REDUCING THE SIZE OF THE AGENCY STAFF

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80-01826R000800090015-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 10
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 29, 2002
• Sequence Number: 15
• Publication Date: January 22, 1959
• Content Type: MF

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T*W
DRAFT
22 January 1959
MEMORANDUM FOR: Director of Central Intelligence
FROM: CIA Career Council
SUBJECT: Reducing the Size of the Agency Staff
1. This memorandum contains recommendations submitted for Director of
Central Intelligence approval. Such recommendations are contained in
paragraph 5.
2. This paper is concerned witb.the reduction of the size of the Agency
from the personnel management point of view. The various decisions made with
regard to the size and composition of the operating units of the Agency will
ultimately be translated into staffing authorizations of the Agency's Career
Services. Once these Career Service staffing authorizations are firmed up,
it will be possible to take the following steps in terms of personnel
planning:
a. Determine the numbers of persons by grade and specialty to be
recruited in order to maintain essential operations and to continue
the recruiting of Junior Officer Trainees.
b. Establish new promotion rates for each Career Service taking
into account such reductions in the size of the Career Services as
have been decided upon.
c. Determine the number of separations by Career Service and by
grade required to bring down to strength those Career Services
which must be reduced.
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d. Subtract from the number of separations established for each Career
Service those separations which may be expected to take place as a
result of voluntary resignation or retirement, mandatory retirement,
illness and death. (Obviously the reliability of our figures in
these fields, as applied to the various Career Services, will
differ from case to case.) The resultant figure will be the number
of persons by Career Service and grade to be separated at the insti-
gation of the Agency.
3. From a personnel point of view, it is essential that the steps re-
quired to arrive at firm Career Service staffing authorizations be completed
as promptly as possible. It is only on the basis of the authorized strength
of the Career Services that decisions can be taken concerning the need to
separate certain specific individuals. These decisions must be made by the
Heads of the Career Services. After they have made their selection, a great
deal of work will need to be done in order to effect the required number of
separations. The files and evaluations reports of those persons nominated for
selection-out must be brought into shape to reflect an hnnest appraisal of
their performance. Individuals whose work is of borderline caliber must be
warned and given an opportunity to show improvement, and individuals whom we
wish to encourage to seek employment elsewhere must be given the earliest
possible notification of this fact. Job hunting is a slow process.
4. It may be possible to accomplish the necessary number of separations
without introducing extraordinary meaitures. In the past attrition and
separation at the instigation of the Agency in the professional grades has
been very slow. Promotion into and racruitment into these grades has been at
a much higher rate. Thus, in order to reduce the jze o the 's staff
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SUBJECT: Reducing the Size of the Agency Staff
and to make such a reduction reasonably proportionate in terms of our grade
structure, we are going to have to make our Career Service procedures work
a good deal more effectively than we have in the past. And we may wish to
introduce other means of stimulating personnel turnover. The various possi-
bilities that exist and can be resorted to are outlined below.
a. ATTRITION
Attrition simply means the determination on the part of the
Agency not to replace a certain number of individuals who leave.
Understood in its broadest sense, any reduction achieved by the
Agency will be achieved by attrition. In a more narrow sense it.
refers to the Agency's decision not to replace certain individuals
who leave voluntarily. As pointed out above, we plan to arrive at
voluntary attrition rates for each Career Service before we determine
the number of persons by grade that must be removed from the roles
of the Agency at our own instigation.
b. S -CTION OUT
The Selection-Out program was instituted 18 February 1958. It
has as its objective the separation of those individuals who fail
to meet Agency standards of performance or conduct.
Our experience with selection-out during the year 1958 cannot
be regarded as typical of what this program can offer the Agency.
During its first year of operation, the program centered on misfits
and cases of outstandingly poor performance. A considerable per-
centage of the cases referred to the selection-out staff have been
"handling" problems for years. Furthermore, many of the candidates
for selection-out were in the lower grades. The selection-out staff
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devoted an inordinate amount of time to individual cases and
accomplished very little in reducing the hard core of substandard
personnel in the middle and higher grades.
As the program matures, we may expect to get cases less complex
in nature and more adequately documented by the Career Service
concerned. By increasing the size of the selection-out staff,
streamlining some of our procedures, and by having the advantage of
working with materials better prepared by the Career Services we
expect to be able to handle two or three times as many cases as
were handled in 1958, and without undue delay.
c. EARLY RETIRIIr'IERTT
If it is possible for the Agency to obtain legislation providing
for early retirement benefits, we will be in a position to follow the
long-established practice of the military services whereby an
individual at an advanced stage in his career, who fails to achieve
promotion along with his contemporaries, may be separated without
prejudice and provided with an annuity. In the discussion which
follows, it will be seen that there are several different occasions
in an individual's career with the Agency when this would be possible.
Separation for failure to advance at an early stage in an individual's
career can and should be accomplished under our present program.
It would, of course, result in separation without annuity, but it
is obviously not proper to pay an annuity to a young person who has
been found not to measure up to Agency standards of performance or
who is wanting in growth potential. In either case separation
4
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of individuals for failure to advance or to show potential,
would be limited to those individuals whose promotions are
earned competitively (grades 9 and above) and who have clearly
failed to develop or to show potential in a field which requires
growth on the part of all who are in it. The performance of
technicians, clerks and custodial personnel will be reviewed
in terms of the positions they occupy. Thus, for example,
a case officer or analyst might be separated for failing to
achieve promotion from a grade 9 to an 11, whereas a trans-
lator might be held in grade 9 for an indefinite number of
years without being considered for selection out.
In order to deal adequately with the Agency's hard core
of surplus personnel, it is most necessary that we be in a
position to pay some form of annuity or severance pay to
those separated, because the hard core is, in part, niade up
of men and women who have worked in intelligence upwards to
fifteen years. Many of them have had other Government
service and will therefore qualify within the immediate
future for an annuity or separation payment under one or
another of the terms of our proposed early retirement
legislation.
The role that our proposed retirement legislation
could play in providing for the immediate reduction of
personnel and for a permanently accelerated turnover is
suggested by the following figures which represent the
5
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approximate numbers of people who would as of 30 June 1960 be eligible
for retirement according to the various age brackets and retirement
categories shown below.
1. Persons, age 62 or more (Retirement Mandatory)
2. Persons, age 60 to 62 (Retirement Mandatory)
3. Persons, age 55 to 60 with 25 years of Federal Service
(Retirement at discretion of the DCI)
4. Persons, age 50 to 60 (not included in 3 above) who
will have 20 years Federal Service
10 of which have been with CIA and
10 of which have been overseas,
5 of which have been with CIA
(Retirement at the discretion of the DCI)
Estimated total persons who might be retired (under any of
the retirement categories listed above) as of 30 June 1960
5. Persons, age 50 or below, who are selected-out with limited
annuity or severance pay. The major portion of the Agency's
personnel fall in this age category. Further, the majority
of those persons who are reaching the qualifying levels for
overseas service are in the "under 50" age bracket.
25X9A2
J
25X9A2 21 In addition to the ^ persons listed in 3 above, there are ho are over25X9A2
60 and have 25 years of Federal Service. These have alre' as y been
counted in 1 or 2 above. 25X9A2
25X9A2 J
In addition to the[:] persons listed in 4 above, there are
over 60 and will have the requisite 20-10-10-5 Service. The
have already been counted in 1 or 2 above.
6
w~} o are 25X9A2
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d. RETIRFISENT BOARD
Numerous commercial and Governmental establishments now have
formal programs to bring under review the status and future prospects
of personnel approaching voluntary retirement ages. In some cases
such arrangements take the form of Retirement Boards or Committees,
composed of senior staff and operating officials of the companies
or agencies concerned. Reports of the functioning of these
activities indicate that programmed deliberations at this level
are often successful in bringing about voluntary retirements upon
attainment of age and service levels which provide entitlements to
full annuities. Such board or committee arrangements are generally
supplemented by formal staff programs for providing assistance to
the boards and to employees in pre-retirement planning work. The
overall result of these programs is to clarify, in a systematic
way, the continued roles which persons may expect to have in the
organization as they approach retirement age, and to provide on a
planned basis for their transition from careers in the organization
to other spheres of activity.
e. CONVERSION OF STAFF EMPLOYEES TO CAREER AGENT STATUS
Among intelligence officers in grades 12 through 15 there are
a number of capable operators who could very well spend the re-
mainder of their active careers overseas under non-official cover.
This is not a large group. It is recognized that a considerable
effort will be required to convert these men to career agent
status. However, with official cover shrinking, the return to an
overcrowded headquarters of the field's excess personnel and the
requirement to cut, we should once more review the pnesibilities
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f. OUT-PLACEMENT
When the out-placement program was announced during 1958, nothing
that was said about it could prevent it from being viewed as simply
a means of cushioning the blow of selection-out. Now, although this
is a perfectly proper use of our out-placement staff, there is no
reason why the program should be restricted to selection-out cases.
And it must be pointed out that a mediocre person resigning from,
or any person separated by;, the Agency is at a great disadvantage
on the labor market in Washington. In 1956, a staff study submitted
to the Deputy Director (Plans) showed that some of our strongest
people might well round out their personal careers outside the
25X1
point of view. Such opportunity is also attractive to our type
of officer.
The question might reasonably be asked why nothing has been done
about this proposal during the past two years. Up to the present
time we have felt that we could not afford to lose a of our key
senior people. It is now generally accepted that it will be im-
possible to accommodate within the grade structure of the Agency all
of the present senior group and at the same time to develop and
reward those immediately junior to them. Some thinning out at the
top is necessary.
g. EXCHANGE ARRANGEMENT WITH THE CIVIL SERVICE COMMISSION
The possibility that we will want to quite drastically reduce
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the advantages and disadvantages of arriving at an understanding
with the Civil Service Commission which would permit our people
to acquire Civil Service status, thus making it possible for us to
place individuals elsewhere in Government on a scale which is not
feasible at the present time. The Atomic Energy Commission has
such an arrangement. Mr. Siciliano, the Personnel Advisor to the
President, has encouraged us to move in this direction. He has
pointed out that Government-wide personnel requirements include a
great variety of openings. People whom we regard as "locked up"
in CIA might well find opportunities if this channel were opened.
We should not commit ourselves to an exchange arrangement with the
Civil Service Commission, but we should explore this matter
officially and openly with the Commission in the hope that we can
come up with proposals that will benefit the Agency.
5. It is recommended that:
a. Revised staffing authorizations to account for any Agency
reduction in strength be completed for FY 1960 by 1 July 1959.
b. The Director of Personnel proceed with plans to establish a
Retirement Board.
c. The Deputy Director (Plans) be instructed to canvass operational
personnel in headquarters and to convert to career agent status those
who can be used as agents.
d. The Deputy Directors be called upon to nominate 2% of their
satisfactory professional personnel as potential candidates for
out-placement or explain to the Career Council why this cannot or
should not be done.
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e. The Deputy Director (Support) be instructed to enter into
negotiations with the Civil Service Commission for the purpose of
determining the feasibility and desirability of conveying Civil
Service status to qualified CIA employees.
Gordon M. Stewart
Chairman
CIN Career Council
The recommendations in paragraph 5 are approved.
Director of Central Intelligence Date
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