CIA Chief Goes Outside Agency for Key Aides

In the most sweeping shake-up in CIA history, newly appointed Director John M. Deutch reached outside the clubby network of intelligence professionals Monday to pick nine top administrators--including several former staffers on Capitol Hill, which has been sternly critical of the spy agency.

Announcing the changes at a news conference at CIA headquarters in nearby Langley, Va., Deutch said he hoped that the new management team will be able to repair the CIA’s reputation with Congress, which has criticized the agency for its handling of the Aldrich H. Ames spy scandal and for its seeming inability to adjust to the post-Cold War world.

“This agency, it has been noted by me, has not had a stunning success in relating to Congress,” Deutch said. “Not because they don’t try, but because there hasn’t been enough . . . knowledge about the best way to hook into the system. Having some people who have had detailed experience . . . will be very important in keeping Congress currently and fully informed.”

Deutch said that officials displaced by the changes will be offered posts within the agency, but he did not specify them.

For his top deputy, Deutch picked 42-year-old George Tenet, who has been head of intelligence programs at the National Security Council since 1993. Previously, he was staff director of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Other onetime Capitol Hill staffers on the new team include Keith Hall, a former deputy staff director for the Senate Intelligence Committee, to be director of the community management staff; Jeffrey H. Smith, a Washington lawyer who was once general counsel of the Senate Armed Services Committee, to be the agency’s general counsel, and Michael J. O’Neil, former chief counsel of the House Intelligence Committee, to be Deutch’s chief of staff.

Deutch, confirmed by the Senate less than a week ago, made clear that he hopes to avoid the mistakes of his predecessor, R. James Woolsey, who resigned in January after a stormy relationship with Congress. Deutch, who moved to Langley from the post of deputy defense secretary, also brought several Pentagon officials with him.

Although CIA directors are often picked from outside the agency, the management level just below the director is usually filled from among the CIA’s career professionals. But Deutch made it clear that he is dismantling that system, which emphasized continuity over innovation.

His changes were criticized by some. “There won’t be much of a team there,” said retired Maj. Gen. Edward B. Atkeson, a former CIA and military intelligence official. “A lot of these people don’t know each other. Others have been in an adversarial relationship with the CIA.”

Deutch on Monday also named a blue-ribbon panel headed by John McMahon, a former CIA official who just stepped down as vice chairman of Lockheed Corp., to screen candidates for the deputy director for operations post--probably the CIA’s most delicate because it handles the nation’s espionage activities. Other members of the commission include Brent Scowcroft, White House national security adviser in the George Bush and Gerald R. Ford administrations, and James Lilly, a former CIA official who also served as ambassador to China and South Korea.

Of the nine new managers, only Tenet, tapped to replace Adm. William O. Studeman in the deputy post, requires Senate confirmation.

Hall, who has been serving in the Pentagon as deputy assistant secretary for intelligence, replaces Richard Haver as director of the community management staff, a post responsible for planning and budgeting. Smith replaces Elizabeth Rindskopf as the CIA’s general counsel.

Other appointments include:

* Nora Slatkin, assistant Navy secretary for acquisition, to become executive director, the CIA’s third-ranking post. She replaces Leo Hazelwood.

* Richard Cooper, a professor of government at Harvard, to replace Christine Williams as head of the National Intelligence Council.

* Marine Brig. Gen. Michael Hagee, Deutch’s senior military assistant at the Pentagon, to be Deutch’s executive assistant.

* Rear Adm. Dennis C. Blair, to take the newly created post of associate director of central intelligence for military support.

* Dennis Boxx, Pentagon deputy spokesman, to be director of public affairs.