From: Ralph McGehee ============================================= 10/16/97 Intel & Weapons of Mass Destruction David M. Birdsey, Amembassy Bonn, posed a number questions and suggestions, responded to below. (See Addenda Three for some of Mr. Birdsey's comments.) "The CIA devotes the bulk of its resources to providing strategic intelligence to policymakers." CIA - Factbook On Intelligence, 50th Anniversary Edition. "The Intelligence Community has very limited analytical capabilities... especially strategic..." House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, June 1997. The CIA says that its priorities are: Counterproliferation, counternarcotics, counterterrorism, and, counterintelligence. Operational Analysis We must distinguish between analysis for operations and analysis for intelligence. The former serves to guide, oversee and critique operational efforts, while the latter serves the more traditional role. Counterterrorism -- per the State Department's publication on Terrorism, there are many small scattered, loosely or non-affiliated terrorist groups about which little is known. How does the CIA's Directorate of Operations (DO) target these? From what has been published it appears that the DO now targets only the well-known groups and nations employing economic warfare. What about the smaller, lesser known groups, that may pose the ultimate threats? How do you identify them? How do you determine their intentions? How do you target them? These are the ultimate challenges and cannot be accomplished by technical ops -- the 1997 House Intel Committee (HIC) report noted the growing commercial availability and knowledge re overhead surveillance capabilities and devices; and, the improving defenses and deceptions used to defeat them. The HIC also detailed the now extensive use of sophisticated encoding material that defy NSA decoding abilities. So overhead surveillance and electronic intercepts -- become of less importance. But DCI Tenet said the CIA will continue to rely on technical operations for information on his "counter" priorities. You need human intelligence (HUMINT) ops -- but the CIA must aim its efforts at pinpointed targets -- something that cannot be accomplished by current DO procedures and operations. Mr. Birdsey cites the wall separating the CIA's Directorate of Intelligence (DI) from the DO, but the DI has been subservient to the DO and the "wall" separating the two more a fig leaf than a reality. If it is essential to continue the supposed separation, establish a DO career designation of operational analysts with GS grades on a par with DO case officers -- and recruit true analysts to serve in that capacity. The proportion of analysts to case officers might be one to ten. DO stations and bases send only a tiny portion of their information to CIA Headquarters and perform little if any in-station operational analysis. To overcome this deficiency send teams of DO analysts to the installations to conduct reviews of all relevant reporting on terrorists, drug dealers, proliferators and counterintelligence targets. Pass the highly condensed and analyzed results to the stations and bases and forward the reviews to Headquarters. (Case officers have a personal interest in not critically reviewing their targets, agents, operations and intelligence.) DO analyst teams should, where feasible, scan relevant files of cooperating intelligence and security services. DO analyst teams would also scan available, operationally relevant, open source material that now goes unread. See Addenda One for my experiences reading the works of Mao and Ho. The thoroughly analyzed material on terrorists, drug dealers, proliferators and double agents would help identify the perpetrators and allow pinpointed operational targeting. Intelligence Analysis The CIA is flawed in conception -- a policy-implementing agency cannot, has not, and will not provide unbiased intelligence. One obvious solution removes the DI from the CIA and makes it independent financially, organizationally, and geographically. Due to the current politicized leadership of the DI, such a move must be accompanied by wholesale personnel changes. As Mr. Birdsey opines, the intelligence analysis function might be better performed by the State Department with the technical/scientific/cryptological analysis performed by the Pentagon. We note that State Department's INR has the best intelligence record while receiving the smallest budget. The above recommendations admittedly are idealistic, but when does the United States recognize and try to address the problem? We have a fifty year history of CIA intelligence and operational failures, can we survive another fifty years? Ralph McGehee CIABASE -------------------------------------------------------------- Addenda One: It is difficult to convey my experiences in the DO and impressions of the lack of analysis in that Directorate. Two major failures come to mind -- the Vietnam War where I was a direct participant; and, the collapse of the USSR. We could blame both of these lapses on the DI but the DI to a degree only served as the rubber stamp for the DO. In the case of Vietnam, I as an ops officer with an analytical bent and an extremely fortuitous situation, was able to decipher the strengths of the Viet Cong in less than a year. I used operational analysis to devise an approach to the Communist Party's of Thailand's (CPT) armed revolution (that used the organizational techniques of the Viet Cong). My program was successful beyond all expectations but I am still trying, after thirty years to get anyone in the intelligence community to recognize the utility of those analytical procedures. To test my own observations, I compiled a study on Asian revolutions based on the writings of Mao and Ho, and a few American academicians and others. They validated all of my reporting. Mao Tse-tung, in one of his first essays written in 1929!, recorded the necessity of organizing the peasants into liberation associations as the first and most important element of the Chinese revolution. Ho and other Vietnamese Communist authorities, learned their organizational techniques from Mao and wrote their own essays -- but all these passed over the head of the CIA's Directorate of Operations. Had the DO recognized the true strengths of the Vietnamese Communist forces we would not have entered the Vietnam War or would had left prior to the deaths of most American servicemen. In the case of the USSR, the CIA's DO, inter alia, provided many reports to the DI from known KGB double agents. These reports augmented DI Gates' own politicized views and forced the United States to build billion-dollar weapons systems to counter USSR weapons that did not exist. These reports also allowed the CIA to be one of the last government agencies to recognize the collapse of the Soviet Union. Competent (counterintelligence) operational analysis would have detected the deceptions of those KGB double agents. This is not the least of the DO's counterintelligence failures. We now know that East Germany's intelligence service Stasi, ran several hundred successful double agents, supposedly working for the CIA. Again basic operational analysis should, and probably would, have detected these deceptions. Also Cuba's DGI doubled all of the Agency's Cuban agents, all undetected by the DO until announced by the DGI. Operational analysis would have picked up these deceptions early on. With the recorded inability at operational analysis one would expect that correcting this glaring weakness would be the first priority of the current DO leadership -- apparently this is not so. Addenda Two: My background in research and operations. I have an unusual psychological profile for an ops officer. CIA's Psychological Assessment System rated me as having an extremely flexible mentality whereas most ops officers have a regulated; e.g., rigid mentality. Such rigidity does not favor analysis. I survived the selection process, in spite of my "F+" rating because, in my opinion, I had played college football when the Agency was looking for ex-football players for its paramilitary programs. Initially the CIA gave me a number of file-system types of assignments providing me a familiarity with file systems' pluses and minuses. Gradually I worked into a full time ops officer and in 1966 was assigned to Thailand, targeted against the Communist Party of Thailand. When the Thai authorities arrested over 200 communist suspects in mid-South Thailand, I was sent to the province to pull together one collated report from the approximately 200 interrogation reports. I tried my best. I read the statements several times. When I tried to write a collated report, I could remember similarities or differences in statement details, but could not locate them again without time-consuming and often fruitless searches. I had failed to process the information, and my final report was valueless. However, this frustration and failure taught me the necessity of preparation before trying to collate such a mass of details; e.g., analysis. In mid 1967, I put this knowledge to use when I was assigned to work with the 50,000 man Thai National Police to form a counterinsurgency and an intelligence collection program. Through a series of trial and errors we hit upon a workable approach. Our 25-man, mostly officer-grade team, with a dozen translators and interpreters went for a year to one Northeast province, where the threat appeared greatest. Our team traveled to an amphur (county) within the province. The concept of the operation was to interrogate villagers using integrated, well-prepared, methodology. Before the 25-man team began operations, I and the translators and interpreters carded all prior information on suspect villagers and villages from both the American and Thai file systems and prepared situation reports for the team on the worst villages and villagers. When the police entered a village and began work, the translators and I stayed nearby and daily translated and carded all interrogation reports. We filed the information in file folders by village, with sub-categories for weapons, organizations, training, propaganda themes, danger signals, all-clear signals, and other breakdowns. We opened 3/5 inch cards on every individual by true name and alias -- these soon, due to their multiple entries, provided detailed information on communist leaders. I regularly prepared follow-up questions for the police team based on this collated data. At the end of a two to three-month operation in an amphur, I wrote a final (survey) report that included summaries of all of those breakdowns. The report was around 40 to 50 pages long, and listed all individuals who had joined the CPT as liberation association or guerrilla members. The report named guerrilla leaders and groups, areas of operations, and all other breakdowns. The survey reports provided an entirely new perspective of the CPT. We found that the Communist Party of Thailand (CPT) focused all its efforts on recruiting and motivating poor farmers and forming them into liberation associations. Liberation associations were the initial and largest organizational entity from which all other entities grew. Prior to our report, the CIA had said the CPT consisted of only Party members and guerrillas, with a total of 2,500 in the entire country. Our survey showed there were that many in only four amphurs in this one province alone. The Agency also had reported the CPT had no support of the people in the villages and that villagers were being forced to cooperate. After working for a year in the province, we had confessions from about 2,500 poor farmers who had joined the CPT as liberation association members and who believed wholeheartedly in the CPT. Results: The governor of the province, a native of the province, told me the survey reports gave him the only insight into the communist movement. State's INR evaluated the survey reports highest in all its rating categories -- an unprecedented rating. The reports received similar ratings from other Thai and American counterinsurgency entities. Due to the detailed and accurate information, the CPT in that area collapsed. But suddenly CIA canceled the program and "forgot" the survey information. Why? Thailand was not the problem, the problem was Vietnam -- the CIA somehow over the years missed the seven-million-person-strong liberation association members of the South Vietnamese Communist movement. The Thai Communists had received training in organizational procedures in Hua Binh in North Vietnam. If the TCP recruited in the villages using Vietnamese communist organizational methodology, then so had the Viet Cong. If the VC were a popular movement, then we lost all justification for being in Vietnam. (Something I only slowly came to realize). But my experience in Northeast Thailand taught me the tremendous advantage and use of analysis for both operations and intelligence. CIA canceled the survey project over the objections of just about everyone and sent me back to Headquarters. After Tet 1968 in Vietnam, I decided that I had much to offer U.S. efforts in Vietnam. I volunteered and was sent to Vietnam. My efforts in Vietnam to alert the Agency to the existence of a mass-based popular movement in Vietnam, reinforced by my experiences and academic studies, fell on deaf or resistant ears. The Saigon Station assigned me to work in liaison with the Chief of the Vietnamese Special Police (SP). In this position I supervised a small unit of CIA case officers and a translation/interpreter team. I daily traveled to police headquarters to work with the Chief of the service. A long-term SP op targeted more than three dozen South Vietnamese leaders as possible communist spies. The operation over that period had produced safes-full of material. I began pressing the CIA to force the South Vietnamese government to apprehend the group. Two members of the net were President Thieu's Catholic advisor who was a frequent visitor to Palace, the other was the South Vietnamese Foreign Affairs Advisor -- its equivalent of Henry Kissinger. Obviously rolling-up the net would have repercussions. I conducted a six-weeks-long review of all the material. I went through the material document by document and carded on 3/5 cards the names and events surrounding the operation. I concluded, based on the analysis, that this was a genuine Communist intelligence net. The SP rounded up the group and found all sorts of spy paraphernalia and got confessions from all. With these in prison and under interrogation, we received leads allowing us to round up a number of other spies and nets. These successes decided the station to use me to analyze a politically sensitive operation. This took months during which I held down two jobs -- analyst; and, liaison with the SP. The CIA at that time had about 600 staff persons in Vietnam. The Saigon Station had a Counterespionage Section and an office of the Intelligence Directorate -- neither apparently could provide the analyst(s) to handle this job. My review of the operational reporting showed that project elements were nearly opposite what had been assumed. Later I was sent to Thailand for a six-month TDY (temporary duty) to draw up a list of the leadership of the CPT -- again apparently the only person with adequate analytical abilities. I searched CIA files throughout the country. I had enough Thai language ability to be able to search through the files of some of their security services. Over the six months I produced a list of the ten top leaders of the CPT that was highly praised by the Station's leadership. This may provide others with examples of the how and why of analysis, operational as well as intelligence. Operational analysis cannot be handled by some Headquarters-based, politically-correct bureaucrat, it must be performed in the field by competent and trained analysts. If the Agency is serious about its "counters" it will rapidly hire, prepare and assign new analysts. Addenda Three: >A number of posts have criticized the CIA for the lack of analytical >ability....Some suggestions for improvement have included integrating >analysts in with DO personnel, thereby breaking down the "wall" between >DI and DO...." >Does the CIA need an analytical component at all? Is there any sense to >the notion that policy-formulating agencies (such as State) be charged >with the analysis of the raw intelligence product obtained by the >Agency? While there may be areas in which the relevant expertise may be >lacking at Foggy Bottom..., for instance, in >technical/scientific/cryptological cases, it would seem that for broader >questions that make up...the lion's share of "take," the analytical organs >already in place at State and the Pentagon could take over the DI's >mantle...." >David M. Birdsey Amembassy Bonn PSC 117, P.O. BOX 345 APO, AE 09080 ---------------------------- end ----------------------------------------