Barrage of Criticism Puts CIA’s Preeminence on the Line : Intelligence: Critics see the spy agency as being unable to cope with its own weaknesses and a changing world. Woolsey is viewed as lacking leadership.

In the aftermath of the Aldrich H. Ames spy case, the U.S. intelligence community is increasingly embattled, criticized by current and former intelligence officials for failing to cope with its weaknesses and with a changing world.

Some even wonder whether the CIA will be able to hang on to its preeminent status after a half century of helping shape U.S. involvement in the world.

As a result, CIA Director R. James Woolsey appears to be in the deepest trouble of all the Clinton Administration’s top foreign policy officials. Many insiders believe that he will be the first to go if President Clinton reshuffles his national security team after next week’s midterm congressional elections.

“The community is very, very fragile right now,” said a former ranking intelligence officer. “Until serious changes are made and Woolsey attacks the problem head on, U.S. intelligence faces hard times and the danger of being nibbled to death--on the budget, Ames and its mission.”

Woolsey, who oversees all U.S. intelligence outlets, has won some of the CIA’s fights, most notably in preventing further congressional cuts of the $28-billion intelligence budget. But he is losing the broader battle to reform and redefine intelligence goals and functions in the post-Cold War world, according to knowledgeable sources both inside and outside the agency.

In an interview this week, Woolsey defended himself and praised the CIA’s roles in the recent Iraq, Haiti and North Korea crises. He also argued that the intelligence mission has been defined but is difficult for outsiders to grasp because it is more amorphous than in the Cold War era.

“The world we’re in is one of a number of different and occasionally interacting intelligence challenges, several of which are quite deadly: international terrorism, rogue states, the potential for chaos--all of which need to be addressed,” he said.

By tracking corruption and bribery in foreign business dealings, the CIA is even responsible for aiding U.S. business, he said.

“The diversity of the mission and the need for flexibility in responding to it is dissatisfying to people who for 50 years have been involved in either a hot war or a cold war,” Woolsey said.

Not all the U.S. intelligence world is under fire. The analytical branches of U.S. intelligence still get high marks. Indeed, some in Washington believe that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein may even have bought Woolsey some extra time in the job because Baghdad’s massing of troops on Kuwait’s border was nipped in the bud, in part, through CIA warnings to the White House.

Talk about demoralization inside the multifaceted U.S. intelligence community is now open and widespread. And symptomatic of the CIA’s turmoil is the persistent problem of the ultra-secret wing of covert espionage, the Directorate of Operations, or so-called spy shop, which has defied control by either Woolsey or congressional oversight committees, according to insiders and former intelligence officials.

For these and other reasons, some contend that the CIA, in particular, no longer has the support or standing it enjoyed in earlier eras.

Stansfield Turner, the last CIA director to hold office during a Democratic Administration, said he believes that “the agency is much more beleaguered now than it was even after the Church committee revelations in 1975-76 or after the Iran-Contra hearings in 1987.”

The Senate Intelligence Committee, then headed by Sen. Frank Church (D-Ida.), uncovered widespread CIA excesses, including the use of assassination against foreign leaders and illegal wiretapping and spying on Americans.

Turner said that one of the agency’s problems is the reluctance of its officials “to punish their own” but he acknowledged that the attitude “has been there since intelligence operations began.”

As CIA director under then-President Jimmy Carter, Turner created an internal furor in the 1970s by sacking or retiring dozens of operatives and their managers. But the culture is so pervasive that the urge to circle the wagons when the CIA is under attack has persisted.

Woolsey has not been helped by the chorus of recent criticism, including this week’s Senate report on the Ames case, which damns the CIA almost as much for the handling of that espionage debacle as for its laxity during the nine years Ames spied for Moscow. Ames, who pleaded guilty following his arrest in February, is serving a life sentence.

The report charged that Woolsey’s handling of what was the most damaging CIA penetration in the nation’s history was “seriously inadequate” on many fronts.

In a reflection of the deep divide between the CIA and Congress, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dennis DeConcini (D-Ariz.) said in an interview that Woolsey’s efforts are not enough.

“We don’t doubt he’s making changes, but implementing them and having an enforcement capability are two different things,” DeConcini said. “There’s a history and a precedent at the CIA for good talk that isn’t always followed up. We need to be convinced.”

“It’s too late for him to turn it around,” said Turner, the ranking former CIA official. “He’s perceived as lacking leadership. And in Washington, perception often becomes the reality.”