THE CIA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP99-00498R000200150002-5
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 22, 2007
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: January 18, 1978
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Approved For Release 2007/03/22 : CIA- RDP99-00498 R000200150002-5
X10 TV REPORTS, INC.
The Today Show
WRC TV
NBC Network
January 18, 1978 7:00 AM
Washington, D. C.
TOM BROKAW: America's Central Intelligence Agency, or
the Company, as it's known to insiders, has been under assault
for the past couple of years, both for its organization and for
some abuses that the CIA has engaged in here, as well as abroad.
Recently, a number of people were let go from the CIA, and
there have been stories that a lot of people who are left there
are not happy with the current operation under the direction of
Admiral Stansfield Turner.
Wel I , Ford Rowan, who covers that agency for NBC News,
recently was able to get inside and to get an evaluation of
how the CIA is standing up under all of this criticism. He's
in our Washington News Center this morning. And Ford, why don't
you bring us up to date.
FORD ROWAN: Good morning, Tom.
C I A Director Stans f i e l d Turner says he wants a C I A
that's lean and mean. Some eight hundred and twenty positions
in the clandestine service are being cut.
To find out if morale has really been hurt, we talked
to some people inside the CIA and some people who used to be
inside the CIA.
These are not three CIA spies on a covert mission. But
they do work for the CIA. They're commuters who have found that
the shortest distance between their homes and the agency's Langley,
Virginia headquarters is across the Potomac River. We show you
t h i s unique way of commuting because we found that the C I A i s
full of unique people.
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There are a lot of fascinating jobs at the CIA. But
soon there w 1 1 1 be fewer of them. And that's one reason for
a l l of the turmoil at the agency. I t used to be said that the
CIA was a good place to work. That was before the news stories
about domestic spying, drug experiments and assassination plots,
before the "Halloween massacre." That's the name CIA employees
are calling the mass firings of clandestine officers announced on
October 31st.
Most of these people once worked for the CIA. This is
a meeting of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers,
a group which was formed in 1975 to defend the CIA against its
critics. Now it is doing the criticizing.
MAN: The designation of some twenty-five percent of
the individuals to be eliminated has quite obviously generated
morale problems of considerable magnitude.
ROWAN: But a current official in an interview arranged
by the CIA, defended the cuts.
MAN: Change. People fear change more than anything in
the world. And this is a significant change, and it's an or-
ganizational change, and it's going to affect the way people
think and the way people feel.
But we think in making these changes that we're doing
what we have to.
JOHN MAURI: I'm sure they're being jeopardized.
ROWAN: John Mauri is a former CIA officer who once served
as an Assistant Secretary of Defense.
MAURI: The institution is bound to grind down to a pretty
slow pace, because people are worried about their jobs, they don't
wnat to take initiative, they don't want to show imagination, they
don't want to take chances. -Everybody's running scared, and, in
the intelligence business, why, you can't afford to have a lot
of timid fellows there, because it's not a game for timid fellows.
ROWAN: These CIA employees are not practicing for some
covert mission. This is a hobby they practice after hours in
the hallways of the CIA complex.
Some people are worried that some of the CIA's methods
of operating could become as obsolete as this Medieval form of
combat. That's the real controversy. Do the cuts in the clan-
destine service mean big changes in the way the spy agency
operates.
These CIA employees are analysts. The changes may
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benefit them. There seems to be a shift in emphasis to analysis
and away from the clandestine forms of espionage, paramilitary
activity and covert action.
This is a U-2 camera. The CIA utilizes photographs
from spy planes and satellites. So technical means seem to
be replacing the clandestine use of human spies.
Director Stansfield Turner was asked about CIA operations
last year.
DIRECTOR STANSFIELD TURNER: The amount of covert action
has reduced very remarkably over the past dozen years or so. And
my feeling is that this is an exceptional circumstance that we
would use covert action in. But I feel very strongly at the
same time that we must maintain that capabililty for the kind
of unusual circumstance that may arise.
ROWAN: Work goes on Inside the CIA, but the firings
and changes have hurt morale so much that the White House has
decided on some management changes. Ambassador Frank Carlucci,
a hard-nosed administrator, has been chosen by the White House
as Deputy Director to run the day-to-day operations of the agency.
There were a lot of things the CIA would not let us
see. They did let us photograph a touch football game played
by teams in the CIA league. But even here the secrecy prevailed.
When the'cameras appeared, several players hid in the bushes. The
quarterback wore a mask. At the CIA, it's hard to see behind the
mask.
It's a time of great uncertainty inside the CIA.
BROKAW: Ford, what about the White House role in all
of this reorganization? Do you have a strong feeling that this
is all being done at the direction of President Carter?
ROWAN: Well, Tom, the CIA says that the cuts were made
by Admiral Turner and were not ordered by the President or Vice
President Mondale, or any member of his staff. However, it seems
that Turner's acting in consonance with the White House wishes.
I think there is a change in the way the CIA operates, although
Admiral Turner tends to downplay any significance in terms of
the role of the CIA to be seen in these cuts.
BROKAW: Any recruiting problems for the CIA these
days?
ROWAN: Well, the agency says it's continuing to have
lots of applicants. It had thirty-seven thousand applicants last
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year for twelve hundred positions. Of these, ninety-three percent
had college degrees and thirty-seven percent had advanced degrees.,,,,,.
BROKAW: Ford Rowan, thank you very much.