headed by Frank Church in the Senate and Otis Pike in the House.They pub-
lished evidence that the CIA had secretly planned to assassinate Fidel Castro
and other foreign leaders.The President had not taken plain responsibility for
these judgments. CIA officials had taken most of the blame, saying they had
done so in order to preserve the President's "plausible deniability."
ican law. Case officers in the CIA's Clandestine Service interpreted legislation,
such as the Hughes-Ryan Amendment requiring that the president approve and
report to Congress any covert action, as sending a message to them that covert
action often leads to trouble and can severely damage one's career. Controver-
sies surrounding Central American covert action programs in the mid-1980s
led to the indictment of several senior officers of the Clandestine Service. Dur-
ing the 1990s, tension sometimes arose, as it did in the effort against al Qaeda,
between policymakers who wanted the CIA to undertake more aggressive
covert action and wary CIA leaders who counseled prudence and making sure
that the legal basis and presidential authorization for their actions were unde-
niably clear.
overseas facilities were closed, the DCI and his managers responded to devel-
oping crises in the Balkans or in Africa by "surging," or taking officers from
across the service to use on the immediate problem. In many cases the surge
officers had little familiarity with the new issues. Inevitably, some parts of the
world and some collection targets were not fully covered, or not covered at all.
This strategy also placed great emphasis on close relations with foreign liaison
services, whose help was needed to gain information that the United States
itself did not have the capacity to collect.
to seven years of training, language study, and experience to bring a recruit up
to full performance.
another by the quantity and quality of their publications (in this case, classified
publications). Apart from their own peers, they looked for approval and guid-
ance to policymakers. During the 1990s and today, particular value is attached
to having a contribution included in one of the classified daily "newspapers"--
the Senior Executive Intelligence Brief--or, better still, selected for inclusion
in the President's Daily Brief.