ADDRESS BY DCI TO AGENCY RECRUITERS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80B01554R003000270001-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 9
• Document Creation Date: December 9, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 16, 2001
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: September 14, 1979
• Content Type: SPEECH

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Address by DCI
to
Agency Recruiters
14 September 1979
....I continue to believe, as I told you before, without you, without
your performance we would be in trouble. And I continue to say to lots of
people that the primary thing I hope I can contribute to this Agency is to
stress over and over again the importance of the personnel policy, personnel
management. It starts at the bottom of the picture chronologically, at least,
STATINTL
where you are, where we bring them in at the beginning. When we lost Fred, it is
no coincidence that I turned to one of our strongest managers for
personnel, because of the tremendous conviction that I bear the responsibility
as Director to see to it that we carry on in the second thirty years with the
same quality of people we have been blessed with for the first thirty. We can't
ever take that for granted. And particularly not today. We have got
generational changes, where people don't want to go overseas, where more and more
families both work and it is hard to find overseas opportunities in our business
where we can suitably appoint them both. We all know this terrible problem of
inflation, the burden it puts. Particularly, on people like yourselves.
You have to drive your cars, use your own homes in many cases for offices,
and what not. But on all of our people, and particularly the junior people
who don't get paid as much. The rate of inflation, the economists say, hurts
the people who need it more than those of us in somewhat more senior pay brackets.
We in the senior brackets are under a pay freeze, and what the Congress will do
by the 30th of September, I can't sit here and give you a lot of hope. If they
don't pass something by then, the pay raise goes in about 15/6 upward. It is
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just ridiculous, when you have an organization that goes from EP-1 to 15/6.
We have to make a suitable career for people. And those young people don't
miss that in my opinion. They look up and they say, what do I do, when I get
to be a grade 18 in this organization and I get paid like I would if I was a 15,
6 - 10 years before that.
One of the supergrades met me today, he said, well, I came into this
organization as a 12 and now I am an 18 and when I get paid the same as a 12
I am going to quit. Haven't got long to go. I don't want to be all negative.
I am going to talk a few minutes and hope the rest of you will follow my example,
if you are as warm as I am. I just wanted to give you a few ideas of what is
going on in my mind and around us here and then, as we have done before have
a bull session on your strengths, your problems, your suggestions to what I
can do.
On the personnel side I'm very pleased to have had the NAPA Report.
A very professional job by a group of dedicated people, who know the personnel
management business and it certainly confirms the structure of our personnel
organization as sound. You have to also read into it a lot of recommendations
for improvement. We are working through those one by one. Again, to me
part of my main interest is making sure that we are doing in the best possible
way and each step of the personnel process.
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As we review the NAPA Report recommendations--as it turns out
they aren't advisable and as you know no group ever hit everything
one hundred prercent on the head when they come in, no matter how
dedicated or capable they are. At least we will have reassured ourselves
that we have gone through a phase of the personnel management program
and looked at it carefully and confirmed that we are doing it in the
best way. We, as you know, are in a period of accelerated retirement.
There are stories in the press, there are stories all around that we
are losing our best people and we are in for trouble.
Well, if we are 30 years old, and we have a government that gives
disincentives for staying on and postponing your retirement. There
are a lot of reasons why we have people leaving. We aren't losing
our best, we are losing some very fine experienced people, of course.
We have tremendous faith in the people coming up behind. We are short
in numbers in some areas. Again, that is why I have come to my fixation
on personnel planning and management. We have got to try to smooth
those curves and humps out for the future, so that one or so leaves
there is not a void behind. Particularly a void in DDO, where you
can't go out and pick up a GS-14 on the street.
We as an Agency are beset with the inflation problems. The government
has a serious inflation problem, as you are aware. There is not a department
or an agency that doesn't feel it needs more. We feel very strongly that
we need more as an intelligence community as an agency, that as the
problems of the country have multiplied with political and economic
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rivaling in the military and intelligence needs today. All of them
becoming more complex, with military power being less of a card in our
hand as a nation. The need for the leverage of intelligence is greater.
And the cost are greater. These expensive technical systems are super.
We are going to talk to the National Security Industrial Association on
the 4th of October here in Washington for their annual meeting. I am
going to tell them it is no longer any question about our worrying about
what you can give us, it's whether what you can give us is something
can afford at this point. We can get more of everything, you can do
everything better. The satellites can be twice as capable. We have to
now really measure whether twice as much or half again as much in dollars
is worth it. B ecause it really has got to the point where it comes out
of something else. But I want to be optimistic to you. I was excoreated
on the Hill two days ago, by a Senator, a couple of Senators, by some
Congressmen. Why hadn't I asked for more? Why aren't we getting more
money and more people in the intelligence community. Why you are a
lackey of the worst order Turner, you didn't violate the President's
orders and OMB's orders and come up here and tell us they were
shortchanging you.
Well, oke, I slipped. It is encouraging that the shoe is on
the other foot nowadays. They don't look back and find that they
were the ones cutting the budget a couple years ago, and now its why
weren't you. The national problem of holding the budget down is a
very real one. There is more recognition today of our needs.
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Iranian failures, gross overstatement. Cuban crises where
we have performed well. I have been up there this week, five
different 3 hour testimonies before different committees. This
is the first day I have been in the Agency, except I got hauled
downtown for a lunch. Six different testimonies, five of them on
Cuba. Then out of the Cubas, what comes. When you fly four flights
a month for Signals Intelligence instead of 12 you get one/third or
less information. Then when we double the flights in August we made
an intelligence breakthrough of the classical sort, a real team work
operation and we won. We found out what is going on and we are right.
It has had a major impact and a pleasant one. We are not in the business
of finding out grim news only. But there are six committees I have
testified before now who know you can't do something with nothing and
there are priorities and when the resources are limited and you allocate
those priorities, why pretty soon you will end up with something
(inaudible------------------)our priorities were dictated to us by the
National Security Council(--inaudible----------------------------------)
Today everyone downtown would put the Cuban ground forces in Cuba A-1
how many two years ago--would have thought ground forces were an issue.
They talked about those during the missile crisis, not much. So, out of
all of this focus on our intelligence activities in the last I would say
year perhaps, there has come a shift, a shift from why are those people
doing things they shouldn't be doing, why aren't we getting better
intelligence and it isn't sometimes pleasant to be criticized for not
doing as well as we might have in Iran, that was overstated. But the
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fact that it has shifted the focus to we want good intelligence, we
need good intelligence, is a positive step and I think going to lead to our
being able to command resources better. The SALT process has helped,
we have been in the center of the SALT process, because when they finally
got all done, they looked at the end of the table, there
sat the DCI having to say whether you could check on this blooming Treaty
because nobody is going to sign it if you can't, and that meant an awful
lot of people began to appreciate how important what we do is, how we
do need resources to do it and again, it adds to an understanding
that we can't do it with nerves. We have areal problem. It is easy
to go up and swear in front of the Foreign Relations Committee, that
I will really find those missiles when they launch them and put them
out in the Tundra because we have this satellite and we have that.
Next year they will have me up there say and I can work that MBFR Treaty,
with this satellite. Well, wait a minute I committed that last year
to the Tundra and people will have to recognize that.
Just yesterday, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee
wanted another satellite. Well, I said it takes so many years to build them,
so many million dollars. He said, I will get it for you. Can you deliver
$200 million dollars in the next 2 months, he said, I can do that. I don't
think he will.
I neither want to paint you a dark or unduly optimistic picture.
Basically, there are a lot of things moving our way. Opportunities for
us to reemphasize to the important people on the Hill and downtown,
important to what we do. Out of all the publicity out of all the inability to
escape the publics ------- if we want, there is at least coming
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a more balanced understanding. The country is honestly still
a little frantic about us, the basic understanding is they really
want and need good intelligence. There is still a lack of understanding
on how far we can let those people go to do it and get it. I think
the balance is tipping definitely in our favor, but it is a difficult
situation to get across to people. But, like it or not it is going to
be more visible, more understood by the public than a decade ago and
there is no way to turn the clock back. Like it or not, we are more
today a public corporation than a small private business. That comes
back to personnel management too. We start out as a family business
and we all came in here in 48, 50, 55 or so and we are dedicated
running so hard and doing so well, that some areas we haven't set
up the mechanism to keep the machinery running for a century rather
than 30 years and we have got to do that, and it changes in some of
the ways we do business. Placing much more emphasis on Harry and his
job as the leader of the personnel managers of the entire Agency.
It is a transitional period, but I feel very sure that the progress
we are making.
The final comment I would make in terms of the change of
atmosphere, is that I would, I believe today many more responsibilities,
many more demands as the DCI. There is more to be done, to bring the
community into teamwork. It doesn't just happen. Over the summer and
really work with the leaders of the other agencies. We together on the
SALT issue. And when I went to testify on the SALT, General Tighe was
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sitting right here, Admiral Inman was sitting right there, was
sitting right there, the State Department chap was sitting right there.
I wasn't trying to suppress the descending view, in fact I wanted them
there to point out where they descended with me. I called on them from
time to time, now Mr. Senator, General Tighe doesn't quite agree with me,
let him give you his point of view, and then he would speak up and say,
the reason I don't agree with him is the following. Instead of them
going around the corner and getting Tighe and then trying to divide us,
we laid it out for them, where we agreed and where we differed and you
know, Tighe is no chicken, if he doesn't agree with me he will stand up
and say so. That kind of performance is what I want. And we did the
same thing this week on Cuba. Six times we were all up there together.
What we did was, we sat down last Saturday up here for instance and
hacked them out--if they are genuine differences fine, but for heaven
sakes don't get up there and let them think you don't know what you are
talking about because you have a difference that isn't real and it gets
out on the table and its because one guy doesn't have all the information
or may have misinterpreted something. So we are doing a lot to bring
the team together. And it really is increasingly important with the
Cuban brigade situation brings it out. We have got SIGINT, HUMINT ------
and within a very short period of time we made them all three play to
each other confirm each other and that is where we are standing today
in what is a very critical intelligence position for our country. It is
because we swayed the intelligence team. We didn't have any super stars
that said, we do it all at NSA, or we do it all down at NPIC, or we do
it all in the DDO. We all work together. I find myself taking more and
more of my time on that kind of community coordination. It pays off
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for the Agency, it pays off for the Country. It placZ~S a bigger and
bigger load on the DDCI but although he is small in stature, he is
big in shoulders. Terribly capable and ever understanding of
the intelligence process and has been one of our strong supporters
in the backfield and has done a tremendous amount of work, incidentally,
for us in bringing the State Department around, if I can say that.
So, back to the beginning. The atmosphere is good it is grueling.
But if you don't bring them in at the bottom in high quality, it will
all be for naught in a decade. Each of us, but especially with you
bears that responsibility for the long term.
I tried to help you a little bit by going on national tv the
morning after we got all that publicity one weekend just before I
went down to Dallas a few days later, and Harry came to me and
said, I don't know why we got it, all that publicity that weekend
it must have been a slow weekend in Washington. The ad in the paper
really hit around here. So, we went down and got on the show,
Good Morning America. I don't whether that helped or hurt you.
I really liked the one, Harry, the executive secretary by mail,
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the young lady who wanted to be recruited and sent her picture
nude from the waist up. I think this was-----------------------
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I'd like your reactions, I would like to hear from you, how the
advertising effects you. I'm not sold on it. I don't want -----
-------------------- I could imagine that some of you in processing
300 forms you get one good one. I don't know if it is worth your effort.
We are not locked into anything here.
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