SHAKING UP THE C.I.A.

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP99-00498R000300030003-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 11
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 28, 2007
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: July 29, 1979
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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ARTICLE APPEAR.' D
ON PACE
THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE
29 July 1979
SHAKING UP
THE C.I.A.
By Tad Szulc
immy Carter was
furious. He sat in
. the Oval Office on
this chill Novem-
ber day, staring at
the note paper be-
fore him. Riots,
were sweeping 1,
Iran. The Shah had just been
forced to impose a military gov-
ernment on his nation. And the
.President of the United States
hadn't even known a revolution was coming - had, in
fact, been assured all along by the American intelli-
gence community that there was no such danger. Mr.
Carter lifted his pen and wrote: "I am not satisfied
with the quality of political intelligence." The notes
were addressed to "Cy," "Stan" and "Zbig" - Secre-
tary of State Cyrus R. Vance, Director of Central In-
telligence Stansfield Turner and National Security
Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski.
PTAT
r
Those handwritten messages of last Nov. 11 were not
the President's first expression of concern over the
state of American intelligence, but they were by all
odds his strongest. They removed any doubts of White
House determination to force change upon the intelli-
gence apparatus. It had failed him in a most astonish-
ing manner.
A nation Jimmy Carter considered America's linch-
pin of stability in the Middle East, a nation in which
the United States had essential strategic and economic
stakes, was in the midst of a profound crisis. By Febru-
ary, Mr. Carter would see Shah -Mohammed Riza
Pahlevi's government replaced by a radical Islamic re-
Tad Szulc is a Washington writer who specializes in international affairs.
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gime with which the United States {
had established no contact. The I
loss of America's secret tracking
stations that monitored Soviet
missile testing would damage
prospects for Congressional ap-
of the latest strategic arms
proval
limitations talks (SALT II.) The
cutoff of Iranian oil production
would spark shortages that plague
American motorists to this day.
Yet the President, until the end
was almost at hand, had not
known the depth or extent of the
Shah's problems. That kind of failure over the last few "I
years has led to the most comprehensive shake-up in
the history of the nation's intelligence community. A
major reorganization, begun early in 1978, continues.
Special groups have been created to critique the com-
munity's efforts, including a new top-level unit, the
Political Intelligence Working Group, that ? is forcing
traditionally turf-conscious agencies to work together.
Hundreds of Central Intelligence Agency operatives
have been fired, sending the organization's morale
already low following the traumatic investigations of
the mid-70's -plummeting to new depths. Congress is
putting together legislation that would, for the first
time, legally define the powers of, and limitations on,
the intelligence community.
Only a few years ago, the C.I.A. and its partner agen-
cies. were being attacked as too aggressive and too
powerful. Now, irony of ironies, some of the same
liberals in Congress and the Administration who had
led the charge have begun to worry over the failures in
political intelligence. And they are calling upon the
C.I.A. to assert itself, to take a greater role in policy
formulation. The watchdog Senate Select Committee.
on Intelligence is actually approving
clandestine missions that would have
been taboo as recently as 1976.
Meanwhile, the uproar over the na-
tion's intelligence record has come full
circle. The brickbats are no longer re-
served for the "producers" of intelli-
gence, such as the C.I.A. Critics charge
that preconceptions and misconcep-
tions on the part of the "consumers,"
the top policy makers, have prevented
good decisions, regardless of the qual-
ity of the intelligence material pre-
sented them. The "consumers," of
course, are primarily the National Se-
curity Council - and an angry letter-
writer named Jimmy Carter.
THE GATHERING
STORM I
"We will continue to anticipate
tomorrow's crises as often as we can,"
says Adm. Stansfield Turner. "But our
record here will never be as good as we
would like it to be." Admiral. Turner
rules an empire with an estimated an-
nual budget of $15 billion and an army
of tens of thousands, at home and
abroad, overt and covert. But uneasy
lies the head that wears that crown; the
record of Admiral Turner's troops is
not as good as his peers and masters
would like it to be.
Since Harry Truman carved the
C.I.A. out of the wartime Office of Spe-
cial Services in 1947, the chief of that or-
ganization has also been responsible in
theory for the larger intelligence com-
munity. Hence Admiral Turner's offi-
cial title: Director of Central Intelli-
gence/Director of the Central Intelli-
gence Agency.
But keeping rein on the dozen or so
elements of the intelligence community
can try a Director's soul. The C.I.A.,
the mainspring of the community, is a
single, clearly defined entity. The other
members of the community are a dis-
parate lot, ranging from the Penta-
gon's National Reconnaissance Office,
with its spy-in-the-sky satellites, to a
Treasury Department unit that collects
foreign financial data. Thus the Direc-
tor of the community faces a built-in
division of loyalty: The offices of the
Department of Defense that collect for-
eign intelligence, for example, operate
within a military hierarchy as well as
within the intelligence community hier-
archy.
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Over the years, that arrangement
has helped make the Directorship one
of the more notorious revolving-door
jobs in Washington. Between 1973 and
1977, for example, four men - James
R. Schlesinger, William E. Colby and
George Bush - held the post. Probably
the only Director who actually suc-
ceeded in exercising full control over
the intelligence community as a whole
was the imperious Allen W. Dulles, who
was forced to resign seven months after
the C.I.A.-sponsored Bay of Pigs disas-
ter of 1961.
Admiral Turner was given a decisive
leg up in the struggle. Eighteen months
ago President Carter issued an execu-
tive order that, for the first time, gave
the Director budgetary control over all
elements of the intelligence communi-
ty. Just how long Admiral Turner - a
controversial figure in his own right -
would be around to enjoy the benefits of
that change, however, has been a mat-
ter of conjecture.
The Admiral is trim and earnest, a 55-
year-old intellectual who was a Rhodes
Scholar at Oxford University after
graduation from Annapolis. He was
sworn in as Director by Jimmy Carter
in 1977; Senate opposition had led Mr.
Carter to drop his first candidate for
the job, former Kennedy speechwriter
Theodore Sorensen.
Those who have worked with the Ad-
miral say he's "tough" and "mean."
Presumably they were necessary qual-
ities for a man who commanded fleets
for the United States and for the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization and who
was in charge of Allied Forces Southern
Europe. Presumably they came in
handy on his C.I.A. assignment.
But the Admiral has drawn different
kinds of comments of late, the kindest
of them being "inept." The White
House staff complained that he had
failed to breathe new life into the C.I.A.
There was a pronounced coolness to-
ward him at the top of the Defense De-
partment's intelligence establishment.
Many of the Congressmen involved in
C.I.A. oversight were dissatisfied. And
he was not liked within the agency it-
self.
For close to a year, there has been
insistent speculation that Admiral
Turner was on his way out of the job.
However, there is some doubt that the
President would wish to give the re-
volving door another turn so soon.
Mr. Carter's executive order of Jan.
24, 1978, calling for reorganization, was
not greeted with great enthusiasm
throughout the intelligence communi-
ty. It was, after all, the first public sign
of the deep discontent the community's
top consumers were feeling about prod-
uct quality. Moreover, it arrived on the
heels of two of the worst years in the
community's history.
Attacks on the C.I.A. and its sister
agencies traditionally focus on interfer-
ence with the rights of other nations, or
with the rights of American citizens.
And it was the illegal surveillance at
home and abroad of American citizens
suspected of antiwar activism that
brought down on the C.I.A.'s head the
Congressional investigations of 1975
and 1976. The agency's dirty linen was
piled sky high: secret assassination
plots against Patrice Lumumba in the
Congo and Fidel Castro in Cuba ... sub-
version of the Marxist regime in Chile
... mind-control experiments with dan-
gerous drugs .. unlawful ties with
American journalists and academics.
The necessity for the gathering of for-
eign intelligence was never seriously in
question. For a President to make in-
formed decisions about arms-limita-
tion talks or oil imports, he requires
some kind of intelligence-gathering and
analysis apparatus. But the Congres-
sional revelations led to demands that
the intelligence community cease in-
fringing upon individual liberties, and
forsake its aggressive role in the mak-
ing of foreign policy. Congress named a
total of eight committees in both houses
to oversee C.I.A. operations.
The intelligence community was
shaken, but its problems were just
beginning. Having been tried and con-
victed in the public eye on charges of
being unethical, it was up on charges of
being inefficient.
The issue was apparently first raised
by National Security Adviser Brzezin-
ski at a dinner given by Admiral Turner
at C.I.A. headquarters in Langley, Va.,
on Oct. 27, 1977. Brzezinski complained
to the senior officials present that the
intelligence community had allowed its
human-intelligence (known in the trade
as "HUMINT") skills in gathering
political data to decay because of the
increased emphasis on technical intelli.
gence - essentially the use of elec-
tronic and photographic devices. The
data and information he was receiving
at the White House, he said, fell far
short of the mark in terms of policy-
making requirements. (He noted along
the way that he had stopped reading
telegrams from most American ambas-
sadors abroad because they provided
no coherent assessment of political
situations.) .
Meanwhile, the staff of the National
Security Council, the President's chief
policy-making body for international
affairs, was undertaking a full review
of American security and intelligence,
and that led ultimately to President
Carter's executive order. Ten days be-
fore that order was issued, Brzezinski
wrote forceful secret memorandums to
3
Admiral Turner and Secretary Vance
expressing his unhappiness over the
quality of American political intelli-
gence. Among his complaints: a lack of
basic source material and, as one of his
associates put it, a lack of emphasis on
"making sense."
There were other critics. The Senate
Select Committee on Intelligence, in a
report issued last spring, took the com-
munity's "political-social analysis"
record to task. In some instances, the
committee found, "the performance of
specialized public sources," such as
trade publications, "equated or ex-
ceeded that of the intelligence com-
munity." The community was said to
emphasize current developments at the
expense of analysis, and to have a lim-
ited ability to integrate political and
economic factors in those analyses it
produced.
Ray Cline, former C.I.A. Deputy Di-
rector for Intelligence, says that the
agency's political intelligence skills
"fell into disuse" in the late 1960's as a
result of high-level decisions to econo-
mize by cutting down on detailed re-
porting from the field - "in favor of
summary analytical reporting." But,
he insists, "if you don't have patient ac-
cumulation on political and economic
events and trends, you're at a loss for
relevant estimates when new data
come in."
The critics have no dearth of specific
instances of community failure:
? A still-classified Senate committee
study claims that the C.I.A. led the Ad-
ministration to believe that Cuba was
actively behind the 1978 invasion of
Zaire's Shaba province by exiles at-
tacking from Angola, an assessment
that has never been adequately docu-
mented. It led President Carter to pub-
licly denounce the Cubans for mounting
the invasion, to his subsequent extreme
embarrassment.
? When the President announced in
1977 his plans to reduce the United
States military presence in South
Korea, he was not aware of the extent
to which the North Koreans had been
building up their armed forces since
1970. Army intelligence campaigned for
a full review, but was ignored for
{ nearly a year; only last spring did the
community finally conclude that there
were 550,000 to 600,000 troops arrayed in
North Korea rather than the 450,000 it
had previously reported. And nine days
ago the White House officially an-
nounced the indefinite suspension of
troop withdrawals, citing "security
considerations."
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years the Director of Central Intelli- break out in 1978, but the top-secret
gence, was named Ambassador to Iran document did discuss in long-range
b terms the viability of the Iranian
by President Nixon in 1973. armed forces, the political attitudes of
There was, however, some question Iranian students at home and abroad,
about Savak's effectiveness. A senior ! and the growing disaffection in the
American official well acquainted with
its operations commented, "Savak cities. Some agency officials say that
wasn't all that good.... Though it did the authors of the 1975 estimate had ac-
all right on Soviet clandestine opera- tually tried to "talk up" a better overt
trated by the Russians.... Savak also
overreacted when it came to any politi-
cal opponents. One time, in 1977, its
agents badly beat up some innocuous
kids in Teheran. So it was the sort of
thing that just added to the pressures
for the Shah's overthrow."
had been ignored by their bosses.
On March 18, 1978, the Shah an-
nounced what would be the first of a
series of concessions - the release of
385 prisoners. But day after day,
through May and into June, the demon-
strations and riots continued, as did the
5
The C.I.A.'s confidence in the Shah
knew no bounds. In mid-September, as
part of a routine rotation of personnel
and as though no crisis existed, a new,
station chief, Horace Fleischman, was
installed in Teheran. He had been serv-
ing in Tokyo. I
There is general agreement today
that the worst period of the "intelli-
gence gap" ended in. September. The
C.I.A. station acquired a Farsi-speak-
mg officer who could pick up the gossip
in the bazaars. Ambassador Sullivan's
reports home were taking on a more
worried tone, as were those of the
C.I.A. station. Strikes were erupting all
over Iran -. in the oil fields, the refin-
eries, the banks.
Yet even as the intelligence gap was
being closed by the "producers" in the
field, another gap was yawning among
the intelligence "consumers" back in
Washington. Pessimistic views were
being consistently rejected by the
White House in general, and by Na-
tional Security Adviser Brzezinski in
particular. He remained convinced
that the Shah should and would survive,
and he was receiving assurances to this
effect from Ardeshir Zahedi, the Ira-
nian nian Ambassador in Washington, whom
he had selected as one of his principal
sources of information. He had other,
outside sources as well, including some
There was a third leg to the basic in-' flow of assurances from the Iranian
telligence relationship in Iran - Mos- Government that all was, in fact, under
sad, the Israeli secret service. Mossad control. Ambassador Sullivan was tell-
did not labor under the same kind of ing Washington that things were "stir-
self-imposed limits as did the Ameri- ring," but not enough to prevent him
cans. Moreover, they enjoyed the ad- from flying home for a summer vaca-
vantage of a major source of informa- tion at the end of June. The British Am-
tion in the influential Jewish com- bassador, Sir Anthony Parsons, with
munity of 80,000 in Iran. Thus, Israeli whom Sullivan was in close contact, left
Ambassador Uri Lubrani was able to on vacation at the same time.
correctly inform a visiting United Ambassador Sullivan returned to Te-
States senator in 1976 that the greatest heran late in August. On Sept. 7, mar-
danger to the Shah came from the con- tial law was declared, and the following
servative Islamic clergy. And early in day, in Teheran, Government troops
1978, the Israeli Embassy in Washing- fired into protesting crowds; the oppo-
ton sought to alert the State Depart- sition claimed that thousands of civil-
ment to danger signals in Iran. (It was fans were killed.
repeatedly assured that all was well From Baghdad, the Ayatollah Kho-
with the Shah.) meini called upon the Iranian armed
William H. Sullivan arrived in Tehe- forces to rise against the Shah. In Qum,
ran in June 1977 to replace Helms as the Ayatollah Shanat-Madari asked for
American Ambassador. (Sullivan's
background included a stint as Ambas-
sador to Laos, during which he in effect
ran the "secret war" of the C.I.A. and
the Air Force against the North Vietna-
mese.) He quickly sized up the inade-
quacies in the collection of internal
political intelligence. Even contacts
with the middle-of-the-road opposition,
the men who would soon form the Na-
tional Front movement, were limited
because many of the leaders were in
exile and some of the others feared
Savak reprisals if they talked to Ameri-
cans. There were only three officers in
the embassy who could speak the Per-
sian. language, Farsi; that was not
enough to keep tabs on "the bazaars"
- shorthand for the thousands of small
shopowners who are the commercial
and social heart of the big cities.
One source of information the C.I.A.
ignored was in its own files, the Na-
tional Intelligence Estimate of 1975. It
identified the Islamic religious com-
munity, including Khomeini, as a basic
cause of future unrest. It did not, of
course, predict that a revolution would
Iranians who had been among his
graduate students at Columbia Univer-
sity.
"revenge from God against those who During November, Brzezinski appar-
so bestially treated our children." And ently persuaded Zahedi to fly to Tehe-
in Camp David, Jimmy Carter took
time out from his meetings with
Egypt's President Sadat and Israeli
Prime Minister Begin to telephone the
Shah and assure him of continued
United States support. -
What could have led President Carter
to go out on such a limb? One factor
was a report produced by the C.I.A. on
Aug. 16, following three days of riots in
Isfahan and presented to Mr. Carter
personally by Admiral Turner in the
course of a regular Wednesday White
House briefing. This top-secret, 23-page
document was far less exhaustive a
product than the National Intelligence
Estimate of three years before, and it
took a different tack. Its conclusion:
"Iran is not in a revolutionary or even
prerevolutionary situation." The re-
port stated that "those who are in oppo-
sition, both violent and nonviolent, do
not have the capability to be more than
troublesome.
ran to keep him advised of develop-
ments. Zahedi's communications were
invariably optimistic, and they became
the- central influence on American
policy decisions.
Brzezinski was the principal officer
in charge of American policy in Iran.
Secretary of State Vance spent most of
his time on the Israeli-Egyptian peace
negotiations, and was for all practical
purposes cut off from Iranian decision
making. So were his top deputies.
Nor did Admiral Turner play a major
policy role - his agency's stock at the
White House was that low. A small but
telling example of how that had hap-
pened was making the rounds of Wash-
ington: The C.I.A. had just discovered
that Khomeini had written and pub-
lished years before a book about his
philosophy. The book was said to state
precisely what he would do should he
come to power. It was the kind of infor-
mation an intelligence apparatus might
have been expected to turn u automat-
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ically; in fact, it was not found until
late in the game, and even then it was a
private citizen who happened upon it
and informed the agency.
Brzezinski was putting ever more
trust in the Iranian armed forces to
keep the lid on. But there were high-
level doubters. In November, Lieut.
Gen. Eugene F. Tighe, director of the
Defense Intelligence Agency, visited
Teheran. He came away with the im-
pression that the army was trained and
equipped to defend the country from ex-
ternal attack, but that it had not been
taught how to deal with an internal
threat.
Another November visitor to Teheran
was then-Treasury Secretary W. Mi-
chael Blumenthal, who upon his return
recommended that Mr. Carter get an
independent evaluation of the mounting
Iranian crisis. On Nov. 28, the Presi-
dent asked George W. Ball, a New York
investment banker and Under Secre-
tary of State in the Kennedy and John-
son Administrations, to prepare a spe-
cial report. Two weeks later, as Iranian
troops were killing at least 40 demon-
strators in Isfahan, and Ambassador
Sullivan was preparing the evacuation
of dependents of American diplomatic
and military personnel, George Ball
submitted his report to the President, a
document the Administration chose not
to make public. Ball had come to Wash-
ington with his mind pretty much made
up that the Shah was finished; his study
of the situation had reinforced that
view.
Ball presented his pessimistic report
at a meeting in the Oval Office on Dec.
12, but later in the day, Mr. Carter told
a news conference: "I fully expect the
Shah to maintain power in Iran and for
the present problems in Iran to be re-
solved. ... I think the predictions of
doom and disaster that came from
some sources have certainly not been
.realized at all." White House officials
said that the "doom and disaster"
reference reflected Mr. Carter's unhap-
piness with the reporting by the em-
bassy in Teheran and the C.I.A. station
there.
Another Presidential mission was in
the works. According to White House
sources, National Security Adviser
Brzezinski had proposed that he him-
self secretly travel to Teheran to get
the facts, hiding his presence there as
Henry Kissinger had done in Peking in
1971. The President had agreed, but
just before the scheduled Dec. 13 depar-
ture, Mr. Carter canceled the expedi-
tion, convinced that it simply could not
remain secret: -
Meanwhile, voices were being.raised,
particularly in the State Department,
about the need for the United States to
establish some form of contact with
Khomeini, who had moved from Bagh-
dad to a suburb of Paris, from where he
was running the revolution. Men like
Ambassador Sullivan thought that it
would be impossible for the Adminis-
tration to plan future policies without
understanding the Ayatollah, and a
sound judgment required a face-to-face
meeting. In December, there were ac-
tually some secret meetings between a
political officer at the American Em-
bassy in Paris and Ibrahim Yazdi, an
adviser to Khomeini. Yazdi told the
American diplomat that the Ayatollah
was interested in conferring with a sen-
ior United States official, and Ambas-
sador Sullivan called Secretary Vance
to recommend that the United States
send an envoy to meet with Khomeini.
Vance agreed, and called Theodore
L. Eliot Jr., who had retired three
months earlier as Inspector General of
the Foreign Service. But the mission
was aborted. On Jan. 6, Vance received
a telegram from Guadeloupe, site of a
summit meeting of Western leaders. It
was signed by Brzezinski, who was with
the President at the meeting and was
speaking in the President's name. The
mission to Khomeini was canceled.
Later, White House officials would ex-
plain that if word of Eliot's trip were to
leak out, the mission might be con-
strued as undermining the Shah.
By the first week of January, Iran
was virtually paralyzed by strikes in
every sector of the economy. The Shah
named Shahpur Bakhtiar, a political
moderate, as Prime Minister with a
general understanding that he would be
asked to organize a transitional govern-
ment. Ambassador Sullivan was sure
that it signaled the Shah's decision to
leave Iran, at least temporarily.
Now American policy makers fo?
cused once again on the army. Would it
stand by Bakhtiar in the immediate
post-Shah period and prevent Khomeini
from grabbing power? Ambassador
Sullivan asked Washington to rush a
senior United States military officer to
Iran to establish liaison with the com-
manders. Air Force Gen. Robert E.
Huyser, deputy commander of United
States forces in Europe, was tapped for
the job.
On Jan. 16, the Shah left Iran for
Egypt, his first stop in exile. The mili-
tary question was no longer academic,
but General Huyser and Sullivan had a
problem: They were receiving from
Washington "tactical instructions" -
how to deal with Bakhtiar on a day-to-
day basis - when what they wanted
was policy guidance. Foil the two men
had developed very different assess-
ments of the situation. The Ambassa-
dor felt the armed forces had been
"shellshocked" by the Shah's flight and
thought they would split under a severe
challenge. He worried that General
Huyser was concentrating only on the
top brass. The general, on the other
hand, felt that the army had adjusted to
the loss of the Shah and that morale
was so high that they would hold fast if
challenged by Khomeini. C.I.A. Station
Chief Fleischman agreed with Sullivan.
The three men openly discussed their
differences, and when Huyser was
called to Washington early in Febru-
ary, he presented both sets of views.
Brzezinski and his aides gratefully ac-
cepted General Huyser's estimates.
The Ayatollah Khomeini returned to
Teheran in triumph on Feb. 1. In Wash-
ington, the Administration still ex-
pected the Iranian military to hold the
fort for Bahktiar. Even at this 11th
hour, no alternative policies had been
devised. On Feb. 11, following a pro-
Khomeini demonstration at an air-
force base outside Teheran, the army
withdrew to its barracks. The end had
come - an historic defeat for one of
Washington's most important allies,
for the entire American intelligence
community and for the Carter Adminis-
tration itself.
PUTTING BACK
THE PIECES
The office is quiet, spare: a wooden
conference table, a large desk, no ash.
trays, some big briefing charts with
their transparent overlays. Adm.
Stansfield Turner takes his private
elevator to the top floor, the seventh,
and moves toward his desk: It is Febru-
ary 1977, and he has just been con-
firmed in his new post. The C.I.A. is
emerging from a public battering over
its illegal misadventures in the United
States and abroad. Morale is in need of
a boost. But there is nothing to suggest
to the Admiral that, before the year is
out, he and the intelligence community
will be under concerted bureaucratic.
attack and subjected to a sweeping
reorganization.
Admiral Turner's tenure has seen a
dramatic change in the relationship
among the members of the intelligence
community. The intelligence units of
agencies outside the C.I.A., once pretty
much autonomous, have been incorpo-
_rated into a new chain of ' command
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under the Director. The Director has Lion Tasking, responsible for I economic and political materi-
also been given the power of the purse assigning intelligence units in als spew out of banks of com-
over them. Thus, the Pentagon's Na- other directorates to do the ac- puters. Experts in a dozen dis-
tional Security Agency, for example,
which specializes in such arcane tasks
as breaking Soviet codes, has become
more responsive to overall intelligence
community needs. Moreover, new com-
mittees have been created with ex-
traordinary powers to poke into the
nooks and crannies of the community
and to cut across traditional tables of
organization. Such moves, plus whole-
tual collection of data. (In the
jargon of the community, "as-
signing" is translated as
"tasking.") Within the direc-
torate, the assignment job is
farmed out among specialists
-in PHOTINT (Photographic
Intelligence) and HUMINT
(Human Intelligence), for ex-
ample - who will figure out
what community resources to
ciplines analyze the results,
and finally a report emerges to
make its way back up the
chain of command through the
Director's office to the Na-
tional Security Council and,
eventually, to the top con.
sumer of the intelligence com-
munity's product, the Presi-
dent.
sale firings, plus continuing bureau-
cratic hassles, have exacerbated thej
morale problem. And there is concern
within the community that the legisla-
tion now being drawn up in Congress to
define the parameters of intelligence!
operations will cut further into C.I.A.
prerogatives.
The central goal of virtually all of
these changes is to improve efficiency,
to prevent the kind of failure of intelli-
gence gathering and analysis that took
place in Iran. And the cutting edge of
change has been bureaucratic - the
reorganization of the community, from
a relatively loose assemblage of ele-
ments into a tightly structured table of
organization (see chart, Page 15).
At the top sit Director Turner and
Deputy Director Frank C. Carlucci. Re- I
porting to them are six deputies, each
tap. ' Along with the administrate
In addition to Collection tive changes has come a star-
Tasking, the Director and tling turnover in the top eche-
Deputy Director supervise lons over the past 18 months.
three other operational direc- Frank C. Carlucci, for exam-
torates: National Intelligence, ple, has taken over as Deputy
Science and Technology, Director, second only to Admi-
Operations. All are to be in- ral Turner in the community.
volved in the Soviet troop. A short, slim bureaucratic in-
movement inquiry. The Direc- fighter, the 49-year-old Car-
tor also has the authority to lucci is a career Foreign Serv-
task member agencies of the ice officer who won high
intelligence community. For marks as ambassador in Lis-
this inquiry, he calls upon the bon during the Portuguese
National Reconnaissance Of- revolution of 1975, but he also
fice and the National Security served as director of the Office
Agency, both Pentagon-con- of Economic Opportunity and
trolled operations, in other domestic posts tinder
At the supersecret National the Nixon Administration.
of whom supervises a number of spe- Center, part of the Science and
cialized offices. And within each office, Technology directorate, spe-
the personnel may be all C.I.A. or a mix cialists are instructed to
of C.I.A. and other agency staffers. The search high-resolution photo-
theory is that the integration improves graphs from satellites and U-2 reaucratic, to a degree not en-
coordination among the elements, mak- spy planes for details of the joyed by Admiral Turner.
community on any given assignment.
Moreover, the six directorates make it
more easily possible for those seeking
to apportion blame to pin the tail on the
right donkey.
How does the intelligence complex
actually operate when confronted with
a problem? The following scenario re-
flects the community's workings as of
the summer of '79.
Assumption: The United States Gov-
ernment becomes aware of a sudden,
unexplained movement of Soviet troops
in Eastern Europe.
In the National Security Council, it is
the Special Coordination Committee
that considers what is officially de-
scribed as "sensitive foreign-intelli-
gence collection operations." The Na-
tional Security Adviser takes the chair;
the Director of Central Intelligence, the
Secretaries of State and Defense, the
Attorney General and the Chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff are in attend-
ance.
The Director of Central Intelligence
tional Reconnaissance Office, sponsibilities is his role on the
which spends the largest share Political Intelligence Working
of the intelligence communi- Group, created this year with
ty's budget, may be asked to no public notice to find ways of
send new satellites aloft. The improving the product. Under
National Security Agency or- Secretary of State for Political
ders a major new campaign of Affairs David D. Newsom and
electronic eavesdropping on Deputy National Security Ad-
coded Soviet communications. viser David L. Aaron are the
Meanwhile, the Deputy Di-
rector for Operations, the
cloak-and-dagger chief, has
alerted his network of agents
around-the world to be on the
lookout for information bear-
ing on the Soviet troop move-
ments. More specifically, he
has set his operatives in East-
ern Europe and the Soviet
Union itself to ferreting out the
reasons for the moves.
All the data stream in to the
directorate for National Intel-
ligence. Here the thousands of
bits and pieces are shaken
down and pored over; related
other members of the group,
which has no chairman but op-
erates with a small staff. It
conducts regular studies on
what it calls "vulnerable coun-
tries," recommending priori-
ties in political and sociologi-
cal intelligence reporting in
the field by embassies and
C.I.A. stations.
The principal objective of
the organization is to improve
the coordination of overt and
covert reporting by the State
Department and the C.I.A.;
they are now under orders to
work together, pooling their
is instructed to find the information
necessary to understand the scope and
intent of the Soviet troop movement.
Upon his return to his Langley, Va.,
base, he calls in his Deputy for Collec- I
President Carter named him
to his current post in 1978. He
has the respect of virtually all
the power centers of Washing-
ton, legislative as well as bu-
7
 Approved For Release 2007/03/01 : CIA-RDP99-00498R000300030003-6
assets; rather than pursusing
the kind of separate operations
typical of the past. In the
course of its coordinating ef-
forts, the group takes up such
matters as "nominal" versus
"integrated" covers for C.I.A.
personnel in the embassies. A
"nominal" cover is usually
known to the host govern- !
ment; an "integrated" cover
is deeply concealed.
Another new community
leader charged with increas-
ing coordination among agen-
cies is Lieut. Gen. Frank A.
Camm, who runs Collection
Tasking, a new C.I.A. post. A
lanky, 6-foot 4-inch native of
Kentucky, he holds graduate
degrees from Harvard (engi-
neering) and George Washing-
ton (international relations)
and has helped to run the
Corps of Engineers and the
Atomic Energy Commission.
He's been given the job of set-
ting priorities within the com-
munity as to who will do what
jobs and how the available re-
sources in terms of people and
money will be expended.
Under General Camm's
wing, for example, is the
newly created National Intelli- i
gence Tasking Office, staffed
by representatives of the civil-
ian and military agencies that
make up the intelligence com-
munity along with the C.I.A.
The center is intended to
"coordinate" the intelligence
units of these agencies, units
that had been relatively au-
tonomous before President
Carter's Executive Order
forced cooperation upon them.
The Energy Department, for
example, is charged with
overt collection of all informa-
tion on energy matters
abroad, and it cooperates with
the C.I.A. in preparing against
the day terrorists might try
nuclear thefts. The Treasury
Department collects foreign
financial and monetary data.
The Drug Enforcement Ad-
ministration is supported by
the C.I.A. (abroad) and the
F.B.I. (at home) in rooting out
international networks of nar-
cotics smugglers. The State
Department's Intelligence and
Research Bureau specializes
in analyzing information flow-
ing from American embassies
and consulates abroad. The
Pentagon's Office of Net As-
sessments is concerned with
the balance of strategic and
conventional forces between
the United States and the
Soviet Union.
The net-assessments func-
tion is a bone of contention be-
tween the Pentagon and the
C.I.A., the kind of issue that
suggests why there's a need
for coordination. The Defense
Department insists that with-
out access to the most classi-
fied aspects of the United
States defense posture - ac-
cess that the Defense Depart-
ment denies to the C.I.A. - net
assessment should not be
made. Let the C.I.A. stick to
its collection of information on
the war-making potential of
foreign nations, says the Pen-
tagon, and leave the weighing
of the balance of forces, histor-
ically a military-command
function, to the military.
Admiral Turner protests
that his agency "is not in the
business of making net assess-
ments nor does it intend to get
into it." However, he does add
that through the National In-
telligence directorate the
C.I.A. is "trying to find ways
to make our assessments more
meaningful [and] this inevita-
bly involves some compari-
sons...."
The single most criticized
area of intelligence activity is
now centralized in the direc-
torate of National Intelli-
gence, which is responsible for
maintaining the flow of data
and analysis, short-and long-
term, to policy makers. This
army of 1,500 analysts is com-
manded by Deputy Director
Robert R. Bowie, a dapper, 69-
year-old lawyer, educator and
foreign-policy specialist whom
Admiral Turner hired in 1977.
He had once been chairman of
the State Department's Policy
Planning Staff, but this is his
first job in the intelligence
community.
Specific intelligence assess-
ments are produced for Bowie
by the corps of National Intel-
ligence Officers. Years ago,
the Office of Estimates drew
on information and views from
the entire intelligence com-
munity and reached conclu-
sions by consensus (with dis-
sents footnoted). Today, a Na-
tional Intelligence Officer, a
specialist in a given area, may
seek cooperation from others
in the community, but he
drafts his own assessment.
It is The N.I.O.'s who
produce the lengthy National
Intelligence Estimates (N.I.-
E.'s), sometimes projecting a
nation 10 years into the future;
these papers, which include
dissenting views in the actual
text, must be approved by the
National Foreign Intelligence
Board, made up of the chief in-
telligence officers of the com-
munity.
The trouble with such
studies, as members of the
community reluctantly admit,
is that policy makers have no
time to read them. Only the
annual N.I.E. on the Soviet
Union's strategic posture and
intentions has a wide reader-
ship. As a rule, policy makers
prefer daily current intelli-
gence ("the quick fix," as a
C.I.A. official calls it) al-
though they complain about a
lack of in-depth material after
something - like Iran - has.
gone wrong. All of which poses
what Bowie calls "tensions"
between long-term and short-
term intelligence require-
ments. He is constantly urged
to provide current intelli-
gence, making it increasingly
hard to spring analysts loose
for the N.I.E.'s and other in-
depth studies.
Last fall Bowie established
the post of National Intelli-
gence Officer for Warning,
and gave it to Richard Leh-
man, a C.I.A. veteran of 30
years. The Pentagon's Strate-
gic Warning Staff, which had
been primarily designed to
provide advance notice of an
of major developments
through "alert memoranda."
It was Lehman's staff, for ex-
ample, that warned the Ad-
ministration that China would
invade Vietnam last February
and provided a correct assess-
ment of how the situation
would develop. Basically, the
warning system is geared to
situations with a potential for
a Soviet-American confronta.
tion. A coup d'etat in, say, the
Chad, does not trigger alp
memorandums.
Yet another newly create.-
unit is the super-secret "Mos.
cow Committee," set up by the
C.I.A. this year. It seeks to
deal with Soviet efforts to de-
stroy American intelligence
networks abroad.
Meanwhile, Bowie has
created a little-known but
much-experienced group to
oversee the whole collection
and analysis effort. The Senior
Review Panel is headed by the
former Ambassador to Tanza.
nia and Yugoslavia, William
Leonhart. Its other members
are retired Army Gen. Bruce
Palmer, a former Vice Chief o Staff, and Princeton Univer.
sity Prof. Klaus Knorr, a
scholar in the field of intelli.
gence. The full-time pane!
serves as an in-house critic o1
the quality of intelligence; it i
involved at the inception of
every estimating process anc
in all of the post-mortems.
0
The most demoralized of the
departments under Admiral
Turner's wing is the director
ate for Operations, home of thE
cloak and dagger. John N,
McMahon, a graying, 50-year
cades with the C-1-A., brings
quiet demeanor to his post an
is said to have considerabl
popularity with his subord
nates - but he has had an ul
hill struggle coping with th
body blows his organizatia
has absorbed.
The Operations responsibi
ities are officially defined a
_ the collection of "foreign inte
ligeace, largely through seen
impending nuclear conflict,
was absorbed and its role ex-
panded by Lehman. It now
keeps the Government abreast
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 Approved For Release 2007/03/01 : CIA-RDP99-00498R000300030003-6
means," counterintelligence
missions abroad and "other
secret foreign intelligence
tasks." But for all the roman-
tic and/or grisly tales of its
operatives, covert spying
today is devoted more to so-
phisticated espionage - re-
cruiting foreign officials to
serve as American spies, for
example - than to the subver-
sion, political action and guer-
rilla warfare of the past.
In part, that reflects the in-
vestigations of a few years
ago; Congressional oversight
committees are still sensitive
about approving major covert
operations, and the National
Security Council's Special
Coordination Committee
(chaired by Brzezinski) is re-
luctant to propose "special ac-
tivities." Moreover, this
change has dramatically af-
fected personnel. The agen-
cy's paramilitary capability,
for instance, has virtually van-
ished. Some 27 percent of the
C I A 's clandestine services
der whether the SALT II
treaty was even verifiable.
Government experts claimed
that because of complex satel-
lite and radar surveillance
networks around the world,
the United States would not be-
come blind altogether, even if
it takes three or four years to
replace fully the stations in
Iran. What's more, though no
one in Government will dis-
cuss the matter in detail, there
are other sources of informa-
The major outside check on
the community, however, is
the Senate and House over-
sight committees. And it is in
the Congress that the most sig-
nificant limits ever imposed
on the country's intelligence
apparatus are now being de-
signed, in the form of draft
legislation. The so-called
"charters," drawn up by the
Senate Select Committee on
Intelligence, will cover the
C.I.A., the Defense Intelli-
THE NEW
AGE OF
INTELLIGENCE
tion concerning new missile gence Agency and the Federal
designs, even before they have i Bureau of Investigation. The
been test flown. The indica- goal: to define with reasonable
tions are that these sources precision the parameters for
are human agents who have in spying operations in all fields,
some fashion penetrated the including the setting of certain
Soviet defense establishment. constraints on what the agen-
Thus the human element -! cies are permitted to do. The
HUMINT - can still have a central dilemma: how to .
major role in strategic intelli- reconcile national-security
gence; presumably it will con- needs with the constitutional
tinue to do so. "We have to rights of Americans.
play all the systems together," Reasonable men may differ
a senior C.I.A. official said the on such an issue. The White
other day. "Spies tell you that House, for example, opposes
there's something unusual on as too cumbersome the com-
staff is now 50 years of age or' the ground, say, in the Soviet
older; and replacements don't Union, so you order photogra-
grow on trees. As Admiral phy and signal intercepts, and
Turner recently remarked, then you have to go back to the
"You can't just recruit from spy. On the other hand, you
the street for the spy shop:" don't want to send a spy to get
Recruiting, of course, has what can be obtained from
not been a major activity photographs. So it's a syner-
within the community of late. getic affair; the problem is
During the last two years, the how to get the synergism
Admiral has fired more than going."
400 officers in the clandestine El
services. The C.I.A. had be-
come top-heavy, he says. The public concern over the
The personnel cutback has ethics of the C.I.A. was re-
damaged the agency's morale flected in the creation of the
more than the Congressional Intelligence Oversight Board,
investigations and all the other a private citizens' panel ap-
criticism put together. pointed by the President and
operating from the Executive
All of which is not to suggest Office Building next to the
that spy satellites and elec. White House. Its members are
tropic gadgets have totally Thomas L. Farmer, a Wash-
taken over from flesh-and- ington lawyer, chairman; for-
blood spies. Covert operations mer Senator Albert Gore of
continue, and in at least one Tennessee and former Gov.
important instance, they may William S. Scranton of Penn-
be taking the place of scien- sylvania.
tific hardware. The board reviews all activi-
The loss of the missile-track- ties of the intelligence agen-
ing stations in Iran was a low cies that might raise questions
blow to American surveillance of propriety and legality. It
of Soviet strategic testing, and has a mandate to report di-
it made some in Congress won- rectly to the President any
such flaws.
mittee's desire to require the
President's personal approval
of all major covert operations.
The C.I.A. is holding out
against Senators who would
deny the agency the right to
secretly use electronic surveil-
lance on officials of foreign
countries who hold American
citizenship.
The committee staff hopes to
have a draft completed by
Labor Day, in an atmosphere
viewed as remarkably favora-
ble toward the intelligence
community, given past histo-
ry. "The environment has
changed," says Senator Birch
Bayh of Indiana, committee
chairman. He says that the
proposed charter will not in-
terfere with the agency's
"ability to penetrate the deci-
sion-making process of foreign
nations." But some members
of the intelligence community,
given the shaking up they've
received of late, feel they're
entitled to a few doubts.
There has been no obvious
change in the status of Ameri-
ca's intelligence community.
Each morning, the President
of the United States still re-
ceives the top-secret docu-
ment called the President's
Daily Intelligence Brief. (Only
five copies are produced.)
Once a week, the President
continues to welcome Admiral
Turner or Deputy Director
Carlucci to the Oval Office for
a half-hour intelligence up-
date. The very reorganization
that Jimmy Carter has de-
manded of the intelligence
community indicates his con-
tinuing interest - not to men-
tion disappointment.
Yet the glory days of the
C.I.A. seem to have passed.
When the Cold War was per-
ceived by the nation and its
President as representing a
clear and present danger, the
intelligence community had a
special aura. There was little
public discussion then of its
"efficiency" (which in all like-
lihood was no greater than it is
today) and Congress tended to
look the other way when ques-
tions of means and ends arose.
There is no lack of major
problem areas for the modern
intelligence community to ex-
plore, from the growing turbu-
lence in Latin America and the
Caribbean to the strategic
issues of SALT II and the eco-
nomic threat posed by the Or-
ganization of Petroleum Ex-
porting Countries. And the
C.I.A. is expected by its mas-
ters in the White House to
come up with the data and
analyses needed to deal with
those issues. But it is apt to be
a more careful, deliberate ef-
fort, relying more on elec-
tronic tools and patient collec-
tion than on the cloak and dag-
ger.
 Approved For Release 2007/03/01 : CIA-RDP99-00498R000300030003-6
On the top levels of the intel-
ligence community, there is
some uncertainty about that
prospect, and considerable re-
sentment of the criticism the
agencies have attracted. A
Senator recently commented,
for example, on the failure of
today's C.I.A. to play a role on
the policy-making level:
"They must have some opin-
ions." To which a top C.I.A. of-
ficial responds: "What is it
that they want us to do? It's
damned if we get involved in
policy and damned if we don't.
I guess, on balance, we prefer
to stay out of it."
The complaints about the
agency's efficiency, according'
to Admiral Turner, reflect
some confusion as to the na-
ture of intelligence work. Ac-
curate political analysis, he
says, "depends upon anticipat-
ing and correctly interpreting
human action and reaction,
some of which is inconsistent,,
or irrational, or driven by per-
sonal rather than national con-
siderations. The best the ana-
lyst can do is to alert the deci-
sion maker to trends, possibil-
ities, likelihoods."
As Admiral Turner sees it,
the whole process of intelli-
gence gathering and analysis
is undergoing evolution from
what he has called the old-
fashioned "military-intelli-
gence mentality" to a modern
political, economic and socio-
logical approach. "We are re-
tooling," he says, "trying to
understand the world." There
is, however, pressure to speed
up the process. The Congress
and the President are impa-
tient. ^ i
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 Approved For Release 2007/03/01 : CIA-RDP99-00498R000300030003-6
President
Jimmy Carter
PHOTINT
Photo Intelligence
HUMINT
Human Intelligence
Collection
Evaluation
directora
Adm. Stanfield Turner
Director of Central Intel-
ligence and Director of Frank C. Carlucci
the Central Intelligence Deputy Director of Cen-
lAgency (DCI/DCIA) trol Intelligence (DDCI)
Economic
Research
Political Analysis
National Intelligence
Officers
Zbigniew Brzezinski
Assistant to the President for
El Intelligence community
ONSIDE INTELLIGENCE
Lieut. Gen.
Frank A.
Comm
Deputy for
Collection
Tasking
Robert R.
Bowie
I Deputy
for
National
ntelligence
National Intelligence Scientific
Tasking Office Intelligence
Current
Operations
PRODUCERS
In an effort to improve the quality of
its "product," the intelligence
community - the C.I.A. and
other agencies - has been
reorganized. Four of the key new
tes are shown at left.