THE INTELLIGENCE ESTABLISHMENT

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80B01495R000100150011-6
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 19
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 19, 2005
• Sequence Number: 11
• Publication Date: January 1, 1970
• Content Type: REPORT

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IIe?
Intelligence
Extablisl~1 ent
Harry Home Ransom
Harvard Unive"sity Press
Cambrutge, Massachusetts
1970
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? Copyright 1970
by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
All rights reserved
Distributed in Great Britain by Oxford University Press, London
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 70-115480
SBN 674-45816-8
Printed in the United States of America
Revised and enlarged from Central Intelligence
and National Security by Harry Howe Ransom,
Harvard University Press, 1958
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CONTENTS
1 INTELLIGENCE IN THE SPACE AGE
Intelligence: Key to Decision 3
Intelligence and Policy Planning 5
Defining Intelligence 7
The Knowable and the Unknowable 8
11 THE NATURE OF INTELLIGENCE 12
Categories of Intelligence 13
Steps in the Process 15
Procuring Raw Intelligence 16
Sources 17
Recent Developments 18
Tradition, 71 American Misgivings 30
Overt Collection Methods 31
Functional Categories 33
Processing the Data 37
Evaluation and Analysis 40
Dissemination of Intelligence 44
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TII
Rev
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Res
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to IV
UNITED STATES INTELLIGENCE-
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 48
Intelligence: An Ancient Function 48
American Neglect of Intelligence 51
World War I 53
World War II 54
The Impetus of Pearl Harbor 56
The Beginnings of Central intelligence 61
Office of Strategic Services 65
Postwar Reorganization 76
Centralization vs. Confederation 77
The Compromise 79
THE CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE
AGENCY: BASIC FUNCTIONS 82
Expansion of Functions 83
CIA's Statutory Functions 85
CIA's Size and Role 87
The Coordinating Function 90
Overseas Political Action 93
The Forecasting Function 95
The Coordination Function and Its Limits 98
The Importance of CIA Directorship 99
V THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY:
OTHER PRINCIPAL MEMBERS 101
Armed Service Joint Intelligence 102
The Defense Intelligence Agency 103
The Army 108
Army Intelligence Organization 110
National Intelligence Surveys 114
Special Publications 115
The Navy 116
Navy Intelligence Organization 118
The Air Force 121
Air Force Intelligence Organization 122
National Security Agency 126
The Department of State 134
State Department Controversy 137
VIII Th
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Gr
Th
Ov
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VII SURVEILLANCE BY CONGRESS 159
The Inevitable Executive-Legislative Conflict 160
Congress and the CIA 161
The Mansfield Resolution of 1956 163
Arguments for a?Joint. Committee 164
Arguments against a Joint Committee 166
Debate on the Senate Floor 167
The Issue Debated Again in 1966 172
VIII THE BRITISH INTELLIGENCE SYSTEM 180
Historical Background 183
Development after World War 11. 186
Traditions of Secrecy 193
The Role of the Press 197
The "D-Notice" System 197
Evaluation of the Secret Service 203
THE INTELLIGENCE END PRODUCT: 147
THE NATIONAL ESTIMATE
Producing National Estimates 149
The U.S. Intelligence Board 152
The Watch Committee and Indications Center 155
IX PROBLEMS OF THE.- .
INTELLIGENCE BUREAUCRACY 208
Effective Decision Making 210
Tie Problem of Organization 212
Consequences of Federation 214
Intelligence Credibility 215
Mistaken Estimates 218
Great Expectations 220
The Personnel Problem 222
Overseeing the Intelligence Establishment . 226
Public Relations 233
State Department Intelligence organization 138
The FBI 143
Atomic Energy Commission 145
The Task of the CIA 146
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Contents
TILE "CIA PROBLEM"-SOME CONCLUSIONS 235
Stereotypes of the Intelligence System 237
Intervcntionis1 Added to Intelligence Role 238
A Storm of Bad Publicity 239
Where Did the CIA Go Wrong? 240
Trauma over Sccrct CIA Subsidies 241
Problems of Policy, Organization, and Control 245
Role of the Press 251
Can Man Survive Technology 253
Appendix A: Views on Central Intelligence
by Allen W. Dulles 257
Appendix B: CIA Policy on Public Disclosure 264
Appendix C: Authority of Director of Central
Intelligence Clarified 267
Appendix D: Report on CIA Secret Subsidies, 1967 269
A Selected Bibliography 274
Notes
Index
Charts
1. U.S. Office of Strategic Services, 1945 67
2. Defense Intelligence Agency Organization 105
3. Army Intelligence Organization 112
4. Air Force Intelligence Organization 123
5. Department of State Intelligence Organization 139
6. National Intelligence Establishment 154
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In the years
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Europe, and one in London, when the war ended both copies were
destroyed. for security reasons. While one is prompted to wonder
Whose security may have been at stake, this practice was so common
as to make unlikely an objective review of the intelligence system
and performance in many important past events. At any rate, this
illustrates one aspect of the difficulty of scholarly research in this
field. Nonetheless, the subject is far too important to be left unex-
plored. And on the question of whether this book will aid America's
adversaries, I am convinced that they know far more about the
United States intelligence system than American observers outside
that system will ever know.
While there have been a number of publications on the subject
during the 1960's, authentic works remain scarce. My bibliographic
indebtedness will be detailed in footnotes and bibliography, but
reference should be made here to some groundbreaking treatises
on intelligence which have influenced the development of serious
scholarship in the field and my own writing on the subject.
Included among these is George S. Pettee's The Future of Amer-
ican Secret Intelligence (Washington, 1946), an analysis of World
War II deficiencies, with suggestions for the structure of a postwar
intelligence system. Sherman Kent's Strategic Intelligence (Prince-
ton, 1949), written shortly after the Central Intelligence Agency
was established, is an incisive discussion of intelligence as a kind of
knowledge, a type of organization, and a unique activity. Roger
Uilsman's Strategic Intelligence and National Decisions (Glencoe,
III., 1956) remains the only attempt to explore the nature of intelli-
gence doctrine among policy makers in Washington.
I am indebted to each of these authors and to many more recent
ones. Yet none of the works just cited, or those written more recently
presents a detailed descriptive analysis of the contemporary intelli-
gence establishment. The purpose of this book is to survey this
ground.
My original book, Central Intelligence and National Security,
was the outgrowth of materials prepared for use by the Defense
Policy Seminar of the Defense Studies Program, Harvard University,
and thus my debt remains to the students and guest lecturers who
participated in those graduate seminars. This is true also for my
Defense Studies Program colleagues, notably Professor W. Barton
Leach of the Harvard Law School, and including Edward L. Katz-
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enbach, Jr. and Maury D. Feld. Others who assisted me in various
ways were the late Professor V. O. Key, Jr., and Walter Millis, Dr.
George S. Pettee, and Professors Sanford M. Dornbusch, Samuel P.
Huntington, and Walt W. Rostow.
This book bears the Harvard imprint primarily because the late
Thomas J. Wilson, as Director of the Press, thought it should be
published. I owe much, also, to Mark Carroll, present Director,
who encouraged me to produce this new version. The reader will
share my great indebtedness to M. Kathleen Ahern, of Harvard
University Press, for editorial. assistance.
In the preparation of this book I have been assisted by numerous'
other persons over the years, most of whom will be acknowledged
in footnotes and bibliography. Special credit is due William R.
Harris of Harvard University, who generously shared with me in
recent years his extensive bibliographic knowledge. I am partic-
ularly indebted to the Research Council of Vanderbilt University
for summer assistance over several years and to the Rockefeller
Foundation for a research award in 1964-1965 permitting an ex-
ploration of the British intelligence system. My thanks are clue
also to the Council on Foreign Relations, New York, for an oppor-
tunity to participate in discussions of intelligence problems with
experienced individuals in 1967-1968.
Typing assistance has been efficiently rendered by Betty McKee
and Susan Gauthier. If this book has rilerit, all of these persons de-
serve credit; its faults are my burden. My wife Nancy knows how she
has helped; perhaps she doesn't know that I know, too.
Vanderbilt University
Nashville, Tennessee
November 1969
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The Intelligence Establishment
elsewhere outside Washington. A fair guess is that the total munthcr
of CIA employees is roughly 15 per cent of the total number (it
workers in the government intelligence community, broadly defined.
Estimates of annual expenditures have been as high as five billioms,
but this would include all conceivable intelligence activities of tilt
government. Direct expenditures by CIA between 1960 and 1967
probably amounted to between $500 and $750 millions of dollarv
annually. The most tangible source for estimating the number of
CIA's Washington personnel is the CIA headquarters office buildin`,
with a theoretical capacity initially estimated to be approximatefv
10,000 persons."
While the general congressional mandate to the CIA is that it
collect coordinate, evaluate, and disseminate intelligence affectin~-
the national security, there is an even broader grant of authority in
the assignment to it of "additional services" and "other functions"
related to intelligence as the National Security Council may direct.
As previously noted, this cannot be read as an unqualified assign-
ment of "other services." Congress clearly intended that the functions
of the agency be related to information-gathering. The strategic
services assigned to CIA, beginning in the Truman Administration,
are a distortion of the intent of Congress. It can be argued, by
adherence to rigorous semantic standards, that a substantial nuna-
ber of CIA's operations since 1.947 have been performed outside
the limits of its statutory mandate. This question will be further
discussed later in this volume. Under broad grants of authority and
the specific administrative latitude given the Director of Central
Intelligence in other statutes, the CIA, operating under NSC direc-
tives, has expanded, nonetheless, into a mammoth governmental
institution.
The CIA has become at once a central governing authority, .a
coordinator of strategic information, and a correlator of data gath-
ered not only by its own wide-ranging overseas staff and its thou-
sands of Washington intelligence analysts but also by the dozen or
so departmental intelligence units. The total number of persons
working within the intelligence community probably exceed"
100,000.
As earlier stated, CIA's operational functions are determined b~
NSC directives, which have seemed to be based upon the assumh?
tion that the congressional statute is a blank check. The fact that
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CHAPTER X
The "CIA Problem"
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Some Conclusions
11;
Scandal is the word best characterizing the context in which most
citizens have viewed, in recent times, the intelligence establishment,
particularly the CIA. The problems and scandals that have beset
the intelligence system are the result of entanglements of definitions,
purpose, organization, and policy. An overlay of mythology further
beclouds the subject. Perhaps the best way to symbolize this myth-
ology is to cite the observation by Trevor-Roper that in the popular
mind the chief of a contemporary intelligence system is seen as a
"super-spy." In reality he is a bureaucrat.' He works within a polit-
ical system, and his office is the locus of great potential influence.
The heart of the definitional problem is that "intelligence" has
come to be used as a term to label two disparate activities: infor-
mation gathering and secret political action. This semantic confu-
sion is so pervasive that it extends into the highest levels of
government and obfuscates conceptual-and thus organizational-
clarity on the subject. A simpler way of saying this is that the
government does not always know what it is doing in the "intelli-
gence" field. Jf so, officials do not in reality control intelligence
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The Intelligence Establishment
this may in part explain the lack of effective coordination and
control that characterized some secret operations under the Eisen.
power administration. Under Kennedy, there was a promise of
stronger presidential coordination and leadership in foreign af.
fairs.? Yet the Bay of Pigs, the greatest public disaster to befall
the CIA, revealed continuing weaknesses in foreign operations)
concept, command, and control. The State Department remained
in the shadows, failing to exercise its proper authority, while the
Pentagon and CIA were in the forefront, playing an ill-defined
but patently decisive role. As Theodore Sorensen recalls, KennedN
felt that State had a "built-in inertia which deadened initiatih-e
and that its tendency towards excessive delay obscured deter-
m:ination."10 A question never adequately explored is the extent
to which CIA activism may have been a consequence of State
Department inactivity. There is little visible evidence that these
problems have been of serious concern to either the Johnson or
Nixon administrations.
Defenders of the secret intelligence system are quick to insist
that there has always been an elaborate set of policy controls on
all secret operations. Some have argued that intelligence and
other secret operations are perhaps the most tightly controlled
activities in all of government.
One cannot examine the evidence on this point, but experienced
former officials of the intelligence system argue, sometimes per-
suasively, that CIA officials have always been required to seek,
and gain prior approval from policy makers before initiating any
secret operations. In the earliest days of the system, procedure.
for approving secret operations were less formal than in more
recent years. Even in recent times, however, it would seen) tl);0
programs, once initially approved, were rarely given intensive
scrutiny, particularly when the question of their continuation
came up for policy review. The U-2 incident and more recently
the Pueblo case are examples of dangerous routinization of oper.
ations.
Since the early years of the Eisenhower Administration, which
established elaborate procedures for all kinds of national security
decisions, covert political activities have been reviewed and aL
proved (or rejected) by a group representing the highest lcsch
of government: the President's Special Assistant for Nation:']
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