CIA well along in rebuilding after cuts of '90s

0 Comments | Deseret News (Salt Lake City), May 17, 2006 | by Mark Mazzetti New York Times News Service

WASHINGTON -- For all its dysfunction and recent failures, the CIA that Gen. Michael V. Hayden stands to inherit is far along a path toward rebuilding its network of foreign stations and replenishing ranks that were eviscerated during the years after the Cold War.

The rocky 19-month tenure of Porter J. Goss was characterized by turf battles and the bitter departure of many seasoned operatives. Yet it was also a time when a flood of new recruits entered the agency and the CIA opened or reopened more than 20 stations and bases abroad.

By next year, CIA officials say, the agency expects to have tripled the number of trained case officers from the number in 2001. The hope is that a bulked-up spy network will allow the agency at least to begin making inroads in penetrating closed societies like North Korea and Iran.

Statistics showing the sharp increase in case officers and overseas stations, data that have not previously been disclosed, were provided in response to questions about the state of the agency's rebuilding effort.

The long-term rebuilding of the agency began under Goss's predecessor, George J. Tenet, who during the late 1990s persuaded Congress to begin reversing the budget and staff cuts that had set in after the breakup of the Soviet Union.

Current and former intelligence officials say it will still be several years before the agency can meet the goals of a presidential directive, announced in late 2004, to increase the number of case officers and intelligence analysts by an additional 50 percent.

But the rebuilding of the CIA's overseas spying operations is expected to aid the push by John D. Negroponte, the director of national intelligence, to refocus the agency's efforts on its core missions of combating terrorism and stealing secrets abroad. Hayden, currently Negroponte's principal deputy, is regarded as a champion of strengthening the agency's human intelligence. Hayden faces questioning on Thursday at a confirmation hearing before the Intelligence Committee.

As for Goss, he has said little publicly since he was forced to step down on May 5, after what President Bush called a time of transition, a turbulent period in which the CIA lost its status as the nation's premier spy agency. But his associates say Goss, a former case officer himself, made strengthening of spy networks a particular focus of his tenure.

Further, the agency is still enjoying a surge of applicants hoping to join its ranks, a wave that has subsided little since the period immediately after 9/11. In the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, the number of applicants was 121,000, compared with 136,000 in 2002 and 138,000 in 2003. This year, the agency's statistics show, it has already received 84,000 resumes, an average of 2,000 more a month than last year.