if it is all there and in good shape. He will need to
verify that the station projector is of a vintage somewhat later than The Birth
o f a Nation, and that i.t is in working order, with exh?a projection and e:KCiter
lamps and drive belts. He will want to look over the training site, to make
sure that it is capable of handling the class with a minimum of discomforlt and
distraction, and to arrange the furnishings to suit his needs as much as possiible.*
He also must make sure that he has the means to travel between his hotel
and the training site and the station without a great waste of time. He must
either get the loan of a station car, rent a vehicle, or arrange to be driven from
place to place as required. Taxis are usually undependable and unsatisfactory
For this purpose. Field officers are so often overoptimistic about their capability
to fill this need that experienced instructors usually insist upon having their
travel orders include authorization to rent a car when needed.
Not the least important of the preliminary work is a call on the head of the
service for which the training is being provided. It is not always possible t:o set
up such a meeting, of course, although training officers usually urge the station
in advance to do everything passible to arrange it. Failing the head of the see?vice,
some other high official connected with it can serve the: purpose. There is a
multiplicity of motives behind this desire for an interview with the mighty.
[n the first place, the prestige and authority which is liven to the instructor
and his program by the appearance of, or at least strong endorsement by, the
head of the service may mean the difference between a perfunctory attendance
and performance and a lively and successful course of instruction. Most in-
structors quite unabashedly contrive at some time during the course to point
out casually to their charges something to the effect that "C>eneral So-and-Sc~ was
quite emphatic when he told me he wanted this particular thing stressed iri this
training." Of special benefit is the inauguration of the training course by the
head of the service himself, by means of an introductory address an the first day.
''One instructor reported that a program 1~e had recently completed in Indochina was
probably his worst effort, because he had found out after classes began that the classroom
was part of an ammunition storage warehouse. His lectures were regularly punctuated by the
loud crack of cases of 105-mm. HE ammunition being dropped from a truck bed to the concrete
floor. It was not the noise that disturbed him. He just refused to believe the ordnance of:ficer's
reassurance that the shells would not explode when unloaded in this fashion.
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Another matter which the instructor will want to take up with the afficial-
dorn of the liaison service is the problem of attendance. He will plead with
the service not to extract a student or students. casually from the classes to
attend to other official duties except in emergencies of the direst sort.
Then he will need to find out what ground rules this authority may want
to establish for practical street exercises. Are there areas of the city which
are to be considered off limits to~ training exercises? Can other local government
or service personnel be made available as rabbits or drivers or in other support
capacities? Do they have communications equipment for surveillance work? Are
there live targets they would like or permit the class to work on?
The question of an assessment of the students often arises, also, but not
because the instructor brings it ..up. I3e will avoid it if he can, because of all
the tasks he may be confronted with, perhaps the most difficult is that of making
a fair and honest assessment of 20 or more students after four weeks of instruction.
If the subject arises, he will usually try to impress upon the requesting official
that such assessments are subject to chance and personal bias, and can result
in grave errors and injustice to individuals. If they must have some kind of
judgment, it is much safer and more trustworthy for the instructor to cite any
students who have stood out in the class as particularly apt, and to describe
their accomplishments when appropriate, but without any stated or implied
negative reports on th.e slower students. The Minister's nephew who becomes
chief of service in 1975 is not likely to be cooperative if he knows that in 1973
we pointed out that he lacked the brains and the drive to be a good intelligence
officer.
If, in spite of the instructor's demurrer, the service still insists on assess-
ments of all students, it can be done, of course, but the instructor needs to
know of the requirements at the outset so that he can gear his instruction and
the exercises as much as possible to produce for him the elements he needs to
make the judgments. It would seem gratuitous to point out that the instructor
also ought to know their names, but in the case of one program in a Latin
American country the instructor had to tell the head of the service that he could
not give him an assessment on the students because he had never been given
names, numbers or aliases for any of the students. The instructor surmised that
a Student X from some previous course had managed to work his way into the
upper administrative levels of that service.
This reluctance to assess students for their parent services does not imply
any hesitancy about assessment for station purposes. Instructors, as a matter
of fixed routine at the completion of training, give the station as complete an
assessment as possible of all the students and. of the course in general.
It may come as a surprise to some that not all the peoples of this world
regard the eight-hour day as an establishment of the Almighty. In some of the
more horrible of the earth's climates, an eight-hour day could probably accom-
plish no more than asix-hour day anyway. In any event, the instructor should
be well aware of the work tolerance and attention span of his charges. As Jahn
Kenneth Galbraith said after visiting a particularly torrid town in India, "In
India the difference between working and not working is not decisive:' The
same might be said for other countries, but our instructors must be ready to
discern the difference, nevertheless, and respect it.
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FIaving made his preliminary arrangements, the instructor now has the
weekend in which to review his material, his notes, his course schedule, and
any data he may have been able to acquire on the individual students. He must
plan how he intends to break the class down into groups or teams for the live
exercises. He must study maps of the city, traffic patterns, rush hours, and other
factors which may have a bearing on practical exercises.
fIe will never be totally ready, but finally the day of launch arrives and he
is an the podium, with the head of the service to introduce him if he is lucky.
After he has been suitably inflated and introduced, has taken care of the
administrative details of haw the class is to be run and security attended to,
and how the seating arrangement is to be maintained, he is ready to go. He
now beetles his brow portentously, jabs a finger at his class and begins:
"Clandestine activity is a part of everyday living. We all act clandestinely for personal
reasons Yrom time to time, and if you don't believe it, consider the times that you,
yourself ...: '
[n the coming weeks he will get to know this collection of faces very well
indeed, for he is expected to insert behind each one, whether it is black, brown,
swarthy, fair, oriental, or blue-eyed, the skills and attitudes of the professional
intelligence officer. He will wave his arms and draw diagrams and tell war
stories and regale the students with tales of intrigue and derring-da, usually of
his own heroic exploits against an implacable and clever enemy. He will order
them into the street to make a clandestine meeting with an unknown, to pass
rt supersensitive report, to prepare a casing report for a desad drop. He will rail
at them for clumsy evasive techniques in surveillance prablems, and will pray
silently that they will outwit him and show that the instruction is sinking in.
I3e will slap backs when back-slapping is likely to be appropriate and well
received, and will compliment, kid,. and criticize. He will be elated when he
strikes that magic spark any teacher cherishes but sees so seldom. He will be
disappointed but resigned when one of his favorite war stories falls flat. He
will regularly be astonished at some of the things his students do or say.
Consider, for example, the instructor who was trying to teach a grotap of
earnest young men from a new African. nation which is struggling to adapt
its rich tribal traditions to the needs of world affairs. The instructor had
assigned the class the task of passing a message to a contact in the street without
being detected. One of the students asked him if it was all right to use magic.
The instructor, an old warhorse with great sympathy for his charges, replied
without hesitation that if the student was in fact practiced in those arts, it was
altogether acceptable to pass the message by magic.*
Ones of the most difficult tasks for an instructor is to teach an exotic skill
while at the same time keeping his student imbued with the desire for simplicity
of design and plan. One instructor, who had seen many an overelaborate meeting
plan in his life, was still unprepared for the personal meeting exercise he moni-
tored between two of his students in another small African capital. The "`case
officer" had selected a site in full view of the Communist Chinese Embassy, for
reasons That were not clear to the instructor, and the "agent" was standing at the
"`['his same instructor had aheady had enough of a problem finding a way to teach carefully
timed personal meetings to young men who not only did not own watches, but who ~NOUId
not have known how to tell time by them if they did.
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Liaison Training CONFIDENTIAL
site, stiff as a ramrod, his back to the wall across the street from the embassy,
his arms folded over his chest. When it was time for his prospective contact
to arrive, he began to dance a sedate but energetic jig, his arms still folded, and
he continued to do so until the "case officer" arrived and took up a position next
to him, assuming the same arms-folded posture, and joined him in the dance.
Having established something thereby, they then ceased dancing and walked
together to another place to talk, The instructor observed later that this hardly
seemed to be a satisfactory system of recognition and safety signals, but he had
to admit that no passerby or occupant of the embassy across the street was
likely to surmise that this tableau was in fact a clandestine meeting between
two secret operatives.
Although the instructor covets the services of the head of the liaison organ-
ization at certain times, his presence is not uniformly useful, as one instructor
of a recent class in a small Latin American republic will testify. His students
had set up a stakeout against a real and important target, using support from
their own agency to devise individual cover. The head of the service (a military
intelligence service) decided to don civilian clothes and go by for a discreet
personal inspection of the stakeout. Proud of his students, the instructor stayed
at some distance from the scene and watched with a stinking heart as the
officer strolled near awhite-suited ice cream vendor, only to have the latter
leap from his bicycle, snap to attention, and execute a smart military salute.
One instructor still recalls with some bemusement the student who went
out on an exercise and was not seen again for three days. When he returned,
he explained that when he went into the drug store to buy the bar of soap,
according to the plan, he had been hit over the head with a bottle. He seemed
to feel that the explanation was sufficient, for he volunteered no further details,
and the instructor did not ask for any. One never knows.
Of such rugged and varied stuff are made the citizens of other countries
whom we initiate into our clandestine society. On the final day of instruction,
critiques, and wrapups, the euphoria of a mission completed sometimes almost
overwhelms students and teachers alike. In these instances a party is likely to
ensue, and in accordance with religious scruples and capaciousness of purse,
people may get mildly drunk or ecstatic. Great oaths of fidelity and eternal
friendship are sworn, and vows to reassemble at some future date to reaffirm
the ties of clandestine brotherhood. You, sir, are the greatest instructor ever
born! And you, my friend, are one of the best students I have ever had! To your
health, sir! And to yours! Long live democracy! Long live friendship and
decency! Down with bad people! To hell with Communism!
And so another liaison class has been taught, and the instructor, weary but
reasonably pleased with himself, looks over his little chicks and wonders
which of them is going to bug the American Ambassador next year.
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CONFIDENTIAL
The pen is sometimes
flightier than the words
ELEGANT WRITING-REPORT NUMBER TWO
Richard T. Puderbaugh
If you missed my first report,* I should explain to you that I have been
designated Chief Word Watcher, Western Hemisphere Division, and have been
instructed to submit reports from time to time on outstanding examples of
elegant writing in what is best known as the Clandestine Service. It has been
some months since my first report, and I must say that I have been impressed
by the response. Elegant writing has definitely begun to attract the attention
of our officers.
There are some areas which still need improvement, nevertheless. Too
many of our writers are still utilizing the word "use" where they could just as
well use "utilize" and get the same meaning out of it. The mitigate/militate
ratio is merely holding its own, when in fact we ought to be expanding our
use of "mitigate against." As to the flout/flaunt ratio, we may even be losing
ground, and I urge you all to be especially watchful for instances of contempt
for the law so that we can be sure that it gets flaunted rather than flouted.
There is also one point which I failed to make in my first report, because
quite frankly I didn't think we were having any trouble with it, but I now find
that that is not the case. The problem is in the modern and forceful use of the
words target, aim, fault, and blame. It is oldfashioned to aim at a target. One
targets at an aim these days. The same can be said for blaming people for being
at fault. Today we fault them for being to blame. This is a process of shaping
meanings which delights us veteran word watchers, and I can even see possi-
bilities in these words for an entire reversal of meaning, as happened with
our old friend sanction. Think of the linguistic genius it required to give one
word two diametrically opposed meanings! "The U.N. today sanctioned sanc-
tions against Israel." It is an aim we should target at.
Here are a few samples of elegant writing, selected at random from my
collection of the past six months:
"The actions must be completed in as quickly a time as possible."
"Transmitted hereto for your retention and information....'
"We regret that reference cable was ambivalent and apparently misleading."
"They described him as a friendly type who loves entertaining people."
"He has been out visiting the grass roots."
As you read, it will become evident to you that our best work during this
period has been in our descriptions of people and the things they do. One
of the most impressive of these is the following: "Although sleeping at the time
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CONFIDENTIAL Elegant Writing
of the officer's contact, the American Consul talked to Mr. Doe on 25 September,
and was lucid and alert." You can't tell whether that is a dangling participle
or a non sequitur, and therein lies its charm.
"The reference, made in a letter, by Doe's wife to Doe having gotten himself involved
in espionage, though, might be indicative of something, albeit: enigmatic."
"He believes the risk will be minimal ? if students and instnictors utilize reasonab]'.e
jurisprudence in the, course of the exercise; '
"He incurred the intense displeasure of the war ministry and ;general officers close
fo the president recently by pubically advocating abolition of the congressional.
xutharitv."
[ showed that last one to my friend, the Senior Officer, who pronounced
it a typographical error and therefore not really deserving of high marks. I
would agree if it were only the absence of the "1" between the "b" and the "i",
but the addition of the "al" as the penultimate syllable can hardly be a ~typo-
graphical error, and the author of that sentence therefore gets top grades from
me for his effort, especially since he had the great good sense to avoid any
actual description of the gestures a man makes when he pubically advocates
something.
`Ti.1is announcement by the two officials should put an end to specific rumors of one
frin.q the other, or vice versa."
"At that time they were in the first stages of a broken marriage."
"Even the carrot and stick approach of offering a higher income did not produce
results."
"The old man, although infirm, obviously is not on his dying bed."
The following three quotations demonstrate what I have come to cal]! the
Puderbaugh Principle of Traumatic Terseness. We all know what a great impact
one can achieve by making portentous statements in few words. "Lafayette,
we are here." "I cannot spare this general. He fights." Now observe how much
greater an impact can be achieved when the short statement describes the totally
unexpected--not to say unbelievable:
"Toe and his wife had a daughter of four. When he last saw her she was pregnant: '
" 3+'ulano's wife is in her late twenties and their daughter, Mary, is aged about four.
The latter is rather pale and sickly. She doesn't like Graustark very much. She smokes."
"Mengano was one of seven children, and was raised without a father who was
killed by a log in a forest:'
Given the rather consistent distortion of our work by the news media, the
public might be pardoned for supposing that people in our profession live in
a James Bond kind of world. If the truth were to be told (and it can certainly
be deduced from the foregoing demonstrations of Puderbaugh's Principle) ours
is much more of a Tolkien world than a Bond world. They people we deal with
are surrounded by dangers Bond never dreamed of, and that may explain why
they feel impelled to begin enjoying life, and reproducing :it, at a very early age.
While we are on the subject of descriptions of persons and their doine;s, I
must announce with some sadness that a writer from another agency has Kwon
*"Minimal" is a very OK word this year.
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Elegant Writing CONFIDENTIAL
this year's Grand Prize for Baroque Bloviation. CIA has done some fine things,
but nothing to compare with the following analysis which a Defense Department
officer wrote about the wife of a government official in his country of assignment:
"She has a presentable personality with a modern posture, who is well versed in
world affairs, where by modern standards she is considered to be a whole person."
Another non-CIA writer has been granted an honorable mention for ex-
cellence in Freudian Implications. He is a senior foreign service officer at one
of our embassies, who informed his Washington office:
"The editor of a respected weekly called on me today to discuss the current political
situation which he predicted would come to an end very soon."
It must be the golden dream, the cherished Nirvana, of our harried friends
in the State Department-that moment when a political situation comes to
an end.
In no other instance did I find our writers to have been bested by those
of other agencies, although I do have an item of special interest from USAID
which I shall present to you later in this report. Our writers are especially good
in those constructions which separate vital sentence parts from one another
and place high-class words between them, selected and arranged so as to give
the reader many minutes of enchantment as he searches for the meaning. The
first of these sentences also evokes folk-feelings of the ancient past, echoing the
syntax of the Germanic Mother Tongue.
"He helped his daughter, with whom he is quite close, out financially."
"We feel that the university, while still an important target, is less so than it once was.
Even if it were, the situation on campus makes the operation impossible."
The beauty of that last quotation at first seemed to me to lie in its antece-
dent anarchy, but upon closer examination I discovered that the anarchy is
much more pervasive than a mere indiscipline of pronouns and their antecedents.
Here it is entire thoughts which are launched from their pads and enter orbit
without ever achieving rendezvous with sister components.
Closely related to the foregoing examples of skillful disarticulation of sentence
parts is the practice of redundancy. It is not difficult to be redundant, of course,
and no special merit attaches to the mere repetition of a thought twice in several
dozen words, but when you can express the same idea three times in five words
you are in a class by yourself:
"That would make his estimated ETA on or about 5 July."
For technical excellence in tautology, that sentence is the best of the season,
but for a symmetry which closely approaches poetry I think we would have to
give the prize to this one:
"If Doe were arrested as soon as feasibly possible. . . .
There are some sentences which mirror a truly and innately elegant soul-a
writer who not only puts down elegant sentences, but whose thoughts are ele-
*The moment when a political situation reaches its zenith, on the other hand, has never
been better described than by a State cable from North Africa in the mid-50's which may
antedate Mr. Puderbaugh's research: "Tlie seething cauldron is approaching the crossroad,
and. it is beyond the power of the French to get it back on the tracks:' One sighs that these
cables had no visual aids. [Editor.]
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CONFIDENTIAL Eleganf 1Nri1`ing
gantly arranged. Here is a sentence which comes from the mind of just such. an
aristocrat, a writer who is modern enough to have no compunction about ending
a sentence with a preposition, but who at the same time steadfastly avoids any
ellipsis of relative pronouns:
"In order to return, he had to be guaranteed work and a house which to move into."
I shall now list a number of items which do not fall into any special Word-
watcher classification, but which deserve our respectful attention all the same:
"The SDNT, the largest and only exile group in Graustark...."
"IIe was determined not to defend red tape for its own sake."
"Misnomering of ammunition is illegal."
"We apologize for the readibility of the copies." "
"Parall.elly, we plan to start work on another project."
"We opted not to reopen the question to avoid the risk of needlessly beating a dead
horse." *"
"That would be opening the magic Pandora's box."
"We would be foolhearty if we were to dismiss it lightly."
"'['}ie}= threw Molotov cocktails against five downtown stores during daylight hours in
lightening demonstrations:'
A word is in order here about lightening demonstratio~ks. I have had many
discussions about this with associates in headquarters who have never been
to the field, and who think the reference is really to lightning demonstrati~~ns.
It is surprising that this kind of objection can come from people who live in
Washington, D. C., for they have witnessed the real thing right in their own
city. Briefly, any demonstration which reduces a downtown store's inveni:ory
by several tons, or sets fire to its premises, can without hesitation by classed as
a lightening demonstration. Demonstrations which include the use of Molotov
cocktails are, by definition, lightening ones.
I was especially pleased during this period to see that one writer had ex-
tended the use of the word majority beyond anything our people had ever dared
before. There had been a serious flood in his area of assignment, and in due course
he reported that "the majority of the water had receded," and thereby implied
that there was a minority of the water still around. From s,ad experience, how-
ever, Ihave learned not to trust such statements about the majority of, say,
the money, or the weather, or the pollution, because I have found that many
of our writers don't really know the definition of majority, and may in fact: be
talking about a plurality of these things. So I recommend great care with this
usage.
In conclusion I want to report to you about a writer who works for USA.ID,
who recently came to my attention. I know we must not proselyte, but if there
*An apology which might well be made for much of our official correspondence.
*"Analogies have a way of losing their relevance as years pass. The writer of this sentence
was wise enough to perceive that dead horses are not what they used to be, One must be
careful to distinguish between those dead horses which it is bootless to beat, and those which
can be turned into a profitable enterprise only by the application of the bastinado.
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Elegant Writing CONFIDENTIAL
is any way to get this man to transfer to our agency we should try our best to
do it. He is clearly of managerial stature. He writes:
"We must steer a careful course between doing nothing about future plans and
doing the irrelevant."
That statement comes close to the beauty of Ring Lardner's masterpiece,
"Although he was not a good outfielder, he was not a good hitter, either." It is
a question of keeping one part of a sentence from ever knowing what the other
part is doing, and it is this kind of perfection toward which we must continue
to strive. Few of us can hope to attain such high levels of elegance, but we must
not let the seeming unattainability of the goal keep us from doing our best at
all times. You can rest assured that any activity you engage in to equal or better
the foregoing examples of elegant writing will be sanctioned by the highest
authority.
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How it all began:
DONOVAN'S ORIGINAL MARCHING ORDERS
Thomas F. Troy
Two quotations will set the stage for this inquiry into the orders under
which Colonel William J. Donovan was set up in business by President Franklin
D. Roosevelt as this nation's first chief of intelligence and special operations.
The first quotation comes from Breckinridge Long, Assistant Secretary of
State, 1939-1944, a man who figures no more in this paper but who was a close
observer of much to be narrated here and who, moreover, kept an interesting
diary. As one of three assistant secretaries working under Secretary of State
Cordell Hull and Under Secretary Sumner Wells, "Breck" Long administered
both the Department of State and the Foreign Service and, as he perhaps under-
standably complained in his diary, was responsible for 23 of the 42 divisions of the
Department. This wide-spread coverage several times brought him in contact with
the work of the new Coordinator of Information (COI)-the job FDR officially
gave to Donovan on 11 July 1941; and Long was quick to arrive at the following
characterization of this New York Irishman, military hero, and Wall Street lawyer:
"Bill Donovan-`Wild Bill' is head of the C.I.O. [sic]-Coordinator of Information.
He has been a thorn in the side of a number of the regular agencies of the Government
for some time-including the side of the Department of State-and more particularly
recently in Welles'. He is into everybody's business-knows no bounds of jurisdiction-
tries to fill the shoes of each agency charged with responsibility for a war activity.
He has had almost unlimited money and has a regular army at work and agents all
over the world. He does many things under the nom de guerre of `Information':' 1
The second quotation gives the other side of the coin, and quite appropriately
comes from Donovan himself. With reference to a different matter than the
specific one which provoked Long's outburst, and writing not in a diary but
to the President, the Colonel, "angry and indignant," denounced the circulation
of "the well-worn lie" that he had 90 representatives working in Latin America.
He attributed the repetition of this story to an effort to prove that he had "gone
into a field which you had not allocated to me." Then Donovan laid it on the
line: "You should know me well enough to know that I do adhere strictly to
7ny orders and make no attempt to encroach upon the jurisdiction of anyone
else:' [Italics mine.]
"My orders" ... ah, there was the rubl Just what were those orders? That
was, in effect, the question that many in Washington, throughout the summer
1Breckinridge Long, The War Diary of Breckinridge Long: Selections from the Years
1939-1944, ed. Fred L. Israel (Univ. of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, Neb., 1966) p. 257. This
passage was written on 10' April 1942; on 20 December 1941 Long had noted (pp. 233-34)
that Donovan was hard to "control," and that his organization was "composed largely of
inexperienced people" who were also "inexperienced ... in dealing ...with ...confidential
information: '
2 Memorandum from William J. Donovan to President Roosevelt, No. 452, 27 April 1942,
Donovan. Papers, "Exhibits Illustrating the History of OSS," Vol. II, "The Office of the Coor-
dinator of Information," Tab YY. Hereafter the short title is Donovan Papers, "Exhibits," and
this will cover both Vols. I and II.
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CONFIDENTIAL Donovan
and fall of 1941, wanted answered definitely. That was, in effect, the question-
as will be seen-that prompted the Director of the Bureau of the Budget twice
in the first seven months of Donovan's official existence to recommend to the
President that COI's area of activity be newly defined. That question, indeed,
also caused Donovan himself, three months after taking office, to toll the Presi-
dent that their original decision to put nothing in writing was wrong. That
question, in fact, has never really been answered; and it is the purpose of this
inquiry to make an attempt to do so.
The answer will be sought in reconstructing three episodes in roughly the
first six months of COI's history: (1) Donovan's meeting with the President on
18 June 1941 when FDR gave the go-ahead sign on COI; (2) the drafting of
the order which made COI official on 11 July; and (3) the next few months
when that order was implemented.
The Roosevelt-Donovan Meeting, 18 June I94I
Contrary to a common misconception, Bill Donovan was not a close friend
of the President. They had been at Columbia Law School at the same time but
had not known one another. They were from opposite sides of the State of New
York: Donovan from Buffalo, and FDR from the Hudson River Valley. They
were also from opposite sides of the socio-economic tracks; Donovan was an
Irish Catholic, the grandson of immigrants, the son of a railroad yards superin-
tendent, while FDR, the squire of Hyde Park, was a WASP before the acronym
was common coin. Also, and more importantly perhaps, they were from
opposite sides of the political fence; Donovan was as much alife-long Republican
as FDR was Mr. Democrat. Their paths had only occasionally crossed as when,
for example, Donovan unsuccessfully ran for the governorship of New York
when Roosevelt was elected President in 1932. It was not, then, until 1940 that
Donovan, in his fifty-seventh year, and FDR, one year older, were brought
together on the same side of the tracks.
What accompished this was Adolf Hitler and the European War he launched
in September 1939. There is no need here to do more than state the common
revulsion and alarm felt by both men at the prospect of Nazi hegemony in Europe
and abroad. Donovan, probably because he was a private citizen, was way out
ahead of the President, however, in urging all-out aid to Britain as an essential
element: in the defense of the Western Hemisphere. Because of this attitude,
because of his prominence in Republican and national affairs, because of his recent
travels in Germany, Ethiopia, and Spain, and probably on the recommendation
of his good friend, the new Secretary of the Navy, Frank Knox, Colonel Donovan
was sent by President Roosevelt to England in the summer of 1940 to report
on Britain's chances against the expected Nazi assault. Six months later the
President again sent him abroad, this time on athree-months tour of Britain,
the Balkans, the Middle East, Spain, and Ireland.3
After both trips, Donovan, the President's representative who talked day
after day with heads of state and their chief advisors, reported to the President-
at least on 9 August 1940 and 19 March 1941. There are no good records of
these conversations, but it is safe to say that Donovan, whose mind :ranged over
s See this writer's "COI and British Intelligence: An Essay on Origins," (CIA, 1970), esp.
Ghs. II and III. Hereafter referred to as "COI: '
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Donovan
every aspect of the war in Europe, particularly singled out for the President's
attention the whole range of unconventional warfare activities that had been
brought to the fore by the Fifth Cohimn and British counter-measures. He must
have given Roosevelt some idea, however brief, of his thinking on a new agency
to handle "white" and "black" propaganda, sabotage and guerrilla warfare,
special intelligence, and strategic planning.4
Donovan Proposes "Service of Strategic Information"
Eventually, probably late in May of 1941, Donovan was asked by the
President to put his proposal in writing, and this he did in a "Memorandum of
Establishment of Service of Strategic Information," dated 10 June 1941. The
document, which of course is fundamental in the long line of papers outlining
the COI-OSS-CIA objectives and tasks, is as interesting for what it does not
say as for what it .does say. Since it was soon, on 18 June, to receive the
Presidental stamp of approval, it is well here to take a close look at it.6
(Appendix A )
In a few words-934-Donovan laid out his argument, proceeding from
general to particular, for a "Service of Strategic Information." The basic
proposition was the interrelationship of strategy and information: without the
latter, strategy was helpless; and unless directed to strategy, information was
useless. The second proposition measured the information required in terms of
total war-"the commitment of all resources of a nation, moral as well as
material"-and Donovan particularly stressed the dependence of modern war
on "the economic base." The third proposition was the flat assertion. that despite
the activity of the Army and Navy intelligence units, the country did not have
an "effective- service" for developing that "accurate, comprehensive, long-range
information without which no strategic board can. plan for the future." The con-
clusion was the essentiality of "a central enemy intelligence organization which
would itself collect either directly or through existing departments of govern-
ment, at home and abroad, pertinent information" on the total resources and
intentions of the enemy.
As an example, he cited the economic field where there were many weapons
that could be used against the enemy. These weapons were so scattered through-
out the bureaucracy, however, that they could not be effectively utilized in the
waging of economic warfare unless all departments of the government had the
same information. This brief passage will appear more important, in this inquiry
into Donavan's marching orders, when we touch upon the difficulty that Donovan
was soon to have with the Economic Defense Board, which considered economic
warfare its bailiwick.
Another brief-and apparently deliberately vague-passage is the one deal-
ing with radio as "the most powerful weapon" in "the psychological attack
against the moral and spiritual defenses of a nation." Certainly Donavan was
one of the first fully to appreciate the significance of the- Nazi use of the radio
as an element of "modern warfare." In this memorandum, however, he con-
tented himself with boldly stating that the perfection. of radio as a weapon
required planning, and planning required information, which could then lead to
`Ibid., Chs. IV and VIII.
`Donovan Papers, "Exhibits," Vol. I, Tab B.
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CONFIDENTIAL Donovan
action by appropriate agencies. There was no felt need to spell out the role of
radio in psychological warfare and clandestine communications.
In terms of secret activities, the most revealing part of this Memorandum is
not the text but the organizational chart accompanying it. Where one would
expect frankness, he gets obscurity, and vice versa. Hence, the coordination of
information-the main subject of the paper-is entnisted to directors of "Collec-
tion and Distribution" and of "Classification and Interpretation"; and the radio
weapon is the province of the "Director of Supplementary Activities"; whereas
the chart shows what the text nowhere mentions, namely, the two directors of
"Mail, Radio, Cable Interception (Censorship )" and of "Codes and Cyphers."
Only the "Director of Economic Warfare Material" accurately reflects its textual
counterpart.
Presumably Donovan sent this Memorandum to the President on or shortly
after 10 June. At least on the next day FDR told Grace Tully that he wanted to
see Ben Cohen, old friend, adviser, and legal draftsman, before he returned to
his London post and "also Bill Donovan."e Presumably again, at least in the
light of subsequent events, the President v EDB
with data relating to the postwar situation, and Richards was asked at the 16
July conferences to state the need of his unit for postwar planning. Also, an un-
dated statement of the functions of the "Economic Branch" shows that it was to
"formulate plans for the coordination of post-wax planning activities" of the
various agencies, to collect and "popularize" information on such planning for
the President and department heads, and also to encourage such planning by
industry, labor, and agriculture.g2
5. Writing the peace: Milo Perkins is the indirect source of the Donovan
claim that the President had told him to write the peace. Accoxding to Hall,
wxiting on 8 September, Dr. Baxter vas "disturbed by the rumors that Donovan
has been commissioned to write the peace and believes that the State Depart-
ment was also quite concerned." Baxter was further quoted as saying that some
of his friends had been approached by Donovan, before the COI order came
out, "asking them to serve with an organization similar to the House inquiry
of the last war." Baxter was further quoted as saying that no such organization
should be established and the function should be left with State, but that
Donovan did not agree with him on this point.33
6. Basic Strategy Planning: There is no reason to doubt that Donovan
aimed to influence basic political and military strategy. Others may have thought
"policy" was not the field of COI, but Donovan did not think that way, at least,
in the period under consideration. He aimed to gather and interpret the data
"bearing on national security," and working through the "coordination com-
mittees" to make recommendations to the President. Again, an early but un-
dated, statement of functions shows that the "Research and Plans Branch" was
to assist in the development of strategic plans, advise the Coordinator on na-
tional policy, prepare "popular" reports on strategic subjects for the President,
and maintain such liaison as would insure the "full utilization of the expert
facilities in the various departments and agencies in the determination of national
policy:' s4 Just how far Donovan expected to go in this direction is arguable,
but it is not surprising if Hall and others thought the "Donovan organization"
hoped to develop as "the secretariat of [a] high strategy group" within the
defense organization.
Conclusion
By now it must be clear that there was anything but clarity in the listing
of the functions that COI was to perform. First of all, we know only that the
President approved Donovan's memorandum o# 10 June which called for the
establishment of an organization to collect information on enemy countries and
to use the radio as an instrument of modern warfare and that the President
also underwrote Donovan's plans for secret and subversive activities. Secondly,
the order of 11 July authorizes Donovan to collect, analyze, correlate, and dis-
82 This document appears in the BOB Records in company with Hall's reports of 16 July
1941, and there is no reason to doubt that it belongs there.
?3 Hall's Memorandum of Conference, 8 September 1941, on "Developments in the Office
of the Coordinator of Information," BOB Records, Folder 212.
?" Cf. Note 52 supra.
b5
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seminate information bearing on national security and also to carry out "supple-
inentary activities" as requested by the President. We know also, from the
drafting of the order, that Ben Cohen thought the new COI would not interfere
with the "morale function" of La Guardia's office or the need for the projected
Economic Defense Board. Thirdly, as just reviewed, Donovan was quickly in-
volved in a whole host of activities which could not possibly have been touched
upon, spelled out, and agreed upon in the conference that Donovan had with
the President on 1$ June.
The conclusion here is that Donovan was given a charter marked by vague-
ness, contradiction, and open-endedness. The vagueness is clear on the face of
the 11 July order, and Smith had pointed this out to the President a week before
it was issued. It was so vague even on the basic function of the Coordination of
Information that some people concluded, honestly presumably, that his job was
simply to "digest" others' reports to the President. The most patent contradiction
contained in the ord.Pr, although not spelled out, was the authorization to conduct
world-wide radio broadcasts even though Nelson Rockefeller clearly had a
monopoly on such activity as far as South. America was concerned. The open-
endedness-the coordination of data bearing on national security-Donovan
was clearly quite prepared to exploit to the full, and it is not surprising that people
like Breckinridge Long were soon accusing him of poking his nose "into every-
body's business."
This conclusion raises the question of President Roosevelt's understanding
of what he was doing when he issued such a charter to the Colonel. For an
answer, the writer can only fall back on others' analyses of 1?DR's administrative
principles and procedures, anti here there are at least two schools of thought.
James MacGregor Burns has described the President as "...avoiding commit-
ments to any one, man or program, letting his subordinates feel less the sting
of responsibility than the goad of competition, thwarting one man from getting
too much control... ; ' and it was this approach that "pro:mpted him to drive his
jostling horses with a loose bit and a nervous but easy rein:' sg On the other
hand, Dean Acheson has rejected as "nonsense" the idea that Roosevelt liked
"organizational confusion which permitted him to keep power in his own hands
by playing off his colleagues one against the other;" instead, says the former
Secretary of State, under FDR, "civil governmental organization ...was messed
up ...for the simplest of reasons: he did not know any better." 86
Let the last comment on the President's style go to William O. Hall, who,
thirty years after the events .narrated here, observed that: "Donovan was a
pusher, an empire-builder, a man with a sense of mission, whose ~ activity had
"the effect of stirring up the military and the State Department, and FDR was
happy to see this:' sz
"s James MacGregor Burns, Roosevelt: The Soldier o f Freedom (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,
New York, 1.970), p. 53. More recently, John P. Roche noted in his King Features Syndicate
column (Washington Post, 22 May 1973) that: "[Roosevelt's] technique, to simplify, was
always to Rive subordinates overlapping jurisdictions. Thus Jesse Jones of the Reconstruction
Finance Corporation, Harry Hopkins, and Secretary of the Interior Ickes (to take one hypo-
thetical case) would each he ,given the impression by F'DR that he was in charge of some
major aspect of domestic policy. Invariably the three would get into a fight on any significant
policy question and-since it was impossible to settle it among themselves-the President
would wind up as the arbiter."
61 Acheson, Op. cit., p. 47.
bz William O. Hall, private interview, Washington, D.C., 16 September 1970.
bb
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Donovan CONFIDENTIAL
MEMORANDUM OF ESTABLISHMENT OF
SERVICE OF STRATEGIC INFORMATION
Strategy, without information upon which it can rely, is helpless. Likewise, information
is useless unless it is intelligently directed to the strategic purpose. Modern warfare depends
upon the economic base=on the supply of raw materials,. on the capacity and performance
of the industrial plant, on the scope of agricultural production and upon the character and
efficacy of communications. Strategic reserves will determine the strength of the attack and
the resistance of the defense. Steel and gasoline constitute these reserves as much as do inen
and powder. The width and depth of terrain occupied by the present day army exacts an
equally wide and deep network of operative lines. The "depth of strategy" depends on the
"depth of armament: '
The commitment of all resources of a nation, moral as well as material, constitute what
is called total war. To anticipate enemy intention as to the mobilization and employment
of these forces is a difficult task. General von Vernhardi says, "We must try, by correctly
foreseeing what is coming, to anticipate developments and thereby to gain. an advantage which
our opponents cannot overcome on the field of battle. That is what the future expects us to
do."
Although we are facing imminent peril, we are lacking in effective service for analyzing,
comprehending, and appraising such information as we might obtain, (or in some cases have
obtained,) relative to the intention of potential enemies and the limit of the economic and
military resources of those enemies. Our mechanism of collecting information is inadequate.
It is true we have intelligence units in the Army and Navy. We can assume that through
these units our fighting services can obtain technical information in time of peace, have
available immediate operational information in time of war, and on certain occasions obtain
"spot" news as to enemy movements. But these services cannot, out of the very nature of things,
obtain that accurate, comprehensive,, long-range information without which no strategic board
can plan for the future. And we have arrived at the moment when there must be plans laid
down for the spring of 1942.
We have, scattered throughout the various departments of our government, documents
and memoranda concerning military and naval and air and economic potentials of the Axis
which, if gathered together and studied in detail by carefully selected trained minds, with
a knowledge both of the related languages and technique, would yield valuable and often
decisive results.
Critical analysis of this information is as important presently for our supply program
as if we were actually engaged in armed conflict. It is unimaginable that Germany would
engage in a $7 billion supply program without first studying in detail the productive capacity
of her actual and potential enemies. It is because she does exactly this that she displays such
a mastery in the secrecy, timing, and effectiveness of her attacks.
Even if we participate to no greater extent than we do now, it is essential that we set
up a central enemy intelligence organization which would itself collect either directly or through
existing departments of government, at home and abroad, pertinent information concerning
potential enemies, the character and strength of their armed forces, their internal economic
organization, their principal channels of supply, the morale of their troops and their people
and their relations with their neighbors or allies.
For example,. in the economic field, there are many weapons that can be used against
the enemy. But in our government these weapons are distributed through several different
departments. How and when to use them is of vital interest not only to the Commander-in-
Chief but to each of the departments concerned. All departments should have the same infor-
mation upon which economic warfare could be determined.
To analyze and interpret such inforrr~ation by applying to it not only the experience of
Army and Naval officers, but also of specialized trained research officials in the relative scien-
tific fields, (including technological, economic, financial and psychological scholars,) is of
determining influence in modern warfare,
Such analysis and interpretation must be done with immediacy and speedily transmitted
to the intelligence services of those departments which, in some cases, would have been supply-
ing the essential raw materials of information.
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CONFIDENTIAL Donovan
13ut there is another element in modern warfare, and that is the psychological attack
against the moral and spiritual defenses of a nation. In this attack the most powerful weapon
is radio. The use of radio as a weapon, though effectively employed by Germany, is still
to be perfected. But this perfection can be realized only by planning, and planning is dependent
upon accurate information. From this information action could be carried out by appropriate
agencies.
The mechanism of this service to the various departments should be under the direction
of a Coordinator of Strategic Information who would be responsible directly to the President.
This Coordinator could be assisted by an advisory panel consisting of the Director of FBI, the
Directors of the Army and Navy Intelligence Service, with corresponding officials from other
governmental departments principally concerned.
The attached chart shows the allocation of and the interrelation between the general duties
to be discharged under the appropriate directors. Much of the personnel would be drawn from
the Army and Navy and other departments of the government, and it will be seen from the
chart that the proposed centralized unit will neither displace nor encroach upon the FBI,
Army and Navy Intelligence, or any other department of the government.
i'he basic purpose of this Service of Strategic Information is to constitute a means by
which the President, as Commander-in-Chief, and his Strategic Board would have available
accurate and complete enemy intelligence reports upon which military operational decisions
could be based.
Washington, D.C.
June 10, 1941
William J. Donovan
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Donovan CONFIDENTIAL
DESIGNATING A COORDINATOR OF INFORMATION
By virtue of the authority vested in me as President of the United States and as Com-
mander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, it is ordered as follows:
I. There is hereby established the position of Coordinator of Information, with
authority to collect and analyze all information and data, which may bear upon national
security; to correlate such information and data, and to make such information and data
available to the President and to such departments and officials of the Government as
the President may determine; and to carry out, when requested by the President, such
supplementary activities as may facilitate the securing of information important for
national security not now available to the Government.
2. The several departments and agencies of the government shall make available
to the Coordinator of Information all and any such information and data relating to
national security as the Coordinator, with the approval of the President, may from time
to time request.
3. The Coordinator of Information may appoint such committees, consisting of ap-
propriate representatives of the various departments and agencies of the Government,
as he may deem necessary to assist him in the performance of his functions.
4. Nothing in the duties and responsibilities of the Coordinator of Information shall
in any way interfere with or impair the duties and responsibilities of the regular military
and naval advisers of the President as Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy.
5. Within the limits of such funds as may be allocated to the Coordinator of Infor-
mation by the President, the Coordinator may employ necessary personnel and make
provision for the necessary supplies, facilities, and services.
6. William J. Donovan is hereby designated as Coordinator of Information.
(Signed) Franklin D. Roosevelt
THE WHITE HOUSE
July 11, 1941
* ~ ~ x~ a.
~
(Federal Register, Tues., July 15,
1941.
p. 3422-23.
F.R. Doc. 41-4969; Filed, July 12,
1941;
11:53 a.m.)
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INTELLIGENCE IN RECENT PUBLIC LITERATURE
DORA REPORTING and UNDER THE PSEUDONYM DORA. By Alexander
Rado. (Nepszabadsag, Budapest, 1971, and Oktyabr, Moscow, 1972. )
Alexander Rado, the Hungarian geographer-cartographer who headed a
Soviet espionage net in Switzerland during World War II, has published two
versions of his memoirs. In October 1971 the Budapest daily Nepszabadsag
published excerpts from his memoirs,* and from February to June 1972 the arch-
conservative Soviet journal Oktyabr did the same. Despite the differences in
length (the Russian being approximately five times as long as the Hungarian )
both versions are remarkably similar in tone and content. The Hungarian version
appears to be a summary of the Russian rather than an independent work. There
are, however, two noteworthy omissions in the Russian version.
Rado notes in the Hungarian version that he was awarded the Order of
Lenin during the war for his intelligence activities (Hungarian version, p. 44) .
In addition, he states that he returned to Hungary in 1955 "after long and serious
trials" (Hungarian version, p. 81) . This remark is probably an oblique reference
to his years of imprisonment in the USSR. The deletion of the date is probably
an attempt to avoid recalling to the minds of Soviet readers the still sensitive issue
of Stalinist excesses. Oktz~abr's Stalinist editor, Vsevolod Kochetov, is partic-
uIarly unlikely to want to raise the subject. The failure to mention Rado's Order of
Lenin may be a careless error, but it is also possible that it reflects a Soviet desire
not to over-emphasize Rado's contribution. The government has consistently
maintained that the USSR won World War II practically single-handed, and that
its great victories resulted not from the skills of its spies but from the valor of its
warriors.
Another significant omission in both versions of the memoirs is the total
absence of any reference to Rado's life as a spy prior to 1935. The omission is
deliberate. Rado tells us that the Soviets gave him the source materials for his
work, and there is plainly every reason to assume that the KGB edited both the
Russian and Hungarian versions. The omission of Rado's life as an agent of Soviet
military intelligence during the late 1920's and early 1930's reflects the typical
Soviet sensitivity about this period. On 20 February 1968 Komsomolskaya Pravda
printed an article by V. Chernyshev called "Code `Dora'." It included the
following passage: "As a Hungarian emigre Rado went to study in Germany in
the 20's. He worked tirelessly, graduated brilliantly from the university, and
defended his dissertation.... After the Nazis came to power, the young anti-
Fascist scholar lived in Paris, and on the eve of the Spanish Civil War, in 1936,
crossed over into Switzerland." Not a word about when and where Rado was
trained in espionage, or about his clandestine work and contacts in Germany.
And very little about his Soviet case officers, who remain anonymous. This silence,
which the Soviets are at pains to maintain for the entire Rote Kapelle during the
1920's and early 1930's, suggests that they still have assets meriting such protection.
Rado's memoirs inadvertently indict Moscow's intelligence services for
inefficiency and poor planning. Moscow first instructed Rado to establish a cover
operation in Belgium in 1935. The site was later changed to Switzerland (see
below). One might assume that Moscow would already have worked out plans
MORI/HRP
from pg.
71-76
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to support his intelligence activities. The evidence does not support this con-
clusion, however. The change of sites (Belgium to Switzerland) is not a valid
excuse because Soviet agents in Belgium, France, and Germany experienced
the same problems that Rado faced in Switzerland.
If it is assumed that Rado was ready to begin his real work after he opened
Geopress in 1936, Moscow had almost five years before the German invasion of
the U.S.S.R. to arrange to support him and his net. The memoirs, and even more
so the traffic, reveal that the Center was unprepared. Rado was plagued by fi-
nancial difficulties, and security had to he broken by using agents from outside
his net to get funds to him. Even transmitters and operators were in critically
short supply despite the time available to secure both. In 1942 and 1943 Rado was
still recruiting operators, and on the eve of his arrest "Jim" was still struggling
to get parts to assemble another transmitter, Even an inadvertent admission of the
inefficiency of Soviet intelligence activities is noteworthy in a day when their
prowess is sometimes exaggerated.
t?alsif ications and Cnniradictions in Rado's Narrative
't'here is an interesting conflict between the Russian and Hungarian versions
of the memoirs about the decision on where to locate Rado's intelligence net.
According to the Russian account, the authorities in Moscow originally instructed
Rado to set up his cover operation in Belgium. Rado claims that he believed
Belgium was best suited to his cover. The plan. failed in December 1935 when
Belgian officials refused to grant Rado a residency permit. Rado was then in-
structed to set up shop in Switzerland. It would appear from this account that the
Swiss location was a second choice; but such an interpretation conflicts with
the Hungarian account. Here Rado implies that he was originally instructed
to set up his operation in Switzerland and suggests that he preferred this location.
The Hungarian version contains only a passing reference to Belgium as a possible
site for Rado's work and creates the impression that it was not seriously con-
sidered. (See Part I of the Russian version, p. 40; Hungarian version p, 8. )
'1"he two versions are also contradictory about the date when he succeeded in
establishing a W/T link with Moscow. In the Hungarian account Rado claims
to have done so in January 1940, whereas in the Russian he implies that it hap-
pened in March 1940--after a visit from "Kent." The earliest message :From
"Albert" (that is, Rado) to the Director is dated 6 June 194(1. The message appears
only in the memoirs and may be a fabrication. Consequently, either date-January
or March-could be correct; both can also be wrong.
Rado claims that Margherita Bolli ("Rose" or "Rosa") was largely respon-
sible for the breakup of his net in 1943. He asserts that she violated security by
having an affair with a young German, named Hans Peters, who turned out
to be an Abwehr agent. Rado explains that "Rose" was seen with his wife (Lena
Rado) and was thereafter targeted by the Germans. The explanation is plausible,
but it conflicts with one offered by Alexander Foote, a member of Rado's net.
Foote claims that Rado was responsible for the identification of "Rose" as
a member of the net. According to Foote, Rado was having an affair with "Rose."
IIe was seen with her in a restaurant, and the result was the German decision to
target her. Foote agrees with Rado that the German approach was made through
Ilans Peters. (Russian version Part III, p. 7; Foote, Handbook for Spies, p. 116. )
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The involvement of "Rose" with Peters is fact, and .the variations offered
by Rado and Foote are both plausible. But both men have adequate reasons to
fabricate-Rado to :furbish his own image and Foote to denigrate Rado's role
while enhancing his own. Neither variant has been substantiated.
Rado repeats the well-worn allegation that "Werther," "Olga," "Anna," and
"T'eddie" were codenames for organizations, not individuals. This claim is not
substantiated by the traffic, and Rado also contradicts himself on this point.
These subsources were handled through "Sissy," and 'the traffic indicates that
there was conflict between "Sissy" and Rado over releasing their identities.
Moscow also tried unsuccessfizlly to force "Sissy" to identify them. If, as Rado
claims, these names stood for organizations, there would have been no reason
for Rado or Moscow to demand that "Sissy" identify them because there would
have been no persons to identify. They were in fact individuals, however, and
Rado's narrative inadvertently supports this conclusion.
Rado asserts, for example, that "one of `Lucy's' sources, to whom I gave
the name "Olga," served in the OKW communications headquarters." This
passage is certainly a description of a person. Rado also slips when he refers
to "Werther," "Anna," "Olga," and "Teddie" as " `Lucy's' agents." Deception is
also betrayed by the Hungarian version. In this account "Olga" is allegedly the
Oberkommando der Luftwaffe, not the OKW of the Russian version. (Russian
version, Part III, pp. 3, 13-14, 25; Part IV, pp. 14, 18; Hungarian version, pp. 40,
58-59. )
As noted above, Rado included "Teddie" among the cover names of organiza-
tions, not persons. Yet, in the Hungarian version (pp. 58-59) , he also described
"Teddie" as a person: " `Teddy' undertook to get the information [requested by
Moscow]. In the middle of April, :however, he sent word that for the time
being he could not take out the secret documents to copy them for us. He
promised to send detailed information, instead of the documents .the risk
was very great, and `Teddy' worked slowly out of caution." (Russian version, Part
IV, p. 25; Hungarian version, pp. 58-59. )
Rado is obviously trying to follow the established Soviet position by ob-
scuring the roles of these individuals. What is unclear, however, is why this
bit of deception is carried out so poorly. One possible explanation is that the
Soviets have created, through Rado, a book designed for a large lay audience.
Like Soviet forgeries, the memoirs were fashioned for immediate impact. Rado
says in the preface that the Soviet authorities provided the materials with which
he worked, and the KGB has consistently shown a disregard for scholarly exegesis.
In the case of "Luise," Rado distorts the facts in the other direction-that is,
".Luise" was the cover name for an organization, not an individual. Rado asserts
that he "had given the cover name `Luise' to the officer in the Swiss intelligence
office from whom we had gotten this report. The Center had great n?espect for
this source." The message referred to is dated by Rado as 6 April 1941. It is not in
our holdings. The first reference to "Luise" that we have is dated 21 October
1941. It includes this statement: "In the future I shall call the intelligence section
of the Swiss General Staff `Luise."' 'Thus, unlike `Werther' et al, `Luise' was not
an individual. Rado's claim that the Director "had great respect for this source"
is also false. The traffic from the Director to Rado clearly indicates that Moscow
had serious doubts about the reliability of the information provided by `Luise.'
( Russian version, Part II, p. 13; Hungarian version, p. 28) .
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Eariy in the summer of 1943, according to Rado, the Germans discovered
`Bill,' "a female secretary in the German Military Procurements Commission in
Switzerland." She was fia-ed for her intelligence activities. The last message in
the memoirs citing Bill' as a source is dated 18 May 1943. Rado alleges that the
deciphering of this message led to `Bill's' discovery and his decision to order `Sissy'
to break contact with `Bill.' This is fiction. Messages in our holdings dated 28
June 1943 and 1 September 1943 are sourced to `Bill.' They contain the same
type of information attributed to `Bill' in the message Rado dates 18 May 1943.
(The message in Rado's book may be invention; at least, it does not appear in
our files.) `Sissy' could not have broken contact with `Bill' in early summer., nor
could `Bill' have been fired at that time, because she was still providing infar-
rnatian in late summer 1943. (Russian version, Part III, pp, 27-28. )
In both versions of his memoirs Rada deliberately distorts the date of Otto
Punter's involvement with the Rote Drei and the role of Rudolf Roessler (`Lucy') .
1'he er~rars in this case as in all the others are not the result of an old man's failing
memory, because Rado admits having had access to "original documents in the
files of the Soviet Union." The purpose of these distortions seems to he to burnish
the images of both mean because of their pro-Communist leanings. He alleges,
for example, that he met Punter in 1938 (Russian version, Part I, pp, 59-60;
Iungarian, p. 15). It is more than likely that Rado is lying because a message
from `Dora' to the Director, dated 15 July 1942, identifies Punter as a new source.
It is highly improbable that Punter would have been recruited two to four years
before Moscow was informed.
Rado also claims that `Lucy' and Christian Schneider (`Taylor') worked
without pay, in return only for operating expenditures. Allegedly, they believed
that the U.S.S.R, was the "most- implacable enemy of Hitlerism, and on its struggle
depended the outcome of the war." At least in the case of `Lucy,' and probably
also of `Taylor,' this statement is a lie and Rado knows it. `Lucy' was awell-paid
mercenary, Rado's messages to the Director refer to `Lucy's' demands for pay-
ment, and the Director had to keep sending reassuring messages about finances.
7:'wo mincer points merit mention. In the Russian version (Part II, p. 22 )
of the memoirs Rado describes `Lang,' whom he does not identify as Georges
Blun, as a professional military intelligence officer. More correctly, `Long' was
a professional journalist with experience in intelligence work.
In the Hungarian version (p. 79) Rado erroneously calls `Sissy' Esther Rosen-
darfer. He does not ,give a true name for her in the Russian version. Her real
name is Rachel Duebendorfer. Again, there is clearly no possibility of error.
Alexander Foote identifies her correctly as Duebendorfer in his Handbook for
Series. Rado read Foote and refers to Foote's book in his own memoirs. This dis-
tortion may be a minor attempt to muddy Western records.
-Rote Drei traffic in Rada's memoirs
Although many or all of the messages not in our holdings but published in
the memoirs may he inventions, analysis of all messages in the memoirs and,
where possible, ~ comparison with messages in our holdings revealed no pattern
of deception. Most of the messages not in our holdings an-e described as sent
from Switzerland and as providing intelligence on the plans and disposition of
the German armed forces. Sorne few, sent by the Director, contained requests
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 Approved For Release 2004/12/16 :CIA-RDP78T03194A000400010006-5
Books SECRET
for additional information ar comments on the operation, of Rada's intelli-
gence net.
Both the Hungarian and Russian versions of the memoirs contain messages-
dated 1 January 1942 and 22 June 1943 respectively-which purport to relay
Vatican efforts to negotiate a compromise peace settlement between the Western
Powers and the Axis. The messages do not appear in our holdings, but they do
have some basis in fact. The Vatican was hostile to Communism, and in late 1941
it was involved in negotiations aimed at a compromise peace settlement. Never-
theless, the information contained in the messages may be fabricated. They appear
to represent an attempt by Rado and/or his advisors to link the Vatic