BOOKS OF THE TIMES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000504490011-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 23, 2012
• Sequence Number: 11
• Publication Date: June 13, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/23: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504490011-1
A'ryrR,
I'M
Uis 2 Al
YORK TINTS
13 June 1985
Books of The Times
By Charles Mohr
SECRECY AND DEMOCRACY: The CIA two employees clearly involved in an
in Transition. By Stanfield Turner. 304 improper association-with a renegade
pages. Houghton Mifflin. $16.95 retiree named Edwin P. Wilson, who
is now serving more than 50 years in
ORE than one Congress-
man has described the
gence but failures in interpretation
and analysis of the data gathered. Of
the political tremors that toppled the
Shah of Iran in 1978, hi- notes that
"most of the evidence about what was
going to happen was available right
on the surface" and that traditional
Central Intelligence tors and six other people. espionage methods have not been use-
Agency as a "rogue ele- This book is not rich in cloak-and- ful in forecasting long-range political
phant." The institution that Adm. dagger anecdote (possibly in part be- trends.
Stansfield Turner found when he was cause of more than 100 C.I.A. dele- He also pushed for traditional "ob-
appointed Director of Central Intelli- tions that the author calls arbitrary jectivity" in intelligence, arguing
gence in 1977 more nearly resembled for "ridiculous"). But it is a valuable that it must provide real analysis, not
a somewhat geriatric Missouri mule. primer for a large majority of the "ammunition" for policy makers
Although "the agency" has always ,public in the actual art of intelligence determined on a fixed policy. .
contained perhaps the most impres- land, even more important, in basic It is somewhat poignant to consider
sive concentration of intellectual tal- principles and problems of reconcil- how emphemeral his subtitle describ-
ent in the Federal Government and ling what has often been called a ing an institution in "transition" to a
has done perhaps the best, most hon- "'dirty, back alley war" with constitu- new generation of pros proved to be.
est thinking in many diverse fields, it tional government and American Admiral Turner was replaced by an
has been a bit like the late Mayor La political pluralism. The book is wiser O.S.S. veteran and covert action en-
Guardia in that its mistakes tended to than it is entertaining. thusiast, William Casey, who has re-
be "lulus." Unlike a school of troglodyte cheer- sisted Congressional oversight and
But Admiral Turner found a C.I.A. leaders anxious to "unleash" espio- has acted as a policy advocate. He is
in which 30 percent of officers in the nage and covert action operators, Ad- a man who in one speech described
dominant espionage branch were 50 miral Turner, firstly, recognized that the well-documented abuses of the
or more years old, crowding the agen- the task of subjecting the C.I.A. to. past as "mostly false." The admiral
cy's early retirement age. The lead- Congressional control was not impos- says it is Mr. Casey's remark that is
ership cadre had been recruited from sible. He argues convincingly that false and dangerous.
the World War II Office of Strategic years of unsupervised freedom re-
Services or in the early 1950's and was quired that, agency officials always
near the end of its service. demonstrate perfect judgment on the
He found that "the covert action feasibility as well as the politcal ac-
cupboard was almost bare." Al- ceptability of their plans - some-
though Congress was clamoring for thing which, of course, they could no,
greater powers of oversight, the achieve. The relatively mild over-
C.I.A. itself had gone into a state of sight imposed by the Congressional
shock when abuses of 20 years of un- select committees on intelligence not
supervised actions had come to public only created accountability but
light, and' it had become so cautious spread it more widely, permitting, in
that it had nearly handcuffed itself. fact, greater freedom of action.
?
He also found a "tweedy," if intel-
impressive, analysis branch
lectually
that had little prestige, tended to
work on old, familiar problems and
had little "marketing" ability to
make its output appetizing to policy
makers.
On the positive side, he found a
relatively new and vastly impressive
capability to gather "technical intel-
ligence" of astonishing accuracy and
detail through satellites and sensors.
But, even: here, many in the espio-
nage branch were suspicious of this
prison sentences for conspiring to
smuggle weapons to Libya and to
Admiral Turner also takes an unro-
mantic, . but sound view of covert
operations (supposedly deniable
propaganda, political or military
operations abroad). Of his politically
macho, but administratively untem-
pered colleague, National Security
Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, he says
that the White House adviser "held
unrealistic expectations of what could
be achieved by covert action." Like
more orthodox military operations,
spooky high jinks must match goals
with capabilities; it is fatal to confuse
the allure of a goal with the means or
asset
a
When President Carter asked to see lack of means to reach it - a point
"overhead" photography of a minor worth pondering in the current furor
war in the Third World, it took a balky over the Contra operation against
bureaucracy weeks to comply, and Nicaragua. Unlike some idealists, the
Admiral Turner notes with exaspera- admiral sees a role for covert opera-
tion that, while he was nominally the tions but advocates a few shots well-
chief of debatably the best intelli- placed on reachable targets.
gence machine in the world, he could Admiral Turner also makes the
not get pictures of a "Mickey Mouse overwhelmingly important, but often
war." Even more serious, he found overlooked point that most of the real
that he had little influence on person- "intelligence failures" in recent
nel decisions; that "nut one" senior United States history have not been
officer agreed with his decision to fire failures in the collection of intelli-
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/23: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504490011-1