THE 24 DECEMBER 1975 'VAIL PACKAGE'

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP78B02992A000100070008-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 9
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 10, 2008
• Sequence Number: 8
• Publication Date: December 29, 1975
• Content Type: MF

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NSC review completed
29 December 1975
MEMORANDUM FOR: The Director
SUBJECT The 24 December 1975 "Vail Package"
General
Set forth below are my comments on the four main chapters
of the "Vail Package" which Dick Lehman circulated on 24 December.
It is indeed an improvement over earlier cuts, but it is still
far from what I would want to submit to the President and the
NSC as staff analysis to aid in decisions that may determine
the shape -- hence, efficacy -- of American intelligence for
the next quarter century.
It is thin and superficial in its treatment of many issues
and ignores others which need to be considered. Chief among
the latter is counterintelligence: its proper function,
requirements, structure and ground rules. A study of intelli-
gence which ignores this topic is in my view seriously deficient.
Also, in its address to organization and management
questions, the study implicitly accepts the fiction that the
NSC functions as a corporate, decision-making body (roughly
analogous to the British cabinet). It does not, never has,
and -- in our govermental system -- is never likely to. That
Emperor, in short, has no clothes. A staff study for submission
to the President on a subject as important to national survival
in this terrorist and strife-ridden thermonuclear age as our
national intelligence structure ought to be grounded in hard
fact, not fiction.
Chapter I: Principles and Polite
One basic flaw in Chapter I's approach -- a distortion
which permeates the entire study -- is its hierarchy of
priorities. Set forth on page 1-2 are five goals suggested
for Presidential consideration. The first of these, later
described as "overriding" is that "Abuses should be eliminated."
SECT.
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-- This statement reflects a bowing to political
winds and currently fashionable mythology. For one thing,
so long as intelligence services, and governments
(including legislatures) are staffed by human beings,
abuses are never going to be eliminated -- particularly
if this term is used, as it is today, to encompass errors
in judgment or, even more, actions and decisions which
look different from the perspective of hindsight than
they looked at the time they were taken. For another,
actual abuses by the Intelligence Community (as opposed
to judgmental errors or kooky suggestions discussed but
never in fact implemented) have been remarkably rare.
Abuses are not the real problem, and primary focus on
them will inevitably skew everything else.
-- The right order of priority in the five stated
goals is:
(1) improvement in the quality of the intelligence
product,
(2) improvement in the Community's organization
and management,
(3) better protection of essential secrecy,
(4) improved Congressional. relations,
(5) steps to minimize the likelihood of future
abuses.
A second basic flaw is the shallowness of the analysis
of the underlying problems which need to be addressed and,
if possible, solved. The basic issues have little to do with
any lack of adequate charters. They have far more to do with
the kind of intelligence support our government will need in
the last quarter of this century, what are the necessary
organizational and operational conditions required to provide
this support, and how -- or to what extent -- can these necessary
conditions be squared with and/or fitted into our constitution,
governmental system and political mores.
In discussing "The need for a charter" (pp I-5 ff.), a
suggestion is made that some view the CIA and the Intelligence
Community "as primarily policy making organizations." I
regard this view as ill-conceived and fundamentally wrong.
Intelligence can render its best support to policy decision-
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making by, and only by, being detatched from it and independent
of it. Intelligence officers who become policy advocates also
become, inevitably, bad intelligence officers.
Throughout the discussion of the important DCI-Secretary
of Defense relationship there is a confusion of some consequence:
a DCI with an adequate staff over which he has effective control
(e.g., a CIA) is not thereby "biased toward one institution."
If he uses that staff properly and exerts: effective control
over it, he can be free of bias in favor of any given set of
departmental equities, interests or objectives -- which is
something quite different. Without adequate staff support
under his control, the DCI will have no more real voice in
the councils of state than did the now-abolished Science Advisor
to the President.
Chapter II: Oversight and Restriction
Chapter II suffers throughout from the primary focus on
abuses (noted above). It is also far too gingerly in its
treatment (largely by evasion) of two gut issues, both of them
political hot potatoes: counterintelligence and the proper
limits to the role of the FBI.
It also ignores the fact that in this world of jet air
travel, plus loyalties focussed on ideology, class, or even
ethnic groups -- rather than on nations or governments -- the
distinction between what is domestic and what is foreign gets
hopelessly blurred in the field of intelligence, and even more
so in that of counterintelligence.
In its discussion of Congressional matters (11-17 ff), it
waffles on the thorny issues of committee jurisdiction and
fudges these issues badly in opting for separate committees in
each house.
Congress, with reason, would be most restive about and
suspicious of any central dissemination point such as that
proposed on 11-25.
Overall, the restrictions package and arrangements proposed
in this chapter, while of short-term political utility as
cosmetic gestures, would hamstring the Intelligence Community's
ability to function, i.e., to produce quality intelligence
in support of national decisions.
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Chapter III: Organ _zattt:ionand Management
Re page 111-2, the DCI's primacy was implicitly established
by the National Security Act of 1947, it was amplified and
reaffirmed by the 5 November 1971 memorandum.
Also on 111-2, the DCI's "chairmanship" of a two-man
Excom is illusory when the other member (as now happens) feels
free to ignore DCI rulings he does not like or promptly appeal
them to the Secretary of Defense.
On 111-4, you get a prime example of the paper's penchant
for confusing the NSC -- which never functions as a corporate
body -- with the NSC Staff, an appendage of the Executive
Office of the President and something quite different.
Re III-5, there are excellent arguments (I think persuasive
ones) for divesting the DCI of day-to-day responsibility for
managing the CIA -- i.e., not having the DCI also be the
Director of CIA. -- but this is not to say that the CIA should
necessarily be independent of the DCI. If the CIA is not
structured to serve as the DCI's household cavalry, the DCI
will have no ability to be much more than a decorative appendage,
perhaps cosmetically useful but of minimal real function --
unless the DCI is given a staff so large that it itself
becomes, in effect, another, duplicatory agency.
Conversely, the shortest, surest road to politicizing
intelligence lies in the suggestion that the DCI be put in
the White HOuse and made part of any given President's
administration "team."
Giving 0MB a budgetary role in intelligence that involves
de facto command jurisdiction and authority would be a disaster.
Re 111-9, the notion that competition in collection is
not useful is not always true.
Re 111-12, it is chasing moonbeams to suggest that the
DCI could "coordinate" National Intelligence Estimates in any
meaningful way if he was locked into a system which required
him to accept departmental drafts or inputs which he had no
machinery for scrutinizing or challenging.
111-12 also confuses independence and objectivity (in
the sense of lack of bias). CIA's analysts and estimators,
being human, have human frailties -- including, at times,
4-
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%MV err'
mind-sets or preconceptions which they may not always recognize
or may be reluctant to acknowledge, and which others could
term "biases." CIA's analysts and estimators, however, are --
not just "asserted" to be, but are -- independent of departmental
control. Under present arrangements, this essential independence
is protected. It would, of course, be lost under a DCT who
let himself be dominated by a given NSC member -- e.g., a
Secretary of State, of Defense, or an Assistant for National
Security Affairs. To say that, however, is only to state the
truism that no set of institutional arrangements is proof
against human frailty. An arrangement where the DCI, or the
Intelligence Community as a whole, is not formally subordinate
to the head of any cabinet department provides the best
feasible protection for the essential independence of national
intelligence judgments.
Re 111-14, argument 3 (at the top of the page) is perhaps
the strongest, least challengeable one for not setting up a
separate agency with nothing to do but covert action.
None of the option statements gives the option presented
as one of the two recommended alternatives of the Taylor Group
Report: A DCI who is not the head of CIA but throughowhom
the latter reports to the NSC. I happen to think this is the
best option of all.
I know I stand in an outvoted, overruled minority; but I
do not think the theoretically appealing concept of having
a "second deputy" to whom day-to-day management of the CIA
is delegated is ever likely to work in practice. Given the
nature of the human animal, the odds are very high (say 8 in
10) that any DCI -- especially a strong-minded one with a
keen sense of duty -- who is vested by statute with responsibility
for running the CIA will in fact try to manage it. Exhibit
A in my brief is James R. Schlesinger. He wrote the Presidential
instruction directing the DCI to turn the day-to-day management
of CIA over to the DDCI. When the author of that directive
became DCI, however, he promptly ignored it. Raborn let
.Helms manage the CIA but only because Raborn was unique (and
his is hardly a happy precedent). Try to envisage a. Bedell
Smith, an Allen Dulles, a John McCone, a Richard Helms, a James
Schlesinger -- or a William Colby -- letting someone else:
actually run an agency for whose day-to-day performance he
remained responsible and accountable under law. The track
record of history runs six to one against the practical
plausibility or workability of this scheme.
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Chapter IV: Secrecy
This whole section needs re-working for several reasons.
Chief among them is a bad misunderstanding of the concept of
comp artmen tat i on: what it involves, why it is necessary, and
how it can and should work.
George A. Carver, Jr.
Deputy for National Intelligence Officers
Mr. Lehman
Mr. Taylor
Mr. Breckenridge
O/D/DCI/NIO:GACarver/mee
Distribution
Orig - DCI
1C cc's
1 - D/NIO Chrnno
1 - Reorganization Suggestions file
6-
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24 December 1975
MEMORANDUM FOR: General Walters
Mr. Duckett
Mr. Proctor
Mr. Nelson
Mr. Blake
General Wilson
Mr. Carver
Dr. Chamberlain
Mr. Warner
Mr. Cary
Mr. lams
Mr. I3rec inri ge
Ierewith the "Vail package". Someone has
heavily reworked (and substantially improved) it
since Osaw it. The organization section is
still pretty weak and there are a number of for-
mulations we won ? t like, but in general it's a
respectable job of packaging a lot of complicated
and n--pa?ckageable issues for the President.
Section I in particular shows the results of some
of the vrork done in this building.
No action has been requested but I suspect
that by Monday we will be asked to prepare the
DCI (and perhaps Amb. Bush?) for the NSC Marsh
proposes. Thus getting appropriate passages re--
viewed by your staffs between now and then might
not be a bad idea.
on which thought, Merry Christmas
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INTRODUCTION - MEMORANDUM FROM JACK MARSH
CHAPTER I PRINCIPLES AND POLICY
CHAPTER II - OVERSIGHT-AND RESTRICTIONS
CHAPTER III - ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT
CHAPTER IV - SECRECY
APPENDIX I
APPENDIX 2
NSC/OMB Study and Agency Comments
Legal Issue Papers, Draft Executive
Order Imposing Restrictions and
Fact Sheet
APPENDIX 3 - Summary of Comments by Outside
Experts
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