This morning’s WaPo Michael F. Scheuer’s review review of two significant books on intelligence”
• THE CIA AND CONGRESS: The Untold Story from Truman to Kennedy By David M. Barrett
• BURN BEFORE READING Presidents, CIA Directors, and Secret Intelligence By Stansfield Turner
(Michael F. Scheuer was a member of the CIA's Senior Intelligence Service and the first chief of its unit on Osama bin Laden. He is the previously anonymous author of "Imperial Hubris" and "Through Our Enemies' Eyes.")
In two telling paragraphs, makes it clear that our recent failures are due to lack of integrity in leadership.
“For me, the most enlightening section of Turner's book is his discussion of Richard M. Helms's tenure at Langley (1966-73). During my last years at the CIA, George Tenet worshipped at the Helms altar -- moving, as Turner notes, Helms's portrait from the CIA's gallery of past chiefs into his office and referring to Helms in many speeches. For agency personnel, of course, Helms is known as the "man who kept the secrets," but Turner shows that Helms not only lied to Congress but -- more damaging to the CIA as an institution -- willingly manipulated intelligence analysis on Soviet intentions and Vietnam to avoid displeasing President Nixon and National Security Adviser Henry A. Kissinger. Helms, for example, withheld a CIA report analyzing the stark downside of a U.S. invasion of Cambodia because, as Turner puts it, Kissinger's and Nixon's "minds were clearly made up. The report would have just angered them." Having read Turner's excellent assessment of Helms and having lived through the pre-Iraq War period at the CIA, I now understand Tenet's choice of Helms as a role model.?The upshot of these books is that the relationships among the president, Congress and the CIA will never be comfortable. Espionage and covert action are essential tools of foreign policy and national defense, but they do not lend themselves to near-perfect oversight. Barrett and Turner both suggest this tripartite relationship can be handled with good will, common sense, sound leadership and integrity on all sides. A major lesson from these books -- one that was clear in my CIA career -- is that the key to managing the CIA is an intelligence chief who is courageous, honest and ready to deliver bad news to the president clearly, firmly and often.”
Schuer then recommends:
” These books should go to Porter J. Goss and Bob Graham (who led the joint House-Senate inquiry into intelligence failures around 9/11), Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton (who chaired the 9/11 Commission) and Charles S. Robb and Laurence H. Silberman (who headed the presidential inquiry into intelligence on WMD). Perhaps they would be embarrassed enough by them to redo their unsatisfactory labors, which, by failing to lop off so many eminently deserving heads, left the moral cowards in charge. Short of that, we must find a CIA skipper with Walter Bedell Smith's integrity, frankness and courage -- and try resolutely to avoid perpetuating the disastrous combination of Woolsey and Tenet.”
I agree. Maybe we just need a CIA director who can live by the CIA Motto: “You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free” – even though the motto is quoted out of context.
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