THE DIRECTOR'S QUERY CONCERNING EXTERNAL RESEARCH

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP78Z02997A000100220005-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 2, 2000
• Sequence Number: 5
• Publication Date: July 22, 1974
• Content Type: MF

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22 July 1974
1'1EM.ORANDUM FOR: George Carver
SUBJECT The Director's Query Concerning
External Research
1. I understand that the DDI, which had the
action on the Director's 3 July query on external
research, has already sent up a memorandum on this
subject. It is one, however, on which I have rather
strong'views and I would like to, take this opportunity
to express them.
2. Participation in external research activities.
over many years has convinced me that the foreign affairs
community overall has gotten very little for its money..
Useless projects, of which there are an astounding
number, fall into the following categories:
a. Large-scale exercises in the social
sciences, usually contracted out to organizations
with heavy overhead charges. These, as Mencken
said of theology, describe the unknowable in
terms of the not worth knowing.
b. Standard examinations of researchable
problems by organizations using government
funds to hire researchers with no background
in the subject who prepare their studies by
using government files and interviewing
government analysts, who could have done a
better job in the first place and who are
distracted from their own work while serving
the contractor.
c. Solid research analyses of little or
no relevance to policy problems because they
take too much time to prepare, are written
by people far removed from the policy process
and are even longer than the in-house studies
policy makers don't have time to read.
State Dept. declassification & release instructions on file
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d. Excellent papers done by thorough scholars
using all available classified and unclassified
data which, because of the limitations of the
data, add nothing to our knowledge and could have
been done in-house cheaper and faster,
3. I would set against these useless activities
(which proliferate because people have to dream up
projects in order to comply with the requirement
to spend money) others that over the years have seemed
to me to give us some useful return for the XR dollar.
a. Hiring as "consultants" people of
exceptional qualifications, for one reason or
another not available on a full-time basis, to
come in either part-time or for limited periods
to participate in the regular work program.
In INR this use of XR money has helped overcome
budgetary rigidities and stringencies and
produced papers of which one can at least say
that they have been as useful as most of the
rest of the Community product.
b. Projects in which the contractor develops
c. Getting outside scholars in for seminars
on some topic of current interest, This helps
the academic experts to feel that the government--
is really interested in their views and the
government analysts to feel that they are in touch
with important people in the outside world,,. both
useful objectives. It can, though it does not
always, serve as a mind-stretching exercise for
both sides.
4. My own view has long been that External Research
money would be better spent if -- paralleling some
programs in the physical sciences -- much less of it were
devoted to the proliferation of papers and much more to
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the training and development of foreign affairs specialists.
INR has recently gone some way toward this approach.
Having put out queries to a number of universities as
to how they would strengthen their work on US/Soviet
relations if they had more money, it has accepted proposals
from Harvard and Yale. Harvard will use $60,000 to
produce a series of papers and run off a series of
seminars, both of which will involve interaction between
government and academic people. Yale will use its
$60,000 to help Fred Barghorn keep on with his studies
on. Soviet dissidents. This useful idea unfortunately
is probably not one that CIA could adopt with any success.
5. As to the role of the NIO in any new external
research activity in which the Agency may engage, it
seems to me that it should-be no different from the role
of other Agency senior area and functional specialists the right to help shape and pass on projects but not
the obligation to become entangled in the bureaucratic
process.
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