Who will lead American intelligence?

Press, 8 December 1976, Page 24

Who will lead American intelligence?

By

VICTOR ZORZA

in Washington

The speculation in foreign capitals centres on who might be the next Secretary of State, but Mr Jimmy Carter’s head of intelligence could be as influential in shaping the foreign policy of the United States as the man in charge of the State Department.

Three of the men who have been mentioned as possible heads of United States intelligence under Mr Jimmy Carter have all agreed, in conversations held during the last week, that major reforms are inevitable. All three deny, of course, that they are candidates, but they have the qualifications for the job.

Mr James Schlesinger, the former Secretary of Defence and Director of Central Intelligence, is being mentioned for both posts, but some of Mr Carter’s advisers say that they would be most surprised if he got the Pentagon job. They would find his return to some intelligence role less disconcerting.

Mr Tom Hughes, the State Department’s head of intelligence in the Johnson Administration, often disputed the optimistic estimates about the course of the Vietnam war. He is now President of the Carnegie Peace Endowment, and would no doubt prefer to be the next Secretary of State — but he has just published a tifnely pamphlet describing how the next head of the C.I.A. should handle his job. Ray Cline, the C.l.A.’s former deputy director, resigned as Dr Henry Kissinger’s head of intelligence at the State Department because he disagreed with his boss. Mr Cline also says that he has “no plans” to return to the Government — but his book on how to reform the C.I.A. was published at the very time that Mr Carter began to consider how to fill the post. As Director of the' C.I.A. during the Watergate scandal, Mr Schlesinger began a major reorganisation of the agency, but this was cut short when Mr Nixon transferred him to the Pentagon. Even so stern a critic as the Senate Committee on Intelligence concluded that if Mr Schlesinger had remained at the C. I. A., he would have assumed a more vigorous role in attempting to control tiie intelligence community. In his brief tenure, he managed to cut out much of the dead wood — some 2000 men, mostly in the Department of Dirty Tricks. His primary concern, the Senate Committee concluded, was with raising the quality of intelligence analysis — which is something that any head of intelligence under Mr Carter would be ex, pected to concentrate on. It is impossible to summarise in this brief space the six hours of conversation with the three men, and the conversations with several other candidates who did not wish to be quoted, but they all agree that a way must be found to separate the comparatively small segment of intelligence devoted to covert activities from the broader and more important task of analysis. When Mr Schlesigner was at the C.I.A, he tried to break down the watertight wall which divided the covert and the analytical parts of the agency, to improve the quality of intelligence. But he

now says that the public reaction to the recent revelations about covert activities makes it necessary to rebuild the wall, so that analytical intelligence should be seen as the quite separate and respectable pursuit that it is.

Mr Ray Cline goes so far as to propose the setting up of tvhat he calls the Central Institute of Foreign Affairs Research, a body which would carry out much of the analytical work now done not onlv at the C.1.A., but also at the State and Defence Departments. He says in his new book, "Secrets, Spies, and Scholars,” that much of the Institute’s work should be freely published. When pressed, this man with a lifetime of experience in intelligence concedes that something like 75 per cent of the intelligence product could even now be adapted for publication.

What would these men tell Mr Carter if he were to interview them for the job? Mr Cline believes that the new central intelligence organisation should be headed by a man who is by training a scholar in social sciences, preferably one with close experience in government, best of all in intelligence work — a description which, not unnaturally, happens to fit him quite closely. Mr Schlesinger says that the right man ought to be familiar either with intelligence analysis, or with technology which now plays so important a part in intelligence work, but not necessarily with “operations” — the synonym for dirty tricks,

which happens to be the area in which he has no experience.

Mr Tom Hughes, when asked about the qualifications for the job, said that in appointing a director of central intelligence, “you would look for someone who docs not have widely known, strong views on policy.” A man with such views, he fears, would “manipulate the intelligence community” in the interest of the policies he favoured.

Other experienced Washington figures whose views have been sought suggest that Mr Carter should beware of Mr Schlesinger’s ideological bias, which, they argue, was clearly evident Pentagon. But Mr Schlesinger himself insists that the intelligence product should be as free as possible from ideological bias. The higher the degree of ideological bias, he says, the greater will be the blind spots. He sees himself as an analyst, “as unbiased a type as you can find.” When pressed for examples, he will recall, for instance, that he did not want the United States to become involved in Vietnam. “I anticipated that this was going to end as a bloody war,” he says, “in which we would inherit the mantle of colonialism.”

This is not the picture of Mr Schlesinger which most people have, but it still does not make him quite as unbiased as he believes himself to be. We all think we are unbiased — and the more we think so, the more biased we probably are. Mr Schlesinger’s qualifications as the man who could reform

the vast conglomerate of United States intelligence agencies are recognised by some of the most out-spoken — and most knowledgeable — critics of the intelligence establishment, both inside and out. But they also believe that any tendency he may have to impart his own bias to intelligence conclusions could be even more disastrous for United States policy, and for the C.1.A., than anything which happened in recent years.

The danger could, perhaps, be averted by a reorganisation which would allow several competing centres of

analysis to exist side by side. Mr Tom Hughes argues cogently in his pamphlet, “Foreign Policy and In-telligence-making,” published by the Foreign Policy Association, against the notion of one grand central intelligence machine, with perfect subdivisions, no overlaps, and therefore no differences. He does not mind duplication, because the same subject may be analysed differently under different auspices — and the differences could be useful to the policy maker. Competing centres of intelligence analysis already exist — as, for instance, at the C.1.A., the Pentagon, and the State Department, to

mention only three — but their rivalry has not always been healthy in the past. If Mr Schlesinger could present Mr Carter with a workable proposal which would bring all the intelligence agencies under one umbrella, as most reformers advocate, while at the same time insuring that they are free to develop their own conclusions without ideological bias, his own or any other, he may deserve the job of “intelligence overlord.” But if he cannot satisfy Mr Carter on that, the post may well go to one of the other candidates — and there are more than the three named in this article. — Copyright 1976, Victor Zorza.