The Central Intelligence Agency had plenty of trouble during William F. Raborn’s 13-month tour as Director, but it is wrong to heap too much blame on the honest admiral’s shoulders, totally unsuited though he was for the appointment. Certainly the man who made the appointment carries his share of responsibility, and it is in any case not primarily a matter of individuals. The enduring question is whether a CIA type of organization can work in a society as democratic and open as ours.
The Agency has had a very bad press. It has been denounced—for the most part by the Left, which correctly senses that CIA’s actions are more consistently anti-Communist than those of other government agencies—as instigator of every catastrophe, bungle and crime on the global scene. Books have attacked it as an invisible government conspiring to seize world power. Senators Mansfield, Fulbright and McCarthy have aired grave doubts and proposed close congressional supervision.
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