SLOTTING PATTERN WITHIN THE NIO STRUCTURE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80M00165A002900120016-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 5
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 21, 2006
• Sequence Number: 16
• Publication Date: September 25, 1974
• Content Type: MF

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25 September 1974
SUBJECT Slotting Pattern Within the NIO Structure
Your colleague,I recently discussed
with me the attached Office. of Personnel recommendations
on supergrade position slots within my office. Before
this exercise gets set in concrete, I would like to offer
some comments, with the request that they be given careful
attention:
25X1 1. There is, obviously, no problem with positions
I I -- the actual NIO's who are slotted as
s. This is the DCI's wish and conforms to his
instructions.
I would change
as positions
as follows:
These should be listed
- Executive Assistant
- Chief, Publications
- Assistant NIO;
- Assistant NIO.
3. I have problems with your proposed downgrading
of the Executive Assistant slot from GS-17 to GS-16.
The title is simply that, a handy label which bears
little relationship to the range of actual duties
involved. These fall into three broad categories:
E-2, IMPDET
MORI/CDF Pages 1-4 (only).
rank numbering has any significance,
the order of what your list carries
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(a) I do not have a permanent deputy, partly
because I was trying to save a GS-18 position and
partly because my own work style makes it difficult
for me to split up the responsibilities for which I
feel personally accountable to the DCI. Instead, I
adopted the practice of rotating the deputyship among
the NI0's at 60-day intervals -- to enhance the spirit
of collegiality within this organization and to spread
around, whenever I am absent, some of the participa-
tory aspects of my duties such as attending the DCI's
daily Executive Committee meeting. This improves
morale, gives the individual NIO's a greater sense
of participation in the total work of the office, and
has proven a useful procedure in many respects. I
am able to handle matters this way because the so-
called "Executive Assistant" in fact performs most
of the continuing functions that a deputy would per-
form if the latter office existed.
(b) The Executive Assistant serves as this
office's spokesman on and coordinator of a variety
of problems and matters that cut across the whole
structure. He is, for example, the member of this
office who deals on SIGINT matters across the board,
imagery matters across the board and other similar
matters which are no single NIO's responsibility but
affect the work of us all. It is to the Executive
Assistant that COMIREX or the USIB SIGINT Committee
turns in the first instance when either has general
matters to raise with this office, as opposed to
specific points falling within the geographic or
functional province of a single NIO.
(c) The Executive Assistant also performs
the duties which that title normally encompasses,
namely the continuing supervision of the nuts and
bolts details of operating an office. These details
are particularly important in this office, given its
size, the broad nature of the NI0's responsibilities
and the fact that all of the latter are senior
officers who serve, individually, as the DCI's
representatives and legates in their respective
areas.
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(d) Given the range and importance of the
responsibilities encompassed in this "Executive
Assistant" position, I believe quite strongly that
the position should remain slotted at the GS-17
level and not be downgraded to GS-16. The rationale
for carrying it at the GS-17 level when thQ office
was first set up still exists and has been reinforced
by the fact that the responsibilities of the
position now go considerably beyond even those
initially envisaged when the original staffing
pattern of the NIO structure was established in the
fall of 1973.
4. I also question the equity of continuing to
carry the position of the chief of the Publications
Branch at the GS-16 level, even though that was the
slot assigned in this office's original staffing
pattern. Its incumbent is responsible, among other
things, for the preparation of all of the DCI's
briefings: to Congress and various committees thereof,
to the WSAG, to the 40 Committee, to the DPRC, to the
SRG and to the NSC itself. These were the responsi-
bilities carried by the position when it was charged
against the OCI Table of Organization and what actually
happened was that, in effect, the position and its
slot simply moved from OCI's T/O to ours. Its
incumbent has all of the responsibilities for which
a GS-16 was originally assigned (in OCI), but since
coming to this staff he has acquired a number of
additional responsibilities never envisaged or
assigned in this position's former (OCI) incarnation.
He is now responsible, for example, for the final
editorial review of all National Estimates, all
memoranda of any type produced under the aegis of
the NIO structure, the final language of the Key
Intelligence Questions, the strategy assessments and
year-end reviews of each KIQ, etc., etc. Given the
quantum increase in the responsibilities of this
position since it was moved here from OCI, I feel a
one-step increase in its assigned slot -- i.e.,,to
GS-17 -- is more than warranted.
5. With respect to the two Assistant NIO positions
you listed at the GS-16 level, I have no quarrel
provided it is understood that these are, in effect,
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%Wf
"free" positions not necessarily assigned to any
given account. In point of fact, at this writing,
the assignments should properly go to the Assistant
NIO for Economics (who is in effect also the NI0 for
Energy) and the Assistant NIO for Strategic Programs
(who is the 10 for weeks at a stretch when
Mr. Stoertz 25X1
Nonetheless, for reasons o- manage
I would prefer not to lock these two supergrade slots
to those two positions. Though the Assistant NIO's
are basically slotted at the 15 level, we will always
have a justification for making one or two exceptions
and it is proper for this fact to be recognized in
our approved staffing pattern. The essential element
of flexibility should be preserved, however, by not
specifically identifying which two Assistant NIO
positions will warrant supergrades at any given moment
in time.
George A. Carver, Jr.
Att Deputy for National Intelligence Officers
cc: AO/DC V
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