The arrogance of the clerks

National Review, Nov 4, 1991 by Angelo Codevilla

CIA stuck to its line not by defeating opposing arguments but by maligning those who made them. The refugees had "axes to grind." Solzhenitsyn was at best a dreamer and at worst a fascist. As for Pipes's team, CIA ran a campaign to discredit it with charges of "leaking." The consummation of CINs work on the Soviet Union may be seen on August 1, 1991. Eighteen days before the Soviet Union died to practically universal cheers, George Bush went to Kiev to tell the Ukrainian people to be good Soviet citizens because the Soviet regime was reforming itself.

Never Wrong

ARE CIA analysts proud of their performance? The question is off the mark. They are proud of themselves for having been on the politically correct side of the issues. There is an old saying at CIA: "We may not always be right, but we're never wrong." This attitude has deep roots in the social composition of CIA analysts and in the way the analytical process has been organized.

Robin Winks's sociology of CIA recounts that when World War II came, "the coaches and the quarterbacks" of the nation's elite campuses went into espionage, while "the muscular athletes" went into special operations. "The weenies and the wimps," he writes, went into the Research and Analysis branch of the Office of Strategic Services. After the war, this overwhelmingly liberal group became the core of CIA analysts. The principal concern of this group was not so much providing expertise as gaining the bureaucratic prerogative to provide the basis for the U.S. Government's policies. A 1948 report by Allen Dulles, William Jackson, and Mathias Correa convinced President Truman to force all other government agencies to work under CIA to produce a single set of intelligence products on the most important issues. Thus protected from competition, this very peculiar group of people came to believe that, just as the Constitution is whatever the Supreme Court says it is, intelligence is whatever they say it is. During the height of their influence under the Carter Administration these analysts succeeded in calling themselves the National Foreign Assessment Center, as if no one else had a right to speak authoritatively on foreign matters. When outsiders dare to speak on the subject, the CIA Brahmins ridicule them. When an insider breaks ranks, they try to exorcise him.

The analysts' attacks on Robert Gates, which made no sense as intellectual arguments, make perfect sense as social claims to bureaucratic turf. Mr. Goodman says that Gates sent reports to the President that "in terms of their message were at variance with the views of the Directorate of Intelligence." Horror of horrors, Gates also made "a conscious attempt to provide uncoordinated information to the NSC." And again, "The analysts . . . were not consulted." Miss Glaudemans blames him for (gasp!) violating "an atmosphere and a culture." Gates did not "clearly distinguish what were his personal views and what were CIA or intelligence-community views." Her views, you see, were proper CIA views, while his were not. Harold Ford hit hardest: "Everyone's views were not listened to."