On the Inside, Looking In
J. RANSOM CLARK
H. Bradford Westerfield, ed. Inside CIA's Private World: Declassified Articles from the Agency's Internal Journal, 1955-1992. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995.
While living
in the compartmented world of the Central Intelligence Agency for a quarter
of a century, I always awaited the quarterly editions of Studies in Intelligence
with some anticipation. It was here that I could obtain glimpses into areas
of the intelligence discipline otherwise closed to me. Now, Yale University
Press and H. Bradford Westerfield have collaborated to bring us 32 contributions
to Studies selected from an even larger number of declassified articles
available at the National Archives.
Although the
selections hardly justify the dustjacket hype (inclusion of Bob Woodward's
description of the articles as "haunting" is particularly amusing),
the editor has chosen well. The earliest article presented comes from 1959
and the latest from 1990; in between, there are eight articles from the
1960s, thirteen from the 1970s, and nine from the 1980s. The only author
with more than one selection is Richards J. Heuer, Jr., who has three, including
his excellent dissection of the debate surrounding Nosenko.
A number of other
well-known names appear as authors, including B. Hugh Tovar, Dino A. Brugioni,
and David D. Gries. In addition, some of the articles qualify as "classics"
in the field. These include Hans Moses' taut and insightful telling of his
work as a double agent from 1949 to 1953 and Maurice Ernst's brief history
of the development of economic intelligence in the CIA. It is instructive
that even in 1984 Ernst could write that the question of whether the CIA
should provide assistance to private U.S. firms "has been a hot issue
for more than a decade." (p. 328)
Another selection
with a theme that continues to resonate into the present is William R. Johnson's
"Clandestinity and Current Intelligence," originally published
in 1976. Whether you agree or disagree with Johnson's thesis, the argument
that the production of current intelligence and the conduct of espionage
are incompatible has not been better made.(1)
Westerfield has
written a 16-page introduction that includes a short history of the CIA,
comments on the process and criteria involved in selecting the articles
for publication, and the organizational outline into which the articles
have been placed. The Sections cover imagery intelligence collection, human
intelligence collection (overt and clandestine), the use of humint, the
analytical function and its consumers, and counterespionage. The introductory
history is reasonably balanced and will be useful to those coming to the
book without an extensive background in intelligence. However, Westerfield
goes to slightly annoying lengths to prove that he was not coopted by the
Agency during his association with the project.
Covert political
action, a highly controversial aspect of the CIA's role, was not written
about extensively in Studies, and the small number of articles that
did appear were not declassified for this project. Also missing from this
volume are the articles published on the historical aspects of intelligence.
The editor's decision to begin with the Cold War is understandable but regrettable,
given the uniqueness of many of the articles dealing with intelligence history
that have appeared in Studies over the years. The articles presented here
certainly are interesting and of overall high quality. However, they probably
say less about the CIA institutionally than the editor and publisher would
like readers to think.
(1) A succinct rendition of the arguments and conclusions in the Studies article was published as William R. Johnson, "The Elephants and the Gorillas," International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 1, no. 1 (Spring 1986), 42-56.
Return to CIA
Overviews Table of Contents
Return to CIA Table of Contents
Return to Main Table of Contents