HISTORY OF THE CLANDESTINE SERVICES, A PRELIMINARY APPRAISAL OF THE PROBLEM

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80M00165A002900010110-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: C
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 22, 2006
• Sequence Number: 110
• Publication Date: May 14, 1964
• Content Type: MF

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OR: chief, Historical Staff f
1JCT
History of the Clandestine Services,
Ali inary Appraisal of the,
roblees
:iali ze historical study of a particular era, f unct en
b ich voold be required for the preparation of a story of the Clandestine Services or an a basis for -y
1. This se rrandum is addressed to the problem of file
or geographical area. it is based upon a survey, necessarily
Incomplete, and i reecise, of filed material available for such
2. (,uite aside from the more obvious factors inhibiting
the preparation of history covering a highly classifies and
compartmented organization and Its activities, a aisuelber of
other troublosoe problem merge upon inquiry. They Inc l e
a . The vould-be, chronicler today t start from
a foundation of nearly 1S years of virtual neglect in
the historical field; there ft" been no systematic
effort, and very little effort of any description, to
produce or prepare for the production of a history of
CI+G-CIA secret activities abroad or of the organiza-
tional components erected to carry then out.
b. Certain aspects of the clandestine eamponents
have been treated in existing histories of CI#IA
through 19SS? but almost always is contexts where such
mention was necessary to frame or to fill in accounts
of other matters; prior historians were explicitly
barred from dealing with the Clandestine Services per
se; some partial historical studies have been done foor
particular _ purposes but these are of limited value for
serious historical research.
. For the most port, existing files are hsphasl -
ardly organized and Inadequately indexed; they are not
aver .ive n in any acceptable sense of that term.
. Three general categories of files are pertinent to
dentine Services history: (a) those which pass bly
e d of extraneous material (but not of valuable
and retired to Records a ,.ion Division Central
here or to them (b) special
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puree files intended for ready reference, and (c) files of
whatever other description, not retired but held in the pos-
session of the several Clandestine Services components.
4. The first category in of wet interest and potential
usefulness for the historian concerned with the period prior
bout I January 1961. It also poses the knottiest prob-
. The great bulk of these files have been thrown together
by file clerks or junior officers with little apparent sub-
stantive din rimination. A few are well organized and of
uniformly good quality. Most contain some useful, papers inter-
si ngl ed with a preponderance of j unk . are junk from
y illuminating to outright misleading.
to finish. The indexing (or shell-listing) ranges frtn
a. Item: A two-inch-thick file folder labelled
"I-I " rr cp eape>mp dence" consists almost entirely of
iutunl platitudes.
h. Item: Another two-inch folder labelled "DIP
orrespo na e, ie containing useful and useless material
in approximately equal parts, has been put together
totally without reference to subject matter; it was
the WWI Executive Registry.
Item: The ribbon copy of a personally dic-
resting memorandus of conversation be-
1l Ion and 'radon Chiang Kal-a Beek in filed
senior representative folder, without
relations p to anything else therein.
d.. Item: Sol 11Y entombed at re
two folde i tbel led "Parking permits, 1930-37" (I
couldn't bear to look).
e. Item: Twenty-five folders are carefully
'
listed
as "Correspondence on Personalities and
,t Alicabl, to Any of Foregoing Titles."
And so on. Give or taker a few hundred, there are 129000
cubic feet of these materials in storage on retirement from
the DUP area. At a rough estimate, ther 8,000 cubic feet
of paper retired by other components may be guessed to have
pertinene
tea the Clandestine Services. (Total storage at
81#497 cubic feet the day I was there] capac-
ity is ! ,"$0.)
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U WHY
3. The second category of files presents the least fli-
cuity for the practical reason that they have been filed by
responsible officers who nae! r busistesass.caample
are the publications files in office and the Special
Group r eada-minutes in CA Stan. Because they are adequately
indexed and available for ready reference, their bulk is incon-
sequential. Along, he waver, they would suffice only for * bare-
bones chronological log and they are not reliable before 1933.
(Another example might be the 201 personality files, but these
are maintained for CICE purposes and have little relevance to
our wort.. )
6. Except for special studies in depth, such as Ron
the third category in not of immediate research
25X1 us unless we wish to risk writing our history from
the p t backwards. SQst of those papers are evanescent
and comprehensible only to their present guardians. Our gain
concern with them should be to take a few practical steps to
ensure that their residue does not become the bane of some
luckless might tossed to the tank of making historical acme
of them 18 years hence.
ibis if the authorities want it done. ft4as my
The job of winnowing the wheat from the chaff of the
files will be time-coming and largely drudgery, but
1 at it, I would estimate that a fairly rapid,
about one cubic toot per day. The figure of 20,000
ting reader could plow through then at an average
(12-000 plus 8,000) cubic toot could probably be halved by
risking perusal of the shelf lists only. Another 5,000 night
be disposed of fairly quickly by skimpy scanning. That would
leave 5000 cubic foot requiring serious reading which would
out to roughly 20 person-years. What I envision emerging
from this process& if properly done, would be a relatively
compact, properly i xeed set of true historical archives (I
doubt it would exceed 50 3 cubic feet at the outside), plus a
remainder of material which probably should be kept for some
reason or other, but better indexed and better organized than
now and purged of most dross and duplication.
8. Because this work could be done perfectly well at the
X1.1 through 13 level, the total cost In salaries would be
loss than S3OOvOOO. It this. f i gure- should appear an extrava--
ance, lent it be noted that:
a. We pay a g deal more than that annually al-
ready to people 00808 04 in hovering over these files:
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b. It in a tiny fraction of the money gone and
going into the Walnut retrieval system, which in not
needed for historical archives and in any case has its
input capacity over-taxed for the foreseeable future by
CICR requirements;
c. Although it would be nice to hire a qualified
archivist an a member of the team, the work could be done
without increasing the Agency payroll at all by reassign-
ments and adjustments of assignments; (1 know people who
have been placement problems who could do this work well
enough);
d. The only practical alternative would be to have
the same work done by better-paid senior officers, to the
detriment of what presumably are more useful activities.
9. Therefore I recommend that :
a. Preferably at least four people, but certainly
no fewer than two, be assigned as soon as possible to the
job of screening, indexing and placing in proper archival
form existing retired CS files--the assignments to be
made with the understanding that they would be adjusted if
the job proved either more or less onerous than antici-
pated; during their tours of duty, these people would be
under the full supervision of the Historical Staff;
b. That a representative of the Historical Staff
concert soon with appropriate officers of the CS to
establish procedures so that proper historical archives
will be maintained in the future; this will not be easy
because there are many fingers In the pie, standards of
compliance vary widely, and RID is not master in its own
domain.
10. The foregoing is concerned only with the records re-
search end of the CS historical problem. It is not the whole
problem. Its solution is essential but not prerequisite.
Other work can proceed concurrently. In a shortly following
memorandum I shall round out this discussion, but it will be
academic unless we can gain approval of substantially what I
have proposed above. 25X1
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