the raw information of the intelligence community, including the sensitive intercepts of the NSA, and used facts and inference for policy-relevant estimates and assessments. “Open source” materials, such as newspapers, official statements, and published statistics, were often more valuable than secret information from clandestine sources. Both directorates were good at dealing with the capabilities of adversaries; neither did a good job of dealing with intentions.
Clandestine operatives or case officers are deeply involved in policy; they rely on secrecy and hierarchy and share information on a strict need-to-know basis. They are typically generalists who serve overseas and rarely have regional or country-specific expertise. They typically move from one country to another every few years. The best of them gather important information by serving in key countries, but very few are good at incorporating that information into a global picture to serve the needs of policymakers. There were always exceptions, however. Most are hard working because they must do both the job that their cover status demands as well as their clandestine mission. Their political views tend to be on the right.
There was rarely agreement between clandestine operatives and intelligence analysts. Operatives were quick to support administration positions, giving upbeat assessments of the Vietnam War that were contradicted by the intelligence assessments coming from the Directorate of Intelligence. The differences between the two directorates on the war couldn’t have been more stark, moving Director Helms to remark “I felt like a circus rider standing astride two horses.”1 CIA analysts and operatives differed on the impact of Mikhail Gorbachev on Soviet domestic politics and Soviet-American relations.
Intelligence analysts are tethered to their desks at Langley and get insufficient opportunities to travel overseas. It was particularly frustrating to learn that the Directorate of Operations did not permit Soviet analysts to travel to the Soviet Union, although this policy was altered in the 1970s. Intelligence analysts should have no policy axes to grind; their credibility rests on that fact. Unlike operatives, analysts tended to be progressive in their political thinking, which led President Richard Nixon to refer to them as “clowns.” They received short orientation trips to their areas of expertise, but got insufficient support from overseas case officers, who viewed analysts traveling with marginal and ineffective cover as a threat to their clandestine missions. I traveled to countries where the CIA station would not allow me to come into the U.S. embassy (for example, the USSR, India, Costa Rica) and I was denied travel to important countries (for example, Iraq, Pakistan) for no good reason. If the CIA had a genuine “one Agency” culture, intelligence analysts would have gone overseas regularly for temporary duty, and served tours in CIA stations. This would allow regular discussion of sources with case officers and assessments of the information that sources provide. When I was on the faculty of the National War College, the overseas trips were particularly rewarding, because we had support from defense attachés assigned to the embassies in countries we visited. The CIA needs a similar culture.
Unlike the Operations Directorate and the military, which offers extensive training to its recruits, the CIA in the 1960s was extremely casual in preparing intelligence analysts. I received no training and only informal mentoring upon entering the CIA, and no exposure to the problem of intelligence manipulation. The testimony I provided to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence about corruption at the CIA was fully transcribed in official congressional publications, but there was no effort to incorporate these accounts into training manuals or actual case studies. An ombudsman post was finally created in the wake of the hearings, but there were no junkyard dogs among those who filled the post.
The CIA culture was challenging due to the differences between the Directorates of Intelligence and Operations. These two distinct cultures were formed during World War II in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). The OSS had an operational element that served in Europe and Asia with some members becoming CIA directors: Allen Dulles, Helms, Colby, and Casey. The analytical element of the Office of Strategic Services served primarily in Washington, D.C., and their members were influential in forming the CIA’s Office of National Estimates, particularly Yale University’s Sherman Kent and Harvard University’s William Langer.
The culture of the clandestine service remains dominated by the secrecy of the mission; its hierarchical nature has its roots in the quasi-military origins of the Office of Strategic Services. The Directorate of Operations is a closed fraternity; even CIA analysts are considered outsiders who can’t be trusted. The risks confronting operatives are similar to those of Foreign Service Officers and military officers, but clandestine agents believe they are part of an exclusive club. The Directorate of Operations has become a paramilitary organization in many ways.
Operatives are extroverts by nature, getting their energy from other people, useful in recruiting foreign agents to do the bidding of the United States. The culture of the Directorate of Operations is inherently contradictory; it represents a closed, secret society inside an open democracy. It claims to have the highest morality, but represents a lawless organization overseas. The willingness to break laws leads to a resentment of congressional oversight. As former director of central intelligence General Walter Bedell Smith has conceded, “The CIA has committed every crime there is except rape.” The need to manipulate others and to obfuscate their own identities leads many to drop out of the directorate. For the overwhelming majority that remain, their own families, particularly their children, have no idea that they are clandestine operatives of the CIA. There is typically great anger when they become aware.
Unlike operatives, analysts are classic introverts. Many analysts are recruited from graduate school, where they were preparing for life in the ivory tower. The dominant culture of the Directorate of Intelligence in the mid-1960s was shaped by Sherman Kent, who believed that analysts must keep a distance from policymakers and must shield themselves from the prejudices and motivations of the consumers of intelligence. Unlike operatives, analysts are often critical of the excesses of U.S. national security policy, such as the Vietnam War and U.S.-sponsored coups in Iran, Guatemala, Vietnam, and Chile.
Intelligence analysts have registered serious failures, such as the lack of warning about the decline of the Soviet Union or the phony assessments of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. These failures occur when intense policy pressure distorts the flow of intelligence information. CIA directors and deputy directors (Casey and Gates) were involved in the failure to accurately assess the Soviet decline; Tenet and John McLaughlin played key roles, providing tailored intelligence to allow the Bush administration to invade Iraq.
When I left the CIA in the mid-1980s, the dominant culture was shaped by Robert M. Gates, who could not have been more different from Kent, lacking both his stature and his intellect. Gates believed it was the duty of the analyst to study and serve the agenda of policymakers. The ethos of Robert Gates created the conditions that led to the corruption of intelligence.
President Truman designed the CIA so that the intelligence analyst would be at the center of the organization; it soon became obvious that clandestine operatives were the real center. Analysts typically resent their association with clandestine operatives, who are perceived as “spooks.” Operatives see analysts as naïve, idealistic, and unrealistic. Those senior officers of the CIA, such as Harvard University’s Robert Bowie of the National Foreign Assessment Center in the late 1970s, who thought they could merge the two cultures, did not succeed. Director John O. Brennan has created an unprecedented merger of the Directorates of Intelligence and Operations without consulting the Congressional Intelligence Committees and without debate within CIA itself.
I was wrong not to learn more about the CIA’s clandestine foreign interventions that were so abhorrent to many friends and academic colleagues, including my faculty advisors. I believed that my work in the Directorate of Intelligence, which was openly acknowledged, was far different from the work of the Directorate of Operations, which was covert and unacknowledged. I had little contact with officers of the Directorate of Operations, even in my own field of Soviet affairs. I developed an academic interest in the CIA’s clandestine operations, but I felt no responsibility for covert actions that involved destabilizing foreign governments, let alone assassinations and support for brutal regimes.
The CIA’s secret operations, particularly regime changes and political killings, were not the rogue actions of an out-of-control agency, however. These acts were