The Nation's Pulse/The New Class and the Big Bang
Shattan, Joseph
GENTLEMANLY SPOOKS by Arnold Beichman There is only one absolutely safe prediction to be made about President Reagan. Should the Soviet Union invade another Afghanistan, he will not, as did his...
...The CIA...
...Or take the recent arrest and conviction of CIA veteran David H. Barnett after he tried to get a staff job on the Senate and House intelligence committees...
...It is interesting to note that although the USSR has always propagandized about disarmament and SALT treaties, it has never suggested any limitation treaties on intelligence...
...In 1979, Henry Kissinger came close to enunciating a theory of intelligence when he spoke about the need for U.S...
...Nor do I believe that these follies and excesses could have occurred without resolute "blind eye" encouragement by Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon...
...And far better for both sides to engage in "dirty tricks" among the professional few than for massed armies to start tossing nuclear missiles against each other...
...But these criticisms of others merely underscore his failure to mention one of the biggest leaks, which came from an agency executive who said he was proud of its "immoral" projects...
...To put it bluntly in intelligence parlance, the CIA may have been "turned around...
...intelligence is the lack of a theory, a philosophy, a clear statement of purpose to justify the time, money, effort, manpower, and unpleasant strategies required to make the thing function at all...
...One of the major reasons for the weakness of public understanding of U.S...
...Under President Ford, intelligence activities began to falter, however, when the spotlight began to shine brightly on the agencies...
...Braden was Meyer's predecessor in the CIA as chief of the International Organizations Division, where he served until 1954 when he resigned to become a California newspaper publisher...
...Braden's article with its curious title gave names, dates, and places of people, organizations, and publications which, he said, had been subven-tioned by the CIA...
...The reason for an intelligence agency is not that because they do it, we should also do if, nor is it simply that we want to catch the Alger Hisses in our midst...
...The Reagan administration is certainly prepared to undertake changes in the CIA and ancillary intelligence agencies...
...A major beneficiary of President Reagan's politico-ideological awareness will be the U.S...
...All I wish is that he'd get rid of that old school tie...
...Says Meyer of these tests: "They are unpleasant but formidably effective in spotting KGB plants...
...He knows what Leonid Brezhnev, at the 1976 Party Congress, said about the Soviets' "ultimate goals": Detente does not in the slightest abolish, nor can it abolish or change, the laws of the class struggle...
...Cord Meyer's analysis of Soviet strategy in the 1980s and his inside knowledge about the Soviet KGB are outstanding...
...The real question, however, is not President Reagan's desires, but whether the ailing intelligence system, some three decades old, can be returned to life and again become an effective instrument in furthering American security and foreign policy objectives...
...I do not exonerate the CIA and FBI from blame for the follies and excesses which were uncovered in this campaign...
...intelligence...
...Why should Meyer, who has no hesitancy in criticizing others in the CIA for their weaknesses, omit even a reference to Braden's article...
...He refers obliquely to leaks about CIA activities, which is all well and good...
...The Carter administration's blindness to the implacable hostility of the Soviet Union helped to attenuate CIA functions and, in particular, FBI counterintelligence, as did Carter's perception that America's primary enemies are Latin American military juntas...
...I have singled out Congress as the "leak," if only because, as Cord Meyer has pointed out in his highly informed syndicated column, congressional intelligence committee staffs need not take the lie detector tests periodically required of CIA and National Security Agency employees...
...Having said all this, I would still stress that Facing Reality is a valuable contribution to the CIA debate...
...It is far safer to understand a potential or sworn enemy and what he us up to than to live in ignorance and be driven into a crisis where it is war or surrender...
...Forster's casuistical distinction between betraying one's friends and one's country...
...Surely he cannot believe in E.M...
...Security lapses, leaks, and other faux pas are simply the manifestations of an unsettled and unending debate over the future of the CIA and U.S...
...On the contrary, we now have a president who knows full well what detente means to the Soviet Union...
...Whether the title of Braden's article was intended as deep irony or as camouflage to justify an expose of labor officials and anti-Communist intellectuals and organizations, I cannot say, but the damage it did to the CIA is undeniable...
...There is no point in calling for a congressional investigation because the problem might well be the Congress itself, where under the recently repealed 1974 Hughes-Ryan amendment, eight congressional committees and their staffs- some 200 people outside the CIA- were allowed access to CIA secrets...
...We do not conceal the fact that we see detente as a way of creating more favorable conditions for the peaceful building of Socialism and Communism...
...Now what the hell kind of security is that...
...On that Saturday, three Senators- Bayh, Goldwater, and Biden of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence-and two committee staff members met with two CIA executives who briefed them about covert, paramilitary operations in Afghanistan...
...Should the Soviet Union invade another Afghanistan, he will not, as did his predecessor on a 1979 New Year's Eve Broadcast, utter one of the most fatuous statements ever by an American president, to half-wit: This action of the Soviets [their aggression against Afghanistan] has made a more dramatic change in my own opinion of what the Soviets' ultimate goals are than anything they've done in the previous time I've been in office...
...Szulc described how the CIA would provide the Afghan anti-Soviet rebels with assault rifles, antitank weapons, and SAM-7 surface-to-air missiles and launchers...
...Congress...
...It's really a debate as to whether a democracy like ours which lives by selective application of the Bill of Rights can justify a secret intelligence agency, and whether it can organize an agency which can be trusted...
...The article led off with a report of what had transpired on Saturday, January 9, 1980, in Senate Room S-407 ("the most 'secure' room in all of Congress...
...there is a huge grey area between military intervention and normal diplomatic processes...
...that is, the CIA may unwittingly be working for the Soviet KGB...
...Indeed there are many who believe that the CIA may have become irretrievably unreliable because of years and years of merciless media and congressional exposure: because of the debilitation of its counter-intelligence capability...
...Couple this presidential blindness and moral obtuseness with an effective ten-year campaign in and out of Congress against the very idea of American intelligence-by which I mean covert action, counter-intelligence, clandestine collection, analysis, and estimates-and one can say without exaggeration that American intelligence is in crisis...
...It is this kind of behavior which has always mystified CIA buffs like myself...
...And under Carter, even routine intelligence activities were discouraged...
...Yet not only was Braden, so far as I know, never publicly criticized but the article seems to have had little effect on his relationships with CIA executives...
...Let me supply a documented example of how Congress might be part of the problem: On April 6, 1980, the New York Times Magazine ran a long article by Tad Szulc entitled, "Putting Back the Bite in the C.I.A...
...Curiously, Braden never suffered for his indiscretion nor presumably for a violation of some agreement not to talk out of turn.f (Meyer, by the way, says he submitted his manuscript for CIA vetting...
...get rid of that old school tie...
...Or in the words of Hugh Trevor-Roper: "Secret intelligence is the continuation of open intelligence by other means...
...Nothing concentrates the mind of an intelligence executive as much as the knowledge that he is working for a president who fully understands that the 1980s will see the zenith of Soviet military power...
...Allen W. Dulles, the ex-director of CIA, said he would never again speak to Braden...
...covert capabilities which at the time were practically non-existent...
...The White House...
...I have it on good authority that several of Braden's associates pleaded with him not to publish the piece, photocopies of which had circulated in Washington and New York weLl before publication...
...How can any secret be kept when something as significant as the CIA Afghanistan operation becomes known so quickly...
...Or is the . CIA at present really as immovable and' uncontrollable as some people think...
...Cord Meyer has had a singular opportunity to meditate on the nuances of the debate: He served in the CIA for 26 years from 1951 until his amicable departure in 1977, held the top job in the CIA's Covert Action section, and was slandered as a Communist Party member and even suspended from his job without pay at the height of the McCarthy era...
...Braden's article followed in the wake of a March 1967 Ramparts "expose" of CIA funding of the National Student Association...
...Otherwise, in view of his fine record and the recommendations he brought with him, this KGB plant would have penetrated the inner sanctum of two crucial congressional committees...
...intelligence system...
...It is startling to note that Meyer makes no reference to Braden's article...
...According to committee staffers, reports Meyer, it was sheer chance that no job openings were available when Barnett applied in 1977...
...In fact Richard Helms, former CIA director and then ambassador to Iran, was reported in both the Washington Post and New York magazine as guest of honor at a homecoming dinner hosted by Braden and his wife...
...because of its politicization and the finger-pointing game in which past and present CIA executives suggest that everybody-Colby, Angleton, Kissinger, and heaven knows who else-is a mole...
...The article created a furor because it named names in the same way that Philip Agee names namesexcept that Braden s motives, we might suppose, were different...
...The result is a contribution to the debate in the calm, reasoned voice of his recent memoir...
...Another cause of the CIA's troubles has been its old-school-tie syndrome...
...On May 20, 1967, there appeared in the Saturday Evening Post an article by Thomas W. Braden entitled, "I'm Glad the CIA Is Is Immoral...
...It is even more startling because Meyer is sharply critical of William Colby, Merle Miller, Miles Copeland, Ramparts magazine, John Ehrlichman, Agee, and Admiral Turner...
...Who told whom...
Vol. 14 • April 1981 • No. 4
