getting cia history right: the informal partnership between agency historians and outside scholars

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Getting CIA History Right: TheInformal Partnership Between Agency

Historians and Outside Scholars

NICHOLAS DUJMOVIC

ABSTRACT The common task of all historians is to endeavour to present history asaccurately and objectively as possible despite gaps in the record or a paucity ofevidence. Intelligence historians face particular challenges in making sense of what toooften is history deliberately shrouded. Staff historians of the Central IntelligenceAgency operate mostly in the secret world and yet rely on the fine work of outsidehistorians. There is in effect a largely unstated, certainly informal, but absolutelycrucial partnership between CIA historians on the inside and dedicated scholars on theoutside. It is not too much to say, in fact, that accurate and objective history about theCIA is possible only through this informal partnership.

Introduction

Historians have been employed at the Central Intelligence Agency from itsearliest years, joining the more familiar specialists the CIA has employed analysts, scientists and technicians, case officers, covert action specialists,logisticians. Within just a few years of the Agencys founding, insidehistorians were documenting, reflecting on, and interpreting the Agencyspast with a view to understanding its present and future.

Of all the various reasons for an intelligence organization to have ahistorical staff public outreach, substantive contributions to the work ofoutside scholars, internal lessons learned the most important may well bethe idea that history can help us in intelligence figure out who we are byshedding light on the value of our often misunderstood profession, on themistakes and achievements of the past and how they came about, and on theways we can both improve in our work and even appreciate the reasons forpublic criticism, distrust, and the occasional call to disband the CIA.

The work of the CIA History Staff has an external function, like mostgovernment agency historical programmes, but its most important functionis internal. Even so, that internal historical function relies on histories andhistorical treatments of the CIA done by outsiders even though insidehistorians have greater access to sources generally denied to outsiders.

Intelligence and National SecurityVol. 26, Nos. 23, 228245, AprilJune 2011

ISSN 0268-4527 Print/ISSN 1743-9019 Online/11/230228-18 2011 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/02684527.2011.559143

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Intelligence historians who work within the CIA or other intelligenceagencies have a direct stake in the quality and reliability of these outsidehistories, and outside historians benefit from the work of CIA historians aswell, making for what is effectively an informal but important partnershipthat is crucial to the overall field of intelligence history. This paper is anattempt to explain how that informal partnership works by describing whatinside intelligence historians do, and, in the spirit of that partnership, toprovide for outside historians some constructive criticism and a fewsuggestions to make their work more accurate and relevant to all.

Is Getting CIA History Right a Chimera?

First, what does it mean to get CIA history right? What is meant here isnothing less than what good historians have always aspired to: presentingthe past accurately and fairly and therefore, one hopes, with insight byusing to the greatest extent possible all the myriad documentary,archaeological, oral, and other evidence at our disposal. CIA history shouldnot be exempt from the first requirement that it be true, as closely as it can bemade true by fallible humans. Of course, there are at least three groups ofpeople who would disagree that true CIA history is even possible.

First, there are those epistemological sceptics who say history in general isa construct, that there is not an objective past reality that can be recovered ina meaningful way and called true, and that in the end there is no differencebetween what we call history and what we call fiction. Traditional historiansrightly reject the modern sceptics and instead hew to the old fashionednotion that reality exists (except for this moment, all of it in the past) andthat it leaves traces that can be sifted, evaluated, and used to tell the story ofwhat really happened. John Lewis Gaddis, reflecting on the professionalhistorians craft, says historians are like cartographers who map the past.1

Like a cartographer, the historian never has all the information that exists,and much of the information is imperfect. Moreover, the historian like thecartographer has to determine what he is going to leave out and whatfeatures of the landscape he is going to emphasize. If the historian and thecartographer know their business and deal with the evidence critically andobjectively, the result will be a history or a map that reflects the reality of thepast or of the landscape and therefore can be relied on.

A second group says, in essence, that we might be able to know the truthabout all history except CIA history, that there is very little about CIAhistory that can be believed because the intelligence profession itself deals indeceit, that the CIA hides its history. To this group, a CIA historian like meis nothing but a propagandist who should be judged from the outset by thesource of employment, not on the work actually done.

There is a third group, largely composed of serious scholars, who say wecannot really know the truth about CIA history, not so much because of

1John Lewis Gaddis, The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past (New York:Oxford University Press 2004).

Getting CIA History Right 229

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malevolent intent to pretty up the history but simply because the record isnot made fully available. CIA historians would not disagree, because it canhardly be disputed that for the outside scholar the writing of intelligencehistory has unique challenges. Intelligence, after all, is a profession thatrequires and therefore practices secrecy. Whether the scholar likes it or not,there are, in fact, secrets that need to be kept. Sources who gave the CIAinformation need to be protected, as do the specific methods by which weacquired the information, because we may want to use those sources andmethods again or show potential sources that we can keep secrets.2

It is my contention that the truth about CIA history is knowable even ifevery truth is not. I am often asked what the difference is between the historyof the CIA that is available publicly the books and articles by outsidescholars plus the declassified material and narratives we make available and the secret history that still lies in CIA archives. I dont know precisely.My strong impression is that outside scholars, often with our help, havecovered more than 90% of what could be known if all the archives werethrown open. Less than 10%, I think probably a lot less than 10%, of CIAhistory is still secret, and most of that concerns details rather than any hugerevelations.

This rest of this paper addresses the subject of CIA history in three parts:History from the CIA the historical material the Agency makes availableto the public History in the CIA, which covers the use of history internallyat the CIA, and History of the CIA, in which it is argued that CIAhistorians on the inside and outside intelligence scholars can together, butonly together in the informal partnership, determine and make available forpublic knowledge true CIA history.

History from the CIA

We CIA historians often meet people who express surprise when they learnthat the CIA has a history staff at all though why the CIA should bedifferent in that regard from every other government agency is unclear. Tothe degree the population at large is aware that the CIA has a historicalprogramme, that knowledge largely is the result of the public outreachmission of the Agencys History Staff. Any survey of federal agency websiteswill show that almost every government department, agency, or bureau has astaff, unit, or individual doing history at that agency. Generally speaking,the primary mission of any given government historical office is theenhancement of the publics awareness of what that particular agency hasdone over the years, how the taxpayer expenditures for that agency havebeen justified, and, implicitly, why that agency should continue to operate.Indeed, many and perhaps most government historical units (even those inintelligence agencies) are organizationally placed under public affairs offices.

2There is within the CIA a continual and sometimes contentious debate precisely overwhat is still a secret, and this debate often delays the declassification and release ofdocuments.

230 Intelligence and National Security

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The website of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is a modelof this type. It documents in fascinating detail US government efforts fromthe early nineteenth century to protect the public from the adulteration offood (and later from harmful substances in medicines and drugs); the workof the Department of Agricultures chemistry department; the Pure Food andDrug Act of 1906, which the FDA considers its origin; and so forth up to thepresent. Americans cannot read this history and take for granted the safetyof what we consume. Yet, especially to intelligence professionals, it seemsoverkill: the FDA is using its history, well presented and interesting though itis, to express the hardly contentious idea that the government really ought tobe keeping ground glass, sawdust, and poisons out of our food and medicine.The FDA persuasively makes its case: keeping our ketchup safe for the pastcentury is indisputably important.

The CIA as an institution has a harder task justifying itself, even thougharguably the Agency has helped keep the Republic safe for more than 60years. The idea that the CIA and its work might be important is by no meansindisputable. Even though early American history is replete with examples ofthe use of intelligence in the national interest, including by some of thevenerated Founding Fathers,3 by the early twentieth century the Americanview was that there was something unusual or unseemly about intelligence,particularly regarding clandestine collection or covert operations. PresidentWoodrow Wilson himself an astute politician, historian, political scienceprofessor and author, the only US chief executive with a doctorate publiclyadmitted he had been dumbfounded in 1914 when he learned that Europeancountries actually spied on one another.4 This was truly an intelligencefailure at the highest levels.

Of course, the most famous expression of this peculiarly American streakof naivete about intelligence was Secretary of State Henry Stimsonsdismissive (and inaccurate) statement that Gentlemen do not read eachothers mail, a piety accompanying his order in 1929 to close down hisdepartments cryptanalysis operation.5 Major American newspapers ap-proved; one editorialized that this fine gesture will commend itself to allwho are trying to develop the same standards of decency betweenGovernments as exist between individuals. Many Americans became

3Stephen F. Knott, Secret and Sanctioned: Covert Operations and the American Presidency(New York: Oxford University Press 1986).4Christopher Andrew, For the Presidents Eyes Only: Secret Intelligence and the AmericanPresidency from Washington to Bush (New York: HarperCollins 1995) p.30.5The provenance of Stimsons saying is often disputed or considered obscure. Stimsonhimself, in his memoir co-authored with McGeorge Bundy, [On Active Service in Peace andWar (New York: Harper & Bros. 1947)], described the incident and what he claimed to havesaid at the time. It was a remarkable admission to make. Stimson, who died in 1950, probablyin his final years while the Cold War burgeoned would have agreed with the 1963 rejoinder offormer Director of Central Intelligence Allen Dulles, When the fate of a nation and the livesof its soldiers are at stake, gentlemen do read each others mail if they can get their hands onit. Charles E. Lathrop (ed.), The Literary Spy: The Ultimate Source for Quotations onEspionage & Intelligence (New Haven: Yale University Press 2004) p.213.


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convinced, during the period of the rise of totalitarian dictatorships in theinterwar period, that any sort of efficient, effective intelligence, particularlyon the federal level, was tantamount to the totalitarian states chiefinstrument of control, the secret police. The New York Times in 1938,commenting on proposals to combine US intelligence efforts, even opinedthat a concerted intelligence establishment was somehow un-American:

The creation of any super-espionage military agency is both unneces-sary and undesirable. It is alien to American tradition, and no glorifiedOGPU secret police is needed or wanted here.6

We see, then, even before World War II and the creation of Americas firstcentralized intelligence organization, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS),the development of the view possible only in a democracy thatintelligence serving a democracy is necessarily a threat to that democracyand that equates intelligence with totalitarian control. In the post-war periodthis view what CIA insiders call the Evil Geniuses perspective onintelligence found popular expression in movies and spy fiction (and evensome histories) that depicted a CIA inimical to liberty, a government withinthe government, the real centre of power. The Evil Geniuses view of CIAhistory continues to be propagated by popular fiction, television shows(including so-called documentaries), and by Hollywood films.7

After the failed Bay of Pigs operation in 1961 and as part of a generalloss of public confidence in government in the 1960s a kind of revisionismdeveloped that took the opposite tack: the CIA, far from being omnipotentpuppetmasters, is really a bumbling lot of incompetent dolts. In contrast tothe Evil Geniuses view, which is centred in film and fiction, theIncompetent Dolts school has arguably more sophisticated purveyors,tending to be supported by journalists, columnists, and editorial writers, forwhom the successful end of the Cold War far from testifying that the CIAmight have has some role in it only highlighted the CIAs shortcomings.

Both schools of thought, unfortunately, distort CIA history, and neither,needless to say, is of the CIAs making. Offering a balanced and accurate butnot uncritical view of the Agency and its work is the public mission of theCIA History Staff. This is accomplished in several ways. Like the FDA, theCIA maintains a public website, www.cia.gov, which features historicalinformation and narrative that document and, it must fairly be said, tend to

6Ibid., pp.193, 213.7The film Three Days of the Condor, released in 1975 during the height of congressionalinvestigations of US intelligence, is an exemplar of the Evil Geniuses approach to depictingthe CIA. A more recent example is The Good Shepherd (2006), which CIA historianslambasted not for its criticism of the CIA (for we are critics ourselves), but for its utter lackof historicity; see David Robarge et al, Review of The Good Shepherd, Studies inIntelligence 51/1 (March 2007) pp.19. For a general critique on how badly Hollywooddepicts CIA, see Loch Johnson, Spies in the American Movies, Intelligence and NationalSecurity 23/1 (February 2008) pp.524.


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http://www.cia.gov

support, CIA missions and activities over the Agencys history. But the CIAshistorical outreach goes further than affirming the Agencys existence: thewebsite includes thousands of declassified documents as well as theunclassified and declassified articles from Studies in Intelligence that theworlds top intelligence scholars appreciate. Visitors to the site can downloaddozens of unclassified products of the History Staff, including historicalmonographs on the U-2 and A-12 reconnaissance aircraft, the OSS origins ofthe CIA, documentary collections on Cold War intelligence issues, and manymore. Researchers can find released estimates on the Soviet Union and othercritical analyses and make up their own minds about the intelligence record.

Contrary to what many CIA critics say, much of the historical material theCIA makes publicly available is simply not favourable to the Agency andcannot be construed as CIA propaganda.8 The CIA recently released sixpreviously classified volumes covering Agency activities during the Vietnamera histories that are brutally frank about the shortcomings of the CIA andother government agencies, and all of it is available on www.cia.gov.9

CIA historians not only prepare the unclassified histories made availableto the public but work with the Agencys declassifiers to identify collectionsof documents for review and release based on their historical significance and not on the basis of whether a particular release will make the CIAshistory look any better.10 We recently assisted, for example, on the publicrelease of the papers of Richard Helms to Georgetown University, as well as

8In the category of warts and all treatments of CIA history that Agency historians providethe public, I would offer my own recent articles in Studies in Intelligence that are critical ofpast CIA practices. In Extraordinary Fidelity: Two CIA Prisoners in China, 195273,Studies in Intelligence 50/4 (December 2006) pp.2136, I criticized the poor decisions of CIAofficers in the field that led to the capture and Chinese imprisonment of two young CIA men,the stupid mistakes made in their cover story, and the subsequent organizational legend thatunfairly denigrated these men by maintaining, inter alia, that they had been on anunauthorized joyride when their plane was shot down over Manchuria in 1952. In Amnesiato Anamnesis: Commemoration of the Dead at CIA, Studies in Intelligence 52/3 (September2008) pp.316, the culture of the operational directorate came under critical analysisregarding how poorly CIA officers who perished in the line of duty were remembered formuch of the Agencys history. Additionally, in my critique of Tim Weiners Legacy of Ashes:The History of the CIA [Elegy of Slashes, Studies in Intelligence 51/3 (September 2007)pp.3343], I argued for balance in treating the historical record by recognizing CIA successeswhile acknowledging readily the shortcomings, failures, and outright debacles that areindisputably part of the CIAs past: No objective observer of Agency history can fail to notethat CIA in its history has failed sometimes miserably in what it set out to do or wasordered to do.9When one critic of the Agency writes that CIA has consistently refused to declassify any ofits histories that are critical of its activities, one has to wonder what CIA he is referring to.Matthew Aid of the National Security Archive, Electronic Briefing Book No. 260, posted 14November 2008, 5http://www.gwu.edu/*nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB260/index.htm4 (ac-cessed 12 October 2009).10The CIA History Staff, which has formal input into decisions regarding the release ofpreviously classified information or material undergoing declassification review, tends tofavour release unless damage to national security can be demonstrated as a likely result.


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http://www.cia.govhttp://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB260/index.htm

a release of documents related to the work of Ryszard Kuklinski, a PolishColonel who in the 1970s provided the CIA with crucial intelligence onSoviet and Warsaw Pact plans and capabilities. We are advising on futurereleases of Cold war documentation, including more Warsaw Pactintelligence, Vietnam era records including those of Air America, KoreanWar activities, and the use of intelligence by Ronald Reagan (not, I assureyou, an oxymoron).

The wealth of material made available on the CIA website, I believe, isunique for any intelligence organization in history in terms of its volume,quantity, and exposure of previously held secrets. And, as part of ourexternal function, CIA historians also speak many times a year beforeuniversity classes and seminars, think tanks, civic groups, and academicconferences.

But why should outside scholars and the rest of the public believe whatCIA historians say? It is a bit disconcerting when public disclosure andengagement are often greeted by sceptics with Why are they telling us this,and why now? implying that Agency historians are just propagandistsputting a spin on CIA history. No doubt there is a segment of the public thatwill never be convinced that a CIA historian is anything but a propagandistand for whom any denial of inherent bias will be seen ipso facto as itsconfirmation. But for those who profess to keep an open mind, I wouldsubmit two reasons why the CIAs historical work can be consideredindependent, reliable, and free from official pressure to tart up the historyto make it somehow better.

The first reason is that we take professional pride in being historians, as dohistorians in academia, other government historians, and independentscholars as well. Christopher Andrew had to address this question after heagreed in 2003 to serve as the official historian for the British SecurityService. Despite his qualifications and the high regard for his existing works,some scholars expressed doubts that Andrew could remain objective. But thecounterargument was that Andrew is a professional who knows that hisofficial position will, if anything, invite more scrutiny from the growingranks of intelligence historians not paid by the government who have theexpertise and desire to challenge Andrews work. As Andrew himself hasacknowledged, Posterity and postgraduates are breathing down my neck.11

Likewise, CIA historians ask that we be judged by the quality and contentof our work, not by our presumed intentions. We ask outsiders to read ourmaterial, and if bias is detected, let us know call us on it. Denounce us inprofessional journals, on blogs, or in Amazon reviews (the latter hashappened at least once). Stop inviting us to speak before your students andcolleagues. Shun us at academic conferences. But lets not assume from thebeginning that what CIA historians produce is somehow tainted. Con-versely, if our public work is useful, please tell us, or better yet, pay us aneven higher compliment, which is the use of our material in outside scholarlywork. We perceive that the number of such compliments we receive from

11David Walker, Just How Intelligent? The Guardian, 18 February 2003.


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intelligence scholars and from the public at large greatly exceeds thecomplaints or even the number of questions raised about our objectivity.

The second argument for the reliability of the public work of CIAhistorians is that, as important as that work is, it really reflects the HistoryStaffs inner work, for this is our real work the classified research, writing,publication and presentation that Agency historians conduct on the insidefor cleared readers and audiences and not only is more important than theexternal outreach, it absolutely requires us to be critical.

History Within the CIA

Even within the CIA, some are astounded to learn that an historicalprogramme has existed continuously at the Agency for almost 60 years. Evenin 1951, when the Agency was less than four years old, senior CIA officialsrecognized the value of history for the purposes of establishing what todaywe would call best practices or lessons learned. Needless to say, outreachto the American public for its edification regarding US intelligence agenciesand their activities was not considered a mission of the CIA historyprogramme in those early years. Rather, at the beginning CIA leaderswanted their history programme to benefit the Agency and its operations.

In 1997, then CIA Chief Historian Gerald Haines published a definitivestudy of the Agencys history programme, focusing on how it originated andconducted its business over the years. Haines noted that, at the beginningthe study of Agency history had the attention of major CIA officials, andthat this attention was for the right reasons. Agency leaders, includingDirector of Central Intelligence Walter Bedell Smith, wanted the CIA historyprogramme to accurately document CIA activities critically and objectively,including objective analysis of the Agencys weaknesses and defects inorder to avoid repeating failures.12

Despite these good intentions at the beginning, however, Hainess studyshows that over the next 45 years the CIA historical staff rarely had theresources or high-level attention to fulfil this mandate, and while itoccasionally thrived under CIA directors such as Smith, Richard Helms,and William Casey, it more often languished with little access to seniorofficials and minimal effect on the life and work of the Agency.13 Hainespessimistically concluded that, while most CIA officers pay lip service tohistory and are familiar with and use historical analogies, they are basically

12Gerald Haines, The CIAs Own Effort to Understand and Document Its Past: A BriefHistory of the CIA History Program, Intelligence and National Security 12/1 (1997) pp.20122.13A relatively new but increasingly frequent exercise on the part of CIA historians isthe attempt to correlate types of director with observed phenomena such as length of tenure,the party of the president, Agency deaths in the line of duty, and so forth. The fortunes of theHistory Staff, however, show no pattern. The programme has been championed by directorswho were CIA careerists (Helms, Gates) and by outsiders (Smith), and it has been ignored byinsiders (Dulles, Colby) and outsiders (McCone, Webster) alike.


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ahistorical. They believe they have no time or need for history and are toobusy to appreciate historys value not only as a preserver of the Agencysmemory [but also] as an important training mechanism and as a tool in the[decision] making process. Haines in 1997 was doubtful the Agency wouldlearn its history lesson.14

Much has changed, thankfully, in the past 12 years. Today we would haveto write a new conclusion to an update of Hainess study, for in recent yearsthe situation has improved notably in fact, the programme is thriving.Staffing levels are near historic highs for the programme currently fivepermanent staff officers with advanced degrees and relevant CIA experienceserving as historians, plus a dedicated researcher and several contracthistorians. More importantly, the History Staffs involvement in the internalwork and culture of the Agency has grown in recent years to encompass abroad range of activity while remaining professionally objective in itsapproach.

The interaction with the Agency workforce begins early. Every newlysworn-in officer of the CIA, for example, gets an introduction to theAgencys history that many find refreshing and provocative. CIA historiansintroduce themes that are developed at length in another venue, the 25-hourHistory of CIA course, a warts and all SECRET-level survey for mid-levelpersonnel that is presented annually. Those themes include:

. The state of American intelligence before the CIA, why the Agency wascreated, and what it was expected to do.

. The difference between the Cold War mission and todays priorities, andalso the continuities between them, such as the all-source nature of ourwork.

. The mix of cooperation, competition, and conflict that has marked theCIAs relations with other US intelligence agencies, both before and afterthe intelligence reform of 200405.

. The interplay between intelligence and CIA on the one hand andpolicymaking and the political process and personalities on the other,typified by the relationship between the CIA director and the president.

. The nature and conduct of covert action, the consequences it often has onthe Agency and on administrations, and the fact that presidents cannotseem to do without it.

. The development of congressional oversight in response to real andperceived CIA abuses.

. The record of CIA successes and failures.

14An even more critical assessment of the state of in-house CIA historical studies, albeitfrom a far narrower perspective (a personal experience in producing a groundbreakinghistory of the origins of CIA) is Thomas F. Troy, Writing History in CIA: A Memoir ofFrustration, International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 7/4 (1994)pp.397411.


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CIA officers are particularly eager to engage Agency historians on the subjectof successes and failures, largely because many on the outside seem to keepan Agency scorecard that is particularly heavy on the failure side.Naturally, CIA officers would prefer to know that they are not part of anorganization comprising incompetent dolts. CIA historians point out thatpublic discussion of CIA activities is often ill-informed or simplistic whatconstitutes a success or a failure is often not very well defined. In any case, itmust be said, the Agency has had its share of both, and they are discussed indepth. CIA historians explore analytic failures such as missing the first Sovietnuclear test, collection and analysis lapses that blinded CIA to the rise andsignificance of the Islamist movement in Iran, the mother of all operationaldisasters the Bay of Pigs and so on. There are, as it happens, a lot offailures mostly because the nature of intelligence work means that the tasksare inherently difficult. Above all, CIA historians provide the context behindthe record.

CIA historians also present the important successes in collection,analysis, and covert action. Ambiguous cases are also described: the BerlinTunnel, for example, arguably belongs in both columns, as does everycounterintelligence case in which an American intelligence officer wasfound spying for another country. Almost every counterintelligence case isa security failure of some sort, but the only thing worse than finding a spyis not finding him.

In addition to presenting general CIA history for the workforce, Agencyhistorians will cover specific topics of concern to a particular CIAcomponent. CIA historians have illuminated for operations officers andanalysts, for example, the difficulties of operating against a particular hardtarget country with a quite sobering presentation on Cold War activities generally unsuccessful ones in that region. For those who prepare anddeliver the Presidents Daily Brief (PDB), there is the history of the dailyintelligence report to the Chief Executive. CIA historians provide theAgencys communications officers with a sense of their heritage and theenduring attributes of their profession that do not change even ascommunications technology grows more sophisticated. Classified historiesand historical presentations are now a staple of many of the Agencystraining programmes, including for case officers, analysts, paramilitary,technical, and administrative personnel.

Besides educating the workforce and inculcating a sense of identity andheritage, CIA historians increasingly find themselves responding to the needsof CIA managers and senior staff. Much of the work constitutes quick-turnaround historical support that includes answering questions such as,who did the PDB go to at the end of the second Clinton administration(quite a few) or, have Agency aircraft ever carried weapons (yes). There alsoare high level questions about past personalities and events often provokedby obituaries or requests for vetting speeches to make sure Agency speakersget their facts right. Years ago in a public speech a deputy director of the CIAdescribed how the National Security Act of 1947 defined covert action,which is a problem because the Act studiously avoids mentioning such


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activities at all and we told him so. Today, CIA historians routinely checkspeeches and testimony for historical accuracy.

It is the in-depth support for ongoing programmes and decision-makingthat is the most gratifying and useful work of the Agencys History Staff.One technical collection programme manager, for example, could not createa narrative of how his unit had developed a particular collection capabilitybecause of the somewhat haphazard and grassroots nature of thatdevelopment; we could not explain how we did it. This manager wantedthe CIA History Staff both to document that achievement including all itsfalse steps and wrong turns and to serve as a lessons learned model so thatother managers could foster an environment conducive to technologicalinnovation. The resulting study, researched and produced by a CIAhistorian, was critical and fair, and it has been well received across theintelligence community (IC).

Another CIA manager contacted the History Staff for help in determininghow the programme she inherited had started and what were the challengesand pitfalls encountered. Another, a manager of analysis, wanted to studyhow the analytic directorate was organized in the past, particularly the mixof functional and geographic offices. Yet another analytic manager wasinterested in how past presidential administrations had viewed and usedintelligence, and existing studies on this subject were made available to him.In perhaps the best example of influence, CIA historians were asked toreview the record over several decades of a particular type of intelligenceoperation; our conclusions about what practices worked in what situationshave been used in high level decisions on whether to pursue this type ofoperation in a particular place. That is impact, that is relevance, and it doesnot get any better for historians than to have ones work used for currentdecision making on matters of importance to the Agencys mission andtherefore to national security.

It should be obvious that this internal work absolutely requires thehistorians professional objectivity and willingness to be critical. Theseattributes are seamlessly reflected in the external work of the CIA HistoryStaff that the public can see. When we make that work available to thepublic, we do not take off our historians hat and put on a propagandistshat. Inasmuch as all historians have biases, ours are transparent: we considerintelligence a proper function of government and believe that there is nonecessary contradiction between democracy and pluralism on the one handand the secret collection and evaluation of information, along with thenecessary use of covert means to effect a just foreign policy, on the other.Criticism is by no means inconsistent with these assumptions.

History of the CIA

Even from the inside CIA historians can identify with the challenges outsidehistorians face writing intelligence history is not for the fainthearted.Intelligence, after all, is a profession that not only works in the shadows butone whose practitioners fully intend to keep secret in every way. The record


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of precisely what was done, where and how, by whom, and why, is eitherpurposefully not available or often eludes even inside historians who stillhave to deal with compartmentation and need to know. Documentarysources are almost always fragmentary its been likened to researching anancient culture that has left only bits of clay pottery. Releases of previouslyclassified information seem to be few and far between and compriseadditional piles of pottery fragments. Oral histories need perhaps morecareful handling than usual (interviewees have been trained to preciselymanage information). All of this results in the paradoxical situation thatdiscriminating and dispassionate scholarly judgment is required even thoughoutside scholars tend to be in a permanent state of frustration. As a longtimeformer CIA historian observed,

Intelligence thus, by definition, resists scholarship . . . Histories ofAmerican intelligence [because the evidentiary base is difficult] tendto resemble in some ways the works of modern historians writing aboutancient times.15

CIA historians have long been aware that there exists an informalpartnership between us and intelligence historians on the outside. Outsidershave a stake in our publicly accessible work, for the material made availablethrough the History Staffs external outreach adds value to the corpus ofknowledge about the CIA and intelligence, at least judging from the citationsand other use made of it by outside historians. Likewise, CIA historians havea direct stake in the quality of outside intelligence histories, for we wouldfind it much more difficult to do our jobs otherwise. Our own expertise isgiven a bedrock of knowledge by the fine work published by scholars such asChristopher Andrew, John Ranelagh, Loch Johnson, and many others.16 Inaddition to maintaining a sizeable professional library the holdings ofwhich are at least 90% from the unclassified world the CIA History Staffsubscribes to and makes use of in our work professional journals such asIntelligence and National Security, the International Journal of Intelligenceand Counterintelligence, the Journal of Cold War Studies, the AmericanHistorical Review, Diplomatic History, and several others.

CIA officers continually ask the History Staff what books on CIA historyare worth reading unclassified books, that is, because CIA officers like totake this reading home or to the beach on vacation. The various historypresentations offered internally at the CIA have reading lists dominated bybooks, papers, and articles from the outside. CIA historians, like otherprofessionals, have to keep up with the outside literature and often are askedto comment on the latest book or article on the Agency. Reviews, of course,

15Michael Warner, Searching Where the Light Shines? An American View of Methods for theStudy of Intelligence, in L. Johnson (ed.) Strategic Intelligence: Understanding the HiddenSide of Government (Westport, CT: Praeger 2007) pp.10921.16The ability of CIA historians to publish on the outside often relies on our ability to citeunclassified works.


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are part of the normal output for any historian, and Studies in Intelligence aswell as outside publications often make available the views of CIA historianson the outside literature.

In many ways, CIA historians clearly are greatly in debt to intelligencehistorians in the wider world outside of the CIA. Given the interest thatinsiders have in the quality of outside intelligence history, it seemsappropriate to offer some suggestions for making it better. In the spirit ofthe informal partnership, then, we offer some constructive criticism ofproblems we see and gentle prescriptions for improvement.

Our general view of that outside literature is that, by and large, most CIAhistories have value, some have great value, and a few are absolutelyindispensable. At the same time, it must be said, some are misleading,inaccurate, portray a CIA with which we are not familiar, or all of theabove. For those histories with which we have problems, their shortcomingsactually stem less than might be thought from the lack of access to classifiedinformation as they do from other problems such as bias, laziness, inaccurateterminology, curious lacunae in expertise, or an incomplete appreciation forthe subject.

When reading these histories, insiders often wince when encountering astatement or assertion that is wrong as a matter of fact or interpretationand about which the writer should have known better because theinformation is public. These wince moments have less to do with criticismof the CIA (for we are all critics) or with the disclosure of classifiedinformation (that is a different kind of wince) than it does with things suchas sloppy factual errors, an unfair portrayal of intelligence activities, anincomplete recounting of the context in which they occurred, or a distortedconception of the motivations and competencies of individuals engaged inintelligence. Here, then, are areas of concern from the perspective ofinsiders wishing to help outsiders writing on intelligence, and particularlyCIA, history.17

Accurate Terminology Counts for Credibility

Unforgivably inaccurate terminology is the biggest single source of wincemoments in our outside reading. It is not pedantic to expect that purportedexperts on intelligence will get the lingo right. It may well be pedantic toinsist, as some former intelligence officers do, that CIA officers are neveragents, because early in CIA history the term agent was used for at leasttwo categories of Agency employees.18 But clarity and consistency demand

17Out of respect for outside scholars and historians, I have refrained in the discussion thatfollows from identifying problematic outside works by name.18For the first few years (into the early 1950s), the CIA employed US citizens as staff agentsand contract agents. These were what we today call, respectively, case officers and non-official cover officers.


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limits to the flexibility that ought to be tolerated in writing intelligentlyabout intelligence.

Mistaken monikers is one such category, such as double agent to meanjust about any person engaged in espionage except for the spy that has beendoubled. We are told by no less an authority than the EncyclopaediaBritannica, for example, that Kim Philby was a double agent. If only thatwere so! Unfortunately, Philby was a recruited agent of the Soviets withinBritish intelligence. If SIS had managed to double him back, allowingLondon to feed the Soviets with certain misinformation while learning aboutSoviet targets and information gaps, then Philby would have been a doubleagent. Intelligence histories that identify spies like Philby, Oleg Penkovskiy,or Aldrich Ames as double agents have an uphill battle for credibility amongthe cognescenti. Another example: in describing the world of codes andciphers, both these terms are incorrectly used interchangeably; moreover,codebreaker is a lazy writers synonym for cryptanalyst (I have done thismyself!), but even so it should not be used in the phrase the codebreakerssaid . . . when what follows is what the decrypted text said. (Likewise,imagery does not tell us anything until the imagery analysts have madesense of it.)

Institutional inaccuracies are mistakes about intelligence institutions their provenance and evolution, their duties, even their names that betray alack of basic research. Indeed, organizational details often are a reliablebarometer of the expertise of the writer. It might be forgivable to assertthat the Office of Strategic Services was created in July 1941, since OSS actually established in June 1942 had a predecessor office (theCoordinator of Information) that was created the year before, but it is notforgivable to date OSS from 1940, as two different recent historicaltreatments say.

It is amusing for an insider to read of an analyst in the CIAs Office ofSoviet Analysis during the mid-1970s, when that office was not created untilthe reorganization of 1981. That may be considered too esoteric, but itshould be astounding for anyone to read that the National Security Agencyduring the 1980s was directed to take high-resolution photographs fromspace of Beirut. Other clues that the writer has not done his homeworkinclude missing the transition from the National Imagery and MappingAgency (NIMA) to the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) in2003, or from the CIAs Directorate of Operations (DO) to the NationalClandestine Service (NCS) in 2005; calling the DEA the Drug EnforcementAgency; confusing the CIAs Center for the Study of Intelligence with itsjournal, Studies in Intelligence, and so on. A persistent mistake is referring toNational Intelligence Estimates as CIA products, as if the rest of theintelligence community did not exist (and not keeping up on the ICsmembership over time is another telling problem).

Similarly, factual flubs betray a lack of expertise that inside experts andmany outside ones as well will spot. The worlds highest and fastestreconnaissance aircraft was the CIAs A-12, not the Air Forces variant, theSR-71. CIA director John McCone was never a deputy secretary of defense.


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The notorious Family Jewels comprised 693 pages, not 693 potentialinstances of wrongdoing. Michael Hayden was not the first CIA directorsince the early 1950s to be an active duty military officer. Mistakes like theseare easily checked, so why some scholars make them and thereby underminetheir credibility is a mystery.

It is Crucial to Appreciate the Inherent Difficulties of all IntelligenceMissions and to Maintain Realistic Expectations About Them

There is nothing easy about any of the four classic missions of intelligence collection, analysis, counterintelligence, and covert action and much thatsuggests that in the real world intelligence will never work as well as laymenoften seem to expect it should work.19 An approach that implicitly uses aPlatonic ideal the CIA simply should not make mistakes is simplyunrealistic. Writers should keep in mind that since soon after its establish-ment the CIA was expected to maintain a worldwide coverage of events anda global capability to respond, unlike every other intelligence service withthe exception of the KGB.

The limitations of analysis and warning are particularly important tounderstand; it is a cartoonish view that analysts can and therefore shouldpredict the future. If it were true that these individuals had crystal balls,they would be in more lucrative lines of work. Even the logistics ofintelligence support are daunting, which is a neglected but necessaryelement of all intelligence work. American businessmen found that settingup and operating openly the first McDonalds or Pizza Hut in Moscowduring the Cold War was a trying task; American spies know that settingup clandestine support structures and mechanisms in hostile environmentsis infinitely harder.

Facts Should Not be Stretched, Nor Conclusions Tailored, to Fit a Theory

Yes, this is something all of us should have learned, at the latest, in ourundergraduate days, but the fact that a few established intelligence writershave violated this basic maxim of scholarship underscores the need to boldlyrepeat it here. Assertions that the development of the U-2 reconnaissanceaircraft reflected the CIAs failure to develop human sources, or that PolishColonel Ryszard Kuklinski was not really a CIA agent, are indefensiblebecause they have been concocted to fit an overarching theory in this case,that the Agency has never really succeeded at anything. The writer gets nopoints for consistency simply because his flawed theory has required suchoutrageous statements.

In another case, a history of the CIAs origins published a few years agomade several unsubstantiated assertions that fit into the writers theoryabout organizations, but unfortunately, as the insider historian who

19See, for example, Richard Betts, Enemies of Intelligence: Knowledge and Power inAmerican National Security (New York: Columbia University Press 2007).


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reviewed the book observed, statements that the CIA had no authority in thebeginning to collect intelligence or engage in covert action are simplywrong, exposing the writers shaky grasp of the historical facts. No CIAhistorian, I am quite sure, enjoys making such criticisms. We would simplyprefer to praise good history.

Some Themes May Be Interesting But Are Really Not Worth Pursuing

Every field has its outliers, and there are some lines of inquiry that arepointless, misguided, indefensible, and often simply, from an insidersperspective, silly. Historical treatments, for example, that try to portray theCIA as the pinnacle of control of the entire US government by YaleUniversitys Skull and Bones secret society suffer from a lack both ofevidence and of seriousness. The fascination with UFOs on the part ofsome pseudo-scholars, or with the Agencys alleged role in theassassination of President John F. Kennedy, or with the control of humansthrough radio waves or chips inserted in their skulls also belong in thiscategory.

The Scholarly Literature is now Broad and Deep, and a Familiarity with it isa Necessity, Not a Luxury

At one time, historical treatments of the CIA had to be somewhatindividualist and journalistic in nature because there was no body ofacademic work to consult and to provide a check against shoddy work.Today, thankfully, in addition to the body of works by reputable historiansthere are also many professional scholarly journals devoted to intelligence.Unless he has new sources that underlie new interpretations, the historianasserting that President Harry Truman, for example, never intended the CIAto conduct covert operations, or that the Agency missed (pick one) the firstChinese atomic test, the 1967 Mideast war, the breakup of Yugoslavia, thedecline of the USSR, will be surprised when he discovers after publicationthat his assertions were discredited long before he picked up his pen (ormouse).

Some Sources have Axes to Grind

This is as true of intelligence history as it is of the intelligence business itself.Relying on a favourite source because he provides good copy can turn into aminefield if that source turns out to have a particular bias. One history bookinherently discounted anything a CIA officer said, while accepting as facevalue every utterance by a State Department officer. One writer of a CIAhistory used oral history interviews from 30% more State Departmentofficials than from CIA officers, evidently not expecting that someone wouldnotice and raise questions. It is not that State officials cannot commentintelligently about the CIA and intelligence, but there are differences inperspective. If I wrote a history of, say, the New York Times, what would it


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say about my own bias if I interviewed that many more members of the staffof National Review?

Scholars should be Careful to Avoid the Politically Charged Factoid

When a well known and respected intelligence scholar states as a fact thatthe Presidents Daily Brief prepared for George W. Bush comprised only oneor two pages, most readers will accept what seems to be an authoritative(and sourced) statement as true and for many, it may well confirm theiropinions about the First Customers intellectual capabilities. But such afactoid is suspect on the face of it: how could such a PDB do its job for anypresident? Moreover, the potentially political nature of the assertion requiresthe objective historian to check and recheck his sources. In this case, thesource George Tenets memoir actually said that Bushs PDB was a seriesof articles each one or two pages long. Outside historians do not needcharges of bias any more than we inside historians do.

The Creation of Scenes, Words and Phrases, Chronologies or Context, inSupport of a Narrative is a Deadly Historical Sin

This is another obvious scholarly standard that bears repeating because ithas been prominently breached. The revelation two years ago that onejournalist-turned-historian put words in the CIA directors mouth and thenhad the president respond to them when no such exchange actuallyhappened turned into a scandal that may have prevented that writer fromwinning a Pulitzer Prize for that work. In another case, a writer openlyinvented dialogue, thoughts, and motivations concerning a CIA officer morethan half a century ago, saying in a footnote that he did so in service of thenarrative and credited the example of film director Oliver Stone, mostfamous for the notorious JFK.

Other maxims come to mind. An understanding of the culture andsubcultures within the CIA, for example, will reveal that analysts actuallydefy politicization. Considering the ramifications of sweeping assertions for example, that the CIA routinely deceives presidents or acts as anuncontrolled rogue elephant might avoid the attendant but unfoundedconclusions about broad and perfectly kept conspiracies that defy evidenceand common sense.

Conclusion

The foregoing discussion with its recommendations is not meant to suggestthat outside historians should refrain from criticizing the CIA far from it.Just as we in the CIA must never forget that we serve a democracy andwould not have it any other way outside scholars have a moral andprofessional obligation to use the liberties that are the blessings of a freesociety to fairly document, describe, and interpret the activities ofgovernment, including intelligence services. CIA historians are pleased to


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be partners in that effort, which benefits all citizens and ultimately helpspreserve our liberty. In the give and take that characterizes the informalpartnership between inside CIA historians and outside scholars and writersof history, the publics understanding of the mysterious world of intelligencestands the best chance of reflecting reality, of creating, to use Gaddissmetaphor, the true map of the landscape of CIA history.

Acknowledgment

The author, a staff historian at the Central Intelligence Agency, is required tosubmit for clearance drafts for external publication. All statements are thoseof the author and do not reflect the official views or positions of the CIA orany other US Government agency. Nothing in the contents should beconstrued as asserting or implying US Government authentication ofinformation or Agency endorsement of the authors views. This materialhas been reviewed by the CIA solely to prevent the unauthorized disclosureof classified information. Elements of this paper first appeared in LochJohnson (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of National Security (New York:Oxford University Press 2009).


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getting cia history right: the informal partnership between agency historians and outside scholars

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