Iran: C.I.A. displeases Carter

Press, 7 December 1978, Page 20

Iran: C.I.A. displeases Carter

By

LAURENCE MARKS

in Washington

America’s Central Intelligence Agency is in trouble again. This time it is not being accused of any of the excesses of zeal that brought it under attack from Congress and the news media in recent years. The charge—ironically—is negligence. In November, President Carter sent out a terse handwritten memorandum from the White House complaining about the failure of the Administration’s intelligence branches to forecast political developments in foreign countries.

The most notorious misjudgment has been over Iran, where the swiftness and strength with which opposition to the Shah has developed took Washington by surprise. The President’s memorandum went to the Secretary of State (Mr Cyrus Vance) and to White House National Security Adviser (Mr Zbigniew Brzezinski) as well as to Admiral Stansfield Turner, the C.l.A.’s director. But it was to the Admiral that it

was primarily directed — in terms that make it clear that the President is displeased with the performance of his old classmate from the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis whom he appointed to the job last year.

This is not the first complaint about the C.l.A.’s competence. The former Secretary of State, Dr Henry Kissinger, repeatedly criticised the agency for failing to warn the White House of impending crises. The Senate Committee that investigated C.I.A. abuses also recorded the dissatisfaction of policymakers with the quality of the political information and analysis they were receiving. Admiral Turner’s appointment was intended to mark the end of an unhappy chapter in the agency’s history. The C.I.A. has, nevertheless, been dogged by adverse publicity. Only 72 hours before the recent coup in Afghanistan, the C.I.A. discounted a report from a wellplaced Iranian source warn-

ing that it was about to take place.

The agency also failed to alert the President to Rhodesian army preparations for an intensive airborne assault on Zambia timed to coincide with talks by the Prime Minister (Mr lan Smith) in Washington last month—deeply embarrassing the United States with its African friends.

Espionage trials also bring some discredit on counterintelligence branches, which tend to be blamed for lax security rather than praised for catching a spy. The latest of these in America was a 23-year-old C.I.A. recruit who was given access to top secrets, selling the Soviet Union a United States spy-satellite manual. Evidence at his trial revealed that the numbered copy of the manual was not missed by the agency for eight months. The Iranian affair is by far the most damaging. Academic specialists and business consultants had been warning for months that serious trouble was brewing

for the Shah. Yet, as late as mid-August. a C.I.A. study reported that “there is dissatisfaction with the Shah’s tight control of the political process, but this does not threaten the Government.”

As a consequence, the Carter Administration finds itself almost powerless to exercise any influence in the first major foreign policy crisis the President has had to deal with. The size of the West’s stake in Iran is immense. The

country is not only a major exporter of oil to the United States, Western Europe, Japan and Israel. Strategically, it controls the routes from ' the Persian Gulf that carry more than half the oil used by the industrial West. All this is now at risk. So is the $l5 billion cache of advanced technology weapons the Shah has assembled from the United States since 1971. The C.l.A.’s role in Iran was apparently confined to

monitoring the loyalty of the Armed Forces. The United States Embassy’s only link with the Islamic leaders who were to stir up the demonstrations was a second secretary who made occasional trips to the religious centre at Qum, 90 miles from the capital. For the rest, the Americans appear to have relied on Savak, the Shah’s counterintelligence service, whose reputation is for brutality rather than efficiency. With better and earlier intelligence, Washington could, for instance, have encouraged the Shah to bring moderate opposition elements into a coalition Government while there was still time for him to divide and weaken his opponents. But when the White House finally recognised the gravity of the crisis at the beginning of November, it was too late.

If the C.1.A., with its $l3 billion budget and its 1700 political analysts, is incapable of keeping tabs on countries like Iran, then the United States — and the West — are in for some further nasty shocks. — O.F.N.S. Copyright.