Advice for the Next Director--the Spies Need a New Mission

As the Senate Intelligence Committee prepares to consider the nomination of W. Anthony Lake, Bill Clinton’s choice as the third director of Central Intelligence in four years, it should understand what is at stake.

Panel members are not merely deciding on another new head spy at Langley, Va. Rather, they are deciding whether a thoughtful candidate can be found to lead the U.S. intelligence community, with a renewed and relevant CIA at its hub, into the 21st century.

Clinton’s first two directors, R. James Woolsey and John M. Deutch, shared a deep distrust of the organization they headed. Both always seemed to be looking beyond the CIA, dreaming of future moves up the Washington power ladder.

As a result, the CIA drifted perilously. Today, only the Internal Revenue Service is held in lower esteem--and then for only a month or so each spring. It will fall to Deutch’s successor to repair the damage and establish a vision for the future.

The most daunting task, one dodged by the last two directors, will be to come to grips with the Directorate of Operations, the CIA’s clandestine espionage service, to build a leadership team from the men and women already there, and to define a mission. Here are a few thoughts both Lake and the Senate Intelligence Committee might consider.

The Directorate of Operations. The DO is what makes the CIA unique; it has been the CIA at its quiet best, or its clamorous worst, for the last half century. But its raison d’etre has lost its clarity and the institution has foundered. If the mission can be defined and leadership brought to bear, the institution will be restored.

The CIA station. The DO’s overseas stations are indispensable assets, and boldness and creativity have always been required in guiding them. But the intelligence problems we now face--international terrorism, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, international organized crime and rogue states, or a poisonous cocktail of all these--call for even bolder imagination.

Call it the “Dr. No” enigma. To be effective against Dr. No, an international coalition of intelligence and enforcement entities will have to be pulled together under the director’s leadership. A first step might be the creation of “DCI stations” staffed not just from within the CIA, but also by professionals from among other major players in the intelligence community, including the FBI and Defense Intelligence. If the station-chief job was rotated among these agencies, much of the squabbling in the community would be dampened and a new framework for intelligence leadership and cooperation abroad would be created.

Counterintelligence. The CIA must take counterintelligence seriously, but not let it drive its agenda. If counterintelligence becomes the overriding mission, the obvious answer is the solution first offered by Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.): Close the CIA down. Then the Russians certainly can’t penetrate it.

The CIA was brought to its knees by the Aldrich H. Ames affair, a treachery that cost some 10 lives. But the treason of recently accused Russian spy Harold J. Nicholson hasn’t caused the same controversy. That is because it is so clearly part of a spy game between Moscow and Washington that has long since been played out.

The real peril from Russia, now a U.S. aid recipient and a halting partner in potentially great undertakings, involves its disintegration, not its threatening expansion. The CIA will need a working relationship with the Russians to track and neutralize any Dr. No. Slipping back into a spy-vs.-spy contest with Russian intelligence degenerates into seedy sport with senseless casualties.

Yes, another Russian spy might be unmasked at CIA, and the Russians will dig some out at the Lubyanka. When the former does happen, it is important that the CIA director and Congress resist calls to tighten controls even more on the men and women at the agency by intruding more deeply into their personal lives. They have forfeited about all the freedoms Americans can; take away any more, and the CIA will lose its mainstream people and begin to look like its old enemies.

Economic intelligence. The new director should hear out those who suggest that the CIA needs to step up its spying against its economic competitors--and then just say “no.” America doesn’t spy well against its friends, and handles getting caught, as predictably happens, even less well. If our leaders need to know a European central bank’s plans for the Lombard and discount rates, someone can call Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. He knows--and might even tell.

Covert action. Thoughtful, well-reasoned covert action, lawfully reported to Congress, can be a tremendous foreign-policy instrument for a president. CIA covert actions pushed the Soviets out of Afghanistan, nullified the Brezhnev Doctrine and helped fear change sides in Eastern Europe. But knee-jerk covert action, leveraged by partisan politics, can be destructive and is almost always dumb. Covert action is good, it is honorable--but less is more.

Lake has sharp bumps ahead at his hearings. As he goes about his pre-hearing rounds, he makes the case that, unlike Woolsey and Deutch, he actually wants the job.

He also appears to have marked some of the traps that snared his predecessors--contrived combativeness with Congress for Woolsey, a runaway ego for Deutch. That is a good start.

But some critics have already stepped forward to question whether Lake is up to the task. How he handles their challenges will be crucial to how he fares at CIA. The committee can dismiss as frivolous speculation that Lake’s resignation from Henry A. Kissinger’s staff in 1970, in protest over the invasion of Cambodia, will rekindle old passions at CIA or anywhere else. The issue of his failure to sell off stock portfolios is also a non-starter.

But there are more fundamental issues that will touch the sensibilities of the men and women who Lake will lead at the CIA.

One of these is Lake’s involvement with the Institute for Policy Studies in the 1970s. A collection of virulently anti-ClA Washington “hangabouts,” the institute sprang up about the time Sen. Frank Church initiated his hearings on CIA abuses. While the concept of constructive congressional oversight of the CIA ultimately flowed from the Church hearings, the institute veered off in a less productive direction.

Some of the early institute associates launched the publications Covert Action Information Bulletin and Counterspy. These were journals specifically designed to expose CIA activities and personnel abroad. Some older CIA hands still link the 1975 murder of Athens Station Chief Richard Welch to his exposure by these publications. Lake should be forthright in discussing his association with the institute.

Lake must also dispel speculation that he is moving to Langley to quash CIA intelligence reporting that casts a critical light on foreign policies of the Clinton administration. He will face tough questions on the secret and controversial acquiescence to Iranian arms shipments to Bosnia, a White House policy that opened up for Tehran a cheap, easy and menacing bridgehead in the Balkans. Lake has said he regretted not informing congressional leaders earlier, but he may still have to deal with the probity of the policy.

And, finally, some observations on style. If Lake is confirmed, as is probable, he should resist the urge to take a pack of attack dogs with him to Langley. There are good people at CIA. He should use them. And he should also take the pledge never to whine about his inability to “change the culture” of the clandestine services or “break up the old boy network.” Those excuses for failure are as phony as “the dog ate my homework.” He should try vision and leadership instead.