Transcripts For CSPAN3 The Presidency Presidents Their CIA Directors 20240713

Of the relationship between president and cia director and how it is influenced by the president s needs and interests. One cia director george w. H. Bush later became president himself. Good evening, everyone. My name is ruth robins and its a pleasure to welcome you here tonight for our program. A couple quick things first, one is, if you could please put away your cellphones, turn them off, silence them, any electronic devices, wed appreciate it. If you wonder why theres such bright lights in here, youre all going to be on tv, cspan is taking, kidding, youre not going to be on tv, the speaker is going to be on cspan. When we get to the q a they usually want to bring a mic down so they can record it. If you have a question try to wait until they bring the mic to you, the speaker will repeat the question so you can hear, but this is so they can hear it, however they work it. Our speaker tonight is David Robarge who received phd in American History from columbia university. After teaching at columbia working for banker David Rockefeller and at the center for media studies at columbia he joined the cia in 1989 and later became a political and leadership analyst on the middle east. Dr. Robarge moved to the cia history staff in 1996 and appointed chief historian of the cia in 2005. He published several classified works and on the cia super sonic aircraft and his articles and book reviews on kroorks ia leaders, cia leaders and studies in intelligence, journal of intelligence history, the oxford handbook of intelligence and National Security. Hes taught intelligence history at George Mason University and Georgetown University and is also written a biography of chief justice john marshall. Please join me in a warm welcome for our speaker tonight. And enjoy the program. [ applause ] good evening, i appreciate everybody turning out tonight. Its good to have such a large audience for what i hope you will find to be a pretty interesting presentation. Ive spent a good deal of my time at the Agency History staff studying our directors. I did a biography as you just heard about john mccone the director during the early 60s during the vietnam war, jfk assassination, run up to the cuban missile crisis and i got very interested in looking at the different ways in which both the agencies leaders shape the agency itself and the ways in which they in turn were shaped by the political environment and in particular their relations with the president s which is kind of the focus of our talk tonight. I should say before i start, what im not going to be covering today, which is a lot of current stuff. Im not going to be talking about the president and his relations with the agency currently because thats not history. Ill look at that in a few years. Ill do another talk with an update that will be probably very, very interesting. [ laughter ] but what i would like to concentrate on is the ways in which the president s interact with the directors and vice versa and couple things i want to leave you with is fundamental points for the evening is that president s unlike a lot of their other highlevel choices, say, highlevel choices, say cabinet members of certain offices, often clr political payoffs or people who have some lobby behind them and are foisted. The president s pick the type director they want to establish certain aspects of their Foreign Policy at that given time in World History and u. S. History, because domestic politics is a powerful driver behind that the cia can do, what the president can have it do, and the way in which the agency is can effectively or ineffectively, commending on the context, carry out its mission. The decision is a very important index into how the president s are going to run Foreign Policy. We know since world war ii to realize that different president s have had very different Foreign Policy agendas, different ideologies, different value systemings, even. Some of them have been preoccupied with domestic policy and Foreign Policy has been an afterthought. In other cases its been at the fore front, whether its gating communism, finally ending the cold war, whatever, fighting the global war on terror and 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 in other tiles during our history, which is why we have such a mix, although diversity isnt the first word that will come to mind when you look up there. Im seeing we dont have any with beards yet. Im hoping that will change. Yes, they are all white nen. Ill be talk about gina haspin. This is a diverse bunch of leaders, coming from a wide variety of backgrounds. Each of them has brought to the agency particular, if i can use a cliche, skill set and experience, in some cases inner deers to run the agency in the way the president s who pick them want them to. Thats a kashl appointment i want you to leave with tonight. Secondly, wes dont want to exaggerate the influence that directors have on Foreign Policy and the president s they serve. This is the fodder for novels and tv series and pretty much fictional for trails. One of our most important directors ever, richard hems and youll see this in a little bit will tell you that the director of intelligence is one of the weakest figures in washington because he is totally depend on the president. The president can lose him, dump him, misuse him. Thats all the president s call. Thats kind of the theme of our discussion tonight. Before we get started i thought id have a little bit of fun. While i was waiting, i noticed a lot of you gazing up trying to figure out some of these people are. I thought wed spend a few minutes playing directors jeopardy. See how it goes. Ive never done this before. I may spend the rees of the night doing this and i can trash this presentation. Lets start with this. I am the longest serving director of Central Intelligence. Alan doaks. On the other hand the shortest serving. [ inaudible ] pompeo was in for part of the year as was george bush. Slessinger. Almost. No. She was in for about a year and a half. We have to go way, way back to . Im sure youve never heard of unless youre a history geek. The first one, sidney sowers, who is head of the Central Intelligence group, which was cias predecessor organization. He was a croney of larry trumans and he made it clear when he took the job that he only wanted to serve a few months because he wanted to go back and run the pigglywigly grocery chain. He was a very respected individual but not a high powered leader, which isnt what truman wanted at the time. He wanted a figure head who could get the new cig, Central Intelligence group, up and running. I am the only convicted felon [ laughter ] Richard Helms, regrettably. He was caught in what i have to say was a pretty nasty gotcha episode. He was testifying be during his confirmation hearings before he went to become ambassador to iran and he was asked by mr. Siem monton, did we ever try to covertly overthrow the government of chile. Richard helms should said i cant answer that in public, go o into private session. Hes never revealed to me. He goes ahead and goes no three times to three questions. We were doing quite a bit to over throw the government of chile in 1970. He winds up receiving a twoyear suspended expensens and a fine which a group of friends pay on his behalf when they had a celebration at the Congressional Country Club after his sentencing. [ laughter ] ok. I had my security clearance pulled. And one more [ inaudible ] where is he . I cab see him too well here. Deutsche . Am i getting there . Deutsche. John koich. He had laptop trouble and wound up losing his clearance because of some the fact that he had classified material on his laptop and his son was using his laptop to also connect with internet sites that i wont discuss in any detail with this audience. Lets see. Ah. I am the only career analyst to be become director. Robert gates. Now, brennan was an analyst for most of his life but he had a hitch as chief of station. Then he left the agency to become president obamas Homeland Security and terrorism advisor, then he came back to run the agency. Lets see. Heres an easy one. Im the only director to later become president. Bush. Ok. Good. That was the hundred dollar questions, not the 60,000 dollar question. Lets see. I as Dwight Eisenhowers chief of staff during world war ii. [inaudible]. Walter dale smith. I could have asked a tougher question. I resigned as dci to take a better job. That was also smith. The better job, interestingly, was undersecretary of state, which back in 1952 and three when this happened was a much more prestigious position than the director of Central Intelligence. I later became chief of staff of the air force. [inaudible]. No. Check out the military uniforms. We only had two air forcers up there. Ill add i am the only dci who became the namesake for an important military post, military inauguration. Vandenberg air force base. Thats hoyte van dammeniedburg. Its a different world in the late 40s which is why i say sometimes in our history the director of Central Intelligence was not a very prestigious position. Heres one with four answers. So youll at least get one right. I served in the oss. [inaudible]. Ok. I heard dulles. Thats correct. Who else . [inaudible]. Helms. Right. [inaudible]. Bush. Did i hear a colby out there . Yes. And bill casey. So we have four and this is an important point. We have four former 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. It was very influential for many of them. Lets see. I am the only former fbi director to be [inaudible]. Webster. Ok. I am the only judge to be [inaudible]. Webster. Ok. Some piling on. Ok. I was the classmate of a of the president who appointed me. Turner. And president carter. Good. Lets see. I used to be white house chief of staff. [inaudible]. Good. Right. I used to be a congressman from california. Leon panetta. Ok. Good. I used to be one of the Senior Executives at the becthal corporation. All right. Thats a final jeopardy question, so john mccone. He was a classmate of steven boechtel at cal state where they were both studying engineering. Oh, lets see. 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 director ate of operations before i changed careers and served in another capacity for a number of years and then became director. [inaudible]. Well, yes. You could say that, i guess, of any of the oss grads, if you will, but im thinking of someone different. This is director of operations, meaning cia position. He was a case a officer for about ten years. Gates. No. Gates was an analyst. Porter goss. He worked in the do as a case officer for about 12 years or so, had to leave for medical reasons. Then became a local politician in florida and then a congressional representative, ran the House Oversight committee for a while and then became our director. I am the only person up here who is both director of Central Intelligence and director of the c cia. [inaudible]. Goss again. He was running the agency when the dni position was set up. The intelligence terrorism intelligence excuse me intelligence reform and terrorism pretengs vengs act passed in 2004, effective 2005. It abolished the position of dci and for the first time created statutorily drer of the Central Intelligence agency. Well talk later about the effect that that had in the prom members of the dci, vice the dcia and the different authorities that they had. Ok. I think thats a pretty good warm up. Yall did really well. Super job. So let me go ahead and talk about the main points of tonights presentation. When the cia was set up, a couple of different models came to the mind for the leaders. You had alan dulles who at the time had had his oss experience, and he thought based in part on that and his dealings with the British Service during world war ii that cia should pretty much always be run by a careerist, somebody who grew up in the agency and was wedded to, devoted to that particular line of work. Now, weve only had a few directors who were careerists, that is, people who started at the agency and worked their way all the way up to be director. Bill colby, Richard Helms, gina haspell and bob gates, though not directly, because he did do a couple of tours at the nsc during reagan administration, so if youre talking straight from desk up to the seventh floor we have only those three. That is one model. But whats come about is the one that Dwight Eisenhower specifies here, which is and hes using the word peculiar in a variety of meanings here, not just strange not strange and odd ball but peculiarity in the case of requiring special capabilities. I think what hes getting at here and well see this as our talk goes on that you have to be able to pick a certain type of person to run the agency at a particular time to fulfill your, the president s, fourpoint agenda. Thats what became the pattern. These individuals were neither elitists from a small cadre of careerists like the british model, but rather, drawn from all walks of live, as well see. It became an important element, i think, of their strength and u till think that they had this variety of backgrounds. Now, taking a quick kind of statistical snapshot of them, we see that their region of birth, for what its worth as a determine factor is concentrated in a couple of parts of the country. We now have our first southernborn director, gina haspell. Previously nobody from that part of the world. Whos the only overseas born one . Any idea . That was john deutsche. He was born in belgium. As far as education goes, this is a pretty smart lot. A lot of advanced degrees. Four doctorates, people like slessinger and gates and deutsche had them. We have one interesting outlier. He only went to high school but like they used to say anybody in america can grow up to be president , anybody in america almost can grow up to become director of theyre intelligence for dci. Ironically, this was one of our most influential directors ever. If you look at his record were still living with many of his accomplishments. This is walter bidell smith. The reason hes so flubs al is he established the directorate structure of the agency where we hadanalysts and support officers in separate direct rats. Then the sooibs and director was completed and that was our structure from 1963 on until the modernization that occurred under director brennan when all those directates still exists. They fuse together major components of those different directates, 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 had 25 directors, either dcis of dcias, more than 25, so a variety of backgrounds. This is a strength for them because they were able to bring, again, based on what the president s wanted a particular times, a specific kind of expertise and background to wear on the president s Foreign Policy policy. Three of the five military services are represented. 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 really dont have much experience in the Cabinet Department of area responsibility that theyre running. They werent farmers. They werent involved in the energy industry. They didnt have anything necessarily to do with the military directly. And on and on it goes. But with the exception probably of william rayborne who served for one unillustrious career, and he was picked because they had no other alternatives, but his main point was that he was trying to give Richard Helms, who he did want to be his director a year of highlevel grooming. So director of operations helms is promoted to Deputy Director and hes in the more prominent position for a wheel year, getting more washington experience and visibility. Then he checks out almost by design and helms is elevated to the directorship in 1966. Now, what i mean by direct experience here is that an individual was either a prak tissuer of intelligence that is, an analyst, a case officer, or they ran an intelligence organization, like they were head of air force intelligence in the case of vandenberg or they were a senior officer in a military Intelligence Service like general hayden was air force attache for a while and so forth. So youre either a practitioner or youve run an intelligence organization. Indirect experience means a person who was a consumer or a user of intelligence in a Foreign Policy or National Security position. Not a practitioner but someone who had all the clearances needed, used the intelligence to inform decision making, and then we have 10 of them had that background. General ray admiral ray borne was probably the only one who had no background at all. Some would argue that leon panetta did. No direct or even direct contact with intelligence in any depth. But thats an arguable proposition. Its a definite job for the middle agers. Though we do have a bit of a range of ages there. Who do you think was the youngest dci ever . Bush . No. James slessinger. He was 41 when he became director in 1973. Who do you think was the oldest . [inaudible]. Casey. Casey was in his 70s when he was appointed. But the central tendency of the spread is definitely toward that mid 50s age range. Its not a job with a lot of security, though. Now, we do again a bit of a scatter plot. We have dulles serving over eight years, tenant over seven, helms six. Off setting that, almost like figure skating scores is sowers with five months. Slessinger and bush with five months and so forth. Three years is about as long as they last. Its kind of moving in the downward direction lately, but for the most part and youll see why president s change or dont change directors when theyre elected, when they become president s, or why if theyre reelected they might choose to retain a director inrather than picking one. Thats an interesting factor here is the surprising, i think youll see, dushability of directors through transitions or through reelection periods. Now, when youre talking about the director being placed in the washington political environment, a couple of things need to be kept in mind. One is that as ellen dulles said, 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. Over seers in congress. With a lot of misan helpingsppr about what intelligence is, how long it takes to set up networks, to develop covert action prarges why analysis is such a doggedly difficult proposition. They often have a simplistic idea of what intelligence is. Steal some secrets and tell me what they mean. Thats the sort of simplistic view of what intelligence is. Its often misrepresented in the popular culture. Of course, weve all read trashy spy novels and seen horrible spy movies. Nonefficiency times isnt much better. Journalism, it can be hit or miss when it comes to coverage intelligence. Journalists can sometimes be good but sometimes they can be sensationalists, headline chasers. When you put that into the we shall environment, you have a tough situation for a director, because hes under the spotlight all the time. The cia is the most open secret organization in the world, and its held accountable by more vectors of accountability, organs of accountability than any other Intelligence Service in the world. Then when you add to that all of these misrepresentations and misconceptions, the director is in a difficult situation, not being able to explain to the public or the overseers or even the executive bramplg why theyre wrong. Secrets have to be kept and they cant always be brought out into public to explain. Even encamera, our political masters often dont understand what its like to be an intelligence professional. Helms point goes back to something i mentioned earlier, that contrary to the literature and the cia as the puppet master of the world and all this nonsense, the cia director really, when you think about it, is a politically weak individual. I think one way to represent this is to go back to something that a number of us learned back in our Political Science courses in college. You hear about hearing about the iron try automatic . Some textbooks even had a diagram of i. What it means is that in washington politics, a Cabinet Officer, cabinet official, serkts has a Cabinet Department, has a usually sympathetic congressional committee, and some kind of lobby or trade association thats advocating for the business of that cabinet. Now, they all kind of work in a must chally reinforcing fashion. Thats the iron triangle. When you think about cia, cia does not have that. For one thing, cia is not a Cabinet Office. It is an executive Branch Office that reports to the National Security council and through that to the president. But it does not have a 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, afeo, association of foreign Intelligence Officers but other than Public Events and a little publicity and maybe a letter to the editor now and then its not what you call a strong activist organization, certainly nothing like the ama, the nrvegs ra, the chamber of commerce, planned parent hollywood, whatever, name it in washington. Their all powerful lobby groups and they have their targets within the executive branch. Our calm over seers are often very pos till to us. They are not very single that threatic most of the time. Consequently when scandals ensue, when investigations are run, when people want to make headlines by beating up on intelligence and Foreign Policy, cia is pretty much out there on its own unless the president backs it. Now, sometimes we can enlist sympathetic members of congress if we have built relationships with them. Richard helms was especially good at doing this. But more often than not we have to hope that the inhabitant of the white house is supportive and will in effectgo to bat for us in these political controversies and that hasnt always been the case, as youre undoubtedly aware. This is a little bit of work that ive done at cia and you can read about it if you want more details in an article i wrote in studies in intelligence. Go dlo cia dot gov and google my last name and directors, it will pop up. What i did when i was working on the mccomb book was put him in the con tegs of all the other directors and try to figure out why john f. Kennedy picked him and not somebody else. Because he did have some alternatives. Especially after the bay of pigs he had a number of options to exercise as far as leadership. So why did he pick that particular individual . And so i expanded my analysis to look at a variety of important and i think objective facts or data points, if you want. First this is very important what did the president want that director to do . Now, when you think about our history going all the way back from sowers up through pompeo and you associate those directors with the president s they served, youll make the connection. Not every director is supposed to do the same thing with cia. Because the president doesnt want to use cia for those kinds of purposes. If its not fighting the cold war or going after the communists, it might be something entirely different like staying out of trouble, getting out of the headlines, reforming yourself, whatever. So directors get picked by certain president s at certain times to do certain things. These are 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, were their political antenna sensitive to shifts and changes, did they ride roughshod over the agency or did they find ways to work with it, especially if they were brought in from the outside. And then patterns. Can we discern that search types of directors get picked at certain times based not only on what the president wants them to do but what the prior directors had done or failed to accomplish or had gotten the agency in trouble with. The answer to that is yes. Well see that in a little bit. Now, heres what ive done with the various directors. I created these different categories of directors and im going to relate each of these to the president s who picked these types of directors and youll see this connection that im trying to emphasize tonight. You have is this and i color coded these for respects of visual effect later when i do some graphics and animation for you. We have these five types. Ill spell these out in more detail and give you examples. Two types of administers, an intelligence operator, an insider whos supposed to reform the agency, an outsider who is supposed to, and then a restorer. Well define all of these inturn. Now, the administers come in two types. Low energy and medium energy, and what the president at the time picked them to too was not a whole lot. Because either he didnt want much done or he thought if the agency did too much it was going to cause trouble so he wants to stay out of trouble. He wants a steady as you go leadership. Oftentimes after scandals, the president s want to back off from activist leadership and simply say, keep the lights on, keep the engine running, but dont double park. And certainly dont speed. So on the low energy end of the spectrum, you have sidney sowers, ross can co hillenkater im sure you all knew them and the inefable william rayborne. These were kind of directors. I mentioned like truman wanted a friend. Hillinkoetter is brought in after vandenberg who was an activist director to sort of slow things down a little bit and synchronize the new cia. Hillin koetter was the only he was the only person to run both cia and its predecessor organization. Hes selected in 1947 when Central Intelligence group still exists and after the h National Security act is passed creating cia, he stays on and becomes the first dci. But he wasnt much of a manager. But then at that point, truman didnt really want a lot of activist leadership at cia because most Foreign Policy back then is being run by the secretary of state and then after 1947, the secretary of defense. Which office was created under the National Security act. And then rayborne as i said is picked by johnson to simply fill the position until helms is ready. Now, 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 rather wants to manager it during times that are a little bit in transition. So when you think about jim woolsey, for example, who is bill clintons first director of Central Intelligence, clinton comes in and doesnt know what he wants to do with cia because hes fundamentally a domestic policy president. He doesnt have a Foreign Policy agenda. He picks a known quantity from the National Security environment in washington to come in and say keep the agency running and ill ring the phone when im interested in having something done. Needless to say, woolsey did not have much of a relationship with president clinton. He rarely saw him, as best i know they met only a couple of times in formal meetings. Youve heard the old story about the air plane crashing on the white house lawn and people joked that that was jim woolsey trying to get an appointment to see the president. Hell be the first one to tell you he was pretty much read out of Foreign Policy. The Clinton White house, National Security environment was run by the National Security advisors, secretary of state, secretary of defense and prominent figures and such. George tenant becomes clintons third director. John deutsche falls in the center. Hes a different time of director, as well see. Hes an interesting individual because hes the only director who falls into two categories. From 1997 to 2001, george tenant was not much of a presence at cia. I mean, he was popular and people loved to see him down in the cafeteria, back slapping and chewing his cigar and all of that but he really wasnt a person with clout at the agency. The agency was still kind of moving along in this post cold war period, finding its moorings, looking for new targets and avenues of interest. But white house is providing very little guidance in that. And then petraeus comes in, appointed by bahama after panetta leaves to become secretary of defense and hes only there for a year. We wont get into the reasons why he left. In case youre wondering, yes, he will have an official portrait at cia. Were all include sif. We even have a portrait of a convicted felon and a person who lost his security clearance for unauthorized use of governmentclassified property. Were a forgiving agency when it comes to our port ra chur at least. He didnt accomplish a lot at the agency. One could put him almost in the custodian category except he was such an energetic person you couldnt imagine him being just a custodian. But he really didnt accomplish a lot as far as the agency went. But it seems that at the time thats what president obama wanted. Again, bahama was largely a domestic policy president during his first term. Now, the intelligence operator is an individual who, as the title suggests, uses experience, particularly in clandestine activity to move the agency aggressively ahead to advance the president s Foreign Policy agenda. These are people who are experienced with intelligence, either a current or former Intelligence Officer and during their ten iyours they do a lot f technical intelligence, counterintelligence, all in the aggressive support of the president s activist Foreign Policy agenda. Because directors are so closely tied to the president s Foreign Policy agenda, they often have close ties to the president himself. Not that theyre 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 powell makers. This is not a good thing. This leads to the politization of intelligence. I would say in the real world, intelligence is always deeply steeped in politics, and thats entirely different from politization which is the corruption of the analytic product to support president s Foreign Policy agendas. In other words, tell me what to write. Thats politization. What im talking about is the fact that certain president s want intelligence 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 sorry thats not my job and pack your briefcase up and head back to langley. That will probably be the last time youre in the oval office. Instead, you wind up becoming a de facto policy advisor, sitting there with the secretary of state, defense, National Security advisor, whoever else working on those decisions. A combination of long tenure involvement with policy often leads to mistakes, scandals, and screwups. Some of these are not the agencys fault. Some of them are. Policy can be good or bad and the intelligence used to support it can only be as good or bad as that policy is good or bad. Covert action is a classic example. If you have a fumbling inept nonstrategic Foreign Policy and you ask covert action in at the last minute to bail it out, its going to fail. But the flipping always winds up pointing at langley, never at the white house or the pentagon or the state department. And thats usually why these long serving directors go down in flames, in a manner of speaking, because they get in trouble in part because theyre put in trouble, 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 agencys standing. You think about alan dulles picked by eisenhower. Eisenhower is on a containment crusade and in some cases is even trying roll back to push communism back to whence it came. Naturally an intelligence professional with oss experience like dulles was a perfect fit. Thats also why he stayed around as long as he did. Now, Lyndon Johnson picks Richard Helms, i believe, because he wanted a skilled operator and an individual with a good political sense to run the agency as the vietnam war was heating up. A good fit there. Ronald reagan has 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. Its hard to think of another president other than someone like eisenhower perhaps picking somebody like casey. And then george tenant, after 9 11, he in effect becomes a head of a massive Counterterrorism Organization that president bush has mobilized to lead the fight against al qaeda and the beg taliban. And 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. A very opportunistic kind of appointment that perfectly dove tails with the president s agendas. At other times, and in particular after the agency has gotten into trouble, president s decide well, we have to pull way back and cool things off and probably clean up the mess. Reorganize, hire some different people, fire some people, change the way business is done, reconnect with congress, the whole just kind of agenda for the agency with the president at that time. Now, 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 kind of low key quietly dont roughly feathers, keep the waters relatively still. The best way to do this is to pick an Agency Insider to lead those changes. These individuals have experience with the agency, know the bureaucracy, the culture of the personalities and are there to get agency out of trouble and sort of stabilize it in this time of uncertainty. So they go about making their personnel changes, their organizational changes and their mission changes in a quite deliberate low key fashion. Here we have three examples. Richard nixon picking bill colby after a very brief tenure by james slessinger that was really quite tumultuous for the agency and somewhat counterproductive. So nixon says during the time when you have the watergate scandal, dissent growing in the United States or 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 period, which was kind of lackluster, not much going on and webster has fallen out of favor with the white house particularly in the first gulf war. Bush thought that now that the cold war seems to be ending that we needed leadership but one of a low key trusted insider variety to start steering the agency into the post cold war environment. He also makes an interesting shift from picking somebody with operational experience to someone with analytic experience, and thats bob gates. And then you have president obama picking john brennan in 2013 after. [ inaudible ] excuse me . Oh. Sorry. To run the agency while he is trying to navigate some difficult Foreign Policy issues and bringing to the agency the knowledge from the white house sector because as i mentioned, brennan was the Homeland Security and counterterrorism advisor to the white house. So brennan comes in and after managing the place relatively low key sets off on the Modernization Initiative which breaks up the directorates. They still exist but theyre largely administrative now and shifts all of the action to what are eventually 12 Mission Centers that integrate cias analytic operational science, technology, and support functions into either functional or geographic areas. At other times, president s have said i dont really want an insider because i dont quite think theyll accomplish what i want. I need a lot of change out at cia, so i want someone whos not a careerist, someone whos not an insider who brings to bear these outoutsider type experiences. Its the group that has the biggest agenda, the ones who are there really to shake up the agency, to make major changes in personnel in organization and in mission focus. More change occurs under these. Needless to say change isnt always popular with people. They can be successful, and unsuccessful. Here they are Hoyt Vandenburg who was 4647 brings cig into the policy making map. Previously under sowers he wasnt much of a player but he won a collection in capabilities. He already established the direct ait organization and turned the agency sbro a highpowered supporter of the military during crane war. I could go on all night, but was charged with keeping the agency out of covert action trouble after the bay of pigs. Once hes inside he creates the director of science and technology to move the agency very smartly into the cutting edge revolution of technical intelligence. Slessinger comes in in 1973 with the agenda to finally run the agency the way nixon wanted it. Nixon did not like cia and he chose slessinger to come in and implement some Intelligence Community reforms that he, slessinger, had advocated when he was at the office of management and budget a couple of years yemplt slessinger came in and fired about a thousand people. Cut the budget. Got rid of offices, created new offices, moved things around. He was gone, thankly in only fyfe months according to some people at langley. Staenz field turner, carters director, comes in and tries to run the agency like a battleship. And 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 then tell them to go tell the careerists what to do. Well, the careerists will immediately bridle and balk at that and in some cases theyll try to undercut the leadership with rumors and such. It really got bad under turner, who never seemed to quite wake up to the fact that he was a large part of the problem. Now, yes, any agency should take its orders from its boss but the boss also have to make sure they give the right orders in the right way. For turner, this was the wrong way to do things. And he became one of our most unpopular leaders. He fired about 800 people or encouraged them to leave or didnt fill their jobs and really became head of the agency during a very awkward time. John deutsche picked by clinton to run the agency along more military lines, deutsche himself wanted to be secretary of defense but took the dci position as a consolation prize. Then he goes ahead and tries to run it as an add jungt to the Defense Department. Nora slatkin became his hench woman who alienated a lot of the leadership at the agency. Deutsche seemed largely out of touch and aloof with the agencys concerned because he wasnt interested in beings there. We dont do some things because deutsche farmed it out to the pentagon. Goss was another one who brought in people from the hill to help run the agency and got immediate pushback. In fact, some of our Senior Leaders resigned in protest because of the way he was running things. He didnt have a direct mission particularly. I think george bush appointed him principally because he was head of the House Oversight committee and thought it would be a good political move but it was disastrous inside the agency and dwos left after about a year and a half. Michael hayden was popular at the agency because he knew exactly what not to do. He got out of the car the first day on the can job alone and walked up to the seventh floor and said, what do how can i get your help to do what im assigned to do, which was to help the agency navigate the up creasingly controversial counterterrorism scandals that it was falling into with the black sites and the rbi program and very tough relations with congress. Hayden had been a very adept head of the National Security agency, good intelligence professional. I kind of think of him not so much as a military Intelligence Officer but as an intelligence professional who is in the military. I think that really was the perspective that he brought to the job. Le that might sound a little academic, but i think if you knew hayden and saw the way he ran the agency, you could see my distinction there. And the last group, the restorer. As the name suggests, these individuals are none of the above. They are not there to just sit there. They are not there to win the cold war and they are not there to clean up the mess. Except in the respect that they are there to, as i say here, reconnect with the wider world. Get the agency back on track with congress, with the public, with our political leadership. Usually when these people take always, taegts a bit down in the dumps, so they come in and raise morale. Theyre good as Public Relations or portraying themselves as having a particular type of image, rectitude, political experience, moderation, and all of that. Not charged with reorganizing or reforming. And we have four of them here. George bush, bill webster, leon panetta and pompeo. Pompeo is a little bit different. The first three are here to stabilize the ship in periods of controversy. When you think about bush becoming head of an agency right after the start of the scandals of the mid 1970s and the congressional investigations winding down, hes there to in effect make the agency seem like its not the ogre that it was being portrayed to be in the media and in some sectors of congress. Now, initially as a politician, Agency Professionals did not like disappointment, because we did not want the agency turned into in effect just another Cabinet Office with a political hack or a big donor running it. Bush was able to allay those concerns very quickly just because he was basically a nice guy. Everybody could get looping with him. He was very honest an what his agenda was. By the end of his 11 months he had accomplished exactly what president ford wanted him to. Wester gets appointed right after the iran coon tra scandal. You can see why having an ex former judge and a senior Law Enforcement official after all of those illegalities were perpetrated was a bit of appointment time. He brings in the judge webster and all of that, really the mr. Clean of the agency. Panetta comes in under president obama as the agency is still under fire for the rdi program. Congress is after us. Weve had a whole variety of hot hot hightemperature issues with them. Panetta comes in, of course, as a longtime congressional. He knew everybody who was firing their guns at us and was able to to get them to steer the barrels in the other direction. He had a lot of Political Savvy of course and he had the experience from being chief of staff. They were very good and timely appointment for restoring the teegt a better luster. And lastly, mike pompeo, and heres where hes kind of a u sneak restorer. Hes trying not to restore the agencys reputation with the public but with the white house. Its going in the other direction. When he resigned and i could finally talk about him in this analysis, i went back and looked at some of the things he did at the agency and for Foreign Policy and such, and yes, some people said, well, you know, he was kind of an operator because he was very policy oernriented. He didnt do a lot of reforming and organizing and such. I got to thinking what about thinking of restoring in a different con fedex, not with the public and congress but with the white house chltsd and yes thats where it occurred. He was able to maintain the bridge between cia and the president that i dont think another director perhaps would have been able to. Hasspell has continued that a bit but im not going to talk about her in any detail. Pompeo fits there the best. Cycles of leadership. As we look at all these different leaders and as i say, ive color coded them and given them ak nips here for a purpose, because i wanted to emphasis that once we put some order into this scatter plot, youll find some interesting patterns. Notice, 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, theres always replaced by a reformer or a restorer or in one case by an administer custodian. In other words, definitely not an insider after an operator who are by definition insiders mucks up the place, you dont want another insider necessarily to come in and clean it up. So notice so often right after the intelligence operators, you have the outsiders coming in to sweep the place clean youll also notice that we never had to operators in a row and after periods of drift you have a more activist leader being appointed and look at the times after the custodians you had energetic director coming in and either an outsider or until agents operator. You dont want to make too much about it but its an indication of situational appointments that president s make. To look at the contacts in which it exist a think about what they want to do and they pick a director to carry out that specific mission. One important index of the amount of change that directors make at the agency at the president ial b has this how many people to get rid of. The higher and fire criteria and interesting lee the most senior level personnel change occurs with restores and thats because i think that they look at the agency and they dont want to have a lot of holdovers and they have new leadership to give the impression that everything is fresh and clean for your protection and its kind of the Good Housekeeping and seal of approval by getting rid of people in the senior ranks. Of course the both types clean house a lot but not as much as the restores and some of that is the recognition especially on the outside but also the insiders that they can only do so much with getting rid of people before they destabilize and create a lot of internal backlash. They do a little bit less very smartly and then of course the, administrators do the personnel changes because theyre not supposed to and the intelligence operators also i analogize analyze this as the head of the military and the last thing you do when youre about to go to war is change or Senior Leadership and it creates all sorts of instability with new relationships that has to be built interest has to be established as youre about to go to war. The intelligence operators keep the Senior Leadership in place as they march on its global campaign. When we are talking about variables to success, we have a variety of things we want to keep in mind and how can these directors most opportune lease exceed that them at the missions that they give them. And under which if you dont grasp the limitations. And you dont learn too much on the job and the relationship with the president , is a close, is it strange and what exactly is it. What is the president s attitude himself towards intelligence and cia. This would be a crucial factor as we see other president s have experience with Foreign Policy and their hostile to it or whatever. Very importantly, how they run their National Security apparatus and who is really in charge of intelligence. Is it the person or someone downtown . Another important variable is the bureaucratic bureaucratic skills under the director of the National Intelligence who is no superior to the director of cia. Would it be so in this perspective and that still very much a work in progress. Well talk a little bit how the directors of Central Intelligence are trying to manage that issue with the president as affected. Lastly, the very important oversight element and we alluded to this earlier, this cia being ineffective and wide open organization and when it gets in trouble, through the oversight process does the president support it and how does d. C. I try to manage that difficult balance of being in congress and allowing the president for gap stopping. Lets start with the legal authorities. Back in 1947 the National Security passed and in addition to creating the air force as a separate branch of military, the offensive secretary of defense that came in 1949 and establishing the National Security council and the National Security act created cia. In that language, you find an interesting dynamic, if you want to interpret a law i would suggest you look at the action words because those are the words that bestow a celebrity potentially and if they are strong, precise and empowering words and they will be able to do something but if they are vague that dont really mean much that you cant really get your arms around then you know youre probably going to be in some kind of trouble down the line and this is exactly what you have with the National Security fact. When the agency is given authority to perform hits core issues which are to collect secrets and protect secrets and that is espionage and Counter Intelligence its clear in the National Security act that we have to perform and protect and its legal ease that in legal terms this means something and giving something inaction and in the analysis area its a little vague and this is because we have competitors in the analytic area where as were not competing with military espionage or action with the fbi and Counter Intelligence but thats really our core mission. The intelligence analysis that we do have in the military and the state department. You would think that that is supposed to be one of cias primary missions is that theyre giving us that authority of equal and powerful to deal with but instead were evaluating and dissimulated. What does evaluate mean. Means youve been compared to get in some trouble when your story doesnt match with the state department or pentagon are saying about the same issue. This is a Crucial Point in relation to the president dealing with cia. Does the director of Central Intelligence really direct something called Central Intelligence thats a rhetorical question, the obvious answer is no. The d. C. I never had direct Line Authority direct management over any other organization and u. S. Intelligence except cia 85 plus percent of the intelligence resource in the u. S. Government had been run by the military. They had no authority over any of them and he could not save the pentagon, move this money and these people over here all they could do is suggests it might be a nice idea and hope this argument prevailed in the National Security council of operations. Usually it didnt. The dca is really not a d. C. The only way it was going to prevail in future of disputes of which there are many throughout history as with president ial backing. 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,m9w 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 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 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 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 turn 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, 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 as qualified as people thought she would be, 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 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 ridiculous climax of a deathbed conversation with bill casey which simply did not happen as best we can reconstruct. Thankfully, you do have a good open source piography to 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 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 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. Is a true that the nixon did not like the agency was that he held the Agency Responsible for the missile gaps for the 1960 campaign, plus the fact that the agency was populated with a bunch of liberal democrats etc. He did think that the agency had passed information to candidates during the 1960 campaign to his detriment. None of that is true on that score. Georgetown said yes if you look at a handful of the early leaders, they did fall into that elitist category. We had another of other grudges against the agency. He said the d. C. I was not running anything properly. Analyses of the soviet union. On to of all the characters to decide, why did she decide on shawn. I picked john column for my subject because somebody else on the history staff when i arrived had done a draft that was and publisher bowl, and i thought it definitely deserved, he deserved a better treatment. I wont go into why was unpublished a bull but i just kind of result of the story from scratch spent seven plus years with a long of other things. Came out with it in 2005. I do think, it sells sounds self justifying that he was our best directors, but i will leave it up to you to decide after you read. We had a question down and front here for from the men in the blue shirt. Speaking structurally, not necessarily current events. If a president is determined to her little size 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. It can rely on your oversight committees to do that for you. Inevitably, and the washington gambit you will have leaking going on so you can analyst the media as an asset rather than an adversary to certain extent. Inside the agency we have mechanisms like an ombudsman for politicization. We have an Inspector General who is statutory lee independent of cia, confirmed by congress, senate rather. So you do have opportunities, if you feel aggrieved at it, and a broader political sense, you have of course the resignation possibility. The big public boom ha over politicization that a director could weve had a couple of instances like that one blip bill clinton for political reasons was going to possibly pardon Jonathan Paul or its spy for israelis. George tennant said, if you do that i am resigning. He really meant. It that cost clinton to back off. That is not politicization the way you are talking about, but it is using intelligence as a political adjunct for Foreign Policy, because it was a way of immigration getting himself to israel. Consequently, our director did the noble thing instead flat out no. Pretty much every director since made that very clear, that collared was not an issue. It would never agree to the partner. I guess youll have to be the last ones, or because we need to close down. Two questions if i may. Im not sure if you can answer this one, that i will ask anyway. Im not sure what the relationship is between the director of National Intelligence, the director of the Central Intelligence agency and the National Security advisor. What are their goals . What are the supposed to be doing . My second question is, what time of the day is the Daily Briefing done from the president under normal circumstances . I will answer the second one first because it is easy. Except for those situations i had mentioned, intelligence briefing has almost always occurred sometime in the morning. Some president s have wanted at the very first thing, like george bush 41, and since did that the first thing on his daily calendar was the briefing. Other president said, i will take it later as my schedule requires. Some people had never gotten around to it during the day even though its been on the calendar. The briefing would go down and cool his or her heels and be sent home. The document will stay but no briefing occurs. Whether that is ideal or not, hypothetical, to me it makes sense, but other president s deemed otherwise. First question, the d and i under the orca is the legal integrator and coordinator of the 16 agencies in the Intelligence Community, but he does not have mandatory authority to shift personnel and resources wherever he pleases. He can do it in a limited area, but he simply cannot say pentagon, i want five billion dollars moved out bird to cia tomorrow. He does not have that authority. If he becomes the president s National Intelligence adviser, the one who goes down every day and does the briefing or sits and on policy discussions, that is again up to the president. That is not part of irked putt that is an ad on based on the president s preferences. Under or posh, runs only cia, but if the president wants that individual to participate in the morning briefings, given instead of the dni or with the dni, or come down and bring along senior experts on various policy or intelligence areas, that is a president ial preference. George bush, 43, orchestrated at the suggestion of his National Security adviser, a pretty elaborate briefing mechanism throughout the week in which she would have generalized briefings with walk on with his experts popping into talk about an issue and then leaving, and another one coming in on another issue. He would have hole warnings devoted to issues, terrorism tuesday, or act thursday, that is all he was briefed on. Again, strictly a preference. The role of the National Security adviser, which has been the subject of similar analyses that i did tonight on the sea ice, varies directly with the president s and trusts. Some in ministry tours and then a security National Security staff, some have been highlevel policy makers like shadow president s, like kissinger, some had been heavily involved in policy but not big administrators of the council. Some had been more of one, and more the other. They cycle through relatively quickly. They have a shorter shelf life and then directors of Central Intelligence and cia. Have again, all president ial preference. I cannot leave you here with a more important point that practically everything that has been talked about tonight is all based on what the president wants. Nothing that we have discussed tonight with few exceptions is mandated under law. It will change with the next administration, i am sure. Thank you very much for listening. applause . Good afternoon neighbor. When im mark silver stone. Associate professor in president ial studies at the university of virginia. And as chair of the centers president ial records progr i