The book Eternal Vigilance? 50 years of the CIA, seeks to explore some of the major themes in CIA history. In February 1947 the White House submitted to Congress a bill for the unification of the armed forces which, in its 102nd clause, provided for the establishment of a Central Intelligence Agency. Congress approved the bill on 26 July, 1947 and the National Security Act came into force on 19 September and the following day the modest Central Intelligence Group gave way to the mighty United States Central Intelligence Agency. No single volume can seek to cover all, or even most of the CIA's diverse activities during its first 50 years as the present book on the subject has attempted to do. America’s march towards a systematic post-war permanent intelligence system, made up of CIA, NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY and the intelligence organizations of the military services, remain significant elements of American intelligence history. But the fact remains that after passing through a series of ups and downs between 1861 and 1941, the United States finally came of age in Second World War and that henceforth the only road open to it was one leading to larger, more sophisticated and better integrated intelligence systems.
Tthe CIA owed its essential nature to an Act of Congress and on Capitol Hill fear of Soviet Union had not yet taken root. Pearl Harbor was the burning issue there. While Congress which in later years sometimes demanded a more restricted role for CIA showed a broader appreciation of the need for expanded intelligence. The creators of CIA were seeking to strengthen America’s capacity for free thought and independent action.
Regarding relationship between American and Dutch Intelligence, very little has been published in Netherlands, and almost nothing in English. The present Dutch Intelligence community consists of an Internal Security Service (BVD) and a military Intelligence Service (MID). As regards BVD, this internal security service was established in 1949 by confidential Royal decree. Despite recurrent American disappointment with Dutch foreign intelligence, it was interesting enough that relationship between the two agencies was generally close. Further the most significant contribution during the Second World War was to demonstrate the potential significance of all fields of science- from Biomedicine to meteorology to national defense. As Ronald Doel and Allan Needell pointed out that establishment of scientific intelligence within CIA in the immediate post-war period was at best a mixed success. Military intelligence agencies resisted often unsuccessfully the intrusions of civilian strategic analysts. The ethical lapses of CIA medical specialists in “Artichoke” and “MKULTRA” mind control experiments ranked among the most troubling violations of national trust. Finally, the success of CIA science specialists in developing greatly improved remote monitoring means by the late 1950’s reduced their reliance on military intelligence and helped bring about a further consolidation of scientific resources in the Agency’s new Directorate of Science and Technology (created in 1963).
As for as the Soviet threat is concerned vis-à-vis CIA, the book brings out the essence of Soviet influence on the working of CIA. The CIA though originally not envisaged as a counter force to contain so-called Communist expansionism became increasingly dominated by the desire to outwit Soviet influence. Around 50 National Intelligence Estimates (NIE) were produced each year. Those dealing with the Soviet Union were the NIE-11 series. The important feature of this estimating process was that it favored the CIA. The responsibility for producing national estimates rested with the Board of the Office of National Estimates (ONE). Although ONE was notionally separate from CIA it shared the same offices in Langley, Virginia and its personnel often recruited from the CIA. In the estimates on Soviet strategic forces, ONE had a long standing distrust of military estimators. They were fortified with the view that it was shared by the most substantial figure in the defense establishment- Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. McNamara had become disillusioned with the continuous promotion of what he considered to be exaggerated claims about Soviet potential. The book has elaborately dwelt on a wide range of topics ranging from downing of U-2 reconnaissance aircraft, ICBM deployment, ABM deployment and SALT negotiations. In the course of time, the validity of National Intelligence Estimates began to be challenged, fragmented intelligence community was struggling to produce an estimate that was subject to inherent uncertainties.
Michael Donovan in the chapter entitled “National Intelligence and the Iranian Revolution” considers Iranian Revolution as agency’s greatest predictive and reporting failures. Senior policy makers in particular have cited a lack of intelligence to explain their own belated and limited response to the crisis. On the last day of 1977, President Jimmy Carter declared Iran to be an ‘island of stability in one of the most troubled areas of the world’. A week after Carter’s speech the government controlled press in Iran published an article entitled ‘Iran and Red and Black Colonialism’ which ridiculed the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. In response to this violent demonstrations were staged in the Holy city of Qom, marking the beginning of Iranian Revolution. Yet in November 1978, did the foreign policy establishment in Washington become aware that the regime in Teheran was faltering. However, prior to 1978, there was no intelligence that predicted the fall of shah. The nature of the Iranian power structure tended to obfuscate sources of information that might have been available in other countries.
The CIA’s economic function grew in response to the undeserved need for more reliable estimates about Soviet Bloc economies and then the economies of the less developed countries and newly independent nations of the Third World, decades before the international financial institutions began to accumulate impressive data about such problems. Government officials unanimously praise the value of economic intelligence gathered by Agency, even if the flashes of special insight are unpredictable or episodic. The marketplace produces such information as is helpful in achieving commercial interests. Outside information can even be distorted. The Soviet Union never accurately reported its defense spending. Finally, US Government may want to mould information to fit its own special requirements. Thus the book has very nicely pointed out the actual working of CIA. How the Agency’s bureaucratic structures expanded with the passage of time has been aptly brought to the fore by Rhodri Jeffreys Jones and Christopher Andrew.
On the question of accountability vis-à-vis CIA and other Government agencies, by constitutional design, the Executive branch of government in the United States is required to share its powers with the legislative and judicial branches. This legislative monitoring or review is usually referred to by the awkward tem ‘oversight’. For the most part, though, the government has abided by the founding principle of power-sharing, though its precise form has always been dependent on the personalities and conditions of the times. Some events have compelled a greater concentration of power in the hands of the Executive, for the sake of swift action and secrecy. Mindful of the need for improved supervision over the CIA and its companion agencies, legislators attempted from time to time to craft new congressional controls. However, these initiatives were always defeated as a majority of legislators remained content to abide by the rule of exceptionalism for America’s secret agencies.
Not unlike the other segments of the vast CIA bureaucracy, the fortunes of the CIA historical programme have been closely tied to the personal interest paid to them by the senior menagement officials. Most CIA officers and decision makers, although they use historical analogies everyday, are basically ahistorical. For many CIA officials, resources and personnel were and are better placed in other areas. Generally, history per se has a very low Agency priority as the book has spelt out. The study on CIA’s own effort to understand and document its past traces the development of CIA history programme from its origins under the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) General Walter Bedell Smith in 1950 to its status under DCI judge William Webster in 1991. What becomes strikingly clear in this brief study of the origins and development of the CIA history programme is the general ignorance and misunderstanding on the part of most CIA officials of history’s value to the agency. Despite its current strengthened position, there is little to suggest that Agency policy makers are using history insightfully. Whether or not the Agency has learned its history lessons remains to be seen.
Some of the CIA’s notorious errors, like Roosevelt’s failings before Pearl Harbor, have been closely related to misunderstandings of intelligence history. The disastrous overestimation of the efficacy of covert action by Allen Dulles and his senior operations officers during the 1950’s, culminating in the debacle of the Bay of Pigs, derived from a false comparison between wartime special operations behind enemy lines and paramilitary operations in peacetime. That false comparison was reinforced by superficial analysis of the apparently easy overthrow of the Iranian Prime Minister, Muhammad Mossadeq, in 1953 and of the Guatemalan president, Jacobo Arbenz Guzman, a year later. More careful study of such successes would have shown that they would not be easily replicable in future.
The book related to the CIA is “The Wizards of Langley: Inside the CIA’s Directorate of Science &Technology” by Jeffrey T Richelson. This book particularly focuses on the working of CIA’s Department of Science & Technology. The issues spelt out in the book “50 years of CIA” like the ethical lapses of CIA medical specialists in ‘Artichoke’ and ‘MKULTRA’ mind control experiments, administering LSD to scientists without their knowledge (one committed suicide as a result), employing cats as bugging devices, have been more broadly discussed in the book by Richelson. The book also offers a wealth of anecdotes, giving readers a rare look at top-secret operations and spy games of the cold war. This is a nice book for those interested in the largely unsung heroes who have enabled the CIA to work so effectively.
The book 50 Years of CIA is an interesting account about the past, present and future of Central Intelligence Agency. I personally find it very much insightful which is not self- praising or only presenting the viewpoint of United States, but a well drafted document which has objective approach in its entirety. “Eternal Vigilance?” is an edited book which has contributions from various types of scholars who are not in any way seem to promote the interests of Western world alone. This is the most significant factor which has particularly increased my interest. The one who wants to have significant information on the working of Cia , then the search for an authentic account ends here.
Tthe CIA owed its essential nature to an Act of Congress and on Capitol Hill fear of Soviet Union had not yet taken root. Pearl Harbor was the burning issue there. While Congress which in later years sometimes demanded a more restricted role for CIA showed a broader appreciation of the need for expanded intelligence. The creators of CIA were seeking to strengthen America’s capacity for free thought and independent action.
Regarding relationship between American and Dutch Intelligence, very little has been published in Netherlands, and almost nothing in English. The present Dutch Intelligence community consists of an Internal Security Service (BVD) and a military Intelligence Service (MID). As regards BVD, this internal security service was established in 1949 by confidential Royal decree. Despite recurrent American disappointment with Dutch foreign intelligence, it was interesting enough that relationship between the two agencies was generally close. Further the most significant contribution during the Second World War was to demonstrate the potential significance of all fields of science- from Biomedicine to meteorology to national defense. As Ronald Doel and Allan Needell pointed out that establishment of scientific intelligence within CIA in the immediate post-war period was at best a mixed success. Military intelligence agencies resisted often unsuccessfully the intrusions of civilian strategic analysts. The ethical lapses of CIA medical specialists in “Artichoke” and “MKULTRA” mind control experiments ranked among the most troubling violations of national trust. Finally, the success of CIA science specialists in developing greatly improved remote monitoring means by the late 1950’s reduced their reliance on military intelligence and helped bring about a further consolidation of scientific resources in the Agency’s new Directorate of Science and Technology (created in 1963).
As for as the Soviet threat is concerned vis-à-vis CIA, the book brings out the essence of Soviet influence on the working of CIA. The CIA though originally not envisaged as a counter force to contain so-called Communist expansionism became increasingly dominated by the desire to outwit Soviet influence. Around 50 National Intelligence Estimates (NIE) were produced each year. Those dealing with the Soviet Union were the NIE-11 series. The important feature of this estimating process was that it favored the CIA. The responsibility for producing national estimates rested with the Board of the Office of National Estimates (ONE). Although ONE was notionally separate from CIA it shared the same offices in Langley, Virginia and its personnel often recruited from the CIA. In the estimates on Soviet strategic forces, ONE had a long standing distrust of military estimators. They were fortified with the view that it was shared by the most substantial figure in the defense establishment- Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. McNamara had become disillusioned with the continuous promotion of what he considered to be exaggerated claims about Soviet potential. The book has elaborately dwelt on a wide range of topics ranging from downing of U-2 reconnaissance aircraft, ICBM deployment, ABM deployment and SALT negotiations. In the course of time, the validity of National Intelligence Estimates began to be challenged, fragmented intelligence community was struggling to produce an estimate that was subject to inherent uncertainties.
Michael Donovan in the chapter entitled “National Intelligence and the Iranian Revolution” considers Iranian Revolution as agency’s greatest predictive and reporting failures. Senior policy makers in particular have cited a lack of intelligence to explain their own belated and limited response to the crisis. On the last day of 1977, President Jimmy Carter declared Iran to be an ‘island of stability in one of the most troubled areas of the world’. A week after Carter’s speech the government controlled press in Iran published an article entitled ‘Iran and Red and Black Colonialism’ which ridiculed the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. In response to this violent demonstrations were staged in the Holy city of Qom, marking the beginning of Iranian Revolution. Yet in November 1978, did the foreign policy establishment in Washington become aware that the regime in Teheran was faltering. However, prior to 1978, there was no intelligence that predicted the fall of shah. The nature of the Iranian power structure tended to obfuscate sources of information that might have been available in other countries.
The CIA’s economic function grew in response to the undeserved need for more reliable estimates about Soviet Bloc economies and then the economies of the less developed countries and newly independent nations of the Third World, decades before the international financial institutions began to accumulate impressive data about such problems. Government officials unanimously praise the value of economic intelligence gathered by Agency, even if the flashes of special insight are unpredictable or episodic. The marketplace produces such information as is helpful in achieving commercial interests. Outside information can even be distorted. The Soviet Union never accurately reported its defense spending. Finally, US Government may want to mould information to fit its own special requirements. Thus the book has very nicely pointed out the actual working of CIA. How the Agency’s bureaucratic structures expanded with the passage of time has been aptly brought to the fore by Rhodri Jeffreys Jones and Christopher Andrew.
On the question of accountability vis-à-vis CIA and other Government agencies, by constitutional design, the Executive branch of government in the United States is required to share its powers with the legislative and judicial branches. This legislative monitoring or review is usually referred to by the awkward tem ‘oversight’. For the most part, though, the government has abided by the founding principle of power-sharing, though its precise form has always been dependent on the personalities and conditions of the times. Some events have compelled a greater concentration of power in the hands of the Executive, for the sake of swift action and secrecy. Mindful of the need for improved supervision over the CIA and its companion agencies, legislators attempted from time to time to craft new congressional controls. However, these initiatives were always defeated as a majority of legislators remained content to abide by the rule of exceptionalism for America’s secret agencies.
Not unlike the other segments of the vast CIA bureaucracy, the fortunes of the CIA historical programme have been closely tied to the personal interest paid to them by the senior menagement officials. Most CIA officers and decision makers, although they use historical analogies everyday, are basically ahistorical. For many CIA officials, resources and personnel were and are better placed in other areas. Generally, history per se has a very low Agency priority as the book has spelt out. The study on CIA’s own effort to understand and document its past traces the development of CIA history programme from its origins under the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) General Walter Bedell Smith in 1950 to its status under DCI judge William Webster in 1991. What becomes strikingly clear in this brief study of the origins and development of the CIA history programme is the general ignorance and misunderstanding on the part of most CIA officials of history’s value to the agency. Despite its current strengthened position, there is little to suggest that Agency policy makers are using history insightfully. Whether or not the Agency has learned its history lessons remains to be seen.
Some of the CIA’s notorious errors, like Roosevelt’s failings before Pearl Harbor, have been closely related to misunderstandings of intelligence history. The disastrous overestimation of the efficacy of covert action by Allen Dulles and his senior operations officers during the 1950’s, culminating in the debacle of the Bay of Pigs, derived from a false comparison between wartime special operations behind enemy lines and paramilitary operations in peacetime. That false comparison was reinforced by superficial analysis of the apparently easy overthrow of the Iranian Prime Minister, Muhammad Mossadeq, in 1953 and of the Guatemalan president, Jacobo Arbenz Guzman, a year later. More careful study of such successes would have shown that they would not be easily replicable in future.
The book related to the CIA is “The Wizards of Langley: Inside the CIA’s Directorate of Science &Technology” by Jeffrey T Richelson. This book particularly focuses on the working of CIA’s Department of Science & Technology. The issues spelt out in the book “50 years of CIA” like the ethical lapses of CIA medical specialists in ‘Artichoke’ and ‘MKULTRA’ mind control experiments, administering LSD to scientists without their knowledge (one committed suicide as a result), employing cats as bugging devices, have been more broadly discussed in the book by Richelson. The book also offers a wealth of anecdotes, giving readers a rare look at top-secret operations and spy games of the cold war. This is a nice book for those interested in the largely unsung heroes who have enabled the CIA to work so effectively.
The book 50 Years of CIA is an interesting account about the past, present and future of Central Intelligence Agency. I personally find it very much insightful which is not self- praising or only presenting the viewpoint of United States, but a well drafted document which has objective approach in its entirety. “Eternal Vigilance?” is an edited book which has contributions from various types of scholars who are not in any way seem to promote the interests of Western world alone. This is the most significant factor which has particularly increased my interest. The one who wants to have significant information on the working of Cia , then the search for an authentic account ends here.
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