ON THE TRAIL OF THE QUIXOTIC: PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS ON PROPOSALS TO SPIN OFF THE CLANDESTINE SERVICE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP86B00269R000600030008-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 5
• Document Creation Date: December 14, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 22, 2002
• Sequence Number: 8
• Publication Date: November 14, 1974
• Content Type: REPORT

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ON THE TRAIL OF THE QUIXOTIC : PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS
ON PROPOSALS TO SPIN OFF THE CLANDESTINE SERVICES
William R. Harris
November 14, 1974
11 fancy curtseying as you're falling through the air!
Do you think you could manage it?"
Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in
Wonderland (1865).
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Proposals-to disembowel the clandestine services of the Central.
Intelligence Agency are generally of two sorts: on the one hand
are the proposals for-'euthanasia by surgery, so as to quash in
the post-cold war era, whatever it is, the symbols and the remnants
of cold war political architecture; on the other hand are found the
proposals to "spin off" the clandestine services: to create organiza-
tion X, or to relocate the clandestine services under management by
committee Y. My attention is directed to the latter set of proposals,
suggested by those who would reform rather than eliminate the clandes-
tine services.
There appear to be four central reasons for spinning off the clandes-
tine services, if by mouth-to-mouth resuscitation or some other means
one manages to extract those raisons d'etat from the verbiage of
reform. These reasons are, simply put, as follow:
[1] symbolic bridge-burning;
[2] systematic exascerbation of the problems of
clandestine service cover;
[3] enhanced personnel. flexibility; and
[4] the freeing of DCI managerial opportunity from
the burdens of the clandestine services.
There is a fifth reason, which is not listed because it is a
nonstarter upon even cursory examination: enhancing the personnel
opportunities of the analytic side of the house, by dissociation
from the clandestine services. First, the evidence does not sug-
gest that the clandestine service nexus is, from a recruitment
perspective, substantially disadvantageous. Most of the waves of
recruitment applications follow on the heels of clandestine ser-
vice publicity; most of the analysts would miss the opportunity
to draw upon the clandestine services' resources in support of
analytic work. The fifth reason I dismiss as a non-serious piece
of decor, an afterthought of slight significance and dubious merit.
The two fundamentally important reasons for "spin off" proposals as
a means of policy reform appear to be [1] and [2], cited above.
ON SYMBOLISM: SEEKING THE NEW PATHWAY
"Cheshire Puss ..... Would you tell me, please, which way
I ought to. go from here?"
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,"
said the Cat.
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"Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat.
"--- so long as I get somewhere," Alice added as an explanation.
"Oh, you're sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only
walk long enough."
Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures
in Wonderland (1865).
Spinning off the clandestine services would constitute a
dramatic act of state, a symbolic burning of a bridge to the
policies of the cold war.
Are there not, however,-alternative sets of symbolic acts,
if such are needed, which signal an era of responsible restraint
without imposing the cacophony and dollar costs'(in an inflation-
ary era) of a spin off? For example, I have proposed requiring,
by amendment of the National Security Act of 1947, a legal opinion
prior to NSC authorization of clandestine service functions ---
symbolic of reasoned restraint, and a growing respect for the
rules of international law. Alternatively, public pledges by
leading statesmen have symbolic importance. From the garden of
symbolic reform there is no special need to pick this particular
flower.
ON THE EXASCERBATION OF COVER: DESIGNING THE SUPERIOR TREADMILL
"Well, in our country," said Alice, still panting a little,
"you'd generally get to somewhere else - if you ran very fast
for a long time, as we've been doing."
"A slow sort of country!" said the Queen. "Now, here, you see,
it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.
If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least
twice as fast as that!"
Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking
Glass (1872).
For some time I was intrigued by the possibility that a spin
off would result in better cover,.in greater emphasis upon "deep
cover" operations, in lower incidences of disclosure, in a more
efficacious clandestine service. Gradually it dawned on me that
the central purpose of spinning off the clandestine services --
whether or not formally admitted by the proponents" -- was to sub-
stitute for failures to "narrow the front" of operations by choice
"Who destroys illusion in himself and in others, nature punishes
tyrannically." J. W. von Goethe, "Die Nature." (1782)
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an incapacitating feedback control mechanism for the undisciplined.
25X1
.Z governmental officials who in their spirited ignorance might be
- tempted to widen the operational front beyond tolerable limits.
Are there not more direct, economical, and candid means by which
to narrow the operational front?
As for the enhancement of personnel flexibility, associated with
an organizational transformation, there may be a touch of merit in
the proposition. There'a geriatric problem with old organizations
which may not be fully remediable, even in special cases such as
CIA where the Director has powers of termination and pension plan..
incentives for early retirement. And yet there is a fundamental
core of tradecraft expertise which must be maintained, and which
is likely to be found in the upper management levels of the clandes-
tine services. Would an organizational transformation be merely a
weeding out at the bottom? The marginal advantages of an organiza-
tional transformation with respect to personnel policies should not
be exaggerated.
With respect to the fourth reason, the freeing of the Direct-^r of
Central Intelligence from the clutter of clandestine service
activity, this too may be valid, but once again there may be less
painful mechanisms for achievement of this objective. If the
intelligence community, hereafter, requires a manager who is familiar
with the analytic issues of intelligence, and not an achiever within
that feudal guild housing the brethren of the clandestine services,
the management of the clandestine services could be more fully dele-
gated to either the Deputy Director (Operations) or to a Director of
the Clandestine Services, operating outside formal Agency auspices
but nonetheless operating under the authority of the Director of
Central Intelligence." The separation of the direct management of
the clandestine s rvices from the Director of Central Intelligence
is quite distinct and probably far preferable to the separation
of the clandestine services from either the authority of the Director
of Central Intelligence or from the official cover of foreign opera-
tions. Third country and deep cover operations may yet be of growing
importance, without imposing them as an exclusive remedy for perceived
indiscipline among those policy officials who are in need of narrowing
the operational front. Alice in Wonderland should remainafter all, a
See W. R. Harris, Legal Authority for the Conduct and Control
of U.S. Foreign Intelligence Activities, October 30, 1974,
Appendix 2.
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