Lawmakers Seek Greater Role in CIA Forecasts : Intelligence: Shrouded in secrecy, the analyses are an important tool for the President. Charges of distortion have triggered congressional interest.

Whether Robert M. Gates wins or loses, his battle for confirmation as intelligence director may mark a watershed in the 44-year history of the Central Intelligence Agency--for it has allowed Congress to inject itself for the first time into the CIA’s most important function, producing secret intelligence analysis for the President.

For most of their 16 years of life, the Senate and House intelligence committees have focused largely on the CIA’s most eye-catching covert operations and its big-ticket budget items.

But last week, with their interest awakened by charges that Gates and former CIA chief William J. Casey deliberately skewed intelligence forecasts during the Administration of President Ronald Reagan, leaders of both committees said they intend to pay much closer attention to the way intelligence analysis is produced.

Sen. David L. Boren (D-Okla.), chairman of the Senate committee, said the issue lies at the heart of the spy agency’s very existence. “If the analysis of intelligence information is slanted or misrepresented,” he asked, “then what use are all the . . . billions of dollars” spent on gathering information?

Rep. Dave McCurdy (D-Okla.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said he intends to make sure the President hears from divergent voices within the intelligence community, and said his panel has begun doing that already.

“The President, as a mature adult, should hear both sides of an argument,” McCurdy said. “Unfortunately, I don’t think they get the unvarnished view.”

And Gates himself told the Senate committee--which is scheduled to vote on his confirmation Oct. 18--that he would welcome more congressional attention to the CIA’s analytical work. “I encourage the committees to consider re-establishing something like their old analysis and production subcommittees that can focus oversight on the analysis process,” he said in his formal rebuttal to the charges against him on Thursday.

A CIA official laughed when he heard Gates’ conciliatory position. “What would you expect him to say?” he asked.

Several current and former CIA officials reacted with alarm to the idea of congressional intervention in the process--until now, shrouded in secrecy and obscurity--of writing the official “estimates” that carry the intelligence community’s major forecasts and judgments to the President.

“It would be an enormous change, and the impact could be profound,” said George Carver, one of Gates’ predecessors as deputy director for intelligence, or chief of the CIA’s analytical wing. “You could be making a congressional committee the new arbiter of national intelligence. . . . I’m not sure that’s in the best interest of the country.”

“No Administration is going to like that idea,” added a senior State Department official. “It would be a serious shift in power away from the White House and into the intelligence committees.”

The CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies have often produced analyses that question the premises of an Administration’s policy--but until now, most presidents have succeeded in keeping those discordant estimates secret.

If Congress seriously begins to monitor the analytical debates of the intelligence community, one of the President’s longtime advantages in foreign policy--being able to claim superior knowledge based on his access to intelligence--will begin to evaporate.

As early as 1965, for example, CIA Director John McCone warned President Lyndon B. Johnson that the Vietnam War was “a military effort that we cannot win”--but his warning was kept from Congress and the public, because Johnson wanted to pursue the war.

In 1980, the Administration of President Jimmy Carter tried to keep a lid on intelligence about Soviet military supplies to Nicaragua, because the White House was already under fire in Congress for its conciliatory policy toward the leftist government there.

And during the Reagan Administration, while Gates was at the CIA, the agency produced several papers warning that Nicaragua’s Contras were incompetent and ineffective--but the White House, which was portraying the rebels as intrepid “freedom fighters,” kept most such reports from reaching outside eyes.

At the same time, critics charge, both Gates and Casey intervened directly in the intelligence process to quash analyses that challenged Administration policy--and to boost ones that promoted their own views. Cited is a 1985 CIA estimate on Soviet influence in Iran that, although disputed hotly at the time, was sent to Reagan and encouraged him to sell weapons to the Iranian regime in the secret deals that turned into the Iran-Contra affair.

Then-Secretary of State George P. Shultz later accused Casey of having “cooked” the intelligence to support his own policy desires. Gates, who approved the estimate, said last week that parts of it turned out to be “inaccurate” but insisted that they were honest mistakes.

A series of CIA analysts have accused Gates of deliberately stifling dissent and distorting intelligence estimates on issues including Nicaragua, Afghanistan and Soviet support for terrorism. Gates denied the charges in detail--but also acknowledged that “the perception of politicization in some areas remains real, and must be addressed by the next director.” He suggested a series of reforms, including formal measures to encourage “openness to alternative views,” an advisory council of retired intelligence analysts and increased congressional oversight.

The result is likely to be one of the major intelligence debates of the 1990s: As the CIA reorganizes itself to analyze a radically changed world, how should it change the way it does the job--and how much influence should Congress have over the process?

Some members of Congress suggested last week that CIA analysts who believe an Administration is skewing or politicizing the intelligence process should feel free to warn the intelligence panels on Capitol Hill--an idea that enrages CIA traditionalists.

“How the hell can you run a covert intelligence service if every member of it can run to a political body that’s going to use the information in political ways?” asked a senior CIA official who recently retired but--in deference to his old habits--asked not to be quoted by name.

McCurdy, chairman of the House intelligence panel, argues that both Congress and the President should listen to the debate among intelligence analysts--instead of simply receiving an estimate that represents the consensus of the intelligence community.

“Rather than just have the deputy director of a particular division come forward and testify before the committee and say ‘Here’s what’s happening in the world,’ I’ve been bringing the analysts into it,” he said. “Prior to (Russian President Boris N.) Yeltsin’s election, we had the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency), CIA and State Department, and they had almost a knock-down, drag-out debate in front of us--it almost became personal. It was the most informative briefing I’ve ever received . . . because there was dissent, there was division, there was difference.”

Some intelligence experts believe opening up the process of analysis could be more dangerous than the current system.

“Talk about a chilling effect,” Carver said. “Take the Nicaraguan war: How on Earth could any analyst hope to please both the Reagan Administration and the Democratic majority in Congress? It would have been impossible.” As a result, he argued, few intelligence analysts would be willing to produce controversial or venturesome work.

In any case, the change to a more open process is already under way. As a result of Gates’ confirmation hearings, the Senate Intelligence Committee and the public have received a quick but thorough education in the major issues surrounding intelligence analysis.

In response to the hearings, the CIA even found itself releasing several previously secret internal memorandums on analysis issues, in an effort to show that its executives are already acting to fix the problems of the Casey era.

As recently as last June, John L. Helgerson, the current deputy director for intelligence, acknowledged that concerns over politicization were still alive.

An internal inquiry “surfaced some general concern about this issue among analysts,” Helgerson wrote.

“We . . . do not sanction and will not tolerate deliberate distortion of our intelligence products to match anyone’s preconceived views. Clearly, this would be anathema to our mission and our role as a trusted source of timely, objective intelligence for policy-makers,” he wrote.