OCA GOALS AND STRATEGIES FOR 1988

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90M00005R000500020012-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 5
• Document Creation Date: December 27, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 20, 2012
• Sequence Number: 12
• Publication Date: September 20, 1988
• Content Type: MEMO

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OCA 88-3065
20 September 1988
MEMORANDUM TO: The Director
The Deputy Director
The Executive Director
FROM: John L. Helgerson
Director of Congressional Affairs
SUBJECT: OCA Goals and Strategies for 1988
1. This memorandum summarizes actions taken from January
through June to implement the goals and strategies for 1988
outlined by the Office of Congressional Affairs (OCA) on
7 January 1988.
Promote the "Four C's"
Implement the New Guidelines for Contacts with Congress
2. In January 1988, OCA published, with DCI approval, its
"Guidelines for Contact with Congress." This 12-page document
explains the "Four C's" (candor, corrections, completeness,
consistency). It also discusses for Agency briefers their
obligations in briefing the Congress and the limitations on what
they may say without specific approval from the Director of
Congressional Affairs or from more senior officers. The
document addresses such concerns as Congressional access to
Inspector General reports, protection of third agency material,
sources and methods, protection given liaison relationships, and
unevaluated intelligence information. These guidelines were
sent to the Directorates and independent offices for broad
distribution throughout the Agency. In addition to these basic
guidelines, OCA on 22 January published for use by its own
liaison officers an additional 33-page document consisting of
detailed questions and answers to enable our officers who deal
with Congress on a full-time basis to cope with more specific
and troublesome issues.
3. The Director of Congressional Affairs, the heads of the
Office's three main components, and several of our other
officers address a large number of Agency management
conferences; Chiefs of Station conferences in Washington and
elsewhere; and training courses ranging from the New Analyst
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Course, the Mid-Career course, the Advanced Intelligence
Seminar, to the CIA and the Congress elective offered to our
SIS-level officers. We find that these opportunities to
describe and underscore the "Four C's" and our guidelines for
contact with Congress provide valuable opportunities to draw
attention to these goals by officers who actually do our
Congressional briefings and by managers who can pass the word
within their components. Experience has shown that oral
discussions of these issues register with participants even
better than circulating the written version. In all cases, OCA
officers attempt to work with first-time Congressional briefers
to ensure they are aware of our guidelines.
Improve Responses to Congressional Inquiries
4. OCA is working with the principal Agency components to
eliminate impediments to our providing prompt and complete
responses to Congressional questions. We have tried to focus
both on limiting the numbers and scope of Congressional
questions and on getting our own house in order to ensure a
quick and appropriate response to legitimate questions. During
the first six months of 1988 we received far more numerous and
time consuming questions on the INF issue than on any other
single topic. The CIA and the Intelligence Community enjoyed
modest success in focusing and limiting the questions, but they
distinguished themselves in responding promptly to the still
astonishing number of questions that remained. Chairman Boren
on several occasions praised the Intelligence Community for its
timeliness and thoroughness in responding to these questions,
which enabled the Committee to produce its own report on INF
monitoring capabilities for submission to the Committee on
Foreign Relations.
5. The most troublesome area in responding to Congressional
inquiries remains the tendency of the Oversight Committees,
particularly the Senate Intelligence Committee, to ask
open-ended questions of the operations Directorate. During the
first half of 1988, these tended to focus on Central American
issues, especially Nicaragua and narcotics. Although we have
turned aside numerous questions and limited the scope of others,
those remaining demand a great deal of manpower and time from
already overburdened components.
6. OCA has discussed with the Deputy Director for
Operations and his staff organizational changes and other
measures that should speed our written responses to the
Congress. The Deputy Director for Operations recently
established a position of Special Assistant in his office to
oversee directorate actions related to Congressional inquiries.
OCA will cooperate with this officer to see that we are as
responsive to Congress as possible while at the same time
protecting the Operations Directorate's sources, methods, and
other legitimate concerns.
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Reduce Number of Briefings of Congressional Staffers
7. This objective is intended primarily to'limit the number
of briefings we provide to the staff of non-oversight committees
and to the personal staff of Members. This goal was made
necessary by the dramatic increase (41%) in the number of staff
briefings from 1986 to 1987.
8. During the first half of 1988 we have succeeded in this
endeavor in the limited sense that we have halted. the increase
in the number of staff briefings. We have failed in the sense
that the number of staff briefings remains at a constant level
higher than we would like. Overall, during the first six months
of 1988, the numbers of staff briefings, occasions when
testimony was given before Congressional committees and
subcommittees, and briefings of individual Members stayed at
1987 levels. We have been seeking as part of this objective to
increase the number of joint briefings to the oversight
Committee staffs to protect the time of senior Agency managers.
We have made some progress in this area, but must consider
carefully whether to push harder because the joint sessions also
have the unintended effect of assisting the Committee staffs to
cross-examine us still more closely than when each is left to
its own devices.
9. There was one important difference in the level of our
Congressional activity between 1987 and 1988. The number of
presentations by the DCI or DDCI before our four Oversight
Committees dropped by 70 percent from 35 in the first six months
of 1987 to 10 in the corresponding period this year. For the
most part, I believe this is a positive development reflecting
the fact that much of the politics and passion have been removed
from the Agency's relationship with Congress. On the other
hand, this represents a diminished level of exposure that we
should monitor lest the Oversight Committees feel we are
ignoring them.
Discourage Trend Toward Micromanagement
10. During 1988, the trend toward micromanagement has
continued both in terms of Committee requests for briefings on
covert action programs and in terms of how overall Agency
resources should be allocated. The increase in micromanagement
was made certain by the political debates growing out of the
Iran-Contra affair and over the wisdom of the Administration's
Central America programs. In each case, the Congress for
political reasons had to demonstrate that it was taking a firmer
hand with the Intelligence Community. The trend has been
reinforced by Congressional awareness of real or imagined
weaknesses in the Agency's management of three different covert
action programs.
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11. In terms of concrete and generally negative
developments, the most significant change in 1988 has been the
establishment of the Senate Intelligence Committee's Audit Team,
which has undertaken a fairly intrusive look into the operations
and files of an overseas station and has acquired access to
documents in the Washington area previously not provided
routinely to the Committee. The micromanagement stimulated by
the activities of the Senate Audit Team will only increase once
the House follows through with its plan to establish a parallel
unit. On the analytic side, a single but somewhat worrisome
development occurred with Senator Bradley's insistence on
reviewing the raw reporting that went into our judgments on the
matter. Although I believe the Committee's interest in
Congressional initiatives that would have resulted in still
greater micromanagement of the Agency. We have succeeded in
holding GAO at bay (partly by cooperating with the new Senate
Audit Team) despite increasing efforts by GAO's inspectors to
look at Agency programs and facilities and continued efforts by
some Members of the Congress to have the organization look into
CIA activities. Similarly, we have reached agreement with the
Senate on a substitute for a "Statutory Inspector General," the
effect of which will be to forestall a substantially greater
reporting responsibility to the Congress. We have also
succeeded in sharply limiting the scope of some new reporting
requirements included in next year's Authorization Bill and have
provided effective protection from these provisions for some of
our most sensitive proprietaries. Finally, the Agency has been
generally successful in holding back non-oversight Members
and staffers who would like to get into the micromanagement
business
this type of undertaking is not likely to be sustained, it does
represent an opening wedge toward micromanagement of the
analytic process that is cause for concern.
12. On the positive side, we have turned back a number of
Increase Coverage of Congressional Delegations and Staff
Delegations Traveling Abroad
13. We have pressed both Intelligence Committees to
increase the numbers of officers from OCA or the Operations
Directorate area divisions accompanying Congressional
delegations abroad. We have in a limited number of cases sent
Agency officers with Congressional groups, and this invariably
has served to minimize problems that otherwise arise. Officers
from Headquarters who deal regularly with Congress typically
know the rules better, enabling them to provide help in reining
in overbearing Congressional visitors and bolstering the
confidence of some Chiefs of Station who receive few visitors
and might otherwise be too reticent.
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14. Despite the obvious benefits of these escorts, we are
not destined to increase the numbers significantly, especially
on the House side. Both the Staff Director and the Chief
Counsel of the Committee believe that staffers feel inhibited
when officers from Headquarters accompany them abroad. Although
not articulated, it is also clear that they believe they can
elicit more from our officers abroad if the latter do not have
the benefit of the presence of officers from Headquarters to
clarify the rules. We do somewhat more traveling with groups
from the Senate Intelligence Committee, which has a more
positive view of Agency escorts.
Encourage Improved Security in Congress
15. Officers from Congressional Affairs and several other
Agency components have worked actively during 1988 to prompt
both the House and Senate to improve their security programs.
We have met with the Senate Security Officer, the Capitol
Police, the Sergeants at Arms of both Houses, the Capitol
Architect, and the staffs of both House and Senate Intelligence
Committees in pursuit of this goal. We have cleaned up records
of those holding Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI)
accesses, audited the physical security of several areas in the
House and Senate where highly classified information is stored,
provided educational briefings to several Members and--perhaps
most important--urged all interlocutors to establish a
centralized, technical security office in the Capitol.
16. I believe there is reason for cautious optimism
concerning Capitol Hill security. The House Sergeant at Arms
has decided to establish an independent technical security group
and is negotiating with the House leadership to win their
support. On the Senate side, Senator Hollings is attempting to
provide funds in the Legislative Appropriations Bill to finance
a Senate technical security group. Senate Intelligence
Committee Chairman Boren has registered his concern with the
quality of security protection afforded classified intelligence
by the other committees of the Congress and has indicated that
in the new Congress he will press the leadership to consider a
centralized storage facility. These are signs of a heightened
consciousness on the security issue that we have not often seen
in the past.
D/OCA/JLH:wcsr
(20 Sep
. Helg V son
Distribution:
Original -
DCI
1 -
DDCI
1 -
EXDIR
1 -
ER
1 - JLH Chrono
1 - Reader Library
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