FORMER NSA CHIEF INMAN: 'WE'RE FAR SHORT OF SKILLS'

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00806R000100140038-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 2, 2010
• Sequence Number: 38
• Publication Date: October 29, 1982
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/09/08: CIA-RDP90-00806R000100140038-4
ARTICLE
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THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
29 October 1982
Former NSA chief Inman:
`We're far short of skills'
Washington
In a speech to the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO)
last Oct. 4, Adm. Bobby R. Inman, the former deputy director of the
Central Intelligence Agency, lamented that the United States is not the
world leader in intelligence gathering.
"We have some good organizations doing first class work," said Admi-
ral Inman. "But for over 14 years, we drew down the size and cut back on
the spending power.
"The education system failed to produce the people with the skills and STAT
the ability of linguists in area studies that would quickly give us the surge
to deal with a whole range of burgeoning problems in the outside world,"
said the man who has long been regarded as one of America's most highly
qualified intelligence officers.
"We did take advantage of new technology," the youthful-looking
Inman told the former intelligence officers at their meeting in McLean,
Va. "We're probably better at some things with regard to our principal
adversary (the Soviet Union) than we've ever been before. But in a trou-
bled outside world, we're far short of the skills and trained manpower,
that we're going to need for the coming decade...." - ,
Inman declared that the Soviet Union was undergoing a leadership
change and that the US knows far less than it should about those who are
likely to rise to power in Moscow. He said that the Soviet-ability to project
air and naval power around the world had increased markedly and that
this added a further element of worry.
The new leaders, the admiral said, "may be as{cautious as their
predecessors." -
'But one must face the bleak fact that there is at least as much pros-
pect that they will be more arrogant, without the same memories of the
Germans on the banks of the Volga and [at] Leningrad - and more in-
clined to use that unparalleled power in ways inimical to the vital inter
ests of this country..' _
In a Monitor interview, Inman added that, looking back, be realized a
failing in US intelligence's analysis of the Soviet leadership. The error, be
said, was in trying to divide those leaders-along the lines that resemble
American "hawks" and "doves:" -
- Inn n, who once beaded the supersecret National Security Agency,-
the largest of the American intelligency agencies, said in his speech that
the administration had put together a long-range plan that will add "sub-
stantial people and substantial dollars" to the intelligence agencies. But .
be added that sustaining support for that plan "is not going to be easy."
Inman announced at the AFIO meeting that he was resigning as a
volunteer consultant to the Permanent Committee on Intelligence in the
House of Representatives. His resignation was sparked by a report which
one of its subcommittee chairmen. Rep. Charles Rose (D) of North Caro- i
lira. issued last month raising the possibility that high-level intelligence
officers had done some political tinkering with intelligence reporting on
Central America to make it fit Reagan administration preconceptions.
Inman said that the subcommittee report had been issued on a partisan
basis. The subcommittee's ranking minority member, C. W. Bill Young,
a Republican from Florida, called it a "self-sen ing report" which could
be shown to be biased.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/09/08: CIA-RDP90-00806R000100140038-4