MANAGEMENT SURVEY OF BIOGRAPHIC REGISTER
Document Type:
Collection:
Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST):
CIA-RDP57-00042A000100050003-1
Release Decision:
RIPPUB
Original Classification:
S
Document Page Count:
3
Document Creation Date:
November 17, 2016
Document Release Date:
August 15, 2000
Sequence Number:
3
Case Number:
Publication Date:
February 23, 1950
Content Type:
MF
File:
Attachment | Size |
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CIA-RDP57-00042A000100050003-1.pdf | 267.52 KB |
Body:
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M ,l';MOPANDUM FOR: EXECUTIVE .1/
NIANAGEMENT OFFICER, "'_~
COAPS
23 February 1950
FROM: Assistant Director, OCD
SUBJECT: Management Survey of Biographic Register
11
1. Transmitted herewith is a Dossier on the 13iogMhie Register
which, unluckily, exists in only one copy. I shall have to ask that
the addressees route it from one to the next. The Dossier contains
comments by the Chief of BR on Management's detailed recommendations,
as well as a number of exhibits showing actual examples of the work
oeing done by BR. I have not time to write about all the minutiae
myself, but will deal in this paper with the points which seem to me
most important. I have entered symbols and brief notes on the face
of Management' s paper.
On the next to last page of BR's comments I have indicated
that we will dig deeper before deciding that no further simplification
is possible in two of BR's machine operations. There is always danger,
.in an office equipped with IBM machines, that machine enthusiasts will
be tempted to use the equipment for purposes which are not wholly essen-
tial. Management has focussed light on two operations which I shall
wish to explore in person.
2. Clarification of mission. I am in full agreement with Manage-
ment's apparent intent on this score, and also With Mr letter
which Management shows as Tab 1. The letter is a very good one. If we
could get interdepartmental agreement on these lines we would really put
CIA into a position favorable for full achievement of the biographic
mission in foreign intelligence. But BR is correct in saying that the
departments are too short-handed to prepare large quantities of abstracts
for their own or CIA's use, and I fear that COAPS will find itself up
against a stone wall if it tries to sell the scheme to the agencies.
Though I hate to let things go by default, I believe it would
not be good tactics for the Agency to put hot and heavy pressure on this
proposal. Important though it is, biographic intelligence is only one
.aspect of the broad picture; and we have other burning issues which -are
vital to CIA's continued existence before us. Rather than start an all-
out offensive on this front I believe we shouDl d selec a concrete b jectives
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within the scope of our present fraanework, and attack them on a priority
basis. I agree with BR that it would be a mistake, however, to set up
a rigid and inflexible pattern of limitations based on what today is
practicable. We should leave ourselves latitude to select targets of
opportunity. We should not turn down requests for any reason except in-
ability to do the work. We should do the best we can with every request
which is directed to BR - whether or not a directive or functional state-
ment covers it explicitly.
3. "Evaluation.", the question as to whether anyone in OCD should
be permitted to do any evaluating at all, is a red herring which is for-
ever being dragged across our trail. It appears in various guises through-
out Management's survey report on the Biographic Register. The argument
runs like this: a) Evaluation is part of the intelligence production
process, b) There are two Offices charged with producing finished intelli-
gence, c) Therefore no one in OCD should be permitted to evaluate anything.
It is time to take a hard look at this red herring and, if we find
it offensive to the general welfare, to bury it.
There is nothing magical about the process of evaluation, and
nothing which makes it the sole property of Deep Thinkers turning out
finished intelligence on political, economic, ticientific,.and military
matters. I read in a magazine the other day that Robert Schumann was
born in 1810 and died in 1756. By. a process of evaluation I determined
that one or both of these dates was wrong. So I turned to a copy of
Groves and found that the correct dates were 1810 and 1856. This is
precisely the kind of evaluation which BR must perform every time it
writes, or proofreads, a biographic report; and it is able to do it much
better and more efficiently than the Deep Thinkers because it is intimate-
ly familiar with a host of biographic reference tools and has them at its
elbow. These fat volumes are organized in different ways, they employ
different abbreviations and styles, and they even spell and arrange
foreign names according to different systems. We do not want to put a
complete set of these references in every office, and we would be unwise
to put them all in the Library and require all analysts in ORE and OSI
to study them and learn their quirks. See Exhibit E in the Dossier.
Nov evaluation in biographic intelligence does, and very properly
should., go a good deal further than this. If my magazine had gone on to
say that Schumann owed his great reputation to his views on dialectical
materialism I should have evaluated this as a highly suspect statement.
Perhaps, if I were writing a biographic report on Schumann, I'd have
included this statement - but I'd have been very careful to quote the
source, and also to make it clear that a great many authorities had come
to a different conclusion. This kind of evaluation must also be done by
the Register, and it must be careful to quote sources for every statement
which it makes.
There is a final type of evaluation which lies outside the BR
bailiwick. It should not, for example, make such a statement as: "In
the opinion of CIA, Schumann's greatest contribution to musical history
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was the currency he gave to the all-but-forgotten music of Johann
Sebastian Bach." BR might quote such a statement as this, giving its
source, but it should leave it to CIA's musicologists to decide whether
or not the Agency should publish it as its own final estimate.
Exhibits B, C, and D in the Dossier show actual reports turned
out by BR on scientists, Polish political figures, and two organizations
in Argentina. Several comments from the requesters for whom the work was
done are included. It will be noted that the reports do not give final
evaluations of the personalities concerned, but that they have, pulled
together a great amount of material on each, have quoted sources for each
statement of fact, and have arranged the whole in readily readable and
intelligible form. This, I believe, is precisely what the Register
should do; and we have reason to believe that most of our customers are
satisfied with the results.
Mr. of RDB, in the letter cited by Management, says:
"The directive covers only biographical 'data'. The Departmental
.intelligence agencies evaluate much of this data to produce biographical
intelligence. It is highly important that both the data and the intelli-
gence be incorporated in CIA's central register."
Last week's finished. intelligence is today's information, to be
reassessed in the light of other information received during the week if
we must write a report today. It is BR's job to pull the bits and scraps
together, screening out obvious errors, citing sources for contradictory
statements, and putting the whole in such shape that the analysts can dig
into it without waste of time and effort.
!. Management's general uroosal, that BR should write no biographic
reports but should merely assemble bits and scraps in dossiers, leaving it
to the analysts in ORE or OSI to make sense of them, is. entirely impractic-
able. The inf orma.tion contained in reference volumes could not, without
monumental waste of effort, be typed out, clipped, and put in the dossiers.
And our customers would not be happy if, instead of getting reports from
BR, they were handed masses of contradictory and repetitive information
and told to boil it down themselves. They would promptly call for
additional hands to do the job, set up their own files, order reference
books, and generally go haring off in different directions.
JP1AF1,S 11. ANDREWS
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