SUPERGRADE PRESENTATION CEREMONY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80B01554R002900250001-7
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 10
• Document Creation Date: December 12, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 7, 2001
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: February 16, 1979
• Content Type: SPEECH

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SUPERGRADE PRESENTATION CEREMONY
16 February 1979
This is indeed a happy occasion. An occasion when we can recognize
not just sterling performance in the past but tremendous potential and
capability of some of our finest people for the future. Every promotion
is a significant one but there is really something especially significant
about promotions to and in the supergrade category.
To those of you moving to GS-17 and 18 my particular congratulations
because you have clearly proved yourselves. You have lived up to our
expectations. Our confidence in you and entering you into the supergrades
has clearly been rewarded and carried out. You, at 17 and 18, are at
the apex. Your opportunities to contribute are very, very great.
To those of you who are joining today as GS-16s into the supergrade
my particular congratulations on a great and important step forward. We
are depending upon you to continue the superlative performance that has
brought you to where you are. It opens the door for you for much
greater contribution, much greater opportunity to serve our Agency or
our Community. Most of all in my view it requires that you assume a new
breadth of outlook, a new sense of responsibility as representing not an
office, not a directorate, but an Agency; or not a branch of the Community,
but the whole Community. From now on the public and all of us inside
the Intelligence Community look upon you, the supergrades, as truly the
leaders and the representatives of what the Agency and what the Community
stands for.
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For all of you Lhe challenges, the opportunities today are greater
than ever. Look around us at the demands and requirements that are on
us this very afternoon. We're being asked to play an increasingly
important role in our country's new relations with the Republic of
China. The opportunities for intelligence, the opportunities for
understanding and interpretation that will benefit our policymakers is
very great. And yet, at this very moment, we're watching and reporting
on the tense situation in Cambodia and Vietnam and China. On the
otherside of the world almost I hardly have to remind this audience that
we're watching hourly at the difficult situation in Iran, contributing
immensely there and also throughout the Middle East in support of the
Camp David accord which go forward again next week. And so elsewhere
all around the world the requirements that I feel upon us today and the
thirst of the policymakers above us to have our product is as great or
greater than ever.
As I said on public television several weeks ago, we're the best
intelligence organization in the world but we're still trying harder.
We're trying harder because the challenges are greater today in many,
many ways. And speaking of the challenges I'd like to address a
few words to the GS-14s and 15s and so on who are here also, because I
hope many of you will be called to this platform before long. And the
challenges that lie ahead of us are ones that are going to require the
leadership of people who are now not in the supergrades and people who
are going to be selected for them because they are imaginative and
adaptive to the changes and the challenges that we as an Agency, and we
as a Community are going to face.
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One of those challenges is with us all the time but it's new--and
that's the challenge of oversight. Oversight from the President, the
National Security Council, Intelligence Oversight Board within the
Executive Branch and, of course, from the Legislative side the two
oversight committees of the Congress. As new as this is, relatively
speaking, to all of us, it's here to stay and it requires a new attitude,
a new approach when we are held as publicly, as fully accountable as we
are. It's not going to go away. We don't want it to go away. Its
form, its shape, its degree, its type of questioning, its amount of
disclosure will be adjusted as time goes on. But it is a part of the
intelligence way of life of this country and we must have new leaders
who understand and can adapt to new accountability.
Similarly we have challenges of much greater public scrutiny today.
We have publicity that we seek and we have publicity we don't seek.
Again, this is not going to go away either and it isn't all bad, even
the unwanted publicity. When we are challenged that we've had an
intelligence failure in Iran and its grossly distorted in the press, it
hurts you and me. On the other hand, out of it we see also coming and
can be grateful for a recognition by the country that they want good
intelligence, that they understand its importance and out of that we
derive support. Again, it is not easy for any of us in organizations
that must have a large core of secrecy to adapt to a greater public
posture, a greater public scrutiny. But we have to do it and we must
have leaders who will and can interpret the Intelligence Community to
the country.
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We are facing challenges in our personnel management. The youth,
the younger people coming in have different mores and attitudes today
than they did when those of us in the supergrade category joined our
organizations. We have to gear our personnel procedures for the long
haul, for attracting into and ensuring we retain the same high caliber
of people that we have been blessed with for these past 30 odd years.
And it takes a change in our leadership procedures and we must have
leaders in the future who really understand leadership. Leadership
down, looking after your subordinates, ensuring they are well informed,
ensuring they understand their career opportunities, ensuring that they
are shielded from the rumors, the reports that disturb people. And yet,
leadership up ensuring that those rumors and reports that disturb the
people down below are forcefully brought forward to those up above.
Overall, we're looking for new qualities of leadership that are going to
be required to carry us forward into the rest of this century.
We are facing challenges in how we collect intelligence today.
We are facing burgeoning capabilities on the technical side that inundate
us almost with quantities of data and yet do not, in any way, slacken
the need for the traditonal human intelligence input of which this
Agency has been the supreme deliverer for our country. And yet what we
face is a understanding that there must be a close integration of the
technical in its several aspects and the human to be sure that we are
really working as one team overall.
And, similarly, we face challenges on the analytic side where the
disciplines we must cover are broader, the areas of the world we must
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cover are more extensive than ever before. And it doesn't do any good
today to have a good economic analysis of any given situation if you
can't meld to it the political and even the military implications. And
here in bringing together collection and analysis into true teamwork
efforts, not the efforts of an individual office or directorate, but the
efforts of the entire Agency and the entire Community tremendos responsi-
bilities levied upon the supergrade category. Because it is here that
we must find the leaders who will rise above the limited horizons and
outlooks and be those who integrate and tie together in a teamwork
effort all of the collection, all of the analysis.
And finally let me say that we can never forget the one overriding
requirement that we will need in our people and our leaders of the
future and that is true professionalism. That is what has made us great
and that's what you must inculcate in the people coming up. They must
have the qualities, the skills be they analytic, collecting, managing or
whatever, and they must have them in abundance and with great profession-
alism.
Again I congratulate each of you. I give you my best wishes for the
future and tell you I'm going to count on you more even than in the past.
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SUPERGRADE PROMOTIONS
16 February 1979
- Congratulate all being promoted today
- Promotees to 17 & 18
- lived up to expectations
proud of what you've done
- shown capability to assume greater responsibility
now moving into top slots
- Welcome to new 16s
- great step
- depending on you to continue superlative performance
that got you here
- opens door for greater demand and challenges/truly Agency
perspective--rote--that role being called on more/more
Since last promotions
- new horizons opening--new problems, e.g.,
China
' Iran/Middle East
Southeast Asia
- pressures on A ency greater than ever before
- as said on "Issues and Answers": we're the best intelligence
orcanization in world but will still try harder.
- To 15s in audience
- hope they will be on this stage in near future
- big challenges ahead for Agency are challenges for you--
leadership Agency must go into hands that are imaginative
and adaptive
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2
- New era - Oversight
Public scrutiny
Neither ea y- -sec~'ei
Especially after 13 decades relatively little
oversight/exposure
Personnel management--
Adapt mores
Gear long haul
Collection--
Burgeoning costly tech
Human--integrate
Analy--
- Most of all--professionalism
- Congratulations to all of you being promoted today
- My best wishes and encouragement to those of you who will be
working to be on this platform the next time.
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