SURVEY (Sanitized)

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80B01554R003400030004-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: T
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 19, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 5, 2005
• Sequence Number: 4
• Publication Date: November 25, 1977
• Content Type: MF

25X1 Approved For Release 2005/11/23 : CIA-RDP80BO1554R003400030004-2
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Approved For Release 2005/11/23 : CIA-RDP80BO1554R003400030004-2
 Approved For Release 2005/11P"t IA E780B01554R003400030004-2
CHRISTIAN' SCIENCE MONITOR
The CIA's new priorities
Joseph C. Harsch
The new management at the Central In-
telligence Agency in Washington is firing spies
but hiring intelligence analysts. This is one of
those milestones in history which tell of im-
portant changes in the American role in the
world.
From January of 1953, when the Dulles
brothers (John Foster at State and Allen at
CIA) took over the management of American
foreign policy, down to March of 1973 (when
the last American combat troops left Vietnam)
the emphasis at CIA was on clandestine oper-
ations against communist movements and gov-
ernments. Secretary Dulles at the State De-
partment used to talk about "giving them
some homework to do," by which he meant
that his brother Allen at CIA would turn his se-
cret operations agents loose inside the commu-
nist countries and try to give them so much
trouble at home that they would have less
energy left for operations against the United
States and its allies.
That assertive period in American clandes-
tine activities opened with two spectacular
successes which contributed to the prestige of
the CIA in general and of the clandestine side
of that organization in particular.
One of Allen Dulles's first acts as director of
CIA was to send a_ clandestine agent in to Iran
where a politician named Mohammed Mossa-
degh had overthrown the Shah's government
and was running a Moscow-oriented dictator-
ship. The agent hired some street demonstra-
tors, trained a few Iranian air force officers in
how to take over the local radio station, and
organized a coup d'etat. On Aug. 19, Mr..Mos-
sadegh's regime was ' toppled, the Shah was
brought home from exile, and Iran has ever
since been a loyal and prospering client of the
United States. The cost in dollars was negli-
gible.
In May of the next year the CIA learned of a
shipload of Czech weapons on its way to Guate-
mala for the benefit of that country's leftist-in-
clined President, Arbenz Guzman. The CIA
was authorized to back a rival Guatemalan pol-
itician named Castillo' Armas. Mr. Armas was
in neighboring Nicaragua from whence he
launched a small invasion of Guatemala. The
CIA backed the invaders with three P-47
fighter planes left oyer from World War II
with American pilots they recruited for the
purpose.
Those three planes with their three pilots
made up the CIA's first clandestine military
force. It was a startling success. The planes
routed Senor Guzman's army. Senor Armas be-
came the new President of Guatemala and
Guatemala has been a loyal client of the
United States ever since.
From that moment on White House and
State Department thought of CIA as the place
where miracles could be organized on order
overnight. The clandestine operations side was
loaded with one new task after another. Its se-
cret armies expanded from those three planes
to thousands of men. A Chinese anticommunist
army was maintained for years in northern
Burma. It was supplied and reinforced from
Taiwan by a CIA transport air line. All over
the world big CIA offices were opened under
the "cover" of any and every type of business.
CIA "operations" became big business in
themselves and the Directorate of Operations
at CIA became the tail that wagged the dog.
The gathering and analysis of intelligence con-
tinued, but was treated as the poor relation of
the glamorous "ops" side of CIA.
But, alas for the CIA, there was never again
any success as spectacular, easy, and cheap as
the overthrowing of Mossadegh or Guzman. A
major effort was made in 1958 to organize a
revolution in Indonesia against President Su-
karno. It was an ignominious failure. An even
larger effort was under way against Fidel Cas-
tro in Cuba in 1961 when John F. Kennedy took
over the White House from President Eisen-
hower. That ended in the bloody fiasco of the
Bay of Pigs.
The CIA's biggest secret armies ever were
organized in the jungles of northern Laos dur-
ing the Vietnam war. But that is all over and
finished now. Some 800 "operatives" came
home to the CIA's mini-Pentagon at Langley,
Virginia. Last month the Office of Manage-
ment and Budget ordtred new CIA boss Adm.
Stansfield Turner to trim his covert staff by 820
persons. That operation is under way.
This will not end CIA clandestine activities.
There will still be CIA "station chiefs" in most
capitals of the world. The number of secret
agents will remain around the 4,000 figure. But
they are not likely to be running secret armies,
or organizing revolutions or trying to assassi-
nate unfriendly heads of state, certainly not
soon again or in any big way. Their main as-
signment will be in collecting intelligence. The
main thrust of CIA activities from now on will
be in arriving at sound estimates of the condi-
tion and intentions of other countries, The
Howard Hunts are being phased out. Their
time has gone by.
Approved For Release 2005/11/23 : CIA-RDP80BO1554R003400030004-2
 Approved For Release 2005/11/23S999
23 November 1977
MERANDUM FOR, NIO/Strategic Programs
FROM: Director of Central Intelligence
1. Good work at the NFIB yesterday. I thought it went very
well and we have accomplished a lot. Clearly, the soundness of your
and your team's work has carried the day.
2. As I see the next step in this process, it is for me, in my
next meeting with Harold Brown on December, to take him just that
section of the study that explains our`'reliance on the different static
and quasi-dynamic indicators and the charts. I'll need four copies
for this discussion.
3. I think I should-also give two copies to Aaron and Brzezinski,
and you should give a copy to whoever is working the problem for them.
The sooner on these latter ones, the better.
V STANSFIELD TURNER
cc: D/DCI/NI
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