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nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/18285-national-security-archive-doc-02-memorandum
Memorandum from Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Special Assistant to the President, to President John F. Kennedy, “CIA Reorganization,” June 30, 1961.
June 30, 1961
MEMORADUM FOR THE PRESIDENT
SUBJECT: CIA Reorganization
I submit the following views as one who worked in OSS during the
war ad served as a periodic CIA consultant in the years since.
On balance, CIA’s record has probably been very good. In the
nature of clandestine operations, the triumphs of an intelligence
agency are unknown*) all the public hears about (or should hear
about) are its errors. But, again in the nature of the case, an
agnecy dedicated to clandestine activity can afford damned few
visible errors. The important thing to recorgnize today, in my
judgement, is that the CIA, as at present named and constituted, has
about used up its quota. Its margin for future error is practically
non-existent. One more CIA debacle will shake faith considerably
in US policy, at home as well as abroad. And, until CIA is visibly
reorganized, it will (as in the Algerian instance) be widely blamed for
developents of which it is wholly innocent.
The argument of this memorandum is that the CIA’s trouble can be traced
to the autonomy with which the agency has been permitted to operate,
and that this autonomy is due to three main causes: (1) an inadequate
doctrine of clandestine operations: (2) an inadequate conception of
the relationship between operations and policy; (3) an inadequate
*Or should be – – a gross and repeated CIA failing has been its
occasional readiness to succumb to the temptations of favorable
publicity. The Guatemalan ad Iranian operations were almost
nullified by the flood of self-congratulatory publicity which followed
them (e.g., the articles by Richard and Gladys Harkness, “The
Mysterious Designs of CIA,” Saturday Evening Post, Oct. 30, NN.6,
19, 1951.
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conception of the relationship between operations and intelligence.
The memorandum also suggests ways in which some of these prob-
lems can perhaos be alleviated.
- CIA Autonomy
CIA conducts three main forms of secret work; clandestine intelli-
gence collection; covert political operations; and paramilitary
activities. It carries on these functions with relative autonomy.
The reasons for the autonomy are historical.
When CIA began, the State Department, still thinking too much in
terms of its traditional missions in foreign affairs, looked on this
new venture with suspicion and renounced the opportunity to seize
firm control of CIA operations. It did not, for example, try to
establish any effective system of clearance for CIA activities; and
some ambassadors frankly preferred not to know what CIA was up to
in their countries. After 1953 the fact that the Secretary of State and
the Director of Central Intelligence were brothers further confirmed
CIA’s independence from Supervision by State Department desks.
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