COMMENTS ON YOUR PAPER: 'ROLES OF THE DCI'

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP79M00095A000300020003-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 6
• Document Creation Date: December 9, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 4, 2000
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: May 4, 1977
• Content Type: MF

Approved For Release 2001/08/25 : CIA-RDP79M00095AO00300020003-7
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 SECRET
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4 May 1977
MEMORANDUM FOR:
Director, Office of Performance, Evaluation &
Improvement
SUBJECT : Comments on Your Paper: "Roles of the DCI"
1. We find your draft first-rate. You have compressed doctrine,
practice, and diagnosis into a lucid, and by the standards of its kind,
brief account. I say this as one who has read all the papers since the
beginning of time. This is both a compliment and a warning: You should
test the paper on someone quite unfamiliar with these problems to see
if it is equally lucid to him.
2. The suggestions which follow are intended to strengthen cer-
tain passages, but I have also wasted a few spears on familiar windmills.
Pa a 11. Here under a I would note that DIA,
INR, etc.,-Fa e to give first priority to their own
departmental consumers at some cost to their national
contribution. This would lead in b to an addition
that CIA's role is also justified by its being the
only organization that is in a position to put national
needs over departmental ones. Finally I would add an
additional principle, that the purpose of collection
is to support production. From this it would follow
that the system must include means by which collection
is fully responsive to producer and consumer needs,
however difficult this task turns out to be in
practice.
Page 14, top. If you discuss the desirability
of decentralization in processing, should you not give
even greater weight to the desirability of competition
in production (where appropriate)?
Page 24. It gives me grief to see the conventional
wisdom in regard to "what's wrong with" NIEs reproduced
yet again without any balancing judgment. As you know,
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SECRET
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I believe much of this criticism comes from people
who have an axe to grind or who are responding to our
masochistic approach to the consumer, "Please tell us
how poorly we are serving you." For instance, we are
faced today with a situation in which the observations
of one half-baked young staffer on NIE 11-3/8-76
become graven in stone as an emission of the Senate
Select Committee, while the fact that Harold Brown
spends two nights reading the same estimate, passes
out copies at the NSC, and urges each member to read
the full paper goes totally unheeded by those who make
a living out of criticism.
Pages 36-37. I hope that the paragraph bridging
these two pages will remain intact in the final draft.
Page 62. It might be worth noting that there are
also pressures to divorce the National Intelligence
staff from CIA, but that the staff's dependence on
integration with the DDI has so far been an effective
countervailing argument.
Page 64, top. Everything you say is correct,
but it would be well to note that as compared with, say,
16 years ago the improvement in interdirectorate re-
lations has been substantial indeed.
Page 66. The existence of the National Intel-
ligence-s-t-a-fT tends to conceal from the user the
vital importance of CIA to the national production
effort. Similarly, the existence of the IC Staff
masks the key role of the Agency in many other activities.
To those in CIA, this sometimes seems to be an effort
to pretend that CIA did not exist, while expecting it
to do even more work and then to justify its activities
to yet another layer of staff. This is the root cause
of CIA's "identity crisis."
Pae_ 70. Over-control of raw intelligence is
especially damaging to analysis itself. This thought
is implicit, but should be emphasized.
Page 94. The tendency described in2 may indeed
exist, but I have never encountered it once there way
any evidential suggestion that deception was being
attempted.
Page 100. You are too kind to the SIGINT Com-
mittee. With due recognition to the Sisyphean nature
of its task, it nevertheless is seen by producing
agencies as NSA's device for protecting itself from
effective Community guidance.
-2-
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Page 103. In a you should note the importance
of the intermediate stage, prior to the outbreak of
war, when political decisionmaking, etc., should not
be "dominated" by military needs if hope remains of
avoiding war.
Page 105. This passage might end with the
thought that this problem needs to be resolved. We
have allowed the present indeterminate situation to
continue too long.
Associate Deputy Director
to the DCI for
National Intelligence
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LOG NO: /5
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NOTES:
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TRANSMITTAL SLIP
DATE 4 May 77
TO:
D/OPEI
ROOM NO.
BUILDING
3N07
Community Hqs. Bldg
REMARKS:
25X1A
FROM: AD/DC I / N I
ROOM NO.
7E62
BUILDING
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EXTENSION
6371
FORM NO I REPLACES FORM 36-8
I FES LA WHICH MAY BE USED.
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