Transcripts For CSPAN3 The Presidency Presidents Their CIA Directors 20240713

Program. Good evening everyone. Its a pleasure to welcome you for our program. If you could put away our cell phones, we would appreciate it. If you are wondering why there are bright lights in here, you are going to be on tv. Im kidding, the speaker is going to be on cspan. When we get to the q a, wait until we bring the mic to you. The speaker will repeat the question so you can hear it. Our speaker is teaching at columbia and working for David Rockefeller he joined the cia in 1980 nine and became a Political Leadership analyst on the middle east. He moved to the history staff in 1996 and was appointed chief historian of the cia in 2005. And his biography as director of Central Intelligence was recently declassified. His articles and book reviews and technical collections have appeared on studies in intelligence and intelligence in National Security and the oxford handbook of intelligent security. He has taught intelligence history at George Mason University and georgetown university. And has also written a biography of chief justice john marshall. Please join me in welcoming our speaker tonight, and enjoy the program. Good evening, i appreciate everybody turning out tonight. Its good to have a large audience for what i hope you will find to be an interesting presentation. I spent a good time studying our directors. I did a biography of john mccone, a director in the early 60s, jfk assassination. I got interested in looking at the different ways in which the agencys leaders shape the agency itself. In particular their relations with the president s. I should stay debt should say before i start im not going to be talking about the president and his relations with the agency currently. That will probably be very interesting. What i would like to concentrate on is the ways in which the president s interact with the director. President s, unlike choices, often which are political payoffs or people who have some lobby behind him and are hoisted by the president. The president s pick the type of director they want to accomplish certain aspects of their Foreign Policy given that time in World History and u. S. History. Domestic politics is a powerful driver behind what the cia can do. When the president can have it do. And the way in which the agency can effectively or ineffectively carry out its mission. The choice president s make about who will run the agency is very important index into how the president s are going to run Foreign Policy. We all know enough about our American History since world war ii to realize different president s have very different foreignpolicy agendas, different outlooks on the world, different ideologies, different value systems. Many had been occupied with domestic policies. In other cases foreignpolicy has been at the forefront of what the United States is doing in the world. Fighting the global war on terror. These are the times when president s pick particular types of directors to do certain things with the agency that you wont find other president s doing at other times in our history. Diversity is in the first word that will come to your mind when you look up there. I do notice we dont have any with beards yet. Yes they are all white men. One other point i want to leave with you is this is an extremely diverse bunch of leaders coming from a wide variety of backgrounds. Each of them has brought a particular skill set and body of experience and some cases inexperience they have applied to running the agency. Its a very Cardinal Point i want you to leave here with. We dont want to exaggerate the influence that directors have on foreignpolicy, this is the father for novels and tv series. One of the most important directors will tell you flat out that the director of Central Intelligence is one of the weakest political figures in washington, because he is totally dependent on the president for his influence. Thats kind of the theme of our discussion tonight. I thought i would have fun, because when i was waiting to get started i noticed a lot of you gazing up trying to figure out who these people are. I thought we would play directors jeopardy. I have not done this before. It may fall flat. Or i may spend the rest of the night doing that. Lets start with this. I am the longestserving director of Central Intelligence. And you can shout out the name. Allen dulles, correct. And there is right there. Conversely, im the shortest serving director. Pompeo was in for the better part of the year. So was george bush. Schlesinger, almost. He was in for about a year and a half. We have to go way back. The first one. He was a crony of harry truman. He made it very clear when he took the job that he only wanted to serve a few months. He was not experienced. Truman wanted a figurehead who could get the Intelligence Group up and running. I am the only convicted felon richard hounds. Regrettably. He was caught in a pretty nasty gotcha episode. He was testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during his hearings before he went out to iran and was asked by senator stewart and who knew the answer but for whatever was grandstanding at the time, did we ever try to covertly overthrow the government of chile . This is an open hearing. Richard helms should have said i cant answer in public. We will have to go in to closed session. For reasons he has never explained i helped him with his memoir and in writing, he says no. Three times to direct questions for this to direct questions. This is a flat out lie because we were doing quite a bit in chile in a twoyear suspended sentence and a small fine of a few thousand dollars which a group of friends paid on his behalf when they had a celebration at the Congressional Country Club after his sentencing. Ok. I had my security clearance pulled. And . One more. Where is he . I cant see him too well. Deutch, am i getting there . John deutch. He had laptop trouble. Wound up losing his clearance because of some, the fact he had classified material on his laptop and his son was using the laptop to connect with internet sites that i wont discuss in any detail for this audience. Lets see. I am the only career analyst to become director. Robert gates. Brennan was an analyst for most of his life but had a hitch as chief of station, then he left the agency to become president obamas Homeland Security and terrorism advisor, and he came back to run the agency. Lets see. Here is an easy one. Im the only director to later become president. Bush, ok good. That was the 100 question. [laughter] i was Dwight Eisenhowers chief of staff during world war ii. Walter smith. I could also ask a tougher question, i resigned as director to take a better job, that was also smith. The better job interestingly was undersecretary of state which back in 1962 and 1963 was a much more prestigious position than the director of Central Intelligence. I later became chief of staff of the air force. Nope. Check out the military uniforms. [laughter] we only have two air forcers up there. And i will also add i am the only dci who became the namesake for an important military post. Military installation. Vandenberg air force base. That is Hoyt Vandenburg who took the job as director, as a stepping stone to becoming chief of staff of the air force. It was a different world in the late 1940s which is why i say sometimes in history the director of Central Intelligence was not a very prestigious position. Here is one with four answers so you will at least get one right. I served in the o. S. S. We heard dulles, that is correct. Who else . Helms. Not bush. Did i hear colby . Yes. And bill casey. So we have four. This is an important point, four fomer directors who used to serve in one of cias predecessor organizations. They bring to their experiences as directors that on the ground, in the war intelligence experience and it was very influential for many of them. Lets see. I am the only former fbi director to be bill webster. I am the only judge to be webster. They are piling on. I was the classmate of the president who appointed me. Turner and president carter. Good. Lets say. See. I used to be white house chief of staff. I used to be a congressman from california. Leon panetta. Good. I used to be one of the Senior Executives at the bechdel corporation. Thats a final jeopardy question. John mccone. He was a classmate of Stephen Bechtold at cal berkeley where they both were studying engineering. I was the only person to be director of cia and director of the nsa. Michael hayden. Ok. I used to be an officer in our directorate of operations before i changed careers and served in another capacity for a number of years and then became director. Well yes, you could say that because any of the oss grads. This is directorate of Operations Meeting cia position. He was a case officer for about 10 years. Gates was an analyst. Porter goss. He worked in the d. O. , had to leave for medical reasons and became a local politician in florida and then a congressional preservative, ran the House Oversight committee for a while, then became our director. I am the only person up here who is both director of Central Intelligence and director of cia. Goss again. He was running the agency when the dni position was set up, the intelligence, terrorism intelligence reform and prevention act passed in 2004, effective 2005. It abolished the position of dci and for the first time in history created statutory the director of Central Intelligence agency. We will talk about the effect that had in the prominence of the dci and the different authorities that they had. I think that is a pretty good warmup. You all did really well, super job. Let me go on and talk about the main points of tonights presentation. When the cia was set up, a couple of different models came to mind for the leaders. You had allen dulles, who at the time had his oss experience. He thought based in part on that and his dealings with the British Service during world war ii, that the cia should pretty much always be run by a careerist, somebody who grew up in the agency and was whetted to, devoted to that particular wedded to, devoted to, that particular line of work. We have only had a few directors who were careerists, people who started at the agency and worked up to be director. Bill colby, Richard Helms, gina haspel and bob gates, but not directly because he did do some tours at the nsc during the reagan administration. If you are talking directed straight from desk to the seventh floor, we have only had those three. That was one model. What has come about is the one Dwight Eisenhower specifies here, which is, and he is using the word peculiar in a variety of meanings, not just strange and not just oddball but peculiar in the sense of requiring special capabilities. What i think he was getting here is that, and we will see this as our talk goes on, but you have to be able to pick a certain type of person to run the agency at a particular time to fulfill you, the president s, Foreign Policy agenda. That became the pattern. These individuals were neither elitists from a small cadre of careerists like the british model but drawn from all walks of life. It became an important element of their strength and utility that they had this variety of backgrounds. Taking a quick statistical snapshot of them, we see that they are, region of birth, for what it matters, is a couple parts of the country. We now have our First Southern born director, gina haspel, previously nobody from that part of the world. Who is the only overseas born one . Any idea . John deutsche, born in belgium. As far as education goes, this is a pretty smart lot. A lot of advanced degrees, four doctorates, people like schlesinger and gates. Only one outllier, he only went to high school. Ironically this was one of our most influential directors ever. You go back and look at his record we are still living with many of his accomplishments. This is walter smith. The reason he is so influential is he established the directorate structure of the agency where we had analysts, operations officers, support officers in separate directorates and then a decade or so later the science and Technology Directorate is created and that was the structure from 1963 on until the modernization that occurred under director brennan when directorates still exists, the action in the agency occurs in a group of 12 Mission Centers that fuse together major components of the different directorates as a way of encouraging collaboration, getting rid of stovepipes, that sort of thing. This is where the diversity really comes into play. If you look at those variety of backgrounds and of course some people did more than one thing in their careers, we have 25 directors either dci or dcias, so this is a variety of backgrounds. This is a strength for them because they were able to bring, based on what the president s wanted at times, a specific kind of expertise and background to bear on foreignpolicy agenda. All three branches of government are represented as our three of the five military services. As are three of the five military services. Perhaps one of the keys that distinguishes many of these directors, in fact almost all of them, 24 out of 25, from other cabinet appointees, many of whom when you think about it dont have much experience in the Cabinet Department area of responsibility they are running farmers, they werent farmers or involved in energy, didnt have anything to do with military directly, on and on it goes. With the exception probably of William Raborn who served for one year 196566, and johnson picked him because he had no other alternatives and was looking for someone he was remotely familiar with, but his main point was he was trying to give Richard Helms, who he did want, a year of highlevel grooming. Director of operations helms is promoted to deputy director, and he is in the more prominent position getting more washington experience and his ability, then rayborn checks out almost by design and helms is elevated to the director in 1966. What i mean by direct experience is that an individual was either a practitioner of intelligence, analysts, case officer, or they ran an Intelligence Organization like they were the head of air force intelligence, in the case of vandenberg, or they were a senior officer in a military Intelligence Service like general hayden, air force attache for a while. You are either a protection are or run Intelligence Organization. Indirect experience means a person who was a consumer or user of intelligence in a Foreign Policy or National Security position, not practitioner but someone who had all the clearances needed, use intelligence to inform decisionmaking and 10 of them had that background. Admiral raborn was the only individual who had no background at all in intelligence. Some would argue leon panetta didnt because other than engaging with it when he was in congress and chief of staff at the white house, no direct or even indirect contact in any depth. That is an arguable proposition. It is a definite job for the middle agers. Who do you think was the youngest dci ever . Bush . No. James schlesinger. He was 41. Who do you think is the oldest . Casey. Casey was in his 70s when he was appointed. The tendency of the spread is toward that mid50s age range. It is not a job with a lot of security though. We do have again a bit of a scatterplot. We have dulles serving over eight years, one of them over six. But almost like figure skating scores, souers with five months, bush 11 months and so forth. Three years is about as long as they last. It is kind of moving in the downward direction lately, but for the most part, and you will see why president s change or dont change directors when they are elected or if reelected they choose to maintain a director instead of picking a new one instead of the cabinet shuffle. That is an interesting factor is the surprising durability of directors through transitions or election times. When you are talking about the director being placed in the washington political environment, a couple of things need to be kept in mind. One is that a lot of intelligence people dont know much about intelligence. They come to it as overseers or managers of the agency, being the chief executive, overseers in congress with a lot of misapprehensions about what intelligence is, what it can do, capable of, how long it takes to set up intelligence networks, develop covert action programs, why analysis is a doggedly difficult proposition. They have a simplistic idea of what intelligence is, go steal secrets and tell me what they mean. That is the sort of simple stick view of what intelligence is. It is misrepresented in the popular culture. We all read trashy spy novels and seen horrible spy movies, nonfiction sometimes isnt much better. Journalism can be hit or miss when it comes to covering intelligence. Journalists in the National Security area can be good or sometimes sensationalist headline chasers. When you put it into the washington environment you have a tough situation for a director. He is under the spotlight all the time. The cia is the most open secret organization in the world. It is held accountable by more vectors of accountability, organs than any other service in the world. When you add to that all of these misrepresentations and misconceptions, a director of Central Intelligence is in a difficult situation, not being able to explain to the public or the overseers or executive branch why they are wrong. Secrets have to be kept and cant always be brought out into the public to explain. Even in camera and closed environments our leaders, political masters often just dont understand what it is like to be an intelligence professional. Helmspoint goes back to something i mentioned earlier that contrary to the conspiracist literature and the cia as the puppet master of the world and all of this nonsense, the director when you think about it is a politically weak individual. One way to represent this is to go back to something a number of us learned in Political Science courses in college. Remember hearing about the Iron Triangle . Some textbooks had a diagram of it. What it means is in washington politics, a cabinet official, secretary, has a Cabinet Department, has a usually sympathetic Congressional Committee and some kind of lobby or trade association that is advocating for the business of that cabinet. They all kind of work in a mutually reinforcing fashion. That is the Iron Triangle. When you think about the cia, it doesnt have that. For one thing it is not a Cabinet Office. It is an executive Branch Office that reports to the National Security council and through that to the president. It doesnt have an executive department that is nearly as powerful in policy terms as a Cabinet Department. Secondly it does not have a lobby group. We have our retirees associations. The association of foreign Intelligence Officers. Other kinds of Public Events and published the and a letter to the editor now and then, it is not what you would call a strong activist organization, nothing like the ama, chamber of commerce, planned parenthood, you just name it in washington. They are powerful lobby groups and have targets in the executive branch. Our congressional overseers are often hostile to us. They are not sympathetic most of the time. Consequently we get into political trouble, when scandals ensue, when investigations are run and people want to make headlines by beating up on intelligence and Foreign Policy, cia is out on its own unless the president backs it. Sometimes we can enlist sympathetic members of congress. Richard helms was good at doing this. More often than not we have to hope that the inhabitant of the white house is supportive and will go to bat for us in these controversies. That has always been the case as you are undoubtedly aware. This is a little bit of work i have done at cia. You can read about it if you want more details in an article i wrote in studies in intelligence if you go to cia. Gov and google my name. It will pop up. When i was doing when i worked on my mccone book was put him in the context of other directors. Why john f. Kennedy picked him to not somebody else because he did have alternatives, and especially after the bay of pigs he had a number of options to exercise three why did he pick that individual . I expanded my analysis to look at a variety of important and i think objective facts or data points if you want. This is very important. What did the president want that director to do . When you think of our history going all the way back from souers through pompeo and you associate those directors with the president they serve, you will make the connection. Not every director is supposed to do the same thing with cia. The president doesnt want to use cia for those purposes. If it is not fighting the cold war are going after the communists, it might be something entirely different like staying out of trouble, getting out of the headlines, reforming yourself, whatever. Directors get picked by certain president s at certain times to do certain things. These can be readily identified. Then you look at the end of the career. Did they accomplish what the directors or the president s wanted them to . Interestingly how did they go about it . Were they effective managers . Did they have good people skills . Was the political antenna sensitive to shifts and changes . Did they try to find ways to work especially if they were brought in from the outside . And then patterns, can we discern that certain types of directors get picked at certain times based not only on what the president wants them to do but with the prior directors had done or failed to accomplish or gotten the agency in trouble with . The answer is yes. We will see that in a little bit. Here is what i have done with the various directors. Youll see the connection im trying to emphasize tonight. You have and ive color coded these for reasons a visual effect later. When i do some kind of graphics and and ration for. You and let me i will spell this out and more detail for you, but you can see them up their two types of administrators, intelligence operator, insider whos opposed to reform the agency, and an outsider is supposed to be there and a restore. We will define all of these in terms. The administrator comes in two types, low energy and needy medium energy. What the president at the time pick them to do was not a whole lot. Either he didnt want much done, or he thought if the agency did too much it was going to cause trouble so wants us to stay out of trouble, he just wants a steady as you go leadership. Oftentimes, after scandals the president want to back off, from activists leadership. And simply say keep the lights on, keep the Engine Running but dont double park. And certainly dont speed. On a low energy end of the spectrum, you head sydney sours, ross go and the nfl will william rayburn. These were definitely chair warmer directors. You dont know why truman picked sours, he wanted a friend to run the agency with them keep him out of trouble. It was brought in after van damme burke. To sort of slow things down a bit and synchronize the new cia. Helen catt are, i couldve asked this question to during our jeopardy round, he was the only person to run the cia and the predecessor organization. Was in 1947 when cia group still exist, and then he stays on and becomes the first d. C. I. He wasnt much of a manager, but then at that point truman didnt want a lot of activists leadership at the cia, because most Foreign Policy back then, was run by the secretary of state. And after 1947, the secretary of defense. Whose office was created under the National Security act. Then rayburn, as i said was picked by johnson, to fuel the position to fill it actually, until helms was ready. At other times president s have said, they wanted a little more energetic type of leadership. Not one that is going to take the agency off on big Foreign Policy crusades, but to manage it during times that are a little bit in transition. When you think about jim woozy, whos clintons first director he is a president that doesnt really know what he wants to do at the cia because he is fundamentally he does not have a Foreign Policy agenda. Youve heard the old story about the airplane crashing on the white house lawn, and people joked that that was jim walsh trying to get an appointment to see the president. He will be the first one to tell you, that he was pretty much out of the Foreign Policy the National Security environment was run by the security advisers secretary of state were promises prominent woolsey figures and such. Tennant becomes the third director for clinton, hes a different type of director as we will see. And it is a he is an interesting individual he falls into categories, from 1997 to 2001, george tenet is not much a presence at cia. He was popular, people love to see him in the cafeteria, backslapping during on his cigar into that. But he wasnt the type of person with with clout at the agency. The agency was moving along, in this post Second World War period, looking for new targets, and avenues of interest. The white house is providing very little guidance. And then, comes in, appointed by obama, and he become secretary of defense, he is only there for a year, we wont get into reasons why he left, but in case you are wondering yes he will have an official portrait at the cia. We are all inclusive when it comes to our directors, and they say we even have a portrait of a convicted felon, and someone who lost their security clearance for unclassified use of government property. But were preeasy agency when it comes to our portraiture at least. But he did not accomplish a whole lot at the agency. One could almost put him, as a in a custodian category, he was such an energetic person, you cannot imagine. Aside from a couple of minor tinkerings, he really did not accomplish a whole lot as far as the agency went. But it seems at the time, thats what president obama wanted. Again obama, was largely a domestic policy president during his first her. The intelligence operator, is an individual who, as the title for jests, uses experience particularly in clandestine activity, to move the agency, aggressively ahead, to advance the Foreign Policy agenda. These are people who are experienced, within intelligence either current or former Intelligence Officer, and during their tenure, the agency goes off and does a vast amount of espionage, covert action, counter intelligence, all given the aggressive support of the president s active policy agenda. Because these directors are so closely tied to the president s Foreign Policy agenda, they often have close ties to the president himself. Not that they are best friends forever, but they do have entree, the president does listen to them, sometimes they are even elevated to cabinet rank. Like bill casey. They get drawn into policy, now for some directors, and certainly a lot of observers at the cia this is not a good thing. Because this can lead to the politicization of intelligence, but in the real world, intelligence is always deeply staked in politics its entirely different than politicization which is the corruption of the analytic product to support president s Foreign Policy agendas. In other words, cia will tell you what to write so you can say you agree with me and im advocating certain Foreign Policy. That is politicization and that is not what im talking about here. Im talking about the fact that certain president s want intelligence at the table to do more than inform. If you work for the president and he says what do you think i should do . Youre not just going to say im sorry thats not my job, pack your briefcase and go back to langley. That will be probably your last time in the oval office. Instead you wind up becoming a defective policy adviser. Sitting there with the secretary of state, defenses, National Security adviser, whoever else, working on those decisions. A combination of long tenure involvement with policy often leads to mistakes, scandals and screw ups. Some of these are not the agencies fault and some of them are. Policy can be good or bad and the intelligence used to supported it can only be as good or bad as the policy is. Covert action is a classic example of this. If you have a fumbling, inept, non strategic Foreign Policy and you ask covert action at the last minute to bail it out it will fail. But in washington who do you think takes the blame for that . The finger is always pointed at langley, never the white house or the pentagon or the state department. Thats usually why these long serving directors go down in flames in a manner of speaking. Its because they get in trouble. In part because they are put in trouble and in part because the agency has overreached or been overstretched. Its a variety of reasons for those disasters that have huge political implications for the agencies standing. You think about allen dulles, picked by eisenhower. Eisenhower is on a containment crusade and in some cases is trying to roll back to push communism back to whence it came. Naturally, in a telegenic professional with oas as experience like dulles was a perfect fit. Thats why he stuck around as long as he did. Lyndon johnson picks Richard Helms i believe because he wanted a skilled operator and an individual with a very good political sense to run the agency as the vietnam war was heating up. A good fit there. Ronald reagan, pledged to win the cold war and he goes back and picks his Campaign Manager bill casey to lead the agency on a worldwide crusade to finally crush communism for good. Again a Perfect Match and it is hard to think of another president other than someone like eisenhower perhaps, picking Something Like casey. And then george tennant, after 9 11. He in effect becomes a head of a massive Counterterrorism Organization that president bush has mobilized to lead the fight against our canada and the taliban. Tenet almost overnight transforms from a technocrat to a high powered intelligence operator with major influence in policy. You can see the connection there between the president s agenda and the transformation that he made of george tenant. So all of the president s who picked these individuals really had no qualms at all about using the agency aggressively. Very optimistic opportunistic that dovetails with the president s agendas. At other times and in particular after the agency has gotten into trouble, the president decides that we have to pull way back and cool things off. Probably clean up the mess. Reorganize, hire some different people, fire some people, change the way business is done. Reconnect with congress. With the present and that. Time the time. In these cases, the president can choose to go inside or go outside. In a few cases, the president s have deemed the timing right to take the agency into a reform mode but to do it low key, quietly, do not ruffle feathers. Keep the waters still. The best way to do this is to pick an Agency Insider to lead those changes. Individuals have experience with the agency. Know the bureaucracy, the culture, the personalities and to get the agency out of trouble and to stabilize it in this time of uncertainty. They go about making their personnel changes, there were organizational changes and mission changes in a the leverett, loki deliberate, low key fashion. And Richard Nixon picking bill colby after a brief tenure by james lessened or that was quite tumultuous for the agency and somewhat counterproductive. Nixon says during this time when you have the watergate scandal. You have dissent growing in the United States or very widespread against the vietnam war. You have a lot of distrust of government and trusted insider like colby is appointed to run the agency during this time of uncertainty. Robert gates becomes george bushs director of cia in 1991 after the webster here. Which was webster period which was not much. Webster had fallen out of favor over intelligence in the first gulf war. Bush thought now that the cold war seemed to be ending, that we needed new leadership, but one of loki trusted inside low key tested inside society. He also makes an interesting shift from picking somebody with operates in of experience. That is bob gates. Then you have president obama picking john brennan in 2013 after excuse me . Sorry. In 2013, to run the agency while he is trying to navigate difficult Foreign Policy issues and bringing to the agency the knowledge from the white house sector because brennan was the Homeland Security and counterterrorism adviser to the white house. Brennan comes in and after managing the place relatively lowkey sets off on the Modernization Initiative which breaks up the directorates. They exist but are largely administrative and ships all the action to 12 Mission Centers that integrate cias analytic operational science, technology and support functions into functional or geographic areas. At other times, president s have said i do not want an insider because i do not think they will accomplish all i want. I need a lot of change. I want somebody who is not a careerist, somebody who is not an insider who brings to bear the outsider type of experiences to run the agencies. This is the most diverse kind of group and it is the one with the biggest agenda. The ones to shake up their agency to make major changing and personnel and organization and and mission focus. More change occurs under these and laid this destiny this to say changes not always popular with people. They can be the most successful and unsuccessful directors. Some of the most popular and unpopular directors. Here they are. Like vandenberg, head of the Central Intelligence group in 4647 4647, brings on Foreign Policy. Under salas he elevates substantially by winning analytic capabilities. Smith established the directorate organization and turned the agency into a high pie art highpowered creator of the military. I could go on all night but charged with keeping the agency out of covert action troubles after the day of once he is inside he creates the director of finance and technology to move the agencies smartly into the cutting edge revolution of technical intelligence. Comes in a 1973 with the agenda to run the agency the way nixon wanted it. Nixon did not like the ia and he choses lessons are chose slessenger that he budget, created new offices moved organizations around and he was gone thankfully. Stansfield turner who is carters director comes in and tries to run the agency like a battleship. One of the big mistakes that outsiders have made is to come in and bring a group of friends from the previous life, put them in senior staff positions and tell the careerists what to do the careerists bridal and walk at that blockbalk at that with rumors and such. It got bad under turner who never seemed to wake up to the fact that he was a part of the problem. A any agency should take its orders from its boss but the bosses have to give the right orders and give them in the right way. For turner this was the wrong way to do things. He became one of the most unpopular leaders. He fired it hundred people or encouraged them to lead leave. And really became head of the agency during a very awkward time. John doyle lee deutche, picked by clinton won it to be secretary of defense but took the dci position as a consolation prize. He tried to run it as an adjunct of the Defense Department. He brings in people he knew from previous jobs. Nora slacken became his hence woman, who alienated a lot of the Senior Leadership. Duetche seemed aloof because he was not interested in being there. The agency lost important capabilities like imagery analysis. We do not do that anymore because he funded out of the pentagon. Farmed it out to the pentagon. Goss was another one who brought in people from the hill and got pushed back. Senior leaders resigned in protest because of the way he was running things. He did not have a direct mission particularly. George bush appointed him because he was head of the Oversight Committee and thought it would be a politically good move but it was politically disastrous for inside the agency and he left after 1. 5 years. Michael hayden in contrast was very popular because he knew exactly what not to do. He got out of the car the first day on the job alone and walked up to the seventh floor and said, how can i get your help to do what i am assigned to do . Which was to help the agency navigate the increasingly controversial counterterrorism scandals they were falling into and very tough relations with congress. Hayden had been adept at the National Security agency, a good professional. I think of him as not so much a military Intelligence Officer but an intelligence professional in the military. That was the perspective he brought to the job. That might sign sound academic but if you knew him and saw the way he ran the agency, you could see my distinction. And the last group, the restorer. As the name suggests, these individuals are none of the above. They are not there to sit there. They are not there to win the cold war. They are not there to clean up the mess except in the respect that they are there, as i say to reconnect with the wider world. Get the agency back on track with congress, the public, our Political Leadership. When these people take office, the agency is down in the dumps so they come in and raise morale. They are good at Public Relations arbitrating themselves as having a particular type of image, rectitude, political experience, moderation and all of that. Not charged with reorganizing or reforming. We have four of them here. George bush, bill webster and mike pompeo. I will talk about mike pompeo in a second in the way he was a restorer. The first three are here to stabilize the ship in periods of controversy. When you think about bush becoming head of agency after the start of the scandals of the mid1970s in the congressional investigations winding down, he is there to make the agency seem like it is not the ogre it was being portrayed to be in the media and in some sectors of congress. Initially, as a politician, Agency Professionals did not like this appointment because we did not want the agency turned into another Cabinet Office with a political hack or donor running it. Bush was able to relay those concerns quickly because he was a nice guy. Everybody could get along with him. He was honest about his agenda. By the end of his months, he had accomplished what president webster gets appointed right after the iran contra scandal. You can see why having a former judge and a senior Law Enforcement official after all of those illegalities are perpetrated was kind of an ideal appointment timing. He brings in this image of rectitude and judge webster and all of that. The mr. Clean of the agency. Panetta comes in under president obama as the agency is still under fire for the rgi program. Congress is after us. Weve had a whole variety of hot High Temperature issues. Panetta comes in of course as a long congressional. He knew everybody who was firing the guns at us and was able to kind of get them to steer the barrels in another direction. He had a lot of Political Savvy and executive experience from being chief of staff. A good and timely appointment for restoring the agency to a better luster. And lastly mike pompeo. Here is where hes kind of like a unique restore. Hes not trying to restore the agencys reputation with the public but with the white house. Its kind of going in the other direction. When he resigned and i could finally talk about him in this analysis i was kind of thinking where would he fit . I went back and was looking at some of the things he did at the agency and for Foreign Policy in such. Yes some people said he was kind of an operator because he was very policy oriented and all of that. I did not see that fitting terribly well. He did not do a lot of reforming and reorganizing and such but then i got to thinking, what about restoring in a different context . Not with public and congress but with the white house. That is where the restoration occurred because pompeo was able to maintain that bridge between cia and the president but i do not think another director would have been able to do. Haspel as been able to continue that to a great degree but im not going to talk about her in any great degree. I think pompeo fits their the best. Cycles of leadership, as we look at all of these different leaders. Ive color coded them and given them a little acronyms here. For a purpose. I want to emphasize that once you put some order into this scattered plot, you will find that some interesting patterns arise. Notice that it for example that every time you have an intelligence operator running the agency, and as i mentioned earlier they always leave in some kind of position of controversy, they are always replaced by a reformer or restore or in one case by the administrator custodian. In other words, definitely not an insider. After an operator who art by definition insiders marks up the place, you do not want another insider necessarily to come in and clean it up. Notice so often right after the intelligence operators, you have the outsiders coming in to sort of sweep the place clean. Youll also notice that weve never had to operators in a row. And oftentimes, after periods of drift, you have a more activists type of leader being appointed. Look at all the times that after the custodians, you have an energetic director coming in. Either an outsider reformer or an intelligence operator. I dont want to make too much about it but i think it is an indication again of the very situational appointments that president s make. They look at the agency, in the context in which it exists, they think about what they wanted to do and they pick a type of director to carry out that specific mission. More one important index of the amount of change that directors make at the agency, on president ial behest, its how many people they get rid of. The hire and fire criteria. Interesting really, the most senior level change occurs with restores. I think they look at the agency as a bit tainted and they dont want to have a lot of holdovers. They need new leadership to give the impression that everything is fresh and clean and sanitized for your protection. In other words, its kind of like the Good Housekeeping seal of approval by getting rid of people in the senior ranks. Of course, the two manager reformer types also clean house a lot but not as much as the restores. I think some of that is their recognition that especially on the outsiders part but also the insiders, they can only do so much with getting rid of people before they destabilized the place and create a lot of internal backlash. So they do a little bit less very smartly. Then of course, the administrators do the least personnel changes because they are not supposed to. Interestingly, the intelligence operators also do very little change. I analogize this to a head of a military whos about to go to war. The last thing you do when you are about to go to war is change your Senior Leadership. It just creates all kinds of instability and uncertainty among the ranks. New relationships have to be built. Trust has to be established. You cant do that as you are going to war. The intelligence operators keep the Senior Leadership in place as they march the agency off on its global campaign. When we are talking about variables to success, we have a variety of things we want to keep in mind. How can these directors most opportunity succeed at the mission the president has given them . First they have to have a keen understanding of the legal authorities under which they operate. If you do not grasp the limitations of your power, you have to wind up learning too much on the job. Secondly of course, the relationship with the president is. Is it close . Is it estranged . What exactly is it . What is the president s attitude himself toward intelligence and cia . This will be a crucial factor as we will see. Whether president s have experience with Foreign Policy, know about intelligence or are hostile to it or whatever. More importantly how they run their National Security apparatuses . Whos really in charge of intelligence . Is it the person at a langley . Or is it purse somebody downtown . Another important variable for the d. C. Is the bureaucratic skills. This is now more important under the director of the National Intelligence who is notionally superior to the director of cia. Would it be so from the dnis perspective . That is still very much a work in progress but we will talk a little bit about how the d. C. Ice or the directors of Central Intelligence have tried to manage that issue with the president as a factor. Lastly, the very important oversight element. Ive already alluded to this earlier. The cia being in effect a wide open organization. When it gets in trouble through the oversight process, does the president support it and how does the d. C. High or the d. C. I ate try to manage that difficult balance between conciliating congress and relying on the president for back stopping . Lets start with the legal authorities. Back in 1947, the National Security act is passed. In addition to creating the air force as a separate branch of military and the office of secretary of defense. Not the defensive department, that came in 1949. As well as establishing the National Security council, the National Security act also created the cia. And in that language, you find an interesting dynamic. If you want to interpret a law i would suggest that you look at the verbs. The action words. Those are the words that bestow authority and power potentially. If they are strong, precise, empowering words, then you know that youre going to be able to do something. But they if they are kind of vague weasel words that dont mean much that you cannot get your arms around, then you know youre probably going to be in some sort of trouble somewhere along the line. This is exactly what you have with National Security act. When the agency is given authority to perform its core missions, which are to collect secrets and protect secrets. That is espionage and counter intelligence, it is pretty clear in the National Security act that we have the power. Perform and protect. Doesnt sound like its on steroids or anything, its illegal lease. In legal terms it means something and it did mean something inaction. When you move away to the analysis area, it gets a little vague or. Because we have competitors in the analytic area, whereas we are not competing with the military espionage or covert action, a little bit of intelligence action. That is our core mission. We have competitors in the military and state department and you would think if that is supposed to be one of cias primary missions, the language giving us that authority would be more equally powerful to the others. Instead we correlate and disseminate. What does correlate mean . What does evaluate mean . You Better Compare what other people are saying so you do not get into trouble when your story does not match what the state department of the pentagon is saying about the same issue. Lastly, and this is crucial in relation to the president s dealings with cia, does the director of Central Intelligence direct something called Central Intelligences that is intelligence . That is a rhetorical question. The answer is no. The dci never had direct authority, direct management executive authority under any organization in u. S. Intelligence except cia. Historically, 85 plus percent of the intelligence resources of the u. S. Government have been run by the military. And cia, the dci, had no authority over any of that. He could not say to the pentagon, move this money and these people over here. All he could do is suggest it might be a nice idea and hope that his argument prevailed in the National Security council deliberations. Usually it did not. The dci is not the dci. The only way he was going to prevail in interdepartmental disputes of which there were many throughout history is with president ial backing. More often than not, the president decided with the Defense Department when it came to those conflicts over resources and authority and in some cases, analytic issues. I can think of during the richard pounds directorship, principal issues in which cia flat out said something entirely different than the pentagon. The president disagreed, sided with the pentagon and ultimately was proven wrong on both counts. But it goes to show you that when the pentagon musters its resources and political infighting in washington, it is far more formidable than the director of Central Intelligence. Now in contrast to that situation, you have under the intelligence reform and terrorism protection act, prevention act of 2004, the agency having two things happen to it. It is no longer first among equals necessarily. It is no longer central but it it has much more power in its realm of activity, because it is now the only organization, unless the president makes specific exceptions, that is going to engage in espionage and particularly covert action. The Defense Department has some Clandestine Service that does espionage but it is a pretty small enterprise. C. I. A. Is the place to go for espionage activity. And the president has clearly said in executive order that unless i say so, c. I. A. Is the only outfit that does covert action as legally defined. And we also have, under the book as its called, the other duties as assigned. The president can tell us to do pretty much whatever he wants us to do, as long as its legal. That would necessarily be to the detriment of the military. So in a sense, though c. I. A. Was demoted with the dni placed above it in the bureaucracy, its power within its Core Mission Areas really was amplified under there. So its a long march from the cig back in 1946, which pretty much didnt do a whole lot, except produce a daily product for the president , to c. I. A. Today which really is the most Dynamic Force in these areas of operation. Its budget has grown and its personnel, the table of employment has grown significantly as well. Now, relations with the president s have a variety of variables. Youll see a montage here that, if you lock at the body look at the body language and the expressions and such, kind of say a lot. And i have a few points to make on that. One is, going back to the National Security act of47, other than accomplishing the National Security council, that act doesnt tell the president to do anything about how to run it his National Security apparatus is his. He can set it up as he wishes and use it as he cares to. It can be very important. It can be highly structured. It can be free wheeling. It can be anything he wants. And the role of the National Security advisor is a key variable in this, because in certain cases, the National Security advisor becomes the barrier between c. I. A. And the president. Most significantly with nixon and kissinger and carter and turner. In both of those cases, the president s made very clear that they wanted their National Security advisors to be their National Intelligence advisors. And to control the flow of intelligence into the white house to be the principle analyst on the scene, to interpret the daily product that c. I. A. Produced for the president , and to be in effect his intelligence policy maker. Stan turner had the same role under jimmy carter. And he did a clever thing. He noticed that on the president s daily calendar was a provision for a morning meeting called the morning intelligence briefing. And, of course, stancefield turner, the d. C. I. , said im doing that. He said, well, well see about that. And what he did was change the entry on the daily calendar from morning intelligence briefing to morning security briefing. And, of course, the National Security advisor would do that. So stan turner is shouldered out of the morning meeting and it becomes Stansfield Turner who brings the brief to the president and talks with him about it. Going back to the nixon period, you have a clear indication of what nixons relationship with c. I. A. Is going to be when, at the end of the transition period, after we had provided the president s daily brief to president elect nixon during that november to january period, kissinger was the only one who read them. The copies that went to the president were all returned to us in sealed envelopes. And very soon, we found out that nixon was not receiving the president s daily brief as a standalone product but that Henry Kissinger was having the National Security staff cook it along with a lot of other information, into a morning briefing memo, that his staff would write. And he would use that when he met with the president in that morning briefing. The c. I. A. Is largely out of the picture during that period. As i say, this is what the president wants. Some National Security councils have been highly structured. For example, eisenhower ran it like a big military staff. We have become enneured with the idea that every day the president should get a briefing from the c. I. A. Or the dni. Thats the president s choice. Is it going to be our leadership . How is the whole process going to be structured . Under eisenhower, intelligence was part only of a weekly National Security council meeting. The president got the daily product but it was simply not part of the daily discourse at the white house. Its a very different kind of environment back then than in later years, when much of the agency is constantly spun up, trying to feed that daily product for the benefit of the president. In some of those cases, the directors of Central Intelligence might have gotten a little too close to the president s. In some cases, they were estranged. One way that we tried to make that connection was with this daily product. As you can see from the montage, its looked different over the years. As we have tried to fashion it in ways in response to generally negative feedback from the white house, about what the president s reading preferences are, what does he want it to look like . How much information should it have . Should it be a classified headline service, or should it be short, almost Like Research papers that analysts have written, or a combination of the two . How many people should get it . Heres a tradeoff, inevitably, between utility and sensitivity. If a lot of people are getting the daily product, you think, hey, thats good. Its in front of a lot of painful makers. Theyre connecting with what c. I. A. Is doing. But because so many people are getting it, youre not gonna put your most Sensitive Information in it, because you dont want it to leak. So some president s have said, youre right, i dont want it to leak. I want hardly anybody to see it. So youve had some president s who have had it distributed to as few as six people or 10 people. In other cases, as i mentioned, like in the Clinton White house, you had dozens of people receiving it. And the format has changed, as i said, in response to president ial feedback. Some president s, like lyndon johnson, initially wanted to get it at night. You always think, morning briefing, of course, so you can start your day with the best secrets the c. I. A. And other Community Officers have collected and the best analysis. Why would you read it before you go to bed . You probably would toss and turn all night. But thats how the president at the time, johnson, preferred to get it. And you might have seen this one photograph of him sitting there with lady bird and one of the grandkids in her lap. Hes reading the pdb at the time. Not a very good bedtime story for the youngins. One wonders if the infant was cleared for it. Anyway, it shifted, because we found out he started to want to get it in the morning, because he would listen to the morning newscasts on tv. Remember, in the oval office he had the three television which had the three major channels, so he would watch all his morning newscasts and get the pdb and all these newspapers. And that was the way he started his way. Its varied significantly over time. If youre interested in the daily product, the agency right now has undertaken a big effort to declassify as many of them as we can. We declassified all of trumans. Were working on eisenhowers. We declassified all of kennedys johnsons, nixons and fords. Were about to start on carters. These are all available out on the c. I. A. Public website, cia cia. Gov. I hope you find this a little surprising. We would generally think that when a president is elected or reelected, that he would, as he often does with the cabinet, kind of clean house, start afresh. You never have a holdover secretary of defense or secretary of state or secretary of whatever from a previous administration. Its just not done. So what does that does that pattern hold with the c. I. A. . Weve had 12 transitions since truman, starting in, of course,5253. In only six of them have president s picked new directors. And i colorcoded these blue and red for democrat and republican to see if some kind of partisan angle could be developed here. And im not seeing one. But lets take out one anomaly here, if you will. You might expect that a new president appoints a new director because hes dissatisfied with the old one or he has a new Foreign Policy agenda or he thinks that the incumbent is politically tied to the outgoing administration. So get rid of them. Lets eliminate the one case when that didnt happen, when a president offered a director a better job. Remember, i think i asked this question back during the jeopardy round. Who was that . Smith, bedell smith. He became undersecretary of state. So lets eliminate him as a not fitting the new president , new director model. So now were down to fewer than half of the transitions involved a new director. You will notice, however, that increasingly, thats happening. More recent president s have done that than older ones. So i think thats why we might think that thats always been the case, but its not so. The flip side of that is holdover directors. Six of 12 transitions. The new president keeps the incumbent director. Now, if you look at this, again, i dont see any party angle to it. Thats what we call negative intelligence, information that disproves a theory, and its valuable from that standpoint. But lets take out of here the two, thankfully, anomalous situations. When we had a president ial transition. What would they be . Because we have an assassination and a resignation. If we eliminate those two, we have one third of our transitions as holdovers, five of them were new directors. Again, no pattern here. So fitting in with my general point, president s deal with this transition issue in a very situational manner. They decide that the time and the place dictate to a certain extent whether i keep or i get rid of the incumbent director, because that fits my Foreign Policy and that fits my particular political needs, broadly speaking. Here, however, is a decided distinction between a certain set of president s and another set of president s. These are all the republican president s. And all of the different types of directors they have picked, again, using our nomenclature and color coding for the evening. Does something strike you about that selection . Its kind of hidden in plain sight, in a way. Every type of director is up there for republican president s. Contrast that with democratic president s. Very notably, what kind of director is almost entirely absent from democratic president schoices . The intelligence operator. In only one case, johnson and helms, did a democratic president select an intelligence operator. And overwhelmingly, the preference for democratic president s is the manager, reformer, outsider followed by the administrator, three of each type. And one restorer and one reformer insider thrown in. Almost as outliers. Now, this demands an explanation. And im going to give you one, but others are possible. And i invite commentary, either during the q a or after, but heres what i think is going on here. And i want to i hasten to add that what im about to say is not a statement of partisanship or a statement of evaluation. Im trying to be as objective and historicalbased as i can. What i think is going on here is experience with Foreign Policy and intelligence as the key variable. Now, let that settle for a moment. And here is where im going with this. If you think about all the democratic president s weve had since the c. I. A. Was formed, and well go back to the cig with truman, most democratic president s have less experience in Foreign Policy and less awareness of intelligence than the other kind of president. Now, again, thats not a partisan statement. Its not a i think if you go back and think about who those president s were, what their primary focuses were, that they were mostly domestically oriented and they came to their office with relatively not no but relatively less experience in the Foreign Policy, National Security area. And they nearly always appoint, as we just showed, administrators or manager, reformers, particularly the outsider types. Whereas and here we want to keep in mind that the most recent republican president s do not fit this generalization, but president s who were more relatively experienced in intelligence, relatively more experienced than the others were all republicans. Again, think back at our republican president s and the names will jump out at you. And they appoint all types. As we showed. Now, what i think is going on here, and, again, i dont mean this as a partisan or an evaluative statement. I think because of the times in which they take office, the democratic president s with less experience in Foreign Policy and less awareness of intelligence dont really know what to do with c. I. A. To them, its not a potential asset. Its a potential problem. Especially if they take office after an intelligence scandal. Or flareup. So theyre probably looking at c. I. A. As something that needs to be tamped down, reformed, cleaned up or heavily damaged or made not to do the bad things it was doing. The republicans, on the other hand, because they are more experienced with intelligence and Foreign Policy, kind of take it as it comes. And they look at the situation that theyre in and they figure, im comfortable with intelligence. I know what c. I. A. Can do or not do. Ill pick precisely the kind of person i need at this juncture to do what i want. And as a result, because of that Comfort Level being relatively high, theyll take any kind they care to. Because they trust that c. I. A. Will wind up doing what they want. And its not something that automatically is a potential problem or a real problem that needs managing and reform. Its something i can use at times. Notice all the republican president s, with that one exception, picked the operators to advance their Foreign Policy. The key point here i want to make about how a director manages the Community Goes back to what i said earlier, with the limits on the directors legal authorities. He doesnt have really any clout legally when it comes to the intelligence community. He must rely somewhat on backing but congressional backing but ultimately it has to be the president who backs him when he gets into these bureaucratic squabbles, over analysis and such with the pentagon primarily. Now, when the director of Central Intelligence was at least notionally head of the community, as indicated by the old emblem there with the other organizations encircling it, you could at least say that the d. C. I. Was on paper the head and that he had some ability in certain circumstances to use powers of persuasion with those other organizations, particularly through something called the u. S. Intelligence board, which was kind of like the c. E. O. s of the Intelligence Organizations with the d. C. I. As the chairman. John mccone used this very adeptly because of his business background as a chief executive at a global enterprise. This was just very familiar territory to him, to term this into the board of directors of intelligence incorporated. That was his corporate mindset. He was very effective at trying to get some buyin from the military services with the things that he wanted to do. Other directors did not choose to use that. They, again, had to fall back on the white house for assistance in these disputes. After the passage of the intelligence reform and terrorism prevention act, you have c. I. A. Sort of taken out of the center and now having to deal with the dni. Now, the dni i wont talk about in any great detail today, but its had a number of directors. Theyve had varying degrees of success. Jim clapper is far and away the most effective of any of them. And hes probably set the standard for future directors of National Intelligence. Dan coates, for various reasons, has never emerged as much of a player. But the place of the director of c. I. A. In here is now important, because instead of being at the head of the table, hes now just another chair at the table. As trying to manage in that sort of not quite first among equals environment, all these different agencies with their different cultures, different missions, different resources, different authorities, different oversight mechanisms, its a massively difficult bureaucratic challenge. I would not want to be to have to confront that day in and day out. And, again, the fallback for the director in these situations is relying on support from, first, the dni, if that individual is important to the president , and, again, thats the president s choice, and ultimately the inhabitant of 1600 pennsylvania avenue. That becomes particularly important in the oversight process. C. I. A. Is the most open secret organization in the world and im not just talking about congressional organizations, the appropriations committees, but the special commissions, investigative bodies that congress routinely sets up or authorizes like the 9 11 commission depicted there, and very importantly, in our open intellectual environment, the power of the media to sensationize and create scandals where they dont exist for publicize them where they ought to be publicized, this becomes a huge political change for directors of c. I. A. They can sometimes fall back on sympathetic individuals in congress, which was frequently the case in the early years, but that changed radically in the 1970s, when oversight became very ownerrous. And ultimately our protecter in these controversies would have to be the president. Very notably, in the confirmation process, we have increasingly become the target of a lot of political attack. When you think about these individuals who have been confirmed, the earlier ones were all confirmed by acclimation, voice votes, no recorded votes. The first was john mccones in 1962. In relative terms, this raised a huge kerfuffle about his qualifications, about his supposed hardline ideology that would slant analysis, about some questions of financial trust, divesting themselves money and such. Getting 15 negative votes was pretty astounding at the time. Doesnt sound like much. But notice over the years, the numbers of negative votes, for the most part, have risen steady and theyve kind of locked on now to about a one third against. Big point here is that the controversy rarely has anything to do with the qualifications of the nominee. I would suggest that, aside from michael cairns, one of clintons nominees in 1995, nub of none of these individuals would be considered unqualified to run c. I. A. They all had some kind of background, whether its direct in intelligence or managing Large Enterprises or political connections, political experience, whatever. I think you could say that all of them in effect deserve to be confirmed. So why do they get so frequently so many negative votes . Its because the confirmations become a forum for political debate over Foreign Policy issues. And the role in place of c. I. A. In that Foreign Policy. As you can see, increasingly, its just become standard. Even lets see. I think i have even gina haspel ran into trouble and got 34 negative votes, which is slightly over one third. What this says then is, again, if a president nominates somebody for office, sometimes that doesnt prove to be sufficient backing, that the political winds become just too strong and the nomination has to be pulled for various reasons. Ok. By way of just finishing up here, if you want to learn a little bit more about the directors and their relations with the president s, i didnt have a chance to put together a reading list for you tonight, so ill just pitch a few titles at you here. Over the years, the agency has had a fairly Robust Program to document the histories of our various directors. I did the mccone book there, but weve had others done on the early directors and also helms and colby. We just finished a study of the casey years but its very highly classified. I do it it will ever be declassified, regrettably, because its a nas naiting work fascinating work. They are available at cia. Gov if you want to read more about them. Weve also put out a couple of other publications. One focuses on the directors as heads of the intelligence community, sort of a different take on the story. And then our Public Affairs office, working in conjunction with the history staff, has a nice kind of profiles of leadership publication on all of our directors. So if you want to read like a threeor fourpage document about the various directorsterms and get data on them, check out profiles in leadership. Again, its on the public website. If you want to read what historians have said about the directors, theres a decent shelf of books here. Some of them of varying reliability. Oops. Sorry. I would commend a few of them to you. Let me get myself straight here. Peter grosss bio of ellen goss is superb. Colby still awaits a good biographer. Bob woodwards book on casey has a lot of interesting information on culvert action but sullied itself with a deathbed conversation with bill casey which simply did not happen as best we can reconstruct. Thankfully, you do have a good open source biography of casey. Joe persecos is a perfect treatment of it. The directors themselves never have written about themselves. What does it do to capture the writer . Its not just a bland rehash of what happened on my watch or an apology for what i did or didnt do. But rather, kind of a verbal portrait of the individual. And in that respect, every one of the directorsmemoirs fits the bill. Bill colby, the objective lawyer, has written an extremely solidly grounded, candid but lawyerly type of account of his life. Stansfield turner, who never thought he did anything wrong, makes that very clear in his book, secrecy and democracy in which he effectively blames the agencies for everything and himself for nothing. Robert gates, a ph. D. In russian studies, has written probably less an autobiography and more an i was there throughout c. I. A. History and the cold war book. You can read this as a very good history of the cold war with bob gates popping in and off of the scene as the situation merited. Richard helms, and i had the privilege of assisting him with the memoir as a research assistant, has written, i think, probably overall the best memoir. The man who kept the secrets, he was referred to in a biography about him, and he does do the same thing here. Hes written a very discrete, cautious, cagey, savvy, all the descriptors are epitomized. George tenet at the center of the storm is very much at the center of the book. Its all about george. Hes picked three big episodes in his tenure and its everything that he was involved with, with him at the center of the maelstrom in some circumstances. You can see his energy, his enthusiasm, his excitement, his georgeishness. He really comes alive on these pages. Michael hadid, very good playing to the edge recounts both his careers as director of National Security agency and c. I. A. A very candid, objective, honest i did things wrong, i didnt do this right but for the most part, hes trying to say the agency was pretty much on the mark in most of the big issues and really fell into political disfavor for unjustified reasons. Leon panettas memoir is a full autobiography, covering his time in congress, his time at c. I. A. , his time as chief of staff and then a bit as secretary of defense. All of these books went through our publications review board, so they do not tell any secrets out of school. Theyve all been vetted for National Security information. And lastly, id like to just finish up with some measures of success that would be bases for evaluating, i think in an objective fashion, how well a director succeeded. Ive already indicated kind of infren shaly inferen i would certainly put down kind of as the ulysses grants and Warren Hardings of c. I. A. People like deutch and turner and raborn to some extent. I think the washingtons, lincolns and trumans and eisenhowers would be people like smith and mccone, to some extent hayden. I think they were all very excellent at doing what the president s appointed them to do. If you step back and look at, as a biographer like me would, these are the kind of areas you would focus on, whether they had a durable impact on any of these and especially with our focus tonight on the president s, how well they cemented or tried to repair that relationship with the president. Some were close, like tenet and casey. Some started out reasonably well like mccone but eventually became estranged over policy issues. In some cases, there was very little relationship as woolsey would tell you, to come some excellent. If you try to evaluate a directors success on some kind of objective indices, these would be the types of things you would look for. And if you were to try to tell a president a new director how to do his business based on what predecessors did or didnt do, i would suggest these kind of things. If youre gonna come in with an agenda, make sure Everybody Knows about it from the outset. And you keep them posted as things are going along. Nobody likes surprises, least of all intelligence professionals. We like secrets but not surprises. You want to make sure that you are ultimately the man who takes the fall but you also want to make sure that you push out authority to the operational level so people can do their jobs. And then you back them up when they need resources and when they get into a bit of a bind. You dont bring in, especially if youre an outsider, outsiders to run our professional organization. You use the professionals to administer your changes. This was haydens success. This was mccones success. That was deutchs and turners and gosss failures. As Richard Helms said, you only work for one president at a time. And that was one of his keys to success, was making the transition as smoothly as you could from one incredibly difficult president to work for, johnson, to probably an even harder president to work for, especially if you were at c. I. A. , Richard Nixon. And it is surprising in our history, with those holdover directors, that some of them didnt make the jump from one to the other. Mccone, very notably. He had a decent relationship with john kennedy. Then when johnson came in, he tried way too hard to sell the agency on somebody who didnt know much about it. And joks finally johnson finally just shut him out of the oval office. And it didnt help that mccone was routinely bringing him bad news about vietnam, which johnson didnt want to hear. It was up to Richard Helms in effect to repair the relationship, which he was able to do during the sixday war between the arabs and israelis in 1967. As i mentioned earlier, a couple of times, it doesnt matter what the law says. Politics often trumps law in reality. Not that politics is illegal, but nonetheless, in the environment of washington, if you get into disputes with other bureaucracies, you better have the white house behind you, regardless of what the National Security act or the erpa happen to say. A very fine line to avoid is the appearance of partisanship or policy advocacy, because as we noted, some president s draw you into it. If they want you as a key advisor, if they are using the agency aggressively in covert action to implement Foreign Policy, you become de facto a policy figure. If that policy tanks, you might go down with it. Its a question really of who you ultimately work for, and the president soperating style and the director can fall on his sword, but that doesnt accomplish anything, because hell probably be replaced by somebody who wont. And youre back to square one. Especially after the mid1970s, when the entire congressional oversight mechanism changed, you have to include congress right at the start of anything you do, as director. You must preemptively brief them, if bad news is coming down the road. You have to work with them as a collaborator, not as aned a adversary, regardless of what the political situation seems to dictate. And in that realm of accountability, its important to not just clam up and hope that the issue at hand, the public criticism, will just go away. You must try to deal with it not defensively and not aggressively but put out as many facts as you can to address what youre being charged with. A good example of this came in 2007, after one of the worst books on c. I. A. History, in c. I. A. History, was written. Tim weiners book legacy of ashes. If you dont read one book about c. I. A. In your life, thats the one. Its terrible. And you can see what we think of it by looking at our review on the c. I. A. Public website. Now, im not averse to criticism. You should read some of the things ive written about us. We are our own best critics. We kind of revel in tough love, because we think it will make the agency better. But we dont like unfair criticism and onesided criticism. Thats all you get with tim weiners book. When that came out, general hayden said we need to respond to this in some fashion. So he when that came out, general hayden said we need to respond did make a point of addressing to this in some fashion. So he did make a point of addressing some of its flaws in public and he did authorize the agency, history staff and Public Affairs staff, to in effect go public with a rebuttal, something we hadnt done before in our history. It didnt get any blowback. Nobody accused us of trying to influence American Opinion in violation of our charter or anything like that. I think it was the right way to deal with the public criticism. The other point i would make about this is the way bill colby handled the scandals of the mid1970s. If you contrast Richard Helmsapproach, which was to say we are a secret service and i think the secrets should stop with me, if you can imagine him running the agency in the mid1970s, with a congressional spotlight on him, we could have been blown apart. But bill colby came in, like a lawyer. And he viewed this public indictment, almost in a courtroom kind of setting. Here are the charges. And im gonna sit here and rebut them or acknowledge them or clarify them. And i will disclose as much as i safely can for National Security reasons. He was reviled by many Agency Professionals for doing so. But i think ultimately he helped save the agency. And that might be the best way to respond to this kind of criticism. Promptly, firmly, openly, not defensively. And we have a little bit of time for questions. I know ive run on a little bit. But let me give it a go. We have a microphone here. So if you can wait until it arrives. Can you hear me . Is it true the reason nixon did not like the agency was that he held the agency solely responsible for the fictitious missile gap in the 1960s campaign . Also that it was staffed by at the lakers he did not like. That was his reputation. He did think the agency had passed information to kennedy during the 1960 campaign to his detriment. None of that is true. On that score, georgetown said if you look at a handful of the early leaders they did fall from fall into the elitist category. But nixon had a number of other grudges against the. He disagreed fundamentally with some of our analysis of the soviet union. Are the questions . Either one. Maybe i can take to more. Start with a lady in the back and then the gentleman on front. Of all the characters to decide to write a book about why did you decide on john macomb . I picked john macomb for my subject because somebody else on the history staff when i arrived hadnt a draft that was unpublished will. I thought it definitely deserved, he deserved a better treatment. I wont go why into it was unpublished a ball but i kind of revisited the story from scratch. Spent seven plus years writing it along with a lot of other things. Eventually i came out with it in 2005. I do think, with sound self justifying that macomb was one of our best directors but ill leave that up to you to decide after you read it. Then we had a question down in front from the man in the blue shirt. Thats good. Speaking structurally, not necessarily current events. If a president is determined to politicize the agency, are there structural things the agency can do to avoid that . What can we do if hypothetically we have a president who really wants to turn the agency into a political tool. You have congress. You can go public to a certain extent. You can rely on your Oversight Committees to do that for you. Inevitably in the washington amperage you will have leaking going on so you can enlist in the media as an asset rather than it adversary to certain extents. Inside the agency, we have mechanisms like an ombudsman for politicize asian. We have an unexpected general who statutory lee independent of cia and confirmed by congress. Senate rather. You do have opportunities if you feel aggrieved. In the broader political sense you have of course the resignation possibility, the big public brew ha over politicize a shun that a director could engage in. Weve had a couple of instances like that for example when bill clinton for political reasons was going to possibly pardon jonathan paw lured. A spy for the israelis. George tenet said if you do that im resigning. He really meant tint. That caused clinton to back off. That is not politicize a shun the way youre talking about but it is using intelligence as well a political adjunct to Foreign Policy consequently our director did the noble thing and