SHAKING UP THE C.I.A.

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-01208R000100070057-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 11
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 22, 2011
• Sequence Number: 57
• Publication Date: July 29, 1979
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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ARTICLE APPEARED
ON PAGE /-_R
By Tad Szulc
THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE
29 July 1979
immy Carter was
- furious. He. sat in
the Oval Office on
Novem-
this chill
ber day, staring at
the note paper be-
fore . him. Riots
were sweeping
Iran. The Shah had just been
forced to impose a military gov-
eminent on his nation. And the 1
.President . of the United States '
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 Eebru-
. ary, Mr. Carter would see, Shah -Mohammed Riza :4.
Pahlevi's government replaced by a radical Islamic re-
Tad Szulc is a Washington writer who specializes in international affairs.
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.
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gime with which the United States
had established no contact. The
loss of America's secret tracking
stations that monitored Soviet
missile testing would damage
prospects for Congressional ap-
proval of the latest strategic arms
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'
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 law 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-
wnter named Jimmy Carter.
THE GATHERING
STORM..
''We will continue to anticipate
tomorrow's crises as often as we can,,,
says Adm. Stanfield 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 11 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 thator-
ganization has also been responsible in
theory for the larger intelligence com-
munity. Hence Admiral Turner's off I.
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- f
pa "rate 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.
.cONT14NUI.+J
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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 Alien W. Dulles, who
was forced to resign seven months after
the C.IA-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 Byer 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 righzs 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-gath ering 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
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, Brzezins)d
wrote forceful secret memorandums to
Admiral Turner and Secretary Vance
expressing his unhappiness over the
quality of American political intelli-
gence. 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, "equaled 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
y 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
American official well acquainted with: growing disaffection in the
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
and covert collection
Iran, but
by their tions inside Iran, it found itself pene- had been en ignored by t effort ort bosses.
traced by the Russians.... Savak also overreacted when it came to any politi-i On March 18, 1978, the nounced what would be the first first of a
cal opponents. One time, in 1977, its of a
agents badly beat up some innocuous) series of concessions - the release of
kids in Teheran. So it was the sort of 385 prisoners. But day after day,
thing that just added to the pressures through May and into June, the demon-
for the Shah's overthrow." strations and riots continued, as did the
There was a third leg to the bMisic 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 Sha).) 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
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_
not have the capability to
munity, including Khomeini, as a basic troublesome."
cause of future unrest. It did not, of
course, predict that a revolution would
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.
There is general agreement today
that the worst period of the "intelli-
gence igap" ended in. September. The
C.I.A. station acquired a Farsi-speak-
ing officer who could pick up the gossip
in the bazaars. Ambassador Sullivan's I
reports home were taking on a more
worried tone, as were those of ? the
C.I.A. station. Strikes were erupting alI
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 theShah should and would survive,
and he was receiving assurances to this
effect from Ardeshir Zahedi, the Lra-
nianAmbassadorin Washington, whom'
he had selected as one of his principal
sources of information. -He had other:
outside sources as-well, including some
Iranians who had been among his
graduate students at Columbia Univer-
the Ayatollah Shariat-Madari asked for 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 ran to keep him advised of develop-
time out from his meetings with ments. Zahedi's communications were
Egypt's President Sadat and Israeli :invariably optimistic, and they became
Prime Minister Begin to telephone the the. central influence on American
Shah and assure him of continued policy decisions.
United States support. Brzezinski was the principal officer
What could have led President Carter in charge of American policy in Iran.
to go out on such a limb? One factor Secretary of State Vance spent most of
was a report produced by the C.I.A. on. his time on the Israeli-Egyptian peace
Aug. 16, following three days of riots in negotiations, and was for all practical
Isfahan and presented to Mr. Carter purposes cut off from Iranian decision
personally by Admiral Turner in the I making. So were his top deputies.
course of a regular Wednesday White I Nor did Admiral Turner play a major
House briefing. This top-secret, 23-page ! policy role - his agency's stock at the
document was far less exhaustive a White House was that low. A small but
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
be more than
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 beingraised,
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 Vazrii an
American diplomat that the Ayatollah . called to Washington early in
was interested in conferring with a sen- iP ary, he presented both sets of views.
for United States official, and Ambas- Brzezinski and his aides gratefully ac- . r~
sador Sullivan called Secretary Vance cepted General Huyser's estimates.
to recommend that the United States III The Ayatollah Khomeini returned to.
Teheran in triumph on Feb. 1. In Wash-
send an envoy to meet with Khomeini. ington, the Administration still ex-
Vance agreed, and called Theodore the Iranian military to hold the
L. Eliot Jr., who had retired three 11' pected
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. For the two men
had developed very different assess-
ments of the situation. The Ambassa-
dor felt the armed forces had been
"shelishocked" by the Shah's flight and If
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
fort
for Bahktiar. Even at this 11th
hour, no alternative policies had been
n devised. On Feb. 11, following a pro-
ii Khomeini demonstration at an air
r force base outside Teheran, the army
withdrew to its barracks. The end had
11 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. .:
11 Immune
rurr'xc 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.
Stanfield 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 tion Tasking, responsible for economic and political materi-
also been given the power of the purse assigning intelligence units in als spew over them. Thus, the Pentagon's Na- out of banks of com-
other directorates to do the ac- puters. Experts in a dozen dis-
tional Security Agency, for example, tual collection of data. (In the ciplines analyze the results,
which specializes in such arcane tasks jargon of the community, "as- and finally a report emerges to
as breaking Soviet codes, has become signing" is translated. as make its way back up the
more responsive to overall intelligence ' .:making::,) Within the direc- chain of command through the
community needs. Moreover, new com- torate, the assignment job is Director's office to the Na-
mittees have been created with ex- farmed out among specialists tional Security Council and,
traordinary powers to poke into the in PHOTINT (Photographic eventually, to the top con,
nooks and crannies of the community Intelligence), and HUMINT sumer of the intelligence com-
and to cut across traditional tables of (Human Intelligence), for ex- munity's product, the Presi-
organization. Such moves, plus whole- ample - who will figure out dent.
sale firings, plus continuing bureau- ; what community resources to
cratic hassles, have exacerbated the tap. Along with the administra-
morale problem. And there is concern In addition to Collection tive changes has come a star-
within the community that the legisla- Tasking, the Director and tling turnover in the top eche-
tion now being drawn up in Congress to Deputy Director supervise Ions over the past 18 months.
define the parameters of intelligence three other operational direc- Frank C. Carlucci, for exam-
operations will cut further into C.IA. torates: National Intelligence, ple, has taken over as Deputy
prerogatives. Science and Technology, Director, second only to Admi-
The central goal of virtually all of Operations. All are -to be in- ral Turner in the community.
these changes is to improve efficiency, volved in the Soviet troop- A short, slim bureaucratic in-
to prevent the kind of failure of intelli- movement inquiry. The Direc- fighter, the 49-year-old Car-
gence gathering and analysis that took tor also has the authority to lucci is a career Foreign Serv-
place in Iran. And the cutting edge of task member agencies of the 'ice officer who won high
change has been bureaucratic - the 1 intelligence community. For marks as ambassador in Lis-
reorganization of the community, from this inquiry, he calls upon the bon during the Portuguese
a relatively loose assemblage of ele- National Reconnaissance of- revolution of 1975, but he also.
ments into a tightly structured table of fice and the National Security served asdhrectorof the Office
organization (see chart, Page 15). Agency, both Pentagon-con- of Economic Opportunity and
At the top sit Director Turner and trolled operations. in other domestic posts under
Deputy Director Frank C. Carlucci. Re-
I At the supersecret National the Nixon Administration.
porting to them are six deputies, each 1 Photographic Interpretation President Carter named him
of whom supervises a number .of spe- !Center, part of the Science and to his current post in 1978. He
cialized offices. And within each office, Technology directorate, spe- has the respect of virtually all
the personnel may be all C.I.A. or a-mix 1 cialists , are instructed to the power centers of Washing-
of C.I.A. and other agency staffers. The search high-resolution photo- ton, legislative as well as bu-
theory is that the integration improves 1 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.
ing use of the best skills of the entire troop movements. The Na- . One of Carlucci''s major re-
community on any given assignment. tiona] Reconnaissance office, sponsibilities is his role on the
Moreover, the six directorates make it which spends the largest share ? Political Intelligence Working
more easily possible for those seeking of the intelligence communi- Group, created this year with
to apportion blame to pin the tail on the ty's budget, may be asked to no public notice to find ways of
right donkey. send new satellites aloft. The improving the product. Under
How does the intelligence complex National Security Agency or- Secretary of State for Political
actually operate when confronted with ders a major new campaign of Affairs David D. Newsom and
a problem? The following scenario re- electronic eavesdropping on Deputy National Security Ad-
flects the community's workings as of coded Soviet communications. viser David L. Aaron are the
the summer.of '79. Meanwhile, the Deputy Di- other members of the group,
Assumption: The United States Gov- rector for Operations, the which has no chairman but op.
ernment becomes aware of a sudden, cloak-and-dagger chief, has erates with a small staff. It
unexplained movement of Soviet troops
in Eastern Europe. alerted his network of agents !conducts regular studies on
around the world to be on the what it calls "vulnerable eoun-
In the National Security Council, it is lookout for information bear- tries," recommending priori-
the Special Coordination Committee ing on the Soviet troop move- j ties in political and sociologi-
that considers what is officially de- ments. More specifically, he Cal intelligence reporting in
scribed as "sensitive foreign-intelli- has set his operatives in East- the field by embassies and
gence collection operations." The Na- ern Europe and the Soviet C.I.A. stations.
tional Security Adviser takes the chair; Union itself to ferreting out the The principal objective of
the Director of Central Intelligence, the reasons for the moves. the organization is to improve
Secretaries of State and Defense, the All the data stream in to the the coordination of overt and.
Attorney General and the Chairman of directorate for National Intel- covert reporting by the State i
the Joint Chiefs of Staff are in attend- ligence. Here the thousands of- Department and the C.I.A-,
ance. bits and pieces are shaken they are now under orders to
The Director of Central Intelligence down and pored over; related work together,
pooling their
is instructed to find the information necessary to understand the scope and
intent of the Soviet troop movement. ! 'yrJ.c! I!_~tl J
Upon his return to his Langley, Va.,
base, he calls in his Deputy for Collec- j
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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
]mown to the host govern-
ment; an "integrated" cover
is deeply concealed.
Specific intelligence assess- of major developments
ments are produced for Bowie through "alert memoranda."
by the corps of? National Intel- It was Lehman's staff, for ex-
ligence Officers. Years ago, ample, that warned the Ad-
the Office of Estimates drew ministration that China would
on informationjand views from invade Vietnam last February
the entire intelligence com- .and provided a correct assess-
munity and reached conclu- ment of how the situation
sions by consensus (with dis- would develop. "Basically, the
sents footnoted). Today, a Na- warning. system is geared tc
tional Intelligence Officer, a situations with a potential for
specialist in a given area, may a Soviet-American confronta.
seek cooperation from others tion. A coup d'etat in, say, the
in the community, but he Chad, does not trigger 4r
drafts his own assessment. memorandums.
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...." .
Another new community
leader charged with increas- I'
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 I
Atomic Energy Commission. !
He's been given the job of set- I
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 I
wing, for example, is the
newly created National Intelli-
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
It is 'the N.I.O.'s who
produce the lengthy National
Intelligence Estimates (N.I:
.E.'s), sometimes projecting a
nation 10 yearslllinto 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.II 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. officials 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-
The single most criticized term intelligence require-
area of intelligence activity is ments. He is constantly urged
now centralized in the direc- to provide cur ent intelli-
- Bence, making it increasingly
Yet another newly crea.e?_
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 of
Staff, and Princeton Univer-
sity Prof. Klaus Knorr, a
scholar in the field of intelli.
gence. The full-time panel
serves as an in-house critic o!
the quality of intelligence; it h
involved at the inception of
every estimating process arx
in all of the post-mortems.
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.
w+c.~c ??? ??????~????? ...----- tiara [a spring~i anniyau #L
gence, which is responsible for . for the N.I.E.'s and other in- old veteran of almost three de}
maintaining the flow of data depth studies -__ caries the C1A., brings .
and analysis, short-and long- Last fall Bowie established . quiet demeanor to his post an
term, to policy makers. This the post of National Intelli- . is said to have considerabl
army of 1,500 analysts is com-. gence Officer i! for Warning, popularity with his subord
manded by Deputy Director and gave it to Richard Leh- . hates - but be has had an ul
Robert.R. Bowie, a dapper, 69- man, a C.I.A.r veteran of 30 hill struggle coping with th
year-old lawyer, educator and yearn The Pentagon's Strate- ~' body blows his organizatio
been primarily designed to 1 The Operations responsibi
provide advance notice of an + ities are officially defined a
Planning Staff, but this is his .was absorbed and its role ex- .. Itgence, largely through seers
first job in the intelligence I paraded by Lehman. It now
community. I keeps the Government abreast I CONTINUED
Admiral Turner hired in 1977.
He had once been chairman of
the State Department's Policy
impending nuclear conflict, _ the collection of "foreign mte
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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-
rillawarfare 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-
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
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
Iran. What's more, though no "charters," drawn up by the
one in Government will dis- Senate Select Committee on
cuss the matter in detail, there Intelligence, will cover the
are other sources of informs- C.I.A_, the Defense Intelli-
tion concerning new missile ~gence Agency and the Federal
designs, even before they have !Bureau
been test flown. The indica-
goal: to
tions are that these sources
are human agents who have in
some fashion penetrated the
Soviet defense establishment.
Thus the human element -'
HUMIIVT -can still have a'
major role in strategic intelli-
gence; presumably it will con-
tinue to do so. "We have to
of Investigation. The.
define with reasonable
precision the parameters for
spying operations in all fields,
including the setting of certain
constraints on what the agen-
cies are permitted to do. The
central dilemma: how to ,
reconcile national-security
needs with the constitutional
rights of Americans.
Reasonable men may differ
on such an issue. The White
House, for example, opposes
as too cumbersome the com-
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 wilt 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 fate, feel they're
entitled to a few doubts.
cy's paramilitary capability, I play alt the systems together,"
for instance, has virtually van- ~ a senior C.I.A. official said the
fished. Some 27 percent of the ;other day. "Spies tell you that:
C.I.A.'s clandestine services .there's something unusual on'
staff is now 50 years of age or the ground, say; in the Soviet i
older; and replacements don't Union, so you order photogra-I
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-
I within the community of late. getic affair; the problem is
I During the last two years. the how to get the synergism
I Admiral has fired more than going."
~ 400 officers in the clandestine ~ _
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 fleeted 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, aWash-
taken over from flesh-and- ington lawyer, chairman; for-
blood spies. Covert operations mer Senator Albert Gore of
continue, and in at least one Teru~essee 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-
Theloss of the missile-track- ties of the inteNigence agen-
ing stations in Iran was a low Gies that might raise questions
blow to American surveillance of propriety and legality. It ~
of Soviet strategic testing, and has a mandate to report di- j
it made some in Congress won- redly to the President any
such flaws. '
TP!E C~EV!
AGg ~F
SY7?Ii4GfyCE
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 j
that Jimmy Carter has de- "?
mantled of the intelligence 1
community indicates his con-
tinuing interest -not to men.
lion 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
i
special aura. There was tittle
public discussion then of its
"efficiency" (which in all like-
lihoodwas nogreater than it is
today) and Congress tended to
look the other way when ques-
tions ofineans 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 f
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-
geT- ~ .. _ _... .
~3Na U~3
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On the top levels of the intel-
Iigence 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." Towhich atop C.t.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 Lhe 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. 67
C011TTINUED
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sS~D~ 3N~~4i~G~~t~!
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In on 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