ADDRESS TO CIA EMPLOYEES BY THE DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP05T00644R000100040001-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 43
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 5, 2009
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: August 9, 1977
• Content Type: REPORT

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ADDRESS TO CIA EMPLOYEES
BY THE
DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE
9 August 1977
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Good morning. I asked to get together with you as one
of the representative groups that I hope will help to pass
the word of what I have got to talk to you about through the
Agency. I wish there was some way I could talk to everybody
at once; it does not work out. I am pleased you are here.
The reason I am here is obvious. We have all been waiting
with expectant breath for about six months now for the
Presidential decision on reorganization of the Intelligence
Community. If you are aware of the notice we put out last
Thursday, that basic decision, it is not all finished, but
the most important part was decided by Presidential decision
memorandum last Thursday. What I would like to do this
morning is--recognizing that we are still working on the
detailed implementation of this--we are developing a new
Executive Order to replace Executive Order 11905 that
governs our operations now, in addition, of course, to the
law. We are looking at whether changes in the law are going
to be necessary. This is in a state of flux; we still have
not had any opportunity to coordinate with Congress and the
various committees who are concerned, but I feel that I owe
it to you and I want to share with you at least my thinking
at this stage. I will try to be as explicit as I can, but I
will also try to be explicit when I do not know exactly how
things are going to work out. When I finish casting doubt
and confusion on the picture, I will ask for your questions,
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and we will see if we can go away with some better understanding
of what impact this overall decision of the President's last
Thursday is likely to have on us.
Let me start by saying I am very pleased, both as the
DCI and as the Director of the CIA, with the nature of the
decision that was made. I think it was a good one, and I
think it is going to improve the effectiveness of the
overall Community. I think it is going to enhance the
position of the CIA within that Community. It is a good
move.
Now, how did we get there? Well, we got there through
a long, six-month period of debate, discussions, which
culminated in several meetings of the PRC (Committee of the
National Security Council), in which not only was my view
and Secretary Brown's view, but a number of other views or
plans for how the Community should be organized were set
forth. We had good, constructive, stirring debates. We
could not, after two prolonged meetings, come to one clear,
agreed solution. In fact, I would say there were really
three or four solutions floating around when we finished.
So each of us who desired to, and I was certainly one, wrote
a proposed solution and they were packaged together and sent
to the President, along with the minutes of these PRC meetings.
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He reviewed them thoroughly, turned it back to the Vice
President to get us together again, individually and in
groups. The President talked with us all, and he finally
came up with his solution. Now, there are a number of
really good things about this. First of all, let me allay
concerns the media sometimes has tried to raise. There is
no great acrimony, there is no hard feeling, there is no
great animosity that has been generated by this between
Secretary Brown and myself or anybody else. Yes, any two
men looking at as complicated and as important a situation
as this will probably come up with different solutions. I
am happy with what has come out; Secretary Brown is satis-
fied with it. We both sat down the day it came out and
agreed on how we are going to make it work. There is only
one thought in both of our minds--make it work--not sit here
and fight the issue and push for pieces of turf one place or
another. We have had marvelous cooperation from the people
in Defense as we are proceeding forward with this. I think
that it has been healthy within the Community. From your
point of view and mine, I think we should not lose sight of
the fact also, that a great deal of high-level attention from
the President, Vice President, Secretary of State, Secretary
of Defense, National Security Council Advisor Brzezinski,
and others has gone into this process. You and I, as the
professionals in the intelligence business, can only benefit
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by that attention. By getting the top policy makers under-
standing of and involved in our business--that is great.
That is going to be a plus that will help us as we go for-
ward. People will-be more understanding, people will be
more anticipatory, looking for our product, and right on
down the line it is a plus for us all the way. Now what
actually has occurred makes me particularly happy that we
will have in the role of the DCI more authority to bring
this Community together in a coordinated and effective
manner. Three principal things: The first is that I have
been made chairman, and incidentally I did not ask for this
chairmanship. I asked to be on the committee, but they
decided it was best for the DCI to be the chairman, and that
is fine with me, of a new committee under the National
Security Council that will set the priorities for the
Intelligence Community--the overall substantive requirements
of intelligence. This is a good thing for us too because
really we are here to provide a service and people who
receive that service are the ones who should tell us what
they need. As they tell us that, it begins to be sure that
we are involved in the policy process in a proper way. We
do not make policy, but we cannot make good intelligence
unless we relate to the policy--unless we are providing a
service that is being employed by the customer. This will
involve our customers because Secretary of State, Secretary
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of Defense, Secretary of Treasury, and the National Security
Council Advisor are the other members of this governing body
under, of course, the President, through the National
Security Council apparatus. So that is a plus.
The second plus is that the DCI has been given full
budgetary authority. I will have the authority to make the
final budget decisions as they go forward to the OMB, the
President, and the Congress, the responsibility to support
the budget on the Hill, the responsibility to take the money
that is appropriated through the President, the OMB, to the
DCI and apportioned out to the various agencies whether they
are in Defense, CIA, State, or Treasury or where ever they
may be. This is a very effective tool, as you can well
imagine for bringing the
Community together. This is not a
question of wanting more power. This is a question of
wanting to be sure that on the one hand we coordinate well,
and on the other hand we do not leave any gaps. I am as
concerned in our business with gaps as I am with overlaps.
The one costs us money; the other may cost us our security.
We have got to be sure that all of our agencies are working
together so that we have the right amount of overlap and no
critical underlaps.
The third area of improvement is that the DCI has been
given full tasking authority over all the collection agencies
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of the Intelligence Community. Now, I am talking national
intelligence here. What in the national, foreign intel-
ligence budget? I am not talking about the scout on patrol
from his platoon or the aircraft going off an aircraft
carrier for reconnaissance mission or things that are purely
military-tactical intelligence. Anything that is paid for
by the National Foreign Intelligence Program budget will be
tasked by the DCI. The degree of detail in which it is
tasked is, of course, something that has to be worked out on
the scene. I do not intend to go down and tell a pilot how
to fly his airplane, but we do intend to tell him what we
want him to do and when we want it done, what the targets
are, and so on. For the purposes of tasking, we will create
a National Intelligence Tasking Center. This was my sug-
gestion into this debate. It was my effort to ensure that
we will have a system such that if we go into a wartime
condition, and the military requirements become more impor-
tant in this process, there is ample opportunity for that
opinion, that voice to be heard, and there is specific
provisions in the President's decision that if he felt it
desirable, he could shift the National Intelligence Tasking
Center's control from the DCI to the Secretary of Defense.
That would be his decision. We will have one room, one
group of people, with representatives from all the collec-
tion tasking, from all the agencies, and all the production
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agencies of the Community, and the people will sit around
and decide what the day-to-day, month-to-month, year-to-year
tasking ought to be, and then they will vote on it. When
they have finished, there will be one more vote and that
will decide it--the chairman--and that will be myself in
peacetime. In short, today we do not have a clear line of
authority for tasking. If there is a split opinion and
decisior-, it may filter through the cracks while time flitters
away and we lose an opportunity. This has qualified that,
it has made it explicit, we will have nay votes around the
table, and the ayes will have it. If the President feels
that it is a crisis or a wartime situation, all he does is
say, "Secretary Brown, you take the gavel from Turner, and
you are the aye vote, and you decide it." I think this pro-
tects people's interest and gives us a good authoritative
way of handling the whole tasking situation.
Now, let me go on from there to talk about how this
will affect our internal Intelligence Community organi-
zation. Here, I want to make it very explicit that what I
am telling you is tentative, what I am telling you is in
some sense, in confidence, because some of the things that I
hope and think we will do really require some Congressional
backing and support. I do not want to get out in front and
get in the newspapers having decided things I cannot decide--
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that I have to get approval for. Let me outline it for you
as my thinking stands today and recognize that one has to go
to other authorities to get full approval. Basically, I see
this new decision as giving us the opportunity for an
organisation that will have four subordinates reporting to
the DC; directly. The first will be the DDCI, who will
manage the CIA much as the relationship is today--try to
delegate most of the day-to-day management to the DDCI. He
will have the full authority, or the DCI and DDCI under him
will have the full authority over the CIA. Note that
despite some suggestions that in this reorganization the DCI
and the CIA Director ought to be separated, this is not the
case. I will have both jobs, and I am very pleased that it
has come up that way. I think that it is the best solution,
and I am very pleased to continue to be the Director of the
CIA as well as the DCI. The second subordinate reporting
directly to the DCI will be what we call a Vice President
for collection. In fact, it will be the Director of this
National Intelligence Tasking Center. That Director will
not have management authority over anybody. He will not
have people working for him in the sense that he is their
hire and fire, feed and quarter, and take-care-of-all-their-
problems boss. He will have coordinating authority for the
tasking; he will be able to give orders to the CIA collection
elements (DDO, DDSET); he will be able to give orders to the
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NSA, to the NRO, and to any other collection elements of the
Intelligence Community. That will be his job to tie all
that together into a harmonious, carefully coordinated
operation. Now in point of fact, I have already progressed
down the pike. Several months ago I created something we
just called ad hoc, the DCI Planning Committee, and the
point was that I was sitting around here having trouble when
we wanted some intelligence collected in some areas of the
world. I would push one button, and I would get one answer,
I would push an NSA button and get another answer. I got
tired of that so I created this committee which has all of
the collectors and the producers represented on it. I now
push the button, and it says John McMahon because right now
the Intelligence Community Staff is running this for us.
John gets the COMIREX, HUMIREX, and SIGAREX Committees. I
guess that is not the right names, but anyway he gets the
three committees together, and they come up with a coordinated
plan. We want more information on Shabah Province. We had
a disaster when I first got here trying to get information
about Shabah between different agencies overlapping and
underlapping. Well, now, I go to one fellow, and he gets
all the people around the table, and we come up with a good
plan. That is what the National Intelligence Tasking Center
will do.
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The third person reporting to the DCI will be Dr. Bowie--
I will step aside so you can see Dr. Bowie--who will be the
Vice President for Production in effect. Dr. Bowie will
have under him a new combined organization of the NIOs and
the DDI. For all purposes except housekeeping in a sense,
the DDI will be under Dr. Bowie and not under the DDCI. Let
me explain that because it gets a little complicated.
Dr. Bowie now has the NIOs; they work very closely with the
DDI under this new arrangement. Dr. Stevens will become
Dr. Bowie's Deputy, and they will work together in this
combined organization.
Secondly, Dr. Bowie will have responsibility for
coordinating for the entire Community the production efforts
of the INR in State and the DIA in Defense. In short, on
the one hand he will be the boss of the NIO-DDI production
unit, and he will be the coordinator of that unit with the
other production units of the entire Community. What does
come from or why do we want to do it this way? To begin
with, if you look at the Presidential decision, he has
reaffirmed very expressly that he wants the DCI to be the
central manager of the production and collection of national
intelligence. National intelligence is that which affects
the entire government operation as opposed to what we call
tactical which is really a very military thing. I think you
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can also call some State Department intelligence tactical in
the political sense too because it is down to the level
where it deals with the individual operations of embassies
or in the military sense the individual operations of
military commanders only or primarily. In producing na-
tional intelligence today, the NIOs and the DDI people are
interwoven and depend upon each other very, very much. So I
have decided to end this artificial organizational fracturing
here and bring them together. What this is going to mean is
that the NIOs will continue to serve as the principal
substantive staff officers for their individual areas--
functional or geographical as they may be. They will serve
the entire Intelligence Community in that regard. They will
be the overall honcho for Asia, Africa, or whatever their
area is. They will also serve and give the basic guidance
to the DDI analysts as to how to tie into this and how to
provide that support. Surely, the NIOs are going to have to
rely primarily on the DDI for their production support. We
do not anticipate any major organizational changes as a
result of this; we are going to merge the front offices.
Dr. Bowie and Dr. Stevens will be putting out some direc-
tives on this very shortly that will clarify it for every-
body. Let me now emphasize one point that has come up with
concern to DDI people. This will in no way take the DDI
people out of the CIA. This will no way jeopardize their
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career status, their retirement benefits, their privileges
to join the credit union. People have asked me all kind of
questions about what they are not going to have as a result
of this. I am absolutely intent there will be nothing done
in this entire reorganization that will in any way jeopardize
an individual's rights and privileges--the way we look after
you, the way people are taken care of around here. That is
our first concern; people are the organization in this
operation, and we have got to take care of our people and
take care of them well. There is no intent here in any way
to change your status. It is possible over time with changes
in the law that there would be a change in status here, but
there will be no such change that will in any way jeopardize
anybody's position, job, influence, rights, retirements, or
anything else like that. We will not make any such change
unless we can ensure that everything will be protected, and
we are talking down the pike, we are not talking now. The
DDA will continue to provide full personnel support to the
DDI even though for its organizational and operational
functions, the DDI will report not through the DCI, not
through the Deputy for the CIA, but through the Deputy for
Production, Dr. Bowie.
The fourth Directorate will be Budgets and Evaluation
which will be what is left of the IC staff. We will be
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taking COMIREX, HUMIREX, and SIGAREX out of the IC Staff and
moving them to the Vice President for Collection in the
National Intelligence Tasking Center, and the very fine
residual of the Intelligence Community staff under John
McMahon will be the Vice President of Budgets and Evaluation.
This will be a greatly expanded operation not necessarily in
terms of people but certainly in terms of importance. We
will have to beef it up with people also because they will
now be managing, really managing, the budget for the entire
Community.
Let me just tell you the overall philosophy behind
this. The National Intelligence Tasking Center is to ensure
that we have this coordination of collection elements. The
merging of the NIOs and the DDI, and giving the boss of that
group the coordinating responsibility with INR and DIA, is
to ensure a careful meshing of the production estimating
functions. Incidentally, to be sure, in that process there
is no czar, as the newspapers like to talk about it, of
intelligence production, of intelligence interpretation, and
intelligence estimating. That is a canard; we have defi-
nitely built in, and I have strongly advocated from the very
beginning, the continued independent operation of INR-DIA,
and I really want that overlap, that competition. I want
the DIA to be strong in military intelligence and moderate
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in political intelligence, and the INR to be strong in
political intelligence and moderate in economic intelligence,
and the DDI-NIO organization to be strong in all three so we
have that overlap in meshing and the divergent views come
forward. If there is any complaint I have had with Dr. Bowie
and Dr. Steven's operation today is I want more divergent
views. I am tired of people coming up and telling me what
will 'happen in the future. I do not believe the Delphic
oracles we have around here. What I want to know is--it may
happen this way for the following reasons but it also may
happen that way for following other reasons. Now weigh them
out yourself boss and see what you think the answer is going
to be. That is the kind of thing we are paid to do rather
than make express predictions. I am off the subject now and
onto one of my soapboxes.
I recognize that while there is in my opinion a sincere
need in the Community today to emphasize this coordination
of the collection elements on the one side and the production
elements on the other that you cannot have good intelligence
unless you have production and collection working together.
I hope and believe that under this organization we can .
promote that and keep it largely by use of first, the Priorities
Committee I described at the beginning, setting the overall
priorities and objectives so that we are sure that collectors
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and the producers are working toward the same goals. Secondly,
by means of the Budget and Evaluation Authority that hands
out the money and makes sure they are doing what they are
supposed. to be doing and that they are working together and
that the evaluation assures that. I believe we can emphasize
this coordinating function and yet not get production and
collection out of synchronization.
I do not want to overlook the OLC, the OGC, the Public
Affairs Office, Comptroller's Office, the Inspector General.
Basically, they will continue to report to the DCI, provide
services also to the CIA--whether we decide at some distant
point in the future to split that and have separate support
for those other areas for the DCI and for the CIA is another
area we just have not addressed--but again, it in no way
will jeopardize any of the individuals involved. I would
like to stress, while we are on this subject, that we will
increase the strength of the Inspector General's Office and
increase its sense of responsibility and importance here.
We are getting more and more oversight from the outside, and
so we are going to have more and more innersight or whatever
one calls it. We have got to keep track of our own house
and do it well. It is not that I have any particular con-
cerns, but it is that with oversight being the key word
today, we have got to be sure our Inspector. General has the
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resources to stay on top and to revisit with a frequency
that is necessary to ensure that we have good oversight from
inside our own house.
Let me talk briefly then about the other three Directorates
of the CIA as they now exist in our Agency and give you my
views on their future and how they fit into this.
DDS4T: To begin with, the new organization reemphasizes
the importance of continuing the strong imagery and SIGINT
operations of the DDS&T. As the DCI, I find it absolutely
essential to have that expertise available to me from people
who work for me and are loyal to me so that I can maintain
an overall perspective on the SIGINT and imagery operations
of the entire Community. This organization will heighten
that importance. I would anticipate in the future we are
going to want, under the Vice President for Collection, to
bring the SIGINT operations of DDS&T and the NSA under
closer coordination, but I am still intent that we retain
the independence of the CIA SIGINT operations. We have a
very close working relationship between the CIA DDS$T's
imagery operations and those of NRO today, and I would
anticipate that continuing and becoming perhaps even closer.
The second role in DDS&T is research and development.
Here again, the new organization makes that even more
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critical. I find it essential that I have somebody in the
Community who is looking at R&D from an overall national
point of view, not just a military intelligence point of
view. That is the function of the DDS&T as well as, I
think, providing some competitive spirit and innovativeness
into the R&D process of the Intelligence Community. I
believe the DDS$T over a time has been superb in this regard
and made tremendous contributions to our country. We must
retain that.
Finally, the DDS&T's FBIS operations is, if anything,
in my view becoming more important and will have to be
continued. Under the DDCI, the DDS$T will continue very
much as it is today with the tasking now coming from the
National Intelligence Tasking Center.
The DDA: There will be no diminution of the support
required from DDA throughout all the elements that operate
under the DDCI, for the DDI over/under the Vice President
for Production, for actually the Intelligence Community
Staff which will become the Budget and Evaluation Vice
President, and so on for the DCI's office and so on. I
think there will be areas in which the DDA will probably
have to expand under this new organization. I am particu-
larly interested in communications and ensuring that somebody
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is looking at the overall communications structure of the
Community. I have some concern that there may be too much
duplicatory communications capability. Secondly, I am very
interested in ensuring that we strengthen the security
function. We are going to put some more people into that.
I digress for just a second to share with you my intense
concern about the security situation in our overall country
and throughout the Intelligence Community today. We just
cannot go on picking up the newspapers and reading about
quotations from highly classified documents like PRM-10. We
cannot afford Boyce Lees, espionage traitors, giving away
secrets it costs this country billions to create, and in
some measure compromised by this kind of espionage activity.
We are taking a number of steps. I solicit your ideas; I
solicit your intense interest and effort in closing all the
barn doors that we can. We have made inspections recently
of two industrial contractors and found them both in a very,
very sad state of security control. What I mean is that the
kinds of errors that we found are not just serious because
they may lead individually to the loss of information. They
are indicative of a lack of attention and seriousness to the
problem. When we find 40 and 50 members of our own Agency
carrying classified material out of here when we do a spot
check of bags and packages, it bothers me greatly because it
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is the same kind of perhaps sincere dedication we want to
work more at home or something. I appreciate that, but we
just cannot go on throwing away the national wealth, the
national effort, the national security by giving away what
we work so hard in the Intelligence world to get.
DDO, and we start carrying right on from there with
counterintelligence. It is again, I think, going to require
even increased emphasis in the future. I am particularly
concerned to get counterintelligence into both the technical
and the human areas to make sure we are denying the opposi-
tion every opportunity that we possibly can from a technical
as well as an espionage point of view. The reorganization
study under PRM-11 really is not fully complete yet. There
are pieces of it that are still being worked on. One of
which is a proposed program to have a new coordinating group
to run counterintelligence so that there is maximum interplay
between the FBI and the CIA. We are still working on that.
Decisions will be forthcoming, I think, within a matter of
weeks.
The second function of the DDO, of course, is covert
action. Covert action is not popular today. I can assure
you the President, Mr. Brzezinzki, Mr. Vance, and myself are
all dedicated to maintaining a capable, viable, strong
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covert action capability in this country. We go in waves of
enthusiasm and lack of enthusiasm, and yes we are not highly
active in covert action today. Many people are thoroughly
opposed to it, but it is absolutely essential that we have
that potential, that capability ranging from the paramilitary
right on down to some of the lesser dramatic types of covert
action, in the kit of tools that a President may have available
to him. I can anticipate a day when we would be found
wanting if we were not able to offer that capability when
called upon.
Of course, the principal tool of the DDO is clandestine
collection. I believe that the demand for this type of
intelligence collection is on the increase in every area.
It is partly on the increase because if you read the Carter
foreign policy and the Brzezinski and Vance attitudes toward
foreign policy, we are becoming more interested, more
involved in more countries, more areas of the world. We are
not going to neglect our focus on the hard targets--Communist
Blocs--but I think we are going to become more involved,
particularly in the economic and political spheres with more
countries around the world. We are going to want more DDO
products on indigenous intelligence, on areas where we do
not even have DDO representation today. I would anticipate
strengthening and trying to increase, if we can get permission
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to do so, the DDO representation overseas. Let me just
emphasize that I do not want anybody running off from what I
have just said and sending a message to some Chief of Station
saying change your targeting policy from target A and B to
objective K. We will do that in due, deliberate course and
largely probably through this Priorities Committee. That is
my inclination, that is my attitude. It is not that I am
really sure that we want to shift away from the objectives A
and B, the hard targets. I do not know whether we are going
to be giving additive requirements to our Chiefs of Station,
or whether we are going to be substituting. We cannot just
give them more without more assets I recognize. Those are
policy decisions we have not made. They will be officially
enunciated station-by-station and area-by-area if and when
the time comes to change. I am sharing with you my thinking
at why the DDO is going to be in increasing demand; I am not
giving directives at this point.
I see clandestine collection becoming more important
because of our need for political intelligence and economic
intelligence; these are on the increase. I think too it is
going to be needed to help keep our SIGINT and our imagery
viable. I think we have to play this as a team and get _
information from clandestine collection that will help us
know what and how to target these technical systems.
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 IV V, i ,
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Now, over the five months that I have been here, today
being the fifth anniversary of my swearing in I have been
looking carefully into the DDO, a very thorough and careful
review. I doubt that you would respect me had I done
otherwise. I know that it has caused some concern around
the campus, but I have a mandate from the President to
ensure that the clandestine covert operations of the Agency
would be conducted in a legal and, in his view, a proper and
ethical way. I engaged and tasked
my helper in doing a thorough review of the DDO and its
operations because I knew my time personally would be
limited. He worked on the Headquarters end of DDO first,
has completed that, will be proceeding in time to the
I want to say that he has given me 11 note-
books worth of review of the DDO Headquarters side of things.
I have reviewed them all, and the two of us are in full
agreement that things are not only in good shape, they are
in very good shape. I have worked with Bill Wells through
these notebooks. We are not through them all yet, but we
are working on them one by one, and we are making small
adjustments here and there. These are matters of judgment
and policy; they are not because there is anything in my
view that has been done in an improper, illegal, or any
otherwise reprehensible manner. DDO is doing its job and it
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is doing it well. I am impressed by the take and the
quality of it. I am impressed by the breadth of coverage of
it. I am impressed by the operational performance, both in
the field and in the support that is given to the field from.
here at Headquarters. My goals for the DDO are to increase
the quality and capability to provide cover for its people.
Not particularly the DDO's fault, but it has become a rather
serious problem. We are working on many fronts to try to
correct it. Secondly, to maintain the basic professional
core of DDO officers at about the same level that we are at
today. And thirdly, to make the DDO a leaner, more efficient
operation overall. Now in that connection, in 1976, Bill
Wells undertook the study of the DDO, and he came up with a
three-phase program. The first phase was some restructuring
of the internal organization, it was executed last year.
The plan called for a phase two to be executed in the summer
of 1977. He came to me about a month ago with this plan.
It called for a substantial reduction of personnel in the
DDO over about a seven- or eight-year period. I reviewed
it, I felt uneasy with it in a couple of regards. The first
was that I was uneasy as to whether we should take that
substantial a reduction because of my intuitions that we
might want to be putting more people overseas in some
places. I sympathize with the fact that, however, that over
the last decade the ratio of people in Headquarters and the
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ratio of people in the field in the DDO has flipped. We
have a higher percentage here today than we deserve. I was
also concerned that a plan for substantial reduction that
would be protracted over such a long period of time would
leave a very unsettled state within the Agency--people not
knowing their status a year or two down the pike. So I made
two amendments to his plan. I reduced the reduction, made
it a smaller number, and I compressed the execution of it
into a zwo-year or actually a 26-month period. In the next
26 months we will eliminate something over 800 positions in
the DDO. This comes from a conviction within DDO, in my own
thinking and on Capitol Hill, that the DDO has not yet
settled into its right size and shape as the result of the
draw down from Southeast Asia. There have been. reductions
before as you are well aware, but there is every evidence in
the reports I have received and the attitudinal surveys that
the Agency has taken itself over the last several years and
I have a strong belief that there are many people underemployed
in this operation. I do not think that is something we can
or should tolerate. I want every person here in this Agency
to feel fully challenged and thereby feel a sense of reward
and accomplishment. I want to be sure that we have an
attractive career opportunity here. The future and the
health of this Agency, which is so critical to our country,
depends on our being able to attract and retain the right
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kind of people in all areas as they come forward. Therefore,
this reduction is in no means a retributive one. This is
one to become lean and efficient and effective. We intend
to try to execute the reduction in as helpful and as humani-
tarian a way as possible. I said that this morning with
some newspaper men at breakfast, and they said you mean you
are not going to hang anybody. You cannot get away with
anything around this town.
Seriously, we will take the reduction by attrition
first. The normal attrition will absorb as much as we can.
Secondly, we will put greater emphasis on the more senior
people who have the opportunity to retire so we do not deny
that opportunity to others who have not achieved retirement
status yet insofar as possible. Thirdly, we will look at
the records of performance, and those who have been consistently
in the bottom quotients will be the ones first asked to
leave.
Now, it is a 26-month operation. We will produce the
names of all people who will be required to leave in Fiscal 1978
by the first of November 1977. No one will be required to
leave before the first of March 1978. We will work on
Fiscal 1979 in the following way. We will produce the names
by the first of June 1978, four months before the Fiscal Year
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begins in 1 October 1978, and we will phase the reductions
through that entire fiscal year ending 30 June 1979. As I
say, there will be more reductions at the top proportionately,
the percentage of cuts. We just cannot afford as we compress
from our much larger size before Vietnam to go and become
top heavy.
I want to reaffirm in closing on this subject with my
conviction that we must have a strong DDO in the long run
and than this action is being taken in the name of making it
stronger. As I said at one point, the basic cutting edge,
the operational professional end of the DDO will remain at
about the same size with cutting really surplus personnel
largely from the support element here at Headquarters.
Finally, let me say that in these past five months, I
have spent a lot of my time simply getting to know you,
getting to know the Agency, getting to know the Community,
getting to know what my responsibilities are as the Chief
Intelligence Officer. I spent a lot of time necessarily
studying organization and purpose'and how to be more effi-
cient in the Community. Now that decision is basically
behind us. We have got lots of tidying up to do, but it is
time to really start looking forward and saying with this
new basis, this new organization, where are we going to go.
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We should all feel pleased and confident at the expressions
of confidence the President has made in us and his willing-
ness to give more centralized responsibility and authority
to the Director of the Intelligence Community. It shows
that he wants intelligence and he wants it done well and he
has confidence in us. I have heard him say that repeatedly.
I hope all of you have heard it in some of his public
utterances and in particular his praise on 60 Minutes and
elsewhere of the CIA itself. I have been told over the
months I have been here by every former DCI who is still
alive that I could never find a more dedicated a more loyal,
a more competent group of public servants than those here in
the CIA. I can say to you with great sincerity after five
months I have become a full believer in that. I have been
around the government a long time, but I have never known a
more competent, capable, and dedicated group of people than
we have here. We now (with this new charter, with this new
outlook) have our work cut out for us. We are going to be
put to the test. We have got to produce. We have got to
warrant the confidence that has been placed in us in this
new attitude and decision by the President. We have got to
deliver. I know I can count on you to do that. Thank you.
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Q. These cuts in DDO, is that in addition to the 0MB cuts
or is that going to be included?
A. That will be included. I think the 0MB cuts will
affect other Directorates to some extent besides the DDO,
right.
Q. During your last you were talking about the DDO, you
said that Mr. Wells came to you with two questions. He came
with a three-phase change in the DDO. One was restructuring
in 1976 which took place, the other one was a substantive
reduction over a eight-year period, a period which was
modified. First question: What was the third phase (Wells'
reply inaudible).
A. That is not really looking, at least I have not talked
with Bill much about this, but I am not going to encourage
him to go look for ways to cut field stations. I think we
are going to look at the readjustment of them and the things
I have been talking about of maybe wanting to add more
people in different places; there may be some reallocations.
I do not think the field activity is one that deserves any
kind of a major reduction. Right, Bill?
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(Wells) That's right, that was the overall plan.
When the President came out here on the ninth of March and
talked to us before the swearing-in ceremony, he specifically
said that he wanted me to look at the allocation of our DDO
assets around the world. Were they in the right place for
where the country is going to need its intelligence five,
ten years from now? We cannot just turn that kind of thing
on and off.
Q. A different area, . . . Office of Communications, you
said that you wanted the Office of Communications possibly
to expand in the future to look at the overall Intelligence
Community requirement. How is it going to relate to the
present situation or condition that we have with the State
Department communication?
A. We are in the midst of a study with the State Department.
We have been having trouble getting it off the ground, but I
think it is beginning to roll. I talked to the Secretary of
State about it ten days ago and urged him to get his people
going. I know it included what I had in mind was not only
the pure Intelligence Community communications but those' of
the State Department perhaps even the White House communications
Anything else that can be effectively brought together to
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reduce overlap. We all know that redundancy in communications
has some benefits so I am not just talking about getting us
down to one system for everybody necessarily. Clearly in my
short time here, I have seen one example where competitive
communications led to a bad situation in an operational
sense. Yes, I am interested in coordinating carefully with
the S--a-%-'e Department on the overall communications picture.
Q. Under the present organization, the DDCI is a Presidential
appointee. Will this continue and will your other vice
president's or directors be Presidential appointees and
require Senate confirmation, or will the DDCI not or how
will that work out?
A. I suspect they all will require Presidential confirmation
but I cannot make that statement because that is up to the
Congress whether they are going to put that in the law which
is where it belongs and how they feel about it. There are
two sides to the story. If you get them to put.it into the
law and then you are locked into having four people now
until you can erase the law. There are advantages, of
course, and I would suspect they would want to interview
these people and pass on them. That will probably be the
way it will turn out. I think the change if we do get the
law changed at all will be the DDCI will no longer necessarily
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be the number two fellow in the Community which he is today
because he is the only Presidential appointee besides myself.
That is my concept if the Congress will go along with it; we
will have four deputies who will be equal and if I go out of
town or go on leave as I am going to go tomorrow I would
say, "Joe, you have it this week, or Bill, you got it next
time," depending on the circumstances.
Q. CIARDS--do you know what the effective dates will be
yet? 25-year, 5-year period?
A. Blake: Yes, there is sufficient quota to take care of
it. So your question is basically affirmative.
Q. What is the period?
A. Blake: I do not understand what you mean by period?
Q. Saying--"It will be open until October."?
Blake: Oh, I am sorry. There will be a paper out in about
five or seven days which will announce that time. We are
working on it now.
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Q. Sir, do you envisage that the national tasking authority
will be able to task the Foreign Service, and what do you
envisage the future role of NFIB to be?
A. First question, the real answer is no because the
Foreign Service is not part of the National Foreign Intelligence
budget, but we have been working over the last several
years, as I imagine you are aware, with scope studies and
things like this they are called, that let us feed into the
Foreign Service how we think they are doing and what we need
more and would hope that this whole process of having a
Priorities Committee, and so, on will continue to feed into
the Foreign Service through our most important collector of
intelligence. Your second question was NFIB; the National
Foreign Intelligence Board is specifically required in the
Presidential Directive to be advisor to the DCI on the
budget process. It has not been in the budget business
before so it is sort of changing its character and will
probably change the composition even some, but that is one
principal function that it will have. I would intend, also,
to continue using the NFIB in its present sense of reviewing
the product. When we come up with the National Intelligence
Estimate, I want advice before I sign off on it. It is my
estimate and I will make the final decision, but I do not
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want to do that unilaterally. So I will use the NFIB in
these two ways. The budgetary advice and the advice on the
substantive intelligence that we produce for national purposes.
Q?
. . . Has there been any decision on who would head
that up and where it will be located?
A. No. John and I had a talk on it yesterday which
revealed to me how much thinking and decision I have got to
do on it. It is a very complicated issue, and there are a
number of places it could go, and each one would have some
different costs. Basically, the only thing I can really
tell you in all sincerity at this point is that the COMIREX,
SIGINT, and HUMINT committees will be the basic core of what
we build into this thing. I suspect there will have to be
additional people, and we will have to find a director for
Q. Sir, you mentioned that you wanted to retain independence
of the DDS&T SIGINT collection capabilities and that they
are the same. I am concerned about the independence of
DDS$T to produce the adaptance to collecting much of the
analysis that started in the DDI to change some values
produced by DDSET in House. How do you perceive that for
the future?
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A. I am not sure I see how this in any way inpinges on
that. I am sure we want the DDSET's data to flow to the DDI
and to the other DIAs and INRs. I really did not touch on
it. There is a specific provision in the Presidential
Directive that says the National Intelligence Tasking Center
will be responsible for insuring the immediate dissemination
of the material collected by all the collection agencies.
That is a very useful and important provision because every
once and awhile I hear allegations. I have not really
pinned them down to my satisfaction yet though that one
agency is withholding from another. We all know that that
kind of thing, is at least an accusation going around about
it all the time. I think this provision in the directive
gives us a handle to prevent that and I want to be sure that
if DDS$T has collected some imagery or some SIGINT of value
to not only DDI but to anybody else that it properly gets
there and gets there quickly. I am not sure I am really
dealing with the specific you are asking though.
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Q. The merger of DIA-NIO structure, in view of the fact
that the NIO structure does not directly correspond with the
office structure within the DDI, is there anticipated that
there will be some reorganization eventually?
Dr. Bowie: No, on the contrary. The assumption is that the
offices of DDI will continue to be organized substantially
as of now and that the NIOs will provide one means of
organizing the multi-disciplinary type of work which is
being developed and expanded. The two will continue to be
essentially organized on the same principals as they are
now.
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Q. As a follow-up has any consideration been given to
naming this new entity?
A. Not at this point--I think again we get into the legal
aspects and that has to go before the Congress if we are
going to change the name.
When does this grand merger take place.
A. Tomorrow. Somebody asked that question yesterday,and I
asked Dr. Bowie when he would be ready, and he sort of
mumbled a little bit so now he has made a commitment.
Seriously, there is really such a minor perturbation in all
this that we are going to faze into this entire four-deputy
structure as rapidly as we can. Dr. Bowie and Dr. Stevens
are going to put out their directives on implementing this
within the next few days--as soon as they can. They have
been working on it and thinking about it for sometime. We
were going to do this regardless of the reorganization.
This is within my authority. As long as I do not take the
people out of the CIA, that is, do not change the legal
status of them, it is perfectly within the Director of CIA's
authority to ship these people around or the DCI's authority--
I do not know which. So, we will proceed with that step as
expeditiously as we can and in a smooth way. John McMahon,
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as I say, has really got the tasking center, sort of, in the
DCI planning committee in a sense already, and we will begin
to move that into its new form as soon as we can. The IC
staff, the remnant of the IC Staff, is the Vice President
for Budgets and Evaluations. So, there really is a lot of
just slide-in, almost imperceptibly, as soon as we can.
Q. Can you provide some more information of the processing
of image: y?
A. Well, what kind of information would you like?
Q. Right now you could say we have the National Photographic
Interpretation Center, we have several organizations within
the military structure, DIA, those associated with the
commands, all headquartered in You have
national tasking already associated with the collection,
Then what is going to happen with the exploitation and the
resource Is-there going
to be some kind of better delineation of tasking, to exploitation,
to the analysis that should be done than under the Vice
President of Production? What loops are you going to close?
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A. That is a very good question. I will be very candid
with you. I do not think I have yet come to understand that
whole process as well as I would like. I have some concern
whether too many people are looking at the same picture,
though I am very hesitant to suddenly say that only one
person will look at that picture because it seems to me
that there is a great skill in looking at photography and
interpreting it properly and having the imagination to see
that this little clue here was different than it was the
last time and looking at it from different perspectives of
what you are interested in has some value. I would say,
that basically the processing will remain with the collecting
organizations as it does today. I would like to make sure
that on this new system, just as I answered to the question
on the SIGINT contribution, that there is a full passage of
this information to the analysts in the appropriate agencies.
I personally am not at ease that the thing is as efficient
as it should be. I do not want to be critical; I think it
is a marvelous operation. Whether we have more duplications
than we need or not, I have not yet personally reassured
myself.
Q. Have you estabished a timetable for the nomination of
these Vice Presidents and where might they come from?
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A. No, I have not got a timetable other than I am anxious
to get moving as fast as I can. The key element in any
critical decision like this is to be sure that you have got
the rig=-t person. I am going to take whatever time I am
going to need to assure myself I have done justice to looking
the field over carefully. I will look inside the Intelligence
Community, not only within the Agency, but the other elements
of the Community. I am also going to look outside--entirely
new people. It really does not answer your question, but
that is exactly where I stand so I cannot tell you anything
more.
Q. four deputies reporting to the DCI, where do the
directors of NSA and NRO fit with respect to this organization?
A. They report to the Secretary of Defense, and they get
their tasking directions from the Director of the National
Intelligence Tasking Center, so they have a split master in
a sense. Organizationally, housekeeping, budget implementa-
tion, day-to-day operational matters as opposed to the
basically broad tasking all come from the Secretary of
Defense. Our tie to them is first to the Tasking Center for
what they basically do and second, through the budget process
for their overall budget guidance and direction.
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Q?
Are you planning to move the DDI out of the building?
A. Noce. Absolutely not. Somebody came to me about a
month ago and said the DDI was going to Ft. Meade, and the
poor people out at Ft. Meade are trying to build a whole new
building because they are bulging at the seams out there and
want to bring some other of their elements into Ft. Meade.
I do not know where there would be room for the DDI. No, I
do not really see any major housekeeping moves here as a
result of all this. The only thing that is really up for
grabs in the real estate sense is the National Intelligence
Tasking Center--where it is going to be located and with it
there obviously could be some minor numbers of relocations.
I guess people who work there have got to be close to it.
It could be in the Pentagon, it could be here, it could be
probably could be in some entirely
new location.
Q. OCI is a part of the DDI, but it is not a production
unit, it is a support service. Will it continue to support
all CIA?
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A. Yes.
Well, let me wrap up by saying I wish this could be
absolutely explicit, and I could answer all the questions
yes or no. We are not there yet. We have made a tremendous
step forward here. I hope that some of the anxiety that was
generated by rumors like moving to Ft. Meade has been alleviated
by the fact that we have a decision. My effort to talk to
with you this morning is to try to alleviate further concerns
that may exist. I hope you will help me by passing this
word to your co-workers as best you can and bringing back up
through your supervisors and directors, genuine concerns or
questions that continue to exist, and we will try to keep
the process going so that we answer the questions as best we
can. I am afraid that you will have to ask your fellow
workers in some sense to be patient where the answers just
are not there yet. It is going to take time to iron out all
the details. We will keep you as posted as we can. I
appreciate your listening to all of this today, and we will
much appreciate your help in getting the word around and
then beyond that continuing in the way you are, so splendidly
making this the prime agency of the Intelligence Community.
We have got our work cut out for us, but I think it is
exciting and challenging that we have had this much interest
and attention and this much additional responsibility put on
our shoulders. Thank you.
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