DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE MEETING WITH AGENCY EMPLOYEES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80B01554R003100200001-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 15
• Document Creation Date: December 19, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 9, 2005
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: May 30, 1980
• Content Type: MIN

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Q. You may not be able to tell us too many of the details about these
things, but I have a couple questions. What is the progress with the
Kampiles trial or that result and how do you assess the extent of damage
as we look at it over the past few months that has been done by the
revelations with that? Also, can you tell us about
and if we have any there and if it comes to trials how is this going to be
handled?
A. With Kampiles, the Supreme Court refused to hear his case the other
day, the issue is now closed. He is in jail for I think it was 40 years,
and that is just finished. Did you ask for the damage assessment on
Kampil es or the rescue?
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Q. Sir, you said a little earlier that you were very proud of the
record of the Agency in being able to attract and keep junior officers
of quality. Yet, if I understand correctly a lot of the comments that
are made of junior officers like myself, the major things that bother
us is that it seems not only are promotions harder to get, but time
in grade seems to be lengthening. I wonder if you could make a few
comments and try to reconcile these two points?
A. I looked at the statistics yesterday and the promotions last
fiscal year in all the grades represented here today, were higher than
they have been in the previous three years. In fact, with the great
exodus we have had with senior people for retirement in part
because over the 30 years we have not managed our personnel well
enough in my opinion in terms of not letting a group clog the system
here. We now have such a high percentage of people over 50, 28%
in the DDO for instance, that we will have a problem in a few years.
Statistically, 53.5 is retirement age in the DDO and if 27-28% leave
in the next three years that leaves a big void behind. I am straying
from your actual question, but that is a problem. On the other hand
for you it is a great opportunity, as these voids are created the
people behind are going to get sucked up and moved ahead more rapidly.
I have been worrying about it being too rapid in effect, that is,
not enough experience at each level. So, I am a little taken aback
by your question. Clearly, we would have to look at your particular
specialty and see whether that is an exception to what I believe
is the general rule around here. We are running what to me are
very high percentage promotion opportunities every year. I have
pushed ever since I have been here to get them up in order to make
it an attractive career opportunity and I have actually wondered
if we haven't overdone it. I am sure it is hard from your point of
view to overdo it and I can only assure you that you have my sympathy.
You happen to be with a director who came into the Navy just after
World War II and all those people were out there ahead of me and
I sat there and said just what you are saying, how will I ever get there
because there were so many stacked up there. I don't think you are
going to have that in any PlPmPnt in his agency. I would be happy
to et you together with who is back there or somebody
to try to explain to YOU situation is in your
particular situation. is way in the back there and he would
be happy to talk with you.
Q. I find the remark a little hard to understand, considering the Agency
isn't even within 20 or 30% of the compensation that is being paid to
professional staff even by other government agencies. And, considering
the Agency's treatment of its professional staff what is being done
to correct the situation?
A. Well, your talking now about the Federal day scales. I believe
the evidence is that within the Federal Government's wage levels we are
more than competitive. We have various remunerations and what not
that permit us to stay ahead in general of the professionals within
the government. Clearly, within the last few years there have developed
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gaps between what the government can pay and what industry can
pay for comparable skills in some very critical areas to us. In
others it may not be that case, but there certainly are areas where
it very definitely is and all of us are very conscious of that and
very anxious to get the pay raise through the Congress. You know the
politics of that is very chancey but we are working on it, we would
like to see a higher inflation compensation each year than we have
been getting so we can stay up with the trends, but it is a real
problem and we are conscious of it. I wish there was something
else I could give you as a solace that we are going to solve it.
Q. Sir, I don't mean to beat a dead horse, but since we are talking about
this subject. I am a DDO CT of a few years back and my perception,
whether it is justified or not, has been that in terms of CT's and
especially the DDO, the Agency spends an enormous amount of money
recruiting us, training us, putting us into the DDO and once we are
into the DDO we sometimes have the impression that the Agency is less
interested in continuing-to provide the money that would be required
for promotion and would rather spend more money recruiting and getting
new generations of CT's. There is less concern about loosing the
people you have than about recruiting new people and bringing them
onboard. Would you care to address that?
A. It is clearly bad, if that is either the fact or the perception.
Either one. It certainly is not what I hope we are doing or what
we intend to do. I think I have tried to stress retention as much
as anything in my approach to the personnel management issues around
here and I certainly don't profess to have succeeded but I am continuing
in that direction. I believe that we are trying a number of things,
the Personnel Management Board that has beer set up under the
Director of Personnel, much better, I hope, vacancy notice procedures
throughout the Agency. Hopefully, more advanced planning on your assignments
particularly in the DDO we have been trying to stress that because of
the number of rotations that take place there every year and better career
counseling, so that people understand where they are going and what
their opportunities are and what they should be doing to improve their
opportunities themselves. I can't deny what you have said by any means
and the fact that you say it concerns me considerably and we will keep
plugging at this. We certainly cannot afford just to try to bring
in good people at the bottom, it is a matter of retaining the good ones
as we move along through the whole system arid that is what we want and
what we intend to do.
Q. Sir, is there any reason why the Agency cannot have a grievance system
comparable to that in the State Department?
A. Well, I don't know the State Department's system well enough. We have
again, in the last year made changes in our grievance system and I hope
to have improved it considerably including it grievance counselor attached
to my own office if one can't get satisfaction anywhere else. What is
your problem with our grievance system. I would really like to try to
help here. We have gotten the Inspector General involved in it. We have
asked over the last year to get more of the grievances taken care of within
the office structure and a lot of that has happened, I thought, to the
employees satisfaction. The Inspector General is still there when it
doesn't work through the normal command structure.
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Q. Well, in the State Department system the individual has access
in this case it would be the panel's report for inspection. He can
review the testimony of the witnesses, both favorable and hostile and
he can do this in an open hearing. But we are denied that opportunity
in the Agency, in my experience at least.
A. I'll look into that. You have to, of course, put it in the context
of their whole system as compared to our whole system, but it may be
that what your suggesting can be grafted on to ours satisfactorily and
I will ask somebody to look into that for me and see whether your
suggestion has applicability here, be glad to.
Q. I'm from an office that does R&D and I see for the past 2 1/2 years
that our budget has been continually shrinking and was wondering if
that is a trend that is about to be reversed and also our travel budget
has been continually being reduced and with inflation and everything
going up it makes it more-difficult to visit potential contractors and
find out the things we need to know.
A. I hate to keep playing the same record of sympathy and no solutions,
but I do have a lot of sympathy for the R&D budgets decline. It is bad.
It is bad not only here but in the Defense Department and it is bad
for our Government as a whole. There is not enough research development
going on in the United States in my opinion today and I think that bodes
ill for our country's future. We have had a number of sessions with
Les Dirks and the Executive Committee to try to see what we can do here
to bring it back up. We have been fortunate in the last 2 fiscal years
of being able to increase the Agency's budget., I am very pleased that
particularly last year, that is for the budget that is up before the
Congress today, we had very clear sailing within the Executive Branch.
Usually our biggest problem is with OMB. Because we made the case well.
The new budget procedures through the Intelligence Community Staff
have worked very well enabled us to put a persuasive budget through, both
for the Agency and the Community. We have not: had any problems from the
Congress to speak of, they want to move a little here and there and juggle
anb so on, but they have not cut us substantially now for several years.
But, so much depends with increasing demands in so many other areas
than R&D as to whether we can get a big enough increase next year
to restore the R&D to where it ought to be. It is very high on my list
of objectives. I can't give you a guarantee for it. The travel problem
is one that the Congress did cause, not for us alone but for the government.
They just took a scythe and cut it in some percentage, I forget what it was
and said everybody in the government had to reduce this. We made a great
appeal to 0MB and had some success in getting mitigation of that, that is,
it didn't apply evenly to us as it did to everybody else. But it is a
real problem. On the other hand I think we probably were a little bit
generous in our own travel arrangements and we have got to be very careful
that what we do require is in fact needed, that we combine trips as much
as possible, that we take the minimum number of people with us. We must
as an Agency, not only go fight for more money, more people which we do
and we have been modestly successful and I hope we will moreso in the
future. We really have to look, particularly at your level, at where we
can do the job just as well without being as extravagant. Whether it is
in travel or whatever. Money is tight. Inflation is a problem that gets
to you and me and everybody in the country and we as employees of the
government are in two positions here. On the ane hand, we must want to
6
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bring government spending down to help fight inflation.
On the other
we want to do our job and do it well and the demands on us are increasing
and we want to spend more. But I assure you that applies in the Commerce
Department, in the Labor Department, the Interior Department and everywhere.
It is not an easy problem and beig economical is something that each one
of us has to be concerned with.
Q. Sir, what is your policy insofar as circulating vacancy notices for
all positions.
A. Well, we put out a Director's Note just recently about vacancy notices
and it spelled out specifically those for which we have recently required
that there be Agency-wide notices. We have to have some kind of a balance
here. If we put out every -- if every vacancy gets a Agency-wide notice
it isn't going to help the employee because there are going to be so many
that they will just swamp-everybody and the deserving employees won't really
get the attention. But, we have now definitely required many more notices
or many more vacancies to be Agency-wide in their notification. We have
a new system going in by computer which will allow electronic transmission
of the notices so they will be more readily available to people. We are
putting a limit on how long an individual, 6 weeks, can be held once he
has been approved for a move to a new vacancy so that -- you know his old
office has got to make up its mind about who is going to replace him or her--
within 6 weeks and let that person move on. So, in short, ever since
I have been here and everytime I have met with groups of employees I have
heard this complaint about the vacancy notice system and have felt frustrate
for a long time until finally came up with some of these changes within
the last few months. I hope they are going to be a big help in this direction
and if not, we will look at it again in a few months when we have seen
how this trial goes. We are trying very hard to accommodate what your
complaint is.
Q. Admiral what is the status of the merit pay system for people at our
grades and also how will it work once it gets applied to us?
A. We have not decided to go to a merit pay system as allowed under the
new laws. We have group studying this, their report is not completed nor
has it come to me yet, and I don't want to an-:icipate that in any way.
In point of fact I haven't really made up my mind, of course I don't want
to until the report is in and all the facts are on the table. So, I am
really going to dodge your question because I am not that well informed
and I think it would be ill-advised to anticipate the report with any
comment that might appear to mean I had made up my mind one way or the other.
I know there is a lot of controversy with the merit pay system. It
obviously has attractive features and it has 'less attractive ones. It is
a question of balancing and trying to determine what is best for the Agency
as a whole. But we will have to make up our Hinds in the next few months
on that. I will keep you posted.
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Q. Sir, why does the Agency use Grades GS-8 and 10 when other Agencies
seem to promote in fairly rapid succession, 7, 9, 11. It is one of
the things that gives us the perception that we are behind in comparison
to other people?
A. Of course, I hope we are not holding people back in the lower grades
while other agencies are moving more rapidly. It is very difficult sometimes
to compare two systems. I always have to gc back to one of my naval
incarnation analogies. One day I was on a ship that was tied up next to the
pier and then there were two or three other ships outboard of us and their
sailors had to go across our ship to get to the shore. One of the fellas
came and complained to me, he said, "all of those fellas are going ashore
a half-hour earlier than we are, why can't we go a half-hour early."
I went over and checked with the skipper on that ship and of course they
came to work a half-hour earlier. When they went that way nobody was
looking, when they went this way they were. There is a little bit of
that in this problem. Do they languish in other areas longer than we.
I have heard that complaint. I have looked into it several times and
been given assurance by the personnel people that we were not putting
our people at a disadvantage. The fact that several of you have
perceived it as that means that it is something that should be looked
into more and I will.
Q. I would like to add to that and I know it has been discussed here
at length. I am involved in personnel management in EUR division in
the DDO. I am involved in career counseling. This is a very big
problem in the DDO. Part of the thing is with officers that are in
the GS-12/13 level. They were brought in approximately 10 to 12 years
ago as GS-7's and 8's. Through that time they have built themselves
up to a 12 and 13. New officers have been brought on board in the
last two years at grades 9, 10 and 11. Now they have been on board
approximately 1 year. You have people who hve been on board 10 years
13 and 15 years who are now up to this level and that is where some
of the competition gets in in the time-in-grade factor and it is
a problem. They are concerned about. Why are not time-in-grade
factors not put on new employees, yet why should they apply to
old employees because they have already served 10 to 15 years in the
Agency.
A. Well, I can see how that ties back to some of these other comments
on time-in-grade and there is no easy answer to what you are saying.
On the other hand you don't want to penalize the new ones coming in
order to make them suffer the way the older ones suffered if that were
the case. I would hope that the problem is going to solve itself
because of this continuing exodus of the senior people. It is
more a problem in the DDO than elsewhere because you don't bring
in people laterally to fill in. Other directorates to some extent.
you could take 28% attrition in 3 or 4 years at the top and make
do by going outside the Agency to other intelligence services within
our country or elsewhere to get people, but in the DDO that can be
done on a very limited basis only. So, I would have thought, I guess
I just have not understood it right that a 12 or 13 in DDO today
was sitting in a very desirable position. That is, the 17's and 18's
were going to be moving out and have been at such a high rate that
there were going to be lots of openings in the 14, 15, 16 area.
You are shaking your head that is not the case. But the promotion
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statistics in that area are up over what they were. They were
very low not too many years ago. There was a big promotion in 1976,
but before that they were very low and before that they were modest
in 1977, they started up in '78, came up again in '79 and are going
to continue up in '80. I will go look at the statistics again and
see what more we can do in the area you particularly pointed out.
Q. I am concerned about the acceptance of interaction analyses
in net assessments in national intelligence. I wonder what you can do
to establish the legitimacy of acceptance within the intelligence
community, across the community so that we can move ahead with more cooperation
and harmony in the center rather than confronting each other in footnotes?
A. Well, I think I have supported you pretty strong there. I got myself
in all kinds of trouble, but that is fine that is what I am here for.
I am really very optimistic and very pleased.. We started interactive,
some people call them net assessments I don't, in the strategic estimate
a couple of years ago, there was great resistance. I almost had to
go to the President to sustain it, but the Defense Department recognized
that it was such good analysis that they just couldn't deny it.
This last year there was considerable resistance to continuing it.
Again, we prevailed with the Secretary of Defense who recognized the
great value of what we had done. As you know it then appeared in the
front page of the newspapers, but even that story came out rather
favorable. Then it appeared on Capital Hill and they had a hearing.
After the hearing the House Committee on Intelligence said, gee this
is good there is nothing to complain about here. In short, I think
they are shooting arrows at this very legitimate part of our intelligence
function have shot their arrows into the air and where they have landed
I don't know, but they are not having any effect. We have continued
on with it, we just yesterday released a very controversal analysis
with respect to the U.S. Navy and I just intend to back you all the
way. That is a very legitimate function of ours as long as we don't
get into the tactics, the operational plans of the U.S. military
which we have no business with and are not here to second guess whether
if they move the troops to the left flank that wouldn't solve the
problem and so on, but I really think we havE! made some important
contributions in interactive analyses in the last couple of years and
I am really content on continuing in that direction. Displaying sheer
numbers of forces that compare with each other means nothing to anybody.
Going all the way to an interactive war game with all the tactics and
everything in it ends up with such a melange of data that nobody can
decipher. What we are doing is right down the middle giving the
decisionmaker something he can grab onto.
Q. I am not concerned with our ability to do that within house, but
I am concerned with the ability to get that accepted within the community.
More or less your role as the head of the community to establish or
if necessary force them to accept the legitimacy of cooperating with us
and providing the data bases that they have based on U.S. plans and programs
to cooperate with us in our strength in foreign data bases.
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A. I said to you here, that we have forced that on the strategic
side successfully and I have beat back their efforts to withhold.
We are trying it in the Navy and in other areas right now. I cannot
compel cooperation in our non-intelligence data. I can compel
intelligence reports to be disseminated whether it is from NSA or
wherever, but we have to have a combination of persuasiveness and
continued pressure and I am trying to support you all I can, but
it won't be easy. You are fighting city hall and years of entrenched
bureaucracy and a very powerful one. I am only saying to you I
will do everything I can to help you. I believe to the bottom of my
pit in what we are doing. I know it is tough on you when you don't
get full and easy cooperation, but you have got to have a little
vinegar, a little pressure and you have got to have a little honey.
You have got to help me out by being tactful and persuasive down there
too. I am doing some other things to help you. I am circulating more
of these good studies, not just the interactive but the good studies
on military things that we do to the military commanders directly.
Boy, some of them just respond so much better than the bureaucrats
in the Pentagon. They understand we are doing things of great
value to them and they want them. I hope that will, over time,
germinate back to the people who can worry more about turfs than
about analysis.
Q. I too am concerned about advancement. I have seen retirees and
contract employees who run in from the academic world and various
companies being hired to do the jobs that might be good steps for
junior people to have to advance. I am wondering if the money that
is paid these people couldn't also be used to advance some of our
own careers?
A. One of the most controversal things that I did when I got here
was order that we don't hire any retirees, CIA, military or otherwise.
I wanted to make those opportunities available. Over time and with
the large exodus we have relaxed that somewhat. Your question maybe
will make me look at it again. As far as bringing people in laterally
or from academia, there is a careful judgment that has to be made
in these cases. Are you in NFAC? I do happen to believe that we
need a limited amount of lateral entry in NFAC more than in anywhere
else in the Agency. I think it is very healthy to have some stimulus.
We can get all caught up in our own theories and outlooks, anybody
can in an academic institution and a research institution and in
an intelligence institution. So there is, I believe, a legitimate place for
a modest amount of lateral infusion and most of those people don't usually
stay for more than half dozen years or something and then there is
another one comes in in their stead. It is certainly my intent to
give preference to qualified employees for advancement, we have them,
than going out as a matter of course to a retiree or somebody on the
outside. I will try to look into the statistics of how that has been
balancing out recently.
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Q. It seems like Career Service panels have an inordinate amount
of control over who gets selected for a position before that person
even has an opportunity to confer with the respective assignment.
These decisions are often made without the candidate knowing anything
about the terms of why he was denied or selected and because there
is a selection process up through the office, directorate and so
forth, only a small number are actually considered for a position,
when in fact there may be a number of people interviewed for the
position. Because of their career panel process they are ruled out
early in the game.
A. Again that is a tough one to grapple with in the abstract. One of
the major personnel actions that I have tried to take in the past
several years has been to introduce more standardization and more
visiblity into the promotion and assignment system. Clearly, it is
never going to be totally visible to everybody; totally standard,
totally equitable. But I have felt that because we have four different
promotion and management systems we were introducing either the perception
or the fact of inequities and because the precepts for the boards and
panels were not clearly laid out and not fairly uniform, employees had
trouble finding out just what the rules were under which they were
being judged so we are trying to move in directions that will take
care of the problem that you have raised, but. it certainly is not
an easy one to handle. Again, I am unable to give you a crisp answer
on that one.
Q. How do you assess the effectiveness of the Executive Committee
when used on major agency projects?
A. I am very pleased with the way the Executive Committee has been
working on the major projects for the Agency. We organized the Executive
Committee because there was no organized forum procedure for tackling
problems from an Agency point of view. I suddenly realized after being
here a couple of years that Frank Carlucci and I were the only two
Agency people we were getting a recommendation from one directorate to
do this, comments on it from the others. Their submission and their
comments were from the directorate point of view. Now that is fine and
it works, but I don't want to be the only integrating element. Intelligence
today has got to be teamwork. Teamwork between the three collecting
disciplines. Teamwork between the analysts and what they need from the
collectors. Close cooperation between the various kinds of support
people be it of cover, be it communications, be it logistics and
equally close coordination between the research people and what the
collectors need for their support or the analysts need for their
support. And, we really cannot afford to be other than a closely knit
organization. It is more difficult here than perhaps anywhere else in
the government or industry because we also have that very legitimate
need for secrecy and we do not want to and cannot afford to proliferate
very sensitive information that we hold in each of our offices. So, we
have tried by bringing the Executive Committee into everything, proliferated
very sensitive information. We have tried to insure that we are
getting an across the Agency outlook, and I have asked and received
good support from the Executive Committee members in looking at
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not as just representatives of their own directorate. It is taking
time. I think, for instance in the personnel management changes
that we hve made we just never could have done that without the very
vigorous sometimes heated interplay of the meribers of the Executive
Committee. They do work together well as a team but it is important
that they meet together as a team and have this kind of frank and
forthright discussion so that everyone know when we are making a
major move around here why we are going in this direction and just
how it is going to be carried out and just how it will effect each
component of the Agency. I am very pleased with the progress
that I believe we have made in the last several years in becoming
more of a single agency and I think that particularly in the personnel
management area it is going to be very important to many of you as
individuals because with a more uniform system there will be more
opportunities. For instance, in your early comment you may be in
an area where there is a hump out ahead and promotions are slower than
we like but that is an occasion where if you have a one agency concept,
a one agency personnel system we would be able to shift resources
either from out in front of you or from around you. When we do have
high percentages of people who congregate in one area without having
to ask anybody to leave we can move them around the Agency and assure
that the opportunities don't get either too high or too low for people
in different segments of our organization.
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DIRECTOR'S HOUR
1200, 30 May 1980
Trends favorable
1.
320
- 50 - small, significant
Charters dead
2.
$
Budget process
3.
Demand for product hi
a. Sov of '80s
b. Allies of '80s
c. LDC's of '80s
CT's quality
Pers mgmt
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30 May 80
DIRECTOR'S HOUR
GS-10-13
1200, 30 MAY 1980
Asked to get together
Improve comm - transmit what trying - what success
One element my understanding what questions on your mind
See more of supergrades
Opportunity meet w/future top managers
Ideas how might build future better
Primary purpose listen to you and respond where can
Let start - briefly mentioning several very favorable trends
320-50 - Hughes Ryan
Hoped broad charter
Foundered legalistic detail, election year politics - never
got to vote
Here - piece of it - 320-50 shows support we have Li.
We'll get H/R one way or other
Hoping for piecemeal on three others
Graymai1
FOIA
Identities
Not certain - trying
Approved For Release 2005/11/23 : CIA-RDP80BO1554R003100200001-9