The Craft of Intelligence (22 page)

Today, after the Cuba incident of October 1962, when Khrushchev did install “offensive” missiles in Cuba, one may well ask whether their recent actions do not indicate that they are in more of a hurry with their missile program. They were willing to take great risks to get some IRBM and MRBM bases in Cuba to create the equivalent, as a threat to us, of a considerable additional number of ICBM bases in the heartland of Russia.

In any event, the intelligence collected on Soviet missiles has been excellent as to the nature and quality of the potential threat. Our intelligence was also both good and timely as to Soviet production of high-thrust engines and the work on
Sputnik
. And all this intelligence spurred us to press forward with our own missile and space programs.

There is an area of intelligence estimating involving military hardware that is confusing to the uninitiated. On innumerable occasions during my period of work with the CIA, I was asked how the United States stood as compared to the Soviet Union in various respects. Were our bombers better? Did we have more missiles? How did we stand in the race for nuclear weapons? Here I had to explain that, as intelligence officers, we were not experts on American military weapons development. The job of the intelligence officer is to appraise the military strength of other countries, not that of the United States.

It is important, however, for our own policymakers to have the answers to such questions about comparative strengths. To meet this need, procedures were set up during the Eisenhower administrations to form net estimative groups. Intelligence officers were always members of the groups; the other members included experts having full knowledge of United States programs in the particular family of weapons where comparisons were sought—missiles, bombers, nuclear bombs and the like. Then net estimates would be produced indicating the relative position of the two countries and, wherever possible, where we would stand in a few years given our own existing programs and our estimate of those of the Soviet. This proved to be a most useful exercise.

When one turns from the military to the political field, the problems for the estimators are often even more complex. Analysis of human behavior and anticipation of human reactions can never be assigned to a computer, and they baffle the most clever analyst.

More than a decade ago, in the autumn of 1950, this country had to face in North Korea the difficult decision of whether or not to push forward to the Yalu River and reunite Korea. If we did so, would the Chinese Communists answer with a direct attack? Or would they stay quiescent—if, for example, Korean rather than U.S. and UN troops formed the bulk of the advance, or if we did not disturb the Chinese sources of electric power in North Korea?

At that time, we had good intelligence as to the location and strength of the Chinese Communist forces on the far side of the Yalu. We had to estimate the intentions of Moscow and Peking. We were not in on their secret councils and decisions. In such cases, it is arrogant, as well as dangerous, for the intelligence officer to venture a firm opinion in the absence of telltale information on the positioning and moving of troops, the bringing up of strategic supplies and the like. I can speak with detachment about the 1950 Yalu estimates, for they were made just before I joined the CIA. The conclusions of the estimators were that it was a toss-up, but they leaned to the side that under certain circumstances the Chinese probably would not intervene. In fact, we just did not know what the Chinese Communists would do, and we did not know how far the Soviet Union would press them or agree to support them if they moved.

One cannot assume that a Communist leader will act or react as we would or that he will always be right in
his
estimates of our reactions. In Cuba, in October of 1962, Khrushchev presumably “estimated” that he could sneak his missiles into the island, plant them and camouflage them, and then, at a time of his own choosing, face the United States with a
fait accompli
which we would accept rather than risk war. Certainly here he misestimated—just as some on our side had misestimated that Khrushchev would not attempt to place offensive weapons in Cuba, right under our nose.

The role of intelligence in the early phases of the Cuban crisis of October, 1962, was the subject of a public report by the Preparedness Subcommittee of the Armed Services Committee of the Senate, under the chairmanship of Senator John Stennis of Mississippi. The subcommittee’s main conclusion reads as follows: “Faulty evaluation and the predisposition of the Intelligence Community to the philosophical conviction that it would be incompatible with Soviet policy to introduce strategic missiles into Cuba resulted in intelligence judgments and evaluations which later proved to be erroneous.”

This criticism of intelligence was directed to the period in September and early October, prior to the obtaining of adequate photography. Then there had been certain intelligence estimates to the general effect that it was unlikely intermediate-range missiles, i.e., missiles which could reach far into the United States, would be introduced into Cuba by the Soviets. There were some people, however, notably Mr. McCone, the Director of Central Intelligence, who had expressed at the time serious premonitions, but the intelligence community generally felt that Khrushchev would not risk a course of action so directly threatening to the United States and one which subsequent activities showed he was prepared to abandon abruptly in the face of strong American reaction. Cuba is yet another instance to warn us that one must be prepared for the Soviets to do the unexpected, the unusual, the shocking, confident in his own ability to retreat, as well as to advance, when the opposition gets too hot and also confident that he can make these retreats without seriously affecting his own domestic position. With complete control of the media of communication within his own country, he can explain away a retreat in Cuba as just another example of the “peaceful” posture of the Soviet Union.

In the preparation of estimates with regard to Soviet policy, their actions and reactions, it is always well to have among the estimators one or two persons who are designated to play the roles of the devil’s advocate, who can advance all the reasons why a Khrushchev could take an unusual, dramatic or, as viewed from our own vantage point, even an unwise and unremunerative course of action. Of course, one would reach rather ridiculous conclusions, and certainly wrong conclusions in most cases, if one always came up with an estimate that the abnormal is what the Soviet Union will
probably
do. It is well, however, that the policymakers should be reminded from time to time that such abnormalities in Soviet action are not to be excluded.

If some of our own estimators went wrong in the Cuban affair, Khrushchev and his advisers committed an even more serious misestimate in apparently concluding that he could get away with this crude maneuver without a stern American rejoinder. Intelligence officers have to face the fact that whenever a dramatic event occurs in the foreign relations field—an event for which the pubic may not have been prepared—one can usually count on the cry going up, “Intelligence has failed again.” The charge may at times be correct. But there are also many occasions when an event has been foreseen and correctly estimated but intelligence has been unable to advertise its success.

This was true of the Suez invasion of 1956. Here intelligence was well alerted as to what Israel and then Britain and France were likely to do. The public received the impression, however, that there had been an intelligence failure; statements were issued by U.S. officials to the effect that the country had not been given advance warning of the action. Our officials, of course, intended to imply only that the British and French and Israelis had failed to tell us what they were doing. In fact, United States intelligence had kept the government informed but, as usual, did not advertise its achievement.

Sputnik
is another example. Here, despite the general impression to the contrary, the intelligence community predicted with great accuracy Soviet progress in space technology and the approximate time when their satellite would be orbited.

On other occasions the press and the public have been mistaken about the actual role of intelligence in certain situations. Having reached their conclusions about what the intelligence estimate must have been in the light of the official action taken, they have proceeded to attack the intelligence services, even though, in fact, no such estimate had been made.

Take, for example, the Bay of Pigs episode in 1961. Much of the American press assumed at the time that this action was predicated on a mistaken intelligence estimate to the effect that a landing would touch off a widespread and successful popular revolt in Cuba. Those who had worked, as I had, with the anti-Hitler underground behind the Nazi lines in France and Italy and in Germany itself during World War II and those who watched the tragedy of the Hungarian patriots in 1956 would have realized that spontaneous revolutions by unarmed people in this modern age are ineffective and often disastrous. While I have not commented on any details of the 1961 Cuban operation and do not propose to do so here, I repeat now what I have said publicly before: I know of no estimate that a spontaneous uprising of the unarmed population of Cuba would be touched off by the landing.

Clearly, our intelligence estimates, particularly in dealing with the Communists, must take into account not only the natural and the usual, but also the unusual, the brutal, the unexpected. Actions and reactions can no longer be estimated on the basis of what we might have done if we had been in Khrushchev’s shoes because, as we have seen at the United Nations, he took off his shoes. Often Soviet moves seem to be influenced by the theories of Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, the famous Russian physiologist who induced certain reflexes in animals and then, by abruptly changing the treatment, reduced the animals to a state of confusion. The Pavlovian touch can be seen in Khrushchev’s abrupt changes in attitude and action. The scuttling of the Paris Summit Metting in 1960, when he had for years known about the U-2, the surprise resumption of nuclear testing just at the time the nonaligned nations were assembling in Belgrade in 1961, even the famous shoe-thumping episode, were staged so that their shock effect would help produce the results he desired. He probably hoped for the same shock effects from the missiles in Cuba. Estimates on how Communist leaders act in a given situation should take this characteristic into account.

The willingness of a country to accept unpopularity in defense of its vital interests can be an element of strength. Often, because of our desire to be “loved,” this element has been lacking in American foreign policy, but that does not mean that we should emulate the “shock” techniques of a Khrushchev.

Of course, one rarely has knowledge of all the factors bearing on the decisions of others. No one can predict with assurance the workings of the minds of the leaders whose actions make history. As a matter of fact, if we were to set out to estimate what our policies would be in a few years hence, we would soon be lost in a forest of uncertainty. And yet our estimators are called upon to decide what others will do. Unfortunately, the intelligence process of making estimates will never become an exact science.

But at least progress has been made in assembling the elements of a given situation in an orderly manner so as to assist our planners and policymakers. It is possible, often, to indicate a range of probabilities or possibilities and to isolate those factors which would influence Kremlin or Peking decisions. In any event, we have come a long way since Pearl Harbor and the somewhat haphazard system of intelligence analysis which prevailed at that time.

THE AMERICAN INTELLIGENCE OFFICER

The establishment of a permanent intelligence organization in the United States in 1947 resulted in the creation, for us, of a brand-new profession—the career intelligence officer. The profession is small, to be sure, but it still is a fact that this country is now offering to carefully selected young men and women the opportunity to make a lifetime career of intelligence work.

Intelligence officers were trained by the thousands during World War II, most of them to return to their civilian occupations when the war was over. At present the Army, Navy and Air Force maintain peacetime intelligence units which include civilians. For the most part the military personnel assigned to these units are on rotation and for limited tours of service. Until recently, a long tour of duty in intelligence was viewed by the ambitious military officer as a “graveyard” assignment, but this is no longer the case. However, the members of the armed forces who spend long tours in intelligence work are the exceptions.

From the day of its founding, the CIA has operated on the assumption that the majority of its employees are interested in a career and need and deserve the same guarantees and benefits which they would receive if in the Foreign Service or in the military. In turn, the CIA expects most of its career employees to enter its service with the intention of durable association. No more than other large public or private institutions can it afford to invest its resources of time and money in the training and apprenticeship of persons who separate before they have begun to make a contribution to the work at hand. It can, in fact, afford this even less than most organizations for one very special reason peculiar to the intelligence world—the maintenance of its security. A sizable turnover of short-term employees is dangerous because it means that working methods, identities of key personnel and certain projects in progress will have been exposed in some measure to persons not yet sufficiently indoctrinated in the habits of security to judge when they are talking out of turn and when they are not.

The very nature of a professional intelligence organization requires, then, that it recruit its personnel for the long pull, that it carefully screen candidates for jobs in order to determine ahead of time whether they are the kind of people who will be competent, suitable and satisfied, and that once such people are within the fold their careers can be developed to the mutual advantage of the government and the officer.

How is recruitment carried out in an intelligence agency, in particular in our own? The nature of the work which the candidate may be best suited to carry out is the controlling factor.

Initially you can’t invite the prospect inside the plant and take him on a tour to show him how varied and rewarding a career in intelligence may be. Neither can you give him an illustrated booklet telling him all about the agency. Actually, the CIA does circulate a booklet about itself to inquiring job candidates, but this booklet cannot give information which would comfort the enemy or convey much enlightenment to the candidate. The employer wants to know everything about the candidate before employing him, but at that stage he cannot tell much about his organization or the job that awaits the applicant if he is selected.

Obviously in such a situation it is up to the employer to judge not only whether the candidate is suitable but whether he will be happy once he learns more fully what he is to do. The candidate must take on good faith the employer’s assurances. And the only way the intelligence organization can give such assurances is to search as deeply as possible into the life and mind of the prospect, for his own benefit as well as the benefit of the organization.

Security investigations are a purely negative part of this process. They are rigorous, as they must be, but ninety-nine out of a hundred young Americans could pass a security investigation without difficulty. It is not hard to understand why an intelligence organization in these times cannot employ persons with close relatives behind the Iron Curtain, or persons who were at one time associated with Communist or other anti-American movements, or who in the past have displayed weaknesses in personal behavior or moral judgment. Finding out these things about a man is, however, relatively easy compared to finding out whether he is the right man for the intelligence profession.

The difficulty here is that the jobs in intelligence are manifold and there is room for many kinds of talent. And within any category of jobs many different kinds of men and women may succeed in different ways. There is likewise no fixed profile of personal characteristics which can be used in the selection of personnel for intelligence. But there are certain prerequisites without which, in all probability, the candidate will neither succeed nor be happy in the long run.

When I recently addressed a class of junior trainees at CIA I tried to list what I thought were the qualities of a good intelligence officer. These were:

Be perceptive about people

Be able to work well with others under difficult conditions

Learn to discern between fact and fiction

Be able to distinguish between essentials and nonessentials

Possess inquisitiveness

Have a large amount of ingenuity

Pay appropriate attention to detail

Be able to express ideas clearly, briefly and, very important, interestingly

Learn when to keep your mouth shut

I would add to this list certain other qualifications, desirable in a good intelligence officer, which have less to do with working ability than with attitudes and motives.

A good intelligence officer must have an understanding of other points of view, other ways of thinking and behaving, even if they are quite foreign to his own. Rigidity and closed-mindedness are qualities that do not spell a good future in intelligence.

An intelligence officer must not be overambitious or anxious for personal reward in the form of fame or fortune. These he is not likely to get in intelligence work. But he must bring to the task that intangible which is one of the most necessary characteristics of an intelligence officer—motivation. What motivates a man to devote himself to the craft of intelligence?

One way to answer the question is to look at some of the people who make up the ranks of American intelligence today and see how they got there. Here is a man, now a senior supervisor in CIA, who fought in the European Theater in World War II, stayed on for the occupation of Germany, was in Berlin during the airlift of 1948 and was finally returned stateside and discharged. He discovered after three months in his old job that the once attractive occupation of making money no longer satisfied him in a world of continuing international conflict, of which he had some knowledge thanks to his wartime and postwar service. He wanted to be closer to some front where he could feel he was “engaged,” where he was dealing with the things he felt counted most.

Another man, a younger one, graduated from college in the early 1950s. He majored in government and international affairs. His father hoped he would go into the family business but the son didn’t want to settle down to this routine—not just then. He wasn’t really sure what he wanted to do but what interested him from the small glimpse he had of it in his college studies, and what stirred him every time he read the headlines, were the commitments and problems of the United States abroad and the Soviet challenge to our way of life. He went to Washington to look for a job, worked for a while in a branch of the government that had little to do with foreign affairs, and then finally found in intelligence what he was looking for.

Still a third man, from a small town in the Midwest, without a college education, was drafted, assigned eventually to a signals unit overseas, became fascinated with the Far East, witnessed the Chinese Communist attack on Quemoy, was returned stateside and discharged. Thanks to the training the Army gave him, he could have gone into electronics, or perhaps opened a television repair shop. Instead, he turned up one day at CIA offering his services and was assigned to an important communications job overseas.

What all these men had in common was an awareness of the conflict that exists in the world today, a conviction that the United States is involved in this conflict, that the peace and well-being of the world are endangered, and that it is worth trying to do something about these things.

What moved them is something more complicated than pure patriotism and something deeper than a mere longing for excitement. There is in the intelligence officer, whether he operates at home or abroad, a certain “front-line” mentality, a “first-line-of-defense” mentality. His awareness is sharpened because in his daily work he is almost continually confronted with evidences of the enemy in action. If the sense of adventure plays some role here, as it surely does, it is adventure with a large measure of concern for the public safety.

With this motivation, an alert, inquisitive and patriotic individual with an adequate education can be molded into a good intelligence officer. It is this complex “motivational” aspect of a man for which the intelligence service must probe in the prospective employee. Education, talent and the highest security clearances will not make him an intelligence officer if he does not have this motivation.

The charge has been leveled against CIA that it recruits almost exclusively from the so-called Ivy League colleges in the East with an overtone that possibly we have too many “softies” and possibly too many “liberals” for the tough job the CIA has to do. It is quite true that we have a considerable number of graduates from Eastern colleges. It is also true that in numbers of degrees (many of the CIA personnel have more than one degree) Harvard, Yale, Columbia and Princeton lead the list, but they are closely followed by Chicago, Illinois, Michigan, University of California, Stanford and MIT. It is interesting, however, to note that taking the approximately one hundred senior officers of the CIA, statistics show that these officers have degrees from sixty-one different universities, representing all parts of the country. It is, in fact, a highly heterogeneous group of men, representative of the entire Untied States, with a certain number of the men having postgraduate degrees from foreign universities.

Everyone who applies in writing or in person to CIA can be certain that his application will receive serious consideration. If there is no suitable position for which he could qualify, he is told so, as soon as the papers he has submitted are studied. If he seems to have some qualifications which recommend him for an existing opening, he will be invited for an interview. If the interviewer is favorably impressed and feels that the candidate seriously wishes to seek long-term employment with CIA and is not just seeking the “thrills” of what he thinks “espionage” work might bring, the process of testing begins.

The Korean war period caused a rapid expansion in CIA personnel, but the growth in recent years has been at a relatively low pace. There is a constant and recurring need for specialists and technicians to fill specific jobs requiring highly developed skills. In addition to these is the pressing need to recruit and train a cadre of young professional intelligence officers who possess the potential for executive leadership and who will eventually assume the responsibilities of senior intelligence officers and leaders of CIA. This is called the Junior Officer Training Program and its members, of an average age of about twenty-six, are Junior Officer Trainees (JOTs). They go through a series of training courses, at first general in nature, followed by others of increasing concentration on intelligence operations which prepare the JOTs for a specific type of work. This is followed by a trial period of on-the-job application of their training which determines eventual suitability for assignment. While in the training status, the JOT is carefully supervised by a training officer who looks at him as an individual in a continuing effort to place him on the job for which he is best suited. This pragmatic approach has proved itself in actual practice.

To find men of talent and promise, CIA does not rely solely, or even principally, on persons who apply to it for jobs. It goes out and looks for them on the campuses of colleges and universities all over the country. CIA does not do its hiring through the ordinary Civil Service mechanisms which serve as a clearinghouse for many parts of the government. It does, however, give its employees the same insurance and retirement benefits as are received under the Civil Service system, and its pay scale and its method of accruing annual leave and sick leave are the same.

CIA has been developing a Career Service plan with the aim, among other things, of charting out ahead of time for a foreseeable period of years various positions and posts to which an employee is to be assigned. The plan is based, as feasible, on the employee’s own stated preferences, which are matched against the likelihood of openings suitable to the employee and on the supervisor’s judgment of the employee’s capabilities. Ambitious young men and women may sometimes dream up career plans for themselves which are not entirely practicable or which stem from a somewhat inflated estimate of their own capabilities. Agency programming helps to air such ambitions well in advance and to provide the employee with a realistic assessment of his future. Chiefly, however, the idea is to avoid arbitrary or makeshift assignments and to try to give some sense and continuity to the series of jobs which a man or woman may fill over a period of years.

Women in CIA undergo much the same training as men and can qualify for the same jobs, except that overseas assignments for women are more limited. One reason for this is the ingrained prejudice in many countries of the world against women as “managers” of men—in their jobs, that is. An agent brought up in this tradition may not feel comfortable taking orders from a woman, and we cannot change his mind for him in this regard. In World War II, American women shared risks in intelligence missions with men. Some of them parachuted into France as members of American jump teams who were sent in to support the French underground. While there is little reason to assign them today to jobs which endanger life and limb, many of them have served as members of intelligence units in hostile or “hardship” areas where for periods of years they have worked alongside the men, completely isolated from the amenities of modern life as they knew them at home.