OPINION ON CIVILIANS AND INTELLIGENCE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80-01601R001300320001-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 9, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 6, 2000
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: September 28, 1971
• Content Type: NSPR

STATOTHR
Approved For Release 2001/03/04: CIA-RDP80-01601
WAUKESHA, WISC.
FREEMAN
20,659
SEP 2 8 1979
tagon intelligencc was dif- ported information which will
ferent all through the Vict- enhance the role of his own
nom war period from in- service, particularly if he is
telligence gathered at CIA going on in that service.
(Central Intelligence. Agency).: Ideally, the Pentagon would
and at the State Department's take its intelligence from CIA
Bureau of Intelligence and and INR. CIA has no ax to
Research (INR). And tbout grind but its own, and there is
seems to be little e doubt about really almost nothing it can
which was the more reliable, want which it doesn't already
The P Pe onta ;en's ur elligence have - including relative an-
from its own sources was onymity and total freedom
guilty all through of underes from detailed scrutiny in the
,
,
tagon Papers" was that Pen stress an information or pur-
ON CIVILIANS
AND INTELLIGENCE
(The Monitor)
U.S. Secretary of Defense
Melvin Laird is reported to be
considering a major innovation
at the Pentagon, a civilian to
be in charge of intelligence
gathering and evaluating. And
high time.
One of the very big lesson's
which came out of the "Pen-
just for a short tour of duty.
Military intelligence is
heavily staffed, and always so.
far, headed by officers to
whom fit is a temporary duty
between regular service tours.
They are not professionals de-
voting their entire time to in-
telligence. Nor are they civil-
ians who can see such mat-
ters from a nonservice-con-
nected point of view. It is dif-
ficult for an Army, Navy, or
Air Force officer to forget his
own service when ,handling in-
telligence. His inevitable ten-
see
dency is to hear
and
that other side and of overes of Congress goes over its bud-
of what various levels get every yMuch of it is
of American forces could ac-
ors CIA
complish. The most pertinent totally t any debates on There the are
fact about it is that in 1h the never lyear. ear budget in Congress. The com-
Lyndon Johnson agreed to t the miitee is always generous to
commitment of a half a mil- . CIA. It has no special reason
lion Americans to Vietnam on Jo turn out anything but the
the assumption that it would ,nest objective intelligence 'it
be all over successfully in can manage to produce.
ample time for the 191,8 elec- ;The Pentagon won't take its
intelligence from -the CIA.
Unman nature doesn't work
1ik4 that. But it would help to
hak?e a nonservice-connected)
civilian in charge of Pentagon ?
intelligence. It would reduce
most of them civilians. There
are a good many former mili-
tary men in these services,
but they are men (and
women) who have gone per-
manently into intelligence, not
Had President Johnson lis-
tened to CIA and State De-
partment mleThg~rrec r-rather
than to Pentagon intelligence
he would not have made that
mistake. Their reports and es-
timates were consistently
closer to reality.
The reason for the dif-
ference is plain enough. CIA
.and State's INR are both
staffed by full-time profes-
sionals in intelligence work,
Approved For Release 2001/03/04: CIA-RDP80-01601 R001300320001-5