FREEZING OUT THE CIA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP99-00498R000100030046-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 12, 2007
• Sequence Number: 46
• Publication Date: July 24, 1976
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

- 4R IT .cF AY~Approved For Release 2007/06/14: CIA-RDP99-00498R000100030046-1
O i 4AG. 12 i' 24 JULY 1976
The Ascendant Pentagon
by Tad Szulc
The Pentagon is emerging as the principal force in the
management of US foreign intelligence, gradually
displacing the Central Intelligence Agency from its
traditional preeminent position, as a result of the
implementation of President Ford's plan to reur`;anize
the intelligence community. This little-noticed power
shift may, in the opinion of numerous specialists, have
an adverse effect on the quality of US intelligence.
Under Ford's reorganization, based on the Presiden-
tial Executive Order of February 18, the Director of the
CIA (currently George Bush) remains in name the chief
t t
intelligence adviser to tl
that the CIA director ac
Central Intelligence (D(
and military intelligeo .
hoe.ever, there are growing in~-lication_, that Bush, as
DO, is being forced to share his authority with the
l'entag-; n's top intelligence official, the new Deputy
Secretary of Defense, Robert Ellsworth.
In part this is so because Ford,, ishing to centralize
the control of intelligence in the President's office and
the National Security Council after all theabusesof the
past, has effectively diminished the DCI's influence in
the allocation of resources to the various arms of the
intelligence community. It is the power of the purse
that counts in operational policy-making, and the
Pentagon---running the huge National Security Agen-
cy (NSA) and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)
among other military intelligence operations-holds
the lion's share of the total multibillion-dollar in-
telligence budget.
The other reason is that the Defense Department,
interpreting in its own way the presidential Executive
Order, has recently streamlined, expanded and
strengthened its intelligence apparatus in a way that
many intelligence community officials see as an "end
run" by the military, designed ultimately to lessen the
CIA's position in policy-making and its impact on the
elaboration of fundamental intelligence estimates. New
lines of authority were drawn in a manner likely to
reduce the DCI's direct control over such agencies as
the NSA and the DIA. The Pentagon's internal
intelligence reorganization was cornp!eted on, July 6,
when a new organizational chart was circulated
internally; there was no publicity about it.
In the developing controversy over Ford's
reorganization plan-and, especially, the Pentagon's
role in it--at stake is whether civilian control of the US
intelligence process, as represented by the CIA, can be
maintained or supplanted in practice by the military
viewpoint. The picture is still quite blurred; the new
system is not yet fully understood in the intelligence
community, and it is too early to offer finalconclusions.
ggnxia
STAT
Approved For Release 2007/06/14: CIA-RDP99-00498R000100030046-1