Chapter 4: Foreign Broadcast Information Service
What others said we plucked from air and press
To gain an edge in statemen's games of chess.
To gain an edge in statemen's games of chess.
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
It was nearing midnight, New Year's eve, the last day of 1968, as I approached the Key Building in Rosslyn. My wife Miriam had made cookies. These I had with me as well as a bottle of champagne. Tomorrow I would officially begin what was to become my last tour in CIA, as head of its Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS).
The graveyard shift had already reported to FBIS's nerve center, a 24-hour a day, seven days a week operation, the communications center. Here by teletype over military and commercial lines came to headquarters reports from leased news services and from our own twelve bureaus scattered over the globe. There are no holidays for those handling important communications.
I signed in with the security guard, showed him my CIA pass and took the elevator to the 10th floor of this 12-story leased office building of which FBIS's offices occupied five floors. The four employees on duty did not quite know what to make of this intrusion. I introduced myself and told them I had dropped in for no reason but to wish them a happy new year, proferring as evidence the goodies in my keeping.
Thus, the first moments of an eventful 39-month tour which preceded my retirement in 1972.
FBIS is a prime example of one of CIA's main reasons for being: to provide, for the government as a whole and for the intelligence community in particular, essential services of common concern.
This particular service had its origins in December 1941, with the entry of the U.S. in World War II. As an organization it thus antedated CIA by six years.
Recognition that the Monitoring Service of the BBC was performing an important war function for Britain led the U.S. to inaugurate a similar service under the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Much of what we learned then we must attribute to a partnership between BBC and FBIS that endures to this day. Together they cover the world (BBC – 25%; FBIS – 75%) and each has access to the common effort of our collection. With war's end in 1945, the FCC had no compelling need for what FBIS was doing. A transfer of the service was made to the U.S. Army, where it remained for a brief period before its transfer to CIA where it has remained.
Another information service followed FBIS to CIA, this one also from the Army: the Foreign Document Division (FDD). This service had a vast competence in foreign languages and had had as its mission the exploitation for intelligence purposes of captured enemy documents. I mention this here because, shortly before my arrival at FBIS, FDD had been merged into it so that the new FBIS now had a broad mandate covering the exploitation of a very wide range of foreign media and publication output. It had competence in over 70 languages, of which 50 some were in daily use in the preparation of FBIS products.
FBIS is the news service of the White House, and much more. It is a microcosm of CIA itself. Its personnel are in part U.S. citizens, in part foreign nationals. There are analysts, editors, linguists, electronic engineers, communications operators. Some are in headquarters, some are in the field (on every continent). The mix of nationalities among field personnel defies classification or enumeration. We have proved one thing: where different peoples have a common task and are welded into a team with well-defined objectives they support, they get along beautifully and are fiercely loyal, often at great risk to themselves.
As head of FBIS my job essentially was to manage. In his book, Secrets, Spies and Scholars, Ray Cline generously referred to me as "one of the great selfless managerial experts of CIA who devoted a long career to making the institution work." And I was fortunate that as my final assignment in CIA I had a job that enabled me to do what I liked best.
It would perhaps be in order here to say a word about my approach to working with others. It is simple and straightforward. You start with the Golden Rule, applying it utterly without guile. By training and ability I was not disposed to be concerned primarily with the substance of intelligence. Some had no goal but to become an expert on a country, say India, or on a problem area, say world petroleum. That was not for me. I shared Teddy Roosevelt's view that the primary role of an executive is to pick good people to do what you want done, and to then have the self- restraint to let them get on with the job. It is imperative to define clearly the objective, then to organize resources – personnel and financial – in pursuit of the objective, reconciling the conflicts that diverse individuals invariably have in the process of being fused into a team. Beyond that, in a large organization, once a program has been underway, it is important not only to fine-tune the organization's performance with feedback drawn from results, but to review as well the need for continuing a given activity at all.
In FBIS there was ample opportunity to practice this managerial approach. We soon found ourselves in a period when budget belts had to be tightened. At the same time, an increase in services was sought, an effort requiring us to upgrade operations by introducing technical innovations, none of which were inexpensive.
But FBIS was a solid outfit of professionals, and these men and women with their years of experience, accustomed as they were to working together, met every challenge.
An important though less tangible task was to bring FBIS closer to its parent, CIA, and to open up a largely closed society. I wanted to give each person a greater sense of personal identification with, and of participation in, what CIA and the government in general was about.
Seminars we held to re-think our modus operandi. We held retreats at the CIA base in the country. Outside speakers from government and industry came in to share with us their views. Our personnel were sent out for specific training so, for example, we need not rely exclusively on outside consultants in the computer field. Personnel were rotated to other offices to broaden their experience. Those in a rut were given opportunity to change jobs and, if needed, to be trained in new skills.
In some cases we were able to come up with means for measuring output, thus enabling us to reward the producers. Where pay authorized was inadequate to attract recruits to fill vacancies, we went to part-time help, thus tapping a pool of skilled people not then employed. We found that a person working the four hours from 9 to 1 produced the equivalent of what those working full time produced in six hours. This enabled us to reduce staff and eliminate bottlenecks. We fought for higher grades for our people when we found, as in the case of communications personnel, that we were simply training people soon hired away by others who paid a higher wage for identical work.
Hard decisions had to be made regarding closing down major installations at Santa Rosa, California, and eventually at Mayaguez, Puerto Rico. We conducted tests and made arrangements for locating a bureau in Paraguay. We held a steady course at our bureau at Kaduna, Nigeria, amidst a raging civil war. These changes enabled us to improve coverage while reducing costs.
We started an automation staff to move in the direction of improving our ability to process rapidly the millions of words streaming through our system. Let me try to give you an idea of the volumes of words involved. Of the estimated 750,000,000 words broadcast worldwide by foreign stations, our listening bureaus would initially record 8,000,000 words (identified as relating to the guidance they had been given reflecting our government's need). These the editors in the field would reduce to 240,000 words, which were sent to our Washington headquarters via radio teletype and cable. Of these, the staff, located in Rosslyn, selected 130,000 for publication every night in various area books, for immediate delivery to our customers, much as are newspapers.
In addition, the foreign press was scanned for items of interest. Most everything had, of course, to be translated into English. Examples of the tasks performed may help you understand what I have tried to convey in general terms:
THE WHITE HOUSE
Washington
May 17, 1969
Mr. Paul A. Borel
Director, FBIS
P.O. Box 2604
Washington, D.C. 20013
Dear Paul:
Thank you very much for the initial radio and press wrap-up on the President's Vietnam speech. Dr. Kissinger has forwarded it to the President for his information.
Best regards,
Colonel Alexander M. Haig
Military Assistant
DEPARTMENT OF STATE
THE DIRECTOR OF INTELLIGENCE AND RESEARCH
Washington
July 14, 1969
Mr. Paul A. Borel, Director
Foreign Broadcast Information Service
P.O. Box 2604
Washington, D.C. 20013
Dear Mr. Borel:
I want to commend you and the responsible members of FBIS for your outstanding coverage of the Sudan following the May 25 coup in Khartoum. FBIS was consistently the first source of detailed information on the events and central characters in the early days of the change of governments. Your rapid translations and processing of speeches, communiques, and decrees made it possible for INR to analyze the progression of the coup on a day-to-day basis.
I know that such outstanding work required special dedication and sacrifice on the part of your staff. Their work was greatly appreciated and contributed most significantly to our own ability to keep the Secretary of State and other senior officials of the Department informed of developments during the Sudanese crisis.
Sincerely,
Thomas L. Hughes
THE WHITE HOUSE
Washington
August 26, 1970
MEMORANDUM FOR
Honorable Richard Helms
Director of Central Intelligence
SUBJECT: Summary Translation of Trofimenko Book on Global War
Please convey my thanks to all concerned in FBIS who gave us such fast service on the summary translation of The Strategy of Global War by Dr. G. A. Trofimenko which was sent me by Counselor Evstafiev of the Soviet Embassy.
We sent it to your agency on August 17 asking for an indication of the thrust of the book's arguments with special attention to their references to my views. It was returned on August 20 with a summary of the arguments, individual chapter summaries, and verbatim translation of the references to me and my writings.
My admiration is unbounded!
Henry A. Kissinger
A special FBIS staff analyzed our "take" and published reports of trends and developments in world affairs. These were used by other analysts (in CIA, State Department and elsewhere) whose responsibility it is to produce the ultimate intelligence reports based on numerous classified sources of intelligence information.
Historically, very little of the vast information gathered and organized by FBIS was available to the public, for FBIS is not by charter authorized to serve the public directly. Knowing how much of this would be of use to scholars, we arranged to make most of it available by subscriptions through the “Clearing House” (now the National Technical Information Service) of the Department of Commerce.
As a boost to employee morale, we took note of the 30th anniversary of FBIS' founding. We held a party in the Rendezvous Room of CIA's headquarters. There we greeted many of our former employees, most of whom were now numbered among the retirees, and others with whom we did business. To mark the occasion more formally, we published "FBIS In Retrospect," a commemorative volume recalling illustrative historic items monitored from press and radio sources over the three decades 1941-1971.
We shared "Retrospect" with our key consumers with a note of thanks for the timeliness and faithfulness with which they had consistently kept us aware of their needs, so essential if we were to select information which would be useful to them. They in turn joined in our celebration by sending us congratulatory messages of which the one received from the President is illustrative:
THE WHITE HOUSE
Washington
March 9, 1971
Mr. Paul A. Borel
Director
Foreign Broadcast Information Service
Post Office Box 2604
Washington, D.C. 20013
Dear Mr. Borel:
The thirtieth anniversary of the Foreign Broadcast Information Service is an important milestone for all of us who benefit from the many services you and the members of your staff provide. In an era when the United States must understand and often respond rapidly to world-wide developments, your timely and authoritative reporting, your searching analyses and your translation capabilities make an important contribution to the work of everyone associated with the complex field of foreign affairs. I am glad to have this opportunity to add my congratulations and best wishes to the many others you have received.
Sincerely,
/s/ Richard Nixon
My deputy, John Allen, an FBIS careerist of vast knowledge and experience, and I alternated in making visits to our bureaus overseas, for it was imperative to keep in touch. I have reported on such matters in the chapter "Faraway Places," elsewhere in this text, and have no wish to add to what is said there. In the department of morale building, I did inaugurate an award for the splendid service of the foreign nationals serving us as monitors and supporting activities: a walnut plaque in which was set the great seal of the United States in bronze and an inscription of the individual's name and years of service presented at the time of his retirement.
My days in FBIS sped by, and it soon came my turn to retire. As a member of CIA retirement board I had participated in adjudicating cases coming up for retirement in an era when age 60 was decreed in an effort to keep the Agency vital and make room for the younger set. It was a policy to which I subscribed. Indeed, I looked forward to spending time in a climate of no set hours or tasks while my wife and I were in vigorous health and without economic worries.
The pattern of departure had long been established: a ceremony at which an award is made and a party at which guests have an opportunity to wish the retiree well. In my case, I was awarded the Intelligence Medal of Merit by the Director of Central Intelligence, Richard Helms. Of my family, Miriam, Julie, Doug and Mark were present at the presentation (held on January 31,1972), as well as my three brothers from Kansas City, who had surprised me, having flown to Cleveland and there joined my college roommate, Charlie Spahr, chairman of SOHIO, to come in by the SOHIO corporate jet. (I later discovered this was my sister's idea, though much to my disappointment she was not among the arrivals.)
My pleasure at this affair stemmed mainly from the opportunity it gave me to thank those present (numbering about 50) for the pleasure our association at various episodes of my career had given me. Most of those there were colleagues from various offices in CIA in which I had worked. Additionally present were Harold Albertson, my roommate at Harvard Business School; Senator Claiborne Pell of Rhode Island, a classmate at Columbia from Navy days; Bob Yorty, my golfing partner; and Rev. William Nies, my pastor.
After the presentation, I hosted a luncheon in Mr. Helms' private dining room for members of my family and Spahr. We had a great time.
The retirement party was held on March 9, in the Rendezvous Room. There we gathered, some 250 people, including Agency brass. Speeches were made, gifts were presented (including the eight-foot skin of a cobra that until recently had inhabited the antenna field of the FBIS bureau in Bangkok). I sought, with mixed emotions, to respond appropriately. But mostly it was an evening of camaraderie among people who enjoyed reminiscing and simply being with each other, for they were wedded by a bond of service to CIA.
The messages, photos, cartoons and inscriptions brought together in a handsome binder entitled "Inside FBIS: 1173 days with Paul A. Borel, 1969-1972," is a gift I shall cherish always.
The clock was running down. I made personal calls on many people who who during my 25 years in CIA had given me cause to be grateful for meaningful professional association and, in many cases beyond that, for friendship. As I view now an exchange of letters written then, I find little I would change in what I wrote, and remain immeasurably grateful for the final salutation from my FBIS colleagues.
FOREIGN BROADCAST INFORMATION SERVICE
Washington, D.C.
February 23, 1972
Dear Colleagues in FBIS,
For something over three years now we have worked together. Shortly we will part company as I turn to new things.
From the first it has been my good fortune in Government to be given assignments I have enjoyed. Satisfaction has come from engaging in tasks worth the doing; pleasure from an association with people taking pride in doing their work well.
So too has been my experience in FBIS, where the contribution of each is apparent, and each continues to add to our history the touch of his own mind.
Parting is a time when feelings know two things. Regret for the separation to come of associations valued, and excitement from conjecturing what manner of adventure the months ahead may hold.
Whatever may befall us all, may each continue to reach for the high. For as the poet has well said,
Those travelers who beat the upper air
Have clarities in mind – a south somewhere,
Where clouds are higher and the sea more blue.
I shall always be grateful for your kindness, and will continue to value the friendships which have enriched my professional association with FBIS.
All the best always!
Paul A. Borel
Director
FOREIGN BROADCAST INFORMATION SERVICE
P.O. Box 2604
Washington, D.C. 20013
9 March 1972
Mr. Paul A. Borel, Director
Foreign Broadcast Information Service
Dear Paul,
Although we've served with you for only three of your thirty-one years of public service, we believe we've shared your very best years; for from the many threads which make up the whole cloth of your FBIS mantle, an unmistakable pattern is clearly evident – the constant pursuit of excellence.
To a mature organization, you gave an even fuller development; to our semi-seclusion, you brought new insights and an irreversible philosophy of openness. Where there was rote, you substituted reason; where we were drab, you put color; where the cause was just, you knew no fear; and as you leave we know this well – that we are better for having had you with us.
To you and Miriam our best wishes for a long, happy and healthy retirement.
ALL YOUR FBIS COLLEAGUES
At midnight, at the close of Wednesday, March 15, 1972, my sixtieth birthday, the FBIS Wire carried to the field the message: Effective this date E. H. Knoche director FBIS vice Paul Borel.
The graveyard shift had already reported to FBIS's nerve center, a 24-hour a day, seven days a week operation, the communications center. Here by teletype over military and commercial lines came to headquarters reports from leased news services and from our own twelve bureaus scattered over the globe. There are no holidays for those handling important communications.
I signed in with the security guard, showed him my CIA pass and took the elevator to the 10th floor of this 12-story leased office building of which FBIS's offices occupied five floors. The four employees on duty did not quite know what to make of this intrusion. I introduced myself and told them I had dropped in for no reason but to wish them a happy new year, proferring as evidence the goodies in my keeping.
Thus, the first moments of an eventful 39-month tour which preceded my retirement in 1972.
FBIS is a prime example of one of CIA's main reasons for being: to provide, for the government as a whole and for the intelligence community in particular, essential services of common concern.
This particular service had its origins in December 1941, with the entry of the U.S. in World War II. As an organization it thus antedated CIA by six years.
Recognition that the Monitoring Service of the BBC was performing an important war function for Britain led the U.S. to inaugurate a similar service under the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Much of what we learned then we must attribute to a partnership between BBC and FBIS that endures to this day. Together they cover the world (BBC – 25%; FBIS – 75%) and each has access to the common effort of our collection. With war's end in 1945, the FCC had no compelling need for what FBIS was doing. A transfer of the service was made to the U.S. Army, where it remained for a brief period before its transfer to CIA where it has remained.
Another information service followed FBIS to CIA, this one also from the Army: the Foreign Document Division (FDD). This service had a vast competence in foreign languages and had had as its mission the exploitation for intelligence purposes of captured enemy documents. I mention this here because, shortly before my arrival at FBIS, FDD had been merged into it so that the new FBIS now had a broad mandate covering the exploitation of a very wide range of foreign media and publication output. It had competence in over 70 languages, of which 50 some were in daily use in the preparation of FBIS products.
FBIS is the news service of the White House, and much more. It is a microcosm of CIA itself. Its personnel are in part U.S. citizens, in part foreign nationals. There are analysts, editors, linguists, electronic engineers, communications operators. Some are in headquarters, some are in the field (on every continent). The mix of nationalities among field personnel defies classification or enumeration. We have proved one thing: where different peoples have a common task and are welded into a team with well-defined objectives they support, they get along beautifully and are fiercely loyal, often at great risk to themselves.
As head of FBIS my job essentially was to manage. In his book, Secrets, Spies and Scholars, Ray Cline generously referred to me as "one of the great selfless managerial experts of CIA who devoted a long career to making the institution work." And I was fortunate that as my final assignment in CIA I had a job that enabled me to do what I liked best.
It would perhaps be in order here to say a word about my approach to working with others. It is simple and straightforward. You start with the Golden Rule, applying it utterly without guile. By training and ability I was not disposed to be concerned primarily with the substance of intelligence. Some had no goal but to become an expert on a country, say India, or on a problem area, say world petroleum. That was not for me. I shared Teddy Roosevelt's view that the primary role of an executive is to pick good people to do what you want done, and to then have the self- restraint to let them get on with the job. It is imperative to define clearly the objective, then to organize resources – personnel and financial – in pursuit of the objective, reconciling the conflicts that diverse individuals invariably have in the process of being fused into a team. Beyond that, in a large organization, once a program has been underway, it is important not only to fine-tune the organization's performance with feedback drawn from results, but to review as well the need for continuing a given activity at all.
In FBIS there was ample opportunity to practice this managerial approach. We soon found ourselves in a period when budget belts had to be tightened. At the same time, an increase in services was sought, an effort requiring us to upgrade operations by introducing technical innovations, none of which were inexpensive.
But FBIS was a solid outfit of professionals, and these men and women with their years of experience, accustomed as they were to working together, met every challenge.
An important though less tangible task was to bring FBIS closer to its parent, CIA, and to open up a largely closed society. I wanted to give each person a greater sense of personal identification with, and of participation in, what CIA and the government in general was about.
Seminars we held to re-think our modus operandi. We held retreats at the CIA base in the country. Outside speakers from government and industry came in to share with us their views. Our personnel were sent out for specific training so, for example, we need not rely exclusively on outside consultants in the computer field. Personnel were rotated to other offices to broaden their experience. Those in a rut were given opportunity to change jobs and, if needed, to be trained in new skills.
In some cases we were able to come up with means for measuring output, thus enabling us to reward the producers. Where pay authorized was inadequate to attract recruits to fill vacancies, we went to part-time help, thus tapping a pool of skilled people not then employed. We found that a person working the four hours from 9 to 1 produced the equivalent of what those working full time produced in six hours. This enabled us to reduce staff and eliminate bottlenecks. We fought for higher grades for our people when we found, as in the case of communications personnel, that we were simply training people soon hired away by others who paid a higher wage for identical work.
Hard decisions had to be made regarding closing down major installations at Santa Rosa, California, and eventually at Mayaguez, Puerto Rico. We conducted tests and made arrangements for locating a bureau in Paraguay. We held a steady course at our bureau at Kaduna, Nigeria, amidst a raging civil war. These changes enabled us to improve coverage while reducing costs.
We started an automation staff to move in the direction of improving our ability to process rapidly the millions of words streaming through our system. Let me try to give you an idea of the volumes of words involved. Of the estimated 750,000,000 words broadcast worldwide by foreign stations, our listening bureaus would initially record 8,000,000 words (identified as relating to the guidance they had been given reflecting our government's need). These the editors in the field would reduce to 240,000 words, which were sent to our Washington headquarters via radio teletype and cable. Of these, the staff, located in Rosslyn, selected 130,000 for publication every night in various area books, for immediate delivery to our customers, much as are newspapers.
In addition, the foreign press was scanned for items of interest. Most everything had, of course, to be translated into English. Examples of the tasks performed may help you understand what I have tried to convey in general terms:
THE WHITE HOUSE
Washington
May 17, 1969
Mr. Paul A. Borel
Director, FBIS
P.O. Box 2604
Washington, D.C. 20013
Dear Paul:
Thank you very much for the initial radio and press wrap-up on the President's Vietnam speech. Dr. Kissinger has forwarded it to the President for his information.
Best regards,
Colonel Alexander M. Haig
Military Assistant
DEPARTMENT OF STATE
THE DIRECTOR OF INTELLIGENCE AND RESEARCH
Washington
July 14, 1969
Mr. Paul A. Borel, Director
Foreign Broadcast Information Service
P.O. Box 2604
Washington, D.C. 20013
Dear Mr. Borel:
I want to commend you and the responsible members of FBIS for your outstanding coverage of the Sudan following the May 25 coup in Khartoum. FBIS was consistently the first source of detailed information on the events and central characters in the early days of the change of governments. Your rapid translations and processing of speeches, communiques, and decrees made it possible for INR to analyze the progression of the coup on a day-to-day basis.
I know that such outstanding work required special dedication and sacrifice on the part of your staff. Their work was greatly appreciated and contributed most significantly to our own ability to keep the Secretary of State and other senior officials of the Department informed of developments during the Sudanese crisis.
Sincerely,
Thomas L. Hughes
THE WHITE HOUSE
Washington
August 26, 1970
MEMORANDUM FOR
Honorable Richard Helms
Director of Central Intelligence
SUBJECT: Summary Translation of Trofimenko Book on Global War
Please convey my thanks to all concerned in FBIS who gave us such fast service on the summary translation of The Strategy of Global War by Dr. G. A. Trofimenko which was sent me by Counselor Evstafiev of the Soviet Embassy.
We sent it to your agency on August 17 asking for an indication of the thrust of the book's arguments with special attention to their references to my views. It was returned on August 20 with a summary of the arguments, individual chapter summaries, and verbatim translation of the references to me and my writings.
My admiration is unbounded!
Henry A. Kissinger
A special FBIS staff analyzed our "take" and published reports of trends and developments in world affairs. These were used by other analysts (in CIA, State Department and elsewhere) whose responsibility it is to produce the ultimate intelligence reports based on numerous classified sources of intelligence information.
Historically, very little of the vast information gathered and organized by FBIS was available to the public, for FBIS is not by charter authorized to serve the public directly. Knowing how much of this would be of use to scholars, we arranged to make most of it available by subscriptions through the “Clearing House” (now the National Technical Information Service) of the Department of Commerce.
As a boost to employee morale, we took note of the 30th anniversary of FBIS' founding. We held a party in the Rendezvous Room of CIA's headquarters. There we greeted many of our former employees, most of whom were now numbered among the retirees, and others with whom we did business. To mark the occasion more formally, we published "FBIS In Retrospect," a commemorative volume recalling illustrative historic items monitored from press and radio sources over the three decades 1941-1971.
We shared "Retrospect" with our key consumers with a note of thanks for the timeliness and faithfulness with which they had consistently kept us aware of their needs, so essential if we were to select information which would be useful to them. They in turn joined in our celebration by sending us congratulatory messages of which the one received from the President is illustrative:
THE WHITE HOUSE
Washington
March 9, 1971
Mr. Paul A. Borel
Director
Foreign Broadcast Information Service
Post Office Box 2604
Washington, D.C. 20013
Dear Mr. Borel:
The thirtieth anniversary of the Foreign Broadcast Information Service is an important milestone for all of us who benefit from the many services you and the members of your staff provide. In an era when the United States must understand and often respond rapidly to world-wide developments, your timely and authoritative reporting, your searching analyses and your translation capabilities make an important contribution to the work of everyone associated with the complex field of foreign affairs. I am glad to have this opportunity to add my congratulations and best wishes to the many others you have received.
Sincerely,
/s/ Richard Nixon
My deputy, John Allen, an FBIS careerist of vast knowledge and experience, and I alternated in making visits to our bureaus overseas, for it was imperative to keep in touch. I have reported on such matters in the chapter "Faraway Places," elsewhere in this text, and have no wish to add to what is said there. In the department of morale building, I did inaugurate an award for the splendid service of the foreign nationals serving us as monitors and supporting activities: a walnut plaque in which was set the great seal of the United States in bronze and an inscription of the individual's name and years of service presented at the time of his retirement.
My days in FBIS sped by, and it soon came my turn to retire. As a member of CIA retirement board I had participated in adjudicating cases coming up for retirement in an era when age 60 was decreed in an effort to keep the Agency vital and make room for the younger set. It was a policy to which I subscribed. Indeed, I looked forward to spending time in a climate of no set hours or tasks while my wife and I were in vigorous health and without economic worries.
The pattern of departure had long been established: a ceremony at which an award is made and a party at which guests have an opportunity to wish the retiree well. In my case, I was awarded the Intelligence Medal of Merit by the Director of Central Intelligence, Richard Helms. Of my family, Miriam, Julie, Doug and Mark were present at the presentation (held on January 31,1972), as well as my three brothers from Kansas City, who had surprised me, having flown to Cleveland and there joined my college roommate, Charlie Spahr, chairman of SOHIO, to come in by the SOHIO corporate jet. (I later discovered this was my sister's idea, though much to my disappointment she was not among the arrivals.)
My pleasure at this affair stemmed mainly from the opportunity it gave me to thank those present (numbering about 50) for the pleasure our association at various episodes of my career had given me. Most of those there were colleagues from various offices in CIA in which I had worked. Additionally present were Harold Albertson, my roommate at Harvard Business School; Senator Claiborne Pell of Rhode Island, a classmate at Columbia from Navy days; Bob Yorty, my golfing partner; and Rev. William Nies, my pastor.
After the presentation, I hosted a luncheon in Mr. Helms' private dining room for members of my family and Spahr. We had a great time.
The retirement party was held on March 9, in the Rendezvous Room. There we gathered, some 250 people, including Agency brass. Speeches were made, gifts were presented (including the eight-foot skin of a cobra that until recently had inhabited the antenna field of the FBIS bureau in Bangkok). I sought, with mixed emotions, to respond appropriately. But mostly it was an evening of camaraderie among people who enjoyed reminiscing and simply being with each other, for they were wedded by a bond of service to CIA.
The messages, photos, cartoons and inscriptions brought together in a handsome binder entitled "Inside FBIS: 1173 days with Paul A. Borel, 1969-1972," is a gift I shall cherish always.
The clock was running down. I made personal calls on many people who who during my 25 years in CIA had given me cause to be grateful for meaningful professional association and, in many cases beyond that, for friendship. As I view now an exchange of letters written then, I find little I would change in what I wrote, and remain immeasurably grateful for the final salutation from my FBIS colleagues.
FOREIGN BROADCAST INFORMATION SERVICE
Washington, D.C.
February 23, 1972
Dear Colleagues in FBIS,
For something over three years now we have worked together. Shortly we will part company as I turn to new things.
From the first it has been my good fortune in Government to be given assignments I have enjoyed. Satisfaction has come from engaging in tasks worth the doing; pleasure from an association with people taking pride in doing their work well.
So too has been my experience in FBIS, where the contribution of each is apparent, and each continues to add to our history the touch of his own mind.
Parting is a time when feelings know two things. Regret for the separation to come of associations valued, and excitement from conjecturing what manner of adventure the months ahead may hold.
Whatever may befall us all, may each continue to reach for the high. For as the poet has well said,
Those travelers who beat the upper air
Have clarities in mind – a south somewhere,
Where clouds are higher and the sea more blue.
I shall always be grateful for your kindness, and will continue to value the friendships which have enriched my professional association with FBIS.
All the best always!
Paul A. Borel
Director
FOREIGN BROADCAST INFORMATION SERVICE
P.O. Box 2604
Washington, D.C. 20013
9 March 1972
Mr. Paul A. Borel, Director
Foreign Broadcast Information Service
Dear Paul,
Although we've served with you for only three of your thirty-one years of public service, we believe we've shared your very best years; for from the many threads which make up the whole cloth of your FBIS mantle, an unmistakable pattern is clearly evident – the constant pursuit of excellence.
To a mature organization, you gave an even fuller development; to our semi-seclusion, you brought new insights and an irreversible philosophy of openness. Where there was rote, you substituted reason; where we were drab, you put color; where the cause was just, you knew no fear; and as you leave we know this well – that we are better for having had you with us.
To you and Miriam our best wishes for a long, happy and healthy retirement.
ALL YOUR FBIS COLLEAGUES
At midnight, at the close of Wednesday, March 15, 1972, my sixtieth birthday, the FBIS Wire carried to the field the message: Effective this date E. H. Knoche director FBIS vice Paul Borel.
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