1991 Congressional Hearings
Intelligence and Security


[STATEMENT BEFORE THE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE, U.S. SENATE, SEPTEMBER 11, 1991]

The Case for S. 1003

(BY DR. ALLAN E. GOODMAN, ASSOCIATE DEAN, SCHOOL OF FOREIGN SERVICE, GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY)

Mr. Chairman, I greatly appreciate the chance to testify in support of S. 1003. I know this legislation is opposed by the top management of the intelligence community and that some members of this committee have doubts about enacting it until a major review can be completed of how U.S. intelligence should be funded and organized in the wake of Iran/Contra, and until more is known about the significance of the end of the Cold War and the break up of the Soviet system and empire. But this bill is one immediate step to take that would substantially improve and benefit the management of the intelligence community, however such a review comes out.

As the attached will substantiate, I have been in favor of Senate confirmation of the top managers at the CIA since 1981. The reasons I advanced at that time are no less valid today. It is an anomaly that the DDO, DDI, and DD S and T, particularly, are not subject to Senate confirmation. They have far more power over and impact on American foreign policy, and expenditure of government resources, and relationships with other countries and their leaders than most of the Assistant Secretaries at the Departments of State and Defense and virtually every serving ambassador. Few outsiders appreciate the extent of the relationships that the top intelligence officers maintain with key officials in other countries, the degree to which such officials view our intelligence leaders as representatives of the highest echelons of the U.S. government, or the impact that their actions can have on the foreign policy and national security of the United States. Appointment to positions requiring the advice and consent of the Senate means that the executive will take those extra and careful steps to ascertain that the nominee--regardless of his or her politics--is fully qualified for the job and can withstand independent scrutiny. Furthermore, the privilege of appearing before a Committee of this body to assure the members that the appointment is proper and appropriate reinforces in the nominee a recognition of the constitutional role of Congress as an integral part of the U.S. governmental process. The top leaders of the CIA--unlike those at DIA and NSA who, as serving military general officers are at least theoretically subject to Senate review--need to come in from the cold and fully embrace our democratic process. S. 1003 in my view is, thus, long overdue.

What I want to focus on today is why intelligence professionals--the most likely pool of candidates from which such appointments will be made--should actually want to be confirmed.

Congress is rapidly becoming a major consumer of the intelligence product. It makes good sense to know these customers and to start out by winning their confidence. Numerous laws now require that Congress be kept informed of all anticipated intelligence activities in a timely fashion. This creates a clear requirement for the top management of the CIA to be candid with this committee. Nothing helps more to reinforce this notion than starting in the job with an appearance before Congress and assuring them that the appointed individual will consider it a part of his or her personal responsibility to make sure that such communication will take place and that the truth will be told. Congress funds the CIA. The ups and downs of the intelligence budget reflect both the real needs that the intelligence community has for resources and also the confidence that Congress has in the Agency's agenda. And that confidence can best be fostered by the relationships that are developed between the oversight committees and top Agency officials. Too often, in the past, these relationships have been adversarial. and far too often the top echelon of the Agency's management have felt that they owed their jobs and loyalties exclusively to officials in the executive branch.

I feel quite strongly that we should not have DDOs and DDIs who enter office with these presuppositions. But the present system creates the impression that the CIA should be exempted from the process of checks and balances by which our nation is governed.

I can foresee no downside to S. 1003. The legislation will not result in politicizing the corps of professionals who collect and produce the intelligence product. Most intelligence officers today realize that the thrust of this Committee's studies and those conducted by the HPSCI is to alert policy makers to and caution them against any practice that would breach the line between intelligence and partisan policy advocacy. So, the argument that S. 1003 would suddenly reverse this trend--or cause the executive to appoint only persons who were known to hold particular political views on national security questions--is unconvincing to me.

Equally unconvincing is the argument that enacting this legislation should be postponed until such time as the intelligence community has completed its own review of how it should be organized in a post Cold War environment. Short of disestablishing the CIA, the collection and analysis of information will remain at the core of CIA functions. There will always be a head of operations and of intelligence analysis, no matter how greatly the scope or nature of such work varies.

Finally, S. 1003 makes sense because it proposes a safeguard against the abuse of the resources and power of the intelligence community. Such safeguards are always timely. There have been far too many abuses of intelligence in recent years to assume that even the aftermath of and penalties associated with a scandal as egregious as the Iran/Contra Affair will prevent others from happening. At the core of most of these scandals have been individuals who have thought they were at liberty to set themselves above laws made by Congress. In part, I think this happened because they were not required to come before this committee in order to get their job in the first place. I hesitate to speculate whether the passage S. 1003 would have prevented Iran/Contra. But I am certain that without S. 1003 we invite future trouble that the nation, and especially the CIA, can ill afford.

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From the Baltimore Sun, August 26, 1981

[FROM THE BALTIMORE SUN, AUGUST 26, 1981]

M Is Not for Max

(BY ALLAN E. GOODMAN)

Washington: Americans probably know more about `M,' Ian Fleming's fictional British spymaster, than they do about any man who has served in that capacity in the United States. As he appears in the James Bond movies, `M' is a man whose business practices and language are above reproach. In the Fleming novels, `M' is portrayed as a senior civil servant with a strong political base in Parliament and close relations to key Cabinet ministers.

America has not had a spymaster with such political influence since Benjamin Franklin! In 1775, Franklin masterminded a plan to steal gunpowder from the British arsenal in Bermuda and was the chief U.S. operative in Europe in 1776 (under orders of the Committee of Secret Correspondence). Lincoln, in contrast, hired the Pinkertons to conduct his intelligence operations, preferring to keep clandestine operations at arm's length from his government.

General William Donovan, head of the wartime Office of Strategic Services, appointed close personal associates from both his law practice and his service at the Justice Department to lead the first U.S. efforts at intelligence operations on the eve of World War II. All had political connections and influence with key European leaders that served General Donovan and the OSS well. But since the creation of the Central Intelligence Agency in 1947, the clandestine service has been headed by professionals brought up through the ranks.

The emphasis on professionalism in the choice of DDO (Deputy Director for Operations) has produced uneven results. The Bay of Pigs fiasco was hatched under the leadership of the DDO. Some DDOs have also been quite public and controversial. For example, Thomas Karamessines figured prominently in Church Committee revelations of CIA involvement in planning the coup against the government of President Salvador Allende in Chile and of the agency's failure to destroy snake venom poisons despite presidential orders. Two DDOs have graduated to become director of central intelligence, or head of the CIA: Richard Helms and William Colby. Both were more controversial after their tenure than during it. Mr. Helms were severely criticized by congressional investigations for keeping too many secrets; Mr. Colby by his associates for keeping too few.

Judged by any standard, Max Hugel, a New England businessman, was singularly miscast as head of operations. He lacked relevant or recent experience in a very complex and sophisticated craft. He apparently was not a discreet person to do business with, as the published excerpts of his telephone calls and corrspondence suggest. If Mr. Hugel had a close personal relationship with CIA Director William Casey, it proved insufficient to win his initial acceptance by the rank and file in the agency or, later, to shield him from essentially the same type of `investigation' that Richard Allen, the president's national security adviser, survived in 1980 during the campaign. Mr. Hugel resigned.

What should the president and the public now learn from the Hugel Affair?

The most fundamental lesson is that head of operations at CIA is too sensitive an appointment to be left entirely to the discretion of either the head of the CIA or the professionals in operations. The person in this position has far more of an impact on national security and the conduct of foreign relations than most assistant secretaries (who require Senate confirmation) at the State or Defense departments. The deputy director for operations should, therefore, also be subject to Senate confirmation.

Why hasn't this been considered before? With the end of World War II, the Congress (and President Truman) couldn't wait to get out of the wartime spy business and the ranks of the OSS were severely pruned as a new `Central Intelligence Group' was formed. When the CIA was created in 1947, the clandestine operations section was a relatively small unit, and Congress was much more concerned with such issues as whether the director of central intelligence would be a military man or a civilian, and how he would relate to the departmental intelligence units that served the secretaries of State and Defense. My review of the congressional hearings surrounding the establishment of the CIA, moreover, suggests that in 1946 and 1947 Congress had little conception of how large the operations part of the agency would become or what impact its activities could have on the conduct of foreign relations. For almost three decades thereafter, Congress regarded the head of operations as a preserve for careerists rather than as a political appointment.

But the Hugel Affair suggests that Congress cannot count on this always being the case. In addition, the Congress and the public, too, require more accountability than ever before from the leaders of the intelligence community, among whom the spymaster is a key figure.

The experience of the past several years of congressional oversight suggests that such accountability can be had without jeopardizing national secrets. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence--the committee which would logically hold hearings on a prospective DDO appointment--has effective and well respected security procedures. By going into executive session when appropriate, this committee could keep secret the things that need to be kept secret (e.g., the nominee's past involvement in missions and projects, the details of which are still classified).

Congressional scrutiny over such a key appointment would also help to assure that the person who occupied the post was known by the president and had his confidence. In Mr. Hugel's case, the confirmation process would have had a greater chance of uncovering the questionable activities that led to his resignation.

The Hugel Affair also raises questions about the thoroughness of the CIA background investigation and security clearance process. These are significant questions because of the serious damage that could be done to U.S. security if the CIA were penetrated by the KGB (or any other intelligence service, for that matter). It would be a mistake, however, to put too much emphasis on this particular episode. There was precious little time for professionals to conduct their investigations. There is a saying at CIA headquarters in Langley that `If the boss wants it real bad, he will get it real bad.' This, apparently, was what happened in Mr. Hugel's case.

The Hugel Affair, in sum, gives the president a further chance to shape directly the development of U.S. intelligence services. Part of his interest is already evident in drafts of a new executive order governing intelligence activities and in the soon-to-be reconstituted President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. President Reagan should now take a long overdue look at not only how the nation's clandestine services are run, but who is running them.

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Allan E. Goodman, Washington, DC

Allan E. Goodman is Associate Dean of the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, Director of the Master of Science in Foreign Service Program and Professor of International Affairs. He teaches courses on the theory and practice of international negotiation and the future of the international system. In addition, he conducts specialized research on intelligence problems and systems and their influence on U.S. foreign relations and policy development.

Since assuming the position of Director of the Master of Science in Foreign Service Program at Georgetown in 1980, Dr. Goodman has built the course into one of the premier institutions for professional, graduate-level training in diplomacy and international relations. He also founded the `Women in Foreign Service Program' designed to enhance the operational effectiveness of women in international service careers, and the Georgetown Leadership Seminar which annually brings to the School of Foreign Service key younger leaders from the public and private sectors to discuss the forces and trends likely to shape the international system in the 21st century. To date, some 260 leaders, representing 74 countries have participated in the seminar. Dr. Goodman is also a guest lecturer at the Foreign Service Institute of the Department of State and is Co-Chair of the IBM International Personnel Institute and the IBM Educational Symposium, hosted by Georgetown University.

Prior to joining the Georgetown faculty in 1980, Dr. Goodman served as Presidential Briefing Coordinator for the Director of Central Intelligence and as Special Assistant to the Director of the National Foreign Assessment Center. Dr. Goodman was Chairman of the Department of Government and International Relations at Clark University (1971-74) and a National Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution (1974-75). He received his Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University in 1971, and is the author of ten books and over fifty articles on international affairs. He was awarded a Doctor of Laws Degree, honoris causa, from Mount Ida College in May of 1991.

From 1972-74 Dr. Goodman was also a guest columnist for the Christian Science Monitor, a consultant to the Department of State, and a witness on WGBH-TV's `The Advocates.' He has also served as an advisor to the US Information Agency, to the WGBH-TV Vietnam History Project, and as commentator on NBC Radio. He is a frequent guest on the Voice of America's `Encounter' program which is broadcast to 120 million listeners worldwide, and contributes columns on intelligence and foreign policy problems to the Los Angeles Times and its syndicate.

Dr. Goodman's publications include: The Lost Peace: America's Search for A Negotiated Settlement of the Vietnam War (called by Stanley Karnow in his Vietnam: A History, `an excellent correction to [Henry] Kissinger's own account of the Vietnam Negotiations' and cited as major `Book of Reference' in The Statesman's Yearbook) and Negotiating While Fighting: The Diary of Admiral C. Turner Joy at the Korean Armistice Conference. He is co-author of Strategic Intelligence and American National Security, published by the Princeton University Press in January 1989, (now in its third printing), and co-editor of the recently declassified The Central Intelligence Agency: An Instrument of Government, to 1950, by Arthur B. Darling, and General Walter Bedell Smith as Director of Central Intelligence, October 1950-February 1953, by Ludwell Lee Montague.

June 1991.

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