THE FOCUS OF THE NEW DEBATE, CIA HAS HISTORY OF CONTROVERSY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000505390040-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 9, 2010
• Sequence Number: 40
• Publication Date: September 28, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/09: CIA-RDP90-00552R000505390040-7
ASSOCIATED PRESS
28 September 1984
THE FOCUS 0F THE NEW DEBATE, CIA HAS HISTORY OF CONTROVERSY
BY JOAN MOWER
WASHINGTON
The CIA, back in the political spotlight because of a campaign remark by
President Reagan, has endured numerous congressional probes, a massive staff
reorganization, and public criticism in the 1970s.
Reagan suggested during a campaign stop in Ohio on Wednesday that the
nation's primary intelligence gathering agency had been nearly destroyed by his
predecessor, Jimmy Carter.
The comment unleashed a debate between Reagan and Carter over what happened
at the agency during the last decade.
Carter, speaking from Atlanta, angrily retorted that any allegations linking
the Beirut bombing to his administration's treatment of the CIA were
insulting.
Congress started looking into CIA activities in the early 1970s, several
years before Carter was elected in 1976.
A total of eight House and Senate intelligence committees launched
investigations in the aftermath of allegations of wrongdoing by the CIA, which
was founded in 1947.
By 1975, congressional investigators determined the agency had spied on
American activists opposed to the Vietnam war, initiated plots to kill leaders
in Cuba and the Congo, and advocated the overthrow of a democratically elected
government in Chile.
Congress also-passed the so-called Hughes-Ryan amendment in 1974, requiring
the president to inform eight congressional committees of any decision to order
the CIA to engage in covert activity abroad.
That measure, which Carter complained inhibited the CIA, was repealed in
1980. It was replaced by a requirement that the president tell the House and
Senate intelligence committees in a timely fashion of any plans for covert
action.
About a year after taking office, Carter's CIA director, Adm. Stansfield
Turner, began a staff reorganization that resulted in the dismissal bf more than
400 officers in the clandestine operations department. The unit is responsible
for secretly, collecting foreign intelligence.
Turner's action, which he said was necessary because the agency had become
"top-heavy," seriously damaged morale at the agency and prompted many
middle-level CIA Pmployees to leave the agency for jobs in private industry.
Continued
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/09: CIA-RDP90-00552R000505390040-7
 Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/09: CIA-RDP90-00552R000505390040-7
2
Personnel was not the only thing to change at the agency under Carter, who
complained that intelligence had failed to adequately report the strength of
revolutionary elements who deposed the Shah of Iran in 1979.
The former Democratic president, attempting to streamline and improve
intelligence gathering, signed an executive order that gave the CIA director
budgetary control over all elements of the intelligence community. Besides the
CIA, the intelligence community includes parts of the State and the Defense
departments, among others.
The CIA's budget is secret, but it was estimated at about $15 billion in
1979. A Senate intelligence committee staffer, who spoke only on condition he
remain anonymous, said the budget had increased every year since Reagan took
office.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/09: CIA-RDP90-00552R000505390040-7