Inside the CIA

by Kessler, Ronald

  Shirley says another part of working as a spy is carrying out covert action.

  “Covert action is undertaken when diplomacy doesn’t work,” she says. “It’s designed to conceal the hand of the U.S.

  “We put a high premium on social skills. You have to write well—to answer the standard journalistic questions of who, why, where, what, when, how. It makes a difference.

  “You are not going to get recognition,” she warns. “You will not be in the newspapers. You have to have a passion for anonymity. Otherwise there are other kinds of careers—military or what have you, for you.”

  She does not say so, but the State Department is usually cited by CIA officers as the place where those who seek glory should go—and good riddance.

  Working as a spy “can be a lot of fun,” she says. She catches herself. “Maybe I shouldn’t use that word.” She quotes an introduction written by former CIA director William Colby to a book about how to apply to the CIA.

  “Colby said that looking back over twenty-five years, he had good times. We want people who want to do something for their country. . . . You have to have a strong desire to do something for the security of the U.S.”

  “Is your spouse required to be a DO [Directorate of Operations] officer as well?” an applicant asks.

  “Absolutely not,” Shirley says.

  In the old days, she says, the CIA showed new employees a training film depicting a wife chastising herself for asking her CIA husband where he was going. This was silly, she says. CIA employees can give their spouses a general idea of what they are doing or where they are going without revealing “sources and methods,” the mantra of security-conscious CIA employees.

  On the other hand, “you really ought to make sure your spouse does not have a jealous bone in his or her body.”

  “Is it extremely dangerous? Let’s say you try to recruit the wrong person,” an applicant asks.

  Shirley says there is a distinction between CIA officers, who generally operate under official government cover and therefore have diplomatic immunity, and the foreign agents they recruit to give them information.

  “If you are going to pitch a Cuban, you might wait until the end of your tour [in a country],” she says. But a recruited agent does not have diplomatic immunity. “Your agent may be hanged. You try not to pitch someone unless he is going to say yes.”

  “Do you recruit a friend?”

  “Yes,” she says.

  “What if I look American?” someone asks.

  “You can have a disguise. You can blend in. You don’t have to swagger.”

  What about paramilitary operations?

  “We place a low priority on paramilitary,” she says. “We are not really recruiting paramilitary [personnel].”

  “What if your mother or father is foreign?”

  “That’s America,” Shirley says. “It’s a big melting pot. We’ll check them out. We give polygraphs.”

  Now Mark from the Directorate of Science and Technology takes over.

  “Is there anyone who is not familiar with James Bond?” he asks.

  Mark says Q hands devices to the fictional spy so he can do his job—install bugs in a meeting room, for example, or put on disguises.

  “I could change my appearance to a Michael Jackson look,” says Mark, who is black.

  Mark lists the components of his directorate—the Office of SIGINT Operations, which deploys sensors and intercepts communications; the Office of Technical Service, which develops spy equipment; the Office of Special Projects, which determines locations of nuclear devices and facilities and does other special collection of intelligence; the National Photographic Interpretation Center, which analyzes satellite photos; and the Foreign Broadcast Information Service, which transcribes and translates foreign broadcasts.

  The SR-71 Blackbird, a follow-on to the U-2 reconnaissance plane that flies more than three times the speed of sound, is an example of the work of his directorate, Mark says. The plane is no longer in use, supplanted by spy satellites.

  Mark introduces Christina from the Directorate of Intelligence. Christina wears a forest-green suit. Her graying hair is swept back. She refers to notes written on white index cards.

  “I work in Soviet analysis,” she says, peering over her reading glasses. “We have the task of taking information, analyzing it, and addressing national security problems and bringing them to the policymakers.

  “We take considerable pride in doing unbiased analysis—to say it the way we see it. We take all source information and write products and we give briefings. There is a premium on getting information current and in an easily readable form.

  “Every day,” she says, “we provide briefings to the president, vice president, cabinet members.

  “There are six offices on areas of the world—Soviet/East Europe, Europe, Near East, East Asia, Africa, Latin America. There are functional offices—economic, technical, geographic, nuclear weapons, leadership analysis on players.

  “We are looking for people with strong analytical skills—research skills, the ability to think through problems, and people with good judgment.

  “You are working with a team of smart people. There is high esprit. It is tough, hard work. Short deadlines cause stress, tensions. It is very fast paced and competitive.”

  “It seems to me it would be impossible to work on the Soviet economy without going there,” an applicant says.

  “We have an embassy there. We read the papers and reports here. We have clandestine collection. A lot of Soviet economists now come here. We don’t rule out travel,” she says.

  It is eleven-fifty A.M., and Bob draws the meeting to a close. Each individual who is still interested will be interviewed separately. At the end of the interview, those applicants who are right for the agency will be handed an application.

  A look of shock passes over some of the faces.

  “If we don’t receive an application, we’re not being considered for employment?” an applicant asks.

  “Right,” Bob says.

  The application is thirty-four pages long, Bob says. But not to worry—some of the pages contain instructions or certifications. The application asks for a listing of residences for the past fifteen years, employment history back to age seventeen, brothers’ and sisters’ employers. Even birth dates and places of birth of mothers-in-law and fathers-in-law are required.

  Applicants will also be asked to take a psychological and aptitude test. They will be asked to provide a sample of how they write.

  “Tell us who you are as a person. What do your best friends think about you?”

  It will take six to twelve months before security checks are completed and jobs offered to those who have passed all the hurdles.

  A young man wants to know the extent of the background investigation.

  “If I had dinner with friends in a summer in Yugoslavia, will you talk to them?” he asks.

  “Probably not. But we develop our own leads,” Bob says. Bob raises the subject of drugs.

  “There are no problems with a six-pack on a weekend in college. We look at drug use. If you inject something, that will cause a lot of strong concern. If it stopped a year earlier and can be explained by peer pressure, it might not be a problem. What also concerns us is having three to four credit cards, and you don’t have a job or have declared bankruptcy.”

  Another applicant asks if every foreign national he has ever met must be listed. What if he cannot remember them all?

  “If you can’t, say you can’t remember,” Bob says.

  It is just before noon, and the session is over. The applicants line up expectantly for their interviews near the front of the building.

  Understandably, the session did not explain what it really means to be a spy for the CIA. That would give away too many secrets. Nor did the session touch on the office of the director of Central Intelligence, which constitutes the CIA’s fifth and most powerful component.

  PART V

&
nbsp; The Office of the Director of Central Intelligence

  21

  Three Hats

  BECAUSE OF THE WAY AMERICA HAD BEEN CAUGHT OFF guard at Pearl Harbor, President Truman and Congress wanted to make sure that in the future U.S. intelligence would be coordinated. For that reason, Congress created a director of Central Intelligence who wore three hats: one as the head of the CIA, one as the coordinator of the other intelligence agencies in the government, and one as the primary adviser to the president, through the National Security Council, on foreign intelligence matters.181

  Since the Eisenhower administration, the panoply of U.S. intelligence agencies has been known as the intelligence community, suggesting a benign gathering of neighbors. Besides the CIA, the intelligence community consists of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, the intelligence components of the Energy and Treasury departments, the National Security Agency, the counterintelligence component of the FBI, the National Reconnaissance Office, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the intelligence elements of the Army, Air Force, Navy, and the Marine Corps. Other agencies that have intelligence-related functions, such as the Commerce Department, participate in some community councils but are not considered full-fledged members of the community.

  To help in coordinating the intelligence community, the director of Central Intelligence has a separate intelligence-community staff with its own director. The DCI also sits on a dizzying array of interagency groups and committees that coordinate specific activities of the intelligence agencies. The most important is the National Foreign Intelligence Board (NFIB), whose membership includes the senior official of each agency in the intelligence community. Through this group, the intelligence community approves National Intelligence Estimates that represent the views of the entire community. Through various committees, the board also decides what priorities to focus on and what classified information should be given to allies.

  The DCI is appointed by the president with the advice and consent of the Senate. The president may also fire him. In carrying out his intelligence community role, the DCI has a deputy director of Central Intelligence. He serves both as deputy director of the CIA and as the DCI’s deputy in coordinating the intelligence community. Like the DCI, he is appointed by the president with the advice and consent of the Senate.

  In directing the CIA, the DCI has four deputy directors who head each of the four directorates. The DCI also has a number of staff offices that are not part of any directorate and report directly to him. These are the offices of General Counsel; Public Affairs; Congressional Affairs; Comptroller; the Special Assistant for Arms Control, who monitors compliance with arms control agreements; the National Intelligence Council, which prepares estimates; and the director of the Intelligence Community Staff, which coordinates a number of intelligence community committees on such matters as security, information handling, and counterintelligence. In addition, a deputy director for planning and coordination reports directly to the DCI and has a staff of sixteen people. Taken together, these staff offices represent the fifth segment of the CIA.

  As a result of legislation passed in 1990, the CIA’s inspector general is on the same level as the DCI on the agency’s organization chart. Like the DCI, he is appointed by the president with the consent of the Senate. Overseeing the entire octopuslike community are not only the congressional oversight committees but the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB), a citizen panel that investigates shortcomings and reports its findings to the president. Finally, the President’s Intelligence Oversight Board, consisting of three members from outside the government appointed by the president, is supposed to report to the president any intelligence activities that appear to be improper or illegal.

  Most of the directors of Central Intelligence had no previous intelligence experience. Two of those, John A. McCone and Walter Bedell Smith, are remembered as being among the best DCIs. Smith, who served from 1950 to 1953, established the machinery for preparing National Intelligence Estimates to better coordinate the analytical work of the agency. McCone, who served from 1961 to 1965, sharpened the process for preparing estimates and established a fourth directorate for Science and Technology. On the other hand, William F. Raborn, Jr., who served from 1965 to 1966, is remembered as one of the worst DCIs. Like McCone, Raborn had no previous intelligence experience beyond what he’d picked up during his career in the Navy.

  Russell Jack Smith, a former deputy director for intelligence, recalled that when Lyndon Johnson intervened with U.S. forces in the Dominican Republic in 1965, Raborn decided that he could best contribute by rushing every piece of paper received by the CIA to the president. But Richard Helms, then deputy director of Central Intelligence, calmed him down.

  “Dick Helms’s smooth intervention prevented the disaster that is risked when raw, unevaluated intelligence reports are placed in a president’s hand,” Smith said.182

  “I never worked for a nicer guy who was more out of his element,” said Walter N. Elder, who was executive assistant to Raborn. “I thought President Johnson did him a disservice by naming him DCI.”183

  Other DCIs, such as Sidney W. Souers, William J. Casey, and William H. Webster, had some intelligence experience in predecessors of the CIA or in other intelligence organizations. Only three, Allen W. Dulles, Richard Helms, and William Colby, had served in the CIA before being appointed director.

  Each director approached the job differently. Dulles, who served from 1953 to 1961, and Casey, who was DCI from 1981 to 1987, became highly involved in clandestine operations.

  “Dulles always thought he was an excellent practitioner,” Robert T. Crowley, a CIA officer at the time, said. “I have no evidence to support that.”184

  Adm. Stansfield Turner, who served from 1977 to 1981, felt the CIA emphasized human spying too much, to the detriment of technical collection. Turner devoted a great deal of his time to the analytical side, sometimes substituting his own opinions for the estimates presented to him.

  “They [the operations people] were the elite directorate—the untouchables,” Herbert E. Hetu, Turner’s director of public affairs, said. “I think he [Turner] felt we got more bang for the buck from technical intelligence. You can’t get intentions through it, though. He thought they [the operations officers] were important but overblown. They totally overreacted to that.”185

  By his quiet, princely manner, Helms, who was DCI from 1966 to 1973, gave an impression of harboring vast knowledge. He supported his troops while doing his best to deflect White House pressures to involve the agency in cover-ups, politically inspired estimates, and illegal activities. On the other hand, he approved the incarceration of Yuri I. Nosenko, the KGB defector mistrusted by James Angleton.186

  Aside from strongly supporting CIA operations and improving congressional relations, George Bush is remembered for doing very little during his one-year tenure as DCI, from 1976 to 1977.

  Turner is roundly hated for trying to diminish the importance of the clandestine side of the CIA and for cutting the staff of the Directorate of Operations in a crude manner. While the directorate was overstaffed because of staff increases during the Vietnam War, the reductions could have been accomplished over five years through attrition. But Turner was impatient and decided to reduce the staff over two years. This meant 17 people were dismissed and 147 people were forced into early retirement. Many others were told to find jobs in other directorates or be fired. Those affected were told to find new jobs on October 31, 1977. The two-paragraph letter said, “It has been decided that your services are no longer needed.” The action came to be known as the Halloween Massacre.187

  In his book, Secrecy and Democracy, Turner admitted that the wording of the notices was unfortunate but defended speeding up the retirement process. He said complaints about the 147 forced into early retirement “were beside the point. Almost all of them would have retired within a year or two anyway.”

  Robert (Rusty) Williams, one of Turner’s ai
des, spent his first few months at the agency looking into whether operations officers were having “nooners” or were drinking at work.188

  “Rusty Williams asked [subordinates] who I was sleeping with,” a former station chief said. “People said they presume my wife.”

  After creating tremendous resentment within the operations directorate, Williams decided the staff operated ethically and soundly.189

  “I don’t think people should be drinking at lunch,” Turner said recently. “They can have one if they want to, but he [Williams] found people who couldn’t come back. They were drinking when they came into the building. They were genuine alcoholics and were producing only a small percentage of the time.”190

  But even Turner’s aides conceded that his approach created unnecessary resentment. Any organization has its share of alcoholics, and by assigning an assistant to investigate the problem—rather than handling it through the chain of command—Turner seemed to be suggesting that he thought the CIA was full of drunks.

  “Stan was book smart but street dumb,” one of his former assistants said. “He didn’t understand how things would be perceived.”

  In his five months as DCI in 1973, James R. Schlesinger never had time to get a handle on the agency, but he opened it up to public scrutiny by ordering the compilation of the “family jewels,” the list of the agency’s past abuses. Colby ushered the agency into the modern era by emphasizing the need to operate lawfully and be accountable to Congress and the public. But Casey moved the agency backward by again involving it in illegal and improper activities. While he temporarily improved morale by acting as the agency’s cheerleader, most CIA officers—including those in the Directorate of Operations—look back on his tenure overall as a blemish on the agency.

  “Casey had a lot of problems and did a lot of things that didn’t do a lot of people any good,” a former CIA operations officer said. “He did care about the agency.”

  The amount of influence the DCIs have had with presidents has depended on their relationships with them. After the CIA foresaw the outbreak of the Arab-Israeli Six Day War in 1967 and predicted it would last seven to ten days, President Johnson invited Helms to attend his Tuesday lunches with his inner circle of foreign policy advisers. Casey served not only as an intelligence adviser to President Reagan but also—having worked in his presidential campaign—as a political adviser.