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PART FIVE CONCLUSIONS The CIA was conceived and established to provide high-quality intelligence to senior policymakers. Since 1947 the Agency-its structure, its place within the government and its functions-has undergone dramatic change and expansion. Sharing characteristics common to most large, complex organizations, the CIA has responded to rather than anticipated the forces of change; it has accumulated functions rather than redefining them; its internal patterns were established early and have solidified; success has come to those who have made visible contributions in high-priority areas. These general characteristics have affected the specifics of the Agency's development. The notion that the OIA could serve (U5 a coordinating body for departmental intelligence activities and that the DOl could orchestrate the process did not take into account the inherent institutional obstaeles posed by the Departments. From the outset no Department was willing to concede a centralized intelligence function to the CIA. Each insisted on the maintenance of its independent capabilities to support its policy role. ·With budgetary and management authority vested in the Departments, the Agency was left powerless in the execution of interdepartmental coordination. Even in the area of coordinated national intelligence estimates the Departments did not readily provide the Agency with the data required. It was not until John McCone's term as DCI that the Agency aggressively sought to assert its position as a coordinating body. That effort demonstrated the complex factors that determined the relative success of community management. One of the principal influences was the support accorded the DCI by the President and the cooperation of the Secretary of Defense. In a situation where the DCI commanded no resources or outright authority, the position of these two individuals was crucial. While Kennedy and McNamara provided McCone with consistent backing in a variety of areas, Nixon and Laird failed to provide Helms with enough support to give him the necessary bureaucratic leverage. It is clear that the DCls' own priorities, derived from their backgrounds and intBrests, influenced the relative success of the Agency's role in interdepartmental coordination. Given the limitations on the DCI's authority, only by making community activities a first order concern and by pursuing the problems assertively, could a DCI begin to make a difference in effecting better management. During Allen Dulles' term interagency coordination went neglected, and the results were expansion of competing capabilities among the Departments. For McCone, community intelligence activities were clearly a priority, and his definition of the DCI's role contributed to whatever advances were made. Helms' fundamental interests and (91) 70-725 0 - 76 - 7 92 inclinations lay within the Agency, and he did not push his mandate to its possible limits. The DCI's basic problems have been competing claims on his time and attention and the lack of real authority for the execution of the central intelligence function. As presently defined, the DCI's job is burdensome in the extreme. He is to serve the roles of chief intelligence advisor to the President, manager of community intelligence activities, and senior executive in the CIA. History has demonstrated that the job of the DCI as community manager and as head of the OIA are competing, not complementary roles. In terms of both the demands imposed by each function and the expertise required to fulfill the responsibilities, the two roles differ considerably. In the future separating the functions with precise definitions of authority and responsibilities may prove a plausible alternative. Although the Agency 1/)as established primarily for the purpose of providing intelligence analysis to senior policymakers, withiJn three years clandestine operatio'ns became and c~tinued to be the Agency's preemhwnt activity. The single most important factor in the transformation was policymakers' perception of the Soviet Union as a worldwide threat to United States security. The Agency's large-scale clandestine activities have mirrored American foreign policy priorities. 'With political operations in Europe in the 1950'S, paramilitary operations in Korea. Third 'World activities, Cuba, Southeast Asia, and currently narcotics control, the CIA's major programs paralleled the international concerns of the United States. For nearly two decades American policymakers considered covert action vital in the struggle against international Communism. The generality of the definition or "threat perception" motivated the continual development and justification of covert activities from the senior policymaking level to the field stations. Apart from the overall anti-Communist motivation, successive Presidential administrations regarded covert action as a quick and convenient means of advancing their particular objectives. Internal incentives contributed to the expansion in covert action. 'Within the Agency DDO careerists have traditionally been rewarded more quickly for the visible accomplishments of covert action than for the long-term development of agents required for clandestine collection. Clandestine activities will remain an element of United States foreign policy, and policymakers will directly affect the level of operations. The prominence of the Clandestine Service within the Agency may moderate as money for and high-level Executive interest in covert actions diminish. However, DDO incentives which emphasize operations over collection and which create an internal demand for projects will continue to foster covert action unless an internal conversion process forces a change. In the past the orientation of DCls such as Dulles and Helms also contributed to the Agency's emphasis on clandestine activities. It is no coincidence that of those DCls who have been Agency careerists, all have come from the Clandestine Service. Except for James Schlesinger's brief appointment, the Agency has never been directed by a trained analyst. The qualities demanded of individuals in the DDO-essentially management of people-serve as the basis for bureaucratic skills in the organization. As a result, the Agency's leadership has been dominated by DDO careerists. 93 Clandestine collection and covert action have had their successes, i.e. individual activities have attained their stated objectives. What the relative contribution of clandestine activities has been-the extent to which they have contributed to or detracted from the implementation of United States foreign policy and whether the results have been worth the risks--cannot be evaluated without wide access to records on covert operations, access the Committee did not have. Organizatimw'z arrangements within the Agerwy and the decisionmaking structure outside the Agency have permitted the extremes in OIA activity. The ethos of secrecy which pervaded the DDO had the effect of setting the Directorate apart within the Agency and allowed the Clandestine Service a measure of autonomy not accorded other Directorates. More importantly, the compartmentation principle allowed units of the DDO freedom in defining operations. In many cases the burden of responsibility fell on individual judgments--a situation in which lapses and deviations are inevitable. Previous excesses of drug testing, assassinati.on planning, and domestic activities were supported by an internal structure that permitted individuals to conduct operations without the consistent necessity or expectation of justifying or revealing their activities. Ultimately, much of the responsibility for the scale of covert action and for whatever abuses occurred must fall to senior policymakers. The decisionmaking arrangements at the NSC level created an environment of blurred accountability which allowed consideration of actions without the constraints of individual responsibility. Historically the ambiguity and imprecision derived from the initial expectation that covert operations would be limited and therefore could be managed by a small, informal group. Such was the intention in 1948. By 1951 with the impetus of the Korean War, covert action had become a fixed element in the U.S. foreign policy repertoire. The frequency of covert action forced the development of more formalized decisionmaking arrangements. Yet structural changes did not alter ambiguous procedures. In the 1950's the relationship between Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles allowed informal agreements and personal understandings to prevail over explicit and precise decisions. In addition, as the scale of covert action expanded, policymakers found it useful to maintain the ambiguitl of the decisionmaking process to insure secrecy and to allow 'plausible deniability" of covert operations. No one in the ExecutIve-least of all the President-was required to formally sign off on a decision to implement a covert action program. The DCI was responsible for the execution of a project but not for taking the decision to implement it. Within the NSC a group of individuals held joint responsibility for defining policy objectives, but they did not attempt to establish criteria placing moral and constitutional limits on activities undertaken to achieve the objectives. Congress has functioned under similar conditions. Within the Congress a handful of committee members passed on the Agency's budget. Some members were informed of most of the CIA's major activities; others pref~rred not to be informed. The result was twenty-nine years of acqUIescence. At each level of scrutiny in the National Security Council and in the Congress a small group of individuals controlled the approval processes. The restricted number of individuals involved as welllls thl;\ ~s94 sumption that their actions would not be subject to outside scrutiny contributed to the scale of covert action and to the development of questionable practices. The DDO and the DDI evolved out of separate independent (ffga' fLizations, serving different policy needs. Essentially, the two Directorates have functioned as separate organizations. They maintain totally independent career tracks and once recruited into one, individuals are rarely posted to the other. In theory the DDO's candestine collection function should have contributed to the DD1's analytic capacity. However, DDO concerns about maintaining the security of its operations and protecting the identity of its agents, and DDI concerns about measuring the reliability of its sources restricted interchange between the two Directorates. Fundamentally, this has deprived the DDI of a major source of information Although DDI-DDO contact has increased during the last five years, it remains limited. The DDI has traditionally not been informed of sensitive covert operations undertaken by the DDO. This has affected the respective missions of both Directorates. The Clandestine Service has not had the benefit of intelligence support during consideration and implementation of its operations. The Bay of Pigs invasion was an instance in which DDI analysts, even the Deputy Director for Intelligence, were llninformed and represents a situation in which timely analysis of political trends and basic geography might have made a differenceeither in the decision to embark on the operation or in the plans for the operation. In the DDI, lack of knowledge about operations has complicated and undermined the analytic eHort. Information on a CIAsponsored political adion program would affect judgments about the results of a forthcoming election; information provided by a foreign government official would be invaluable in assessing the motives, policies, and dynamics of that government; information on a CIAsponsored propaganda campaign might alter analyses of the press or public opinion in that country. Essentially, the potential quality of the finished intelligence product suffers. The Agency was created in part to rectify the problem of duplication among the departmental intelligence services. Rather than minimizing the problem the Agency has contributed to it by becoming yet another source of intelligence production. Growth in the ran~e of American foreign policy interests and the DDI's response to additional requirements have resulted in an increased scale of collection and ana1ysis. Today, the CIA's intelligence products include: current intelligence in such disparate areas as science, economics, politics, strategic affairs,. and technology; quick responses to specific requests from government agencies and officials; basic or long-term research; and national intelligence estimates. With the exception of national intelligence estimates, other intelligence organizations engage in overlapping intelligence analysis. Rather than fulfilling the limited mission in intelli~ence analysis and coordination for which it was created, the Agency became a producer of finished intelligence and consistently expanded its areas of responsibility. In political and strategic intelligence ~~e inadequ~cy of analysis by the State Department and by the mIlItary seI'Vlces allowed the A~encyto lay cla.imto the two areas. As the need for specialized research in other subjects developed, the DDI responded-as 95 the only potential source for objective national intelligence. Over time the DDI has addressed itself to a full range of consumers in the broadest number of subject areas. Yet the extent to which the analysis satisfied policymakers' needs and was an integral part of the policy process has been limited. The size of the DDI and the admiJnistrati've process in'vol'ved in the production of finished intelligence-a process which involves numerous stages of drafting and review by large numbers of individualspreclJuded close association bet/ween polifJymakers and analysts, between the intelligence product and policy informed by intelligence analysis. Even the National Intelligence Estimates were relegated to briefing papers for second and third level officials rather than the principal intelligence source for senior policymakers that they were intended to be. Recent efforts to improve the interaction include c-reating the NIO system and assigning two full-time analysts on location at the Treasury Department. Yet these changes cannot compensate for the nature of the intelligence production system itself, which employs hundreds of analysts, most of whom have little sustained contact with their consumers. At the Presidential level the Del's position is essential to the utilization of intelligence. The DCI must 'be constantly informed, must press for access, must vigorously sell his product, and must anticipate future demands. Those DCls who have been most successful in this dimension have been those whose primary identification was not with the DDO. Yet the relationship between intelligence analysis and p'olicymaking is a reciprocal one. Senior policymakers must actively utIlize the intelligence capabilities at their disposal. Presidents have looked to the ~gency more for covert operations than for intelligence analysis. While only the Agency could perform covert operations, decisionmaking methods determined Presidential reliance on the CIA's intelligence capabilities. Preferences for small staffs, individual advisors, the need for specialized information quickly-all of these factors circumscribe a President's channel of information, of which intelligence analysis ma.y be apart. It was John F. Kennedy who largely determined John McCone's relative influence by defining the DCI's role and by including McCone in the policy process; it was Lyndon .rohnson and Richard Nixon who limited the roles of Richard Helms and William Colby. Althou/!h in the abstract objectivity may be the most desirable quality in intelligence analysis. objective judl-{ffients are frequently not what senior officials want to hear about their policies. In most cases, Presidents are inclined to look to the judgments of individuals they know and trust. Whether or not a DCI is included among them is the President's choice. Over the past thirty years the United States has developed an institution and a corps of individuals who constitute the the U.S. intelligence profession. The question remains as to how both the institution and the individuals will best be utilized.
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