Mel Goodman is a former CIA official and also one its most articulate critics
The Road to Intelligence Reform: Paved with Good Intentions
By Melvin A. Goodman
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The Danger of a Corporate Culture for Intelligence
A Case for Starting Over
The Failure to Challenge Espionage and Covert Action
The Marginalization of Strategic Intelligence
The Politicization of Intelligence
The Politicization of Imagery Collection
The Failure of Oversight
What Needs to be Done
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The presidential commission on American intelligence, the Council on Foreign Relations,
and the House Select Intelligence Committee have spoken on the intelligence community,
endorsing steps that--far from reforming the Central Intelligence Agency--will compromise
its ability to serve as an independent and objective interpreter of foreign events and
will strengthen the role of espionage and covert action. Several weeks after the
publication of the presidential commission's report, the chairman of the Senate Select
Committee on Intelligence endorsed the findings and noted that its recommendations would
form the basis of several legislative proposals. These reports and actions indicate that
these groups were more interested in establishing "new legitimacy" for the
C.I.A. than in taking a fresh look at our intelligence needs and correcting abuses of the
past.
Major problems received little scrutiny from these studies and major questions went
unanswered. For example, what is the proper role for espionage and covert action in the
post- Cold War era? What is a proper level of expenditure for intelligence? How can
intelligence reporting be protected from policy bias? Which intelligence programs are
making a difference in addressing national security threats and which programs can be
reduced or abandoned? What can be done about redundancy in military intelligence? How can
the process of intelligence oversight be fixed? Few answers are to be found.
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The Danger of a Corporate Culture for Intelligence
The reports are written from the perspective of policymakers and fail to take into account
the potentially dangerous embrace of the policy community on intelligence. The
presidential commission correctly observes that the linkages between policymakers and
intelligence analysts are weak, but its call for a consumer-driven culture ignores the
policymakers' preference for intelligence that supports favored policies. President Bill
Clinton contributed to this problem last year when he gave Director of Central
Intelligence John Deutch a seat on the cabinet, placing the director in a policy role.
Only one previous director--the late William Casey--had cabinet rank and Casey repeatedly
doctored intelligence to bolster covert action and the policy agenda of the Reagan
administration.
The reports apply the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986
for centralization of the military as a model for the intelligence community.
Goldwater-Nichols strengthened the position of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
and unambiguously reestablished the principle of unity of combat command. Using
Goldwater-Nichols as a template, the reports ignore the risk that uniformity in
intelligence analysis will facilitate group- think and eliminate dissent. During the
Vietnam war, for example, the military's high command refused to accept the higher figures
of a C.I.A. analyst for the presence of Viet Cong in South Vietnam. The Pentagon was wrong
and the C.I.A. was right; as a result, the United States persisted with the war on the
basis of mistaken intelligence.
The reports pay insufficient attention to the importance of protecting the integrity of
the intelligence process. Although they endorse insulating intelligence from political
pressure and insuring competitive analysis, their recommendations are consumer-driven and
would "integrate intelligence into the policy community." The Council on Foreign
Relations report even argues that the "requirements for both collection and analysis
[of intelligence] should be heavily influenced by the needs of policymakers,"
(emphasis added) which assumes that each and every administration can do its own
estimating and forecasting of international events.
The presidential commission's report goes even further in opening the door to the
politicization of intelligence. It says, "The greater danger lies not in becoming
`politicized' but in becoming irrelevant to the process of government." As a result,
it measures the intelligence community's "effectiveness" as "largely a
function of its responsiveness" to the policy community. On balance, the C.I.A. must
become more central to both political and military decision-making in Washington, but
there must be an awareness that the embrace of policymakers can suffocate the process of
complete and objective analysis.
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A Case for Starting Over
The reports implicitly acknowledge that it is time to start over in the intelligence
community, particularly at the C.I.A., but reveal that the foreign policy establishment is
unwilling to tackle serious reform issues. Problems in recent years have included the
antics of super-spy Aldrich Ames and the failure of counter-intelligence; the
politicization of intelligence on the former Soviet Union and the reliance on double
agents for intelligence on the Soviet Union, East Europe, and Cuba; and the cover-up of
terrorist activities in El Salvador and Guatemala. We recently learned that, under three
former directors of central intelligence (R. James Woolsey, Robert M. Gates, and William
H. Webster), the C.I.A. provided "intelligence" to several presidents that was
obtained from Soviet double agents put in place by the KGB. Instead of acknowledging that
they had lost their most important spies in the Soviet Union in 1985 and 1986, C.I.A.
leaders provided phony information to the White House during the final years of the Cold
War, when the Soviet Union was coming apart at the seams. When the C.I.A. misleads the
president, it is time to start over.
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The Failure to Challenge Espionage and Covert Action
The reports failed to address the most serious systemic problem at the C.I.A.--the need to
separate the Directorate of Operations (DO) from its Cold War culture. The clandestine
activities of the C.I.A.--both covert action and, to a lesser extent, clandestine
collection--grew out of an exaggerated notion of the threat to our security. These
activities are the key to deeper problems at the C.I.A. and they should be severely
reduced. From the Bay of Pigs to Nicaragua and Iran-contra, it is covert operations that
have caused the C.I.A. and the country the most embarrassment. Covert action may be
responsible for only 2 percent of the C.I.A.'s budget but it represents a major share of
the C.I.A. ethos. Nevertheless, the reports give a high priority to continued covert
action, with the CFR urging a periodic review of "constraints on clandestine activity
. . . to ensure that they do not unduly limit the effectiveness of this tool." Rather
than seriously examining the ethical and practical rationales for covert action, these
groups have simply endorsed its expanded use.
The country probably will never resolve the contradiction between its ideals and covert
operations, but the reports missed an opportunity to provide an ethical framework for such
activities in the post-Cold War era. The presidential commission, moreover, endorsed the
creation of an NSC Committee on Global Crime (whose members would include the Attorney
General and the DCI), which would blend spying and law enforcement. This redefinition of
the traditional roles for U.S. spies could have implications for the civil rights of U.S.
citizens. (The Center for International Policy will sponsor a seminar in June, 1996 to
discuss a framework for clandestine operations.)
The use of covert action is particularly questionable, both morally and politically.
Covert action has contradicted our values and detracted from our message that the United
States functions more openly than other nations, particularly when we take actions abroad
that would be neither tolerated nor legal in this country. Most of these actions raise
moral and humanitarian questions that tarnish the quest for international stability. None
of the reports addressed where, when or whether covert actions are still necessary.
Covert action rarely has been beneficial and even short-term successes--such as Iran and
Guatemala in the 1950s and Afghanistan in the 1980s--have become long-term failures.
Guatemala, home of Central America's most brutal military--installed with the help of a
C.I.A.- backed coup--has not been able to diminish the violence of the military.
Agency-backed mujahedin rebels equipped with Stinger missiles may have sharpened the
policy dilemma for Soviet leaders, but recent books demonstrate that the Kremlin's
decision to withdraw was made before the arrival of the surface-to-air missiles.
Afghanistan today is a country of death and misery and Agency-supplied weaponry is fueling
conflicts in Bosnia and the Sudan. Millions of dollars have been appropriated to foment a
coup against Saddam Hussein, finance opposition groups in Iraq, and support clandestine
radio stations and disinformation campaigns. There is little likelihood of success for
such operations and even less promise that "success" would have a favorable
impact on politics in Iraq or the balance of power in the Persian Gulf.
Covert operations could be reduced with no compromise of American national security.
C.I.A. propaganda has little impact on foreign audiences and should end immediately.
Attempts to influence foreign elections should stop. It is ludicrous for the Clinton
administration to invade Haiti to restore democracy and then authorize the C.I.A. to
conduct covert action to influence elections there. Covert military intervention should
end, and paramilitary capabilities should be transferred to the Defense Department. Most
covert operations are "operations for operations' sake," without a careful prior
reckoning of the result.
Hodding Carter III argued in a dissenting opinion to the Twentieth Century Fund report in
1992 that "covert action is by definition outside the ambit of democracy." The
Cold War and the Soviet threat created the rules that governed the use of covert action;
the demise of the Soviet Union demands a reexamination of every aspect of espionage and
covert action. It is not enough to suggest--as these reports do--that the "world
remains a dangerous place" and the president needs an option "short of military
action when diplomacy alone cannot do the job." Most problems addressed by covert
action could be addressed openly by unilateral means or cooperatively through
international ones.
The presidential commission argues that covert operations should take place only when
"essential" and where the reason for secrecy is "compelling." But all
the reports endorse covert action and none suggests the need for new legislation. Deutch
has lobbied both the Senate and House intelligence committees for greater covert
operations, and both committees favor the hiring of additional personnel in the
directorate of operations. The recommendation of the chairman of the House intelligence
committee that a separate organization for clandestine operations be created would lead to
a renewed mandate for covert action, with increased funding and more personnel.
The CFR report indirectly endorsed expanded use of C.I.A. cover to include journalists,
clergy, and Peace Corps volunteers, and Deutch has insisted that the Agency should be able
to use journalists in clandestine operations. A pattern of collaboration developed between
some journalists and the C.I.A. during the Cold War, but there is no justification in the
post-Cold War era for the use of spies posing as reporters and the employment of bona fide
reporters for intelligence missions. Both practices should be banned. The press has
constitutional protection because it is the chronicler of and check on government, not its
instrument. The CFR also encourages associations with "unsavory individuals,
including some who have committed crimes," but these connections have led to the
cover-up of terrible crimes in El Salvador and Guatemala.
The reports overemphasize the value of clandestine collection, adhering to the myth that,
while open collection can track capabilities of foreign nations, only covert collection
can determine intentions. This theory has proven flawed a number of times in the past:
C.I.A. sources failed to decipher Nikita Khrushchev's intentions toward Hungary in 1956,
Leonid Brezhnev's toward Czechoslovakia in 1968, Anwar Sadat's toward Israel in 1973,
Menachem Begin's toward Lebanon in 1982, and Saddam Hussein's toward Kuwait in 1990. On
balance, the intelligence community is good at finding things, counting things, and
describing things, but intentions are a more elusive quarry.
Far more "intelligence" can be gleaned from political reporting and analysis
produced by U.S. ambassadors who can build close personal and open relationships with
influential government officials. Clandestine collection of intelligence has been marginal
in closed societies and has been inferior to the "collection" of foreign-service
officers, military attachŽs, and journalists in open societies. It is unfortunate
that the budget of the State Department and the United States Information Agency have been
steadily reduced in recent years while that of the intelligence community has been
increased.
In making the C.I.A.'s clandestine collection the "principal or sole source of
information" in closed societies, the CFR conveniently ignores the Directorate of
Operation's past reliance on double agents for most of its intelligence on the former
Soviet Union, Cuba, and East Germany. As Ambassador Robert White has suggested, the C.I.A
could close its stations in many parts of the world, Central America for example, and
allow career diplomats to fulfill Washington's intelligence requirements. Intelligence
collection would not suffer and diplomatic influence would be enhanced.
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The Marginalization of Strategic Intelligence
The reports give short shrift to the most important function of the C.I.A.--unbiased
intelligence analysis on subjects relating to U.S. national security. The primary
functions of intelligence will not change; they deal with warning, monitoring, and
forecasting. The president's commission moves too many intelligence resources into the
Department of Defense, a policy agency, thus weakening the role of strategic intelligence,
including long-term and estimative intelligence. The priority of national intelligence
estimates (NIEs) relative to current intelligence has declined significantly in the past
fifteen years, although NIEs provide one of the few connecting links in the intelligence
community. The CFR report incorrectly argued that the "culture of the intelligence
community, in particular that of the C.I.A." favors long-term estimates over current
intelligence. This trend stopped in 1973, when CIA Director James Schlesinger abolished
both the Office of National Estimates and the Senior Research Staff, which were
responsible for estimates and long-term analysis, respectively. Both offices should be
reestablished.
The presidential commission and the CFR depreciated the currency of NIEs and recommended
far fewer of them. The NIE process, in fact, is one of the few corporate aspects of the
intelligence community, forcing disparate elements of the community to confront each
others' arguments and sharpen the determination of what judgments are based on evidence as
opposed to intuition or ideological bias. In forcing a collective judgment about evidence,
the estimative process establishes a baseline for the burden of proof in policymaking. The
NIE structure has been weakened in the past fifteen years, particularly under Bill Casey,
who framed intelligence judgments to support favored policies. Reestablishment of an
office of national estimates would help restore this important, independent intelligence
function.
In the past, U.S. policymakers have exploited NIEs or ignored them at their peril. The
Pentagon Papers unveiled a long series of estimates that pointed to why U.S. strategy
would fail in Vietnam. Similar estimates revealed the Sino-Soviet split in the 1960s,
which eventually opened the way to the Nixon administration's triangular diplomacy toward
China and the Soviet Union. Estimates on Soviet military capabilities ended the discussion
of so-called bomber, missile, and intentions gaps in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s,
respectively. Similar independent estimates on the Middle East over the past twenty years
could have prevented U.S. failures in that region, particularly the Reagan
administration's egregious introduction of U.S. marines into Lebanon in 1982 and its
dismal failure in the Iran-contra escapade.
The changed nature of international conflict will alter intelligence needs for future
confrontations. Long-term political, economic, and social issues present an increasingly
important challenge to U.S. national security interests but get much less attention from
the intelligence community than current issues and crises. As Michael Nacht, dean of the
University of Maryland's School of Public Policy, has noted, the C.I.A. has too many
people who "know the dimensions of an SS-18 silo" and too few "who speak
Farsi and understand weapons proliferation." More attention must be devoted to
proliferation, ethnic politics and violence, the environment, and demographics and social
migration. The president's commission, however, wants to reduce intelligence analysis in
the non-traditional areas, and the CFR would remove "such subjects as environmental
protection, population growth, or general political and economic developments" from
intelligence collection. Reestablishment of a research staff would enable C.I.A. to
address these non-traditional issues in long-term studies.
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The Politicization of Intelligence
The presidential commission endorses two steps that will increase policy advocacy within
the intelligence community. First, it inexplicably endorsed the new
"partnership" between the arm of the C.I.A. that carries out espionage and
covert action, the directorate of operations or DO, and the one that analyzes
intelligence, the directorate of intelligence or DI. Second, it called for the creation of
a National Imagery and Mapping Agency as a "combat support agency" under the
DoD.
The merger of the DO and the DI will give C.I.A. clandestine reports a privileged status
over other reporting and make it possible for the clandestine services to influence the
analytical product of the C.I.A. The merger already has made it more difficult to recruit
senior, outside experts from the academic community. These directorates were linked in
1994 by Woolsey, without any study of the implications of such a merger. Deutch
immediately endorsed the merger after taking over his new post.
Woolsey's "merger" was his response to the embarrassing Ames affair, but the
director of central intelligence failed to take into account that the agency's two major
divisions cannot be reformed in the same way. The operations wing (because of covert
action) is deeply involved in policy; it relies on secrecy and hierarchy, and shares
information on a need-to-know basis. The intelligence wing must have no policy axes to
grind; its credibility rests on that fact. It needs a free exchange of information and a
great variety of analytical input. The presidential commission incorrectly believes that
most information on the Soviet Union was "secret and could best be obtained,
analyzed, and reported by the Intelligence Community." In fact, most political and
economic intelligence was gleaned from open sources and should have been scrutinized by a
wider community of scholars and analysts.
The commission raised the risk of bias in approving the merger of the two directorates but
ultimately ignored the advice of a key witness, Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, former head of
the National Security Agency and deputy director of Central Intelligence. Inman warned the
commission against merging collection and analysis of intelligence in a single agency,
explaining that analysts in such agencies are under a great deal of pressure to
"protect, but not to challenge the information" that these agencies collect.
Casey, who headed the agency from 1981 to 1987, encouraged the intertwining of operations
and intelligence so that he could influence analysis to support his preferred policies.
The chairman of the House intelligence committee took a strong stand against the
partnership, advocating two separate institutions; removing the DO completely from the
C.I.A., however, will create a stronger clandestine corps with less oversight of
clandestine collection.
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The Politicization of Imagery Collection
The commission's support for the creation of a National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA)
as a "combat support agency" is a particularly dangerous idea that would make
the Department of Defense the sole authority for interpreting weapons developments in
rival nations and determining the military capabilities of U.S. adversaries. The
commission wants the new agency to be responsible to the secretary of defense and the
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The C.I.A.'s National Photographic Interpretation
Center would be transferred to NIMA, thus putting analysis of all satellite photography
under the DoD. The chairman of the House intelligence committee favors the creation of a
Technical Collection Agency, designated as a "combat support agency," that would
consolidate the Pentagon's control over other technical collection as well.
There are major risks in allowing the military to dominate these important fields. The
analysis of imagery has been critical to discussions on the defense budget, the likelihood
of military conflict, and the verification of arms control agreements. Reconnaissance
photographs have helped presidential administrations watch troops stationed abroad, assess
hostile military forces, and plan weapons programs. More often than not, these images
prevented dangerous surprises and showed arsenals to be less imposing, and intentions less
sinister than had been thought. The C.I.A.'s imagery analysis determined, for example,
that there was no bomber gap in the 1950s and no missile gap in the 1960s. C.I.A.
photointerpreters told President Kennedy, during his showdown with the Soviets in 1962,
that the United States had at least seven times as many strategic assets--long-range
bombers, ICBMs, and missile-launching submarines--as did the Soviets. President Eisenhower
identified C.I.A. photoreconnaissance as one of the few recourses against an unbridled
U.S. military-industrial complex that inflated Soviet capabilities to suit its own ends.
In the late 1960s, C.I.A. analysts battled policy agencies and military intelligence
organizations on other sensitive issues; when they demonstrated that Soviet surface-to-air
missiles could not be upgraded to an antiballistic missile defense, the result was the ABM
treaty in 1972. C.I.A. analysts also maintained correctly that the Soviet SS-9 ICBM was
highly inaccurate, did not have multiple, independently targeted reentry vehicles, or
MIRVs, and thus could not threaten the U.S. ICBM force. This line of analysis, which
contradicted the assessments of national security adviser Henry Kissinger and Secretary of
Defense Melvin Laird, eventually opened the way to the SALT agreement in 1972 limiting
offensive weapons.
The establishment of a national imagery agency under the Department of Defense would
contribute to the Pentagon's increasing domination of the intelligence process. Deutch has
made support to military operations the watchword at the C.I.A., with more of its
resources devoted to military support. The intelligence community itself is emphasizing
tactical intelligence and support to the military. Now, control of technical intelligence
collection will be passed to the DOD.
Gen. Colin L. Powell's memoir, An American Journey, revealed the military's willingness to
suppress sensitive imagery intelligence, however. During Desert Storm, Gen. Norman
Schwarzkopf said at a press conference that a smart bomb had destroyed four Iraqi Scud
missile launchers. Intelligence imagery demonstrated that it had actually destroyed four
Jordanian fuel tanks. Gen. Schwarzkopf's intelligence officers would not tell him that he
was wrong. Nor would General Powell, who concluded that preserving Schwarzkopf's
"equanimity" was more important than the truth. Powell's lack of
self-consciousness in relating the story reveals both the hubris of the military and its
insensitivity to the need for intelligence reporting that is independent. Military bias
was one of the primary reasons for creating an independent, all- source C.I.A. in the
first place.
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The Failure of Oversight
The reports offer no recommendations on the issue of oversight and generally ignore the
failures of congressional oversight over the past twenty years (e.g., Iran-contra affair).
The presidential commission, in fact, states that the Senate and House committees have
provided "rigorous and intensive oversight," and the House study introduces a
new (and shocking) role for congressional oversight, that of "advocate." As
Steven Aftergood argues in Secrecy and Government Bulletin, any "advocacy role is
fundamentally incompatible with credible oversight and is in fact the reduction to the
absurd of the oversight mission." For too long, the intelligence committees have
been, in fact, advocates for the C.I.A., particularly for the clandestine world of spies
and covert operations and the scientific world of spy satellites and other cutting-edge
collection technologies.
The President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board could provide oversight to the
intelligence directorate but the PFIAB has been moribund over the past decade and has
provided neither oversight nor guidance. Its sponsorship of the highly controversial Team
A-Team B exercise in 1976 undermined the credibility of the PFIAB, but the right mix of
membership could establish an important niche for oversight. Until the confirmation
hearings for Robert Gates in 1991, neither the legislative committees nor the PFIAB had
demonstrated any interest in the intelligence directorate or the problem of
politicization.
More recently, the congressional oversight committees failed to notice that the National
Reconnaissance Office (NRO), which manages the nation's spy satellites, had built a new
$300 million headquarters in the Washington suburbs and had accumulated over $2 billion in
allocated but unspent funds. The committees for oversight have never established their
bona fides as investigative bodies and now there is evidence that they are unable to
monitor the $28 billion intelligence budget.
The severely limited oversight capabilities of the intelligence committees could be
strengthened with the use of the General Accounting Office (GAO), whose efforts to
investigate C.I.A. practices and procedures in the past have been squelched. Recently,
however, the chairman of the House National Security Committee asked the GAO to review the
"assumptions, conclusions, methodology, evidence, and treatment of alternative
views" in a NIE and to compare it with previous estimates and unclassified literature
on the topic. This request has enormous potential consequences for intelligence oversight.
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What Needs to be Done
For the most part, these reports merely shore up an unacceptable status quo. The
recommended changes do not go to the heart of the problem. As a result, we are in danger
of squandering the first important opportunity for reform since the post-Watergate
investigations of the C.I.A. in 1975. Those investigations produced a great deal of
information on the intelligence community but no reforms, other than the creation of a new
standing committee on intelligence. The House overwhelmingly rejected the work of the Pike
committee, and the Senate rejected nearly all of the recommendations of the Church
committee. Thirteen years after these investigations, in the wake of Iran-contra, the
joint congressional investigating committee concluded that the existing oversight laws
were adequate and that the system had worked. The more things change, the more they stay
the same.
From the standpoint of public policy, the end of the Cold War and the stunning array of
C.I.A. failures have produced another opportunity for reform but the presidential
committee in particular has evaded the challenge to reform the intelligence community. The
commission's support for a National Imagery and Mapping Agency will compromise the
C.I.A.'s mission as a central, all-source agency by subsuming the National Photographic
Interpretation Agency into a consolidated imagery analysis office under the Department of
Defense. The reports favor increased spending on intelligence, not less, and increased
espionage and covert action. The chairman of the House intelligence committee, Rep. Larry
Combest, even favors removing the DO from the C.I.A., and combining it with the Defense
Humint Service, to create a "stovepipe" organization for espionage; the effect
would be an even stronger clandestine collection capability.
Using Goldwater-Nichols as a template for organization of the intelligence community, the
reports serve to advance the militarization of intelligence. Since the end of the Cold
War, the U.S. military has increasingly dominated the intelligence process. Deutch has
used the long coattails of the Pentagon to enhance the credibility of the C.I.A. while
passing control of technical intelligence collection to the Pentagon. The C.I.A., in part
due to its own failures and scandals, has played a lesser role in national security since
the end of the Cold War. Nearly all funding for intelligence is in the DOD budget, and the
reports do nothing to give the director of central intelligence the authority and support
structure to ensure greater effectiveness and accountability within the intelligence
community.
The failure to challenge the continued need for espionage and covert action is one of the
most serious failings of these reports. The fact that the C.I.A. passed to several U.S.
presidents, including President Clinton, misleading information obtained from Soviet
double agents is reason enough for a major shake-up of the clandestine corps. Recent spy
scandals in France and Japan, two of the largest C.I.A. stations, raise additional
questions about the judgment and goals of the directorate of operations. The C.I.A.
secretly supported military organizations throughout Central America despite the long
history of their human rights abuses and the limited value of clandestine collection in
the region. Covert actions to influence the course of events in a foreign country without
our role being known undermine our own moral standards of openness and honesty, and should
be authorized only in times of national peril.
The reports have not recommended the steps that would return the C.I.A. to Harry Truman's
original conception of it as an independent and objective interpreter of foreign events.
The recommendations of the presidential commission, moreover, will seriously erode the
role of the C.I.A. as a central, all-source intelligence agency. The establishment of the
NIMA under the DOD will end the Agency's role in analysis of imagery, and the DO-DI
"partnership" will submerge the role of intelligence analysis into support for
clandestine collection. Just as NIMA will become the "imagery agency," the CIA
will become the "Humint agency."
The reports endorse the "militarization" of the intelligence community, a goal
supported by Director Deutch. Wittingly or unwittingly, Deutch has marginalized the role
of strategic intelligence and put C.I.A. analysts at the beck and call of the Pentagon. If
the Senate intelligence committee proceeds with its endorsement of the presidential
commission's work, it will mark the end of bureaucratic friction between the Pentagon and
the Central Intelligence Agency over the past twenty years. This friction has helped keep
the military honest.
Finally, the reports do nothing to provide the director of central intelligence with the
statutory and administrative authority necessary to protect the primary mission of the
C.I.A. as an unbiased, all-source intelligence agency on subjects relating to U.S.
national security. The presidential commission recognizes that the annual budgets of the
intelligence community represent a "principal vehicle for managing intelligence
activities," but it does not provide the DCI with control over formulation of these
budgets. The commission's support structure for the DCI, creating a deputy director for
the intelligence community and a deputy for the C.I.A., is also inadequate. The DCI
requires deputies for analysis, collection and covert action, and tasking in addition to a
deputy for the intelligence community. This staff and a smaller, more focused C.I.A. will
allow the director to become the president's Director of Intelligence.
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Melvin A. Goodman is professor of international security at the National War College and
consultant to the Center for International Policy. From 1966 to 1986 he was a senior
Soviet analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency. In 1991 he was one of three former CIA
officials to testify before the Senate against the nomination of Robert Gates as director
of central intelligence on the grounds that he had slanted intelligence to suit policy. He
is co-author of the Wars of Edvard Shevardnadze (Penn State Press: University Park, Pa.,
forthcoming in 1996).
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