CIA THE BATTLE FOR SECRET POWER

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80M01009A000100050061-7
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 5
• Document Creation Date: December 23, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 29, 2013
• Sequence Number: 61
• Publication Date: July 27, 1963
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2013/10/29: CIA-RDP80M01009A000100050061-7
THE SATURDAY EVENING POST
July 27?August 3, 1963
CIA
John McCone is boss of the controcersial CIA.
Secretary Robert McNamara created riral
The battle for secret power
By STEWART ALSOP
Since World War I/ the Central Intelligence Agency has been our
main covert defense?sometimes offense?against Communism.
Now a Defense Department agency is challenging its supremacy.
Aabout 9:30 on most working mornings
Maj. Gen. Chester Clifton, the Presi-
dent's military aide, comes into the
President's office clutching a handful of
documents. The papers in Clifton's hands
are likely to include a couple of "eyes
only" cables from American ambassa-
dors, the ultrasecret "Black Book" of the
code-breaking National Security Agency
and intelligence summaries from the
State and Defense departments. But the
document which Clifton almost always
shows the President first is a little book
which has been put together in the early
hours of the morning by the Central
Intelligence Agency.
This neatly typed and bound booklet
has On Its cover the words: INTELLIGENCE
CHECKLIST. FOR THE PRESIDENT. TOP
SECRET. The booklet represents the quin-
tessential end product of a major postwar
industry about which even knowledge-
able people know remarkably little. This
is the intelligence industry, which spends
upward of $2.5 billion a year and em-
ploys over 60,000 people.
Intelligence has traditionally been a
peculiarly feud-ridden business, and for
a simple reason. Intelligence is knowl-
edge, knowledge is power, and power is
the most valuable commodity in govern-
ment. The Central Intelligence Agency
has been at the very center of all the
great crises of the last decade?and the
CIA has actually caused several of these
crises. Where the stakes, in terms of
power, are so great, rows and rivalry are
inevitable, which is one of the principal
reasons why it is rather widely believed
within the intelligence industry that "Bob
Declassified and Approved For Release 2013/10/29: CIA-RDP80M01009A000100050061-7
Declassified and Approved For Release 2013/10/29: CIA-RDP80M01009A000100050061-7
The CIA has
figured in
every major
postwar
crisis.
McNamara and John McCone are on
a collision course."
John McCone, director of the Central
Intelligence Agency, is a white-haired,
kindly faced man, who has been de-
scribed by Georgia's Sen. Richard Rus-
sell as the second-most-powerful man in
the Government. Among McCone's many
responsibilities, the most important is to
make certain that the secret intelligence
conveyed to the President in his little
book is both adequate and accurate.
When the President opens his little
book, he sees on the left-facing page a
series of newspaper-type headlines?
COMMUNISTS PLAN GUATEMALA RIOTS, a
headline might read, or IvAmy G.R.U.
AGENT IN LONDON. If the headline inter-
ests him, the President reads on the oppo-
site page a brief factual paragraph, ex-
plaining, for example, that the Commu-
nists plan to try to topple the military
junta in Guatemala by instigating mass
riots; or that Evgeny Ivanov, who shared
the costly favors of Christine Keeler with
British War Minister Jack Profumo, was a
representative of G.R.U., or Soviet mili-
tary intelligence. Usually there are a
dozen or so such items.
Anyone with romantic ideas about the
spy business might find the President's
book pretty tame stuff on most days. But
the book helps to make the President, in
the words of one intelligence expert, "the
best-informed chief of state in the world
today." It is John McCone's job to keep
him that way.
McCone himself is known hardly at all
to the American public: He grants no
interviews and makes no speeches. And
yet, although he may not be the second-
most-powerful man in the Government,
he is certainly among the half dozen most
powerful. He has three distinct, vital and
overlapping jobs.
As a member of the Executive Com-
mittee of the National Security Council,
McCone is one of the handful of men who
advise the President on the substance of
high national policy. In his two other jobs
McCone also supplies the President with
the intelligence and the estimates on
which policy is based. This combination
of ftinctions is unique and, some main-
tain, dangerous.
As director of the Central Intelligence
Agency McCone is boss of a vastly im-
portant empire that employs some 14,000
people and spends several hundred mil-
lion dollars a year.
Among those 14,000 people there is an
infinite variety?scholarly intelligence
analysts, spies, black propagandists,
scientists, U-2 pilots, specialists in every-
thing from Urdu to assassination.
The CIA spends a lot more money than
the State Department, and at times it has
had more real power and influence on
high policy. The CIA, for example, was
principally responsible for the overthrow
of Iran's Premier Mohammed Mossadegh
in 1953 and Guatemala's pro-Communist
President Jacobo Arbenz Guzman in
1954. CIA operatives dug the famous
tunnel to tap Soviet telephone lines in
East Berlin in 1954. The great U-2 crisis
of 1960, which broke up the Paris sum-
mit conference, was, of course, a CIA
operation. And the CIA has been at the
center of the two great* Cuban crises of
the Kennedy Administration?the Bay
of Pigs disaster in 1961 and last October's
great confrontation between Kennedy
and Khrushchev.
Running the CIA and advising the
President in ExComm might seem job
enough for any man. But McCone is also
responsible, in the words of a letter to
him from the President, for the "effective
guidance of the total intelligence effort."
Members of what is known in bureau-
cratese as "the intelligence community"
include the State Department, the Atomic
Energy Commission and the FBI. De-
partments like Commerce and Agricul-
ture, and agencies like AID and USIA
also have joined the intelligence act. But
in terms of both money and manpower, it
is the Pentagon that owns the lion's share
of the intelligence industry.
The Pentagon's heavily guarded Na-
tional Security Agency employs more
people than CIA, and its building at Fort
Meade, Maryland, is even bigger than the
CIA's huge new building in Langley,
Virginia. All three services have big in-
telligence setups of their own. So do the
Joint Chiefs of Staff. And the Defense
Intelligence Agency, newly created by
Secretary McNamara, will soon spill over
from the dark depths of the Pentagon
into another huge building of its own in
Arlington, Virginia, for which there is a
budget request for over $17 million.
Me Cone has his enemies
The intelligence community over which
McCone is supposed to rule is thus a very
big community indeed. It is not a com-
munity noted for brotherly love and
happy fellowship. CIA has been feuding
intermittently with the State Department
for years. But the real tension nowadays
is between CIA and the Pentagon. Both
McCone and Secretary McNamara deny
that they are "on collision course." But it
is certainly true that McCone's CIA and
McNamara's new, rapidly expanding
DIA have already had plenty of minor
and some major collisions.
The place to start in trying to under-
stand what the intelligence industry is all
about is with John McCone and his CIA.
There are certain facts about McCone
which no one disputes. He is immensely
rich. His own self-made fortune, based
on Wartime shipping?when added to the
even bigger shipping fortune of his at-
tractive second wife, the former Theiline
Pigott?comes to what has been called
"Kennedy kind of money."
McCone is also very able. He has
enemies in Washington-15 senators
voted "nay" on his appointment?and
in time he is likely to have more. But not
even his enemies doubt his ability. Like
most able men, McCone enjoys the exer-
cise of power, and he is a born com-
petitor. He is a devout Catholic, a con-
servative Republican?Richard Nixon is
a friend?and a fervent anti-Communist.
In any listing of the hawks and doves
among the President's advisers, McCone
certainly rates as a leading hawk.
Beneath his rather placid-seeming ex-
terior, in fact, McCone is a passionate
man, with deep and stubborn convictions.
And, despite that kindly face, McCone
can be very tough indeed. "Allen Dulles
ran a happy ship?or at least he did before
the Bay of Pigs," says one veteran of the
CIA. "John McCone runs a taut ship."
Dulles, McCone's predecessor as CIA
chief, had devoted most of his life to the
intelligence trade, and he loved it. Sub-
ordinates found him easy of access and
easy to work with. "We were like a band
of conspiratorial brothers," says a CIA
man, "although there was never any
doubt about who was big brother."
Dulles liked to involve himself directly
in secret operations, and when an agent
or station chief?head CIA man in an
area abroad?returned to Washington,
Dulles would call him into his office, puff
his pipe and pick the CIA man's brains.
McCone runs CIA like the big industry it
is, on an all-business basis. He rarely sees
a returned station chief, and he holds
himself aloof from operations, although
he insists on being informed.
Within the CIA McCone deals almost
exclusively with the five key men who
really run the agency. With one exception
all five are new at their jobs. The reason
for this turnover can be summed up in
three words, words which CIA men
hate?Bay of Pigs. In the wake of the Bay
of Pigs disaster, all CIA's top officers,
from Dulles down, were replaced.
"We were a sick dog in those days,"
one CIA veteran recalls. "Anyone could
kick us and know we couldn't bite back."
For at least three weeks after the disaster
the President himself wanted nothing to
do with the sick dog?he even refused to
read CIA reports. In those days the whole
organization seemed to be teetering on
the brink of destruction.
Nowadays the CIA is back on top of
the heap. The men principally responsible
for its resurrection are John McCone and
his five key subordinates. One of these
key men?perhaps the key man, though
there is much argument on this point?is
Lyman Kirkpatrick Jr., a smooth-faced,
white-haired polio victim, confined to a
wheelchair. Kirkpatrick's title is execu-
tive director?in effect, he acts as a sort
of chief of staff to McCone.
Kirkpatrick is certainly an able man,
obviously intelligent, with a talent for
climbing the bureaucratic ladder. He also
has a talent for making enemies. When
Dulles ran the agency, Kirkpatrick, who
was Dulles's special favorite, had the
enemy-making job of inspector general.
After McCone had been nominated but
while Dulles was still director, Kirkpat-
rick added copiously to his roster of ene-
mies when he wrote for McCone a long
secret report harshly attacking Dulles and
other colleagues for the handling of the
Bay of Pigs operation.
Partly because he was impressed by
Kirkpatrick's ability, and no doubt partly
because he wants above all no Bay of
Pigs during his tenure, McCone greatly
expanded Kirkpatrick's powers. Even so,
in terms of money, manpower and real re-
sponsibility Richard Helms, a dark-haired,
good-looking ex-newspaperman of 49,
may be the real No. 2 man after McCone.
Helms has the innocuous-sounding title
of deputy director for plans?D.D.P., as
Declassified and Approved For Release 2013/10/29: CIA-RDP80M01009A000100050061-7
eft
Declassified and Approved For Release 2013/10/29 : CIA-RDP80M01009A000100050061-7
he is known in the agency. A more accu-
rate title might be chief of espionage and
dirty tricks. Helms's division is respon-
sible for what is known in the intelligence
industry as the "sexy stuff." All the CIA's
covert operations in recent years that
have come to light?and many that have
not?have been the work of the D.D.P.
These operations fall into several cate-
gories. The first is traditional espionage,
the gathering of secret intelligence by
agents acting under one cover or another.
Then there are "special ops," designed to
overthrow a hostile government, as in
Guatemala or Iran, to prevent the over-
throw of a friendly government or to
mount such a paramilitary operation as
the Bay of Pigs. There are "black prop-
aganda" and "morale operations" units,
and there is the creation and support of a
vast variety of "front" and "cover" or-
ganizations. Some of these organizations
operate quite openly, and regularly solicit
support from the citizenry, but are in fact
subsidized and controlled by the D.D.P.
All in all, Helms "owns" about half the
people in the CIA, and at least until re-
cently, the D.D.P. spent most of the
CIA's funds.
Like Kirkpatrick?and McCone, for
that matter?Helms owes his job to the
Bay of Pigs. His predecessor as D.I.P.
was Richard M. Bissell Jr., chief planner
of the Bay of Pigs operation and, before
the Bay of Pigs, a good bet to succeed
Dulles as CIA Director.
Bissell was also the chief architect of
many successful intelligence and special
operations, including the U-2, perhaps
the most brilliant intelligence achieve-
ment of the postwar years. Without the
U-2, Nikita Khrushchev's attempt last
autumn to spring a trap for the United
States in Cuba might well have succeeded.
Helms is accounted both a more pru-
dent and a less brilliant man than Bissell.
"There will be no Bay of Pigs under Dick
Helms," one CIA veteran comments,
adding, "but there would have been no
U-2 either." Helms is unquestionably a
first-class professional clandestine opera-
tor. "He's a real pro," comments another
CIA veteran. "He knows where all the
bodies are buried."
The chief customer for Helms's secret
intelligence is Ray Cline, deputy director
for intelligence, or D.D.I., a stocky, sandy-
haired man of 45 with a brilliant academic
record. He, too, is accounted a more pru-
dent but less imaginative man than his
pre-Bay of Pigs predecessor, Robert
Amory. Unlike Helms, Cline mounts no
secret operations and "owns" no foreign
agents. But Cline is a powerful man too.
Allen Dulles is the authority for the esti-
mate that less than 20 percent of intelli-
gence derives from espionage. Cline's
corps of analysts, who deal in the other 80
percent, includes experts on everything
from "cratology" and "tentology"?the
identification of the contents of a crate or
tent from its external appearance?to the
medical history of Nikita Khrushchev.
Cline's main function is to see that the
intelligence gets to the people who use it.
Cline, for example, made the carefully
worded phone call to McGeorge Bundy
that first alerted the White House to
"hard" evidence of the Soviet missiles in
Cuba. Cline is also responsible for get-
ting that little book to the President?his
subordinates begin arriving at the CIA
building at the horrid hour of three A.M.
to read the late cables and put the book
together. Only McNamara, McCone and
Secretary of State Dean Rusk get copies
of the President's book. Cline's shop also
puts out a Daily Intelligence Bulletin with
a much wider circulation, and weekly and
monthly intelligence summaries as well.
The fourth key man among McCone's
subordinates is Sherman Kent, a brilliant
man with a bulldog face, who chews to-
bacco and talks more like a stevedore
than the ex-professor he is. Among the
top men, Kent is the only survivor of the
Bay of Pigs, in which he was in no way
involved. In the bureaucratic hierarchy
he is a low man on the totem pole?he
ranks below the other key men. But his
job may be the most important of all.
His job is to interpret the intelligence,
to say what it means, and saying what in-
telligence means is at least as important
as getting it in the first place. Kent is
chairman of the 12-man Board of Esti-
mates. The Board of Estimates churns
out national intelligence estimates, and,
in time of crisis, "crash" estimates, known
as special national intelligence estimates.
Making the national estimates is a
risky business. It involves trying to put
yourself in the other fellow's shoes, and
as Allen Dulles has pointed out, Nikita
Khrushchev is quite capable of taking off
his shoes for desk-banging.
Three examples will suggest how risky
Kent's job is. In 1958 Kent's board pro-
duced a national estimate of Soviet capa-
bilities in the production of strategic
missiles. With an assist from the Air
Force, which insisted for parochial rea-
sons that the national estimate was too
low, and from the Democrats, who had
parochial interests of their own, the myth
of the "missile gap" was born. "Hard"
intelligence later proved that the Soviets
had in fact produced far fewer missiles
than they had been adjudged capable of
producing?and that the missile gap was
thus a myth. Some of this hard intelli-
gence came from Soviet official Oleg Pen-
kovsky, shot for treason in Moscow in
May, who supplied "absolutely invalu-
able" information on Soviet missile pro-
duction to CIA and British intelligence.
Some also came from certain top-secret
technical espionage methods.
bad guess OIL Cuba
Last September 19 the estimator
guessed wrong. A national estimate of
that date, while recommending an intelli-
gence alert, concluded that the Soviets
were unlikely to adopt the "high-risk pol-
icy" of placing missiles in Cuba. The first
Soviet ships carrying missiles had actually
arrived in Cuba on September 8. A CIA
sub-agent, peering through his shutters
on the moonlit night of September 12,
spotted a missile-carrying convoy. His re-
port was detailed and convincing enough
to be rated "hard" intelligence. But, un-
derstandably, in view of Fidel Castro's
elaborate police apparatus, several days
elapsed before the sub-agent could get the
report to the chief agent in his area and
thence to the CIA. Thus the report did
not reach CIA hands until September 21,
or two days after the national estimate.
Later, during the height of the Cuban
crisis, a crash estimate was submitted to
ExComm. Its purport was that Khrush-
chev might now be willing to risk nuclear
war. Fortunately for civilization, this es-
timate also turned out to be wrong. These
three examples, it should be noted, do not
accurately reflect the acumen of Kent and
his estimators. The Board of Estimates
has done a creditable job over the years,
given the inherent imponderables.
As this is written, the job of McCone's
fifth key man is open. Until mid-June, it
was occupied by Herbert (Pete) Scoville,
an able scientist highly regarded in the
White House. Scoville was D.D.R.?
deputy director for research, a post newly
created by McCone. A more accurate
title might be deputy director for techni-
cal espionage. Mata Hari, in fact, is rap-
idly giving ground to such scientific intel-
ligence devices as the U-2, reconnaissance
satellites, side-viewing radar, long-range
communications intercepts and other un-
mentionable technical means of finding
out what the other side is up to.
At the height of the Cuban crisis, the
job of overflying Cuba in U-2's was taken
out of Scoville's hands, and assigned to
the Pentagon. The deed?a fell deed in
the CIA's eyes?was done with Mc-
Cone's approval after a bloody jurisdic-
tional hassle at Scoville's level, although
the hassle did not, contrary to published
report, lead to any "surveillance gap."
Scoville is not talking, but it is a good
guess that the Pentagon's tendency to
move in on him, and McCone's tendency
to remain above the resulting battle, had
a lot to do with his resignation in June.
The search for a successor is under way.
So much for the empire over which
McCone rules as director of CIA. It is
interesting to compare CIA and its main
rivals in the world of secret intelligence,
the Soviet K.G.B. and the British M.I. 6.
CIA is a direct descendant of the wartime
Office of Strategic Services, built from
scratch by Gen. Wild Bill Donovan. As
Donovan once acknowledged, OSS was a
carbon copy of the British intelligence
system. Now, in some ways, the Amer-
ican system has more in common with the
Soviet system than with the British.
The K.G.B., like CIA, is headed by a
public figure, Vladimir Semichastny, for-
mer leader of the Komsomol and a
Khrushchev man. Besides the K.G.B.,
there is a second Soviet secret service, the
G.R.U., which is run by the military.
The K.G.B. and the G.R.U. run com-
pletely separate and bitterly competing
intelligence nets. In CIA files a number of
episodes are recorded in which the K.G.B.
and G.R.U. cloak-and-dagger men have
tripped on each other's cloaks and stabbed
each other with their daggers. In our sys-
tem the equivalent of the G.R.U. is the
Defense Intelligence Agency, headed by a
former FBI man, Lt. Gen. Joseph Car-
roll. The developing relationship between
CIA and DIA is not unlike that between
K.G.B. and G.R.U.
All important intelligence services em-
ploy "diplomatic cover" for their major
After the
Bay of Pigs
fiasco,
heads rolled
in CIA.
Declassified and Approved For Release 2013/10/29: CIA-RDP80M01009A000100050061-7
Declassified and Approved For Release 2013/10/29: CIA-RDP80M01009A000100050061-7
McNamara
revealed CIA
secrets in
a television
speech.
20
operatives abroad. In this respect there is
a certain honor among thieves. The So-
viets, for example, are certainly aware of
the identity of the CIA station chief in
Moscow, and the American government
knows who the K.G.B. station chief in
Washington is?Counselor of Embassy
Aleksandr Fomin.
Georgi Bolshakov, also a member of
the Soviet Embassy staff until recently, is
believed in the CIA to have been a major
G.R.U. operative. His assignment was
similar to that of his G.R.U. colleague in
London, Christine Keeler's friend, Ev-
geny Ivanov?to cultivate the acquaint-
ance of powerful persons. Through his
connections, Bolshakov conveyed K hrush-
chev's false assurances to President Ken-
nedy that Soviet weapons in Cuba were
wholly defensive. When an article in The
Post reported his role in the Cuban crisis,
Bolshakov was hastily withdrawn. Bol-
shakov is a witty and personally agreeable
man, and before he returned to Moscow
certain American friends gave him a fare-
well dinner. His parting toast deserves to
be recorded : "Soviet Union has made great
concessions for peace. Has withdrawn
missiles. Has withdrawn 1L-28's. Has with-
drawn Bolshakov. No more concessions I"
In the British system, there is no real
equivalent of DIA or G.R.U. But the
most obvious contrast between the Brit-
ish and American intelligence systems is
suggested by the difference between Mc-
Cone and "C", chief of M.I. 6. Unlike
McCone?or Semichastny?"C" is not a
public figure. His name is never men-
tioned in the British press, and out of re-
gard for British sensibilities, it will not be
mentioned here. The Soviets, of course,
know who "C" is. But keeping his name
out of the public prints does have certain
undeniable advantages.
McCone himself would prefer the ano-
nymity of a "C." But he cannot possibly
achieve it. The director of CIA is ines-
capably a public figure, and there is no
American equivalent of the Official Se-
crets Act. This creates problems. Ad-
vance publicity in the press, which would
certainly have caused the Official Secrets
Act to be invoked in Britain, contributed
to the disaster in the Bay of Pigs.
McCone has plenty of other problems,
but he also has greater latitude in dealing
with them than any other leading Gov-
ernment figure. He can hire and fire at
will, and he can spend his "unvouchered
funds" as he sees fit. These powers give
to the CIA a flexibility unique in the
Federal bureaucracy. To cite one exam-
ple, just eight months passed between
December, 1954, when Allen Dulles gave
Richard Bissell the green light on the U-2,
and August, 1955, when the U-2 first
flew. By Pentagon standards, this was a
totally incredible performance?it would
have taken the Pentagon bureaucracy at
least two years, and more probably three,
to get the U-2 into the air.
This capacity to act quickly is one of
McCone's major assets, when he is wear-
ing his hat as "director of central intelli-
gence," with responsibility for "effective
guidance of the total intelligence effort."
When he wears this hat, McCone needs
all the assets he can find. For, although
what McCone says goes in the CIA, what
McCone says does not necessarily go in
the rest of the nation's intelligence com-
munity?and above all in the Pentagon.
Secretary of Defense Robert McNa-
mara spends far more money and "owns"
far more people in the intelligence indus-
try than McCone does as CIA chief. And
McCone and McNamara are very much
alike in one way?they are both competi-
tors in their every instinct. "Both Bob
and John," says one who knows both
well, "like to get thar fustest with the
mostest." "Thar" is the center of power?
the White House.
The competition between McCone and
McNamara to get thar fustest with the
mostest has sometimes provided a rather
entertaining spectacle. During the Cuba
crisis each new crop of U-2 pictures was
daily processed in the early hours of the
morning at the photo-interpretation lab-
oratory in downtown Washington. While
the pictures were being developed and
analyzed, McCone's CIA man and Mc-
Namara's Pentagon man?usually a ma-
jor general?would breathe anxiously
down the necks of the photo interpreters.
As soon as an interesting picture ap-
peared, McNamara's general would grab
it and drive like the wind to the Pentagon,
where McNamara, a compulsive early
riser, would be awaiting him.
The CIA man would grab his copy,
race even faster for McCone's house in
northwest Washington, rush to McCone's
bedside, and shove the picture in Mc-
Cone's sleepy face. At this instant the tel-
ephone would ring, and McCone would
be able?by a split second?to say, "Yes,
Bob, I have the picture right in front of
me. Interesting, isn't it?"
"All I had to do was trip on McCone's
back stoop," one of the CIA's couriers
has been quoted as saying, "and McNa-
mara would have won the ball game."
In this game of one-upmanship the
CIA's relative flexibility is an important
asset. More than once, doubtless to
McNamara's chagrin, McCone has
beat him to the White House with oper-
ational intelligence garnered by Air
Force or Navy planes. But McNamara
has assets, too, above all in the Penta-
gon's command of money and manpower.
CIA's money troubles
"People think the CIA has more spend-
ing money than it does," says one CIA
man. "Hell, these days it's really tough to
get a measly quarter of a million for an
operation?and in the Pentagon that's
not even carfare. If the Army hadn't
taken over a lot of our responsibilities in
Vietnam, the agency would have had to
declare in bankruptcy."
It is no secret that McNamara and
McCone have not always seen eye to eye,
particularly in regard to the exceedingly
sensitive subject of Cuba. McNamara re-
cently told a congressional committee, "I
do not feel [Cuba] is being used as a base
for the export of Communism to any sub-
stantial degree today." This was flatly
contradictory to McCone's publicly ex-
pressed views on the same subject?and
in this case McCone unquestionably has
the best of the argument.
McNamara's two-hour national tele-
cast on the Cuban missile situation last
February did not improve McCone-
McNamara relations. On February 6 the
President suddenly decided that the ru-
mors that the Soviets had not really with-
drawn their missiles from Cuba must be
publicly scotched. He ordered McNamara
to conduct that same day a "special Cuba
briefing" on nationwide networks.
McCone was not consulted about the
telecast. He was testifying in executive
session on Capitol Hill that morning, and
when asked by such senatorial grand
dukes as Senators Russell and Saltonstall
about details of the Cuban intelligence
operation, he was cagey in his replies.
When, a few hours later, he heard those
same details being broadcast to the world
by McNamara, his hair is said to have
turned a shade whiter.
On McCone's orders, an analysis of the
McNamara telecast was made in CIA.
The report concluded that the telecast
had seriously compromised certain intel-
ligence techniques. "On the next go-
round," says one expert, "you can be
damned sure they will change the shape
of the crates they ship their missiles and
1L-28's in." As the McNamara telecast
made obvious, the CIA's "cratologists"
had .confirmed both incoming and out-
going shipments of missiles and bombers.
McCone had a right to be unhappy
about the telecast?he is charged by law
with "the protection of intelligence sources
and methods," and he should certainly
have been consulted in advance. For his
part, McNamara has made it abundantly
clear that McCone's presidential author-
ity to "guide" the total intelligence effort
has certain well-defined limits where the
Defense Department is concerned. Dur-
ing a House hearing McNamara was
asked if he was "operating on the intelli-
gence you get from the CIA?"
"No, sir," McNamara replied firmly.
"I receive information directly from the
Defense Intelligence Agency, and that in-
formation is screened by no one outside
the Pentagon."
The Defense Intelligence Agency was
created by McNamara on August 1, 1961.
There were good reasons for establishing
the DIA. The intelligence estimates of the
individual services have traditionally been
intensely parochial?an example being
the wildly inflated Air Force estimates of
Soviet missile and bomber production.
Moreover, there are some things in the
intelligence industry which the Pentagon
can do better than the CIA.
For example, John McCone was prob-
ably right on balance when he agreed at
the height of the Cuban crisis to turn the
CIA's U-2 surveillance operation over to
the Air Force. The U-2 operation was
then no longer covert, and in the circum-
stances, the sensible thing to do was to
make the surveillance effort a straight
military operation, as it remains today.
For another example, when the Presi-
dent learned of the Communist plan to
instigate riots in Guatemala, he asked his
military aide an obvious question. "About
those riots," he said to Major General
Clifton. "Can the government handle
them? Find out about that." The CIA
did not have the answer to the President's
Declassified and Approved For Release 2013/10/29: CIA-RDP80M01009A000100050061-7
Declassified and Approved For Release 2013/10/29 : CIA-RDP80M01009A000100050061-7
a.
question. Through its close connections
with the military men in the Guatemalan
junta, the DIA did have the answer?a
firm "yes"?and it delivered the answer
to the White House the same day.
And yet there is one reason why the
Defense Intelligence Agency should not
have been created. There is really nothing
very much that the DIA can do that the
CIA is not doing already. The Army,
Navy and Air Force must have their own
order-of-battle intelligence, so the three
service intelligence units will continue to
exist. That being so, the DIA has no
choice but to concentrate on the political-
strategic intelligence which is the CIA's
chief function. Some military men have
sensitive political antennae. A great many,
unfortunately, do not.
Moreover, Parkinson's Law operates
with special virulence in the Pentagon.
One reason is that all three services are
top-heavy with high-ranking officers. This
creates an intense hunger for staff "slots,"
and intelligence has always been a happy
hunting ground for the slot-hungry. This
scrambling in turn leads to empire
building, and as that budget request for a
huge new building for DIA suggests, the
DIA's empire is rapidly expanding.
DIA spokesmen?not CIA?insist that
all is sweetness and light between the two
agencies. In fact, 13 issues had arisen at
last report between DIA and CIA, on
which McCone and Deputy Secretary of
Defense Roswell Gilpatric have been qui-
etly negotiating.
For example: Will the DIA's intelli-
gence bulletins circulate outside the Pen-
tagon in competition with CIA's? Who
maintains liaison with friendly foreign
intelligence, like M.I. 6? Who "owns" the
CIA-created national photo interpreta-
tion center? Who owns such technical de-
vices as the U-2? Where does the CIA's
responsibility for guerrilla and anti-
guerrilla operations end and the Penta-
gon's begin?
Above all, who runs covert operations
and where? This is the most sensitive
issue of all. It is in this area that CIA and
DIA, like K.G.B. and G.R.U., are likely
to begin tripping over each other's cloaks
and stabbing each other with their dag-
gers. Recently reports reached CIA that
DIA was planning a major clandestine
operation in an area that was previously
an exclusive CIA bailiwick. "If they move
in on us there," says one CIA man, "we'll
really have to pick up the gauntlet."
Meanwhile, much depends on the an-
swer to the question: How good is the
CIA? For DIA and the military can
make a case for moving in on the CIA
only if they can provide better intelligence
more quickly to the President and the
other major intelligence consumers.
"Intelligence." says John McCone, "is
not a measurable commodity. You can't
put a price tag on it." That is true enough.
But there are certain measures which can
be used all the same. One is the opinion
of old hands in the intelligence industry.
This reporter has asked many old hands
for their opinions of CIA. Their answers
in most cases are remarkably similar.
They boil down about as follows:
Dick Helms's Department of Espio-
nage and Dirty Tricks?a solid C-plus.
This moderate rating must be read in the
light of the fact that this is the toughest
course in all the intelligence curriculum.
Ray Cline's analysis section?B-plus.
Sherman Kent's estimators?a B or,
given the trickiness of making the na-
tional estimates, perhaps even a B-plus.
The newly vacated department of tech-
nical espionage?a B-plus.
There are other ways to assess the
effectiveness of an intelligence organiza-
tion. The grand prize in the game is the
"penetration of the opposition." If you can
insert an agent or agents into the other
side's intelligence organization, you are in
the happy position of a player without a
blindfold in a game of blindman's buff.
M.I. 6 has been penetrated to a fare-
thee-well, as was proved by the celebrated
case of George Blake, one of a seemingly
endless succession of Soviet agents who
have penetrated the British government.
"The British suffer from the old-school-
tie complex," says one security expert.
"You know?'What, old Guy a turn-
coat? Why, I went to school with him.'
They regarded the polygraph as ungentle-
manly and our security techniques as
boorish. But they're beginning to learn."
Penetration by spies
K.G.B., it can be stated on high author-
ity, has been penetrated by CIA, although
the hows and wheres are, of course, the
toppest of top secrets. _Has CIA been
penetrated by K.G.B.?
There is no way to prove that it has
not. As Bedell Smith, Allen Dulles's
predecessor, once testified?thus creating
a furor in the McCarthy era?an intelli-
gence chief must operate on the assump-
tion that the opposition has penetrated
his organization. At least two men who
might have been Soviet agents have been
fired from the CIA. But those in the best
position to judge believe that the odds are
high that CIA has not been penetrated. If
so, CIA must be given a higher score in
this vital area than its rivals.
Odious comparison, in fact, suggests
that the CIA has done reasonably well in
total effort over the years. The Soviets
have overflown American territory more
frequently than is generally known, but
they have had nothing to match the U-2
operation. And although we have had our
Bay of Pigs, they have had theirs?
Khrushchev's missile adventure in Cuba.
The outcome of that adventure proved a
total Soviet intelligence failure, in regard
to both American intelligence capabili-
ties and the probable American reaction
to Khrushchev's challenge.
The K.G.B. has had plenty of other
failures. A recent, less obvious example,
was the flop in Iraq. According to CIA
estimates, the Soviets invested the equiv-
alent of half a billion dollars in General
Kassim's Communist-infested dictator-
ship, hoping to turn Iraq into a Middle
Eastern Cuba. Yet K.G.B. had no ad-
vance warning of the coup that led to
Kassim's assassination in February, and
the destruction of the Communist appa-
ratus in Iraq. Neither did the British,
Israeli or Egyptian intelligence services.
The CIA was "thoroughly clued in."
There is no doubt, furthermore, that
CIA has succeeded in attracting and hold-
ing many remarkably able analysts and
operatives. John McCone himself has
clearly been impressed?and, perhaps,
surprised?by the quality of the people
he found in the CIA. "This is the most
competent and effective organization I
have had anything to do with in private
or public life," he says.
There are some veteran CIA men, per-
haps suffering from nostalgia, who sense
stodginess creeping in, who regret the
days when such brilliant if sometimes
overdaring men as Dulles, Bissell and
Amory ran the show.
"The real trouble with this new build-
ing," says one CIA man, "is that it tends
to make an honest woman of the old
madam?you know, no spittoons, keep
the antimacassars clean and no cham-
pagne in the morning. We ought to be
lurking in scrabby old hideouts, with the
plaster peeling and stopped-up toilets.
There's something about the atmosphere
of this building that leads to too many
memos, too many meetings and not
enough dirty work."
There are those who resent John Mc-
Cone's tendency to run the organization
like a big corporation rather than a band
of conspiratorial brothers. "Maybe Allen
was a bit of a romantic. But it was fun
working for him. Dammit, a man who's
been abroad for a couple of years on a
rough assignment wants to see the boss,
if only for half an hour."
Despite these rather nebulous stric-
tures, those in a good position to judge
give both the CIA and McCone himself
high marks. One thing is certain. Our in-
telligence industry is here to stay. There
are a lot of things wrong with it: it costs
too much, employs too many people and
involves too much rivalry and duplica-
tion. But we can never go back to the
dear old days before World War II, when
American intelligence was largely in the
hands of a few elderly female civil ser-
vants with pince-nez glasses, who tended
the attach?iles in the War Department.
John McCone himself has summed up the
best reason why we can't go back:
"Every war of this century, including
World War I, has started because of in-
adequate intelligence and incorrect intel-
ligence estimates and evaluations. This
was true of Pearl Harbor, for example,
and it was true in Korea. The Cuban
crisis in October could have generated a
war, some think a nuclear war. But war
over Cuba was avoided because of intelli-
gence success. Every threat to our se-
curity, every weapons system, was cor-
rectly identified in time to give the Presi-
dent and his policy advisers time to think,
to make a rational estimate of the situa-
tion, and to devise a means of dealing
with it with a maximum chance of success
and a minimum risk of global war. I con-
sider this an intelligence success. Al-
though intelligence is not a measurable
commodity, that is at least a partial meas-
ure of its value."
If good intelligence can help us to avoid
a war which might destroy us all, the
enormous American investment in the
intelligence industry will surely have paid
off rather handsomely. THE END
We have
agents inside
Russia's
intelligence
system.
21
Declassified and Approved For Release 2013/10/29: CIA-RDP80M01009A000100050061-7