CIA: 'SPLIT PERSONALITY'

To the Editors of the Crimson:

The call to abolish the CIA is the kind of superficial hyperbolic bleating that unfortunately makes so much of Crimson editorial policy both outrageous and laughable. By Crimson logic we should abolish the Presidency because Nixon committed crimes against civil liberties.

The Crimson seems ignorant of the basic and vital fact that the CIA is a split personality. It is the Operations Directorate which dominates the popular conception of what the Agency is, playing dirty tricks, attracting right-wing whacko CREEPers like Howard Hunt and Bernard Barker, and inspiring the James Bond mythology; but this branch is the less important part of the CIA in terms of American national interests. It is the Intelligence Directorate, which David Riesman has aptly noted is one of the most left-wing agencies in the government, which is the most important half of the CIA, providing the research, information processing, and analysis necessary for informed policy decision.

I wouldn't expect the Crimson Ed Board to buy liberal arguments for the necessity of government intelligence, but even pseudo-revolutionaries should consider facts such as the following before cavalierly assuming that humanity will benefit by throwing out the intelligence baby with the dirty tricks bath water:

1. In the Bay of Pigs, the Intelligence Directorate was excluded from the operation. If it had not been, the planners and President Kennedy might have been disabused of the fatal illusion that the exile landing would provoke a popular Cuban uprising.

2. As the Pentagon Papers showed so strikingly, it was the CIA Office of National Estimates which waged a lonely battle within the government throughout twenty years of Vietnam policy making, consistently issuing analyses more pessimistic than most other agencies. The tragedy of Vietnam is not that Presidents listened too much to the CIA, but that they did not listen enough.

3. In SALT I policy making, the CIA was allied with the "soft line" Arms Control and Disarmament Agency against "hard line" Defense Department agencies.

4. As Soviet and American negotiators know, the possibility and stability of hopeful future agreements on nuclear arms limitation or reduction will depend on verification assurances, which will mean more intelligence gathering (satellite surveillance of missile sites, etc.) rather than less.

Instead of foaming at the mouth out of justified indignation and unjustified ignorance, and simplistically demanding abolition of the CIA because some of its honchos were criminals, the Crimson should seek to reform the Agency, by purging it of functions and personnel associated with domestic operations, by shackling the probably dispensable dirty tricks branch, and by fortifying the Agency's intelligence branch. Earnestly yours,   Dick Betts   Teaching Fellow in Government