CONVERSATION WITH JIM SCHLESINGER ON 'A REVIEW OF THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY'

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP86B00269R000400070003-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: T
• Document Page Count: 10
• Document Creation Date: December 15, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 31, 2003
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: May 7, 1971
• Content Type: MFR

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ILLEGIB
MEMO ANDUM FOR: General Cushman
Colonel White believes you will be interested
in the attached memorandum regarding the meet-
ing he and Ed Proctor had with Jim Schlesinger
on 5 May.
Barbara
17 May 71
(DATE)
FORM
US10-101
MAY FORM
AUGN 54 IOI WHICH REPLACES
ED.
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Copy 1 of 4
7 May 1971
SUBJECT: Conversation with Jim Schlesinger on "A Review of the
Intelligence Community"
1. On 5 May 1971 at the Director's request, Ed Proctor and I
met with Jim Schlesinger in his office at OMB. Our meeting lasted
for two and one-quarter hours. It was a very friendly and candid dis-
cussion. This is an attempt to summarize briefly some of the signifi-
cant points covered.
2. First, the dialogue between Ed Proctor and Jim Schlesinger
on production went extremely well, and they seemed to be in almost,
if not complete, agreement. Schlesinger is definitely an advocate for
production. It is clear that he would be willing to see more resources
used in the production effort. While critical of some of our products,
in general he personally believes the product is quite good. He also
believes in competing analytical centers, and it is my conclusion that
he thinks there is currently no unnecessary duplication in this field.
He pointed out, however, that this is his personal opinion and might
well not be shared by the White House.
3. We reported to Schlesinger that the Director had shared his
paper with the Deputies and one or two others over the weekend and
that he had spent a good deal of time discussing it as well as the gen-
eral problem of better coordination of the intelligence community.
We pointed out that there was no disagreement with the comments the
Director had made to him earlier, which are summarized in the at-
tached paper.
4. We then discussed the impossibility of having the Director
exercise very much control over what is done in the unified and speci-
fied commands. He could of course review the totality of the intelli-
gence community budget, but on the other hand, he could exercise
very little influence over its administration once the resources were
allocated. We said we thought it important to sort out within the total
budget the part of it on which the Director should really be expected to
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weigh in heavily in making resource decisions as opposed to that
part which he could not really be expected to do very much about.
Schlesinger seemed to accept this admittedly rather broad principle
and to appreciate fully that this had to be done.
5. The one problem on which Schlesinger seems hung up is his
failure to understand how the Director can be a completely objective
and unbiased coordinator when he is in fact a competitor for the re-
sources. He went on to explain that the Clandestine Service is not
really the problem. The problem is really DD/S&T. He was candid
in saying that there has been a tremendous improvement over the
situation which existed when Bud Wheelon was DD/S&T. At the same
time, he said that, when the Director goes to the ExCom, he appears
to the outside world to be an advocate for only one system--and that
is always the system which DD/S&T advocates. It is always the system
in competition with some other system advocated by somebody else in
the community. He also alleged that all the information is held very
tightly within CIA and that we in fact have a virtual monopoly on it. He
was emphatic that neither OMB, the Defense Department, nor anyone
else knows very much about the programs which we are advocating
until they are well down the road. He citedi as an example
and quickly admitted that in this case CIA was right and everybody
else in the community was wrong. He gave EOI as another example to
support his contention.
This interplay fosters the in-
c usion o characteristics that are valuable and deemphasizes those
that may be too costly or unnecessary. This is far less the case for
systems developed by DOD. Schlesinger said he has always insisted
on close relationships between developers of weapon systems and the
intended "battlefield" user. He now recognized that what had been said
was an extension of this principle to intelligence, and he noted this
concept on a piece of paper.
25X1
25
6. Schlesinger referred to as a complete disaster. 25X1
It is his contention that we never did convince the Defense Department
and others that we should proceed with but that we got so 25X1
far down the road with it before anyone caught up with us that every-
body finally said, "Well, it just isn't worth the fight, " and let it go.
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He firmly believes that we deliberately shut off all attempts to improve
CORONA to make sure it would not compete with He sug- 25X1
gested that it might be interesting to do a post-mortem or history of
25X1 the whole project. I said this might be advisable but that I
think it should not be done 25X1
25X1 He agreed that psychologically this would
e a very bad time.
7. We returned more than once to the discussion of why we think
it would be inadvisable to separate the Director and the production units
from the rest of the Agency, either physically or organizationally. Ed
and I attempted to explain the Director's highly personalized style of
management and what we believe to be his strong feeling that he would
soon become highly ineffective under this arrangement. I think we gave
Schlesinger a good deal to think about on this score, but I doubt we were
successful in turning him around.
8. Some of our time was also spent discussing the Defense Depart-
ment. It is obvious that he believes there should be a Director of De-
fense Intelligence. He thinks an Assistant Secretary will not be effective
because there are too many other Assistant Secretaries and flag-rank
officers who can run his end. I think we also agreed that, if the Defense
Department does go the Assistant Secretary route, it will require a good
deal of time on the part of the second Deputy Secretary of Defense in
order to prevent this from happening. I think we also agreed that the
reason NRO worked was because Mr. Packard, who controlled the resources,
chaired the ExCom and nobody was in a position to run his end.
9. Throughout the discussion Schlesinger seemed well disposed
toward the Agency, and on several occasions he was complimentary of
the high-quality personnel he has found in CIA and, in general, of the
product we turn out.
25X1
L. K. White
Executive Director -Comptroller
Attachment
Comments on "A Review of the
Intelligence Community"
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Distribution:
opy 1 - ExDir w/cy 12 of att
Copy 2 - ADD/I w/cy 13 of att CA-vN-
Copy 3 - DD/S&T w/cy 14 of att
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COMMENTS ON "A REVIEW OF THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY"
1. The Review raises, on behalf of the President, a valid basis for
examining the intelligence community, with the objectives of improving the
overall. quality of intelligence products and reducing the community's size
and cost. While there may be differences of opinion as to the causes of,
and solutions to, the problems the Review describes, it is worth our most
serious consideration to see what we can do to bring about the desired
improvements.
2. The principal thrust of the Review deals with resource control
and management, and it is here that the most significant improver ents
can be made. The law, Presidential letters, and other directives have
been silent as to the role the Director of Central Intelligence was to play
in resource management. Lacking clear direction toward a stronger
position regarding resource requirements and allocation, the evaluation
of their effectiveness, the selection of new systems, and the phasing out
of the old, the Director has had little basis to balance his coordinating
authority over substance with a comparable authority over resources.
The Review quite properly recognizes that nearly eighty-five percent of
the total resources are funded and controlled by the Secretary of Defense.
The Department of Defense must therefore be very heavily involved in
any changes directed toward improvement in resource management and
control.
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3. The Secretary of Defense has made a good beginning in making
the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Administration also responsible
for coordinating intelligence. In his posture statement of 9 March 1971,
the Secretary of Defense recoannaended the creation of a second Deputy
Secretary and two additional Assistant Secretaries of Defense to enhance
civilian supervisory management of the Department. An Assistant
Secretary devoting his full time to Department of Defense intelligence
activities and reporting to one of the two Deputy Secretaries would seem
to be a considerable improvement over the present arrangement. This
is probably enough legislation to ask for at this time. In fact, the kind
of legislation which would be required under either Option I or 11 of the
Review could well lead to a wrangle in the Congress which might in the
end emasculate the intelligence effort. There are other drawbacks to
Options I and II, but those alone are enough to rule them out as realistic
solutions. And the Review itself seems to recognize that Option III has
enough built-in problems to minimize its chances of being very effective.
It follows that some variant of these three Options which could be accom-
plished under escisting Presidential authority and without legislation,
offers the greatest hope of accomplishing the President's objectives.
4. Given the wide deployment of resources, disparate interests,
and jurisdictional boundaries within the community, it is very doubtful
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that the Director of Central Intelligence can command the entire cor-
anunity. He should, however, under an appropriate mandate be able to
coordinate it effectively.
5. If the President desires' that the DCI coordinate the resources
of the intelligence community, this could be done through a Presidential
or National Security Council directive to the DCI, the Secretary of
Defense, and the Secretary of State. Such a directive would as a minimum
need to provide for DCI coordination of programs, budget preparation,
and final review before. submission to the President. It would also need
to provide for continuous program review and coordination of budget
administration. Results would depend in large part on the cooperation of
the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of State and, more importantly,
on strong Presidential support.
6. The product will never be as good as we would like it to be. It
should, however, be as good as we can make it. The Review'deal: with
the possibility of separating production units of CIA from the collectors
in order to ensure objectivity. This would be a great mistake. It is
administratively quite simple to ensure that the collector is not also the
evaluator of the information he collects. The fact that the production
components usually have collateral from other, and sometimes several,
sources also minimizes this risk. In any case, -to disembody the Central
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Intelligence Agency and leave the Director of Central Intelligence ` rith-
out cone and of, and intimate association with, those units upon which
he must depend to support production would take away what control he
now has of the intelligence process. The resultant deterioration of the
process and the product is predictable. It simply isn't viable.
7. Some mechanism to bring the consumer closer to the producer
is much to be desired, and the Review's suggestion that this might be
done through a high-level consumer council has much to commend it.
8. If the President should direct that the Director of Central
Intelligence assume responsibility for coordinating the resources of the
intelligence community in line with the suggestion made herein, it would
be necessary for the Director to delegate more of his day-to-day r-na.t>ge-
meat responsibilities for the Central.Inteiligence Agency, which is per-
fectly feasible.
t.J Id -
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