TALK BY LT. GEN. MARSHALL S. CARTER TO MIDCAREER EXECUTIVE DEVELOPMENT COURSE NO. 5

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP84-00780R001000160050-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 13
• Document Creation Date: December 14, 2016
• Document Release Date: April 1, 2003
• Sequence Number: 50
• Publication Date: February 19, 1965
• Content Type: TRANS

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PM ANDUM FOR: Deputy Director (Support)
Red:
Attached is the transcript of the DDCI's talk
at the closing of the latest Midcareer Training
Course. I thought you would be interested. I a
in no position to make suggestions, and I am sur
the General will make none, but I consider his
remarks extremely fine and fitting and perhaps
you might know of some use to which these
remarks could be put.
HK
4 March 1965
(DATE)
n 2003/05/27 : 00016005 3-
FORM r D NO ' Io I REPLACES FORM 10-101
I AUG 54 WHICH MAY BE USED. (47)
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Talk by Lt. Gen. Marshall S. Carter
to Midcareer Executive Development Course No. 5
19 February 1965
Thank you very much. I always get a kick out of noticing on the menu
that I'm supposed to deliver an address. I would much prefer just to talk
to you informally based on some cards which I have prepared over the years.
It's always helpful I think to have your career reviewed for you by what
should be a disinterested observer. None of it explains, however, how
one ends up in this particular slot In the Central Intelligence Agency or
what devious machinations one must have gone through in order to acquire
this somewhat doubtful privilege. I say somewhat doubtful because I would
like you all to realize that, unlike all other agencies of the Government, you
are blessed, let us say, with only two statutory appointees: the Director
and the Deputy Director. Everything else in the Agency is yours and yours
alone. You are not in the unhappy position of having political appointees
rammed down your throat by any administration, nor are you in the unhappy
position of having people come in for two or three years, just long enough
to screw everything up, and then go back to their million dollar enterprises
or their educational processes. All you have to worry about is a ship builder
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and a broken down Army Officer. So I think you are most fortunate.
You're also fortunate in being not inhibited by Civil Service regulations.
Now for quite obvious reasons in our personnel policies--in our promotions,
in our retirements, or releases from the Government service--we attempt
generally to conform to the guidelines put: out by the Civil Service, but we
do not have to. Therefore, in the Agency you have a flexibility. in the handling
of personnel, in the assignment of personnel, and in the promotion of personnel.
You have a flexibility which no other Government agency of this magnitude
or of this importance has. And to me these two things are tremendous
advantages when you are trying to build and trying to maintain a career
service, and I'm talking about the Central Intelligence Agency with Its family
of individual career services. I can think of no assignment in Government
that is more promising for an individual, if he intends to make his full career
in the Government, than the Central Intelligence Agency, and it is because,
at least in part, of these two factors: the lack of statutory fragmentation or
whatever you want to call it that can be foisted on you (and I'm not necessarily
running down the competence of statutory appointees because I know at least
two that are really remarkable: Mr. McCone and myself, but I don't want to
get into that, you understand) and the flexibility that you have by not being
totally hidebound by Civil Service regulations. It is because of this, I think,
that we in the Agency can do what we are doing right now in the Midcareer
Training Program (at least I hope this is what we are doing): building now the
generalists or, if you want to go military, the generals for the Central
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Intelligence Agency in the upcoming years. In spite of Matt Baird, all of
us are not going to live forever; all of us are not going to be in the Central
Intelligence Agency forever; and it is certainly your expectation at your grade
level and with the Midcareer training that I hope you will get_. over the next
five years, that you will assume the leadership of the Agency in what will
appear to you to be perhaps decades, but is really relatively only a very
short time. This is a main purpose of the Midcareer Course, THE main purpose.
Now there are coE,ollary and additional benefits that we in the Agency
expect to get from you and from the training that you get in the Midcareer
Program. Notice that I am distinguishing between this particular six weeks
cow which is Just barely getting you dry behind the ears and a Midcareer
Training Program which I look to cover about five years. The benefit that
we hope to get for the Atency, and certainly you individually will benefit like-
wise, is the rounded education in Agency activities and in the whole broad
scale of Governmental activities which will better equip you, we hope, to
represent the Agency in the halls of ivy and in the forums and the discussions
at the various levels of Government. I do not by this mean that we expect
a man from the DDI to be able to talk for the DDP in any particular Governmental
conference. But certainly he should be so witting of the functions of all of
the elements of the Agency and in the responsibilities assigned to the Agency
that he can represent the Agency as a generally competent across-the-board
senior career officer.. Now this at times requires some doing, but as General
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warts used to say, "Tell them anything, but for God's sake, don't blurt
out the truth." This was in connection with going up to the Hill to testify
about something that made the Air Force unhappy, and this was the guidance
that he gave. I don't mean to carry it quite that far, but if you know the
responsibilities of the Agency across the board and their capabilities, then
certainly you can do us a tremendous amount of good by the type of represen-
tation you give at meetings throughout the Government. This is a tremendous
asset.
And this brings me to what the image of the Agency is right now--if
Government, in Congress, and I would say across the board in the public.
As you know, we are hired for a high degree of anonymity. We are hired
as the scapegoat of the Government, and no matter who screws something
up, eventually we're going to be blamed for it. We're used to this. We
understand this. We accept this as part of the hazards of life. N t I can
tell you that in the Government from the highest levels--the President on
down through the CabLnetr-and on the hill in those thinking people, the
leaders of the Hill--Mahon. Russell, Saltonstall s Ford-this type, the
Agency stands among the very highest and has certainly no one ahead of it
in the confidence they have in what we do, the confidence that they have in
our capabilities, and the great respect that they have for the integrity, the
total objectivity, the professionalism, the devotion to duty, the complete
selflessness, and the complete lack of parochialism that we in the Agency
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represent. Now as it has been pointed out to you, I served three years in
the State Department in a civilian assignment, closely associated with the
Foreign Service. In fact, I was in -bed with them twenty-four hours a day.
('This is a colloquialism we use on the seventh floor; it has nothing to do
of Defense, again in a civilian type assignment. The rest of my somewhat
with security officers). And I served two years in the Office of the Secretary
actually since I was born in the Service) has been in the military with manY,
doubtful Governmental feeding at the trough (over the rest of my whole life
Mr. McCune is concerned- - and he has said this publically and many times
many types of joint assignments. As far as I em concerned, and as far as
Jump quicker and we can apply pressures right now wherever they need to
in the use of funds, so we can jump fast, faster than anyone else. We can
nickel we spend and we have flexibility in the use of personnel and flexibility
are also some assists in that we don't have to account to the GAO for every
Because of our complete lack of parochialism, our total objectivity.. There
.It in all of your actions. And this is why we have that reputation in the Agency.
your own drum. It doesn't come from talking about it. It comes from Proving
on the Hill and so have 4--the Agency is heads above any group of people
in Government or outside of. Government for the reasons that I have already
told you.
Now this doesn't come about just because Mr. McCone stands up and
beats your drum or I stand up and beat your drum or you stand up and beat
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be applied, whether it's in intelligence analysis or in clandestine operations.
We don't have to go through this tremendously awkward and painful and
painstaking procedure which our benevolent Government has surrounded Itself
with. So this is an advantage too. For my
coney . anyone who ia._in the
Central _I a lg$__; ger-cl+'_as.. career c certa my take trMondoue pride
in what he Is doing as well as in the people he is associated with. I say,
however, that you don't get that by talking about it. You get it by proving it
in your daily actions and in the development that you get yourself from
your own self guidance as well as the development we are trying to give
you in this Mideareer Training Course. I think I am reasonably objective about
this. I have a high degree of humility because of the privilege of serving
in the Agency and I mean this very deeply and I mean it very personally. I
have had very close association during the past three years with some of
the most remarkable scientific minds I have ever run into, and, certainly,
large numbers of intellectuals,whom I tolerate, being an Army type (I'm joking
a little bit), whom I admire a great deal but I must say some of whose words
I don't fully understand. There is just a tremendous competence and a
tremendous professionalism.
If you don't mind, I'll refer to a couple of notes that were given me.
Incidentally, I was told by one of your leaders that this is probably the best
class that they have had so far. He didn't categorize it as to adjectives,
so I don't know whether you won the bowling league or what, but this
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apparently is one of the best classes or the best they've ever had down here.
One of the assets that you get from this Course actually is the chance to rub
up against some of the other types in the other career services and to find
out what they are doing and how they think. This to me is extremely helpful.
Compertmenteticn is a desirable and necessary thing in the Agency at certain
times and under certain circumstances. But certainly at your level and as
what I would hope to be the coming deputy directors and inspector generals,
(and we still have a need for a chaplain) you are the type that can best
benefit from this cross-fertilization.
I told you how good we look to other people, and this is true. I hear it
all the time. If there is any question In your mind that the accusations that
we make our own foreign policy and that we generally interfere with the
conduct of foreign policy by the State Department, are untrue, I would like
to lay this to rest. It absolutely is not no. I don't think it is necessary
for me to go through the painful procedures by which the ]DDP finally gets a
covert operation off the ground. All of them don't fly, you understand. Some
of them don't get cranked up; but the procedures by which these occur fit into
a separate sort of governmental operation (not an "Invisible Government")
which assures the policy makers that those operations are directly in accord
with foreign policy or with any other policy. Furthermore, the ambassadors,
who likewise at times are allowed to meddle in foreign policy, are fully on
board on these operations. Before a covert operation-Mother than the introduction
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of agents or something like this--can get off dead center, it is worked out
at the Indian level at the State Department and with the Pentagon. The first
"point of no return" is Dick Helms. The next "point of no return" is
Mr. Kirkpatrick, primarily for funds and personnel, If they're not already
available. The next "point of no return" is me. If It gets through me, it
then goes to Mr. McCone. When It gets to Mr. McCone and through him,
it then has to go to the 303 Committee which is the Deputy Secretary of
Defense, a senior officer in the State Department, Mac Bundy and Mr. McCone.
It then has to go to HA--which is the same as LBJ--"higher authority" in
most cases, unless Bundy chooses to sign off on it himself. If funds are
required that we don't already have, the Bureau of the Budget gets in the
act. If it's a real hairy one, it could well be turned over to the President's
Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board for a look. Meanwhile, you understand,
the Ambassador's on board and the Country Team, or at least part of it, Is
on board. And believe it or not, there are four Congressional Committees
who, while they may not know about it when it is being cranked up, will be
briefed on It, probably within the month. So there is every sort of check and
balance placed on the Agency and I tell you this because you continue to
get these accusations, and there's absolutely no reason under the sun why
you can't stand up and be counted and say, "that's incredible. It just isn't
so. It cbesn't work that way. This is how it works." Now the existence
of the 303 Committee, you understand, is still secret, but you can say it
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is checked and balanced at the highest levels of State and Defense before
anything like this happens. You can stomp on that at every opportunity
that you get.
The last time I was down here I put on a song and dance about 44der-
Thep, ax up vise WgIs$l 4Jities. I don't think it's necessary to do
this. You should have gotten some of that in the Course and if you haven't,
you're old enough to know now,,,thet you've got to keep track of y+ur people.
You must know what your people dung. When you're a superv Tor, I
consider that you have the same responsibilities, depending on the number
of people you have, as a commander in the military. You should have enough
of a feel of your people that you know what their problems are and you know
what their personalities are. Otherwise, how could you possibly rate them?
You should be able to see things coming with the people that are working
for you. You should be able to determine that Toe is operating at about 50%
capacity. He just isn't clicking. .1 wonder why. Talk to him. Maybe you
can help him. Certainly let's don't let our people get sofer away from us
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that they even lose their perspective as have some military types, and go
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over to the other side. Look at the case. In 1963
an enlisted man,was making $30,000 or $40,000 a year from the Soviet Union
and living way over his head. In the first place, he had two boats. He had
two Cadillacs and he was living with two different women, one of whom was
his wife. That made that all right. But the other one was illegal and a lot
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of people knew this. A lot of people knew this. They didn't 1010w he was
making $30,000 or $40,000 from the Bova, but they knew that hd was living
well beyond his means with no other form of income, and this went on for
several years. I'm not trying to establish an internal Gestapo, I don't mean
that at all. But I mean should have enough of a grip of your people (and
by_ grip I mean knowledge of them and their idiosyncrasies and their capabilities)
to tell when something is going wrong. Get them in and advise them. Maybe
they lust need a change of scenery. But maybe it's something deeper, and
this is why we have a highly competent Medical Staff. This is why in the
Agency we are doing everything we can to promote the responsibilities of
the supervisor. And this again is one of the assets which I hope you acquire
in this Course.
I understand that you've been down to Huntsville and around missiles
and all that stuff costing billions and billions of dollars. Don't let it over-
awe you, We're operating on a limited budget and with limited numbers of
personnel. We've got a hell of a lot of normal, hard, dirty intelligence work
to do in the Clandestine Services, in our support facilities, and in our intelli-
gence analysis. There's a lot of good hard regular intelligence work to do.
We cannot depend on the exotic means of intelligence collection. We cannot
depend on them in the first place because they're rather fragile, and in the
second place, because that kind of proof of certain things is not adequate.
So we must concentrate on all of those time-proven methods of intelligence
collection and intelligence analysis. And please don't get too sexed up
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by all of this highly exotic stuff. It has got to be a part of the system,
but you can't depend on it entirely.
Also I wouldn't worry too much about what you might think is a freeze
on promotions. All of you are band to get promoted if you live that long.
It's really not as bad as you might have read in the newspaper. We have
got early retirement legislation, as you know. We are urging people to
retire when they reach the statutory age. I don't anticipate any real freeze
or any real slow up in promotions. It may seem slow to you, but don't let
it sweat you. I can remember after World War I there was such a hump In
the military that lieutenants were serving in that grade for 17 years. Fortunately,
along came World War II and in a couple of years they were all generals.
So there is some recompense. I'm not urging that solution for the Agency,
but we'll take care of you one way or another.
As far as I can make out, I've conformed to all instructions of the staff:
I have covered those points that might have given you some trouble. I've
thrown in a few words of my own. I'd be delighted, If you can stand the
frigidity in hereto tackle any questions you might have. I'll answer them.
If I can't answer,
U so confuse the issue that you won't know about it and
then we can slide on to something else. But if there is something bothering
you about the Agency, or about where we go from here, or if you are not
satisfied with the fact that you are now in the end of a Midcareer Training
Course, and that during the next four or five years, your career is going
to be pretty well laid out for you, let's talk about it. Incidentally, your
T11
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career will not be managed necessarily by the "career manglement" people
in your career se ce--there are too many people in the Agency to let you,
in your own self interest,depend on a "carer mangler" to take care of it.
You've got to look into it yourself and you've got to broaden your horizons
every chance you get. You've got to take advantage of every educational
course that comes up that you can got into, and take advantage of every
piece of cross-fertilization. That was a rather unwieldy phrase. In any
event, continue to educate yourself and make darn sure that you are
capitalizing on every opportunity. in the Agency so that when the time comes
for selection for higher leadership, you're there amongst the selectees.
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