NATIONAL CRISIS MACHINERY: SUGGESTIONS FOR IMPROVEMENT PROMPTED BY THE SS MAYAGUEZ INCIDENT

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP83M00171R001800150007-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: T
• Document Page Count: 15
• Document Creation Date: December 15, 2016
• Document Release Date: April 8, 2004
• Sequence Number: 7
• Publication Date: May 21, 1975
• Content Type: MF

RT-121 May 1975
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.National Crisis Machinery: Suggestions
for Improvement Prompted by the
SS Mayaguez Incident
.assessed problems of warning directly related to the Mayaguez
MEMORANDUM FOR: (Presumably to be addressed to the
President by the DCI)
SUBJECT:
problems related to the Mayaguez incident- -both in the week
or so before, and immediately after, the ship's seizure--is
of course a matter which my colleagues (on the United States
Intelligence Board) and I still have under review. But we have--
as you will see in the paper which follows--looked '.nto a variety
of questions raised by this 'incident fairly extensively. Specifically,
we have in recent days examined issues concerning existing crisis
machinery, both within the Intelligence Community and without;
incident;. identified problems of ;collection and communications
not so associated; and discussed current and projected efforts
Drafter assumes that a cover note will indicate that this
paper (presumably together with an accompanying chronology
prepared by NIOs) responds to the Presidential Memorandum
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 tur uui
to invigorate our warning and alerting procedures. Finally,
beginning on p. 1J , we have assembled our summary statement,
including our thoughts on the need to close communications gaps
between our intelligence machinery and the related machinery
of entities elsewhere in the national c04z4munity.
II. EXISTING CRISIS INSTITUTIONS AND MECHANISMS
The Intelligence Community (hereafter referred to as
appropriate to the needs of our consumers and to the peculiar
the Community) deals with any given crisis in ways which seem
demands posed by the events under way. If, for example, we
Wi(t
foresee an imminent crisis, Isend an Alert Memorandum- -which
contains a brief recitation of the facts as, we perceive them and
a description of our concerns--to the members of WSAG. The
subject of, an Alert Memorandum had we^ariticipated hostile
to-A 14
possibility of a Mayaguez-like incident would have been the
Cambodian actions against a US vessel, which we did not (as
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The Intelligence Community
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It is the responsibility of each of the separate operations
and watch centers in the Community to inform its own principal
(the Director, DIA; myself; etc..) of the arrival of a crisis,
And, in accordance with procedures agreed upon by USIB early
especially if that arrival is announced
this year, it is also the responsibility of . these centers
o inform other immediately if a principal has in fact
been notified. A special telephonic conferencing system we
centers (and three centers not in the Community) to do precisely
y
OAS/watch .
call NOIWON was established.last year to permit most Communit
such
this. Part of the notion here, by the way, is that all centers
will be encouraged to notify their principals if one center does sn_
My own role in all of this reflects both my position as
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by the CIA Operations Center,
the CIA principal and my chairmanship of USIB. 'AMM, I am
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iw4'I am not informed by other operations centers, which, indeed,
0, VXV PC Ir
are not charged with that task. At the same time, a~ I
sfltk fo
do consult with my USIB colleagues, in conference if time permits.
A
In trns cYenr
and the rescue of its crew). USI11B__h--will meet
Cstl ~s
and consider, for example, the analyses and
(e. g. , Special National Intelligence Estimates) prepared in concert,
-with or..withbut dissents, under the aegis of the National Intelligence
rma,l
Officers. Occasionally, if time does not permitAUSIB consideration,
there are ways I have established to permit these same National
Intelligence Officers, who are drawn from the Community at large
but who work directly for me, to provide uncoordinated assess-
ments to, say, the NSC Staff. (Some other USIB members have
established similar channels, and this is generally understood. )
60 -There is a special kind of warning which I have not yet
mentioned: warning of an impending confrontation between the US
and USSR (or some other communist state, including China and
North Korea). The major responsibility, here lies with my
Special Assistant. for Strategic Warning, a general officer in the
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. Time usually will permit if the crisis we are concerned Qho4
has passed its initial, instant-action stage,(vAair& happensCi?some,
port in most bw~' }
lwmagi* i6" not in the case of the
crises, t A
r" 1
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Defense Intelligence Agency, and his staff, the Strategic Warning
Staff, which is headed by a CIA officer.
Outside the Intelligence Community
As already suggested, some crisis machinery in the
Department of State and in the Department of Defense is related
to but quite separate from that in the Community. This machinery,
geared primarily to support policymakers and officers in opera-
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T
--In State, the Operations Center and the Secretariat
oth of which are supported by INR and, in effect, vice versa);
..In Defense,. the",National Military Command Center
..(NMCC) and components of the JCS, principally J-3 (supported
by DIA and DIA's National Military Intelligence Center);
-Also in Defense, the Hydrographic Center of the
Defense Mapping Agency, which i.s responsible for issuing
4 re-rr
Maritime Advisories to the US merchant fleet
(NOTE to readers of this draft, especially
Are there any other DOD centers that should be mentioned
here? The military services' centers are of course in the
Community (original Outline notwithstanding) and are
implicitly included above and below.
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8. Finally, in this itemization of the parts in the crisis
machinery, we must also mention the National Security Council
itself; the NSC Staff; several senior interdepartmental committees,
including WSAG; and the White House Situation Room.
III. PROBLEMS ENCOUNTERED IN. CONNECTION WITH THE
MAYAGUEZ INCIDENT
9. The-problems we and others ran into immediately before
and after the Mayaguez incident now seem to revolve around two
to steer clear of possible trouble spots in the Gulf of Thailand
before the seizure of the Mayaguez on 12 May? And (2), in the
.questions: (1) Why was there no.warning to US merchant vessels
wake of that seizure, why weren't you, the Secretary of State,
the Secretary of Defense, and the USIB principals notified of it
immediately?
The Delayed Maritime Advisory
10. As indicated in some of the material (including various
kinds of -issuances Froth the f4ational Security Agency) I sent to
in four separate incidents, captured some 15 small craft--many
of Poulo Wai Island, where the Mayaguez was subsequently seized.
`Specifically, from early May until that seizure, the Cambodians,
to harass foreign-flag ships. Some of them were in the vicinity
you on 20 May, the Cambodian Communists began in early May
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of them apparently carrying Vietnamese refugees--in areas
the Cambodians claim as territorial waters. In addition, in
two other incidents, the Cambodians fired on two ocean-going
vessels, one South Korean and one Panamanian; both ships
were a substantial distance from the,Cv nbodian coast at the
time. (See Attachment 1) F-- not O a 1 itch 4
11. Beginning on 4 May, reports of most of these incidents
were sent by NSA to appropriate sectors of the Community.(CIA,
DIA, INR, and the three principal intelligence organizations of
the armed services*); to non-intelligence elements in the Defense
Department and the State Department; to several** operational
military commands. Repcirts on the South Korean vessel were
broadly disseminated by the Foreign Broadcast Information Service
one of these (on the 6th) repeated an English
broadcast from Seoul which stated that the government there had
slued a "special alert" advising South Korean merchant vessels
o watch out for communist attacks "on the high seas of Cambodia. "
12. Nevertheless, the seizure of the Mayaguez appears to
have caught everyone by surprise. No element of the Community
This, in re services, needs doublechecking, perhaps by
and
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** Also needs checking.
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and no element of Ie Defense Department or of the military
services sounded - ' alarm before that seizure. Nor did the
i
appropriate office ~in the Department of State or the Department
of the Navy, them o.ves largely dependent on the flow of intelli-
gence, advise the 11ydrographic Center of the 7bowulF Mapping Agency. /
as a consequnceof this, the Hydrographic Center, which
has no direct link 4-1t0 the Community, was not~in a position to
'issue a maritime sivisory to US vessels until -two days after the
Mayaguez incident (See Attachment 2) A: --- not '/+e_t ck-
analysts to percei e., the pattern of events building up in the Gulf
of Thailand in ear 'May. 'There were very good reasons, most
of us on USIB beli why they, so missed at the time-. Inter alia,
the pattern was not then nearly so clear as it may seem now,
partly because m h of the Cambodian activity seemed to be
13.- Behind al 'this was the failure of. the Community's own
directed against 14etnamese rdfugees; and the analysts were
in any event preo 1 upied with other major US concerns inh Indochina.
14. An Alert emorandum was not issued before the Mayaguez
incident occurred ssentially because of this same analytical
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oversight. The National Intelligence Officers who are ordinarily
responsible for initiating such memoranda must rely heavily on
the .ability of the analytical officers in the Community to keep
...them informed. In this particular instance, the one NIO principally
concerned was aware of part of the story but was not privy to the
15. My Special Assistant for Strategic Warning was not
directly involved in this crisis (in that capacity), nor was his
staff, and properly so. His charter; approved by USIB, does
not and is not intended to involve him in instant crises of the
..character of the Mayaguez? seizure; such involvement would only
. detract from his principal.mission vis-a-vis the USSR.
messages concerning the Mayaguez
arrived in the Washington area between 0512 and.0526 EDT on 12 May.
I was notified at 0630. According to the best information we can
obtain here, Secretary Schlesinger learned of the messages some
time between 0700 and 0730; General Scowcroft at 0730. You were
informed around 0800;. and Secretary Kissinger some time after
his regular morning staff meeting had begunat 0800. The State
Operations Center, not INR, is charged with alerting the Secretary.
The Problem of Delayed Warning
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17. Operations centers delayed advising their principals for
A variety of reasons, including: (1) concern that information
was inadequate and that further
data was needed before principals could be properly briefed; (2)
a belief by both intelligence and operations officers that the US
..would be unable to react immediately with force, and that therefore
time was not necessarily of the essence; and (3) related to this,
a. conviction that principals should not be awakened at home at,
say, 0530 or 0600, when they could "just as well" be informed
upon their arrival at the office at, say, 0700 or 0730. (CIA.
operations center officers w ere aware that I would probably awaken
around 0630 and deliberatdly delayed informing me until about that
time. 17 am c nd d 'this 4 ern only one. Insigr ca cI tes ec ?~
.18. Some other problems, real or potential, have emerged
.as a result of the Mayaguez incident. NOIWON (the operations
centers' conferencing net) was not used, though all the operations
centers now agree with us thatit should have been. The alerting
..mechanisms in both DOD and State are divided: operations and
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intelligence personnel are collocated but serve different principals. ~
messages arrive, moreover, the INR intelligence
officers in the State Operations Center receive them first and are
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 responsible for their further dissemination within the Department;
the opposite is true in the Pentagon, where the operations center
(NMCC) is responsible in the first instance
.divisions of responsibility of this character did cause some confusion
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miY~er
and delay on 12 May.
Iii. PROBLEMS WHICH TRANSCEND THE ISSUES RAISED BY
MAYAGUEZ
advanced, technical forms of collection. The second involves
have been with us in one form or another for some time. Progress
has been made in addressing. these problems, _t the two major
ones simply defy facile' solutions. The first is associated with
.the tasking of the means of intelligence collection, especially
.communications between separate elements in the Community;
between the Community and others obviously involved in crisis
warning and crisis management; and even between the Community
and-others not so obviously involved in crisis management (and
I?l~llpr
the Hydrographic Center of the - is a case in point).
19. There are some problems we in'the Community face which
Collection Tasking .
20. Difficulties inherent in the direction or guidance of
- technical collection activities can be illustrated by a brief
examination of the capabilities and limits
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Annex. (Sorry, once you start writing this way you can't
--NOTE: Here, if this lead-in works, would go
some material drawn from Kerr's contribution, which,
itself (almost in the entire) might constitute an appropriate
stop. )
--Next, perhaps, some views of the tactical photo-
reconnaissance problem, by
--And here :might go a summary of tkq, material
in re SIGINT.
21.. Questions concerning the role of the Navy in the rather
more general problem of collecting information concerning US
merchant shipping were spotlighted by the Mayaguez incident.
ButAtiwiy have a long and complex history. (Note: This is a
try at a lead into material which could be drawn from
?essay on this subject)f
Communications .Problems
22. One of the most critical requirements in'warning and
crisis operations is to define our own "national nervous system. "
produce, and transmit information over many communications
military departments have 24-hour "watch centers" which receive,
All major agencies of intelligence, Defense, State, and other non-
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We have produced and distributed a list of 29 of the
24-hour centers in the Washington area. = This, however, is
'.not complete or sufficient. Nowhere does there exist a complete,
.consolidated listing of appropriate centers and how they are
should probably include centers whichdo'not necessarily operate
interconnected, or not connected. Indeed, a complete directory
on a 24-hour basis and which have potential functions in any type
23. Another communications problem reflects the nature of
the flow of information and assessments from intelligence components
to specific operational and.,policy elements of the departments.
Stated candidly and in very summary fashion, the existing circum-
stances- -specifically the lack of an identifiable "'crisis manager".
below Cabinet level--can create some uncertainty and confusion,
into the intelligence maw, can do
roughly
the same. We understand how difficult it is during a crisis for,
say, the Joint Chiefs and the operational commands to service
intelligence--who are not charged with the success or failure
requests for information from people--i. e. , those of us
24. The flow of information, or the lack of flow, in the
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of a given military mission. We a
of time, the delicacy of the diplom
confidentiality can inhibit the flow
of State.
so understand how the pressures
tic process, and thdlxeed for
f information from the Department
25. Still, I can obviously pro wde information only when I
possess it, and especially during c ise,s, I may find that certain
,categories of information can be found only in departmental
intelligence components which I cajnot now formally task, much
REPORTING PROCEDURES III THE COMMUNITY AND
V. ONGOING EFFORTS TO IMPROVE CRISIS WARNING AND
ELSEWHERE
Within the Community
2b, Paragraph here re action
.existing procedures related to: al
.conferencing, and community anal
:drafted by
27. Paragraph here re effort Ito produce single national
situation report during crises--stalled by circumstances, and
communications problems but will1live again after CONTEXT
in use. (This being drafted byl
fi
principally within DOD. (Being drafted by
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initiated by the DCI to improve
rt memoranda, NOIWON
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9. In quite general terms, what I havebjen saying so far
seems in some ways to add up to both a charge and an admission:
..The national security machinery, to which the: Intelligence
Community belongs, is unwieldy during~?crises especially
I
during instant crises like the Mayaguez incident. The responsibility
for seeking to make this machinery more resp nsive to you. is
certainly in part mine. *nWI am persuaded tat we do not have
to 'scrap existing procedures and systems.: AtIthe same time,
as I have tried to suggest above, there is a cl r requirement
'for. some repairs of existing machinery and, if' I may extend
e metaphor, a need to irrstall some new auxiliary motors.
Further work along these lines would, .,I profoundly hope, help
all concerned to warn of and manage crises in