Spies Out in the Cold

After two months of speculation on who would succeed William Casey as CIA Director, Deputy Director Robert Gates has been named to the position. With five years on the National Security Council staff, and 15 years with the CIA (four as Deputy Director for Intelligence, one as full Deputy Director), Gates is certainly eligible. The governing qualification— that the new DCI be able to prevent the Iran controversy from crippling the agency—furthered Robert Gates’s candidacy, and finally clinched it.

The Iran affair, as it unfolds, is not dissimilar to the Watergate unpleasantness when the CIA’s extra-legal activities made it the prime choice for White House scapegoating. Then, as now, the DCI (Richard Helms) stepped down and his successor (William Colby) was picked for the rites of purification (after James Schlesinger’s five-month go at the job). At once, Colby began a quick bloodletting. The CIA’s operational side—the cloak-and-dagger out-in-the-fielders—was decimated, leaving the agency stricken. Stansfield Turner, brought in by Jimmy Carter, then seized the Colby knife and sliced off another seven hundred mid- and senior-level operational staffers (the “Vietnam bulge”). Agency analysts gained from the purges, acquiring the bulk of the residual money and staff.

JM

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John McLaughlin

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After two months of speculation on who would succeed William Casey as CIA Director, Deputy Director Robert Gates has been named to the position. With five years on the National Security Council staff, and 15 years with the CIA (four as Deputy Director for Intelligence, one as full Deputy Director), Gates is certainly eligible. The governing qualification— that the new DCI be able to prevent the Iran controversy from crippling the agency—furthered Robert Gates’s candidacy, and finally clinched it.

The Iran affair, as it unfolds, is not dissimilar to the Watergate unpleasantness when the CIA’s extra-legal activities made it the prime choice for White House scapegoating. Then, as now, the DCI (Richard Helms) stepped down and his successor (William Colby) was picked for the rites of purification (after James Schlesinger’s five-month go at the job). At once, Colby began a quick bloodletting. The CIA’s operational side—the cloak-and-dagger out-in-the-fielders—was decimated, leaving the agency stricken. Stansfield Turner, brought in by Jimmy Carter, then seized the Colby knife and sliced off another seven hundred mid- and senior-level operational staffers (the “Vietnam bulge”). Agency analysts gained from the purges, acquiring the bulk of the residual money and staff.