WHERE SPIES REALLY MATTER

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP99-00418R000100370018-3
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 10, 2012
• Sequence Number: 18
• Publication Date: August 28, 1989
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/05/10: CIA-RDP99-00418R000100370018-3
Where spies
reaII matter
President Bush is angry that he is not getting good
information about key places, and he wants
to change that by improving U.S. intelligence
For George Bush, the only President
to have directed the nation's net-
work of spies, the irony is acute and
painful. He cannot rescue the
American hostages in Lebanon, he says,
because he does not know where they are.
Bush would not be the first President to
blame his problems on a lack of good
intelligence. But this time, without ques-
tion, the gaps are real, and few people
understand the implications
more clearly than Bush. Since
taking office, he has beefed up
the secret budget for spies and
for intelligence analysis and
wants to do more. But the
challenges are formidable.
For instance, to find the hos-
tages, U.S. spies would have to
penetrate the small, tightknit
clans that hold eight Ameri-
cans captive or else persuade a
member to turn traitor. Both
are nearly impossible.
and officials' distrust of covert opera-
tions all eroded the clandestine service,
says Bobby Ray Inman, a former deputy
CIA director. By 1979, Inman says,
clandestine manpower had dropped to
40 percent of its level in the 1950s. Presi-
dent Reagan, his director of central in-
telligence, William Casey, and Casey's
deputy, Robert Gates, now Bush's depu-
ty national-security adviser, streamlined
and upgraded the analysis of
intelligence data, but their ef-
forts to rebuild the global
network of spies were less
successful. Experts say now
that about 90 percent of the
perhaps $10 billion spent by
intelligence agencies goes for
spying by reconnaissance
planes, satellites, communi-
cations interception and ra-
dio listening, all of which
pays off with an estimated 90
percent of the useful intelli-
The hostage issue is just the most obvi-
ous of a multitude of problems facing the
U.S. intelligence community. Its spies are
being drawn ever more deeply into the
war.against drug smugglers, into policing
proliferation of chemical and biological
weapons and even into trade issues.
While the administration continually up-
dates its priorities, experts say what is
needed is a longer look at the threats of
the 1990s and a new commitment to
developing human spy operations. In
places like Lebanon, China and Panama,
Bush knows he needs a richer ethnic mix
of streetwise case officers and well-placed
informers, and he knows it will take time.
"I don't want to hold out the wrong kind
of hope that you can say, 'Let's get more
agents, more intelligence in the human
source' and that that happens overnight.
It just doesn't work that way," the Presi-
dent said recently.
Part of the problem stems from the
long decline of clandestine operations.
Since the 1950s, the nation's reliance on
its huge, supersecret electronic and satel-
lite-spying organizations, budget cuts
gence gathered. Only about 10 percent is
spent on in-house analysis and on hu-
man intelligence gathering. Known in
the trade as HUMINT, it includes spy-
ing, running spies and turning enemy
agents. No one argues that technical col-
lection should be diminished. It is just
that the problems facing Bush appear to
be ones where human spies matter most.
What's needed. Former intelligence of-
ficials say the government's increasing
attention to rebuilding America's human
spying capabilities should fall into five
categories: First, there is a greater need
than ever for intelligence on a rapidly
changing Soviet Union, which under
Gorbachev is spying more on the U.S.
and is in especially hot pursuit of ad-
vanced Western technology. Second, Ja-
pan, South Korea and Taiwan, among
others, have become serious economic
competitors with the U.S., and it is vital
to get a better inside look at their inten-
tions. Third, nations like Brazil, Argen-
tina and China are selling increasingly
deadly and sophisticated weapons, in-
cluding ballistic missiles, while others
Newsweek
Time
U.S. News & World Report 2
are buying chemical and biological
agents. Fourth, the U.S. needs more and
better intelligence on drug trafficking
and terrorism. Fifth, the world will con-
tinue to be threatened by regional con-
flicts; thus, better intelligence in India,
Pakistan, Vietnam, Cambodia and the
Middle East is essential.
Mddle East. Some of the intelligence
community's troubles in the Middle East
stem from a tragic combination of bad
luck and sloppy procedures. In a few
short years, an American spy network in
the region, which had taken 20 years to
build, was destroyed. The first blow was
the Iranian revolution in 1979, which
ousted the Shah and destroyed Savak, the
Shah's secret police, on which the U.S.
had relied heavily. The next blow was the
loss of virtually all American spies in
Lebanon, a process that began when Isra-
el invaded in 1982 and ousted the Pales-
tine Liberation Organization, which re-
moved many of the CIA's best sources
from the city where American hostages
are believed held. Less than two years
later, the man sent to rebuild the Leba-
nese network, William Buckley, was tak-
en hostage himself and killed. U.S. intelli-
gence in Beirut was back to zero.
After that, the U.S. made only a half-
hearted attempt to rebuild. Robert
McFarlane, national-security adviser to
Reagan, says the U.S. made little invest-
ment in human intelligence in Lebanon
over the last eight years and instead be-
gan to rely more heavily on Israel for
intelligence on Lebanon, the hostages
and their Shiite captors. But the Israelis,
like everyone else, are not infallible, even
in their own region. Nor do their interests
always coincide with those of the United
States. The Israelis, for instance, urged
the Reagan administration to deal with
"moderates" in Iran and believed the
Christians could remake Lebanon.
China. A former high intelligence offi-
cial under Reagan says that the U.S.
relied too heavily on its close relationship
with Chinese intelligence, as it had on
Savak in Iran, and was reluctant to spy
on the Chinese government or military.
Administration sources say that the Bush
administration had no advance word, or
3g
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/05/10: CIA-RDP99-00418R000100370018-3
 Declassified and Approved For
at least failed to understand the warning
signs, of the June 4 crackdown in Tienan-
men Square. Sources say Bush was par-
ticularly upset that, just before the crack-
down, some U.S. officials thought Deng
was in a coma. In fact, he was traveling
the country, lining up support from po-
tentially rebellious Army units. On the
critical question of whether there were
disputes within the People's Liberation
Army, intelligence officials say the U.S.
was pretty much in the dark.
Panama. Gen. Manuel Antonio Norie-
ga curried favor with U.S. intelligence
officials for years by passing useful intelli-
gence to the CIA and the Drug Enforce-
ment Administration. For all its close
association with him, however, the Rea-
gan administration had no idea how hard
it would be to dislodge Noriega or to
penetrate the Panamanian Defense
Forces, the institution that keeps him in
power. Now, the U.S. seems almost pow-
erless to influence Noriega, and Bush feels
hamstrung by a lack of solid information.
The huge amounts spent on technical
collection are a tempting target for those
who would improve
HUMINT. "In HU-
MINT, people have to
fight over $150,000,"
says Kenneth deGraf-
fenreid, the senior direc-
tor of intelligence for
Reagan. "In the techni-
cal stuff, millions of dol-
lars fall off the shelf."
Some urge a realloca-
tion of funds. In reality,
the two complement
each other, a fact high-
lighted in recent successful operations
when HUMINT and technical spying
led to the capture of terrorist Fawaz
Younis, the interception of the Achille
Lauro hijackers and the discovery of a
Libyan chemical-weapons plant. "They
should never be seen as competitive;
they're different," says William Odom, a
former director of the National Security
Agency. "It's like saying you're going to
trade off violins against the brass section.
You just can't get brass sounds out of the
violins, and you can't get violins out of
the brass section."
But in places such as Lebanon, China
and Panama, where satellites cannot an-
swer the most important questions, the
U.S. now must rely on what one intelli-
gence officer calls RUMINT-rumors
intelligence-for answers. A frustrated
President Bush has sent strong signals
that he wants to change that for the sake
of American hostages in the Middle East
and for the nation's future well-being. ^
by Peter Cary with Brian Duffy,
Kenneth T. Walsh and Charles Fenyvesi
Release 2012/05/10: CIA-RDP99-00418R000100370018-3
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Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/05/10: CIA-RDP99-00418R000100370018-3