1. REFERENCE CODEVILLA'S ARTICLE, WHICH I HAVE NOW READ, IT SEEMS TO

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91B00135R000200350011-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 10
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 3, 2008
• Sequence Number: 11
• Publication Date: August 24, 1983
• Content Type: MEMO

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1. Reference Codevilla's article, which I have now read, it seems to
me it would be a good idea for somebody to undertake a point by point
refutation of the allegations in this memorandum for consideration by
John McMahon and Bill Casey. In a reasonable world, it would seem
desirable for either Bill or John to send the refutation to Senator
Wallop with the statement that Angelo's extremist and inaccurate views,
which have now been given such broad and formal dissemination, are
extremely embarrassing to the intelligence process and stating that
Angelo's obvious irrational hostility to the Community makes it
impossible to continue to work with him on a confidential basis.
2. I have not talked to either John or Bill about this matter and,
therefore, have no idea whether they would be willing to proceed along
these lines. However, there is a serious question in my mind as to
whether Angelo's attitude will not seriously impair the usefulness of my
Commission.
 ~mz cv xrrr suer u 14 RTEZMY
.Olf- RAGE ~~ _ Srtuu: u i oAo
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Angelo CodevWa it a professions1 staff
member with the Senate lntelGgence
Committee. Previously, he was a foreign
service officer and a fellow as the Hoover
lnstimdon. Stanford Univeaig.. Dr.
Codevilla has wrinen widely on European
politic and in the field of intelligence and
military policy.
Arxgelo Codevilla
By focusing so exclusively on
rules and standards of
operations, the intelligence
debate of the mid-1970s did not
answer the fundamental
question of what the United
States expects of its intelligence
services or what they are to
accomplish in order to meet the
challenges of the 1980,..
ME
Since the early 1970s, this country's intel-
ligence agencies have been asking, "What
does the country expect of us?" That ques-
tion bad not arisen in the postwar period be-
cause the American political system had left
the agencies to the total discretion of those
appointed to lead them. In the early 1970s.
factional conflict among those leaders spilled
over into a national debate about what
America's practitioners of intelligence ought
to have foremost in mind. That debate con-
tinues.
Recently, Admiral Stansfield Turner,
President Carter's Director of Central Intclli-
gence. and his former special assistant,
George Thibault, published an attempt both
to answer that question and to indict the Rea-
gan administration's handling of intelli-
gence. The authors answer seems to be that
the American people expect their intelligence
agencies to be as innocuous as possible...
They charge that the Reagan administration
is undermining the agencies by loosening too
many restrictions. The authors thus contend
that for our civil liberties sake. and for thv
sake of the agencies' own standing in ther
country, the agencies ought to ecinecntmtc on -
formulating for themselves the tight kinds of
rules and restrictions- However. Ane would
not suspect from Turner and Thibault's ani-.
elc.that the rules by which intelligence offi-
cers live ought to flow from the intelligence
profession's substantive requirements-
Nevertheless. in intelligence as in other
areas of government, the American people
rightly want their employees to accomplish
the functions for which they are paid- This
author will argue that Stansfield Turner is
? t
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wrong to assume that the key factor affecting
the quality of intelligence is the, quantity of
intrusion into the lives of innocent people,
that better intelligence.means less civil lib-
erty, and vice versa. This article will then
address the real tasks which American intel-
ligence must accomplish in peace and war,
and the difficulties it now faces in doing so.
A revolution took place in American in-
telligence during the mid-1970s. That revo-
lution was thorough; by the end of the Carter
administration, only a minuscule percentage
of the CIA's supergrade officials had bald
such rank in 1975. Those who became
prominent in American intelligence during
that period were generally not known either
for achievement or technical insight in the
special fields they took over. Some, e.g., the
main who took over the counterintelligence
staff at CIA. were known as non-believers in
the very activity for which they became re-
sponsible. These men, however, were well
attuned to the priorities of the administration
they would serve, and to those of the factions
which had recently won out in the intelli-
gence community's long,' intramural strug-
gles: to lower America's profile abroad; to
reduce the importance of clandestine ac-
tivities at home and abroad; to assert the
CIA's claim to primacy among providers of
analytical products. They were also intent on.
making sure that the recent revolud6iriisthe.:-.-
,field of intelligence would not be reversed.
As a result of all this, the leading men of
president Carters intelligence community,
led by Admirals Stansfield Turner and
Bobby Ray Inman, argued with great per-
sonal vigor for the enactment of legislative
charters for the intelligence community.
These charters would have codified and ap-
proved in law the changes in orientation
which had occurred in the mid-1970s. Of
course the proposed charters' chief feature
was an absorbing concentration on rules and
restrictions. It is essential to understand
whence came this concentration on rules.
The debate of the mid-1970s had concen-
trated so exclusively on rules and restrictions
because it had begun with public accusations
that some intelligence officers had transgres-
sed the bounds of propriety and legality.
These accusations against the CIA's di-
rectorate of operations in general and par-
ticularly against counterintelligence special-
ists in the CIA and the FBI had come from
other intelligence officers.
There had always been controversies
among intelligence officers about what
American intelligence should and should not
be. The best outline of the views held by the
CIA officials who had long fought to reduce
the role of the clandestine services and of
counterintelligence is an article, "Ethics and
Intelligence" by E. Drexel Godfrey, in the
January 1978 Foreign Affairs. William
Colby's memoirs, as well as the published
writings of lesser officials, e.g., Herbert
Scoville, plus the reporting of books like
Edward Epstein's Legend and Henry Hurt's
Shadrin, flesh out that outline with examples
of 'how profoundly this intramural attack af-
fected the daily workings of the intelligence
system.
In sum, clandestine and counterintelli-
gence activities war- charged with being
immoral and developing it-their practitioners
devious thoughts and was which. would
prove dangerous to American civil liberties.
The allegations cla'uned that these activities
present the rest of the world with an unfavor-
able ricuue of thr- United States and tbat they . L_.
and energies toward combat with the Soviets
rather than toward accurate assessments of
reality. Beginning in 1974, some intelligence
officers who, bad been making such charges
gave to their allies in Con Tess and the press
items of information embarrassing to some
of the leading men in the directorate of oper
ations and in the counterintelligence ser-
vices.
In 1975-1976 the select committees on
intelligence led by Senator Church and Rep-
resentative Pike laid out these embarrassing
items, along with a coherent critique of
Americdn intelligence. Understandably, the
intelligence officers whose critiques of their
bureaucratic adversaries were now being es-
poused by congressional committees were
hardly reluctant witnesses. Director Colby,
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for example, did not have to wave the faro-- that was proposed. In their single-minded
ous poison, dart gun in the air before the effort to stand up for the notion that the in-
cameras. When he did, the stock of some at tclligence agencies' role ought not to be re-
the CIA fell, and the stock of others rose. As duced, they put themselves in the unenviable
late as 1978, a senior CIA official, John position of seeming to argue for the right of
Hart, spoke on the CIA's behalf to the House U.S. intelligence agencies to invade the pri-
Select Committee regarding the investigation vacy of innocent Americans. The Ameicn
of President Kennedy's assassination and, Civil Liberties Union, Morton Halperin's
despite the committee's efforts to stop him, Center for National Security Studies, and the
delivered a passionate indictment of a former Institute for Policy Studies understandab i
colleague, once head of the Soviet division did not protest having the intelligence offs-
of the directorate of operations, for allegedly eers' view of the world identified witty
violating the rights of a Soviet defector breaches of Americans' civil liberties, Igor
whose bona fides was in doubt. In sum, a did they protest having thcirown preferences
long-festering intramural bathe was decided. for American foreign policy identified with
when one side went outside the walls and the protection of individuals rights by impli-
linked up with superior political forces cation.
which, for their own reasons, were willing to The debate of the mid-7970s did not touch
help. on the quality of American intelliggeaca, on
The Church and Pike Committees had what ought to be accomplished in each of the-
been organized as a result of years oroffort intelligence communiry's funetioaal areas,
by the American Cavil Liberties Union and and on precisely bow well each of these
likeminded groups, e.g., the Institute for areas was functioning. The anti-inteln,g
Policy Studies. These organizations sup- lobby's fundamental message was that the
ported able individuals like William Miller United States was suffering from an recess
and Morton Halperin. These efforts were of intelligence capability, that we had more
based on the contention that intelligence in, intelligence than we necde -The agencies
vestigations are inherently dangerous to civil defenders did not. ehallcn the impression
liberties. Thus, these efforts were aimed at that though the American intelligence pro.
restricting the scope of such investigations. fcssion might have it nsgressed here and
The proximate goal was to force the agencies there, at least it had been doing its job- So,
henceforth to apply the standards of criminal each for. their own reasons, all sides of the
law to, intelligence investigauoas: ein_ debart;g to ~ ~ PoTtaot. u_dividuals work on?intelhgonec.waspartof^ signs: y djargcthequ Ii y, ofintelligaa~
their broader campaigns for a re direction of had been either acceptable or more than ac-
U.S. foreign policy toward reduced Amen- ceptable; that the quality of intelligence de-
can self-assertions, greater friendliness with pends on the degree of intrusion into inno-
revolutionary forces in the Third World, and cent lives; that the only questions about in-
reduced hostility vis-i-vis the Soviet Union. telligence worth discussing concern what
The reaction of many intelligence officers, rules and restrictions shall be imposed on the
active and retired, against the Church and agencies; and that the essential is what bat-
Pike Committees was to uphold the intelli- ante should be struck between good imclii-
Bence profession's good name against what gence and civil liberties.
they perceived as the far left's almost unpat- Hence, the debate which first accom-
riotie attacks. They proceeded by arguing parried the Church Committee's proposed
that American society must be willing to bear charters fpr intelligence was over minutiae.
the burden of the agencies' intrusive exis- The public position of the Association of
tence if it is to live in a dangerous world. Former Intelligence Officers (AFI() was
They therefore continued to work in public that there should be no charters and that the.
and in private against every restrictive rule intelligence agencies should be allowed to do
 what they thought is necessary to accomplish
their job. But the written critique of the
charters which AFIO submitted to the Senate
consisted exclusively of minute changes in
the details of the proposed rules. By not ex-
pounding a full-fledged, intellectually ap-
pealing contrast to the set of arguments
which underlay the charters, and by disput-
ing the details of individual restrictions,
AFIO and its supporters eonfrrmed.those ar-
guments' legitimacy, and accepted the bulk
of those restrictions. Moreover, by basing
their arguments on the politically unappeai.
ing notions that good intelligence means in-
trusion into the lives of innocent people, and
that the extent of that intrusion into civil lib-
erties is strictly the concern of the intelli-
gence agencies, they virtually guaranteed
their opponents' popularity.
fact, it had undertaken. In short, the es-
timators had missed a huge, ominous deveI-
opment unfolding before their very eyes.
In the fall of 1978 the country learned that,
even as the shah of Iran was being toppled
from his throne by a movement openly or-
ganized in Paris, Washington, Beirut, Teh- i
ran, as well as in Baku, U.S.S.L. the QA f
was estimating that Iran was not in a revolu-
tionary or even in a prerevolutionary situa..
tion and that the shah would be an important t1t
part of Iranian politics into the foreseeable t
future.
That year, the public also learned about a
nasty quarrel within the CIA over the
trustworthiness of a Soviet defector, Yuri
Nosceko, who had come to the United States
to assure the CIA that the Soviet Union had
had no involvement with President Ken-
`The prevalent attitude in American
counterintelligence today seems to be to sit
and wait for indications and then check therm
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' out."
P y ac reeving its objective: to pro- Reader's Digest that the FBI and the CIA had
vide the Soviet Union with the equipment to had a curious reversal on another key agent,
survive- fivht and .v:.. w ......L........- V. -t-- - ? ..- . - _
intelligence in anything '"'"' ?'w ??% cccrrents of
intelligence as else, the priority Nosenko s story were lies, he had been offi-
of rules over substance makes no sense. Here eially believed for administrative reasons.
is a sample of those events. Moreover, those intelligence officers who
In 1977 the country first learned that the had resisted believing him had been de-
Soviet Union's buildup of strategic weapons - tooted. Then the public learned from
was m idl h' '
.. By .1978, however, events=had.-led a. _ .Zcdy's: assassin--.According to public a-
wholly different- set Of people tttsni t e _ 'eountr,=eve:r yagr -T~ . F
oinund nf,h.. .t.1...- .. A though -cver one
...:_. _... .t - - _ -
learned that this equipment would be largely
in place by about 1980, that the Soviets had
been pursuing this capability since at least
the mid-1960s, and that the United States'
intelligence agencies had had enough data to
sound the warning. Instead, however, the
National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs) had
been telling policymakers that the Soviet
Union would not undertake efforts that, in
Nosenko's lies. First the CIA had officially
deemed Fedora bad and the FBI deemed him
good. Then, after a changing of the guard at
the CL.. Fedora was deemed good, while at
the FBI he had become bad. This hardly had
the hallmark of competence. The public also
learned that the CIA had asked an American
citizen, Nicholas Shadrin, to play a danger-
ous double agent's game with the Soviet
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KGB. and that Shadrin had vanished without
a trace while meeting the Soviets under sup-
posedly competent CIA control.
Finally, as struggles for power in Africa.
Asia, and even in nearby Nicaragua resulted
in victory after victory for the Soviet Union,
Americans began to ask, "Where is the
CIA?" They learned that the CIA had never
even suggested plans for thwarting these So-
viet drives.
Thus from 1977 to 1980, as Senators con-
sidered passing the proposed restrictive
charters, the arguments of both proponents
and opponents began to sound hollow.
Clearly, none of the shortcomings of Ameri.
can intelligence of which the nation was
painfully learning was rooted either in too
much or too little intrusion. Hence, though
the debate about proper safeguards against
intrusion remains interesting, since the late
1970s, there has been no excuse for confus-
ing that debate with discussions of what the
country needs by way of intelligence.
But what are those needs? What is the job
to be done in the 1980s and in what areas
should the professionals' habits be changed
in order to ensure that the job is done? In
what ways would the charters' proposed
rules, or any other possible set of rules, affect
the ability and motivation of intelligence
operatives to do their jobs? What happens
when one tries to remove chanet.sa risk:-:
-from an inherently sisky, profcssto "=-_-
No one familiar-with_ U.S.. intelligence
suggests that the United States receives any-
thing Eke the kind of intelligence it needs.
The public record of the few human sources
the United States has enjoyed in the com?
munist world strongly suggests that we do
not recruit agents, so much as accept and use
those who approach us. This should hardly
be surprising given that the United States
does. not have a really clandestine service.
All but a handful of our clandestine officers
are under rather thin official cover, that is,
they are known to be employees of the U.S.
government. A high percentage do not speak
the language of the country they work in.
They can hardly approach someone who is
required to report his contacts with Amen-.
cans and unobtrusively suborn treason or
conduct false flag recruitment. Since our
agents live as official representatives of the
United States, it is not surprising that most of_
their reports read like diplomatic dispatebes.
Of course, nothing prevents the United
States from acquiring the service of people
who can credibly pass themselves off as
something other than Americans. But many -
professionals oppose this, claiming that suet
people would be unwieldy for the present
personnel and promotion system to handlt
Thus the professionals at the CIA resisted
William-Casey's early efforts to change ttre -
character of the clandestine service_Theop_.
position to the nomination of Max Hugel to
the post of director of operations was due to
this. Nevertheless, Casey's early efforts were
on the right track.
No one familiar with the subject .c#oubts
the sophistication of our means of taebnic
collection. Yet no one would contend that
these means were conceive as an intent.
lated system to collect a set of data. Each of
the present systems is a technical extrapola-
tion of previous systems, and exists in num-
bers dictated more by the budget than by any
notion ofoncrstionatnced`..fbe ptocesr by,
whicbthese?systemsGave?benacgntiied has
been irrational. We have not decided what
information is required and then allocated re-
sources among technologies, but the oppo-
site-with one significant exception, arms
control. For fifteen years, much of the im-
petus for buying technical intelligence de_
vices has come from those who wished to
monitor certain kinds of arms-control treaties
with the Soviet Union. As a result, ourcumnt
technical architecture is fit only for operation
in peacetime and is focused to a large extent
on the rather narrow parameters of past
arms-control agreements. Of coupe, this
could be changed. But that would require im-
posing upon the sevcral agencies some sortof -
strategic vision and a consequent coherient set
r
o
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Collection without good operational secu-
rity can be worse thart useless because it can
provide channels for disinformation by hos-
tile intelligence services. Today there is no
mason to be complacent about the opera-
tional security of American intelligence.
Although nowadays the bulk of collection is
through technical means, technical opera.
tional security is barely in the Conceptual
stage. Indeed, some professionals are unwil-
ling to conceive that technical means
routinely might be subjected to the same
kinds of checks for reliability that human
agents must undergo before the information
they generate is accepted.
This is not to suggest that the operational
security of our human collection system is
sound. Traditionally, challenging and testing
the credibility of human sources has been the
least popular and least career-enhancing job
in the clandestine service, because whoever
does it must question the good judgment of
higher-ranking people. In the late 1960s and
early. 1970s internal criticism of the CIA's
But neither has the responsibility, the data,
or the inclination to conceive of the overall
problem of counterintelligence. Conse-
quently, not knowing the whole, their con-
ception of their own parts is necessarily a
hit-or-miss proposition. This is true for indi-
vidual cases, but is quite undeniable as re-
gards the comprehensive counterintelligence
Picture. Anyone who knows counterimelli_
genre realizes that gaining awareness that a
case might exist is the hardest part of any
case. The prevalent attitude in Anne
counterintelligence today seems to be to sit
and wait for indications and then check them
out. Awareness of possible cases sometimes
comes through allegations or because the in-
dividual sees before him the. disastrous ef-
fects of enemy intelligence. At present, that
is how most of ourcases begin. But them is a
preferable way, counterintelligence analysis.
Yet, counterintelligence analysis of serioo-s, -
sophisticated or known intelligence threau is
not possible on the basis of data as limited as -
the CIA and FBI separately possess. Surely
we can expect a scrious.,tnove by a hostile
intelligence service to
^co
G
mpass elements
counterintelligence staff mounted, because both foreign and American, both human and
that staff had questioned the bona fides of too technical. Yet the FBI does not routinely
many agents, and had become bureaucrat- examine tilt take from the CIA and the IVa-
icaDy too powerful to suit the strong:geog-. tionaFSecurity Agency for its; counrcrintdli
raphic divisions of the direetornie otopera- genre implications; and vice vetsa-Vrrustour
lions. Beginning in 1975 , the staff vv
-
a
as s
an
lysiiof all intcliigntce data from a coon-;
mantled and replaced-with non-specialists - terintelligettce perspective, no agency can -t
from the geographic divisions who are ten- hope to do anything but stumble onto cases.
porarily assigned to counterintelligence. The overall picture built up by this sort of
Thus, those responsible for catching the col- fragmented, reactive counimintelligence is
lectors' embarrassing mistakes are them. also quite unsatisfactory.. One is-limited to
selves responsible to those very collectors for listing cases. But one cannot lzegin to esti
their careers. Clearly, operational security is mate the scope of a problem--say the trans-
a thankless job which, if it is to be done well, fer of technology or the potential for agent-
must be done by people who are not totally of-influence operations in Sector X-until
dependent on those whose work they check, one takes the problem itself as a point of de-
The division of responsibility in counter- parture, and brings to bear upon it all the
intelligence between the FBI and the CIA is available data. In the case of technology
understood perhaps least of all by the two transfer, we are just beginning to learn how t
agencies themselves. Of course, each knows dearly the United States has had to pay for a
perfectly what it thinks it should do, and counterintelligence system whose structure
even better what the other ought not to at- precluded asking substantive questions and
tempt in its field! Both cooperate more or kept data in tight bureaucratic compartments-
less satisfactorily in pursuit of known cases. If the press is to be believed, President
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Rtagan and his National Security Council
have noticed these shortcomings in the an-
alysis of counterintelligence. It remains to be
seen whether they will have the moral and
intellectual wherewithal to translate their in-
tuition and their legal authority into changed
behavior on the part of a recalcitrant bureau.
cracy.
ANALYSIS
There is no denying the low quality of all
too many NIEs, nor the serious effects which
some of these have had upon the nation's se?
eurity. The mere fact that, in the late 1970s.
the public and the president, who had been
reassured for fifteen years that the Soviets
were not even trying to gain strategic
ong coor_
superiority, woke up to find that the Soviets dinatrng sessions substitute for data T hey
had in fact achieved it is a sufficient indict- would also_ be more closely argued thaw is
merit of the NIEs. The American people pay now the case; they would have to be, because
billions for an intelligence community to ? they would be written with the sane knowl-
avoid precisely this kind of surprise. More edge that they would have to confront Doan-
galling is the knowledge that the data for a terarguments. Unfortunately
that is r
t
,
c
now
correct assessment was not lacking and that the case. Finally, they would be eompcned
in fact quite a few analysts in the pentagon not to try to fjll with the puny of judgxaettts
had pretty well figured out the nature and the gaping holes we have in our knowledge,
size of'the forces the Soviets were building, The words competitive t;alysis have been
But the process by which the NIEs are writ- widely accepted. But, in the view of ptofes-
ten smothered the correct anal
se
with
h
i
y
s
t
e s
onals at th CIA;
e competitive amtlysis
incorrect ones. The president and other re- neatly describes the system by which NIEs
sponsible officials did not have the chance to have been produced for the past quartrreen_
exercise. their responsible is e :: lute gain
tizemai
o
s
rrs; t
l~csee
n -w..
curd nee. They half no idea that a n-w'otKer the ' Keagae adnunistratien, hav,ng publicly
than the official one existed, much less a accepted the concept will
e
prove to har
chance to decide which was correct. - enough understanding of it and commie rem
Now does one go about improving t
_-k_
it
o
to
i
wys
s vcwcr analysts would 00 a better
job. That is not just a truism. All too often
analysts in our intelligence agencies are
promoted not for being good interpreters of
the real world but rather for being good sol.
diers in the intelligence community's in-
tramural battles. If they stoutly uphold the
office view, they are often preferred to those
who prefer reality. It is often better to be
wrong for bureaucratically acceptable rea-
sons than to be right about the facts and gal-
ling to one's superiors. Strict accountability
and quality control would help. But who is to
control the controllers? After all, the office
view of things comes from precisely those
longtime officials responsible for qualify
control. The insertion at high levels of
numerous outsiders who are not congenial to
the senior analysts would really help. But
unless these outsiders were exceptionally
honest, new office views would startforMing -
around them. -
There is another way of keeping analysts
honest, and of ensuring that those nesponsi.- -
ble people who read intelligence estimates
get to exercise their responsibility: allow,
both the CIA and the DIA to produce esti-
mates on important subjects, each ?ng all
sources but neither coordinating with one
another. The products would contain less of
the bureaucratic prose which l
The Church Committee, echoing many
professionals, characterized coven >ction__
that is, secret activities to influence the out-
come of foreign situations-as exceptional _
means to be undertaken when all others had
failed or,no others could be employtty The
Church -Committee maintained that the
United States had resorted to covert action
too often. The debate within the government -
has been.between those who want more
 herent, success-oriented plan. Rather, one
should ask, "What combination of actions
by various agencies can actually bring about
covert actions and those who want fewer. I
believe that history shows both sides have
missed the point.
The point is to achieve the ends of foreign
policy. Is ally X in trouble in Country A, and
has the president decided that the aim of
U.S. policy is to save his office? Is move-
ment Y in Country Z so menacing that the
president has made it U.S. policy to reduce
its influence? Affirmative answers to such
questions imply nothing about the means to
be employed except one thing, when all is
said and done, ally X should be in office and
movement Y should no longer be in a posi.
tion to do harm. These objectives could be
achieved by various combinations of means,
overt and covert. The particular combination
matters much less than the result -
Today all too many people tend to ask
about any given situation, "Is there anything
that the CIA could do here?" In many cases,
there is or could be. Nonetheless, that is the
wrong question. Covert actions decided upon
in answer to that question may be well-in-
tentioned, but they will not be part of a co-;
the desired objective?" If that ovemll.,taan.,
calls for secret acts, then there is ap'Xtfcr:
them, if not, there is not. Today, covert ac-
lion is touted as one more thing going for us,
or something else to push the situation in the
right direction. Such categorizations are not
helpful. In the international area, there are no
rewards for good interitions or for pushing in
the right direction or for sending signals.
Policy fails if it does no; succeed. The press
has recently carried allegations that the
United States has a coven action going
against Nicaragua. The New York Times
quoted a U.S. official as admitting it but jus-
tifying it on the ground that it was not suffi-
ciently large to topple the Nicaraguan re-
gime. That official's understanding of pol-
icy, if the Times reported it correctly, is pu-
erile. To conduct military or paramilitary op.
orations against a regime by any means,
overt or covert, without a plan for toppling it
is against one of the most elementary norms
of politics: never do your enemy a small
hurt.
The problem of covert action is funda-
mentally that of the conception and execu-
tion of foreign policy. It is impossible either
to rationally discuss or to successfully use any tool of foreign policy unless the ends of
policy are spelled out specifically and a seri-
ous commitment is made to achieving them.
Clearly, the question of what the United
States exgects of its intelligence services has
not been answered with intellectual authority
by those who have had the political authority
to do so. We have made the case here that in
order for the United States to meet the chal-
lenges of the 1980s, American intelligence is
going to have to perform quite differently
from the way it has be9h performing.
Bureaucracies being what they arc, change is
unlikely to take place without some powerful
external stimulus-such as an act of Con-
gress.
The.intelligence=agencies-urgently-need
. -
ct siatements
wh
f
h
a
. o
ar..t
Cr-
are- ter.
c.:
complish: The-executive orders and Presi-
dent Carter's proposed charters consisted of
authorizations for investigations under.
highly specific circumstances. They did not
begin to tell the agencies what kind of infor-
mation they were to collect, what kinds of
analysis they were to provide, what sort of
'security against hostile intelligence services =
and terrorists they were to ensure, and what
sort of influence they should be prepared to
exercise abroad. Perhaps a legislative state-
ment of these missions could begin to answer .
the question, "What does the U.S. expect of =
its intelligence services. TWO
Approved For Release 2008/01/03 : CIA-RDP91 B00135R000200350011-1