STATEMENT OF ROBERT W. MAGEE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP87B00858R000600850018-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 31
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 25, 2011
• Sequence Number: 18
• Publication Date: April 26, 1985
• Content Type: REPORT

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Congrems of .&)e Initeb'tateg
lbouge of Aepre%entatibeg
Washington, D.C., Apri 1 26 '19 85
Referred to:
Mr. Magee
Supplemental Retirement April 25
Testimony given by you before the committee
appears in the attached pages. Please furnish any
information which was requested and return, AS
SOON AS POSSIBLE, for the use of the members
of the committee.
Editorial changes may be made in your testimony
to correct errors in transcribing. However, no other
changes will be permitted. Thank you for your co-
operation and please return to:
Alton Howard
Printing Editor
Post Office and Civil Service Committee
U.S. House of Representatives
Room 309, Cannon Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
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676 Mr. FORD. Thank you very much. Mr. Magee.
677
678 STATEMENT OF ROBERT W. MAGEE
679
680 Mr. MAGEE. Mr. Chairman, my name is Robert Magee. I am
681 the Director of Personnel at the Central Intelligence
682 Agency. I want to thank you for the opportunity to appear
683 before this committee, to discuss the retirement systems at
684 the Central Intelligence Agency. It is an issue which is
685 vital to the continued health of the nation's professional
686 intelligence service.
687 The United States is a world power. Developments anywhei
688 in the world, and indeed now in outer space, can affect the
689 national security of the United States. It is the mission
690 fo the Central Intelligence Agency to understand these
691 developments, and provide our nation's leaders with the
692 advance knowledge so critical to successful foreign policy.
693 The intelligence responsibility is continually expanding.
694 In its early days Central Intelligence dealt primarily with
695 the threat to the United States from our principal
696 antagonists in the world. While this threat has remained
697 our principal concern, new issues constantly arise which
698 demand intelligence attention, technology transfer, economic
699 and financial stability of foreign governments, world
700 petroleum production, narcotics, terrorism, the explosion of
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701 developments inthe technical and scientific field are just
some of the issues which today require daily intelligence
vigilance.
The United States is indeed a world power, and its
citizens expect the nation to hagve a world-class
professional intelligence service. I am pleased, Mr.
Chairman, to say to you today that this nation does have a
world-class intelligence service, and that the leaders of
this nation are the best informed individuals in the world.
Recognizing that CIA's job is different from the rest of
the government, Congress historically has supported agency
efforts to recruit and retain career oriented employees
dedicated to the mission of the agency, and responsie to the
demands that security must place on their professional and
personal lives. Such a career service now exists.
Attrition rates are among the lowest in the government and
attest to a very healthy career organization. It exists
because successive Congresses and administrations were
sensitive to the needs of the people who spend their
professional lives in intelligence.
In recognition of the unique mission of Central
Intelligence, Congress has provided the Director with
special authorities with respect to personnel. These
authorities have no counterpart in the Federal Government.
Consequently, CIA employees are statutorily excluded from
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726 tenure and from the protection and benefits derived by
status under civ. laws, rules and regulations. This is as
it must be, since the Director must have full and final
authority to say when and where an employee will serve, at
what duties and for how long.
To understand the role played by retirement in the CIA
personnel system, it is first necessary to have an
understanding of the process which reoruts and retains a CIA
employee, a process which in some ways is similar to other
organizations but which in the aggregate is unique in the
United States Government. We have the most rigorous pre-
employment screen process in the United States. Nowhere
else is each applicant subject to such scrutiny.
A typical applicant first takes an eight-hour agency
unique exam developed by the Office of Strategic Service
during World War II, and modified since then by the best
minds in the fields of education and psychology. This test
provides insights into an applicant's intellectual
capability, temperament, work attitudes, vocational
interests, writing skills, psychological profile. Those who
do well on the test, who have demonstrated high achievement
either in their academic or professional careers, and who
have several favorable personal interviews, are placed into
our medical and security clearance procedure.
Employment by the Central Intelligence Agency carries with
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751 it extraordinary health risks. These risks are inherent
both in the geographic and sociopolitical environment in
which employees are liable for assignment. The stresses
involved in highly classified work and overseas environment
requires us to have an extraordinarily detailed clinical and
psychiatric screening for all applicants. We require not
only the applicants themselves pass this medical exam, but
for those in the overseas career track, dependents must be
similarly cleared.
Our security and suitability screening is extremely
detailed. Every employee from the most senior to the most
junior is investigated by our own security staff in a
process that covers the last 15 years of an applicant's
life. Again, dependent factors can be disqualifying. When
all of the data are accumulated, we have a very thorough
understanding of the applicant's entire life style. These
data are validated during a polygraph interview given to all
applicants.
At the-end of the three-year trial period, the medical
security process I just described is repeated, with the
added ingredient of work performance. Did the applicant in
fact measure up to our estimate.
It is gratifying to note, Mx. Chairman, that 99 percent of
our employees successfully complete this trial period.
It is rather not surprising that we must consider a large
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776 number of applicants to find the precious few who meet these
demanding standards. Despite enormous difficulties, we have
attracted analysts, attorneys, doctors, case officers,
engineers, scientists and physicists of the highest caliber.
Meeting our recruitment requirements, however, remains one
of our principal priorities. It is a never-ending struggle
which can only get more difficult as we continue to compete
in the marketplace with U.S. industry.
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STAT
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110,15 a.m. )
Entering on duty, the CIA employee becomes a part of a
world which is generally isolated, nomadic, idealistic,
secretive, and increasingly dangerous. In addition to those
personal constraints, common to the few in government who
hold clearance at the CIA level, our employees must endure
even more severe conditions. Every five years they are
subject to a full security investigation and he has no job
tenure, they may not travel abroad, publish articles, marry
a non-U.S. citizen, attend international conferences either
without advance Agency approval. They can receive no public
recognition for their professional achievements but on the
contrary must suffer in silence innumerable calumnies.
Dominating all other considerations, however, is the
single heaviest burden of all, cover. Cover, the term for
concealing the fact that we are in fact employed by Central
Intelligence.
STAT 804
805
806
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ecognizing this in the past several years the government
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834 has improved immeasurably its intelligence capabilities. It
would be extremely unwise to threaten this achievement by
severely reducing our ability to recruit and retain the
caliber of individuals we historically attracted.
The Director of Central Intelligence must have the
authority to move the right people into the right place at
the right time. This requires a corps of personnel who are
prepared to go anywhere in the world as the national
interest requires. Ultimately it also means we must move
people into retirement so that we can prepare the next
generation of intelligence officials.
The mandatory retirement provision in the Central
Intelligence Agency Retirement and Disability System is an
important management tool which has worked well and which
should be retained in any new legislation. We find fox
example, that after age 50, nearly 50 percent of our
employees are not eligible for full service medical
clearance. We we to include those who could not travel due
to family medical constraints, these figures would be more
In addition to the purely clinical health hazards involved
in worldwide service, Agency personal are confronted with
L-
psychological stressed which over the long haul extractsa
health toll just as great. In addition to the subtle
factors of cultural translocation and family disruption,
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859 there are not infrequently hig4I.'traumatic events. Scores of
employees have been in foreign prisons, sometimes for years
or otherwise harrassed when their agency affiliation became
known