(SANITIZED)

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP86R00893R000100050007-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 5
• Document Creation Date: December 21, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 5, 2008
• Sequence Number: 7
• Publication Date: April 29, 1981
• Content Type: MEMO

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:F2
THE DIRECTOR OF
CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE
A week or so ago I talked tol labout
I told him that my impression was fiat
MEMO FOR: Doug MacEachin
OSR/C/SEC
the folks in your shop felt his contribution had
been useful and that he should be retained as a
John, which is attached.
John Steinbrenner. The result was the letter from
He said no, and I passed that message along to
interested in assuming the cost of efforts.
part-time consultant. I asked him if he was
should try to change Rae's mind or whether
you and need to decide whether you
After you read the letter you will see that
the prospect of keeping depends on either
my persueding Andy Mars a o get the Pentagon
to be more generous (unlikely), or getting CIA to
assume the expense. In either case I can act only
if Rae Huffstutler supports it. So it seems to me
contribution is only marginally useful and should
not be sustained. Let me know how you come out.
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25X1
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April 27, 1981
Mr. David Brandwein
National Intelligence Officer
for Strategic programs
Central Intelligence Agency
Washington, D. C. 20505
I am afraid the question ofl (status has become
another degree more complicated.
The Pentagon cannot write a personal services contract for someone
who is also a consultant. In order to handle the travel reimbursement
problem (about $5,000 in the course of a year) they will have to write a
personal services contract for both his time and his travel and that
will definitely alter his legal status. They are in principle willing
to undertake that but are worried about the effect it might have on his
access to information. Moreover, since I informed them that CIA had in
effect declined to pay for him themselves, they have raised the question
whether the entire arrangement is really justified. I can testify on
that point only in substantive terms. I cannot represent your actual
interest in the arrangement. As a practical matter, therefore, there
will have to bel some discussion between you and Andy Marshall if this is
to proceed, and I am best removed from the loop.
My sense now is that administrative convenience is likely to
prevail and that the arrangement will be allowed to lapse because of its
inherent awkwardness. There is something inevitable about that given
that the original parties to the understanding at CIA have now all
retired and that we are now into the second change in administrations
since the arrangement was instituted. I bow gracefully to that logic,
but as a parting word let me at least say what I think you will lose.
s a gadfly with a passion for detail and a long personal
history in the business of strategic assessments. He has a habit of
opening up old analytic issues that were bypassed rather than resolved
as the current intelligence process rolled by them. Because the issues
he has been working on have strong resonance with-current questions and
because the evidence he brings to bear and the lines of argument he
pursues are not available elsewhere, he is very stimulating to the
STAT
STAT
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working analysts around him. There have been some concrete results from
this stimulation. In at least two recent instances of which I am aware,
he brough about major revisions of important points of fact in official
publications by using historical evidence systematically. The necessary
revisions were accomplished, as best I can judge, very quitely and
gracefully with neither praise or blame being spewed about. This is as
it should be in a professional intelligence organization but it does
require that one watch very carefully lest the value of what has
happened be obscured by necessary discreetness. Higher level managers
are prone to misjudging that value. For them old issues and
unconventional lines of argument are potential trouble and they will be
the first to worry about the fuss that might be caused and the last to
accept the value that has been received.
These immediate effects on the current working analysts and their
products provide the most demonstrable utility, but I believe there are
much deeper and much more important matters at stake. represents
a type of asset that the Agency has been gradually losing over recent
years. He is a member of the generation that created modern strategic
assessment and that personally experienced the development of both
Soviet forces and of our own analysis of those forces. His own memory
and experience help compensate for the strong tendency for current
analysts to concentrate their efforts in a narrow slice of time around
the present moment. Because of the process of turnover in personnel,
most working analysts do not know much about critical formative
experiences in the Soviet strategic program that happened more than a
few years ago. The files and archives are not organized to give them
this information. Unless they know the important questions to ask they
will never get it. supplies those questions and the critical
information necessary to get started.
I cannot emphasize too strongly how important systematic access to
the past will be in facing coming intelligence problems and how
deficient the current production process is in'that regard. We are
entering a period in which highly sophisticated assessments of the
Soviet program will be urgently required by American policymakers and
these will have to penetrate much deeper than the standard presentations
of basic technical capability and highly generalized doctrine.
Systematic exploitation of intelligence observations extending back over
20 years is the single most powerful means of achieving that
sophistication. Some excellent individuals are making some promising
efforts and fortunately this entire cause does not depend upon
alone. In my opinion, however, the Agency's capability in this
regar is enormously underdeveloped relative to its importance; that
fact is not widely appreciated; and you can ill afford to lose even one
person who does appreciate it.
STAT
STAT
STAT
S I A I
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With this I retire from the issue. As you can tell I feel very
strongly about it and remain willing to do anything that would be
helpful. It seems to me, however, that I have done all that I can
constructively and properly do at my own initiative, and I must leave
the matter in your hands.
Sincerely yours,
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