PROFESSOR OF OPERATIONS (BY CHIEF, SOUTHEAST EUROPE DIVISION, DD/P)

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP78-03087A000100030101-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 6
• Document Creation Date: December 12, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 1, 2002
• Sequence Number: 101
• Content Type: REPORT

Approved For Rise 2002/06/05 : CIA-RDP78-03087A.00030101 9
S-F-C-R-E-T
PROFESSOR OF OPERATIONS
(by Chief, _Say.t.hea.st Europe Division, DD/P)
Coming back into the Clandestine Services after a tour in the Office
of Training, I find there are still widespread misconceptions about the
value of such a tour for the professional DD/P man. Lshared some of
those misconceptions when I rather grudgingly accepted an assignmPnt to
OTR in April 1953, but have had over the next thirty months in OTR and
nine months back in the Clandestine Services an excellent chance to test
them against the facts. Here, then, are some first-hand observations for
those of my colleagues who still feel like Shakespeare's
. schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school.
.Let me put the old stereotyped prejudices in blunt language:.
A.. Training isn't vary important -- it's experience that counts. As.
.s.00rollary, assignment to. OTh. is a form of exile -or at best a
detour.
2* Training is so far out of the Main stream of events that you'll
stagnate in a backwater of dreary routine.
3. If.you ever get into Training you'll never get out.
4. Those who can, do; those who can't, teach.
Every one of those notions is false. Let's demolish them one by one.
1* :Certainly the importance of Training to the outfit was not recog-
? nized during our first several years. Outside pressures, which
reached their climax when Korea made World War III seem imminent,
impelled Us to a frantic haste altogether incommensurate with the
? difficulty and importance of the job to e done. We recruited too
fast, we sent peoplo.out too fast, we skimped Training wherever
? possible and in literally hundreds of cases omitted it entirely,
All in the name of national emergency. It's easy and not very
profitable in these somewhat quieter times to criticize the mis-
takes we made in those days; but at least wedare not forget that
S-E-C-R-E-T
44 8
Approved For Release 2002/06/05 : CIA-RDP78-03087A000100030101-9
ILLEGIB
25X1A
Approved For Release 2002/06/05 : CIA-RDP78-03087 0Q0100030101-9
?
S-E-C-R-E-T
many of our most grievous blunders were the direct and inescapable
results of lack of training. Hen did get that valuable experience
that was snpposed to be so much more urgent than training, but at
great (and I for one feel unjustifiable) cott. The classic state-
ment of the importance of training to CIA, signalling the end Of
an era, appears in the Jackson Committee's report to the President
in mid-1953:
"The greatest limitation of effective covert activity is the
shortage of skilled personnel. Although the total personnel
strength of CIA is probably adequate, only a small part of
it is as yet qualified to plan and carry out covert operations
effectively and securely. The Committee recommends that for
the immediate future CIA give higher priority to training,
development of improved operating principles, and expansion of
its pool of qualified operators. In making this recommenda-
tion the Committee recognized that such a policy might reduce
CIA's current capabilities. It would mean, however, that with-
in two or three years its capabilities for secure and effective
operations should be greatly enhanced."
No one ever tried very hard to refute those conclusions, because
by 1953 they were pretty well self-evident, and in fact we've made
a good deal of progress since then on all fronts. Some of the
signs of increased recognition of training have been the quotas
imposed throughout the outfit for minimum enrollment in OTR courses,
the extension of the basic DD/P operations training from ten weeks
to sixteen, and especially this statement of DD/P policy in
1 ("Tours of Intelligence Officers as Instructors
1
in the Office of Training"):
"Clandestine Services policy recognizes the rotation of quali-
fied CS Operations officers into instructional assignments in
the Office of Training as valuable both to the individuals and
to the organization. The individual acquires broadened skills,
a wider knowledge of the problems and workings of the Agency,
and in many cases new opportunities for interesting operational
assignments in the future. The Agency profits by passing on
the experience of veterans to its newcomers in training which
has steadily improved over the years.
"A tour as instructor in the Office of Training ordinarily
lasts 30 months. No change of career designation is involved,
unless the individual particularly desires it, and rotation
back into the Clandestine Services at the end of the 30 months
S-EaC-R-E-T
44 b
Approved For Release 2002/06/05 : CIA-RDP78-03087A000100030101-9
25X1
25X1C
Approved For Rose 2002/06/05 : CIA-RDP78-030871.100030101-9
S-E-C-R-E-T
is effected as easily. as any rotation within the Clandestine
Services. Consideration for future operational assignments
is not only not diminished by a. tour in the-Office,of Train-
ing lou+, in many eases is actually enYanced."
2. The old backwater argument was what worried me most When I went
into OTR,' But what happened was that I learned far more about the
outfit as a whole, how the parts fit together and why, than I ever
had in eight years in a single area division with the same old com-
plex, but after all fairly paroebialp problems. I made first-hand
acquaintance with DD/P concerns in the Par East, in Latin America,
and other parts of the world outside my previous narrow area special-
ization. HY knowledge of a wide variety of operations, and of the
people who run them, increased greatly. Much of this came about
because I happened to be deputy director of Training, but the in-
structors similarly have been broadened by wide contacts. They rub
elbows With fellow-case-officers-turned-instructors from all over
the world, and get a much more comprehensive sense of the accumu-
lated experience of the Agency than they ever got in X Branch or Y
Station.
And the present method of instruction has also contributed to that
broadening. Those who took operations courses five or six years
ago will remember the artificial flavoring of the cases discussed
and the problems worked out. In the few instances where genuine
cases were used, they were sterilized to the point of being dull
and nearly meaningless: The locale would be changed from
to or some other improbable spot, and most of the meaty
an significant details left out. But for several years now, OTR
has been able to use real cases with as much accurate detail as
there is time to cram in, and with so little sterilization that
both instructors and students know they are acquiring the real
stuff of Agency experience. The result for one instructor after
another has been acquiring new skills and knowledge in OTR that
fitted them for new types of assignments or new areas or both.
Some instructors, by being assigned to covert agent training, have
actually had more experience in handling agents than in any pre-
vious DD/P assignment, and nearly all get wide experience in deal-
ing with people in general.
3. It used to be true, because of the general reluctance to accept an
assignment in OTR, that if you once got in you'd have a hard time
getting out; nobody would come forward te replace you. But for a
couple of years now the rule quoted in the labove has
been working to the advantage of the individual. Any man from DD/P
is eligible to rotate back into DD/P after thirty months, which is
S-E-C-R-E-T
41c
Approved For Release 2002/06/05 : CIA-RDP78-03087A000100030101-9
25X1C
25X1
Approved For Release 2002/06/05 : CIA-RDP78-03087A000100030101-9
411 . ?
S-E-C-R-E-T-
about the same length of time you'd spend preparing for and then
fulfilling any other tour. In a number of cases, by agreement be-
? tween OTR ad DD/P when particularly pressing needs arise, the
tour doesn't even last the thirty months. Living up to this
rotation rule hes often imposed a severe strain on OTR, but I know
of no case in the last three years where a man's importance to OTR
? has kept him from accepting a desirable appointment in the Clandes-
tine Services. In fact OTR has also rotated to DD/P many men who
never came from there in the first place -- men hired and trained
as instructors by OTR, with the TR career service designation --
because the DD/P experience will make them better instructors when
they return to their own home base, but also because the DD/P has
been keen to get them even if only for a tour or two.
4. Ile.ma who aln, dq. In the days of our most rapid expansion, when
only a handful could be spared from DD/P to conduct training, OTR
had to hire a good many instructors almost off the streets: no
previous experience in CIA, no experience in any field quite like
CIA operations. You'd think such men would be poorly prepared to
? teach our business, and equally poorly prepared for rotation into
responsible jobs in the field. Maybe they were, at first, but by
the time the rotation rule got going these men had taken on a
breadth of knowledge that made them highly desirable, and in sev-
eral cases there has been a real free-for-all competition for them.
(Note, by the way, that a good instructor during one tour makes an
Impression on some hundreds of his colleagues, some of whom because
of lack of training in the early days come to OTR as students after
they are already fairly high in the hierarchy. I remember, with-
out rancor, a division chief taking the Operations course several
years ago, and putting what he had learned about recruitment to
such food use that he recruited one of the instructors on the
spot.) One such instructor without previous DD/P experience had
five overseas jobs to choose from when he was ready to rotate; a
number of others have had three or four good offers overseas or
in headquarters. The man who developed the war plans course now
has an excellent assignment in that field overseas. In the early
PM days, OTR hired many specialists to teach students who for the
most part didn't show up; then when some of the big PM jobs devel-
oped it was the instructors who were best qualified to do them,
and as a result they are now scattered all over the world. Other
instructors new to DD/P have become deputy chiefs of branches in
two area divieions, and have joined the F1, PP, and CI staffs.
As for those who had previous DD/P experience, let me give you
some case histories, to show you the types of jobs they were
wanted for after a tour in OTR:
S-E-C-R-E-T
Itlfd
Approved For Release 2002/06/05 : CIA-RDP78-03087A000100030101-9
Approved For Rose 2002806403-11CAVDP78-03087A110100030101-9
a. Chief of an overseas base -4 chief instructor in an OTR course
-0 chief of station. (Two cases of this. Both, incidentally,
shared the old prejudice and thought their assignment in OTR
had been engineered by some enemy. Bnt one of them told ma
three months after his arrival, and again when he was yanked
out lead than two years later to become a station chief, that
the chance he got in OTR to stand back and see Clandestine Ser-
vices work in perspective, to study new ways of going about it,
to put his ideas into orderly shape and test them against the
experience of others, was the best thing that had happened to
him in the outfit. He spoke as a dedicated DD/P man, who ex-
pects to spend the rest of his life in DD/P operations.)
b. Case officer overseas -* operations instructor in OTR -* sec-
tion chief overseas -* chief of a large area branch.
c. Branch desk officer (female) -* instructor -4>a senior admin-
istrative officer in a large station.
d. Chief of a small base -* instructor developing a new course
senior research analyst on a big project in a new field. One
of several who discovered in OTR a new activity that fitted
their abilities and inclinations better than the old.
e. Senior DD/P job 4 senior OTR job chief of a large station.
f. One-man station -- instructor in the Operations course -- three
firm offers. I don't know which one he took, but he turned
down the job of deputy chief ofa large branch.
All those .I've alluded to above are among the many men and woman
who have rotated from OTR to DD/P in the last three years. So far
as I have been able to follow their careers I know they have been
doing well in the Clandestine Services. Not even the promotions
they won in OTR have damaged their chances of rotation, though I
used to worry about that; out of dozens of eases, I know of only
two who had to take a one-grade cut to get the DD/P jobs they
wanted) and one of those got his old grade back within six months
because of his outstanding performance in the new job.
The senior officers of the Regular Army who led us in World War II
had in many cases spent much more than half their careers as either
students cr instructors. Mast of them entered the war without ever
having heard that famous shot fired in anger; certainly they had
not led large troop units under fire. Instead, they been instruc-
tors at the Commend and General Staff School or Benning or Sill or
? S-E-C-R-E-T
.44 e
Approved For Release 2002/06/05 : CIA-RDP78-03087A000100030101-9
Approved For Ilse 2002/06/05 : CIA-RDP78-03087,100030101-9
S-E-C-R-E-T
Knox. They knew, and their careers proved, the pointlessness of
the Old canard, "those who can't, teach." It was precisely those
who in the Thirties were good enough to be appointed instructors
at Leavenworth who in the Forties were good enough to deserve all
those stars.*
Now we in the Agency have our own Fort Leavenworth - Henning - Knox,
and we also have an advantage over the armed services in that we don't have
to wait for a hot war to get first-hand experience. But even so, we're all
in training all the time for harder jobs to come, and we'd do well to recog-
nize, as the armed forces do, that the instructor's job is a central point
for service that improves the whole Agency's effort. And to recognize too,
not entirely incidentally, the rewards and opportunities open to the men
and women who are lucky enough to perform that service.
I heartily commend to you Connand Liaaiena by General Lucian K, Truscott,
.Jr., as one of the best books on the war but especially as a remarkable
demonstration of how long training, teaching,- and fire-tested experience
combined to develop outstanding battle leadership. This great combat
Tcomrander entered the war entirely without combat experience. In 1940
he was a cavalry major who had spent twelve of the preceding fifteen
years in schools -- four as student, eight as instructor in the Cavalry
and Command and General Staff Schools. But only five years later he was
?a lieutenant. general in command of an army, and later got his fourth
star. Amohg the junior-officer instructors at Leavenworth with Truscott
were (to give their later ranks): General Wade H. Haislip, General John
E. Hull, Lt. General Manton S. Eddy, Lt. General William K. Harrison, Jr.,
Lt. General Frank W. Yilburn, Lt. General Lewis H. Brereton, and Lt.
General George E. Stratemver. Eight instructors, twenty-seven stars.
Almost without exception the other instructors serving with them rose
to command at least a division. And other Army schools added to the
list: For example the founder and first instructor of the Armored
School.was a Captain George S. Patton, Jr. Such men were appointed
instructors because they were.fine soldiers, then they built on their
training experience to become outstanding.
S-E-C-R-E-T
44 f
Approved For Release 2002/06/05 : CIA-RDP78-03087A000100030101-9