The Craft of Intelligence (6 page)

Later, President Truman, using his directive of January 22 and the experience gained through the operations of the CIG, approved the legislation creating the Central Intelligence Agency and included it in the National Security Act of 1947.

Under the Act, the Central Intelligence Agency was placed under the direction of the National Security Council, which is composed of the President, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense and other primary Presidential advisers in the field of foreign affairs. Interestingly enough, CIA is the sole agency of government which as a matter of law is under the National Security Council, whose function is solely to advise the President. Thus there was firmly established the principle of control of intelligence at the White House level, which President Truman had developed in creating the National Intelligence Authority.

The CIA was not patterned wholly either on the OSS or on the structural plan of earlier or contemporary intelligence organizations of other countries. Its broad scheme was in a sense unique in that it combined under one leadership the overt task of intelligence analysis and coordination with the work of secret intelligence operations of the various types I shall describe. Also, the new organization was intended to fill the gaps in our existing intelligence structure without displacing or interfering with other existing U.S. intelligence units in the Departments of State and Defense. At the same time, it was recognized that the State Department, heretofore largely dependent for its information on the reports from diplomatic establishments abroad, and the components of the Defense Department, relying mainly on attachés and other military personnel abroad, could not be expected to collect intelligence on all those parts of the world that were becoming increasingly difficult of access nor to groom a standing force of trained intelligence officers. For this reason, CIA was given the mandate to develop its own secret collection arm, which was to be quite distinct from that part of the organization that had been set up to assemble and evaluate intelligence from all parts of the government.

One of the unique features of CIA was that its evaluation and coordinating side was to treat the intelligence produced by its clandestine arm in the same fashion that information from other government agencies was treated. Another feature of the CIA’s structure, which did not come about all at once but was the result of gradual mergers which experience showed to be practical and efficient, was the incorporation of all clandestine activities under one roof and one management. Traditionally, intelligence services have kept espionage and counterespionage in separate compartments and all activities belonging in the category of political of psychological warfare in still another compartment. CIA abandoned this kind of compartmentalization, which so often leads to neither the right hand nor the left knowing what the other is doing.

The most recent development in American intelligence has been a unification of the management of the various intelligence branches of the armed forces. In August, 1961, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) was established under a directive issued by the Department of Defense. An outstanding Air Force officer, Lieutenant General Joseph F. Carroll, was named as its first director. His first deputy director, Lieutenant General William W. Quinn, and I worked closely together when Quinn was the very able G-2 to General Alexander M. Patch of the Seventh Army during the invasion of Southern France and Germany. In those days, in the summer and autumn of 1944, I used to meet secretly with Quinn at points in liberated France near the northern Swiss border and supply him with all the military intelligence I could gather on Nazi troop movements and plans as Hitler’s forces retreated toward the mountain “redoubt” of Southern Germany and Austria. Rear Admiral Samuel B. Frankel, the Chief of Staff, likewise an experienced intelligence officer, made a special contribution to the work of the United States Intelligence Board (USIB) during the years when I served it as chairman. DIA was not a merger of the intelligence branches of the armed services, but primarily an attempt to achieve maximum coordination and efficiency in the intelligence processes of the three services. On February 1, 1964, the Department of Defense issued a comprehensive directive establishing intelligence career programs to create a broad professional base of trained and experienced intelligence officers.

Thus, in contrast to our custom in the past of letting the intelligence function die when the war was over, it has been allowed to grow to meet the ever-widening and more complex responsibilities of the time. The formation of such agencies as the DIA, like the earlier creation of CIA itself, is the result of studied effort to give intelligence its proper stature in our national security structure. There is, of course, always the possibility that two such powerful and well-financed agencies as CIA and DIA will become rivals and competitors. There is obviously also room here for an expansion of traditional Army ambitions to run a full-fledged and independent covert collection service of its own, which is hardly justifiable under present circumstances. It could also be both expensive and dangerous. A clear definition of functions is always a requisite. In broad outlines, this already exists. Furthermore, the high caliber of the officers, military and civilian, directing the two agencies, if maintained, should guarantee effective performance, but it is vital to protect the authority of the Director of Central Intelligence to coordinate the work of foreign intelligence, under the President, and to see to the preparation of our National Intelligence estimates, which I shall describe in detail later.

America’s Intelligence Requirements

Intelligence is probably the least understood and the most misrepresented of the professions. One reason for this was well expressed by President Kennedy when, on November 28, 1961, he came out to inaugurate the new CIA Headquarters Building and to say good-bye to me as Director. He then remarked: “Your successes are unheralded, your failures are trumpeted.” For obviously you cannot tell of operations that go along well. Those that go badly generally speak for themselves.

The President then added a word of encouragement to the several thousand men and women of CIA:

. . . but I am sure you realize how important is your work, how essential it is—and in the long sweep of history how significant your efforts will be judged. So I do want to express my appreciation to you now, and I am confident that in the future you will continue to merit the appreciation of our country, as you have in the past.

It is hardly reasonable to expect proper understanding and support for intelligence work in this country if it is only the insiders, a few people within the executive and legislative branches, who know anything whatever about the CIA. Others continue to draw their knowledge from the so-called inside stories by writers who have never been on the inside.

There are, of course, sound reasons for not divulging intelligence secrets. It is well to remember that what is told to the public also gets to the enemy. However, the discipline and techniques—what we call the tradecraft of intelligence—are widely known in the profession, whatever the nationality of the service may be. What must not be disclosed, and will not be disclosed here, is where and how and when the tradecraft has been or will be employed in particular operations unless this has already been disclosed elsewhere, as in the case of the U-2, for example.

CIA is not an underground operation. All one needs to do is to read the law—the National Security Act of 1947—to get a general idea of what it is set up to do. It has, of course, a secret side, and the law permits the National Security Council, which in effect means the President, to assign to the CIA certain duties and functions in the intelligence field in addition to those specifically enumerated in the law. These functions are not disclosed. But CIA is not the only government agency where secrecy is important. The Departments of State and of Defense also guard with great care the security of much that they do.

One of my own guiding principles in intelligence work when I was Director of Central Intelligence was to use every human means to preserve the secrecy and security of those activities, but only those where this was essential, and not to make a mystery of what is a matter of common knowledge or obvious to friend and foe alike.

Shortly after I became Director, I had a good illustration of the futility of certain kinds of secrecy. Dr. Milton Eisenhower, brother of the President, had an appointment to see me. The President volunteered to drop him by at my office. They started out (I gather without forewarning to the Secret Service), but could not find the office until a telephone call was put through to me for precise directions. This led me to investigate why all this futile secrecy. At that time the CIA Headquarters bore at the gate the sign “Government Printing Office.” However, Washington sightseeing bus drivers made it a practice to stop outside our front gate. The guide would then harangue the occupants of the bus with information to the effect that behind the barbed wire they saw was the most secret, the most concealed place in Washington, the headquarters of the American spy organization, the Central Intelligence Agency. I also found out that practically every taxicab driver in Washington knew the location. As soon as I put up a proper sign at the door, the glamour and mystery disappeared. We were no longer either sinister or mysterious to visitors to the Capital; we became just another government office. Too much secrecy can be self-defeating just as too much talking can be dangerous.

An instance where a certain amount of publicity was helpful in the collection of intelligence occurred during World War II when I was sent to Switzerland for General Donovan and the OSS in November of 1942. I had a position in the American Legation as an assistant to the Minister. One of the leading Swiss journals produced the story that I was coming there as a secret and special envoy of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Offhand one might have thought that this unsought advertisement would have hampered my work. Quite the contrary was the case. Despite my modest but truthful denials of the story, it was generally believed. As a result, to my network flocked a host of informants, some cranks, it is true, but also some exceedingly valuable individuals. If I could not separate the wheat from the chaff with only a reasonable degree of error, then I was not qualified for my job, because the ability to judge people is one of the prime qualities of an intelligence officer.

When we try to make a mystery out of everything relating to intelligence, we tend to dissipate our effort to maintain the security of operations where secrecy is essential to success. Each situation has to be considered according to the facts, keeping in mind the principle of withholding from a potential enemy all useful information about secret intelligence operations or personnel engaged in them. The injunction that George Washington wrote to Colonel Elias Dayton on July 26, 1777, is still applicable to intelligence operations today:

The necessity of procuring good Intelligence is apparent and need not be further urged. All that remains for me to add, is, that you keep the whole matter as secret as possible. For upon Secrecy, Success depends in most Enterprizes of the kind, and for want of it, they are generally defeated, however well planned and promising a favourable issue.
1

On the whole, Americans are inclined to talk too much about matters which should be classified. I feel that we hand out too many of our secrets, particularly in the field of military “hardware” and weaponry, and that we often fail to make the vital distinction between the types of operation that should be secret and those which, by their very nature, are not and cannot be kept secret. There are times when our press is overzealous in seeking “scoops” with regard to future diplomatic, political and military moves. We have learned the importance of secrecy in time of war, although even then there have been serious indiscretions at times. But it is well to recognize that in the Cold War our adversary takes every advantage of what we divulge or make publicly available.

To be sure, with our form of government, and in view of the legitimate interest of the public and the press, it is impossible to erect a wall around the whole business of intelligence, nor do I suggest that this be done. Neither Congress nor the executive branch intended this when the law of 1947 was passed. Furthermore, certain information must be given out if public confidence in the intelligence mission is to be strengthened and if the profession of the intelligence officer is to be properly appreciated.

Most important of all, it is necessary that both those on the inside—the workers in intelligence—and the public should come to share in the conviction that intelligence operations can help mightily to protect the nation.

In our time, the United States is being challenged by a hostile group of nations that profess a philosophy of life and of government inimical to our own. This in itself is not a new development; we have faced such challenges before. What has changed is that now, for the first time, we face an adversary possessing the military power to mount a devastating attack directly upon the United States, and in the era of nuclear missiles this can be accomplished in a matter of minutes or hours with a minimum of prior alert.

To be sure, we possess the same power against our adversary. But in our free society our defenses and deterrents are largely prepared in an open fashion, while our antagonists have built up a formidable wall of secrecy and security. In order to bridge this gap and help to provide for strategic warning, we have to rely more and more upon our intelligence operations.

The Departments of State and Defense are collecting information abroad, and their intelligence experts are analyzing it, preparing reports and doing a good job of it. Could they not do the whole task?

The answer given to this question fifteen years ago by both the executive and legislative branches of our government was “No.” Underlying this decision was our growing appreciation of the nature of the Communist menace, its self-imposed secrecy and the security measures behind which it prepares its nuclear missile threat and its subversive penetration of the Free World.

Great areas of both the Soviet Union and Communist China are sealed off from foreign eyes. These nations tell us nothing about their military establishments that is not carefully controlled, and yet such knowledge is needed for our defense and for that of the Free World. They reject the principle of inspection which we have considered essential to a controlled disarmament. They boldly proclaim that this secrecy is a great asset and a basic element of policy. They claim the right to arm in secret so as to be able, if they desire, to attack in secret. They curtly refused the “open sky” proposal of President Eisenhower in 1955, which we were prepared to accept for our country if they would for theirs. This refusal has left to intelligence the task of evening the balance of knowledge and hence of preparation by breaking through this shield of secrecy.

The Berlin Wall not only shut off the two halves of a politically divided city from each other and limited the further escape of East Germans to the West in any appreciable number. It also tried to plug one of the last gaps in the Iron Curtain—that barrier of barbed wire, land mines, observation towers, mobile patrols and sanitized border areas stretching southward from the Baltic. When they put up the Berlin Wall, the Soviets finished sealing off Eastern Europe in their fashion, and it took them sixteen years to do it.

Yet there are ways of getting under or over, around or even through this barrier. It is just the first of a series of obstacles. Behind that first wall, there are further segregated and restricted areas and, behind these, the walls of institutional and personal secrecy which all together protect everything the Soviet state believes could reveal either strength or weakness to the inquisitive West.

The Iron and Bamboo Curtains divide the world in the eyes of Western intelligence into two kinds of places—free areas and “denied areas.” The major targets lie in the denied areas behind the curtains. These are the military, technical, industrial and nuclear installations that constitute the backbone of Communist power—the capabilities. These are also the plans of the people who guide Soviet Russia and Communist China—their war-making intentions and their “peaceful” political intentions.

Against these targets the overt intelligence collection work of the State and Defense Departments, though of great value, is not enough. The special techniques which are unique to secret intelligence operations are needed to penetrate the security barriers of the Communist bloc.

Today’s intelligence service also finds itself in the situation of having to maintain a constant watch in every part of the world, no matter what may at the moment be occupying the main attention of diplomats and military men. Our vital interests are subject to attack in almost every quarter of the globe at any time.

A few decades ago no one would have been able or willing to predict that in the 1960s our armed forces would be stationed in Korea and be deeply engaged in South Vietnam, that Cuba would have become a hostile Communist state closely allied with Moscow, or that the Congo would have assumed grave importance in our foreign policy. Yet these are all facts of life today. The coming years will undoubtedly provide equally strange developments.

Today it is impossible to predict where the next danger spot may develop. It is the duty of intelligence to forewarn of such dangers, so that the government can take action. No longer can the search for information be limited to a few countries. The whole world is the arena of our conflict. In this age of nuclear missiles, even the Arctic and the Antarctic have become areas of strategic importance. Distance has lost much of its old significance, while time, in strategic terms, is counted in hours or even minutes. The oceans, which in World War II still protected this country and allowed it ample time to prepare, are as broad as ever. But now they can be crossed by missiles in a matter of minutes and by bombers in a few hours. Today the United States is in the front line of attack, for it is the prime target of its adversaries. No longer does an attack require a long period of mobilization with its telltale evidence. Missiles stand ready on their launchers, and bombers are on the alert.

Therefore an intelligence service today has an additional responsibility, for it cannot wait for evidences of the likelihood of hostile acts against us until after the decision to strike has been made by another power. Our government must be both forewarned and forearmed. The situation becomes all the more complicated when, as in the case of Korea and Vietnam, a provocative attack is directed not against the U.S. but against some distant overseas area which, if lost to the Free World, would imperil our own security. A close-knit, coordinated intelligence service, continually on the alert, able to report accurately and quickly on developments in almost any part of the globe, is the best insurance we can take out against surprise.

The fact that intelligence is alert, that there is a possibility of forewarning, could itself constitute one of the most effective deterrents to a potential enemy’s appetite for attack. Therefore the fact that such a weapon of warning can be created should not be kept secret but should be made well known, though the means and mechanics of warning should remain secret. Intelligence should not be a taboo subject. What we are striving to achieve and have gone far toward achieving—the most effective intelligence service in the world—should be an advertised fact.