(The new construction building behind the row of Don’s Johns, far left, is located at 1724 F Street in Washington, DC. It replaced the former home of the Intelligence Community Staff. To the right, the bulk of the Old Executive Office Building looms in Beau Arts glory and demonstrates how useful it is to be just steps from the White House).
It was another timeless afternoon at Willow. It was our usual weekly evening to chat with Mac about some of the milestones in his long career in the middle of the Intelligence Community. It was not about day-drinking. Liz-S was tending the bar along with Sammy the Morrocan. Jasper was arcing around, taking care of the crowd on the patio. Mac was nattily attired in a jacket with an aloha shirt beneith and plain dress slacks. We normally sit inside to avoid the chatter.
“So, we are into your time on the Intelligence Community Staff, an institution established to reign in an allegedly rogue community of spies/”
Mac smiled. “You have to go through the process to understand it. I well remember the series of interviews Jim Schlesinger had with the members of the staff, and I had mine. I wasn’t told at the end of the interview whether I was retained or not for the new staff, but I did find out a few days later that I passed the test and my contract would be retained.”
“That is a comforting reassurance. Were any let go?”
“I don’t know what he planned. Schlesinger only stayed in that job for five months. He left in July 1973 to become Secretary of Defense.”
“I certainly would have.” I said and looked at the Pollyface devilled eggs that Jasper has slid in front of me on a long dish. Willow always served five half-eggs, and it drove us nuts trying to figure out where the other half went. I was trying desperately to stay on the Paleo diet at the time, thinking that the sugar in the happy hour white was as much as I could justify. I looked longingly at the smoked Buffalo wings- Tracy O’Grady is from Buffalo, after all- and I had missed lunch. But I am nothing if not resolute. I took one of the egg-halves and popped it in my mouth. Tracey says the recipe is from her Grandmother.
“I was on the Community Management Staff in my time at Langley,” I said. “But that is amazing. Our organization was the one you helped establish for central control of the loose confederation of independent intelligence organizations. You actually helped create the Intelligence Community Staff, the organization charted to bring order out of intelligence chaos.”
“That was the plan. Except for the initial review of the personnel making up the Intelligence Community Staff at that time, Jim Schlesinger didn’t give very much attention to the intelligence community role in his few months as DCI. Instead, he devoted his attention to trying to do reorganizations and straightening out in CIA, who thought they worked directly for the President. The DCI said that he was going give his attention first to the agency and then to devote attention to the community.”
“That philosophy was around a long time after you retired, Admiral. In fact, despite the establishment of the office of the Director of National Intelligence after the 9/11 attacks, most Directors of the CIA seemed to treat the DNI as irrelevant.”
“That was certainly true at the beginning, since it was all about budget authority and review. DCI Schlesinger’s tenure was too short for him ever to get back to the community. So, whatever he had intended to do to strengthen the community role, other than the review of the staff personnel, the change in the name, and bringing a military officer to head the staff, he didn’t really exert any further influence on the IC Staff.”
“An active duty guy? Who was that?”
General Vernon Walters, U.S. Army. We knew him as Dick. He had been Deputy DCI for many years- I think from 1972 or perhaps earlier, until 1976. Then he became acting DCI until Bill Colby could arrive to take over the DCI job. Colby had been Chief of Station in London.”
“Minister plenipotentiary for the CIA to the Court of Saint James,” I smiled, thinking about how well the representatives of the individual intelligence agencies lived there.
“Indeed. Colby was named prospective DCI when Schlesinger left to become Secretary of Defense in July, and Colby didn’t arrive and take over the DCI directorship until September of 1973.”
“So it was all ahead full, and then things stalled, right?”
“Basically. The revelations of CIA connections to the White House “Plumbers” coincided with Schlesinger’s first months as DCI. He correctly understood that the building crisis in the Nixon Administration was going to challenge the very existence of the Agency and required hands-on attention. From what we could see, Watergate began to take over almost everything else.”
“That was like the Scott Speicher MIA affair after the Gulf War. Tom Wilson was Director of DIA then, and he told me answering Congressional questions and testifying took most of his time. So how did you get through the biggest politica-Constitutional crisis until the next one?””
“I think the next evolution of personnel on the IC Staff was when General Lew Allen moved to NSA and became director of the National Security Agency. We were delighted to see because, by that time, we had come to know him extremely well and appreciated his talent and capabilities. He was still serving years after he retired. I heard they called him out of retirement to lead a blue-ribbon panel on recommendations to fix the Hubble telescope.”
“Truly a multi-threat officer,” I said, downing another egg.
“I am going to have dinner back at The Madison, but I envy those eggs. I am watching my cholesterol.”
“Don’t listen to the Docs,” I said. “They tried to tell us that coffee was bad, too. You could not have won the Pacific War without it.”
“Or Three Feathers Whiskey. Just to finish this off, since I have to be going to make the first seating back home, at a date that I no longer can document, Bill Colby brought in Lieutenant General Sam Wilson as the head of the Intelligence Community Staff. Now, during these evolutions….”
“Organizational conniptions,” I said around a sip of wine.
“Well, true enough, but remember, we were a growing group. And don’t interrupt. The Intelligence Community Staff continued to grow from a initial cadre of perhaps a dozen people in 1972, all of them being CIA people. The staff was clearly growing by the addition of people like myself who were hired as contract employees.”
“Flesh out? That is a euphemism. When existing organizations are told that they have to cough up people, who do you think are chosen? It is the only way to clear out government dead wood. Send them to the new staff.”
“And everyone wonders why things work the way they do. There were people being assigned from other agencies to flesh out the staff, and I don’t have specific numbers in mind. But from the original cadre of dozen people the staff grew into the range of perhaps 50 people within a period of a couple of years. It grew rather rapidly. We had our own administrative officer. Again, we were paid by CIA, we were housed by CIA, but every possible effort was made to identify us separately from CIA. No one really believed it, though. That was one of the main reasons for the name change to Intelligence Community Staff. Our old name was about budgets. We needed to reflect a more inclusive identity.”
“When did the staff relocate to 1724 F Street in downtown Washington. Did you want to be closer to the White House?” I asked and popped the last of the devilled eggs into my mouth.
“You are getting ahead of my story. Actually, that happened sometime around 1977 or ’78. The decision to move out of the Langley Headquarters and establish the staff separately in a building all its own was a decision that was made by George Bush, when he was DCI during 1976- the only year he was there.”
“I had no idea it was that recent,” I exclaimed. “I understood that the building you moved into used to be the place used by the Selective Service in World War Two.”
“Started during World War One and lasted until the Vietnam War was lost. George Bush made the decision to move to reinforce the idea that we were an independent organization and not creatures of the CIA bureaucracy.”
“We wound up right back at Langley as the Community Management Staff,” I said. “It was sort of cool driving up to the gate in the morning, except for the left turn off Chain Bridge Road where Mir Aimal Kasi shot all those commuters.”
“I have found the government operates in an elliptical manner. After we moved down to that building, and probably sometime in 1978, I was walking between the F Street building and the Old Executive Office Building when I encountered Vice President George Bush, who I had come to know well, and George asked me if we ever made to the building that he had arranged. And I said, “Yes indeed.” And I asked him if he’d like to come see us. And he said, “I certainly would.” I then aborted the mission that I was then on, whatever it was, and I took George Bush back to the headquarters building and. As a former Director of Central Intelligence, he had access rights to the building, and he was welcomed by many old friends.”
“I almost got a chance to brief him during the Gulf War,” I said. “I screwed up and went for a jog and my deputy got to do it.”
“He was a good man. We showed him through the building, and he spent a couple hours greeting friends and looking over the building that he had arranged for us a couple of years earlier.”
“So, what it sounds like to me is that we just saw this all over again with the establishment of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the reason for their move to the Liberty Crossing facility in Fairfax.”
Mac nodded. “There seems to always be a conflict between what its responsibilities were and how much authority they had over the community. It seemed to me from where I was, that that authority was largely what the other agencies were willing to grant. There was always a tension between the intelligence organizations and the IC staff.”
“True enough. But our only real authority was budgetary. We couldn’t tell anyone what to do directly, unless we drafted a DCI Directive or made DCI guidance in the formation of the President’s Annual Budget.”
“Ouch. I spent two years of my life working on DCID 7-1.”
“What was that about?” asked Mac. He was having a good week and has permission to take a sip of Anchor Steam beer with satisfaction.
“I wish I could remember,” I said. “But then there was 9/11 and everyone lost their minds.”
“It happens,” said Mac. “You should have seen what happened after Pearl Harbor.” He did not have to reach for his wallet, since Liz-S had given him a pass for a lifetime of free drinks at the Willow Bar.
That is one full-service restaurant, and the only one I know that comes with a chance to talk to Mac.
Copyright 2017 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com