ROUTING AND RECORD SHEET HIRING FREEZE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP84B00890R000500110006-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 34
• Document Creation Date: December 14, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 9, 2003
• Sequence Number: 6
• Publication Date: February 6, 1981
• Content Type: FORM

ROUTING AND RECORD SHEET n
SUBJECT: (Optional) r u S
Hiring Freeze Lbo L-Z'
FROM: Harry E. Fitzwater
Director of Personnel
EXTENSION
NO.
Policy, Planning, and Management
DATE y
TO: (Officer designation, room number, and
building)
DATE
OFFICER'S
COMMENTS (Number each comment to show from whom
RECEIVED
FORWARDED
INITIALS
to whom. Draw a line across column after each comment.)
1 A/Deputy Director for
Administration
~2
I would like to meet with you and
the others concerned immediately
staff
mornin
the Monda
followin
2
g
y
g
meeting in the DCI Conference Room.
3.
/0
fir-
4.
Harry Fitzwater
5.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
FORM 61 O USE PRE
I-79 EDITIONS
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The Honorable David Alan Stockman
Director
Office of Management and Budget
Washington, D. C 20503
Dear Dave: ,
I have assessed in some detail the impact of the Presidential hiring
freeze on the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). I am now satisfied that
the Agency has already suffered from even a short hiring freeze because of
the unusual nature of its hiring process. As a prerequisite to employment,
each applicant must undergo an extensive, time-consuming and expensive
security investigation. This process includes an exhaustive 15-year
background investigation. The selection and clearance process typically
stretches out over many months and, as you might expect, we lose many good
people just because they either cannot or choose not to tolerate this time
delay inconvenience. Even in the best of times the Agency has trouble
filling positions for certain critical skills. From past experience when
the Agency was forced to turn off its applicant pipeline, it took many
months to recover.
While there are many serious requirements for new employees, I am
prepared to live temporarily with the freeze--except in certain critical
skills necessary to our mission. At present, the Agency is 302 personnel
below the Congressional-approved FY-1981 budget ceiling
expect to lose another 720 through attrition by the end of the fiscal year.
I consider it imperative that we be given partial relief from the freeze in
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certain critical categories. These skills represent approximately 55 of the
160 skills categories for which we recruit personnel. Specificially, we
request authority to hire among the following skills to fill current
vacancies and one-for-one attrition in these special categories:
Occupational
Category
Projected
Attrition
Requested Exemptions
Not to Exceed
Freeze Impact
Attachment
Communications
Specialists
49
149*
A
Operations
Officers
80
172*
B
Engineers and
Physical
Scientists
75
75
Computer
Specialists
24
24
Intelligence
Analysts
106
168*
Security Officers
and Couriers
26
26
F
Linguists
20
20
Attorneys
15
15
Clericals
164
164
The Agency's ability to conduct clandestine operations also is depend-
ent upon a large number of non-ceiling personnel who are hired on contract
or memorandum of oral commitment to perform essential operational support
*Includes current vacancies.
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The majority of
those involved are foreign personnel who properly fit the definition of
agents. However, in some cases the operations support functions can be met
best by a U. S. citizen or, because of cover and security considerations,
can be met only by a U. S. citizen. Payment usually ppsists of a small
retainer, a fixed daily rate, or reimbursement for out-of-pocket expenses.
Turnover in this category is constant, and 100 new operations support assets
will be required during the remainder of the fiscal year..- I cannot believe
that it is the intent of the hiring freeze to restrict this Agency from the
use of these assets. For record purposes, I ask that you affirm that
these individuals are exempt.
In addition to the above, I believe it necessary that you exempt from
the freeze those applicants placed in process between 5 November 1980
and 20 January 1981. During this period the Agency had given commitment
letters to 465 applicants. Under the most ideal conditions, only 50 percent
of these would survive the clearance process. Because of our unique hiring
problem, a considerable investment of time and money has already been
expended in the advertising for and recruitment, selection and investigative
screening of these apicants currently in process. They were selected from
among approximately 12,000 applicants. There is a large number of the
critical skills represented in this category, and it would be an indefensi-
ble waste to discontinue their processing and not allow those who passed the
screening to report for duty. To realize a return on our investment, this
entire group should be exempted from the freeze.
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The impact of the total freeze in hiring of the above-critical cate-
gories of skills is discussed in the attachments. I urge your favorable
consideration of this request and assure you that I will maintain strong
monitoring controls on all new hires to ensure that only those for whom we
have requested exemption will be brought on-duty. Your approval of this
request will help me fulfill my responsibilities at an acceptable level,
while demonstrating my support for the President's hiring freeze.
Yours,
William J. Casey
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Operations Officers - The 1978-79 Operations Directorate's
personnal reductions, combined with a very high retirement attrition,
resulted in the loss of thousands of man-years of experience, the
present shortage of 140 operations officers, and a projected shortage
l iZ
of 2O0`by the end of FY-1981. This understrength coincides with
dramatic increases in demands for clandestine human intelligence
collection against economic, monetary, nuclear, science and tech-
nology and political targets; the "rebirth" of covert action
generated by events in the Near East, Latin America and Africa;
and the necessity
to open new stations overseas. In spite of a hostile overseas
environment, making overseas assignment less than attractive, a
major recruiting effort was beginning to make up the deficit in
these officers. Under ideal conditions these officers are hard to
recruit; they are usually employed, and often at salaries higher
than we can afford to pay, and because of their qualifications
Ware in great demand in both the public and private sectors.
It is necessary that an input of 160 Career Trainees and 40 other
operations officers with non-official cover and other special skills
be recruited annually in order to reach and maintain ceiling. The
interrelationship of hiring and training these officers is in-
extricable; it is one process and when one part of the chain is
broken the entire process is thrown awry. Because of length of
processing and availability of training resources, new applicants
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are not available for operations production for at least 20 months
after being placed in process. Even if the freeze were lifted now
it is doubtful that there would be an output class from these
recruits until spring 1983. In summary, the full hiring freeze
will cause major problems for the Operations Directorate over both
the short- and long-term. To be more specific with respect. to
immediate impact -- intelligence__will_not...b_e_.__colLected against
high priority ar ets, covert ac Q _progxams cxi ~ al_to_U.S.
foreign policy efforts will not be mounted, and some overseas
stations and bases will have to be closed.
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T
Engineers and Physical Sceintists
As with all other hard-to-get occupation categories in the CIA, engineers
and physical scientists also present us with unique acquisition problems.
All agencies of government have difficulty competing with the private sector
for the skills of these professionals. As a part of the improvements made
in the Agency's selection and processing procedures, major recruiting emphasis
was placed on this category. It has taken us eight months to get 86 people
with these skills into our pipeline.
During FY 1981 the DBS&TT alone will be responsible for the execution of about
$1 billion of contract and other program activities which will support pro-
grams across the full spectrum of intelligence functions requiring the appli-
cation of tec,'nlology. These include the management of ongoing space collec-
tion systems; the development of the next generation of space collection
systems; the management and operation of a number of ground-based collection
systems both independently and in close partnership with NSA; and the develop-
ment and operation of critically important audio, covert communications,
and other techical support to the operations people of CIA's Directorate for
Operations.
We conduct these programs through people who have post graduate degrees
and/or significant industrial experience in such fields as electrical engineering,
physics, mathematics, optics, chemistry, and electronics. Our workforce
is relatively young and highly mobile. Substantial numbers of our people
can easily move to private sector concerns like TRW, Lockheed Missiles and
Space and other high technology corporations. Because of the technical
challenge we are able to offer, the inherent excitement and dynamism of our
programs, and the reputation we have in the high technology community, we
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are able to attract and hold individuals of high competence -- despite our
inability at many levels to compete with private sector salaries and benefits.
We do, however, face some attrition in our workforce. Experience tells us that
we are most likely to lose the people whose skills we most require. They
are the people with mobility, contacts, significant future growth potential,
and professional experience gained here of great value to the private sector.
If we cannot replace these key people as we lose them, we will have to shift
qualified people, where we have them, from other programs. This will cause
significant disruption. More critical to us is the fact that in many cases
we will simply not have the talent required anywhere within our organization,
and in those cases critical positions will go unfilled. DDS$T has two such
key senior positions unfillable today from within our organization. Extending
this state of affairs for any significant period of time will substantially
increase the risk of serious and expensive mistakes in judgment, omissions,
and schedule adjustments within ongoing developmental activities. It is our
judgment that failure to improve the limited exemptions in critical skills
areas proposed in the letter above will prove exceedingly costly to the
government over the next two to three years. In addition, the Office of
Scientific and Weapons Research will have increasing difficulty in providing
analyses of foreign space weapons systems, nuclear warheads, and computer
technology.
S
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Computer Specialists
The CIA has as much difficulty dct{uirilig computer specialists as
-A-t,'4 SRS-Ns r'P -YI oscy
it does engineers and physical scientists for all af.-ttth:e -carne
r-e.aaans sited abe. Programs like SAFE.--a large computer system
being developed to improve the tools available to intelligence
analysts--will be significantly i~ a ed because of an inability
to acquire supervisory and operating personnel to man the computer
center scheduled for initial operation in 1982. Again,
because of the length of the pipeline for people with these
skills andtheir need for extensive training, the SAFE system may
'el not begin operation as scheduled. Because of the dynamic
nature of the marketplace for these skills, attrition in this
category is typically higher than others and will impact ongoing(
computer operations that this Agency has become so dependent
upon.
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~' _= ,n Anal ~sts - In the Cor. ressier.~tl.-approved b dget
for FY-19.81 the National Foreign Assess,ent Center (NPAC) .
was authorized an additional. 64 positions and projects losses
lc E,
of an additional people through the era of FY-1981.
-- NI~AC's research on geographic, eco:,o:uiic and political
issues will be most affected by the freeze. NFAC does not have
enough people working on required aspects of the Third World. ,
Critical subjects that cannot be address:d because of the lack
of analysts crith the necessary backgrownds, and because the people
presently employed on Third World subjects are heavily engaged in
current intelligence on crises rather than in research. The areas
inhere we are unable to meet our research objectives include:
Central America and the Caribbean; Egypt and Saudi Arabia;
Eastern Europe; energy shortages 0 South Africa; and
factors supporting Third ~;orld political instability.
-- Fifty to sixty analysts t?;i th the following skills
are needed: 15 economists 1Jith various area specialities and/or
background in energy topics; 20 people free among the disciplines
of anthropology, political./cultural geography, demography,
critical non-fuel resources; and 20 people tith area expertise
in Latin America (parti.cularly Central America,
Brazil) ,
Africa, and the Middle East (especially Lc pt, Saudi Arabia ant
the lesser Gulf States) .
-- In the absence to hire at leastk5 of the above
category, I expect degradation to CIA's intelligence production.
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Security Officers and Couriers
The CIA relies on people with these skills to protect our classi-
fied information and to protect our facilities, both at home and
abroad, that contain not only classified information, but our
people as well. Given increasing political instability in the
major areas of the world, as most recently evidenced by incidents
in the Near East and Latin Americaq CIA security officers are
taking on increasingly r '~~me-x~ts with respect to
the protection of our employees and our property located overseas.
Our .security officers play critical roles in
performing security investigations,, not only for prospective
CIA employees, but also for the myriad of people in the private
sector working on classified CIA contracts--some with the very
highest clearance requirements of our government. CIA security
officers are also very heavily and continually involved in counter-
intelligence and antiterrorist activities overseas, Rcg~a~a-g
RPaarr~inrt nnr rn?r,o~.~- ,.... ..,.,.i.. ..... ~L,.- '-- --- -
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delivery and pickup points around the world on a
24-hour-a-day basis. We are presently some 30 percent under
strength in this occupational category and, without relief, will
haveKo recourse but to d-e~e-te professional employees from their
primary intelligence-related responsibilities to perform these
courier duties, to the further detriment of CIA's intelligence
collection and production responsibilities.
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.,
i~_:" t~-
Linguists
Skilled linguists are a vanishing breed in America. This comes
at a time of increased demand for linguists by~:both the govern-
ment and multinational corporations. For example, increased
requirements to translate documents from the Muslim world have
been levied on the
Operations Directorate is debriefing an ever-increasing
number of and has requirements for overseas
w~r~
operations officers Derr very esoteric languages o~~. At
this time, the DDO is 50. percent below its language capability
need. In many cases, there are only a few people in the
United States who speak and read the more difficult languages--
Chinese, Russian, and Arabic, for example. Once an applicant
25X1
with a language capability is found, it is absolutely necessary
to hire the person if he/she meets other necessary qualifications.
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Attorneys - Because of high turnover, our General
Counsel's Office expects to be at only half strength if the
freeze continues for the rest of this fiscal year. At least
one-half the work of the Office is devoted to dealing with
cases in active litigation (approximately 150 to which the
Agency is a party at present; plus some 50 more in which
important Agency interests are at stake, even though the CIA
is not a named party). To reduce the attention being given
to these cases would risk public disclosure of classified
intelligence information, degradation of the Director's
authority to protect intelligence sources and methods, and
judicial interference in Agency operations. If new vacancies
in the Office of General Counsel are not filled, and in
light of the fact the Office cannot diminish attention to
active litigation, virtually all other legal activity would
have to be curtailed. This would result in an inability to
assist the Directorate of Operations in implementing clan-
destine activities and in assuring that clandestine and
cover necessities in the United States do not expose intelli-
gence officers to criminal or civil liability. In addition,
the Office would be severely hampered in carrying out present
efforts to simplify legal regulation applicable to intelli-
gence activities and to remove unjustified restrictions
imposed in the past.
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Clericals
experience
As you might suspect, we es}~exaxll~Cxxxe our highest attrition
in the field. This has obviated the nee~to sendSecretaries
rates in the clerical fields and yet in many ways xeare most depen-
dent upon these skills to make our daily processes operate
effectively and efficiently. ~Ye are talking here not only
about typists and stenographers who produce our large numbers
of intelligence reports, but also with the file clerks who
help compile volumnous data and with the payroll clerks who
ensure that our employees are paid. Based on the Carter hiring
freeze, for example, the Operations Directorate has already
accummulated 75 clerical vacancies in Headquarters and 30 addi-
tional clerical vaca/n~ci~es in the field. CIA has historically
utilized spouses of ~-h~-~r employees to satisfy clerical requirements
~~ around the world at a significant annual savings. This hiring
freeze, while precluding us from saki ~E "'9clerical requirements
overseas, is also precluding us from satisfying these requirements
in the most efficient manner. This is just one example of our
clerical difficulties. Others of equal magnitude exist everywhere
in the Agency.
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Dear Dave,
I have assessed in some detail the impact of the Pxe.~i.dent's
hiring freeze on the CIA. I am now satisfied that the Agency will
suffer from even a short freeze because of the unusual nature of
its hiring process. You are no doubt aware of the stringent
security requirements that must be met by al{prospective Agency
employees--an exhaustive 15-year background investigation, poly-
graph interview, and the like. This selection and clearance
process typically stretches out over six months and, as you
might expect, we lose a lot of good people just because they
either can't or chose not to tolerate this inconvenience. Those
who stick with it do so in largest part because of the good
faith that CIA demonstrates.
Even in the best of times, CIA has trouble fillings its
authorized position ceiling. This factor, coupled with the
fact that over the last three years the Agency has suffered an
inordinate skills loss, puts CIA in a very difficult position.
The Agency has, within the past year, implemented sweeping improve-
ments in the way it selects and processes prospective employees.
',dhile these changes have been productive, CIA has still not been
able to significantly shorten this so-called pipeline--the end
to end recruiting and processing system used to acquire new
employees. If the Agency is required to turn off its pipeline,
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It will take literally years to turn it back on again.
The CIA will be most vulnerable in a hiring freeze in
what it calls its Hard-to-Get Critical Skills, a longstanding
collection of skills that have been particularly difficult to
acquire in recent years. Each of these skills categories is
significantly under strength now. The Agenc:- has estimated its
attrition through the end of the year, and the dilemma looms
much larger. The following specifics wil gi~-e you an appreciation
of the dilemma:
Occupational
Category (Hard-
to-Get)
Under Strength
As of
Estimated
FY 1981
Attrition
Communications
Specialists
100
49
Operations Officers
(foreign intelligence
collection)
100
100
Engineers and Physical
Scientists
Computer Specialists
75
24
Security Officers and
29
Couriers
Linguists
Clericals
43
20
165
475
Communications Specialists
The CIA's Office of Communications provides a worldwide service
classified communications. The Office of Ce-:.:~unications, because
2
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of its serious understrength condition, is and will continue
to be unable to satisfy overseas communicator requirements
-some nei~: activities, others
necessary expansions of existing activities.
ti7oreover, red.uc-
tions will very shortly have to be imposed at other foreign
posts. This will be accomplished by- reducing seven overseas
stations from a four-communicator complement to a three-commur.i-
cator complement; reducing~tations from three communicators
to ttivo communicators; and reducing additional Stations from STAT
ti~.,~.
two communicators to ~a single communicator/. These cuts would
result in a reduction of overseas communications operations
of some0percent and would .eliminate some percent of cur- STAT
rent overseas electronic reporting of foreign intelligence.
Domestically, the Office of Communications is also responsible
for the maintenance and repair of CIA's metropolitan Washington,
D.C. telephone service, both unclassified and secure. It
STAT
works. The Office is now estimating that it will increase its
usage of overtime some 65 percent just to maintain existing
.levels of support. If the freeze continues for any appreciable
length of time, an additional 10 percent will be necessary.
Notwithstanding this extensive and inefficient use o.f overtime,
significant operational delays will occur.
Operations Officers
Personnel reductions imposed on the Operations Directorate in
1978 and 1979 combined with a very high retirement rate not
unassociated with the reductions have resulted in a significant
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loss of unique intelligence skills. The CIA is only in the
very early stages of recovering from these losses. Current
understrength in this. area coincides itiith dramatic increases and
demands for:
-- Clandestine intelligence collection against
economic, monetary, nuclear, science and technology,
and political targets;
-- The rebirth of the Agency's covert action capability
resulting from events in the Near East, Latin
America, and Africa;
-- The necessity to open new stations overseas.
In order to satisfy these requirements under less than ideal
conditions (hostile overseas environment not conducive to normal
family living), it is necessary that we bring 160 career trainees
and 40 nonofficial cover officers through the pipeline each year.
The pipeline for these officers begins with their initial
identification and stretches through~~heir subsequent interviews,
security processing, unique tradecraft training, and culminates
with foreign language training some 24 to 30 months later. This
pipeline is ~ carefully structured continuum. Interrupt any
part of it, and you seriously unbalance all other segments.
Engineers and Physical Scientists
As with all other hard-to-get ocupation categories in the CIA,
engineers and physia~.l scientists also present us with unique
acquisition problems. All Agencies of government have difficulty
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competing with the private sector for the skills of these profes-
sionals. As a part of the improvements made in the Agency's
selection and .processing procedures, as previously discussed,
major recruiting emphasis was placed on this category. It has
taken us eight months to get 86 people with These skills into our
pipeline. These skills are most urgently needed in the Officeof
Development and Engineering, in support of national reconnaissance
programs; at the National Photographic Interpretation Center,
tivhere we are initiating major improvements in our ability to process
collection data that will be acquired with a neti~T generation of
overhead collection systems; in the Office of SIGINT Operations,
to work on developing capabilities to recover Soviet data that was
~,x,s c L~...
STAT lost the closing of our
O
sites; and in the Office of
Logistics, which is tasked with supporting all of these endeavors.
-t-l~.a~t.__~e.c~u~-~=~-...s~m~_._c?~b~.ti.ox~...of_ ~evl;--?mechani-cal ~ .~,~arrd-.~ele~tri~-a 3:
an-g ~~-e~~g---s~-~~. I n addition , the O f f i c e o f S c i e n t i f i c and
Weapons Research will have increasing difficulty in providing'~t-o--
mex analyses~f foreign space weapons systems, nuclear warheads,
and computer technology. ( ~)
Computer Specialists
The CIA has as much difficulty acquiring computer specialists as
it does engineers and physical scientists. for alI of the same
reasons ~ited above. Programs like SAFE--a large computer system
being developed to improve the tools available to intelligence
analysts--will be significantly impacted because of an inability.
to acquire supervisory and operating personnel to man the computer
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center scheduled for initial operation in 1982. Again,
because of the length of the pipeline for people with these
skills andp~heir need for extensive training, the SAFE system may
well not begin operation as scheduled. Because of the dynamic
nature of the marketplace for these skills, attrition in this
category is typically higher than others and will impact ongoing
computer operations that this Agency has become so dependent
upon.
Security Officers and Couriers
The CIA relies on people with these skills to protect our classi-
fied information and to protect our facilities, both at home and
abroad, that contain not only classified information, but our
.people as well. Given increasing political instability in the
major areas of the world, as most recently evidenced by incidents
in the Near East and Latin America, CIA security officers are
taking on increasingly responsible assignments with respect to
the protection of our employees and our property located overseas.
Our .security officers play critical roles in
performing security investigations, not only for prospective
CIA employees, but also for the myriad of people in the private
sector working on classified CLA contracts--some with the very
highest clearance requirements of our government. CIA security
officers are also very heavily and continually involved in counter-
intelligence and antiterrorist activities overseas. Rya-rt}-i~.g
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Regarding our couriers, we rely on them to routinely service
over 700 delivery and pickup points around the world on a
24-hour-a-day basis. ~Ve are presently some 30 percent under
strength in this occupational category and, without relief, will
have~o recourse but to devote professional emplo}-ees from their
primary intelligence-related responsibilities to perform these
courier duties, to the further detriment of CIA's intelligence
collection and production responsibilities.
.Linguists
Skilled linguists are a vanishing breed in America. This. comes
at a time of increased demand for linguists by :both the govern-
ment and multinational corporations. For example, increased
requirements to
been levied on
Operations Directorate is debriefing an ever-increasing
have
The STAT
and has requirements for overseas
operations officers for very esoteric languages overseas. At
this time, the DDO.is 50 percent below its language capability
need. In many cases, there are only a few people in the
United States who speak and read the more difficult languages--
Chinese, Russian, and Arabic, for example. Once an applicant
with a language capability is found, it is absolutely necessary
to hire the person if he/she meets other necessary qualifications.
Clericals
experience
As you might suspect, we ~xge~za~~~Cx~zxe our highest attrition
rates in the clerical fields and yet in many ways rare most depen-
deist upon these skills to make our dail}r processes operate
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effectively and efficiently. We are talking here not only
about typists and stenographers who produce our large numbers
of intelligence reports, but also with the file clerks ~ti~ho
help compile volumnous data and with the payroll clerks ~tiho
ensure that our employees are paid. Based on the Carter hiring
freeze, for example, the Operations Directorate has already
accummulated 75 clerical vacancies in Headquarters and 30 addi-
tional clerical vacancies in the field. CIA has historically
utilized spouses of their employees to satisfy clerical requirements
in the field. This has obviated the need to send ecretaries
around the world at a significant anneal savings. This hiring
,~
~~''~~ r . .
freeze, while precluding us from`SPn~ clerical requirements
overseas, is also precluding us from satisfying these requirements
in the most efficient manner. This is just one example of our
clerical difficulties. Others of equal magnitude exist everywhere
in the Agency.
Applicants in Process
The CIA's selection and processing pipeline that I have previously
described is a very expensive one. nearly 80 percent of the
prospective employees. that CIA had in process on the 20th of
January fall into one of the Hard-to-Get ccupational categories
ju$t described--those skilled areas that are presently most
critical to the CIA. Because of the sunk cuts in these prospec-
tive employees and the fact that ~~e will ultimately hire only
250 ~ so of them, I would propose that the CiA not interrupt-his
processing and that those who survive the process be allowed to
enter on duty.
8
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I further reQuest that CIA be authorized to continue
to hire in those Hard-to-Get occupational categories listed
above with the understanding that ive kill not exceed the
authorized ceiling at any time in ~~c ~-y one of them.
William J. Casey
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