CIA's Record of Intelligence Failures

   The below contains comments about the CIA's horrendous record 
of intelligence failures. The Director John Deutch apparently has 
chosen to ignore this record and not reform the CIA. 
He instead has chosen to continue the failures of the past using 
its intelligence to support its operations -- a process that took
us in and kept us in -- the Vietnam War. In the name of reform 
DCI Deutch juggled a few assignments, renamed a few offices and 
accomplished little else.

   I had hoped that all of the Aldrich Ames problems, the details
of CIA distributing reports from known KGB double agents, the
operations with Guatemalan death squads, and other situations,
would convince the Agency's leadership that change was essential. 

   As evidence that Deutch has opted to continue the role of the CIA's 
writing policy-supporting intelligence we note that he appointed 
David Cohen to be the new Director of Operations (DO) -- one of the 
most powerful positions in the CIA supervising intelligence 
gathering operations and covert actions. His appointment as Director 
of Operations sounded the death knell for any reform.

   David Cohen began his CIA career in the East Asia Division, 
responsible for the disastrously low estimates of Viet Cong strength in
Vietnam, and fought off internal critics such as Sam Adams and Ralph
McGehee. Cohen apparently "bent with the wind" and supported agency-biased 
estimates. U.S. News and World Report said Cohen was "a company man ... 
who will find out what way the wind is blowing and then go with it." 
In the 1980s as a senior Intelligence Directorate officer he directed 
the April 1985 assessment claiming KGB involvement in Ali Agca's 1981 
attempt to assassinate Pope Jean Paul II. The report was so biased that 
the CIA itself criticized it in its July 1985 "Cowey Report."  

   Since writing the above there are strong rumors that Deutch
plans to leave the CIA. An article in the 8/15/96 Washington Post 
states that Deutch, is to resign due to dissatisfaction. 
His friends say he has never been comfortable with the CIA culture. 
Deutch took over in May 1995 but has made little progress toward 
fundamentally restructuring the intelligence community for the 
post-cold war world. 

   I believe that Deutch is suffering from the same fate of other
CIA officials who try to implement change in this rock-bound
institution.  He probably has run afoul of the CIA's defensive culture 
including and especially the intensely protective old-boys-organization, 
the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO), that prides itself 
on being the protector of the CIA's reputation and future.

   Below are a few citations about the CIA's record in "intelligence."

Ralph McGehee
CIABASE

                  How Bad is CIA Intelligence?

   The Agency's inabilities and intelligence failures are legend. My own 
primary experience -- an indication of its overall problems -- was the 1968 
Tet Offensive in Vietnam.  To me this, in the history of the world, is 
its most egregious intelligence failure. 

   The CIA had a 600-person station in the country with officers stationed 
throughout the provinces.  The Agency via unilateral, military and liaison 
programs had literally tens of thousands of individuals gathering 
intelligence. U.S. programs surrounded, and were surrounded by, the enemy. 
Yet the VC were able to infiltrate soldiers, weapons, ammunition, demolitions,
and supplies of all types throughout the country and attacked every major 
city and town completely unanticipated by the CIA. Even hours after the start 
of the offensive, the CIA's Watch Office recorded no new developments. 
(There was one lone CIA officer who alerted his province commander of the 
expected attack and those forces repulsed the offensive. His efforts 
to get the information widely disseminated were angrily rejected.)  In my 
own case I spent years in the CIA fighting its flawed intelligence on Vietnam 
only to be attacked for insubordination. 

   Vietnam was by no means the only major intelligence disaster. The CIA was 
one of the last government institutions to accept the collapse of the Soviet 
Union. Robert Gates the DDI and later the Director of the CIA traveled the 
U.S. exhorting all not to be fooled by the USSR's apparent collapse.  

   The list of CIA intelligence failures is massive. A list of slanted 
intelligence in support policy is even longer. As just one example, the 
House Pike Committee report of the mid 1970s examined six major world 
events and retroactively evaluated CIA intelligence against those events.
The Committee concluded that CIA intelligence over the extended period of 
those events was either completely non-existent or totally inaccurate -- 
a one hundred percent failure.

   The recently completed examination of the CIA by the Commission on 
the Roles and Capabilities of the U.S. Intelligence Community took note 
of part of the problem and said: there is ``arrogance, parochialism, 
disdain for oversight, lack of diversity, and tolerance of inadequate 
professional performance'' in the CIA's Directorate of Operations (DO). 

   Even John Deutch said he was shocked by DO's "inability to 
formulate solutions." The Directorate did not have the desire or ability to 
reinvent itself. "Compared to uniformed officers they certainly are not as 
competent or as understanding of what their relative role is and what their 
responsibilities are."  

   Tim Weiner of the New York Times reported from his interview with Deutch 
that the deep rot of the DO in Guatemala is a core sample of the deep rot of 
the overall DO. The curse of old boys on Deutch is the patrimony of an elite 
secret society that degenerated into an elitist bureaucracy, an inbred tribal 
culture. Rules and laws were not for them. The Director Casey in 1980s hired 
thousands of new spies of questionable quality (many apparently were
chosen to run CIA paramilitary operations -- not to be basically
intelligence officers).  Milt Bearden, the last chief of the Soviet Division, 
says, "out of 5000 people, you've got 1,500 buggy-whip makers," in the 
spies' ranks. There's nothing worse than having a couple thousand more 
troops than you need....their mission is greatly reduced.

   The problem is not solely that of the Directorate of Operations - in many 
cases the Directorate of Intelligence (DI) is just as bad.  The DI is so 
bureaucratized that legitimate intelligence cannot survive or cannot survive 
intact. The other major problem is the politicization of intelligence. John 
Gentry's incisive review of those problems are recorded in his book, "Lost
Promise: How CIA Analysis Misserves the Nation." 

   Since the United States leads the world community it needs the best 
intelligence.  It needs it for itself -- and also hopefully so that it will 
curtail mistaken impulses to destroy governments it does not agree with 
or accept. 

   Can we expect that by juggling assignments within the CIA to 
achieve the ability to penetrate terrorist organizations, drug 
trafficking cartels, international criminal rings or groups  
distributing weapons of mass destruction?  Can we expect this juggling 
to develop a sophisticated intelligence cadre to gather economic 
intelligence?  

   Solutions to the problems are obvious but will not be implemented 
until there is an acknowledgment of the real problems and a willingness
to change.

Ralph McGehee            
CIABASE