(Then-AEC Chairman Schlesinger with Pat and Dick Nixon, 1970)
“Covering this upcoming election is like covering a competition between two Soviet refrigerator companies, cold-war relics offering products that never change.”
– David Brooks, NY Times token Hamiltonian pundit, today.
(Loyal readers, there have been recent and unsettling allegations out there in the world-wide web. We have striven mightily here at The Daily Socotra to maintain an evenhanded and objective account of the sometimes (oh, hell, mostly) bewildering events here in the nation’s capital. In specific reference to irresponsible commentary, this informative and innovative column is truly written by a retired white male former Spook, not a proud young Lesbian in Damascus, Syria. For sure. )
It turned cold here- cold enough to wear long jammies and long sleeved shirt to bed. I assume we will bounce back up into the swelter here shortly, but it was magnificent yesterday. The International Executive of the Ornamental Concrete Workers had their annual golf outing yesterday, taking advantage of the splendid weather, and they were all back and very drunk on the patio until the wee hours, just like old times.
Their laughter was a comfort: a steady roll of summer sound that conveyed tradition, even as things change. There are a lot of new faces by the pool, younger, by in large, and old fixtures like Uncle Bill have decamped for the greener, if more uncertain, pastures of retirement in the Golden West.
It was a welcome change from the dyspepsia I felt when I reviewed the film clip. The moment had come with a chance search looking for something else; the account of the Schlesinger Report on how screwed up and out-of-control the Intelligence Community was, and his specific recommendations about how to fix it.
Jim Schlesinger was a career academic and economist when he joined the Nixon administration in 1969 as Assistant Director of the Bureau of the Budget- the outfit that I knew in later years as the Office of Management and Budget, or OMB.
Schlesinger specialized in analysis of defense matters, but was known to be a loyal Republican operative who could be trusted to come to the right conclusions that supported the Administration agenda. He was tapped in 1970 to chair a group charted to conduct “A Review of the Intelligence Community.”
I have to bore you with that, since the delivery of the report to President Nixon (by then the effort had become known as the Schlesinger Report) which supported an Administration initiative to reign in the CIA, which along with J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI, were off the reservation and out of control.
Nixon and Kissinger wanted them back in the box, and the fractious tribe of assorted agencies, some in Defense, like DIA and NSA, some unacknowledged (the NRO was “covered” for years afterward) and some completely independent- like the Central Intelligence Agency.
The objective of the survey was to re-establish firm Presidential control, which was covered by the requirement to “identify and alleviate factors of ineffectiveness within the intelligence community, which included recommendations to reform the “organization, planning and operations of the community.”
Schlesinger delivered the report in March of 1971, and the wheels began to grind in the White House to turn the recommendations into action.
That ultimately resulted in the phone call from CIA Director Dick Helm’s deputy, Bronson Tweedy, to my pal Mac in late 1972.
Mac was Deputy Director at DIA at the time, and the politics of the Navy indicated that his time on active duty was coming to an end.
The Schlesinger Report was the first attempt to reform the community. We know now the astonishing things the Christians in Action had been up to through the 1960s. In addition to the wild-west activities of the Directorate for Operations, the Agency had a significant paramilitary force on the ground in SE Asia.
My pal Steve Canyon was one of them, and I have tried to get him to talk about his days walking around North Vietnam, and maybe he will get to it one of these days.
The growing technological capabilities of the IC- notably space-based Imagery and Signals intelligence- had significant impact on the entire tasking-collection-processing and dissemination model for how the community operated.
Schlesinger highlighted two “disturbing phenomena” within the IC: an “impressive rise in…size and cost” and the “apparent inability to achieve a commensurate improvement in the scope and overall quality of intelligence products.”
Stop me if you have heard any of this before (or since). I participated in several subsequent efforts and have read reams of results of Blue Ribbon Panels on the fiercely independent and compulsively secretive tribes.
Schlesinger recommended created a Director of National Intelligence, strengthening the role of the Director of Central Intelligence as the Pater Familia of the tribes, and establishing a central staff to assign priorities and manage the books on the secret world.
Mac told me that Dick Helms had no interest whatsoever in doing any of that. He told Bronson Tweedy to get something going that would conform to the intent of the Report and keep it the hell away from him.
Mac retired from the Navy (and DIA) on the 31st of December, and reported the first working day of 1973 to the Central Intelligence Agency to join what would become the Intelligence Community Staff.
That could close out this chapter of an account of the career of a great Naval Officer, but of course his second career was just beginning. We have agreed not to discuss anything specific about what he did as part of the oversight structure of the IC in the later 1970s and early 1980s, since some of it remains sensitive to this day. He has given a classified oral history, but God only knows when that will be available.
Of late, the Spooks have been reclassifying things that were previously released.
My Pal the Lawyer was surprised at the hostility the Administration had for the CIA, and the way it was returned.
Dick Helms refused to use his power to block the parts of the Watergate investigation that were starting to illuminate the dirty tricks of an Administration that considered itself to be in a domestic war as serious as the shooting war in SE Asia.
President Nixon fired Helms, and installed a new Director.
James Schlesinger.
He was only at Langley for six months, but he made enough progress in paying back the CIA that they had to install a surveillance camera ear his official portrait to ensure that the employees did not deface it. You have to realize what was at stake, and why no one trusted anyone.
But we will have to get to that tomorrow.
Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com