Part 1 of 2
THREE: The CIA and the Intelligence CommunityIt is the task of the Director of Central Intelligence, utilizing his influence in the various interdepartmental mechanisms, to create out of these diverse components a truly national estimate, useful to the national interest and not just to a particular bureaucratic preference. This is not an easy task. -- HARRY HOWE RANSOM, The Intelligence Establishment
THE CIA is big, very big. Officially, it has authorized manpower of 16,500, and an authorized budget of $750 million -- and even those figures are jealously guarded, generally made available only to Congress. Yet, regardless of its official size and cost, the agency is far larger and more affluent than these figures indicate.
The CIA itself does not even know how many people work for it. The 16,500 figure does not reflect the tens of thousands who serve under contract (mercenaries, agents, consultants, etc.) or who work for the agency's proprietary companies. * Past efforts to total up the number of foreign agents have never resulted in precise figures because of the inordinate secrecy and compartmentalization practiced by the Clandestine Services. Sloppy record-keeping - often deliberate on the part of the operators "for security purposes"- is also a factor. There are one-time agents hired for specific missions, contract agents who serve for extended periods of time, and career agents who spend their entire working lives secretly employed by the CIA. In some instances, contract agents are retained long after their usefulness has passed, but usually are known only to the case officers with whom they deal. One of the Watergate burglars, Eugenio Martinez, was in this category. When he was caught inside the Watergate on that day in June 1972, he still was receiving a $100-a-month stipend from the agency for work apparently unrelated to his covert assignment for the Committee to Re-Elect the President. The CIA claims to have since dropped him from the payroll.
A good chunk of the agency's annual operational funds, called "project money," is wasted in this fashion. Payments to no-longer-productive agents are justified on several grounds: the need to maintain secrecy about their operations even though these occurred years ago; the vague hope that such agents will again prove to be useful (operators are always reluctant to give up an asset, even a useless one), and the claim that the agency has a commitment to its old allies-a phenomenon known in the CIA as "emotional attachment." It is the last justification that carries the most weight within the agency. Thus, hundreds-perhaps thousands-of former Cuban, East European, and other minor clandestine agents are still on the CIA payroll, at an annual cost to the taxpayers of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars a year.
All mercenaries and many field-operations officers used in CIA paramilitary activities are also contractees and, therefore, are not reflected in the agency's authorized manpower level. The records kept on these soldiers of fortune are at best only gross approximations. In Laos and Vietnam, for example, the Clandestine Services had a fairly clear idea of how many local tribesmen were in its pay, but the operators were never quite certain of the total number of mercenaries they were financing through the agency's numerous support programs, some of which were fronted for by the Department of Defense, the Agency for International Development, and, of course, the CIA proprietary, Air America.
Private individuals under contract to-or in confidential contact with-the agency for a wide variety of tasks other than soldiering or spying are also left out of the personnel totals, and complete records of their employment are not kept in any single place. * In 1967, however, when the CIA's role on American campuses was under close scrutiny because of the embarrassing National Student Association revelations, Helms asked his staff to find out just how many university personnel were under secret contract to the CIA. After a few days of investigation, senior CIA officers reported back that they could not find the answer. Helms immediately ordered a full study of the situation, and after more than a month of searching records allover the agency, a report was handed in to Helms listing hundreds of professors and administrators on over a hundred campuses. But the staff officers who compiled the report knew that their work was incomplete. Within weeks, another campus connection was exposed in the press. The contact was not on the list that had been compiled for the director.
Just as difficult as adding up the number of agency contractees is the task of figuring out how many people work for its proprietaries. CIA headquarters, for instance, has never been able to compute exactly the number of planes flown by the airlines it owns, and personnel figures for the proprietaries are similarly imprecise. An agency holding company, the Pacific Corporation, including Air America and Air Asia, alone accounts for almost 20,000 people, more than the entire workforce of the parent CIA. For years this vast activity was dominated and controlled by one contract agent, George Doole, who later was elevated to the rank of a career officer. Even then his operation was supervised, part time, by only a single senior officer who lamented that he did not know "what the hell was going on."
Well aware that the agency is two or three times as large as it appears to be, the CIA's leadership has consistently sought to downplay its size. During the directorship of Richard Helms, when the agency had a career-personnel ceiling of 18,000, CIA administrative officers were careful to hold the employee totals to 200 or 300 people below the authorized complement. Even at the height of the Vietnam war, while most national-security agencies were increasing their number of employees, the CIA handled its increased needs through secret contracts, thus giving a deceptive impression of personnel leanness. Other bureaucratic gambits were used in a similar way to keep the agency below the 18,000 ceiling. Senior officers were often rehired on contract immediately after they retired and started to draw government pensions. Overseas, agency wives were often put on contract to perform secretarial duties.
Just as the personnel figure is deceptive, so does the budget figure not account for a great part of the CIA's campaign chest. The agency's proprietaries are often money-making enterprises, and thus provide "free" services to the parent organization. The prime examples of this phenomenon are the airlines (Air America, Air Asia, and others) organized under the CIA holding company, the Pacific Corporation, which have grown bigger than the CIA itself by conducting as much private business as possible and continually reinvesting the profits. These companies generate revenues in the tens of millions of dollars each year, but the figures are imprecise because detailed accounting of their activities is not normally required by agency bookkeepers. For all practical purposes, the proprietaries conduct their own financial affairs with a minimum of oversight from CIA headquarters. Only when a proprietary is in need of funds for, say, expansion of its fleet of planes does it request agency money. Otherwise, it is free to use its profits in any way it sees fit. In this atmosphere, the proprietaries tend to take on lives of their own, and several have grown too big and too independent to be either controlled from or dissolved by headquarters.
Size and Cost of the CIA (Approximate)
-- / Personnel / $ Millions
Office of the Director / 400 / 10
Clandestine Services (Directorate of Operations) / 6,000 / 440
Espionage/ Counterespionage / (4,200) / (180)
Covert Action / (1,800) / (260)
Directorate of Management and Services / 5,300 / 110
Communications / (2,000) / (70
Other Support / (3,300) / (40)
Directorate of Intelligence / 3,500 / 70
Analysis / (1,200) / (50)
Information Processing / (2,300) / (20)
Directorate of Science and Technology / 1,300 / 120
Technical Collection / (1,000) / (50)
Research and Development / (300) / (70)
[Total] / 16,500* / 750**
* Nearly 5,000 CIA personnel serve overseas, the majority (60-70 percent) being members of the Clandestine Services. Of the remainder, most are communications officers and other operational support personnel.
** Does not include the Director's Special Contingency Fund.
Similarly, the CIA's annual budget does not show the Pentagon's annual contribution to the agency, amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars, to fund certain major technical espionage programs and some particularly expensive clandestine activities. For example, the CIA's Science and Technology Directorate has an annual budget of only a little more than $100 million, but it actually spends well over $500 million a year. The difference is funded largely by the Air Force, which underwrites the national overhead-reconnaissance effort for the entire U.S. intelligence community. Moreover, the Clandestine Services waged a "secret" war in Laos for more than a decade at an annual cost to the government of approximately $500 million. Yet, the CIA itself financed less than 10 percent of this amount each year. The bulk of the expense was paid for by other federal agencies, mostly the Defense Department but also the Agency for International Development. Fully aware of these additional sources of revenue, the CIA's chief of planning and programming reverently observed a few years ago that the director does not operate a mere multimillion-dollar agency but actually runs a multibillion-dollar conglomerate-with virtually no outside oversight.
In terms of financial assets, the CIA is not only more affluent than its official annual budget reflects, it is one of the few federal agencies that have no shortage of funds. In fact, the CIA has more money to spend than it needs. Since its creation in 1947, the agency has ended almost every fiscal year with a surplus-which it takes great pains to hide from possible discovery by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) or by the congressional oversight subcommittees. The risk of discovery is not high, however, since both the OMB and the subcommittees are usually friendly and indulgent when dealing with the CIA. Yet, each year the agency's bookkeepers, at the direction of the organization's top leadership, transfer the excess funds to the accounts of the CIA's major components with the understanding that the money will be kept available if requested by the director's office. This practice of squirreling away these extra dollars would seem particularly unnecessary because the agency always has some $50 to $100 million on call for unanticipated costs in a special account called the Director's Contingency Fund.
The Director's Contingency Fund was authorized by a piece of legislation which is unique in the American system. Under the Central Intelligence Agency Act of 1949, the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) was granted the privilege of expending funds "without regard to the provisions of law and regulations relating to the expenditure of Government funds; and for objects of confidential, extraordinary, or emergency nature, such expenditures to be accounted for solely on the certificate of the Director. ... " In the past, the Fund (DELETED) But there have been times when the fund has been used for the highly questionable purpose of paying expenses incurred by other agencies of the government.
In 1967 Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara promised Norwegian officials that the U.S. government would provide them with some new air-defense equipment costing several million dollars. McNamara subsequently learned the equipment was not available in the Pentagon's inventories and would have to be specially purchased for delivery to Norway. He was also informed that, because of the high cost of the Vietnam war (for which the Defense Department was then seeking a supplemental appropriation from Congress), funds to procure the air-defense equipment were not immediately at hand. Further complications arose from the fact that the Secretary was then engaged in a disagreement with some members of Congress over the issue of foreign military aid. It was therefore decided not to openly request the funds for the small but potentially sticky commitment to the Norwegians. Instead, the Pentagon asked the CIA (with White House approval) to supply the money needed for the purchase of air-defense equipment. The funds were secretly transferred to the Defense (DELETED) That same year President Johnson traveled to Punta del Este, a posh resort in Uruguay, for a meeting of the Organization of American States. He entertained the attending foreign leaders in a lavish manner which he apparently thought befitted the President of the United States, and he freely dispensed expensive gifts and souvenirs. In the process, LBJ greatly exceeded the representational allowance that the State Department had set aside for the conference. When the department found itself in the embarrassing position of being unable to cover the President's bills because of its tight budget (due in part to the economies LBJ had been demanding of the federal bureaucracy to help pay for the war in Vietnam), it was reluctant to seek additional funds from Congress. Representative John Rooney of Brooklyn, who almost singlehandedly controlled State's appropriations, had for years been a strong critic of representational funds (called the "booze allowance") for America's diplomats. Rather than face Rooney's wrath, State turned to the CIA, and the Director's Contingency Fund was used to pay for the President's fling at Punta del Este.
For some reason-perhaps because of the general view in the CIA that its operations are above the law-the agency has tended to play fiscal games that other government departments would not dare engage in. One example concerns the agency's use of its employee retirement fund, certain agent and contract-personnel escrow accounts, and the CIA credit union's capital, to play the stock market. With the approval of the top CIA leadership, a small group of senior agency officers has for years secretly supervised the management of these funds and invested them in stocks, hoping to turn a greater profit than normally would be earned through the Treasury Department's traditional low-interest but safe bank deposits and bond issues. Originally, the investment group, consisting of CIA economists, accountants, and lawyers, dealt with an established Boston brokerage house, which made the final investment decisions. But several years ago the Boston brokers proved too conservative to suit the agency investors, some of whom were making fatter profits with their personal portfolios. The CIA group decided it could do much better by picking its own stocks, so the brokerage house was reduced to doing only the actual stock trading (still with a handsome commission, of course). Within a matter of months the agency investors were earning bigger profits than ever before. Presumably, the gains were plowed back into the retirement, escrow, and credit-union funds.*
In 1968, Senator Richard Russell of Georgia, then the chairman of the Senate joint subcommittee for overseeing the CIA's activities, privately informed Director Helms that because of increasing skepticism among certain Senators about the agency operations, it probably would be a good idea for the CIA to arrange to have its financial procedures reviewed by an independent authority. Thus, in Russell's view, potential Senate critics who might be considering making an issue of the agency's special fiscal privileges would be undercut in advance. Senator Russell suggested the names of a few private individuals who might be willing to undertake such a task on behalf of the CIA. After conferring with his senior officers, Helms chose to ask Wilfred McNeil, at that time the president of Grace Shipping Lines (DELETED) to serve as the confidential reviewer of the agency's budgetary practices. McNeil, a former admiral and once comptroller for the Defense Department, was thought by Helms to be ideally suited, politically and otherwise, for the assignment.
McNeil accepted the task and soon came to CIA headquarters for a full briefing on the agency's most sensitive financial procedures- including an account of the methods used for purchasing and laundering currency on the international black market. He was told of the CIA's new planning, programming, and budgeting system, modeled after the innovations Robert McNamara had introduced at the Defense Department. Agency experts explained to McNeil how funds for new operations were authorized within the agency. He learned that the agency maintained a sliding-scale system for the approval of new projects or the periodic renewal of ongoing ones; that espionage operations costing up to $10,000 could be okayed by operators in the field; and that progressively more expensive operations necessitated branch, division, and Clandestine Services chief approval until, finally, operations costing over $100,000 were authorized personally by the Director. McNeil also was briefed on the agency's internal auditing system to prevent field operatives from misusing secret funds.
McNeil's reaction to his long and detailed briefing was to express surprise at the scope of the CIA's financial system and to praise the accounting practices used. When asked where and when he would like to begin his work in depth, he politely demurred and departed-never to return. A month or so later a CIA officer working in the Director's office learned that McNeil had had certain misgivings about the project and had sought the advice of former agency Director William Raborn, who had his own doubts about the reliability of the CIA's top career officers. Raborn had apparently discouraged McNeil from becoming involved in such a review. But as far as the CIA was concerned, Senator Russell's request for an independent audit had been carried out, since the agency's fiscal practices had been looked over by a qualified outsider and found to be in no need of improvement. The whole matter was then dropped.
OrganizationThe CIA is neatly organized into five distinct parts, a relatively small office of the Director and four functional directorates, the largest of which is the Directorate of Operations (known inside the agency as the Clandestine Services). The executive suite houses the CIA's only two political appointees, the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) and the Deputy Director (DDCI), and their immediate staffs. Included organizationally, but not physically, in the Office of the Director are two components that assist the DCI in his role as head of the U.S. intelligence community. One is a small group of senior analysts, drawn from the CIA and the other agencies of the community, which prepares the "blue books," or National Intelligence Estimates, on such subjects as Soviet strategic defense capabilities, Chinese long-range missile developments, and the political outlook for Chile. * The other is the Intelligence Resources Advisory Committee, a group created in 1971, which provides staff assistance to the Director in his efforts to manage and streamline the $6-billion intelligence community.
The Intelligence Resources Advisory Committee, long a dream of those officers who believe the U.S. intelligence community to be too big and inefficient, has thus far proven to be something of a nightmare. Instead of eliminating wasteful and redundant activities within U.S. intelligence, it has been turned into a vehicle for the military intelligence agencies to justify and expand their already overly ambitious collection programs. Likewise, the recent revamping of the Board of National Estimates, under present Director William Colby, has been characterized by some experienced hands as "a sellout" to Pentagon power, caused in part by the political pressures of Henry Kissinger's National Security Council staff. Under Colby, the board has been greatly reduced in both prestige and independence, and has been brought under the stifling influence of military men whose first allegiance is to their parent services rather than to the production of objective, balanced intelligence assessments for the policy-makers.
The other components of the Office of the Director include those traditionally found in governmental bureaucracies: press officers, congressional liaison, legal counsel, and so on. Only two merit special note: the Cable Secretariat and the Historical Staff. The former was established in 1950 at the insistence of the Director, General Walter Bedell Smith. When Smith, an experienced military staff officer, learned that agency communications, especially those between headquarters and the covert field stations and bases, were controlled by the Clandestine Services, he immediately demanded a change in the system. "The operators are not going to decide what secret information I will see or not see," he is reported to have said. Thus, the Cable Secretariat, or message center, was put under the Director's immediate authority. Since then, however, the operators have found other ways, when it is thought necessary, of keeping their most sensitive communications from going outside the Clandestine Services.
The Historical Staff represents one of the CIA's more clever attempts to maintain the secrecy on which the organization thrives. Several years ago the agency began to invite retiring officers to spend an additional year or two with the agency-on contract, at regular pay-writing their official memoirs. The product of their effort is, of course, highly classified and tightly restricted. In the agency's eyes, this is far better than having former officers openly publish what really happened during their careers with the CIA.
The largest of the agency's four directorates is the Directorate of Operations, or the Clandestine Services, which has about 6,000 professionals and clericals. The ratio between professionals, mostly operations officers, and clericals, largely secretaries, is roughly two to one. Approximately 45 percent of the Clandestine Services personnel is stationed overseas, the vast majority using official cover -Le., posing as representatives of the State or Defense Department. About two out of three of the people in the Clandestine Services are engaged in general intelligence activities-liaison, espionage, and counterespionage-the remainder concentrating on various forms of covert action. Yet despite the smaller number of personnel working on covert action, these interventions in the internal affairs of other countries cost about half again as much as spying and counterspying ($260 million v. $180 million annually). The greater expense for covert action is explained by the high costs of paying for paramilitary operations and subsidizing political parties, labor unions, and other international groups.
The Clandestine Services is broken down into fifteen separate components, but its actual operating patterns do not follow the neat lines of an organizational chart. Exceptions are the rule. Certain clandestine activities which would seem to an outsider to be logically the responsibility of one component are often carried out by another-because of political sensitivity, because of an assumed need for even greater secrecy than usual, because of bureaucratic compartmentalization, or simply because things have always been done that way.
The bulk of the Clandestine Services' personnel, about 4,800 people, work in the so-called area divisions, both at headquarters and overseas. These divisions correspond roughly to the State Department's geographic bureaus-a logical breakdown, since most CIA operators in foreign countries work under State cover. The largest area division is the Far East (with about 1,500 people), followed in order of descending size by Europe (Western Europe only), Western Hemisphere (Latin America plus Canada), Near East, Soviet Bloc (Eastern Europe), and Africa (with only 300 staff). The chain of command goes from the head of the Clandestine Services to the chiefs of the area divisions, then overseas to the chiefs of stations (COS) and their chiefs of bases (COB).
The CIA's stations and bases around the world serve as the principal headquarters of covert activity in the country in which each is located. The station is usually housed in the U.S. embassy in the capital city, while bases are in other major cities or sometimes on American or foreign military bases. For example, in West Germany, the CIA's largest site for operations, the station is located in Bonn; the chief of station is on the staff of the American ambassador. There are subordinate bases in ( DELETED) and a few other cities, along with several bases under American military cover scattered throughout the German countryside.
The Domestic Operations Division of Clandestine Services is, in essence, an area division, but it conducts its mysterious clandestine activities in the United States, not overseas. Its chief-like the other area-division chiefs, the civilian equivalent of a two- or three-star general-works out of an office in downtown Washington, within two blocks of the White House. Under the Washington station are bases located in other major American cities.
Also in the Clandestine Services are three staffs, Foreign Intelligence (espionage), Counterintelligence (counterespionage), and Covert Action, which oversee operational policy in their respective specialties and provide assistance to the area divisions and the field elements. For instance, in an operation to plant a slanted news story in a Chilean newspaper, propaganda experts on the Covert Action Staff might devise an article in cooperation with the Chilean desk of the Western Hemisphere Division. A CIA proprietary, like (DELETED) might be used to write and transmit the story to Chile so it would not be directly attributable to the agency, and then a clandestine operator working out of the American embassy in Santiago might work through one of his penetration agents in the local press to ensure that the article is reprinted. While most CIA operations abroad are carried out through the area divisions, the operational staffs, particularly the Covert Action Staff, also conduct independent activities.
The Special Operations Division is something of a hybrid between the area divisions and the operational staffs. Its main function is to provide the assets for paramilitary operations, largely the contracted manpower (mercenaries or military men on loan), the materiel, and the expertise to get the job done. Its operations, however, are organizationally under t-he station chief in the country where they are located.
The remaining three components of the Clandestine Services provide technical assistance to the operational components. These three are: the Missions and Programs Staff, which does much of the bureaucratic planning and budgeting for the Clandestine Services and which writes up the justification for covert operations submitted for approval to the 40 Committee; the Operational Services Division, which among other things sets up cover arrangements for clandestine officers; and the Technical Services Division, which produces in its own laboratories the gimmicks of the spy trade-the disguises, miniature cameras, tape recorders, secret writing kits, and the like.
The Directorate of Management and Services (formerly the Directorate of Support) is the CIA's administrative and housekeeping part. However, most of its budget and personnel is devoted to assisting the Clandestine Services in carrying out covert operations. (This directorate is sometimes referred to within the agency as the Clandestine Services' "slave" directorate.) Various forms of support are also provided to the Directorate of Intelligence and the Directorate of Science and Technology, but the needs of these two components for anything beyond routine administrative tasks are generally minimal. Covert operations, however, require a large support effort, and the M&S Directorate, in addition to providing normal administrative assistance, contributes in such areas as communications, logistics, and training.
The M&S Directorate's Office of Finance, for example, maintains field units in Hong Kong, Beirut, Buenos Aires, and Geneva with easy access to the international money markets. The Office of Finance tries to keep a ready inventory of the world's currencies on hand for future clandestine operations. Many of the purchases are made in illegal black markets where certain currencies are available at bargain rates. In some instances, most notably in the case of the South Vietnamese piaster, black-market purchases of a single currency amount to millions of dollars a year.
The Office of Security provides physical protection for clandestine installations at home and abroad and conducts polygraph (lie detector) tests for all CIA employees and contract personnel and most foreign agents. The Office of Medical Services heals the sicknesses and illnesses (both mental and physical) of CIA personnel by providing "cleared" psychiatrists and physicians to treat agency officers; analyzes prospective and already recruited agents; and prepares "psychological profiles" of foreign leaders (and once, in 1971, at the request of the Watergate "plumbers," did a "profile" of Daniel Ellsberg). The Office of Logistics operates the agency's weapons and other warehouses in the United States and overseas, supplies normal office equipment and household furniture, as well as the more esoteric clandestine materiel to foreign stations and bases, and performs other housekeeping chores. The Office of Communications, employing over 40 percent of the Directorate of Management and Services's more than 5,000 career employees, maintains facilities for secret communications between CIA headquarters and the hundreds of stations and bases overseas. It also provides the same services, on a reimbursable basis, for the State Department and most of its embassies and consulates. The Office of Training operates the agency's training facilities at many locations around the United States, and a few overseas. (The Office of Communications, however, runs (DELETED) The Office of Personnel handles the recruitment and record-keeping for the CIA's career personnel.
Support functions are often vital for successful conduct of covert operations, and a good support officer, like a good supply sergeant in an army, is indispensable to a CIA station or base. Once a station chief has found the right support officer, one who can provide everything from housekeeping to operational support, the two will often form a professional alliance and stay together as they move from post to post during their careers. In some instances the senior support officer may even serve as the de facto second-in- command because of his close relationship with the chief.
Together, the Clandestine Services and the Directorate for Management and Services constitute an agency within an agency. These two components, like the largest and most dangerous part of an iceberg, float along virtually unseen. Their missions, methods, and personnel are quite different from those of the CIA's other two directorates, which account for only less than a third of the agency's budget and manpower. Yet the CIA-and particularly former Director Richard Helms-has tried to convince the American public that the analysts and technicians of the Directorates for Intelligence and Science and Technology, the clean white tip of the CIA iceberg, are the agency's key personnel.
The Directorate of Intelligence, with some 3,500 employees, engages in two basic activities: first, the production of finished intelligence reports from the analysis of information (both classified and unclassified); and second, the performance of certain services of common concern for the benefit of the whole intelligence community. Included in the latter category are the agency's various reference services (e.g., a huge computerized biographical library of foreign personalities, another on foreign factories, and so on); the Foreign Broadcasting Information Service (a worldwide radio and television monitoring system); and the National Photographic Interpretation Center (an organization, run in close cooperation with the Pentagon, which analyzes photographs taken from satellites and spy planes). About two thirds of the Intelligence Directorate's $70 million annual budget is devoted to carrying out these services of common concern for the government's entire national-security bureaucracy. Thus, the State and Defense departments are spared the expense of maintaining duplicate facilities, receiving from the CIA finished intelligence in areas of interest to them. For example, when there is a shift in the Soviet leadership, or a new Chinese diplomat is posted to Washington, the Intelligence Directorate routinely sends biographical information (usually classified "secret") on the personalities involved to the other government agencies. Similarly, the various State Department bureaus (along with selected American academicians and newspapers) regularly receive the agency's unclassified transcripts of foreign radio and television broadcasts.
Most of the rest of the Intelligence Directorate's assets are focused on political, economic, and strategic military research. The agency's specialists produce both current intelligence--reports and explanations on a daily basis of the world's breaking events -- and long-range analysis of trends, potential crisis areas, and other matters of interest to the government's policy-makers. Turning out current intelligence reports is akin to publishing a newspaper, and, in fact, the Intelligence Directorate puts out daily and weekly publications which, except for their high security classifications, are similar to work done by the American press. These regular intelligence reports, along with special ones on topics like corruption in South Vietnam or the prospects for the Soviet wheat crop, are sent to hundreds of "consumers" in the federal government. The primary consumer, however, is the President, and he receives every morning a special publication called the President's Daily Brief. In the Johnson administration these reports frequently contained, in addition to the normal intelligence fare, rather scandalous descriptions of the private lives of certain world leaders, always avidly read by the President. * The agency found, however, that in the Nixon administration such items were not appreciated, and the tone of the daily report was changed. Even so, President Nixon and Henry Kissinger soon lost interest in reading the publication; the task was relegated to lower-ranking officials on the National Security Council staff.
The fourth and newest of the CIA's directorates. Science and Technology, also employs the smallest number of personnel, about 1,300 people. It carries out functions such as basic research and development, the operation of spy satellites, and intelligence analysis in highly technical fields. In addition to these activities, it also handles the bulk of the agency's electronic data-processing (computer) work. While the S&T Directorate keeps abreast of and does research work in a wide variety of scientific fields, its most important successes have come in developing technical espionage systems. The precursor of this directorate was instrumental in the development of the U-2 and SR·71 spy planes. The S&T experts have also made several brilliant breakthroughs in the intelligence- satellite field. In the late 1950s, when Clandestine Services chief Richard Bissell encouraged the technicians in their development of America's first photo-reconnaissance satellite, they produced a model which was still in use as late as 1971. And agency technicians have continued to make remarkable advances in the "state of the art." Today spy satellites, capable of producing photographs from space with less than (DELETED) resolution, lead all other collection means as a source of intelligence. The S&T Directorate has also been a leader in developing other technical espionage techniques, such as over-the-horizon radars, "stationary" satellites, and various other electronic information- gathering devices.
The normal procedure has been for the S&T Directorate, using both CIA and Pentagon funds, to work on a collection system through the research-and-development stage. Then, once the system is perfected, it is turned over to the Defense Department. In the case of a few particularly esoteric systems, the CIA has kept operational control, but the agency's S&T budget of about $120 million per year is simply not large enough to support many independent technical collection systems.
CIA technicians, for example, worked with Lockheed Aircraft at a secret site in Nevada to develop the A-II, probably the most potent airborne collection system ever to fly. In February 1964, before the plane became operational, President Johnson revealed its existence to the news media, describing it as a long-range Air Force interceptor. Five months later, at another news conference, the President disclosed that there was a second version of the aircraft, which he described as "an advanced strategic reconnaissance plane for military use, capable of worldwide reconnaissance." Three years after that, when the A-ll, now the SR-71, was flying regularly, the program was turned over to the Air Force. (DELETED)
(DELETED)
Any reasonable reviewer of the CIA, after surveying the deployment of agency funds and personnel and weighing these against the intelligence gains produced by the various directorates, would probably come to the same conclusion as did Richard Helms' temporary replacement as Director, James Schlesinger. On April 5, 1973, Schlesinger admitted to the Senate Armed Forces Committee that "We have a problem ... we just have too many people. It turns out to be too many people in the operational areas. These are the people who in the past served overseas .... Increasing emphasis is being placed on science and technology, and on intelligence judgments."
Schlesinger's words-and the fact that he was not a "house man" from the Clandestine Services-were auguries of hope to those many critics of the CIA who believe that it is overly preoccupied with the covert side of intelligence. But Schlesinger lasted only four months at the agency before he was named Secretary of Defense, and the changes he effected were generally confined to a 6-percent staff cut and an early-retirement program for certain superannuated employees. Schlesinger has been succeeded by William Colby-a man who had a highly successful career as a clandestine operator specializing in "dirty tricks," and who can only be expected to maintain the Dulles-Helms policy of concentration on covert action.
At present the agency uses about two thirds of its funds and its manpower for covert operations and their support-proportions that have been held relatively constant for more than ten years. Thus, out of the agency's career workforce of roughly 16,500 people and yearly budget of about $750 million, 11,000 personnel and roughly $550 million are earmarked for the Clandestine Services and those activities of the Directorate of Management and Services (formerly the Directorate of Support), such as communications, logistics, and training, which contribute to covert activities. Only about 20 percent of the CIA's career employees (spending less than 10 percent of the budget) work on intelligence analysis and information processing. There is little reason, at present, to expect that things will change.
The Intelligence CommunityTaken as a whole, U.S. intelligence is no longer made up of a small glamorous fraternity of adventurous bluebloods-men motivated by a sense of noblesse oblige who carry out daring undercover missions. That is the romantic myth without which there would be few spy novels, but it is not the substance of the modern intelligence profession. Today the vast majority of those in the spy business are faceless, desk-bound bureaucrats, far removed from the world of the secret agent. To be sure, the CIA still strives to keep alive such techniques as classical espionage and covert action, but its efforts have been dwarfed by the huge technical collection programs of other government intelligence organizations--chiefly military agencies.
In all, there are ten different components of the federal government which concern themselves with the collection and/or analysis of foreign intelligence. These ten agencies, complete with their hundreds of subordinate commands, offices, and staffs, are commonly referred to as the "intelligence community." Operating silently in the shadows of the federal government, carefully obscured from public view and virtually immune to congressional oversight, the intelligence community every year spends over $6 billion and has a full-time workforce of more than 150,000 people. The bulk of this money and manpower is devoted to the collection of information through technical means and the processing and analysis of that information. The intelligence community amasses data on all the world's countries, but the primary targets are the communist nations, especially the Soviet Union and China, and the most sought-after information concerns their military capabilities and intentions.
Size and Cost of U.S. Intelligence Community (Approximate)
ORGANIZATION / PERSONNEL / ANNUAL BUDGET
Central Intelligence Agency/ 16,500 / $750,000,000
National Security Agency* / 24,000 / $1,200,000,000
Defense Intelligence Agency * / 5,000 / $200,000,000
Army Intelligence* / 35,000 / $700,000,000
Naval Intelligence* / 15,000 / $600,000,000
Air Force Intelligence* (Including the National Reconnaissance Office / 56,000 / $2,700,000,000
State Department (Bureau of Intelligence and Research) / 350 / $8,000,000
Federal Bureau of Investigation (Internal Security Division) / 800 / $40,000,000
Atomic Energy Commission (Division of Intelligence) / 300 / $20,000,000
Treasury Department / 300 / $10,000,000
TOTAL / 153,250 / $6,228,000,000
* Department of Defense agency
As can be seen, the intelligence community's best-known member, the CIA, accounts for less than 15 percent of its total funds and personnel. Despite the agency's comparatively small size, however, the head of the CIA is not only the number-one man in his own agency but, as a result of the National Security Act of 1947, is also the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI)-the titular chief of the entire intelligence community. However, the community which the DCI supposedly oversees is made up of fiercely independent bureaucratic entities with little desire for outside supervision. All the members except the CIA are parts of much larger governmental departments, and they look to their parent agencies for guidance, not to the DCI. While all participants share the same profession and general aim of protecting the national security, the intelligence community has developed into an interlocking, overlapping maze of organizations, each with its own goals. In the words of Admiral Rufus Taylor, former head of Naval Intelligence and former Deputy Director of the CIA, it most closely resembles a "tribal federation."