THE CHANGE AT CIA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80-01601R001200950001-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 9, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 7, 2000
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: December 26, 1972
• Content Type: NSPR

?OSI
Approved For Release 2001v:/pAsitple.IGe7:?sN,_RE,TF:opi-11?1:1Fr1R
The Change at CIA
..4
? 'There are such strict limits to what is knowable about
''fany discussion of Mr. Helms' departure from the direc-
the Central Intelligence Agency and its workings that
:torship and Mr. Schlesinger's appointment to replace
-him must necessarily rest on a comparatively small store
'of information. Even so, one or two things are plain.
:And chief among these is the fact, evident from what
is known about the two men themselves, that one highly
qualified and eminently capable official is being re-
placed by another.
- Richard Helms has spent most of his professional life
:in intelligence work, and he has acquired a reputation
-among those qualified to judge, as a man of great hon-
esty and tough-mindedness. The term "tough-minded"
in this connection can only summon forth imaginary
zither music for some people and visions of grown men
running around endlessly shoving. each other under
irains. But Mr. Helms?unflappable, personally disin-
terested, and beyond the reach of political or ideological
pressures where his judgment is concerned?earned his
reputation for tough-mindedness in an intellectual
-sense. As Agency Director, he has been far less a public
-.figure or celebrity than some of his predecessors?Allen
'Dulles, for example, or John McCone?evidently prefer-
"ring to maintain a certain becoming obscurity. He has
-Worked very effectively with some of his overseers on
the Hill. And, if the leaked not by CIA) material, such
1,/ 'as the Pentagon Papers, that has been appearing in the
press is any guide, he and his Agency have also served
-their executive branch leaders with some distinction.
,,One gets the impression that from the presumed efficacy
of bombing the North Vietnamese to the presumed neces-
sity of responding to every wild surmise of what the
Russians were up to in nuclear weapons development.
Mr. Helms has offered a practical, dispassionate and
rigorously honest?if net always popular?view.
That the Congress will be pushing for some greater
degree of responsiveness from the CIA in the coming
session seems pretty certain. And there also is at least
a chance that internal bureaucratic difficulties at the
Agency will require some managerial rearrangements.
In a way, solely because he comes to CIA from outside
(not from up the ranks), James Schlesinger may be
specially suited to take on both. But he has other quail-
fciations. At the Rand Corporation in California, Mr.
Schlesinger did analytic work that gave him more than
a passing familiarity with the intelligence estimating
business. At the Budget Bureau?as it was then known
?in the early days of the Nixon administration he
proved himself a very astute, not to say downright cold-
eyed, scrutinizer of military budget requests. His brief
term at the AEC was notable in several respects. Mr.
Schlesinger bucked the pressure of the atomic energy
establishment to insist that the AEC take note of and
respond to the claims of its ecological critics. And he
attempted to push the agency back from its political role
toward the more disinterested service role it was meant
in the first place to fulfill. He, like Mr. Helms, is
demonstrably a man of talent, dedication and impressive
intellect. We should have been content to see them
stay on in their present jobs. But if Mr. Helms is to
leave the Central intelligence Agency, we think Mr.
Schlesinger is a first class choice to replace him._
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Reviewed by
by
Bruce (hides
The r:eriewe'rTs written
extensiOly o)t African,,, pf-
lairs aita was a. member of
the Amoican inisswa- l?
Congo (inishaso) in-11364-65.
? ? ?
?
In this procesa of adding,
- up our flesh itc.1 blood as ?
well as lasychological losses -
from our recent adventures,
abroad, there should be a
line for the foreign service,.
especially 'the. junior ranks.
Talented potential: candi-
dates Inive -shunned go''ern-
talent service, and a number
of those on the :inside have
resigned Outright: An entire
foreign service gerievation
has been depleted by this
self-purge.
Some signed petitions and
? - demonstrated .before Ahoy
Oita others made a splash -
of resignation, as a question
of principle: Malcolm" Mc-
Connell did neither. ?
-
tie ? quietly went to. a
-Greek- Island and wrote in
eloquent fury a taut first
nqe1 about how a young
American diplomat and ex-
Freedom Rider, Steve Sher-
man, and his sexually ath-
letic wife ?spent . the last
week of. 1965 in the Congo
clueing a matata, the. Swahili
:equivalent of brouhaha.
And what, pray tell, does
this now ancient Congolese
history have to do with, say,
the U.S. "people-to-people"
campaign in Indochina? As
\r/Sherman, the disenchanted
FSG, put it to a CIA Man on
New Year's eve in Albert-
ville, "All you people going
around the world writing
- surrender passes and bomb-
Ing , the hell 'out of people
and stuff like that. It's O.K.
as long you say they're Com-
Munists ... Why the hell do'
we always have to decide
who gets bombed and who
-gets the milk powder?"
? Sherman IS disgusted not
MATATA. rly Malcolm McConnell.
(Viking. 360 Pp.. 68.95)
with the superficiality One is almost relieved to
see Tshimpama's youthful
respect and admiration for
whites exolve to adult
hatred. Anything lesi would
have meant McConnell
pulled punches. A CIA B-26
I saw parked on the apron,
at Kamina in Int carried
- an unforgettable reminder.
On the nose of that. plane
abroad is that in posts with-
out an FBI agent, it is the 7onr" anti-Castro Cubans
CIA section that keeps tabs were flying on behalf of tina
Congo's national air force
was the World War II-style
hand-painted manic: "Boo-
gie's Bogey."
only
of the U.S. contact with the
Congolese, but with the vapid,
play-every-night life he end
Lisa are leading within the
American community?a
phenomenon known as em-
bassy incest. ?
One of the paranoia-induc-
ing tauths of embassy life
on the private lives of all
Americans. Me.Connell dem-
onstrates just what a clout
for conformity this lever
can deliver. The spook tells
Sherman, "You won't get a
security clearance for a pay
toilet in Red Square when
Pm through with you."
"Matata" is the first novel
to give a slice of what life
was really like for Ameri-
cans in the Congo in those
slapdash days, and Me-
Connells effort is a vivid,
chilling success. The Congo,
now the Republic of Zairt2,
was the kind of place where
one set of American officials
used every possible pressure
to keep private Americans
from joining the South Afri-
can-Rhodesian dominated
mercenary commandos,
while others saw to the
"mercs" - combat needs in-
cluding jeeps?with AID
friendship decals?to chase
Simba rebela. It wouldn't do
for Americans to actually
kill Africans, not even er-
rant ones.
McConnell, fortunately,
does not limit his perspec-
tive to a one-way view of the
Congo's tragedies, but he
tells at sympathetic counter-
point the only slightly inereda?
.ible story of the ghillies-
. sential Congolese, Pies-re-
Marie Tshimpama, a victim
of independence.
The difficulty of drawing
a fair conclusion about what.
the U.S. did in the Congo is:
that, according to the usual
yardsticks of international
success, our cowboy diplo-
macy worked. The Congo is
still whole, the U.S. role and
expenditure there is down
considerably, American in-
fluence remains. high, and
the goVernment is relatively
stable. ?Joseph Mobutu is
just as much a fat-cat -gen-
eral and expert at one-man
elections as Nguyen Van,
Thieu, but he and his coun-
try have receded in the
Atherican mind back to the
travel pages. a?
Nevertheless, -the Ameri-
can diplomatic brigade that
helped put out the fire is to
a substantial degree still in-.
tact. When things got slow in.
the Congo, the State Depart;
talent transferred Mc-
Council's boss, Ambassador
G. .McMurtrie Godley, back
to Indochina. The gregari-,
ons Godley -took to Laos a
choice selection of aides in-
cluding his CIA station
chief and his present chief
deputy where, to this day,
the "Congo inafia'i is still
doing business:
However, the protagonifit.
of this novel, Steve 'Sher-
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:caching a conclusion about
,
the_ quality 'of_ Anterican di-
plomacy he saw. Ile told the
CIA ? mart all.:'about 'it:
"You're all just robots. You
don't have any human feel-
ing left . . . They're just
epics or niggers or siopes to
you. They're something to
f with, some-
thing to laugh at and plan
air strikes against and make
up ? lies about in your
horse-hit reports. It doesn't
matter whore they send Yon.
It'll always be the same,
doesn't 'matter if it's Cuba.
or Laos or the Congo. You
just follow orders.". ,
? The civil right S collegians
of the, early .'605 didn't jute:
grate easily into the foreign
service. They weren't as in-
different and 'calculating as -
the traditional mold would
have preferred, but the
Steve Shermans were in-
tensely aware of what Wash-
ington is now rediscovering:
the human consequences of
foreign policy.. . ?
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WAStiiii a A
1Th s. ?17
;;iiO"iri? flJ
Reviewed by
Henry Steele
COMM ager
The reviewer taught at Go-
tumbia for 20
veers and is now the Simpson
Lecture?. at Amherst College.
He testified this spring be-
fore the Senate Comm.ittce on
Foreign. Relutions on presi-
eevtial yowers in foreign
policy.
When James. Russell Low-
ell wrote that Arat,rica waS
nutured "by . strong men
with empire in. their brain"
he had in y?ind that empire
-which stretched. from the
.Atlantic to the. Pacific, not
one that encompassed the
globe. To the generation of
the Pounding Fathers, and
their successors through
most of . the 10th century,
these two concepts of em-
pire were antithetical; more,
?they viere in eeoneiliablo_
Mr. Posey here CoridliCts
an inquiry into the nature of
the new American empire,
one which ostentatiously
Jini
1- 00T 1071
. ?
tV uiti
THE ASTRIDE THE GLOBE.
By Merlo f. Pusey.,
' (l30u,_;h ton Mif inn, 247 pp.. 51.55)
the world's largest fleet off
the China coast, perhaps the
? speond largest fleet in the
:Mediterranean; enough nu-
. Clear overkill to destroy any
enemy: 10 times OVCC; CI
SiThVerS10/1 in some 60 coun-
tries. Ile has not explored,
though he MIAS at, the
larger costs ---- to the sue.
-cess of the United Nations;
to our standing in the inter-
national community, to our
own internal unity, to our
economy, our culture and
cur morality.
How hos it 131ppened that
a people who so long cher-
ished- the notion that 11.1-2-:7
were h_ar.!pily isolatd from
the rest of the globe 110,,,V
eagerly embraces 'involve-
ment?militory and political
involvement?in every quar-
ter of the globe?
plunges into the "extermi- This is a large subject and
Jutting havoc" and the de- one which Mr. Pusey cloa3
.gradations" ()revery quarter not undertake to, illuminate.
of the. globe. The new ithicr- Two ConsiCerations appear
to be relevant.
San tayara has said that
Americans never . really
lean. empire,. In sharp (and
'perhaps in the long run ben:
ificent) contrast- to ear-
lier empire, from those of
Alexander and Augustus to
those of Louis XIV and
Queen Victoria, is neitlic)
Solve any problems; they
amiably- bid them good.
bye. -We are now in process
not merely of bidding prob.
lems good-bye but of bid-
cultural not economic, NAL ding good-bye to both
his-
alniost wholly military. :tory and experience; it may
? .Mr. Pusey has analyzed be doubted that there htis
ever been an American ad-
ministration as ignorant, of
and Contemptuous of history
as that which now presides
over our frustrations and de-
feats. The Founding Fathers
did not feel themselves
bound by history?indeed;
they were confident that
America was to open, a new
page in history?but they
were familiar with it, end
with its "lessons". They
thought that history was
"philosophy teaching by ex-
amples" end studied that
phi/osophy and those exam-
ples: thus Madison and
? Hamilton in the "Federalist
Papers," John Adams in the
"Defense of the Constitu-
tions," Jefferson in all of his
Approved For Release 2001/03/04 : CIA-RDP80-0
and charted the manifesta-
tions of this American re-
sponse to the Communist
challenge: $1,000 billion in.
military expenditures; an
annual military budget of
.some $110 billion; military
:bases in 33 countries; an
?elaborate net:Ivo/Tit of alli:
prices which hs led us to
propping up the Franco re-
gime in Spain, the rule of
the colonels in. Greece, the
-military regime in ? Brazil,
the Thicu dictatorship . in
.South Vietnam and so forth;
state papers; Tom Paint., in
"The Rights of Man.'
We no longer read history
this way pr to this pur-
pose; yet Presidentf;
son and Nixon Might have
done worse than study the
history of the Sicilian Expe-
dition as told. by Thucy-
(rides: taken to heort, that
lesson might have allowed
us to escape from Vietnam.
The last four administra-
tiorrs have been prepared, in.
little things as in big, to ig-
nore history, even our own.
They have been prepared to
ignore what we' ourselves
long took for granted: that
sezrecy de.feats itself; that
you can't fool all the people
all the time; that the mili-
tary cannot be trusted, with.
responsibility for national
?policies; _that pow-er cor-
rupts; and that?in the
words of John Stuart
governliient which dwarfs
its nen in order to make
them docile instruments of
power will find that with.
small, men no great things
can ever really be accent-
plished.
This readiness to forego'
the lessons - of the Past is iii'
part responsible for the see-
ond major source of CODf12-?
sion and error: our persist-
once in a double standard--
a double standard of national
and international conduct
that has by now become sec-
ond nature. Examples are
familiar: we denounce Rus-
sia (and justly) for. invading
Czechoslovakia to overthrow
a government it disap-
proves, but we ourselves in-
vade Santo Domingo for
much the same purpose; We
regard it as "a dark day for
mankind" when China deto-
nates a nuclear . bomb btit
We ourselves dropped mt-,
ciear bombs on Japan- and
threaten Vietnam and Chinn.
with them; we lava one
standard for the Germans
guilty of 1,,,Ex climes at Nu-
remberg and for Japanese in.
the Tokyo Trinls, but a very
different one for our own vi-
olatio
the / a s of war,
ire.? f roe.111. Of prisoners,
.the Mylai massacre'
It is, still., always the
side that. cheats?Rus-
sia or China, or Cuba, or
North' Vietnam. They arc-
the aggressors. It. is they
who violate the law. It is
They who are the militarists,
and force us, all unwilling,
to take to arms..
Mr. Pusey proposes some
remedies and some- changes
designed to .advancc peace
throughout the world and
'harmony at home. Put an
end to the'Vietnam adven-
ture; get, out of Southeast
Asia, and, eventually, of
Korea and the Philippine's.
Abandon 'our excessive
bases in most parts of the
globe--hut not NATO:
NATO is a beneficent insti-
tution. Limit the arms race,
, defuse trouble spots in the.
Middle East: and India and
the Caribbean, restore civil-
ian control of the military
and restore the blanee ?be-
tweet; the exeeutive and the
legislative power.
? Al) of this isonoeilleso to
say, to the good;. needless to
say it is not good enough. It
leaves the Cold V-ar almost.
as cold as ever.The Soviet is
net going to loosen pressure
.on her border st.ties as long.
as we maintain a mighty
military presence in - Gar-
' many; it is not going to step
playing a power game In the
Middle East as long a.,,"thi,
US. Navy dominates ?the
...Mediterranean cud Greece
and Turku are part of,
NATO. China is net .going to
abandon the Cold War 'as_
long as we insist on a two-
China policy or forco
armament on the japan.e.se;
whom we once forbade to
arm. The Pentagon is :net
-going to be.returnedilO.thet
subordinate, place which', it
should occupy in our palitie-at
system as long as Preside*.
and Secretaries of Defense
are prepared- to act f.;..Sits
-
spokesmen and champions;
the Congress Is not going to
recover its constitutional
equality as long 'T:fl? ill?l") many
of its members arc. pusiliani-
? mons in periormanoe of
duty. Americans are not go-
ing to abandon their dclu-
sive double standard either
at Ilene or abroad am long
as their schools, their press,
their television, their. lead-
ers continue to impress upon
Clem that they are
the
and
trittic0097001-7
? - ards.
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