INTELLIGENCE IN THE COLBY ERA CIA IN FLUX

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75B00380R000600010003-6
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 5
• Document Creation Date: December 12, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 25, 2002
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: December 8, 1973
• Content Type: NSPR

uQ 6-et, THE TIT ,v' REIULIC
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Intelligence in the Colby Era
I_
iT,
11. Te 1,11 IF AUX
by Stanley Karnow
When President Truman was contemplating the cre-
ation of the Central Intelligence Agency more than a
quarter-century ago, Secretary of State George C.
Marshall warned against the new organization on the
grounds that its "powers ... seem almost unlimited
and need clarification." Since then the CIA has suc-
cessfully resisted hundreds of attempts by Congress to
limit and clarify its powers, and the latest such bid,
this time by Senator John G. Stennis of Mississippi,
promises by be equally ineffective. Stennis, whose
Armed Services subcommittee is supposed to super-
vise the CIA, has consistently protected it against any
serious investigation, control or criticism, and, con-
sistent with that practice, his present bill is less a gen-
uine effort to harness the agency than a diversionary
tactic designed to prevent other members of Congress,
notably Senator William Proxmire, from pushing
through stronger measures. The CIA is likely to emerge
unscathed again.
Even so, other pressures have combined to diminish
the CIA's influence, and, although it continues to carry,
on covert and sometimes reckless activities, the agency
is not quite the sinister "invisible government" of
years past. For one thing its reputation has suffered
badly from misadventures like the Bay of Pigs and the
secret war in Laos, as well as its tangential involve-
ment in the Watergate scandals, and, as a result, it has
fallen prey to the fierce bureaucratic rivalries of Wash
ington. It has gradually become overshadowed by the
Defense Department's -various espionage services,
which now account for about 85 percent of the esti-
mated six or seven billion dollars spent annually by
what is known in`the idiom of the capital as the "intel- ??
ligence community;" The biUgest of the Pentagon out-
fits is the National Security Agency, whose 25,000
employees manage satellites, fly reconnaissance air-
craft, and, among other jobs, monitor open and secret
foreign radio communications from some 900 clandes-
tine bases around the world, all on a budget that runs
into the billions. In contrast the CIA staff of'15,000
operates on roughly $750 million per year, and, in
many respects, it could not function without military
support. Unlike the Defense Department, moreover,
the CIA cannot seek funds directly fron Congress, but
makes its requests:to the Office of Management and
Budget. Therefore, while he is technically in charge of
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 the entire intellil~cQ~r~si~r~Qi~i1
tor's theoretical predominance is restricted by his rela-
tive poverty. The extent to which the military has
reached into intelligence matters was recently reflected
in the assignment of two senior officers, Major General
Daniel O. Graham and Major General Lew Allen, to
key.positions inside the CI'A. Prior to his shift Graham
contended in an unusual article in ArmU
magazine
that
the Pentagon rather than the CIA ought to have the
chief responsibility in the field of defense intelligence.
"The time is ripe," he wrote, "for the military profes-
sion to reassert its traditional role in the function of
describing military threats to national security."
More significantly, the importance of the CIA has
been pared down over the years by the White I-louse.
John F. Kennedy's confidence in the agency Was shaken
by the Bay of Pigs disaster, and, as the Pentagon Papers
have vividly revealed, Lyndon Johnson repeatedly ig-
nored pessimistic CIA evaluations of the Vietnam sit-
uation that contradicted his preconceived policies.
? The agency's prestige has dropped even further under
President' Nixon, partly because his administration
has tried to centralize power at the expense of the dif-
ferent Washington bureaucracies and also because his
-resident foreign policy expert, Henry Kissinger, who
served as a counter-intelligence sergeant during World
War II, lost patience with many of the CIA's tong, elab-
orate and sometimes inconclusive reports. According
to Patrick J. McGarvey, a former intelligence specialist
whose book on the CIA was officially cleared, Kissin-
ger once rejected an agency study on Britain and the
Common Market with the words "Piece of Crap"
scrawled across the cover. McGarvey also disclosed
that Kissinger never requested agency analyses on
Vietnam, preferring instead to have his own aides pro-
duce assessments on the basis of data supplied by the
CIA and other intelligence units. This approach led
not long ago to the dissolution of the Office of Na-
tional Estimates, which had been established under
CIA auspices to turn out independent, objective intel-
ligence evaluations representing the collective wisdom
of all government espionage services. The disappear-
ance of the Office of National Estimates will certainly
decrease the flow of paper that has been pouring out
of the CIA, but it may also prompt the agency to tailor
its interpretations-to fit administration policies.
The decline of the CIA is reflected as well in its new
director, William Egan Colby, an agency veteran who
lacks the stature to stand up to such major Washing-
ton figures as Kissinger and Defense Secretary James
Schlesinger. Colby was infOrmed of his nomination
for the job last sprint; by General Alexander I laig. tile
('resident's chief of stiff, rather than by Mr. ,Nixon'
himself. A mild-mannered elan of 53, some of whose
subordinates call him "the bookkeeper," Colby grow
behind the German lines in France and Norway as an
agent of the Office of Strategic Services, the precursor
of the CIA. Friends from those days remember him as
phenomenally. courageous and intensely faithful to his
friends, and yet, as one of them recalled recently, his
first loyalty has always been to his superiors and their
'directives. Another friend of his submits that Colby's
character has been shaped by two main experiences:
his life as a clandestine operative during the Cold War
and his years in Vietnam, where he first served in the
early 1960s as the local agency chief and later as boss of
the Phoenix program designed to destroy the Vietcong
structure in South Vietnamese villages. Colby's cour-
teous facade seems to camouflage the inner apparatclrik
whose devotion to orders can be cold-blooded. Testi-
fying before congressional 'Committees a couple of
years ago, for example, he calmly related that his Phoe-
nix program killed 20,587 Vietnamese between 1968
and 1971. A former military intelligence officer in Viet-
nam by the name of K. Barton Osborne, who chal-
lenged Colby's confirmation as CIA director during a
Senate Armed Services Committee hearing this sum-
mer, called Phoenix an "indiscriminate murder pro-
gram," buttressing his charge with the claim tftat
suspects were shot or tossed out of helicopters. Al-
though Colby tends to take the cool c'est In guerre view,
he has at least acknowledged somewhat obliquely that
Phoenix was a brutal business. In May 1970, for in-
stance, he advised Americans involved in the program
that they could be reassigned without prejudice if they
found its activities "repugnant." He also conceded un-
der interrogation by Representative Ogden Reid of
New York that innocent Vietnamese may have been
assassinated, tortured -or jailed:
Reid: My question is: Are you certain that we know a
member of'the VCI [Vietcong infrastructure] from a
loyal member of the South Vietnam citizenry?
Colby: No, Mr. Congressman, I am not.?
One of the revelations of-Watergate is that former
CIA agents like E. I toward Hunt were using the same
cloak- and dagger techniques at home that they used
aborad, and that the White House was prepared to 0111-
ploy them for precisely that purpose. To some degree
the upper echelons of. the agency went along with
these illegal practices. Although the National Security
Act that created the CIA expressly bars it from "police,
subpoena, law enforcement powers or internal security
functions," the agency plainly violated its charter in
the summer of 1971 wLien General Robert E. Cushman,
Jr., then its deputy director and now the marine corps
comman'dailt, provided I lun.t with a wig, camera, false
identity papers and a speech-alteration device in order
to burglarize the psychiatrist of Daniel Ellsbi'rg.
Cush- has claimed that he Was unaware of Hunt's ohjec-
up as the son of Qa >cri )acetic arm officer, raduated live 1 b' s t ~~ r}' technicians to
from Princeton X11 iPresr ~ 1R ~Ch O /44AQ 0 r CI~i ,RR19 1' 111 1. 11 aL c RPlgc CIA c3rct% up a
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g,cr irec- c. lIS 1I111'n urrng or ar 1 ,when he operated
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"psychological pOff"( ElRrMtaM i1iOQ,r~e,Vi4i ` cl~i ilg~~l c~c~ X80 sc i~r~i6~g~4,3~5pr a~or Stuart Svt?i?g-
the law that forbids the agency from spying on Ameri-
can citizens. Colby has calledt these transgressions
"deplorable" and other senior CIA officials affirm that
the agency stopped short once it realized that it was
going beyond bounds. These officials congratulate
themselves that the agency has come out of 'Watergate
looking "pretty clean."
B
ut deception is an integral part of the CIA's busi-
ness, and so questions about its claim to cleanliness
inevitably linger. It is still unclear, for example,
whether the agency illicitly spied on the US antiwar
movement in 1969 and 1970. Richard I-ielms, the former
director and now American ambassador to Iran, has
denied that the' CIA was engaged in such activities,
yet Tom Charles Huston, the architect of the White
House intelligence project, has said that Helms was
"most cooperative and helpful" in the effort. At this
writing Helms is en route to the US to reply to fresh
allegations, raised in a Harper's article this month by
Andrew St. George; that the CIA had infiltrated the
Watergate conspirators and knew in advance of their
planned break-in. One of the conspirators, Eugenio
Martinez, was on a CIA retainer and reported to the
agency in fate 1971 and again in March 1972 that Hunt
was in Miami, presumably in order to recruit opera-
tives for the Watergate job. Colby recently disclosed in
response to Senator Howard Baker that Martinez was
advised to forget about Hunt, who was then "an em-
ployee of the White House undoubtedly on domestic
White I-louse business of no interest" to the agency.
Maritnez's lawyer said just the opposite in court. Nor
did the CIA know, Colby has said, that Martinez was
participating "in any secret arrangement or relation-
ship that might have involved any domestic clandes-
tine operations." Baker reportedly remains uncon-
vinced. Colby's contentions strain credulity, for they,
suggest that the CIA, which swallows up data with the
voracity of a vaccuum cleaner, was neither 'interested
in the activities of a former agent skulking among the
Cuban exiles of Miami nor able to keep tabs on one of
its part-time stringers. Equally difficult to believe is
Colby's claim that he was merely trying to protect the
CIA from adverse publicity when he sought to avoid
telling Earl Silbert, the Justice Department prosecutor,
that it was former White House chief of staff John Ehr-
lichman who had instructed General Cushman to pro-
vide Hunt with the paraphernalia to case the office of
Eilsberg's psychiatrist. As Colby himself put it, he
"danced around" with Silbert because "we were con-
vinced at a public misunderstanding of CIA in olve-
ment in Watergate, and ... there was a reluctance to
drop somewhat inflammatory names in-the kind of at-
mosphere that was around its at the time."
Colby asserted during his confirmation hearing this
summer that he was "quite nrel-'arcd to leave this job"
rather than ca rry ,,RpTMp
ton, the only Armed Services Committee member
present through most of the hearing, Colby carved out
enough loopholes to justify a number of dubious CIA
operations. Among other things he declined to pledge
that "we will never give any other agency of the US.
government help which it might use in its responsibil-
ities," and, he added, he could envisage situations in
which "it would be appropriate" for the CIA to assist a
White House official "without its coming to public
notice." Colby indulged in similarly fancy footwork
during secret hearings on Chile held in early October
by the House subcommittee on inter-American affairs.
As Tad Szulc has revealed, Kissinger had laid down,
US policy toward Chile in September 1970, when he
said during a background press briefing that the elec-
tion of Marxist President Salvador Allende Gossens
would lead to a Communist regime and contaminate
Argentina,. Bolivia and Peru. The CIA had tried to pre-
vent Allende's election by, among other moves, sub-
sidizing to the tune of $400,000 Chilean news media
opposed to him. When that failed the administration'
became less interested in seeing Allende overthrown
than in having his government collapse economically
so that, as Assistant Secretary of State Jack Kubisch
explained, socialism would be discredited. Testifying
before the I-louse subcommittee, Colby agreed with
Kubisch and he denied with apparent sincerity that
the CIA had either favored or been implicated in the
coup in which Allende was ousted and died. He also
denied that the agency had financed the Chilean truck
strike that sparked the coup. But when Rep.- Michael
Harrington asked him whether. the subsidiaries of US
corporations*in Brazil and other Latin American coun-
tries had subsidized specific anti-Allende demonstra-
tions, Colby responded evasively with replies like, "I
would rather not answer the question than give you an
assurance and be wrong." He also displayed the
foughn,ess of a CIA professional when, disagreeing
with Rep. Robert Steele's comment that the killings by
the Chilean military had "done no one any good," he
said that the slaughter had rdduced the chances of
civil war and thus "does them some good." Colby's
testimony on Chile further indicated that he has no
intention of withdrawing the CIA from covert opera-
tions overseas, but, as he put it during his confirma-
tion hearing, he will try to keep the agency "out of the
kind of exposure" that Laos and other such "larger'
activities got us into." Hence his outlook is consistent
with that of his predecessors, and the prospect is that
the CIA will continue, as it does, at present, to spend
about half of. its budget on clandestine work.
The catalogue of the agency's assorted assets is
largely familiar by now. It has, run its own radio sta-
tions, among them Radio Free Europe, and it currently
operates a feature service that distributes slanted
CI~n r around shed by the New
oontinuod.
 0
York firm of Frederick A. Praeger, and it still has the durin~~,Y,,, the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, when they
influence to perAA, R ?YYl~erFoj LRIqRes 2 !94!P CI,~i rr-~ti~~~Q sites in Cuba.
works on the CIA to its censors. One of its largest "pri- Now controlled by the National Security Agency, elec-
vate enterprises" is Air America, which controls sub- tronic observers keel) track of the latest Soviet weap-
sidiaries like Southern Air Transport, Rocky Mountain ons, and there are radio monitoring systems so acute
Airlines and four or five others. And, through various that they can listen to a Soviet control tower speaking
cover organizations, it has at one time or another fi- to a Soviet pilot. The Russians, of course, have similar
nanced French labor leaders, Latin American journal- equiipment, and the fact that the US and the Soviet
ists, Asian Buddhist monks and African politicians. Union can watch each other closely has been legiti-
West German Chancellor Willy Brandt was a CIA ben- mized in the Strategic Arms Limitation agreement,
eficiary in the days when the agency was searching for which allows for "national technical means of verifica-
moderate socialists to offset the volatile Kurt Schu- tion." As John Newhouse relates in his book, Cold
coacher. The agency also bankrolled Pope Paul VI Dawn, US electronic intelligence is so accurate that,
when, as Cardinal Montini, he headed Italy's anti- during one negotiating session, a Soviet officer asked
Communist.Catholic youth movement. an American delegate not to disclose his knowledge of
Russian military affairs to his civilian comrades. The
More dramatic CIA operations have included the weakness of electronic intelligence, however, lies in its
overthrow of Iranian Premier Mohammed Mossadegh inability to judge an adversary's intentions-and that
in 1953, the ouster, of leftist President Jacobo Arbenz's is what went wrong in the recent Middle East crisis.
government in Guatemala a year later, and attempts to Although it had all the data in hand, the CIA failed to
unseat Indonesian, President Sukarno and Prince forecast the Arab attack, and, as a result, it is engaged
Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia. Popular accounts to at present in examining its errors.
the contrary, such flamboyant j-ictivities were never Sophisticated,espionage had one defect: it produced
undertaken by the agency without the highest author- huge amounts of data that required interpretation by
ity. Formerly known under other names, that authority increasing numbers of specialists. 'As a consequence
today is the Forty Committee; so called because it was the irite]ligence bureaucracy swelled to enormous
established by National Security Council Directive proportions. In November 1971 President Nixon in-
No. 40. Its present chairman is Kissinger, and its mem- structed Helms to streamline the community, curtail
bers are the deputy secretary of State, the deputy sec-' its cost and improve its coordination. Helms had a
retary of Defense, the head of the joint chiefs of staff year in which to survey the problem, but he acted
and the CIA director. At one time during the Nixon slowly, reportedly because he feared that his own CIA
administration former Attorney General John Mitchell would be downgraded in any reorganization. Mr. Nix-
also attended its meetings. The National Security Act on's irritation at this delay was compounded by his
of 1947, which created the CIA, is vague on the subject annoyance with Helms' -refusal to blame foreign re-
of covert operations. The agency's real charter for gimes for backing US antiwar movements and thereby
"dirty tricks," however, is contained in 10 confidential provide the White House with the rationale to clothe
National Securtiy Council intelligence directives. repressive measures in "national security" garb. So,
The CIA's most ambitious "dirty trick," the abortive late ]ast'year, the President peremptorily sent I lelms to
invasion of Castro's Cuba, was not only a failure that .Iran, the site of a large CIA mission and one country in
took the lives of 300 Cubans and four American pilots, which a former agency director could be tolerated as
but it marked a turning point for the agency. President US envoy. James Schlesinger took his place at,the CIA
Kennedy dismissed the bold Ivy League types who and promptly fired about 10 percent of its employees,
had commanded the CIA until then and replaced theih among them many superannuated paramilitary types.
with more cautious bureaucrats. The agency would Several agency operatives who had initially detested
later get into supporting a secret army in Laos of some Schlesinger grew to admire his no-nonsense style. But
30,000 tribal guerillas, and, under Colby's aegis, it Schlesinger lasted only five months before the Presi-
would direct the Phoenix "pacification" program in dent moved him to the Defense Department. In came
Vietnam. But, in comparison to the CIA's earlier ad- Colby, a figure hitherto unknown outside the intclli-
ventures, these could be justified as wartime activities. gence apparatus. Senator Kennedy called him "the
Meanwhile new technological developments were epitome of the covert man," and Senator Proxmire,
emerging that would vastly change old espionage noting that "we are not allowed to go back into his em-
methods and, in effect, send the classic spies into ployment history and judge his fitness," complained
retirement. that "we don't really know who Mr. Colby is." Never-
In 1955 scientists working Linder CIA auspices eon- theless the Senate confirmed him on Augur-,t I by a
shucted a high altitude airplane, the U-2, that could vote of 81 to 13, and consoled itself With the expccta-
photograph a golf ball from a height of 70,000 feet. tion that it would take up reform of the CIA later this
They later invented satellites to do the same job even year. But so long as the Armed Services a nd Appro-
better. These spies in the sky. )erformed brilliantly Xriations subcornnritt 'es it C In ' ess monopolise CIA
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affairs, authentic reform of the agency is remote.
One of the first serious moves to supervise the CIA
was initiated in 1956, when Senator Mansfield and 34
co-sponsors sought to form a joint committee on-intel-
ligence patterned after the congressional body that
keeps watch on, atomic energy matters. Their move
was defeated, and the issue lay dormant until 1966,
when Senators Fulbright and Eugene McCarthy again
tried to strengthen legislative control over the CIA.
That effort ended in a hollow compromise. The chair-
man of the Senate Armed Services Committee invited
the three senior members of the Foreign Relations
Committee to attend CIA subcommittee sessions,
which are rarely held. Still another attempt last year by
Senator John Sherman Cooper to compel the CIA to
provide Congress with intelligence died in the Armed
Services Committee, and Senator Stennis, its chair-
man, made it clear that he considered regulation of the
agency to be sacrosanct. "Spying is spying," he said.
"You have to make up your mind that you are going to
have an intelligence agency and protect it as such, and
shut your eyes some and take what is coming."
Last spring Proxmire proposed that the CIA's budg-
et for covert operations be cut by 40 percent, and he
followed up that recommendation with a bill that,
among its other provisions, would prevent the agency
from engaging in any clandestine activities without
the approval of the congressional oversight commit-
tees. Proxmire's proposal was matched at the time by
Senator Eagleton's suggestion that the war powers bill,
then being debated, include an amendment prohibit-
ing. the CIA from any paramilitary operations without
congressional authorization. Those potential infringe-
ments on the agency's powers apparently alarmed
Stennis. He first signaled that he would back the war
powers bill on condition that the Eagleton amendment
'be eliminated, and that tactic worked. Then, evidently
aiming to head off Proxmire, he introduced a mild bill
that merely reinforces the National Security Act's orig-
-inal injunction against CIA involvement in domestic
affairs. And, announcing it with a bit of oratory, Sten-
nis described his bill as insurance that the CIA "will
never become the private tool of unscrupulous men,
whatever position they may hold."
At the moment the CIA appears to be under tighter
White House command than it has been at any time,
and this may seem to be, at least in theory, a salutary
change from its days as a free-wheeling assemblage of
dangerous romantics. Yet the practical question still
unresolved is whether the President in control of the
agency intends to use it to bolster himself or the na-
tional security. Only Congress can guarantee' that the
administration employs the CIA responsibly, but ef-
fective legislation remains to be passed. Until it is the
CIA is bound to remain an organization whose pow-
ers, as General Marshall warned, are both unlimited
and ambiguous, and, more crucially, tempting to an
ambitious Executive:
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