RESOURCE ALLOCATION TO POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC INTELLIGENCE COLLECTION AND PROCESSING (U)

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CIA-RDP84M00713R000200040001-8
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RIPPUB
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S
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19
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December 22, 2016
Document Release Date: 
March 21, 2012
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1
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Publication Date: 
January 1, 2000
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REPORT
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25X1 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/03/21 : CIA-RDP84M00713R000200040001-8 Next 1 Page(s) In Document Denied Iq Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/03/21 : CIA-RDP84M00713R000200040001-8 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/03/21 : CIA-RDP84M00713R000200040001-8 vr.vUI RESOURCE ALLOCATION TO POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC INTELLIGENCE COLLECTION AND PROCESSING By Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/03/21 : CIA-RDP84M00713R000200040001-8 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/03/21 : CIA-RDP84M00713R000200040001-8 _. This report presents the analysis and observations resulting from an investigation of the resources currently allocated by the Intelligence Community to political and economic intelligence collec- tion and processing (and, to a lesser extent, production). The work was performed under contract number in support of the Program Assessment Office (PAO) of the Resource Management Staff. SECRET Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/03/21 : CIA-RDP84M00713R000200040001-8 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/03/21 : CIA-RDP84M00713R000200040001-8 U11ULIith)It ILU TABLE OF CONTENTS (U) Section Page 1 STUDY OBJECTIVES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1-1 2 STUDY METHODOLOGY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-1 2.1 DESCRIPTION OF THE TASKS . . . . . . . . . . . 2-1 3 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC INTELLIGENCE: A PROFILE . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . 3-1 4 NATIONAL REQUIREMENTS FOR POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC INTELLIGENCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-1 4.1 FORMAL REQUIREMENTS REGISTERS . . . . . . . . 4-1 4.2 COLLECTION TASKING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-9 4.3 STATISTICAL ANALYSIS . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-10 5 RESOURCE DISTRIBUTIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5-1 5.1 RESOURCE DATA COLLECTION ALTERNATIVES . . . . 5-1 5.2 SUMMARY RESOURCE DISTRIBUTIONS . . . . . . . . 5-5 5.3 COLLECTION SOURCE RESOURCE DISTRIBUTIONS . . . 5-8 5.4 GEOGRAPHIC RESOURCE DISTRIBUTIONS . . . . . .. 5-11 6 DATA BASE STUDIES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6-1 6.1 DATA COLLECTION ISSUES . . . . . . . . . . . . 6-1 6.2 P/E RAW DATA BASE INTELLIGENCE . . . . . . . . 6-4 6.3 P/E PRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6-10 7 ANALYST PERSPECTIVE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7-1 7.1 BACKGROUND . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . , . 7-1 7.2 INFORMAL REQUIREMENTS MEASURES . . . . . . . . 7-2 7.3 ANALYST EVALUATIONS OF SOURCE UTILITY . . . . 7-4 7.4 SOURCE CITATIONS IN PRODUCTION REPORTS . . . . 7-11 UNCLASSIFIED Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/03/21 : CIA-RDP84M00713R000200040001-8 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/03/21 : CIA-RDP84M00713R000200040001-8 UnI,LMJ)In`u TABLE OF CONTENTS (continued) Section Page 8 TOPICAL CASE STUDY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8-1 8.1 SETTING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8-1 8.2 ANALYST BACKGROUND AND EXPERIENCE . . . . . . 8-2 8.3 JOB CONTENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8-3 8.4 REQUIREMENTS/PRIORITIES . . . . . . . . . . . 8-3 8.5 DATA BASE USAGE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8-7 8.6 SOURCE UTILIZATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8-8 8.7 RESOURCES TO COLLECTION/PROCESSING . . . . . . 8-10 9 INTEGRATION OF STUDY RESULTS . . . . . . . . . . . 9-1 9.1 APPROACH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9-1 9.2 STATISTICAL TESTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9-3 9.3 BASIC INTEGRATED DATA . . . . . . . . . . . . 9-4 9.4 TESTING FOR RANDOMNESS . . . . . . . . . . . . 9-6 9.5 DESCRIPTION OF THE DATA PATTERN . . . . . . . 9-7 9.6 PATTERN DEVIATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9-9 9.7 RELATIVE REGIONAL EMPHASIS . . . . . . . . . . 9-11 9.8 INDIVIDUAL METRIC CORRELATIONS . . . . . . . . 9-14 10 CONCLUSIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10-1 10.1 GENERAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10-1 10.2 DEFINITIONAL CLARIFICATION . . . . . . . . . . 10-1 10.3 FACTUAL FINDINGS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10-2 10.4 SPECULATIVE INTERPRETATIONS . . . . . . . . . 10-7 iii UNCLASSIFIED Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/03/21 : CIA-RDP84M00713R000200040001-8 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/03/21 : CIA-RDP84M00713R000200040001-8 ul\UL lUUIR iLY TABLE OF CONTENTS (continued) Appendices Page DEFINITIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A-1 A.1 DEFINITIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A-2 A.2 ACRONYMS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A-5 A.3 GEOGRAPHIC REGIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A-7 A.4 DESCRIPTION OF DATA BASES . . . . . . . . . . A-8 B RESOURCE DISTRIBUTIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . B-1 C DATA BASE VOLUME . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C-1 C.1 AEGIS ACCESSION DATA . . . . . . . . . . . . . C-1 C.2 SOLIS ACCESSION DATA . . . . . . . . . . . C-4 C.3 FBIS ACCESSION DATA . . . . . . . . . . . . . C-5 D PRODUCTION VOLUME . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . D-1 E SOURCE UTILIZATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . E-1 E.1 ANALYST SUPPORT TASK FORCE (ASTF) . . . . . . E-1 E,2 SUPPORT FOR THE ANALYSTS' FILE ENVIRONMENT (SAFE) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . E-5 E.3 PUBLICATIONS SOURCE SURVEY (PSS) . . . . . . . E-7 E.4 DATA DISPLAYS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . E-9 F ANALYST QUESTIONNAIRE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . F-1 UNCLASSIFIED Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/03/21 : CIA-RDP84M00713R000200040001-8 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/03/21: CIA-RDP84MOO713R000200040001-8 1 viIvLnUVll ILY 1. STUDY OBJECTIVES (U) In 1975, Robert M. Macy, in an essay prepared for the Murphy Commission, suggested that: a study would be useful to help settle the sharp differences existing within the U.S. Govern- ment today on the equitable allocation of intel- ligence resources. There have been many studies of the Intelligence Community, but nearly all of them seem to have been concerned with 'moving the boxes around on the organization chart', and not with the allocation of resources or the general strategy for intelligence . . . .1 Less than a year later, former DIA chief, Lieutenant General Daniel 0. Graham, noted that: . political and economic intelligence on a wide variety of target countries has become critical to good national decision-making. This requires new efforts to collect, process, and analyze politico-economic intelligence . . . .2 Most recently, the Director of Central Intelligence, Stansfield Turner, cited improving the quality of political and economic intelligence as the first of three major challenges con- fronting the Intelligence Community in 1979: 1Robert M. Macy, "Issues on Intelligence Resource Management", Commission on the Organization of the Government for the Conduct of Foreign Policy, Vol. 7, Washington: GPO, June 1975, 66-67. 2DanieZ 0. Graham, U.S. InteZZigence at the Crossroads, Washington: United States Strategic Institute, 1976. UNCLASSIFIED Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/03/21 : CIA-RDP84M00713R000200040001-8 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/03/21 : CIA-RDP84M00713R000200040001-8 U11 ULMJJIFILU Our experience . . . underscores the importance of sensitivity to broad trends and underlying social, political, and economic forces that will shape the international environment in the 1980's. How well equipped are we today to detect these kinds of social and political changes, changes that could threaten U.S. interests. . . .3 In recognition of the increasing importance of political and economic (hereafter, P/E) intelligence to U.S. security interests, this study was commissioned to identify and, where possible, measure current P/E intelligence activities within the Community. In order to accomplish this, the study first compiled data that should be of interest to Community resource managers concerned with: ? the links between political and economic intelligence requirements and collection and processing resource allocations; ? the value of available information sources to P/E analysts; and, ? the current patterns of human and material resource allocations to P/E intelligence collection and processing. duplicating those studies, and instead has concentrated on the collec- tion and processing end of the intelligence cycle. Any analysis of resource allocations to intelligence activities - particularly one that attempts to draw inferences about the adequacy of such allocations - ideally should assess the quality of finished intelligence products. However, a number of recent studies have focused on finished intelligence production and consumer satisfaction; consequently, this effort has sought to avoid 3"The Intelligence Community in 1979", Annual Report of the Director of_Central Intelligence to the Congress, 25 Jan. 1980, 1,TS/Codeword. UNCLASSIFIED STAT STAT Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/03/21 : CIA-RDP84M00713R000200040001-8 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/03/21 : CIA-RDP84M00713R000200040001-8 UNCLASSIFIED To support the objectives of the study, specific indicators from which reasonable inferences could be drawn were identified. These include: ? the national requirements emphasis on P/E subjects, as reflected in the DCID 1/2, NITS, and collection tasking summaries;`' ? the size and scope of various P/E intelli- gence activities, as reflected in CIRIS, CBJB, and ZBB documents; ? the types and volume of intelligence in- STAT formation on P/E subjects, including that from namon-NFIP entities, as reflected in automated data bases- ? analysts' assessments of the utility of both information sources and data bases, as reflected in surveys and other avail- able statistics; and ? the costs of collecting and processing P/E intelligence, as reflected in the NFIP. The intangible, qualitative factors that tend to skew intelligence resource allocation decisions in particular directions, though not totally ignored, do not figure prominently in this analysis. Furthermore, the lack of an accepted conceptual framework or model of the Intelligence Community prohibits the derivation of algorithms that could relate various Community functions. The surrogate indicators adopted for this effort, therefore, are both imperfect and imprecise. Where problems with the data revealed by the indicators have hampered the analysis of P/E resource allocation, those problems have been discussed in the study. 4Definitions and explanations of these and other acronyms are contained in Appendix A. UNCLASSIFIED Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/03/21 : CIA-RDP84M00713R000200040001-8 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/03/21 : CIA-RDP84M00713R000200040001-8 UNCLASSIFIED Despite the lack of precise indicators and data, however, the trends discernible in the data, and an analysis of those trends, should be of value to those concerned with enhancing political and economic intelligence. By identifying the type, size,and contents of automated P/E data bases, for example, gaps, redundancies, and disor r ions in these data bases may be revealed. Similarly, isolation of the resources expended on collection and processing of P/E intelligence could lead to identification of redundancies and imbalances in the allocation of those resources. Finally, by studying resource allocations relative to national requirements, relationships between changes in national requirements and changes in allocations might be uncovered. This study is intended to be descriptive rather than prescriptive. Its goal is to integrate the data from the indicators mentioned into a description of P/E collection and processing that will help Community resource managers and decision-makers identify disproportions or discrepancies in the relationships between national requirements, and resource allocations. Additionally, where usable and meaningful data have permitted, political and economic intelli- gence has been compared with other forms of intelligence, such as military or S&T, to determine the relative emphasis placed on the former. UNCLASSIFIED Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/03/21 : CIA-RDP84M00713R000200040001-8 STAT STAT Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/03/21 : CIA-RDP84M00713R000200040001-8 UNCLASSIFIED 2. 'STUDY METHODOLOGY (U) 2.1 DESCRIPTION OF THE TASKS Despite the absence of an accepted model of the processes and functions of the Intelligence Community, most Community members agree to a simplified model in which a variety of national intelli- gence requirements - both formal and informal - result in demands for data, which in turn induce collection and processing activities. For reasons of convenience, timeliness, or accuracy, the formal links between these various functions are frequently circumvented, as when, for example, an analyst needing additional data bypasses the formal tasking mechanism and informally queries the collector most likely to have access to the needed information. The six basic tasks of the study were derived from the following simple model of the intelli- gence process: Foreign U.S. U.S Events & - Security Security Issues Interests Policy INTELLIGENCE ANALYSIS, PRODUCTION REQUIREMENTS & PRESENTATION Q Observation COLL'ION?PROCESSING (2)TASKING Figure 2-1. Intelligence Process-Study Task Relationship* *Circled numbers depict the study task(s) corresponding to each element of the process. UNCLASSIFIED Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/03/21 : CIA-RDP84M00713R000200040001-8 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/03/21 : CIA-RDP84M00713R000200040001-8 UNCLASSIFIED TASK 1: Definitions and Profiles - In order to understand the content, data flows, and data requirements of P/E intelligence from collection through analysis, the study first reviewed existing reports and documentation on the subject. These included (1) standard defi- nitions from such sources as the Community's Glossary of Intelligence Terms and Definitions and the major data bases used in the study - AEGIS, SOLIS, and HIMS - as well as (2) more detailed profiles of Community activities from the Analyst Support Task Force and SAFE surveys. Collectively, these sources provided clarity concerning the accepted composition of the major elements of the study - political intelligence, economic intelligence, collection, and pro- cessing; they highlighted commonalities and differences across agencies in the classification of geographic regions; and they clarified the roles and characteristics of the analyst as an inter- vening variable between the acquisition and consumption of intelli- gence information. It is important to note that, because the study was fundamentally descriptive in nature, no attempt was made to modify existing definitional distinctions, even where discrepancies were noted; rather, emphasis was placed on achieving approximate comparability wherever possible. TASK 2: Requirements and Priorities - To assess the relative level of emphasis on P/E intelligence, the study next developed a set of requirements metrics, based on information contained in the National Intelligence Topics (NITS), DCI Directive 1/2 (DCID 1/2), and the collection tasking summaries produced by the Collection Tasking Staff (CTS). The intent of this effort was not to measure the extent to which national requirements and priorities are being satisfied, but instead to identify, as a vehicle for subsequent comparisons, where established formal requirements would seem to suggest that Community emphasis be placed. A major difficulty of attempting to manipulate established sets of priorities mathematically, however, is that they UNCLASSIFIED Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/03/21 : CIA-RDP84M00713R000200040001-8 consist of ordinal numerical scales that have no intrinsic quantita- tive value. Beyond the basic determination of which subjects and geographic regions are more or less important than others, it is essentially impossible to determine by how much. Consequently, this study employed statistical approach specifically designed to treat ordinal rankings; these statistics sought to determine the randomness of the data, the nature of the overall data pattern, any pattern deviations, and individual cross-dimensional correlations. TASK 3: Volume of Data - In order to describe the product of the collection and processing functions of the Intelligence Community and thereby permit the identification of gaps and redundancies in those activities, Task 3 measured the quantity of data available to analysts, as reflected in various Community automated data bases.5 This parti- cular effort sought not to measure the flow of data from particular sources or collectors, to measure losses of data, nor to identify criteria for data retention. Likewise, it did not seek to assess data quality, a subject treated in Task 5. Rather, the intent was to capitalize upon the best available data, in terms of both format and accessibility, and determine the volume of reporting on parti- cular subjects and geographic regions, measured as the flow of data into and out of extant data bases. Though providing a recognizably less than perfect measure, this metric was adjudged to be a suitable representation of the "actual" emphases of intelligence collection/ processing and production that could be compared with the "desired" emphases reflected in national requirements. 5These included CIA's AEGIS, DIA's RIMS, and the FBIS data bases. Other data bases that might have been used for the study, but were not, include NSA's SOLIS and NPIC's NDS. STAT UNCLASSIFIED Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/03/21 : CIA-RDP84M00713R000200040001-8 U11ULHJ)I I[U Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/03/21 : CIA-RDP84M00713R000200040001-8 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/03/21 : CIA-RDP84M00713R000200040001-8 %FBI I6IVV11 116M TASK 4: Resource Allocations to Collection and Processing - Funda- mental to the objectives of the study was the identification and analysis of current patterns of resource allocations to each collection and processing program by subject area and geographic region. Task 4 sought to identify these current patterns but did not attempt to measure the effectiveness of either resource allocations or actual expenditures. Although resource data from the annual CBJB (Congres- sional Budget Justification Books) and ZBB (Zero-Based Budget) submissions were investigated, the format of these data precluded their effective use in the present context. Specifically, the fact that the fiscal displays in those documents typically are not organized geographically, in many instances do not reflect substantive foci, and emphasize systems and organizations served as a major disadvantage. Consequently, it was felt that, by virtue of format and accessibility, the Intelligence Community Staff's CIRIS data base was most appropriate for the purposes of the study. CIRIS provides the requisite breakouts across subject areas, functions, and countries necessary to provide the comparisons of importance here. TASK 5: Utility of Data - Analysts' evaluations of the various sources of data available to them provide the most useful measure of the value of intelligence data collected and processed by the Community. This study used two primary sources for this purpose:' (1) the Publications Source Survey (PSS) of NFAC's Requirements Evaluation Staff, and (2) the results of the Analyst Support Task Force (ASTF) survey sponsored by the Information Resources Office and Information Handling Committee of the Resource Management Staf PSS contains evaluations of the reference/source material used by NFAC analysts in the preparation of (1) the National Intelligence Daily (NID) and (2) Intelligence Memoranda (IMs) and Intelligence Reports (IRs). Each intelligence product is evaluated by its author in terms of the contribution (key, supplemental, incidental) to that STAT UNCLASSIFIED Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/03/21 : CIA-RDP84M00713R000200040001-8 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/03/21 : CIA-RDP84M00713R000200040001-8 U11ULn%JUIl ILu report of each of sixteen collection sources. PSS contains data only on NFAC products and does not address all of those (e.g., National Intelligence Estimates and Interagency Memoranda are omitted). The ASTF survey, in contrast, interviewed 122 analysts across agencies and asked them to evaluate each of eighteen collection sources ac- cording to their general utility (essential, important, marginal, none). Together, these two sources of data (PSS and the ASTF survey) provide a useful basis for comparing the utility of various collection sources with the level of resources expended on them. TASK 6: Case Study - To supplement and cross-check the results of earlier tasks, an in-depth case study of the recent Nicaragua crisis was undertaken in Task 6. The task involved the investigation of relevant documentation and interviews with political and economic analysts concerning the major dimensions of the overall study: requirements/priorities, data base usage, source utilization, and resource allocations. A total of thirteen analysts from CIA/NFAC (3- OPA, 2- OER), State/INR (3), NSA (3), and DIA Current Intelligence (2) were interviewed to elicit their views and thereby provide con- firmatory findings or uncover anomalies not otherwise surfaced in the remainder of the study. 2.2 DATA AGGREGATIONS AND RELATIONSHIPS An early and critical decision involved the selection of an appropriate level of detail for the data to be analyzed; for example, should data be organized by geographic region or by country? Would organization by specific collection platform or generic collection category be preferable? The study initially determined that the maximum amount of detail provided by the available records and surveys should be used. Efforts quickly revealed, however, the UNCLASSIFIED Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/03/21 : CIA-RDP84M00713R000200040001-8 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/03/21 : CIA-RDP84M00713R000200040001-8 infeasibility of organizing data by specific collection program because of the lack of data comparability across agencies, the lack of visibility of specific questions of interest to this study, and the time delays required to reformat available data. Discussions with personnel familiar with the data further revealed that data broken down by regions would be less sensitive to double-counting than data arrayed by specific country, because many sources are attributed to more than one country. Similarly, the subject content of the data usually can be identified as political and/or economic, but not as more specific subsets of those disciplines. The level of detail and organization of the data eventually used in the study, though far from ideal, were dictated by the '` available sources of resource and management information. A major problem continues to be the lack of standardization of such infor- mation within the Community. Not even the definition of geographic regions, for example, is consistent across data bases. This study so selected the AEGIS geographic categorization scheme as a common denominator and applied it to resource information data bases. The source categorization scheme used by PSS was selected to represent the various types of collection. The various levels of management information detail - subject (or discipline) content, geographic region, and collection type (or source) - were then related to each other and to the chosen indicators - requirements, resources, volumes of data and production, and analyst evaluations - according to the following matrix: UNCLASSIFIED Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/03/21 : CIA-RDP84M00713R000200040001-8 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/03/21 : CIA-RDP84M00713R000200040001-8 ~^.vr^^vv^ 10.10 Table 2-1. Data Relationships STUDY DIMENSION REQUIREMENTS RESOURCE COLLECTION PRODUCTION ALLOCATION VOLUME VOLUME co Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/03/21 : CIA-RDP84M00713R000200040001-8 nships, howe Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/03/21 : CIA-RDP84M00713R000200040001-8 UNCLASSIFIED More sophisticated and complete analysis would have been possible had the Community's resource management data been better organized, readily available, and adequate. Hopefully, the findings of this report will prove interesting and useful enough that managers will be persuaded to improve their resource management data bases so that future studies may be more valuable. UNCLASSIFIED Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/03/21 : CIA-RDP84M00713R000200040001-8 STAT Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/03/21 : CIA-RDP84M00713R000200040001-8 6 CO Q Next 175 Page(s) In Document Denied Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/03/21 : CIA-RDP84M00713R000200040001-8