CIA Panel Rejects View That Reports Were Slanted
NATIONAL EMERGENCY SECURITY ACT (Senate - February 07, 1992)
Mr. MOYNIHAN addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New York.
Mr. MOYNIHAN. I ask unanimous consent that I might proceed for 5 minutes as in morning business.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, the Senator may proceed.
Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I have important and reassuring news for the Senate. I have read in the New York Times this morning that a secret report at the Central Intelligence Agency has cleared the agency of the charges that earlier secret reports were politically slanted.
The details of this secret report are reported in full by that formidable journalist, Elaine Sciolino, under the heading `C.I.A Panel Rejects View That Reports Were Slanted.'
The head of the CIA, Mr. Gates, was evidently not available to comment. The lead story in the New York Times reports that he is in the Middle East arranging the overthrow of the head of the Government of Iraq.
The report is evidently the work of a Mr. Edward W. Proctor who was Deputy Director of Intelligence, DDI, in the 1970's.
It says, and I quote from this secret report as printed in the Times:
Distortion was not perceived as pervasive and had much to do with poor people-management skills and misperceptions arising from the review, coordination and editing of an analyst's work.
We are glad to know that distortion was not pervasive and the psycho-babble about people management skills is reassuring in the sense that the CIA is entering the mainstream of the American bureaucracy and is no longer an organization on the periphery.
But, sir, may I say, as one who raised these issues along with others, that there was never any charge from us of distortion and political slanting. It was simply that an enormous event had been missed, which was the collapse of communism and of the breakup of the U.S.S.R. in the face of the evidence and an analytic argument that it was coming.
In the full issue of Foreign Affairs, Adm. Stansfield Turner, in the open, speaks of the `enormity of the failure' of the intelligence community. It was his community, his watch. This is an admiral. He said `I was there,' saying that the standard of living in the U.S.S.R. was about that of the United Kingdom.
In the current issue of Foreign Service Journal they speak of the `gargantuan failure of the Agency to understand the problems of Communist economies.'
No one is charging bad faith, and by speaking to the issue of bad faith they avoid the enormity of the failure itself. The economists speak to this. Dale Jorgenson of Harvard said that the failure to understand the coming collapse of the Soviet economy and of these managed economies generally, was comparable to the incapacity of economists to figure out the problems of the 1930's.
There is nothing wrong with being wrong. It is only wrong when you deny it, when you avoid it, when you divert attention from it.
I fear, sir, that the Agency is frittering away its authority with this kind of behavior, to have a secret report and give it to the press immediately--not the Presiding Officer, not to me, not to any Senator that I know of, although you can read about it in the Times.
I fear the secrecy system is out of control because it has no means to correct itself. You know, the secrecy system got us to the point where in 1987, 2 years before the Berlin Wall came down, the Central Intelligence Agency was reporting that per capita income in East Germany was higher than in West Germany. If you believed that, you will believe anything, and we did.
Well, it is not so much a problem that we made a mistake as it is that we are denying the mistake.
In this morning's Washington Post a fine editorial speaks very positively about the proposals by Senator Boren and Mr. McCurdy on the reorganization of the intelligence community.
I ask unanimous consent that Ms. Sciolino's article and the Washington Post editorial be printed in the Record at this point.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
CIA Panel Rejects View That Reports Were Slanted
Washington, February 6: A Central Intelligence Agency task force appointed in the aftermath of the grueling confirmation hearings of Robert M. Gates as the country's espionage chief rejects the assertion that the agency has systematically slanted intelligence over the years, C.I.A. officials said today.
The findings, included in a classified report recently submitted to Mr. Gates for his approval, largely blame poor management and the inexperience of some analysts for allowing the perception of purposely slanted intelligence to flourish, a view articulated by Mr. Gates during his confirmation hearing last November.
`Distortion was not perceived as pervasive and had much to do with poor people-management skills and misperceptions arising from the review, coordination and editing of an analyst's work,' said an agency official who paraphrased the panel's report. But the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, added that the report concluded that a few instances of `modest concern' warranted `remedial action.'
As an in-house body, the panel was not expected to criticize the agency harshly or to make drastic recommendations. And the report, which was never intended to be made public, has already been criticized by some former and current intelligence officials for not going far enough.
The panel was established by Mr. Gates as one of a dozen study groups after he was confirmed as Director of Central Intelligence. It was headed by Edward W. Proctor, who was Deputy Director of Intelligence in the 1970's and who now works for the agency on a contract basis.
The panel defined the slanting of intelligence, or `politicization,' narrowly, describing it as the alteration, delay or suppression of an assessment to avoid offending a policymaker. At the hearings, critics characterized the problem more broadly, to include the skewing of analysis to influence decision making or to promote the personal views of an analyst or manager. The critics said it even extended to the fostering of an intimidating atmosphere that led to self-censorship among analysts.
The report, which was based on interviews with more than 100 agency analysts and managers and written surveys submitted anonymously by 250 others, did not deny that analysts asserted that intelligence had been tailored. Indeed, the surveys were full of sharp complaints, particularly among less-experienced analysts, that managers had unfairly edited, delayed or rejected reports because they did not conform to what the manager thought they should say.
Many in the agency also complained that their work was unnecessarily edited or changed in the review process in which several analysts examine the reports before they are approved.
[Page: S1328]
MORE TRAINING SUGGESTED
Agency officials say that the surveys accurately reflect the views of the analytical side of the agency. More than 75 percent of those chosen at random to participate returned the surveys.
The report recommended on-the-job training for analysts and managers to better understand the importance of objective intelligence, a reduction in the layers of review, the inclusion of dissenting views in analytical papers, the encouragement of full debate of issues and the publication of internal procedures to deal with accusations of politicization.
The recommendations do not seem to go beyond those made by Mr. Gates at the hearings.
`If that's what the recommendations are, they all sound good, but they aren't as far-reaching as many observers, including myself, feel is necessary,' said Harold P. Ford, a former senior analyst who testified against Mr. Gates at the hearings and who still works part-time for the agency as a consultant.
Mr. Ford said that the tailoring of intelligence was never `pervasive' in the agency. But he added, `Where it did exist it was more than just a matter of misperceptions and poor management skills.' He continued, `It sounds as though they're treating the matter very gingerly.'
TRYING TO EXPLAIN TAILORING
One official who praised the report said that many of the complaints came from younger, less-experienced analysts who might have tailored their papers to please their superiors. Another official noted that analysts at the agency always tended to believe that their work is edited or suppressed because it is politically incorrect, while managers would argue that it may not be good enough or does not reflect the institutional view of the agency.
But other current and former intelligence officials said that the report missed the point.
`To conclude that politicization is not widespread is irrelevant,' said one intelligence official. `What's important is that it's happening at all, that people feel too intimidated to write what they believe or that their views get changed by senior managers who want to push the conclusions in one direction.'
Another official who had seen the report simply called it `cautious.'
Mr. Gates's confirmation as the nation's espionage chief was threatened by accusations by former C.I.A. officials who said that Mr. Gates slanted intelligence during his years as a senior C.I.A. official in the 1980's, either to fit his pessimistic views of the Kremlin or to please his superiors.
GATES ATTEMPT TO HEAL
But Mr. Gates convinced the majority of the Senate Intelligence Committee that he was not guilty of tailoring intelligence and vowed to remove even the `perception' that intelligence could be slanted or politicized and to be more sensitive to agency employees.
In his closing statement, he admitted that it was `discouraging' to see that old problems about management's role in the analytic process and worries about the tailoring of intelligence `have not diminished in intensity even in the years since I left the agency.'
Soon after he assumed the job as director, he moved to heal the wounds opened in the confirmation hearings. In his first message to senior managers, he assured them that he wanted to work with everyone in the agency and told them his door would be open to them. He also made phone calls to the analysts who still work for the agency and who had signed sworn affidavits critical of him, telling them that he would not punish them for their actions.
Another study group recommended the creation of an office to devise a plan for an electronic intelligence network that would transmit classified reports, maps, satellite photographs and graphic designs directly to the computer terminals of senior Administration officials. The agency has already completed a study estimating the cost of the network, which would send reports throughout the day six days a week.
The panel also said that issues like security control and the effect on personnel had to be examined before such a network could be created.
`Right Kind of Intelligence'
With everyone agreeing that the passing of the Cold War dictates a review, Congress has proposed a reorganization of the nation's intelligence agencies; the Bush administration's own plan is due soon. A somewhat similar non-legislated initiative was launched in the Carter years. It entailed, as does this one, a challenge to the existing disposition of turf. It succumbed to the weight that the Pentagon was able to wield at a time of prominent Soviet threat. The Defense Department itself may still be immune to the sort of full-scope review of mission and structure that now faces the intelligence community. But with the diffusion of the Soviet threat, it becomes possible and necessary to zero in on the intelligence agencies.
Sen. David Boren and Rep. Dave McCurdy, chairman of the intelligence committees, offer their ideas by way of inviting a dialogue with the executive branch on a matter in which President Bush, a former chief of intelligence with a strong interest in the machinery as well as the substance of policy, is an essential interlocutor. The chairmen do not mean to proceed adversarially, but they do mean to assert a broad reading of the oversight function. By tackling this project together, and with bipartisan support, they strengthen the congressional hand. It adds further to congressional leverage that the CIA is a much battle-worn agency and that its current director, Robert Gates, has incurred heavy obligations to stay on Capitol Hill's good side.
Not that the Boren-McCurdy proposals should be whooped through. They are complex and will require hard scrutiny. Some heavy turf wars are ensured by the fact that the proposals undertake to move around the expensive intelligence assets (satellites, electronics) of the collection agencies. Further controversy is added by the proposal to empower a new director of National Intelligence--a `czar'--to run separate bodies dealing with collection, analysis and clandestine operations; this last function would be reserved for a much-reduced CIA. Pooling the different departments' now-dispersed analysis capabilities is a keen issue: One bureaucrat's streamlining is another's stifling of healthy competitive analysis.
To insiders, the inputs--the flow of resources--may be the crux. To the rest of us, what must matter most are the outputs: the quality, timeliness and policy relevance of intelligence. But intelligence should not only produce `the right kind of intelligence,' as Sen. Boren says. The agencies must be open to the outside, and they must respect the law. The world is changing. So should they.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. [Mr. Rockefeller]. The Senator from New York is recognized.
Mr. MOYNIHAN. I thank the Chair.
(The remarks of Mr. Moynihan pertaining to the introduction of Senate Joint Resolution 254 are located in today's Record under `Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.')
Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, seeing no Senator seeking recognition, I respectfully suggest the absence of a quorum.
Mr. HELMS. Will the Senator yield?
Mr. MOYNIHAN. The distinguished Senator from North Carolina is on the floor and wishes to speak.
Mr. HELMS. I thank the Senator.
Mr. MOYNIHAN. I look forward to hearing him.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Carolina.
[Page: S1329]
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