IT S TIME TO CLOSE INTELLIGENCE GAP

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00901R000500230016-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 14, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 30, 2000
• Sequence Number: 16
• Publication Date: January 8, 1986
• Content Type: NSPR

AR[ev
ON PAGE
elease 2003/04/02: CIA-RDP95 Wd bo
WASHINGTON TIMES
8 January 1986
It's time to close
intelligence gap
Near the top of the advance list of issues for the
1988 presidential campaign will be "intelligence
and counterintelligence failures".
Or, to put it more politely, the listing might be
called "how to improve United States intelligence
and counterintelligence measures:'
Foreign spies had a banner year, at our expense,
in 1985. Names like Pollard, Walker and Chin were
grim reminders of a counterintelligence effort in
disarray.
Vitaly Yurchenko, The Spy Who Came in From
Fredericksburg, raised a lot of questions about se-
curity and handling of defectors when he walked
out of a Georgetown restaurant without finishing
his after-dinner coffee.
allan E. Goodman, associate dean of the School
of Foreign Service at Georgetown University says
appeared in the Winter 1984-85 issue of Foreign
Policy magazine.
The article ruffled so many feathers at the CIA
Seci A enc the military service an s ecial
collection offices in t e enta on the State De-
partment s Bureau of Intelligence and Research
t e easur _ epartment's O ice o ~ntelli ence
Su oft a FBT an a bureau o t e e~5 artme t
of Energy) as ee_n serious y questions for some
time.
"There have been at least 30 alleged intelligence
failures investigated by Congress or by the press
since 1960;' Mr. Goodman wrote in an article "Date-
line Langley: Fixing The Intelligence Mess," which
Evidence suggests that the situation has wors-
ened, rather than improved, over the past year.
As early as 1981, the Reagan administration
knew it had intelligence problems. The dis_ap-
Qointment was and r ' Aim. Bobby Inmana
senior career military intelligence offer and
e u irector o centra mte li ence
w to several forums that th telli ence
community was at its lowest level since Pearl Har-
bor.
lence o re u severs o t e a e a ions.
After the bombing of the US. Embassy in Beirut,
President Reagan talked about the "near de-
struction of our intelligence capability." Spokesman
Larry Speakes said the situation was due to "a
decade-long trend of a climate in Congress that re
suited in inadequate funding and support for intel-
ligence gathering capabilities:'
Such criticism and demands for soul-searching
should be taken seriously by intelligence and for-
eign policy professionals, even though it may be ob-
vious that some of the criticism is highly politi-
cized.
Many of our best intelligence specialists and
spies have left the profession mumbling that the
community has become too fragmented and lacking
in central coordination.
Soviet behavior and capabilities - the priority
target in the intelligence field - have frequently
been misjudged by American intelligence. The U.S.
was in error on the Soviet threat to American U-2
reconnaissance flights in 1960, did not predict So
viet Premier Nikita Khrushchev's placing of offen-
sive missiles in Cuba in 1962, missed on naming
Leonid Brezhnev and Yuri Andropov as successsors
to Mr. Khrushchev and misjudged the level of So-
viet defense spending.
Military failures included the North Korean inva-
sion of South Korea in 1950, the risk to the USS
Liberty of Israeli air attack if the ship continued
surveillance during the Arab-Israeli war of 1967,
the risk to the USS Pueblo of its spy mission off the
North Korean coast, the Argentine seizure of the
Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas) and others.
The press sniffs out the failures of the intelli-
gence community and is less likely to pounce on the
successes. But there is enough noise being made on
the politicizing of the community and of the need
for more centralization that corrective measures
should be taken now rather than waiting for the
next big failure to predict a military attack or for
the next Yurchenko to walk away before finishing
his coffee.
Approved For Release 2003/04/02 : CIA-RDP91-00901 R000500230016-4