DCI INTRODUCTION OF NATIONAL SECRETARY GUEST SPEAKER, DOROTHY NELMS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP99-00498R000200130001-8
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 6, 2007
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: April 24, 1980
• Content Type: REPORT

Approved For Release 2007/09/07: CIA-RDP99-004988000200130001-8
DCI Introduction of National
Secretary Guest Speaker,
Dorothy Nelms
24 April 1980
Thank you Mary Jean, and I'm particularly pleased that this
event is an outgrowth of our establishing a DCI Secretarial MAG
a little over two years ago. And I'm glad to see this additional
evidence of interest, concern and cohesiveness in the secretarial
ranks of the Agency and pledge to you, Mary Jean, continued
support to the MAG group.
It isn't often that we have an opportunity like this under
MAG sponsorship to get together to honor almost a third of our
employees in this Agency--some 27% of our employees are clerical
or secretarial employees, and I think there are many times when
I'm sincerely persuaded that your contribution to the success of
the Agency is far more than 27%. Our business, as you well know,
is providing information. You can't do that unless you can process,
type, retrieve, store, handle all of this information as it flows
from the collectors to the analysts and from the analysts to a
finished product. The clerical, the secretarial input in that
process is absolutely vital. There isn't one of you here who
doesn't know that in this Agency in particular, our ability to
do those steps expeditiously and to do it frequently under great
pressure is very, very important. So often what we have to say,
so often the input that we can make to the decision process of
our country is perishable, and if we can't get quick response,
if we don't have dedicated secretaries who don't punch a clock
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but do what ha s. to be done, who'll respond as I've always seen
you in marvelously cheerful ways, no matter how trying, how
pressing, how demanding are the requirements, we wouldn't make
those deadlines, we wouldn't make those inputs in a timely manner.
In addition, we require in this unique Agency, not only
clerical and secretarial personnel who are highly qualified
technically, but who are of the most upstanding character.
Nothing is more important in these halls than secrecy. And
we do not have utterly the highest quality of people in this
organization, we will ultimately tumble for an inability to keep
our necessary secrets. And so, we are particularly grateful for
the high quality of people that we see around us all the time.
I think I was only here a couple of months, when I actually
made a complaint about the secretarial support here. I said it
was too good, all my government career I've said, you know, I
don't mind a strikeover, I don't mind lining something through
with my pen or writing a note on the bottom of an official letter
if I have an extra thought instead of having it retyped, and I
even put out a couple of memos around here and said let's do
that. Well, I must say, I've been defeated in three years.
The sense of pride in the secretarial element of this Agency is
so great, that every time I do that somebody sneaks it out before
I can deliver it and redoes it in utterly letter perfect form,
and I'm grateful for that kind of pride, because it does mean
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that with it, we get the security, we get the timeliness, we get
the accuracy, we get the attractiveness of our presentation, each
element of which is very important to our doing the job that we do
and which is so vital to our country.
I'm very pleased today that we have with us Dorothy Nelms to
speak with us on this occasion of honoring our secretarial and
clerical help. Dorothy is National President of Federally Employed
Women, as you know, an organization of some 239 chapters across this
country, a very valuable organization for bringing together into one
forum, information, views, opinions that are of interest to people in
the Federal Government in the secretarial, clerical ranks acrd very
valuable to all of you in looking after the interests of these people
on Capitol Hill is all too often that inadvertently, perhaps, a piece
of legislation can be proposed that doesn't take into account the
interests, the needs, the proper concerns of the secretarial and
clerical people in our government. And Dorothy and her organization
are alert and very helpful in bringing those problems to the fore
so that they can be taken care of before we have a law on the books
that is difficult to change. Dorothy retired in 1978 after 28 years
of Federal service, she knows the field, she knows what the problems
are, she knows her way around to help find solutions to them. She is
a dynamic, perfect leader for this organization. We are very grateful
to have her here to share her views with us this afternoon. I give you
Dorothy Nelms.
Approved For Release 2007/09/07: CIA-RDP99-004988000200130001-8