chapter 3: Directorate of Intelligence
Spies collect in secret what the scholars analyze
Adding information of which others them apprise.
Adding information of which others them apprise.
NOTE: The text covering material on the Central Intelligence Agency, Pilgrim in the CIA, was cleared for publication by the Publications Review Board of that Agency pursuant to CIA Public Affairs Regulation HR 6-2: Non-official Publications and Oral Presentations by Employees and Former Employees (Revised 7 August 1984). Such clearance for security reasons does not, of course, imply any official Agency endorsement of this manuscript.
PAB
Fall 1986
PAB
Fall 1986
In 1963, I moved from my office on one of the lower floors to the front center of the top floor. This was the executive row of the Agency, and I was reunited with Ray Cline, an old colleague of estimates days who was now CIA's deputy director for intelligence (DDI). There I served for three years as his deputy (ADDI). Under Cline my duties were those of general manager of the production arm of about one-fourth of the Agency (the other directorates being Clandestine; Science & Technology; and Administration). They were eventful years. Vietnam and the missile crisis over Cuba were highlights of our substantive preoccupations. Consolidation of programs, reorganizations, budgetary problems were among my primary management concerns. (I also kept the chairmanship of my interagency committee on information processing.)
By then John McCone had become our director, and Kennedy was in the White House. The pace quickened. Once again we had to adapt our conduct to be responsive to those whom we were by our existence meant to serve. McCone, well known in business and government circles, brought crisp and decisive leadership. Whereas Dulles was familiar to us for his jovial and warm manner, his professorial attention to our problems could not disguise his primary love of clandestine operations. Indeed, one such, the Bay of Pigs failure, had caused an irreparable gap between him and his president, JFK, accounting for McCone's arrival.
Still, the amenities of departure had been observed. In the fall of 1961, the president's helicopter landed in the area just in front of our building. The presidential party (including Bobby Kennedy who, having come from a television appearance, still had on makeup), the secretary of defense, the joint chiefs of staff and other dignitaries took their places in seats just in front of Agency executives, and Dulles was awarded the National Security Medal.
After speeches, the President was asked if he wished to visit any part of CIA while he was there. He chose one place: the library. Inasmuch as this unit was then under my general supervision, I joined Mr. Dulles, and we, in company of the librarian, showed JFK around. Thus I had an opportunity to exchange greetings with the man with whom I had shared a canoe on the Wansee when, in July 1945, circumstances found us both at the Potsdam Conference, he a civilian having just been discharged from the naval service after his exploits as PT commander.
As Cline's deputy, his alter ego, we soon fell into an easy division of labor. He looked to the director's office and spent much time outside headquarters in National Security Council meetings, or in attendance of meetings of the United States Intelligence Board (USIB) which were chaired by the CIA director. During the period 1963-66 he thus served three different directors: Allen Dulles, John McCone and Admiral Raborn. Cline set the policy; I, as his principal assistant, looked inward and strove to accomplish what he felt should be done.
It is difficult to define "intelligence" in a few words. The London Economist (1 October 1966) defined well enough "intelligence" as a discipline:
"Modern intelligence has to do with the painstaking collection and analysis of fact, the exercise of judgment and clear and quick presentation. It is not simply what serious journalists would always produce if they had time: it is something more rigorous, continuous and above all operational – that is to say, related to something that somebody wants to do or may be forced to do."
As a managerial task "intelligence" to us was the meaningful organization of the myriad activities undertaken to accomplish the above.
Our major component parts included the two in which I had already spent a total of 13 years: national estimates and central reference. Additionally, Cline's responsibility including photo reconnaissance analysis, current intelligence, economic research, basic intelligence, collection from domestic sources, monitoring foreign overt broadcasts, exploiting foreign publications, translation service, a collection guidance staff, geographic research, map production. Some four to five thousand people were involved in these activities. It was a big show indeed, and an important one.
Earlier there had been no command center between many of these activities short of the director of the Agency. Each had developed its own reporting formats, its own contacts with other components of government; and, those producing reports for external distribution decided to whom these should be sent. In short, this portion of the Agency had evolved into individual fiefdoms. One of our tasks was to continue the rational consolidation of these activities inaugurated by our predecessors. There was still a long way to go.
One of my principal roles was to bring about changes that we had determined to be necessary and to do so in a way that would lead to improved performance. In doing this I kept to heart the words often attributed to Petronius Arbiter:
"I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralization."
Change brings in its train certain costs. Gains anticipated by inaugurating change should therefore considerably exceed costs before change is decided upon. Moreover, every supervisor dealt with has a fair share of the prima donna in his makeup. Tact and timing had to be our twin bywords.
Sometimes a move could not initially go beyond intention until the passage of time, and someone's retirement, offered better hope of bringing it off. But persistence pays. Over time just about all we set out to do was done.
There was the abolition of a management echelon in one of our subordinate offices, the unification of office publication programs into a directorate program, a merger of an office collection requirement program with the collection guidance staff to further consolidate the functional direction at our level, merging the components of two offices to form a CIA operations center, a merger of the graphics units of two offices, the transfer of a major translation component from one office to another, a reorganization of basic intelligence, setting up a directorate budget and planning staff, a master plan to reconsolidate substantive analytical functions under our directorate, bringing as well cognate military functions under unified direction. All this, and more, made for busy days.
During this period, I endeavored to develop an arrangement whereby expertise in academia, primarily in the social sciences, could formally be associated with our Directorate in the form of panels. Thus panels on political science, economics, sociology, for example, would be a counterpart to existing panels in the hard sciences, such as physics and missilery. In this I sought the assistance of two top educational organizations, meeting, separately, in New York with the heads of the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) and the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). I got nowhere. What members of these groups did as individuals was their business. However, for me to suggest that the societies representing their members could in any way be associated with CIA, "caused," as one member put it, "a tremor to be felt throughout the academic community." The Vietnamese war had so divided the American people, in particular on campuses, that my suggested approach was viewed as endangering the independence and integrity of academic institutions.
I was still much involved in work for the Intelligence Community, as chairman, Committee on Documentation of the United States Intelligence Board. One of our studies had come to the attention of the White House. This led to the formation by McGeorge Bundy, the President's assistant for National Security Affairs, of a blue ribbon panel to look into the problem of processing intelligence information. I was the Community's point man for this panel, which included the president of MIT and the vice president of Bell Laboratories. I described how we handled problems in CIA in a report "Handling Intelligence Information."
I took my committee to various companies and conferences so we could keep up with the state-of-the-art.
At that time I was also chairman of the committee of my church for putting up a new sanctuary. One day I was called to the CIA entrance as a matter of urgency. There I found a grimy cement-caked contractor who wanted to know where his money was. He had discovered where I worked and felt the church should pay up promptly!
Socially, there were parties at embassies of countries with whom we did business, and gatherings at the homes of representatives of other intelligence services. They were busy days indeed.
On January 16,1965, the sixteenth birthday of my daughter, Jane, I was in Arlington Hospital, my most serious bout with the medics. It was not to have been a serious matter. By a simple surgical procedure, my esophagus was to be dilated and thus relieve me of the discomfort of periodic spasms that impeded the passage of food to the stomach.
In the event, my tissue did not respond and the esophagus was ruptured – but the doctor did not realize this. I got worse, septicemia began to set in as I was fed. In the middle of the night I quickly acquiesced to an operation. No need for details. I was virtually cut in two as the thoracic surgeon gained access, from the back, to the torn passage in order to repair it.
I do not know what percent of patients would today consider a malpractice suit in such a case. When it was suggested to me, I would have none of it, and ended up ultimately buying the surgeon a steak dinner in the CIA executive dining room.
An episode during the recovery period as reported in a letter dated February 28, 1965, to my parents, may be of interest:
. . . The hospital episode is a strange mixture of reality and dream, as I am sure you both can testify from your own experiences. Sometime early on I found myself falling down a well. My descent was increasingly rapid and soon the occasional flash of light approached total darkness. All the way down I clawed and kicked in an effort to brake and arrest my fall. Eventually – it seemed a long time indeed – I did stop, much closer to the bottom it seemed than to the top. By supreme effort I established a footing and raised myself upright, extending my arms upward as far as I could stretch. There was light above, though not much. The last thing I could remember was holding this posture while repeatedly shouting at the top of my voice: I shall come back! I shall come back!
It sounds a bit silly to write about it now, but it was so vivid at the time. I feel it was perhaps when the situation changed from the worst to the better.
There came a day, in February 1966, when my boss, Ray Cline, moved to another job, that of chief of the German Station, one of CIA's largest overseas operations. His successor, R. J. Smith, an old and very able colleague of mine from mid-1947 on, was selected as his replacement. He in turn decided that he needed someone other than me as his principal assistant. At that point I faced the prospect of not having an assignment. There were some disconcerting days. Not that I feared dismissal, but uncertainty about one's future can be an uneasy companion. I had lived through the Agency's reorganization when Beedle Smith came in as CIA director in the fall of 1950. He had dealt brutally with people who had deserved better. But some executives, in business or government, mistakenly believe, or act as if they believe, that humaneness in dealing with people is a sign of weakness. I have never quarreled with change, but the manner of effecting change is all important in human relations.
But I stray from my subject. After exploring various alternatives with me, Smith recommended, and Helms approved, my appointment as director of intelligence support, a newly created position in the intelligence directorate, with line authority over half of the personnel of the directorate. The intelligence support services were: collection guidance; central reference; domestic collection; monitoring of foreign broadcasts; and foreign document exploitation, including translation services.
This arrangement assisted the new DDI and ADDI (my old job) by reducing by half the number of managers reporting directly to them. They were thus freer to concentrate on the problems, both substantive and budgetary, that were piling up as the Johnson administration acted as though the U.S. could have both guns and butter in our troubled world. The arrangement, never ideal, worked best early on, though it called for an inordinate exercise of tact on my part inasmuch as my immediate subordinates had been pushed down a step in the hierarchy. What helped, of course, was that the relative relationship between us had not changed.
During the year that followed, all hands accommodated to the new organizational pattern. As time went on, however, I became increasingly restive. These were days when drastic programmatic and organizational changes had to be made. Much as Kennedy had found it necessary to disregard the chain of command during the Cuban missile crisis – it was said that at times he called a destroyer commander directly – my superiors at times dealt directly with some of my subordinates. Putting myself in the shoes of my superiors, I had to conclude that if they were better served to do business that way, then I could best serve by removing myself.
Moreover, I had identified a number of management problems with long-range implications that needed study in depth. They were studies I felt I could and would like to tackle. But such study was unlikely under present staffing arrangements. I therefore took a step rarely taken in government: I recommended that my GS-18 job be abolished (and that the units under me once again report directly to the DDI).
The outcome was good. I was designated as special advisor to the DDI and given discretionary authority to initiate studies. Moreover, I was at that time offered the position of director, FBIS, upon the retirement of the then current director. For me this was an ideal situation. So I was back to the days of 1940, when, with Phillips, I had tackled management problems.
I took with me my devoted secretary, Nancy Latvala, as capable as they come, with a maturity of judgment and a generous supply of tact. She had once worked for Jules Borel & Co. in Kansas City, for nine years, before her family had moved to Washington. She came to work for me in early 1965, and remained with me until my retirement in 1972, when my successor was only too pleased to keep her on as his executive secretary. Only those who have had management responsibilities can fully appreciate the full measure of the contribution made by such capable assistance over a period of years.
Physically, we moved across the hall from where I had been a year and a half earlier. There I began my studies.
In earlier times my studies had mainly to do with how to handle intelligence information, particularly as we moved into the age of greater automation and computers. In the present situation, I turned to a study of people, in particular the intelligence researcher or manager. The themes were: recruitment, retirement, and turnover.
What kind of questions did I try to answer?
● What can be learned from the track record of the professional that would improve the recruitment performance of our managers? (Nov. '67)
● What impact will the newly adopted early retirement policy (at age sixty) have upon our operations? (Jan. '68)
● What will be our junior professional needs in the future in the light of our experience with those we hired in recent years? (Feb. '68)
● Why do some promising professionals quit? (Jul. '68)
While these were prepared for our own directorate, in one case the Agency's director was moved to order a similar study on an Agency-wide basis, in which I participated. The findings of these various studies were interesting, helpful, and served to focus management attention on CIA's greatest asset: its people.
While working on "Why They Quit," I had some correspondence with those who had quit. I wrote to 82 former employees and invited each to write, off-the-record, to my home, giving them assurances of confidentiality, so that they might speak frankly. I got 52 replies. It was clear that many had taken considerable time and care in preparing their responses.
It is not my purpose here to recapitulate the findings of these reports. But having said so much about the questions, let me at least indicate in very cursory form why my respondents had quit.
● 30% criticized the work environment and its effect on them.
● 30% were concerned with the lack of professional opportunity.
● 20% found our use of manpower so inefficient as to deprive them of challenge.
● 15% found fault with our supervision of them and with the management of their careers.
● 5% were concerned about low pay.
There is ever much room for improvement in any organization. The larger the organization the greater the room. And finding out what improvements are needed still leaves the doing of it. Thus the lives of managers.
Another study I completed in October 1968, at the request of the CIA historian, who was gathering contributions from individual participants in the events of recent years: An Historical Note on the Operation of the Intelligence Support Service.
As I had throughout my career with CIA, I frequently performed temporary active service in our Navy. Especially meaningful assignments were possible because of my high security clearances. On one such occasion, for example, I worked on a law of the sea problem involving a change in national policy.
Department of the Navy
Office of Chief of Naval Operations
Washington, D.C. 20350
Op-61B/lal
Ser 001930P61
9 OCT 1967
From: Chief of Naval Operations
To: Director of Central Intelligence Agency
Subj: Commendatory Performance of Duty by Captain Paul A. BOREL, USNR
Encl: (1) Study entitled "Considerations Affecting U.S. Policy on the Breadth of the Territorial Sea"
1. In May 1966, Captain Paul A. Borel, USNR, was assigned two weeks active naval duty in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations (Op-61, Politico-Military Policy Division). During that time he contributed significantly to a review of U.S. policy relating to the breadth of the territorial sea. A copy of the document produced during this review is enclosed with this letter.
2. Since May 1966, this paper has been much in use as a reference document and as a basis for briefings and presentations concerning the territorial sea.
3. Only recently, however, has the full impact of this well-reasoned document been felt. It served as the principal vehicle for Navy's development of a policy statement on this significant matter. The statement was forwarded to the Deputy Secretary of Defense and embodies the thrust of the recommendations contained in the enclosure.
4. It gives me great pleasure to commend to you Captain Borel's performance, and to express my appreciation for his fine contribution to our Navy.
5. A copy of this letter is being forwarded to the Chief of Naval Personnel for inclusion in Captain Borel's record.
James W. O'Grady
By direction
Copy to: BUPERS (w/o encl)
By then John McCone had become our director, and Kennedy was in the White House. The pace quickened. Once again we had to adapt our conduct to be responsive to those whom we were by our existence meant to serve. McCone, well known in business and government circles, brought crisp and decisive leadership. Whereas Dulles was familiar to us for his jovial and warm manner, his professorial attention to our problems could not disguise his primary love of clandestine operations. Indeed, one such, the Bay of Pigs failure, had caused an irreparable gap between him and his president, JFK, accounting for McCone's arrival.
Still, the amenities of departure had been observed. In the fall of 1961, the president's helicopter landed in the area just in front of our building. The presidential party (including Bobby Kennedy who, having come from a television appearance, still had on makeup), the secretary of defense, the joint chiefs of staff and other dignitaries took their places in seats just in front of Agency executives, and Dulles was awarded the National Security Medal.
After speeches, the President was asked if he wished to visit any part of CIA while he was there. He chose one place: the library. Inasmuch as this unit was then under my general supervision, I joined Mr. Dulles, and we, in company of the librarian, showed JFK around. Thus I had an opportunity to exchange greetings with the man with whom I had shared a canoe on the Wansee when, in July 1945, circumstances found us both at the Potsdam Conference, he a civilian having just been discharged from the naval service after his exploits as PT commander.
As Cline's deputy, his alter ego, we soon fell into an easy division of labor. He looked to the director's office and spent much time outside headquarters in National Security Council meetings, or in attendance of meetings of the United States Intelligence Board (USIB) which were chaired by the CIA director. During the period 1963-66 he thus served three different directors: Allen Dulles, John McCone and Admiral Raborn. Cline set the policy; I, as his principal assistant, looked inward and strove to accomplish what he felt should be done.
It is difficult to define "intelligence" in a few words. The London Economist (1 October 1966) defined well enough "intelligence" as a discipline:
"Modern intelligence has to do with the painstaking collection and analysis of fact, the exercise of judgment and clear and quick presentation. It is not simply what serious journalists would always produce if they had time: it is something more rigorous, continuous and above all operational – that is to say, related to something that somebody wants to do or may be forced to do."
As a managerial task "intelligence" to us was the meaningful organization of the myriad activities undertaken to accomplish the above.
Our major component parts included the two in which I had already spent a total of 13 years: national estimates and central reference. Additionally, Cline's responsibility including photo reconnaissance analysis, current intelligence, economic research, basic intelligence, collection from domestic sources, monitoring foreign overt broadcasts, exploiting foreign publications, translation service, a collection guidance staff, geographic research, map production. Some four to five thousand people were involved in these activities. It was a big show indeed, and an important one.
Earlier there had been no command center between many of these activities short of the director of the Agency. Each had developed its own reporting formats, its own contacts with other components of government; and, those producing reports for external distribution decided to whom these should be sent. In short, this portion of the Agency had evolved into individual fiefdoms. One of our tasks was to continue the rational consolidation of these activities inaugurated by our predecessors. There was still a long way to go.
One of my principal roles was to bring about changes that we had determined to be necessary and to do so in a way that would lead to improved performance. In doing this I kept to heart the words often attributed to Petronius Arbiter:
"I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralization."
Change brings in its train certain costs. Gains anticipated by inaugurating change should therefore considerably exceed costs before change is decided upon. Moreover, every supervisor dealt with has a fair share of the prima donna in his makeup. Tact and timing had to be our twin bywords.
Sometimes a move could not initially go beyond intention until the passage of time, and someone's retirement, offered better hope of bringing it off. But persistence pays. Over time just about all we set out to do was done.
There was the abolition of a management echelon in one of our subordinate offices, the unification of office publication programs into a directorate program, a merger of an office collection requirement program with the collection guidance staff to further consolidate the functional direction at our level, merging the components of two offices to form a CIA operations center, a merger of the graphics units of two offices, the transfer of a major translation component from one office to another, a reorganization of basic intelligence, setting up a directorate budget and planning staff, a master plan to reconsolidate substantive analytical functions under our directorate, bringing as well cognate military functions under unified direction. All this, and more, made for busy days.
During this period, I endeavored to develop an arrangement whereby expertise in academia, primarily in the social sciences, could formally be associated with our Directorate in the form of panels. Thus panels on political science, economics, sociology, for example, would be a counterpart to existing panels in the hard sciences, such as physics and missilery. In this I sought the assistance of two top educational organizations, meeting, separately, in New York with the heads of the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) and the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). I got nowhere. What members of these groups did as individuals was their business. However, for me to suggest that the societies representing their members could in any way be associated with CIA, "caused," as one member put it, "a tremor to be felt throughout the academic community." The Vietnamese war had so divided the American people, in particular on campuses, that my suggested approach was viewed as endangering the independence and integrity of academic institutions.
I was still much involved in work for the Intelligence Community, as chairman, Committee on Documentation of the United States Intelligence Board. One of our studies had come to the attention of the White House. This led to the formation by McGeorge Bundy, the President's assistant for National Security Affairs, of a blue ribbon panel to look into the problem of processing intelligence information. I was the Community's point man for this panel, which included the president of MIT and the vice president of Bell Laboratories. I described how we handled problems in CIA in a report "Handling Intelligence Information."
I took my committee to various companies and conferences so we could keep up with the state-of-the-art.
At that time I was also chairman of the committee of my church for putting up a new sanctuary. One day I was called to the CIA entrance as a matter of urgency. There I found a grimy cement-caked contractor who wanted to know where his money was. He had discovered where I worked and felt the church should pay up promptly!
Socially, there were parties at embassies of countries with whom we did business, and gatherings at the homes of representatives of other intelligence services. They were busy days indeed.
On January 16,1965, the sixteenth birthday of my daughter, Jane, I was in Arlington Hospital, my most serious bout with the medics. It was not to have been a serious matter. By a simple surgical procedure, my esophagus was to be dilated and thus relieve me of the discomfort of periodic spasms that impeded the passage of food to the stomach.
In the event, my tissue did not respond and the esophagus was ruptured – but the doctor did not realize this. I got worse, septicemia began to set in as I was fed. In the middle of the night I quickly acquiesced to an operation. No need for details. I was virtually cut in two as the thoracic surgeon gained access, from the back, to the torn passage in order to repair it.
I do not know what percent of patients would today consider a malpractice suit in such a case. When it was suggested to me, I would have none of it, and ended up ultimately buying the surgeon a steak dinner in the CIA executive dining room.
An episode during the recovery period as reported in a letter dated February 28, 1965, to my parents, may be of interest:
. . . The hospital episode is a strange mixture of reality and dream, as I am sure you both can testify from your own experiences. Sometime early on I found myself falling down a well. My descent was increasingly rapid and soon the occasional flash of light approached total darkness. All the way down I clawed and kicked in an effort to brake and arrest my fall. Eventually – it seemed a long time indeed – I did stop, much closer to the bottom it seemed than to the top. By supreme effort I established a footing and raised myself upright, extending my arms upward as far as I could stretch. There was light above, though not much. The last thing I could remember was holding this posture while repeatedly shouting at the top of my voice: I shall come back! I shall come back!
It sounds a bit silly to write about it now, but it was so vivid at the time. I feel it was perhaps when the situation changed from the worst to the better.
There came a day, in February 1966, when my boss, Ray Cline, moved to another job, that of chief of the German Station, one of CIA's largest overseas operations. His successor, R. J. Smith, an old and very able colleague of mine from mid-1947 on, was selected as his replacement. He in turn decided that he needed someone other than me as his principal assistant. At that point I faced the prospect of not having an assignment. There were some disconcerting days. Not that I feared dismissal, but uncertainty about one's future can be an uneasy companion. I had lived through the Agency's reorganization when Beedle Smith came in as CIA director in the fall of 1950. He had dealt brutally with people who had deserved better. But some executives, in business or government, mistakenly believe, or act as if they believe, that humaneness in dealing with people is a sign of weakness. I have never quarreled with change, but the manner of effecting change is all important in human relations.
But I stray from my subject. After exploring various alternatives with me, Smith recommended, and Helms approved, my appointment as director of intelligence support, a newly created position in the intelligence directorate, with line authority over half of the personnel of the directorate. The intelligence support services were: collection guidance; central reference; domestic collection; monitoring of foreign broadcasts; and foreign document exploitation, including translation services.
This arrangement assisted the new DDI and ADDI (my old job) by reducing by half the number of managers reporting directly to them. They were thus freer to concentrate on the problems, both substantive and budgetary, that were piling up as the Johnson administration acted as though the U.S. could have both guns and butter in our troubled world. The arrangement, never ideal, worked best early on, though it called for an inordinate exercise of tact on my part inasmuch as my immediate subordinates had been pushed down a step in the hierarchy. What helped, of course, was that the relative relationship between us had not changed.
During the year that followed, all hands accommodated to the new organizational pattern. As time went on, however, I became increasingly restive. These were days when drastic programmatic and organizational changes had to be made. Much as Kennedy had found it necessary to disregard the chain of command during the Cuban missile crisis – it was said that at times he called a destroyer commander directly – my superiors at times dealt directly with some of my subordinates. Putting myself in the shoes of my superiors, I had to conclude that if they were better served to do business that way, then I could best serve by removing myself.
Moreover, I had identified a number of management problems with long-range implications that needed study in depth. They were studies I felt I could and would like to tackle. But such study was unlikely under present staffing arrangements. I therefore took a step rarely taken in government: I recommended that my GS-18 job be abolished (and that the units under me once again report directly to the DDI).
The outcome was good. I was designated as special advisor to the DDI and given discretionary authority to initiate studies. Moreover, I was at that time offered the position of director, FBIS, upon the retirement of the then current director. For me this was an ideal situation. So I was back to the days of 1940, when, with Phillips, I had tackled management problems.
I took with me my devoted secretary, Nancy Latvala, as capable as they come, with a maturity of judgment and a generous supply of tact. She had once worked for Jules Borel & Co. in Kansas City, for nine years, before her family had moved to Washington. She came to work for me in early 1965, and remained with me until my retirement in 1972, when my successor was only too pleased to keep her on as his executive secretary. Only those who have had management responsibilities can fully appreciate the full measure of the contribution made by such capable assistance over a period of years.
Physically, we moved across the hall from where I had been a year and a half earlier. There I began my studies.
In earlier times my studies had mainly to do with how to handle intelligence information, particularly as we moved into the age of greater automation and computers. In the present situation, I turned to a study of people, in particular the intelligence researcher or manager. The themes were: recruitment, retirement, and turnover.
What kind of questions did I try to answer?
● What can be learned from the track record of the professional that would improve the recruitment performance of our managers? (Nov. '67)
● What impact will the newly adopted early retirement policy (at age sixty) have upon our operations? (Jan. '68)
● What will be our junior professional needs in the future in the light of our experience with those we hired in recent years? (Feb. '68)
● Why do some promising professionals quit? (Jul. '68)
While these were prepared for our own directorate, in one case the Agency's director was moved to order a similar study on an Agency-wide basis, in which I participated. The findings of these various studies were interesting, helpful, and served to focus management attention on CIA's greatest asset: its people.
While working on "Why They Quit," I had some correspondence with those who had quit. I wrote to 82 former employees and invited each to write, off-the-record, to my home, giving them assurances of confidentiality, so that they might speak frankly. I got 52 replies. It was clear that many had taken considerable time and care in preparing their responses.
It is not my purpose here to recapitulate the findings of these reports. But having said so much about the questions, let me at least indicate in very cursory form why my respondents had quit.
● 30% criticized the work environment and its effect on them.
● 30% were concerned with the lack of professional opportunity.
● 20% found our use of manpower so inefficient as to deprive them of challenge.
● 15% found fault with our supervision of them and with the management of their careers.
● 5% were concerned about low pay.
There is ever much room for improvement in any organization. The larger the organization the greater the room. And finding out what improvements are needed still leaves the doing of it. Thus the lives of managers.
Another study I completed in October 1968, at the request of the CIA historian, who was gathering contributions from individual participants in the events of recent years: An Historical Note on the Operation of the Intelligence Support Service.
As I had throughout my career with CIA, I frequently performed temporary active service in our Navy. Especially meaningful assignments were possible because of my high security clearances. On one such occasion, for example, I worked on a law of the sea problem involving a change in national policy.
Department of the Navy
Office of Chief of Naval Operations
Washington, D.C. 20350
Op-61B/lal
Ser 001930P61
9 OCT 1967
From: Chief of Naval Operations
To: Director of Central Intelligence Agency
Subj: Commendatory Performance of Duty by Captain Paul A. BOREL, USNR
Encl: (1) Study entitled "Considerations Affecting U.S. Policy on the Breadth of the Territorial Sea"
1. In May 1966, Captain Paul A. Borel, USNR, was assigned two weeks active naval duty in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations (Op-61, Politico-Military Policy Division). During that time he contributed significantly to a review of U.S. policy relating to the breadth of the territorial sea. A copy of the document produced during this review is enclosed with this letter.
2. Since May 1966, this paper has been much in use as a reference document and as a basis for briefings and presentations concerning the territorial sea.
3. Only recently, however, has the full impact of this well-reasoned document been felt. It served as the principal vehicle for Navy's development of a policy statement on this significant matter. The statement was forwarded to the Deputy Secretary of Defense and embodies the thrust of the recommendations contained in the enclosure.
4. It gives me great pleasure to commend to you Captain Borel's performance, and to express my appreciation for his fine contribution to our Navy.
5. A copy of this letter is being forwarded to the Chief of Naval Personnel for inclusion in Captain Borel's record.
James W. O'Grady
By direction
Copy to: BUPERS (w/o encl)
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