EARLY RETIREMENT

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP78-03091A000100020008-9
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 5
• Document Creation Date: December 19, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 17, 2005
• Sequence Number: 8
• Content Type: REPORT

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'Wool
(Gordon Stewart)
Early Retirement
Early retirement is the benefit that will do the most to
improve the clandestine services. It will help hold the average
age down, it will speed up promotions, it will permit a larger
intake of young officers and it will reward individuals for
years of service overseas.
Ideally the clandestine services should be able to retire
any officer who has served twenty years and has reached the age
of 50 by certifying that such action is in the interest of the
United States. If it is not possible to obtain legislation this
broad, I would strongly urge that we narrow it down by stipulating
that the clandestine services will not retire more than X number
of officers each year. Under this system retirement would neither
be a right nor would it be entirely voluntary. It would, however,
be an effective tool of management and that is what is most badly
needed at present.
As time goes on and as the bumps and lumps have been worked
out of our system, it could logically be construed as being in
the interest of the United States to offer early retirement
routinely to those officers who have served long periods of time
overseas. This would add a voluntary aspect to the administration
of early retirement and emphasis would shift slightly from the
needs of the Agency to the desires of the individual; or perhaps
to put it more exactly, the two would become more compatible.
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High Salaries
The take-home pay of a GS-18 at the present time is less in
terms of goods and services than that of a GS-15 during the 30's
and most of the 40's. The gradual decline in the value of govern-
ment pay is very disturbing when one considers the effect this is
having on the Federal service. It is to be hoped that this adminis-
tration will face up to its responsibilities in this area. Short
of a large-scale revision of pay schedules, there is little that
we can do to improve the material circumstances of officers now in
the supergrades. An increase in the top salary paid to $19,500.
or $20,000. will place us in a more competitive position with respect
to the Foreign Service and will be a great help in recruiting. But
it will not have much effect on anyone's way of life. The great
advantages in salary and other forms of income and service enjoyed
by military brass are plainly out of reach, short of a general
revision of pay schedules.
With regard to the number of supergrade positions, I would
strongly caution against creation at one time of a large number of
additional slots. Expansion should be slow and continuous over a
period of years. At the moment I believe we have too few grade
16 and 17 positions. My Division, for example, needs three grade
16 openings, or at the most four. If these were granted, we would
probably ask for one or two more in a year or so, but not sooner.
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Public Status and Prestige
In developing special and unique careers for clandestine
service officers we would be flying under false colors if we were
to suggest that these officers could look forward to occupying
positions of public status and prestige at the end of their
careers with this Agency. We must appeal to men on the basis
of the intrinsic value of the service that they can render and the
great personal rewards that come from participating in the exercise
of power that the clandestine services can bring to bear in world
events. At the same time I feel that we should encourage certain
of our people to seek to move on to conspicuous positions in
government, business, and the professions, and that we should stay
in touch with these individuals. Ideally the clandestine services
should enjoy the reputation of being a good organization to be with
and also a good organization to be from. This is a sign of health
in any enterprise. It is not, however, part of a career program.
A Separate Corps
I doubt very much that we should at this time attempt to
separate out the highly motivated and overseas-prone officers
in grades 15 and below and constitute them into an overseas opera-
tions corps. This is not to say that our discussions of this
subject have been unproductive. In rather general terms we have
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sketched out the type of a corps that might well be instituted
slowly over a period of years. The concept that an officer be
promoted more or less automatically during the first few years of
service (apprenticeship and training), that he then be subjected
to a period of testing and that at some stage after he has been
promoted to grade 12 he either be selected into a corps or told
that his career lies elsewhere within or outside of the service
is, in my opinion, basically sound. I would associate selection
very closely with the decision to send a man overseas on his
second or third tour because we should not allow a situation to
arise in which an officer is considered to be good enough to
serve overseas on repeated tours but is not good enough to enter
the corps. I would suggest furthermore that an accounting procedure
be established which would show in aggregate the amount of time
served overseas by members of the corps and the amount of time
served at headquarters. These figures would be valuable in
expanding or defending the granting of benefits to corps members.
By having them available we might furthermore be able to administer
the corps objectively without having to pay too much attention to
the number of years of overseas service of any particular officer.
I feel it is most necessary that we not be placed in a position
in which in order to grant benefits to a particular person we are
forced against judgment to assign that person overseas.
I would suggest that in forming the corps we begin with the
oldest JOT and that we take people at his age and younger under
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examination as potential members of the corps. I feel this
selection should be based on service rather than on "evidences"
of motivation or lack thereof. Our experience with the Agency's
career service proved to me that efforts to distinguish between
individuals in terms of motivation result in an absolutely banal
type of exercise.
-I would furthermore suggest that we, in fact, select the
members of the "corps" and carefully study the problems created
by separating off this group before we publicly identify the
group. In making this proposal I foresee the possibility that
we may not wish to go ahead with the corps after we have sized
it up in practical and concrete terms. There is, in my opinion,
a very strong possibility that a separate corps would be more
trouble than it is worth. It might draw false distinctions between
people and it might tend to limit and narrow the operational
direction the clandestine services will take in the future. There
is no doubt the group of officers selected into the Foreign Service
of the State Department have exerted an extremely conservative
influence on the Department. Whether this Agency can afford to
have such a group is a philosophical question at least worth
careful consideration.
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