IMPROVING THE INTELLIGENCE SYSTEM

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CIA-RDP90-00552R000404030007-5
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RIPPUB
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K
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5
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December 22, 2016
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July 22, 2010
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7
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Publication Date: 
June 1, 1980
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'STAT- Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/22 : CIA-RDP90-00552R000404030007-5 ARTICLE APP ARED FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL ON PAGE JUNE 1980 linproving t Intelligence Syste The Iranian crisis raises anew the issue of US intelligence cap- abilities, or rather the lack of them. The failure of US diplomatic and intelligence reporting to alert the White House and State Department to the strength and dynamism of the Islamic revolutionary move- ment, the inability of the shah's vast panoply of modern armament and repressive police apparatus to contain it, and the likelihood of a violent reaction in Iran to admit- tance of the shah to the United States, are only the latest-miscalcu- lations in the collection and evalua- tion of political intelligence. Whether US political intelligence and reporting is as feeble as both its critics and supporters, for different reasons, say is a matter of debate. What is clear is that the conditions of the next decade would make overhaul of the system imperative in any case. This will not take place so long as the formula for its re- newal includes the same ingre- dients that precipitated the failures of the past. Unfortunately, blind repetition of old policies seems to be the course advocated by the CIA's congressional supporters and the increasingly vocal lobby of retired intelligence professionals. In recent articles, and in congressional tes- timony on the proposed CIA "charter," they put exclusive blame on the post-Watergate, post-Vietnam climate of national guilt and self-exposure, coupled with savage media criticism and crippling legislation, for disas- trously weakening US intelligence capabilities. Their remedy is to re- move lep-islative restrictions and e6 STAT CHARLES MAECHLING, JR. back to the good old days. The current proposals would, if implemented, indeed rebuild the US intelligence system, but not in a way calculated to purge it of its weaknesses and improve its per- formance. Nona -of the pending proposals would terminate the dangerous connection between in- telligence collection and covert operations-a union of missions and a scrambling of techniques so dissimilar and incompatible that uniting them within the same CIA directorate has periodically com- promised the functions of both. Each of them in one way or another perpetuates centralized control by the CIA over the analysis of in- telligence information and the pro- duction of intelligence estimates by a specialized corps of academ- ically-oriented career analysts. Nor would the proposed reforms have any impact on the present self- limiting, security-conscious pattern of intelligence gathering which in the political field excludes or downgrades information from the most crucial sectors of the develop- ing world-labor, youth, in- tellectuals, the press and the work- ing clergy. The debate over the future of the CIA has already been muddied by diversionary currents. Outside the intelligence community public dis- cussion has been monopolized by legislators and lawyers whose prin- cipal focus has been on forging a complex network of restrictions and chains of accountability, a negative approach at best. Within the intelligence community, a lobby of retired professionals has drowned out the voices of the foreign policy makers who actually use the intelligence product. Some of the arguments mask a power struggle over the proper role and power base of the director of cen- tral intelligence-whether or not he should continue also to head the CIA. Throughout, the level of the debate has been degraded by the demagogic tactic of CIA supporters in and out of government in accus- ing critics of seeking to dismantle the whole US intelligence estab- lishment, when in fact the occa- sional target is covert opera- tions-which are not intelligence operations at all! B asic to an effective national se- curity establishment should be a covert operations capability that is separate and distinct from the in- telligence system. Within the CIA this demarcation has always existed in the form of separate di- rectorates of intelligence and oper- ations (formerly plans). But the os- tensible separation applies to in- telligence evaluation and analysis only-secret intelligence collection is the responsibility of the opera- tions directorate, a combination unknown in other western coun- tries. (Great Britain's foreign in- telligence and counter-espionage organizations [MI-6 and MI-5] have never been organizationally linked to clandestine warfare organiza- tions like the special operations executive [SOEJ and the special air services [SAS] unit.) Indeed, much of the.present con- fusion is a legacy of the CIA's war- time origins in - the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), which in the beginning was not so much an intelligence organization as a clan- destine warfare organization re- cruited and trained for paramilitary operations behind enemy lines. What should have been two sepa- rate, small, tightly-controlled and totally separate agencies grew into a single monstrous bureaucracy created in a wartime image and staffed by OSS carryovers, many of whom, whatever their talents as underground fighters, were poorly attuned to peacetime intelligence work, or indeed to civilian life in CAWT2ltrrwfl Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/22 : CIA-RDP90-00552R000404030007-5 general. Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/22 : CIA-RDP90-00552R000404030007-5 ~..~ atuluai uival inuly in is Ur uestaruirzatlon and in Intelligence operations are so proved to be a two-edged sword. creating "factions" favorable to markedly different from covert op- This history of CIA covert opera- their interests in other Greek city erations that the distinction de- tions is an albatross around the states. Louis XIV kept King serves further elaboration. In- neck of every legitimate business Charles II on his payroll, and tried telligence collection is informa- and government enterprise over- to foment internal rebellion in Brit- tion-gathering focused on particu- seas. It is the covert action side of ain on behalf of the exiled Stuart lar operational or policy needs. It the CIA, not the intelligence side, pretenders. During the first phase involves a longterm, laborious, whose highly publicized interven- of the wars against Napoleon, multifacted process of acquiring tions in Cuba, Iran, Guatemala and William Pitt almost bankrupted the facts and data from a wide variety Chile, to name only a few, have so British treasury with overt and of sources and subjecting this dramatized the name of the CIA covert subsidies to the German heterogeneous material to painstak- abroad that its own intelligence op- principalities. A classic example of ing evaluation, cross-checking, and erations have been crippled and US covert action in modern times was analysis. The analytical process is foreign policy in the Third World the despatch of Lenin in a sealed (or ought to be) a compound of sci- train from Switzerland to Russia by entific investigation and art, com- the German general staff in 1918. A bining a multitude of special tech- "Howard Hunt more recent example was the clan- nical and analytical skills with area adjusting his red wig in destine mission sent by Britain and knowledge and a high degree of . the United States to Yugoslavia in empathy with the personal and col- the White House March 1940, which resulted in a lective motivations of others. If de- basement, the rogue fake coup that sent the regent, partments and agencies like state, Prince Paul, into exile and swung commerce, defense and treasury operation conducted by Yugoslavia into a posture of resis- did a satisfactory job of reporting Cuban mercenaries in tance against the transit of Hitler's on foriegn areas it has been esti- forces to attack Greece. mated that only 10 percent or less the Watergate and The differences between tradi- of the information collected from bizarre assassination tional covert action as practiced by open societies, and 20 percent or the European monarchies and the less from closed societies, need schemes were fully to covert operations of the United come from clandestine sources. As be expected." States after World War II are it is, according to 1976 congres- largely one of scale-but that is the sional testimony from the CIA, vital difference! Once escalated to about 30 percent of significant in- exposed to compromise and vilifi- global dimensions and institu- formation comes from clandestine cation. Sooner or later the role of tionalized in a large bureaucracy sources. the United States in supporting a the very term covert. action be- Covert action is utterly different. despotic ruler or overthrowing a le- comes a misnomer. If a secret in- It should not be confused with gally constituted regime either pre- telligence operation is blown, the paramilitary operations like the cipitates a violent reaction or opens cell can be sealed off and a new abortive hostage rescue mission, the United States to perennial start made with only minor damage though sometimes forming part of charges of conspiracy and corrup- to the whole apparatus. A blown them. Its object is to change the tion, in many cases wildly exagger- covert operation may compromise policy of foreign governments, ated. the whole spectrum of foreign rela- perhaps even to influence whole Moreover, entrusting under- tions for an indefinite period. societies. Unlike intelligence ground operations to a bureaucracy By their nature, covert opera- gathering, which is quiet; dis- with a vested interest in "success" tions in peacetime are so tricky, so persed, and equipped with built-in regardless of cost, diminishes per- liable to exposure or backfire, that mechanisms and checking devices sonal responsibility for the to bring them off with even a re- to correct error or repair breaks in methods employed or the character mote chance of long-term secrecy the system, covert action is usually of local allies. The United States requires delicate- handling of the a risky gamble in which victories not only becomes identified with highest order. In earlier times, the may be more apparent than real, foreign secret police forces, but chosen instruments of such opera- and exposure can spell political tarnished with their atrocities. Any tions have been agents uncon- disaster. Even the more benign as- civilized nation that presumes to nected with government, recruited pects of covert action, such as sub- establish collaborative arrange- on the basis of special qualifica- sidizing friendly political parties to ments with the thoroughly vicious tions for that operation alone. The offset political expenditures by the security establishments of certain practice of entrusting politically other side-as in Italy in the late nations of Latin America bears a sensitive secret missions to all- '40s-need to be handled with heavy responsibility for the train of purpose bureaucrats, with no par- maximum discretion or they can be mutilated corpses left in their titular cultural or ethnic affinity counterproductive. wake. with the area involved, 'supervised As practiced in the past, the Nevertheless, covert action has by even more unqualified more sinister aspects of the CIA been part of the arsenal of weapons superiors, is absurd on its face. covert operations-destabilization, of the sovereign state since the The Achilles' heel of all covert bribery of foreign leaders, support days of the Trojan horse. The operations is their personnel. When of foreign secret police organiza- Athenians were adept both in the kept in tight military harness in ~:A*TTTXtTYV Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/22 : CIA-RDP90-00552R000404030007-5 Sanitized Copy Approved for Release wartime their abilities can be turned to good account. Unfortu- nately, dedication to a lifetime of clandestine activity produces a conspiratorial mentality that, if not criminal in nature, is uncom- fortably well-adapted to leading an underground life that is illegal in most foreign countries. What emerges from recent literature, not to mention the personal experience of many Foreign Service officers, is an unacceptably high proportion of covert action operatives who are alcoholic, violent, and inhabitants of a paranoiac dream-world. How- ard Hunt adjusting his red wig in the White House basement, the rogue operation conducted by Cuban mercenaries in the Water- gate and bizarre assassination schemes were fully to be expected. Equally embarrassing have been the revelations of ex-CIA agents about every major covert operation from Iran in 1953 to Angola in 1975. Sensationalized to generate maximum sales appeal, they depict a pack of exuberant amateurs play- ing lethal games along the fringes of US foreign policy. In White House Years (p. 658) Henry Kissinger notes that the na- tional temperament and tradition is unsuited to covert operations. This view may be too pessimistic. Nev- ertheless, a media-saturated con- stitutional democracy like the United States should be wary of in- stitutionalizing a foreign policy tool that is alien to its values, incompat- ible with domestic political condi- tions and, in the long run, more likely to harm the wielder than the adversary. T he problems of the intelligence system proper are quite differ- ent. The claim that recent lapses like the failure of the CIA to predict the collapse of the shah or the takeover of the US embassy in Tehran are attributable to self- destruction of the system in the post-Watergate climate ignores similar failures in the days when CIA effectiveness was supposedly at its peak. In any case the recent wave of CIA dismissals was largely confined to covert action person- nel: the intelligence directorate still has the largest collection of politi- cal and economic analysts in the business-1700 political analysts alone. Moreover, the total US in- telligence capability includes the CIA- R D P90-00552 R000404030007-5 . attache networK of the i)etense in- telligence Agency; the political and economic reporting functions of US embassies and consular posts overseas; the satellite surveillance system; and the code-breaking and telemetering functions of the Na- tional Security Agency-a formid- able collection of assets with a budget of nearly $5 billion and per- sonnel approaching 30,000. In February of 1978, well before the fall of the shah, the White House signified its dissatisfaction with the poor quality of CIA and 'State Department political and in- telligence coverage of the Iranian revolution in a letter from the pres- ident's national security adviser, to the director of central intelligence. In mid-August of 1978, the CIA produced its notorious 23-page as- sessment of Iran that included such sentences as "Iran is not in a revo- lutionary or even pre-revolutionary situation" and "there is dissatisfac- tion with the shah's tight control of the political process, but this does not threaten the government." On November 11, 1978, President Car- ter sent Secretary of State Vance, CIA Director Stansfield Turner, and Brzezinski a three-sentence handwritten memorandum bluntly stating: "I am not satisfied with the quality of political intelligence." The roots of US intelligence weakness are too deeply embedded to be eradicated by cosmetic or- ganizational change. Well-adapted to assessing developments and framing scenarios for the advanced societies of the West, the average American political analyst is ill- prepared to appreciate the self- abnegation and dynamism of non- Western religions and ideologies, not to mention the charisma of primitive political personalities. He is equally ill-equipped to under- stand the private financial motiva- tions that lurk behind public rhetoric the world over. At both ends of the spectrum a wide range of indicators is closed to him. As civil servants with a social science background, the majority of intelligence analysts have a sub- conscious antipathy to the emo- tional and irrational factors that dominate mass movements. As a result they tend to downgrade polit- ical fervor and ideological convic- tion as factors to be reckoned with. Nothing is more pathetic than the perennia- oeiusion or American dip- lomats and intelligence experts that sooner or later in the course of a raging revolution such "rational" goals as political democracy, eco- nomic development and improved living standards will reassert them- selves. Another delusion is that the leaders of mass movements can be brought to heel by attachment of national assets or economic sanc- tions. The empty abstractions that analysts use exemplify their flight from the passions that bring mobs out into the streets. Anodyne terms like "power centers," "repres- sion," "Tafety valves," and "or- chestrated demonstrations" and the fatuous "responsible ele- ments" comfortably insulate both writer and reader from the harsh realities of Third World conditions, including the corruption, brutality and social injustice that fuel revolu- tionary movements. There can be no real knowledge of other societies without some degree of empathy. Neither the policy- making bureaucrat nor the analyst can accept that once a regime tor- tures and kills students and non- violent political activists the rela- tives of the victims will never rest until they have obtained retribu- tion, regardless of the material cost to themselves or their country. The insulated, suburban values of the intelligence specialist extend to his sources. The predisposition of American officals overseas to restrict their social contacts to the local "establishment" is well known. They even confine their journalistic contacts to Americans, despite the foreign language illiteracy and cultural insularity of American media personnel that make them useless as evaluators and give them little entree to inside sources. Intelligence professionals often compound this disability by cultivating only the power struc- ture of the moment and confining their underground contacts to those approved by the security services of the host country. This erects a wall of mistrust between US in- telligence services and the radical and Marxist groups that form the core of political dissidence-and the future leadership-in most of the Third World. The scanty con- tacts of US intelligence with the students and clergy of Iran are now a painful reality. The same holds CDW IRfJ Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/22 : CIA-RDP90-00552R000404030007-5 Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/22 : CIA-RDP90-00552R000404030007-5 C true in South Korea where em- bassy contacts with disaffected students and city dwellers are-min- imal and the strongest official links are with the Korean army. At the other end of the scale the civil service intelligence profes- sional is such an innocent about private financial- motivation that he makes no attempt to penetrate the world of exchange speculation, capital movements, currency transactions, insider stock trading, and contract kickbacks, which are often crucial indicators of political allegiance and impending change. The details of these transactions are not as systematically recorded in foreign countries as they are here but, since business deals cannot be consummated without some form of paperwork, there are always dis- affected sources to reveal them. Intelligence professionals pro- fess to adhere to a cult of scientific objectivity which is supposed to render their cerebrations immune to irrational hunch or diversionary emotion. In fact, most of them are quite unconscious of the extent to which cultural biases distort their reasoning. As authorities like Karl Popper (The Logic of Scientific Discovery) and Thomas Kuhn (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions) repeatedly point out, fields of in- quiry are always structured: the as- sumptions of the investigator in selecting his data and assigning it weight predetermine his conclu- sions. Whenever the intelligence analyst unconsciously allows his cultural biases or the policy prefer- ences of his superiors to exclude or downgrade unpalatable realities, he builds what William James called "a closed and completed system of truth in which "phenomena un- classifiable within the system are . . . . paradoxical absurdities and must be held untrue." Ideally, the US intelligence analyst should feel as remote from his-country's policies as a gnome of Zurich. To be of optimum use to the policy-maker, assessments should be denationalized and value-free, avoiding like the plague the sin of ethnocentrism approach- ing the problem from the. standpoint of US interests and exaggerating the role of one's own nation in its interaction with others. If as an experiment President Car- ter were to scrap for one week the political intelligence served up by the State Department and the CIA in favor of the reports of the inter- national banking community he would obtain a better picture of the prospects for his battered foreign policy than he does today. The worst feature of the present system is the pressure for confor- mity and the absence of any institu- tional means of correcting error. Once "facts" are arranged in symmetrical patterns they become difficult to challenge. The location "To the extent that clandestine sources are relied on, the material should be processed as rapidly as possible since in an age of mass effects most sensitive information usually has the value life of a fruit fly." of a national foreign assessment center within the CIA, and the re- quirement for a consensus on im- portant strategic and political is- sues, stifles dissent, eliminates competition, and makes the esti- mate system a captive of its own weaknesses. During the period 1975-78 the policy of detente put a premium on an optimistic evalua- tion of the US nuclear deterrent and corresponding depreciation of Soviet nuclear capabilities. There was no way for dissenting agency voices to register their alarm over the massive build-up of Soviet strategic missiles except by intro- ducing hedges and qualifiers into the consolidated estimates. Simi- larly, dissenting viewpoints as to the durability of the shah were submerged in qualifiers or rele- gated to footnotes. The lesson of World War II is al- ready forgotten. The insistence of Hitler on centralized analysis and streamlined consensus was the greatest infirmity of an otherwise excellent German intelligence system-in contrast to the decen- tralized, less orderly, structure of the British and American in- telligence services, which pro- duced competing estimates of greater coverage. As General Daniel Graham pointed out in a re- cent symposium, whenever the conventional wisdom of the analysts becomes congealed as of- ficial doctrine, failure is inevitable. W 1~ W hat are the solutions for our intelligence dilemma? The United States cannot retreat from its vital interests, which owing to energy dependency and a network of shaky alliances still extend around the globe in both directions. The president needs a limited covert action capability, and the' government the best political in- telligence it can obtain. New depar- tures will not, however, be easy so long as intelligence is treated as an arcane field for specialists. As a first step, the present covert action organization should be pruned of its older personnel, re- moved from the CIA, and trans- ferred to the executive offices of the president. It should be named the special operations branch of the National Security Council, and gradually reconstituted along dif- ferent lines and under different leadership. Under the new concept, the spe- cial operations branch would be basically a high-level planning staff, housed in the NSC structure because of its proximity to the pres- ident and high-level inter- departmental policy formation, and to keep covert action missions under tight control. Covert opera- ions themselves would no longer be entrusted to a large, autonomous corps of CIA bureaucrats. Except for a small permanent core of specialists, routine political action programs, such as subsidizing foreign organizations Or channeling arms to guerrilla movements, would be entrusted to specially trained personnel seconded from the various departments and agen- cies of the national security estab- lishment-state, defense, CIA, the International Communications Agency, AID, and even treasury. Sensitive, high-level covert mis- sions would henceforth be en- trusted to hand-picked government personnel and civilians. with legiti- mate credentials appropriate for the mission in question. The objective would-be to create a small, highly secret capability to rnr Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/22 : CIA-RDP90-00552R000404030007-5 Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/22 execute a limited range of missions not overtly performable by any other part of the national security establishment. A' covert action of- fice of this kind would, by its secret and high-level character, be more responsible and self-limiting than the present massive, though com- partmentalized, bureaucracy. As-! signments would be entrusted to! qualified persons with well- established covers, not to a corps; of easily-identified, multi-purpose; clandestine operations. Because of their reliance on non-government personnel, the projects of the spe- cial operations branch would have to be kept under the strictest sec- recy. Project clearances and re- ports should be restricted to two congressional committees, with se- vere legal penalties prescribed for unauthorized disclosure. There should be no repetition of the in- credible public exposure of the methods, equipment and use of local agents that emanated from Pentagon briefings immediately after the Iranian rescue debacle. Improvement in the coverage and product of the US intelligence system would require quite a dif-' ferent approach. The ideal solu- tion-admittedly not achievable- would be to take the bureaucratic components responsible for politi- cal and economic estimates out of the system completely and unite' them in a new and completely auton- omous organization, staffed by a diversified, international corps of political and economic specialists, charged with preparing reports and estimates for the national security establishment similar to what The Economist Intelligence Unit, or the Petroleum Intelligence Weekly, furnishes to private subscribers. A more achievable goal would be gradually to contract and diversify the intelligence side of CIA, by rotating personnel-bringing more in from the field, giving two four- year assignments to area specialists from other agencies and univer- sities under the Intergovernmental Personnel Act, and recruiting from CIA- R D P90-00552 R000404030007-5 a broader spectrum of business''; journalism and the professions than is now the case. In the case of esti- mates involving remote areas and unfamiliar non-western cultures, the analytical process should be farmed out to business or academic specialists, or at least subjected to a rigorous critique by such specialists before taking final form. On crucial. questions, other de- partments and agencies with exper- tise or special insights should be encouraged to submit competing estimates or given the opportunity to file informed and well-sub- stantiated dissents. The collection process should be broadened. All countries should be regarded as being in a permanent state of societal evolution. Their social, economic and political structures, as well as the forces op- posed to them, should be viewed in a detached and impersonal way as transitory phenomena. Contact should be made with levels of the private business and financial sec- tors not heretofore systematically covered. An even greater effort should be made to develop sympa- thetic contacts in youth and student circles, and with dissident groups. There should be no hesitation about obtaining information from any source, domestic or foreign. To the extent that clandestine sources are relied on, the material should be processed as rapidly as possible since in an age of mass effects most sensitive information usually has the value life of a fruit fly. Classifi- cation of political and economic in- telligence should be corre- spondingly downgraded for rapid handling. In the analytical process, the ob- jective would be to transform in- telligence estimates into products that the policy-maker can actually use, instead of being scanned for trends and then discarded. Lan- guage and syntax should be pruned of jargon and abstractions. Esti- mates should be oriented to foreign actions and capabilities, not speculative intangibles, and sub- stantiated by supporting evidence. Neatly packaged conclusions aimed at giving the policy-maker a comfortable sense of control over events should be avoided. Above art, estimates should keep events in their proper cultural and historical perspective, free alike from policy bias and the hysteria of the mo- ment. One other organizational change should be considered. If the direc- tor of central intelligence were lib- erated from his dual role as head of the CIA, and moved to the White House as supreme chief of all in- telligence activities, it would have the beneficial effect of giving the State Department's bureau of in- telligence and research, and the Defense Intelligence Agency equal bureaucratic status with the CIA, thereby enhancing diversity of ap- proach, and stimulating competi- tion in the preparation of estimates. Of itself, this would not work any fundamental change in the mind-set of intelligence professionals, but might at least free the system from the straitjacket of consensus. As regards the recent debate in Congress over the CIA "charter" the emphasis has been misplaced. Clearly, the Hughes-Ryan amend- ment should be repealed and con- gressional oversight of covert op- erations limited to two committees. But the objective should be to as- sure presidential accountability, not more agency accountability to Congress. The law should require prior disclosure of the full details of prospective covert operations to the president, and disclosure to Congress made under controlled conditions well after the fact. It should be made statutorily impos- sible for the chief executive or na- tional security adviser to escape re- sponsibility for the consequences of their blunders by pleading ignor- ance of the details of covert opera- tions that backfire. Beyond this there is little that or- ganizational change or legislation can do. There is no way of mandat- ing improved performance or better judgment by enacting laws or draft- ing regulations. Any more congres- sional oversight would only multi- ply the chances of ignorant or malicious interference in a sorely beset system whose ills are internal and not susceptible to legislative remedy. The responsibility is the president's and he should not be permitted to evade' it. -~ , Charles Atoechlin5'. Jr., a Washington I lawyer, was director for internal defense and staff director al' the special croup (counter-insurgency) in the Kennedy and Johnson adrninistratiorrs. Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/22 : CIA-RDP90-00552R000404030007-5