Secrets, Spies and Scholars

Cline, Ray S.

BOOKS IN REVIEW - "Secrets, Spies and Scholars" existing occupants lose. The history of economic growth over the past two centuries has been a steady improvement of the lot of the masses, and a slow slide in the quality of life of the...

...The American business community annually spends millions of dollars on programs aimed at promoting the private enterprise system through increased public understanding of economic concepts and business institutions...
...The cut-off of aid last year to the pro-Western factions in the Angolan Civil War is a good example of the HughesRyan Amendment at work...
...She went so far as to assure one hostess that she had not eaten meat for ten years-when actually there had been plenty of meat in Europe after the war--because she thought that was what the woman wanted to hear...
...Ostensibly a move to improve the relevance and timeliness of reports, Cline sees it as a "retrograde" step that increased White House control of intelligence analysis...
...20024 The Alternative: An American Spectator August/September 1977 31 fact that nearly 90 percent of the intelligence budget is controlled by the Defense Department...
...He is now a furniture dealer in Kansas City where he lives with his Israeli wife and their two children...
...In addition, he points out that most of the wrongdoing was uncovered in 1973 by the Agency itself in an effort to correct past irregularities...
...Despite all the recent publicity, the number of such operations has been declining steadily since 1968...
...Cline, understandably, assigns covert action a minor place in his scheme...
...With a flood of' 'an average of hundreds of reports each week," few analysts had time to digest more than a small portion of them...
...These operations, of course, are not intelligence activities at all, but are attempts to influence events in other countries...
...As befits a former Deputy Director for Intelligence of the CIA and a former Director of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Cline's approach is analytical (and in fact a bk dry) rather than anecdotal...
...Of special interest are his assessments of the various CIA Directors and his account of J . Edgar Hoover's repeated attempts to capture control of foreign as well as domestic intelligence...
...it is no accident that they are the principal manifestations of mass prosperity...
...But it was two of the Agency's own covert "successes" that encouraged the illusion that it could meddle anywhere in the world with impunity...
...Box 23221, L'Enfant Plaza Station, Washington, D.C...
...They will assess "the state of the a r t " and offer recommendations for directing resources toward approaches which promise positive and lasting results...
...10.00 Robert L. McTiernan Intelligence agencies and activities are taken for granted today...
...Even though the Senate has consolidated oversight responsibility in a single Intelligence Committee, so many members of Congress are still entitled to classified information that it is nearly impossible to keep covert actions covert...
...More than a year has passed since former President Ford set up an Operations Advisory Group and a Committee on Foreign Intelligence to oversee all intelligence activities and covert operations...
...Placing the responsibility for analysis in one bureau and the Director in the Cabinet might even improve the coordination of intelligence activity...
...His greatest fear was that he would never again be fit for normal society...
...Though Cline spent his career mainly as an intelligence officer, he does offer some observations about covert actions, the second theme of Secrets, Spies and Scholars...
...According to Cline, this program was adopted at the urging of George Kennan in order to counter a massive Soviet effort to undermine democracy in Western Europe...
...In contrast to those who portray it as a mindless tool ofCold Warriors, he credits the CIA with moderating the Joint Chiefs' fear of a Soviet attack in Europe during the 1950s...
...Indeed, he acquitted himself well in the war and left the army with an excellent record--despite a propensity to react violently to any remark he considered antiSemitic...
...He attributes most of the anti-CIA sentiment of the past few years to Watergate-era paranoia and, citing the Church Committee's retraction of its Chairman's statement that the Agency was a "rogue elephant," claims that the CIA's abuses were "not massive...
...There is a word that can be appropriately employed to describe the deployment of state power to achieve the social and economic goals of the prosperous--that word is fascism...
...The exhaustive review of the intelligence community during the past few years by two Congressional committees, the Rockefeller and Murphy Commissions, and the press may have had a needed "cathartic effect," to use Senator Howard Baker's phrase...
...This proposal, which has wide support, is eminently sensible, as is Cline's suggestion that less sensitive intelligence reports be made available to all members of Congress...
...Cline emphasizes the need for a neutral agency--with no interest in increasing the defense budget or vindiRobert L. McTiernan is a recent graduate of the University of Pittsburgh Law School...
...As the Church Committee reported, the Senate subcommittee with chief oversight responsibility convened only six times between 1971 and 1974...
...The fast stresses the primacy of the intelligence as opposed to the operations function of the CIA...
...In addition to keeping track of current events, this agency must provide "estimates" of what other governments will do in the future, and Cline manages to convey what an extraordinarily difficult task this is...
...she explains the processing of the survivors once they'd reached America--which agencies they dealt with, and what services the various agencies provided...
...Yet the CIA has repeatedly overestimated the value and feasibility of peacetime covert operations...
...Name Company/ Organization Address City State Zip [ ] NFIB Member [ ] NAM Member [ ] Other Registration fee includes all scheduled receptions and meal functions and admission to all sessions...
...Most information secretly collected by the CIA comes from defectors, electronic bugging devices, and agents in the Third World...
...This agency would supervise the budget and work of all intelligence analysts, including those in the State and Defense Departments...
...This uncertainty will inevitably end, but not until the current debate over the CIA--which is really a debate over the proper goals of American foreign policy-is settled...
...S. Gordon chose to adapt to the new life 32 The Alternative: An American Spectator August/September 1977...
...Hirsch is following a line more vigorously laid down by Lewis Mumford, John Kenneth Galbraith, and E.J...
...This is not as revolutionary as it sounds...
...Yet only since Franklin D. Roosevelt created the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in 1941 has the United States government been able to rely on a centralized, civilian authority to gather and evaluate strategic information...
...he praises the undercover aid given to anti-Communist political, labor, and cultural groups in Western Europe after World War II...
...Then, the same political pressures that mandated covert assistance in the ftrst place usually force the United States to withdraw its support...
...Cline praises these reforms for increasing the accountability of the various intelligence agencies without threatening their independence...
...Cline attributes this, in part, to the overlyromanticized stories of the OSS's wartime exploits...
...That step resulted largely from the quiet persuasion and assistance of British officials, such as Winston Churchill, who, with a Secret Service of their own dating from the time of Elizabeth I, could foresee the crucial role intelligence would play in the inevitable conflict between the United States and Nazi Germany...
...There is always the danger that so much information will simply overwhelm analysts...
...If Congress had been a better watchdog, successive Presidents would not have dared to push the Agency into embarassing enterprises...
...Even the Church Committee conceded in its Report that the program has "passed retrospective public judgment...
...The socialists at least expressed primary concern with the welfare of the lower classes...
...He recommends "public allocation" of commodities...
...Michael MacDowell President-Elect, Joint Council on Economic Education Dr...
...The other branch, the Clandestine Services Staff, would be responsible for conducting espionage, i.e., the clandestine collection of information...
...When the CIA launched an extensive effort to topple President Sukarno of Indonesia in 1958, the result was "ignominious failure...
...Underlying these details, however, are two basic themes...
...Thus, our own involvement in the intelligence world stemmed from a covert political operation by the British government, an irony that the author of Secrets, Spies and Scholars makes sure is not lost on his readers...
...foreign policy goals and some, for instance the Bay of Pigs, have been total disasters...
...Mail registration coupon and your check payable to: NFIB/NAM CONFERENCE, P.O...
...Hirsch cares only for the privileged...
...The support and endorsement of this study by one of America's leading foundations and its praise in the establishment press is an ominous development...
...Flekier was thirteen when he was conscripted into a Nazi labor gang in Poland...
...The question of "effectiveness" will be discussed in the context of the cultural-political values of the American people, the-public's expectations of business institutions, and the patterns of influence and leadership in American society...
...In 1953, the CIA reputedly overthrew the leftist premier of Iran, Mohammed Mossadegh, and restored the Shah to his throne...
...And along with many students of the Vietnam War, Cline claims that the Agency frequently angered policy-makers with its sober assessment of the effectiveness of U.S...
...She went with the firm conviction that as a dependent it was her duty to accept what was given and to adapt quickly to the demands of the new situation...
...During the Korean war, he was looked upon as a sort of expert in the art of survival...
...Cline makes the more telling point that the most egregious CIA excesses, such as domestic spying, were the direct result of pressures from Presidents Johnson and Nixon...
...Further, as Cline points out, existing laws make even small-scale covert projects highly impractical...
...Mishan in his emphasis on the automobile and suburbia...
...Press leaks and a full and public policy-debate are inevitable...
...Keeping analysts in a separate agency would help to shield them from the suspicion Americans have for clandestine activities...
...But it seems that nearly every institutional reform that could prevent future abuses has now been adopted...
...The CIA's blunders in the intelligence area are by now well known...
...Primarily, however, New Lives is the story of survival as told by the survivors themselves...
...The conference will address basic issues and assumptions involved in the economic education movement and will appraise the effectiveness of various approaches embodied in corporate, foundation, and school programs...
...W. Allen Wallis Chancellor, University of Rochester Dr...
...But Cline reminds us that the Agency predicted China's fast nuclear explosion and detected the Sino-Soviet split as early as 1956...
...Yet the problem these programs are intended to alleviate-the growth of the governmental sector at the expense of the private sector--seems to grow more acute...
...Not surprisingly, many members of Congress who also participated have since suffered "convenient lapses of memory...
...Ray S. Cline joined the OSS in 1943 and retired from government service thirty years later...
...my check for $135 is enclosed...
...But he also makes a modest proposal of his own--abolish the CIA...
...Tawney's The Acquisitive Society...
...When it is indulged--in response to some form of anti-Semitism--it seems far from a manifestation of antisocial tendencies...
...No refunds for cancellations after August 16...
...The need to fight is still with him, but it is rarely indulged...
...Alan A. Waiters Urban Advisor, The World Bank Paul Weaver Associate Editor, Fortune Magazine _9 Partial List [] Register me for the conference...
...Still, there is a risk in making all these changes...
...But those who see a prudent policy of containing Soviet power and supporting liberal democracy as the only viable course for the United States realize that a strong and trusted Central In...
...The Agency's critics appear intent on trimming its capabilities to a point suitable for a drastically reduced American role in world affairs...
...The best chance of combining effective oversight with secrecy lies in establishing a single Congressional committee with full and exclusive rights to information about covert action...
...Editor-in-Chief, The Alternative Dr...
...Cline is doubtless correct that the media overreacted to CIA revelations and that the Agency "has never come close to being an American Gestapo...
...Nevertheless, he seems to ignore what disturbed most Americans and threatened civil liberties: the government' s belief that opponents of its policies were enemies of the nation...
...Sponsored by The National Association of Manufacturers and The National Federation of Independent Business In Association with The Foundation for Research in Economics & Education Speakers * Robert Bleiberg Editor, Barron's Financial Weekly Dr...
...Rebecca Spanner, on the other hand, was not at all disposed to do battle when she arrived here...
...Cline reports, however, that in both cases the CIA rendered no more than "marginal assistance" to strong, indigenous forces already opposed m the regime...
...As Cline himself reminds us, the intelligence community must now "rebuild its prestige, spirit and competence...
...Reshuffling that community again would once more draw public attention to it and interrupt the period of quiet renewal it so sorely needs...
...And so, though she did, years later, disabuse her friend as to the conditions in Europe after the liberation, her belief that adaptability is the key to getting along in life still stands...
...Small-scale, short-lived programs of economic and military aid could be undertaken, but only after a formal decision by the President on the recommendation of the Operations Advisory Group...
...Moreover, the attitude of Congress toward the CIA during most of the last thirty years has been, as Cline characterizes it, "supportive rather than critical...
...Considering his belief that most of the CIA's wounds were White House inflicted, Cline's sympathy for greater Congressional oversight is not surprising...
...The most important foreign policy problem we face today is not the secret activity of federal agencies but the fact that, since the end of the Vietnam War, the United States has not had a coherent foreign policy...
...The executive branch did keep the oversight subcommittees informed about major covert projects and, as Deputy Director for Intelligence, Cline participated in many of the briefings...
...He joined the army shortly after his arrival...
...Blending personal memoirs with detailed history, he examines in his book nearly every important issue concerning the Central Intelligence Agency...
...He would level incomes in business and the professions, not in academia and government...
...He has, in fact, flourished here...
...Nobody has ever been able to photograph intentions," as former CIA Director James Schlesinger put it...
...Espionage is a rather limited tool for gathering intelligence, if only because in tightly-controlled societies, such as the Soviet Union or the nations of Eastern Europe, infiltration is next to impossible...
...One of the most interesting of the portraits is Abe Flekier's...
...Also, during Nixon's tenure, the Office of National Estimates (which Cline helped to establish in t950) was replaced with a system of preparing intelligence estimates upon request by the National Security Council...
...The significance of this book and its reception is that the bourgeoisie is getting its back up...
...In fact, the Pike Committee has attributed the CIA's much-criticized failure to predict the 1973 Yom Kippur War to the sheer volume of reports the Agency received from the Middle East...
...Like most serious students of the subject, Cline blames the lack of responsible oversight on Congress itself...
...He came to this country six years later, burdened by a rage that had been the cause of numerous fights--and at least a bit of legal trouble--in postwar Europe...
...The Central Institute of Foreign Affairs Research would be the heart of Cline's new system...
...despite his lack of education--and of English--he was given a position of responsibility...
...Dorothy Rabinowitz studied the available background material and included it in the book: She describes, for example, the liberation of some of the concentration camps--which armies liberated them, what steps they took against the administrators...
...The Hughes-Ryan Amendment, passed by Congress in 1974, prohibits covert operations, except for those the President finds "important to" the national security and reports "in a timely fashion" to the "appropriate" committees of Congress...
...cating State Department policy--to keep policy-makers informed...
...bombing and the chances for military success...
...One year later, the CIA supposedly deposed Arbenz Guzman in Guatemala...
...Though less reliable than information collected openly, it may provide the only clues as to what unfriendly governments or terrorist groups are planning or how they will react under certain circumstances...
...Most of this datammore than 80 percent according to Harry Howe Ransom--comes from open sources such as foreign broadcasts and photo reconnaissance satellites, and much of it eventually proves worthless...
...The acronym, "CIA," is a "worldwide public relations liability," and to remedy this, Cline suggests that the tasks the CIA now performs be divided between two new organizations...
...All intelligence activities would be managed by the Director of Central Intelligence, who would be elevated to the Cabinet...
...For some suspicious practices, Cline provides innocent explanations: CIA "files" on American citizens, for example, were merely records of routine FBI inquiries to see whether anti-war groups had foreign connections...
...telligence Agency is essential...
...His critique of capitalist selfishness has been made much more learnedly and elegantly by a long line of conservative and socialist thinkers (to my mind, the most attractive exposition is R.H...
...Hirsch is very careful to avoid the term, but in his proposal to reduce commercial (i.e., consumer) choices and to increase social (i.e., government) choices he is, of course, advocating socialism...
...Cline, however, is not opposed to all covert operations...
...1 7 6 BOOK REVIEW Secrets, Spies and Scholars: Blueprint of the Essential CIA Ray S. Cline / Acropolis Books Ltd...
...Citing the political barriers to such a joint committee, Cline instead recommends two separate intelligence oversight committees: one in the Senate that would focus on foreign policy and intelligence, and another in the House that would deal mainly with budgetary problems...
...30 The Alternative: An American Spectator August/September 1977 In his final chapter, "Blueprint for the Future," Cline discusses recent revelations, reforms, and his own proposals for change...
...He is especially critical of President Nixon and Henry Kissinger for impairing the Agency's independence by suppressing intelligence that could not be used to bolster administration policies...
...But it would not remove the greatest barrier to better management: the A National Conference On Economic Education And The Future Of Capitalism August 21-23, 1977 [ ] Hyatt Regency O'Hare [ ] Chicago Why A Conference...
...Participants from the worlds of education, business, media, and public affairs will share their experience and insights on a wide range of topics...
...Rabinowitz talked with 108 survivors, and it is through portraits of about 15 of the most representative-and, clearly, most striking--that Rabinowitz answers the question "What does it mean to hav~ survived the most irrational and ghoulish persecution ?" Naomi Decter is a researcher at Newsweek magazine...
...She was sent, with her husband and daughter, to a small Texas town...
...Henry G. Manne Director, Law & Economics Center, University of Miami Kevin P. Phillips Author and syndicated columnist R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr...
...The history of economic growth over the past two centuries has been a steady improvement of the lot of the masses, and a slow slide in the quality of life of the privileged...
...Cline argues that the main practical problem with covert paramilitary operations is that United States involvement is almost always revealed...
...A research analyst must sift through enormous amounts of data, and then try to make an accurate assessment of the political, military, or economic situation in some distant country or area of the world...
...Rebecca's adaptability is not a function of fear but of a tough sort of pragmatism...
...BOOK REVIEW New laves: Survivors of the Holocaust Living in America Dorothy Rabinowitz ! Knopf / 18.95 Naomi Decter New Lives is about East European Jews who lived through the holocaust and came to America after 1945...
...John Howard President, Rockford College Philip J. Lesly President, Philip Lesly Company Dr...
...Cline does not provide for any permanent organization to conduct covert political and paramilitary actions...
...Most such projects have done little to further U.S...

Vol. 10 • August 1977 • No. 10


 
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