Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume XXXVIII, Part 2, Organization and Management of Foreign Policy; Public Diplomacy, 1973–1976

51. Letter From Director of Central Intelligence Colby to President Ford¹

Washington, October 13, 1975.

Dear Mr. President:

The scope of the several investigations being made of American intelligence has inevitably raised the subject of its organization. The Rockefeller Commission made certain recommendations on this subject, and it is predictable that the House and Senate Select Committees will do the same. Your own staff has also given consideration to whether an Administration initiative would be desirable on this subject.

Some weeks ago, six senior professional intelligence officers in CIA were asked to examine this question. I believed their experience in this field could possibly offer insights into the matter which would sharpen the issues, eliminate unnecessary focus on useless or even counterproductive proposals and identify some subjects for attention which otherwise might be missed. They approach the subject from a CIA perspective, of course, but in the nature of their work and in this study they have acquired a broad familiarity with the intelligence interests and problems of the other agencies and departments. They represent the various aspects of the intelligence process, from clandestine and technical collection to analysis and management.

This booklet is the result of their study, with an Executive Summary to provide a quick overview. It should be read as their work, embodying their ideas, and not as my own or any agency’s or department’s official view or recommendation. I do believe, however, that the ideas are worth considering with the other factors affecting the likely final outcome of the several investigations in process. For this purpose, I am planning to make it available to the members of the National Security Council, the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and members of your staff such as Messrs. Buchen, Marsh, and Lynn.

I am of course at your disposal for any discussions or other action you would like to take with respect to this study.

Respectfully,

W.E. Colby²

Attachment

Executive Summary of a Report Prepared by a Central Intelligence Agency Study Group

Washington, October 13, 1975.

AMERICAN INTELLIGENCE: A FRAMEWORK FOR THE FUTURE

[Omitted here is a table of contents.]

Executive Summary

For the past year American intelligence has been subjected to intense scrutiny by both the press and Congress. In early 1975 the President established the Rockefeller Commission, and the Senate and House each established a Select Committee to investigate the American intelligence system and make recommendations for change. The Rockefeller Commission focused on alleged improprieties in the domestic area and recommended ways to prevent the American intelligence system from posing any threat to civil liberties. The Congressional investigations still underway are broader. They have a mandate to consider the full range of questions dealing with intelligence, from constitutional issues to the quality of the product.

These developments led the Director of Central Intelligence to commission this study, in the belief that a thorough analysis of American intelligence by a group of experienced professionals could make a useful contribution to the ultimate decisions to be made.

This paper does not address past excesses or steps to correct them. Nor does it address the related issue of oversight. We fully recognize the need for stronger oversight, but we believe the appropriate arrangements for this function require more than an intelligence perspective.

This study concentrates on basic issues which will need consideration in any reorganization of American intelligence. The President has a particular opportunity not available to his predecessors, who saw to varying degrees a need for basic reform in the intelligence structure but also recognized that basic reform could not be carried out without amending the National Security Act. Now the Act is certain to be reconsidered, with or without a Presidential initiative.

The intelligence structure must be made more efficient and effective. It must also be made more acceptable to the American polity. Thus, efficiency achieved through rationalization and centralization of authority is not the only test. Structural improvements must be accompanied by provisions for external controls and internal checks and balances, even at a cost in efficiency, to develop and sustain public confidence. Changes in the elaborate structure in being must also be justified by the improvements which would be achieved. These must be weighed against the losses and disruption which would result from altering the existing machinery; our recommendations must build upon the present, rather than start from scratch.

Part I describes the present environment of intelligence. Part II focuses on present problems in the organization and management of intelligence, emphasizing the central role of the Director of Central Intelligence and the difficulties in meeting his extensive responsibilities with the limited authorities vested in him. The expanding breadth and depth of national requirements for intelligence and the growing sophistication of the technology developed to meet them add year by year to the difficulty of this management task. We place particular stress on two problems:

—First, the relationship between the DCI, who has at least nominal responsibility for all US intelligence, and the Secretary of Defense, who has operating authority over the bulk of its assets. This relationship is ill-defined and hampers the development of a coherent national intelligence structure.

—Second, the ambiguity inherent in the current definition of the DCI as both the head of the Intelligence Community and the head of one element of the Community. This poses internal management problems for CIA and also reduces the DCI’s ability to carry out effectively his Community role.

Part III outlines three basic approaches to organizing the Intelligence Community. These are:

—Transfer most national intelligence activities out of the Department of Defense into a reconstituted and renamed Central Intelligence Agency, responsible for servicing the fundamental intelligence needs of both the nation’s civilian and its military leadership.

—Absorb the Central Intelligence Agency within the Department of Defense, eliminating the DCI’s role as it has been conceived since 1947 and placing responsibility for effective coordination of all American intelligence on a Deputy Secretary of Defense for Intelligence who would absorb the Community responsibilities now exercised by the DCI, as well as those exercised by the present Assistant Secretary of Defense/Intelligence.

—Leave mostly unchanged the division of labor between Defense and CIA which has evolved since 1947 and, instead, focus on the office of the Director of Central Intelligence; modifying that office, and its authorities, in ways that will enhance the DCI’s ability to play a more effective role in contributing to the overall effectiveness of the Intelligence Community, at the same time reducing his direct involvement in managing CIA.

The study argues that fundamental political problems and the unquestioned need to maintain both Defense involvement in intelligence operations and an independent CIA preclude the first two of these solutions.

The third basic approach structures the office of the DCI so that its holder can discharge the responsibilities of Community leadership without adversely affecting the legitimate interests of the Departments of State and Defense. The DCI clearly needs a stronger voice in decision making on fundamental substantive intelligence judgments and on management issues in the Intelligence Community. At the same time, individual program managers in Defense need to retain considerable latitude and flexibility in the conduct of day-to-day operations. Both goals can be met by increasing the DCI’s voice in the processes which determine how intelligence judgments are made and disseminated and how resources—money and people—will be allocated in the Community, while preserving an independent CIA and continuing Defense responsibility for actual operation of most present programs.

There immediately arises, however, a critical choice, namely whether:

1) The DCI is to be responsible in a major way for stewardship of the resources this nation devotes to intelligence and, simultaneously, to be the nation’s principal substantive foreign intelligence officer, or

2) The substantive and resource management responsibilities are to be split, with the DCI being replaced by two senior officers; one charged exclusively with resource management and the other with substantive responsibilities.

For reasons explained, we reject the second of these choices and argue that the Community leadership role must include responsibility for both resource and substantive matters. We present two options for restructuring the office of the DCI, leading to two quite different DCIs of the future.

In the first option, the DCI retains direct responsibility for CIA and a staff role with respect to the balance of the Intelligence Community. This option would much resemble present arrangements, but would differ from them in several significant respects. This DCI’s ability to influence decision making on certain important issues would be enhanced somewhat by creation of an Executive Committee, under his chairmanship, for the Consolidated Cryptologic Program, along the lines of the present arrangement with respect to the National Reconnaissance Program. His line responsibility for management of CIA would be reduced by creation of two statutory deputy directors, one responsible for day to day supervision of CIA and one for Intelligence Community coordination.

Implementation of this option would improve in important ways the overall management arrangements which currently exist within the Intelligence Community. The study group is convinced, however, that the changes needed are more fundamental than those reflected in this option, and that an opportunity for effecting such basic changes now exists.

The second option would create a new kind of DCI called the Director General of Intelligence (DGI). He would be separated by statute from the present CIA, which would be renamed the Foreign Intelligence Agency (FIA), with its own Director (D/FIA). Funds for most US intelligence programs would be appropriated to the DGI, then allocated by him to program managers for actual operations. The DGI would assume broad substantive production and resource coordination functions and would receive staff support to exercise both responsibilities. Finally, the DGI would be a statutory member of the National Security Council with concomitant access to the President and standing with the Secretaries of State, Treasury and Defense.

Under this arrangement, two important and interrelated questions must be answered:

—To whom should the Director of the FIA report; specifically, should he report directly to the NSC (as does the present DCI), or should he report to the NSC through the DGI, himself a member of the NSC?

—Should the DGI’s staff include the production elements of CIA or should these remain in the new FIA?

We present two workable solutions to the problems raised by these questions. Both have important advantages and serious disadvantages. The study group did not make a choice between them. A chart of these organizational choices appears opposite page 85.

If fundamental change could be at least contemplated in 1971, it is a central issue in 1975. Current political developments suggest that the National Security Act of 1947 will be rewritten, at least to some degree. Our analysis of the Act and the intelligence structure it established convinces us that it should be. We have made no effort in the pages which follow to set forth how precisely the law should be rewritten, but rather have addressed the broad principles which we believe should be incorporated in such an effort. It is not an exaggeration to observe that we are fast approaching an historical moment and unique opportunity to charter the Intelligence Community to meet future needs for effective intelligence support. It may be another 25 years before events provide the President a comparable opportunity. Our detailed recommendations are presented at the end of Part III.

1. Source: Ford Library, President’s Handwriting File, Box 30, National Security, Intelligence (4)–(6). No classification marking. A stamped notation indicates that the President saw the letter.
2. Colby signed “Bill” above this typed signature.