THE CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF INTELLIGENCE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP84B00890R000400040014-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: C
• Document Page Count: 15
• Document Creation Date: December 19, 2016
• Document Release Date: April 3, 2006
• Sequence Number: 14
• Publication Date: August 10, 1981
• Content Type: MEMO

We
10 August 1981
You asked for some comments on the CSI paper. My
understanding was that this group (or actually OPP)
was to come up with some alternatives for the CSI
which fell between
-- full management commitment and
participation in the Center's current
structure, and
I don't believe that this paper accurately reflects
that charter.
(over)
DO NOT use this form as a RECORD of approvals, concurrences, disposals,
clearances, and similar actions
FROMia (Name, org. symbol, Agency/Post)
LIDA Management to
5341-102
*U. S,GPO:197b'-U--261-617 3354
Room No.-Bldg. STAT
7D10 Has
O TIO AL FORM 41 (Rev. 7-76)
Proscribed by GSA
FPMR (41 CFFB) 101-11.206 STAT
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STAT
Since L requested comments,?I'd suggest
you rep y directly to him. (Dianne called everyone
requesting a drop copy of the reply.)
Since these recommendations offer no substantial
change to CSI (except removal from OTE) we could
probably respond as we did last time and add a
comment on our position on CSI leaving OTE, and on
the Historical Staff joining OPP as well. Our
other alternative is simply to state that the paper
doesn't meet its charter, and we stand on our past
position on CSI.
We can discuss further if you'd like.
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0 4,M (~- ge ~ (~~)
DRAFT
5 August 1981
The Center for the Study of Intelligence
At the request of the Deputy Director for Administration
(DDA), the Executive Committee (EXCOM) met on 9 July to con-
sider the future of the Agency's Center for the Study of
Intelligence (CSI).
The Center, founded by DCI Schlesinger in 1975 to provide
the Agency with a "mini think-tank" that would provide an at-
mosphere in which the more vexing issues that confront the
Community could be examined objectively and dispassionately
and encourage research and writing on the profession of Intel-
ligence, has faltered for lack of management support, stable
leadership and the lack of recognition and support from the
Agency's rank and file. Administratively as part of the
Office of Training and Education (OTE), the Center initially
flourished--producing more than 20 original monographs (CIA
Intelligence Support for Foreign and National Security Policy
Making; The Field Station of the Future; and Clandestinity
and Current Intelligence, etc.) and sponsoring more than 25
seminars (The National Tactical Issue, A Consumer's View of
Intelligence of Intelligence Analysis, etc.) that themselves
resulted in the publication of useful and widely disseminated
reports,
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 Assessments Center (NFAC), the Center experienced three changes
of leadership--one abrupt and two-relatively brief with a con-
comitant disruption of stewardship and continuity. Additionally,
the Agency entered a period of administrative change and re-
organization and personnel restraints. Administratively and
physically removed from the Directorate of Operations (DDO) and
NFAC and drawing little support from the Directorate of Science
and Technology (DDS$T), the Center's program languished and the
flow of DCI Fellows abated because prospective fellows perceived
little if anything that was career enhancing about the program
and the concept of DCI Fellows, itself, was overshadowed by the
established two years ago of the Exceptional Analysts Program
under the DCI's direct aegis.
Aware of these trends but unable to reverse them by winning
the kind of support necessary from the DDO, DDSET and NFAC, the
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'T
Central Intelligence Fellows who undertook research on issues
of concern to the Community and to the policy makers. These
fellows bespoke the Center to their colleagues, acted as its
representatives in Community-wide meetings and participated
actively in the seminars and meetings held during their tenure.
Once its original director returned to the National Foreign
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Key to its early success was aggressive and established
leadership and the appointment to the Center of Director of
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Director OTE_had concluded reluctantly by the Spring of
r
this year that the Center was expendable and recommended
that it be abolished. The Board of Studies of Studies in
Intelligence, the Agency's quarterly, disagreed with the
recommendation and sought a hearing first with the DDA and
then the EXCOM. (With the establishment of the Center in
1975, the editor of Studies was relocated from NFAC or its
predecessor and functions as Deputy Director of CSI. The
Board, in turn, functions as an advisory group to CSI--
approving research proposals, ratifying the nomination of
DCI Fellows, etc.).
The Board conceded the merits of the Director OTE's
brief, i.e., that the major directorates had not supported
the Center by proposing suitable research projects or
encouraging a steady flow of qualified Fellows, publicizing
CSI's published research or implementing whatever recom-
mendations followed from that research. Nevertheless, it
felt that the logic for a Center was as compelling in 1981 as
it had been in 1975 and that shorter-term research projects,
carefully monitored by the interested components and/or
directorate leaderships, would be a windfall for the Agency
and the Community. It was this counter argument that the
Board sought to place before EXCOM -along with proposals
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for changing its own membership and the character of Studies
in Intelligence (both deferred in the event).
The EXCOM had under its purview several papers setting
forth the high and low points of the Center and heard Mr.
Lehman argue that it required effective leadership, top level
support, experienced and qualified officers to serve as Fellows
and a visible link to the Agency's decision making process--
perhaps as a research mechanism for the EXCOM's own staff. Not
all of the members favored retention of CSI, arguing that its
resources, however limited, could better be applied in other
endeavors. But Messrs. McMahon, Briggs and Gates felt that the
Center should be retained, that it should be employed as a
vehicle for asking how the Agency and the Community do their
business, facilitating the exchange of ideas among managers and
nourishing the development of a body of intelligence literature.
The DDCI underscored his belief that the Agency will need
to focus on professionalism as it rebuilds and expands over the
next decade and noted that the Community is not overly endowed
with facilities or talent to sustain such an effort. He seemed
to favor the appointment of senior fellows with ready access to
top management as a means of gearing-in the Center to real time
issues and ensuring an audience for its product. He asked that
the Office of Policy and Planning (OPP) ponder the future of CSI
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and consider, in particular, what options or levels of invest-
ment would be required to sustain it at a greater level of
productivity.
OPP, in turn, chartered a working group with members drawn
from across the several directorates to prepare such a study.
The working group had access to the several proposals and
issues papers, etc., that had prompted DCI Schlesinger to
establish CSI following recommendations from the Management
Advisory Group (MAG) that he do so and the 1977 study by
Andrew Falkiewicz affirming the validity of the guiding concept
while at the same time seeking to reformulate the mission and
role of CSI so as to draw on the experience gained in its first
two and a half years. The focus of that report, like that of
this, was not on CSI's seminar program which all agree allowing
for a brief hiatus caused the dispersion of CSI personnel in
support of the first running of the Agency's Senior Officer
Development Course (SODC) is alive and thriving and recently
sponsored a productive evening session with the DCI, DDCI and
their principal deputies and working-level officers. Important
as it may be, that activity is not central to CSI's charter;
equally important it is not now--nor was it in 1977--becalmed,
as are CSI's research efforts.
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There is little disagreement about the desirability of
fostering the development of a literature of Intelligence,
The working group, like Sherman Kent in 1955, feels strongly
the lack of a systematic body of knowledge of high intellectual
content that would provide the underpinning for a sense of
professionalism in the intelligence business which has long
since evolved from a mere craft. Needless to say, such a body
of literature must be relevant--it must be related to real
issues, reflect real decision, encompass the trade-offs between
intelligence gaps, tasking, collection and production. With
few exceptions, such as those noted earlier, much of CSI's
work has lacked such relevance, just as the Center itself has
suffered from its separation from top management and the assurance
that its working is meaningful to the way the Agency functions.
Whether more stable leadership of CSI might have meant a dif-
ference is moot; there has not been that kind of enduring
direction, nor have the several directors clearly been seen
within or without the Agency to enjoy the confidence of and
access to senior management. Administratively speaking, there
may seem to he a kernel of logic to subordinating CSI to OTE;
practically speaking that subordination has meant that the
Center has functioned in a vacuum. That the directors of CSI
have been subordinated to OTE and physically separated from
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the major directorates has meant in practical terms their
divorcement and that of the Center from the arenas where the
Agency's real business is conducted, the corridors where the
give and take of ideas flourished.
There is no quick payoff to be realized from an entity
like CSI. Its goals are oriented to the longer term support
of management, i.e., the needs of the profession. To function
effectively over time it requires some measure of autonomy, as
well, so that it is not seen to be a mere tool to be applied
or misapplied in putting out fires. Finally, it must have and
be seen to have "support at the highest level."
In the judgment of the working group, CSI's current plight
is a compound or mix or lack of mix of all three of the fore-
going desiderata.
Candidly, too much of CSI's research has been unrelated to
the press of business and its product, however high the quality,
has lacked relevancy to harried managers who have turned to
staff officers for short term, action oriented studies that
might well be accomplished in the Center by officers assigned
to it for shorter periods of time. Its research ought to be
more closely related to day-to-day issues, to the Agency's and
Community's goals, to encompass and reflect both the expertise
and divergency of views present across the directorates.
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If it is to have an all-Agency, supra-directorate charac-
ter then it cannot be part of an office not directly tied to the
Director. It must benefit from proximity to senior management--
physically and administratively--if it is to be able to attract
the kind of energetic and upwardly mobile younger officers who
can lend it verve.
At present, the Center lacks focus and it lacks an audience
as well. Its members or fellows ought to be privy to the on-
going concerns of management and a significant part of their.
research ought to be geared to meet those concerns. There is
to be sure a requirement for histories and postmortems but their
preparation ought not to be the purpose of the Center or to drain
off energies better applied to anticipating the needs of tomorrow
or developing principles for the profession from the lessons of
today. In spite of the glare of newspaper exposure and con-
gressional investigation, or perhaps because of both, we have
become less'open to new ideas, less inclined to test standard
operating procedures against changing criteria. What better a
means of doing so than a Center for the Study of Intelligence.
Everyone agrees that the Center ought to serve as a
"Catalyst." What escaped us to date is a mechanism that would
ensure that the Center or something like it "can change the
way we do things at the Agency."
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The working group chartered by OPP at the direction of
EXCOM believes that such a mechanism can be found and brought
into play to accomplish that purpose.
In its deliberations on 9 July, EXCOM reaffirmed the need
for CSI or something akin to it. That being so, the working
group did not consider disestablishment as one of the options
it was to consider; rather, it considered the optimum size of
a center, the relationship of its director and members to
Agency leadership and its administrative subordination.
CSI currently has four professional positions--that of
the director, the deputy director (who serves as editor of Studies
in Intelligence and runs the Interdirectorate Seminar as well) a
publications officer and a lower grade seminar director or
training officer. In addition, there is one full-time clerical
assistant and part-time secretary, both seconded from OTE. More-
over, CSI now has one DCI Fellow and provides office space and
clerical support to one Exceptional Analyst from DIA. A second
Exceptional Analyst is scheduled to arrive in September. The
Exceptional Analyst Program is funded by the DCI's Office and
managed within the Community Staff which is not prepared to
provide either office space or clerical assistance, CSI
prudently has done both and the likelihood that it will be called
upon to do so in the future must be borne in mind in any allocation
of space.
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Four, full-time professional positions probably is the
optimum size for the permanent staff of any Center. Four
positions make possible the management of the Center's
ongoing research, the regular publication of the serials
Studies and Contra,(nominally a NFAC publication), the
sponsorship of seminars, and the monitoring of the work
of at least the DCI Fellows. (Some consideration ought to
be given to whether responsibility for the Exceptional Analyst
Program should be transferred from the Community Staff which
is undergoing reorganization and a change of mission, as well,
to the Center). More important than the size of the Center's
staff is the access its leadership has to the Seventh Floor,
Such access is essential if the Director of the Center and his
associates are to work closely with EXCOM members to identify
and explore research topics of concern to top management and
to be in a position to call upon the best talent available
within the Agency to undertake research. Implicit in this, of
course, is the idea of more flexible "fellowships," temporary
assignments to the Center pegged to the research project, itself,
rather than to stated terms of six months or a year.
Access and proximity argue against leaving the Center in
the DDA environment and away from Headquarters in OTE, which
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frankly regards CSI as expendable. They also argue against
subordinating it to NFAC or the National Intelligence Council
(NIC) since neither would afford the Center an all-Agency or
Community-wide cast. The latter character might be had by
transferring the Center to the Community Staff but such a move
would not of itself radically affect other Agencys' perceptions
of the Center and its role or result in people from other
agencies associating with it. That might better be accomplished
by coopting representatives of the Bureau of Intelligence and
Research, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National
Security Agency, etc., to the Board of Studies, thus imparting
a Community-wide character to the journal which is after all
published under the Director's imprimatur.
Considerations of access and proximity do argue for placing
the Center somewhere within the Office of the Director--within
the new Office of Policy and Planning or the Executive Secretariat
which oversees the work of the Agency's Historian. Of these two
choices, the working group thinks that assigning the Center to
the Office of Policy and Planning offers the greater promise
of success. (Moreover, while neither function fell within its
purview, the group is of the opinion that consideration should
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be given to relocating both the Agency Historian and the
Historical Intelligence Collection in OPP, thus bringing
together in one place current and historical research in
tradecraft together with both classified archives and overt
literature):
In sum, then, the working group recommends: (1) the
Center for the Study of Intelligence with four professional
slots be transferred from OTE to OPP; (2) that its mandate for
exploring issues of current concern to Agency management in
collaboration with EXCOM be affirmed; (3) that its staff
continue to be responsible for the publication of Studies
in Intelligence in collaboration with the Board of Studies
whose membership gradually be opened to other agencies in
the Community and (4) that eventually it be joined by the
Historian and the Historical Intelligence Collection.
OTE/CSI
(5Aug8l)
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