Statement of Sen. Paul Simon (D-Illinois):

I am going to vote in the negative on the approval of Mr. Gates for Director of the CIA. I have every reason to believe I would vote for him for almost any other position other than Director of the CIA.

I think there are three positions in the Federal Government--perhaps others could be added--but three at least where it is very key that they have the full confidence of this body and of the American public. One is the Director of the FBI, the second is a drug czar, and the third is the Director of the CIA. In each of these positions the potential for abuse is very, very great, particularly when you operate under the cloak of secrecy.

It is extremely important that whoever heads that operation has the full confidence of this body and of the American public. Judge Sessions, as head of the FBI, has that confidence. I have great respect for him.

The reality is that Mr. Gates is a person of great ability, but there are people who are thoughtful Members of this body, such as Senator Bradley, who have serious concerns whether he is the right person to head the Agency. There has been a lot of talk about the Iran-Contra problems.

Let me mention another area that also concerns me and that is a memorandum of December 14, 1984, from Mr. Gates to Bill Casey, and in that memorandum, first of all, he talks about maintaining the fig leaf of curtailing the arms sale to Salvador, and second, he talks about taking certain actions that are clearly acts of war.

My idea of what the Central Intelligence Agency ought to be doing is that it ought to be gathering intelligence, period, and then, if there are military decisions that should be made, the military should be involved in that.

I happen to have served in the Army in something that few people will even recall existed anymore, I know it has not existed for several years, called the counterintelligence corps. I am very much interested in this whole process of sound intelligence gathering, and that is what the CIA ought to be about. They ought to be gathering intelligence, period. And then, if they want to make recommendations to other agencies to take other kinds of covert or overt action, that should be done.

And I think there are plenty of people who are competent, who are knowledgeable. Let me just mention two, and I have no idea whether they would even consider it. I recognize the Gates nomination probably is going to be approved. But Admiral Crowe or Gen. David Jones, both retired, both former Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have great respect in this body. I would without hesitation vote for either as head of the CIA. And I would have full confidence that they have the sense of balance to do the right kind of a job.

I have an uneasy feeling about Mr. Gates, and I do not think we ought to have that uneasy feeling about whoever heads the CIA.

So, Mr. President, my vote will not be for Mr. Gates as head of the CIA. I think we can do better in this country. I think we can find someone who would have the unanimous support of this body.

Source: https://irp.fas.org/congress/1991_cr/s911105-gates3.htm#google_vignette

CIA ANALYSTS CONTINUE DRUMBEAT OF CRITICISM

by Benjamin Weiser
The Washington Post, October 2, 1991

Sen. David L. Boren (D-Okla.), chairman of the intelligence committee holding confirmation hearings on Robert M. Gates to be the new CIA chief, observed yesterday that the American public finally is getting its first glimpse at how the intelligence community works and is finding that in many ways "the CIA is not one agency but two."

He was referring to the focus this week not on the CIA's covert operations branch which has been the source of scandal in the past, but on the agency's intelligence directorate from which Gates comes and which generates for policymakers normally secret analysis of world events.

This community of analysts has labored in relative obscurity, sifting through reams of classified documents and computerized data and trying to make sense of it all. In riveting testimony yesterday that echoed earlier accounts by two other former analysts, Jennifer Glaudemans condemned Gates for politicizing that process, for intimidating those who disagreed with him and for creating a "culture of fear and cynicism among front-line analysts."

"Many analysts out at Langley {CIA headquarters} are pleading, and pleading largely to you, to set a higher standard of excellence and integrity," Glaudemans told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

Glaudemans and the two other witnesses who have testified against Gates say his actions poisoned the atmosphere principally in the division responsible for Soviet analysis, which includes some 300 or so analysts of 2,000 to 3,000 at the agency.

The intelligence committee has interviewed about two dozen other analysts, collecting statements and documents that are said to corroborate reports of serious morale problems under Gates, who headed the intelligence directorate from 1982 to 1986 and served as the CIA's second-in-command from 1986 to 1989.

Continues...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1991/10/03/cia-analysts-continue-drumbeat-of-criticism/839f48f7-f9d7-41f2-8660-25b45b3da8ce/

Limit CIA Role To Intelligence

By Harry S Truman
The Washington Post, December 22, 1963 - page A11

INDEPENDENCE, MO., Dec. 21 — I think it has become necessary to take another look at the purpose and operations of our Central Intelligence Agency—CIA. At least, I would like to submit here the original reason why I thought it necessary to organize this Agency during my Administration, what I expected it to do and how it was to operate as an arm of the President.

I think it is fairly obvious that by and large a President's performance in office is as effective as the information he has and the information he gets. That is to say, that assuming the President himself possesses a knowledge of our history, a sensitive understanding of our institutions, and an insight into the needs and aspirations of the people, he needs to have available to him the most accurate and up-to-the-minute information on what is going on everywhere in the world, and particularly of the trends and developments in all the danger spots in the contest between East and West. This is an immense task and requires a special kind of an intelligence facility.

Of course, every President has available to him all the information gathered by the many intelligence agencies already in existence. The Departments of State, Defense, Commerce, Interior and others are constantly engaged in extensive information gathering and have done excellent work.

But their collective information reached the President all too frequently in conflicting conclusions. At times, the intelligence reports tended to be slanted to conform to established positions of a given department. This becomes confusing and what's worse, such intelligence is of little use to a President in reaching the right decisions.

Therefore, I decided to set up a special organization charged with the collection of all intelligence reports from every available source, and to have those reports reach me as President without department "treatment" or interpretations.

I wanted and needed the information in its "natural raw" state and in as comprehensive a volume as it was practical for me to make full use of it. But the most important thing about this move was to guard against the chance of intelligence being used to influence or to lead the President into unwise decisions—and I thought it was necessary that the President do his own thinking and evaluating.

Since the responsibility for decision making was his—then he had to be sure that no information is kept from him for whatever reason at the discretion of any one department or agency, or that unpleasant facts be kept from him. There are always those who would want to shield a President from bad news or misjudgments to spare him from being "upset."

For some time I have been disturbed by the way CIA has been diverted from its original assignment. It has become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of the Government. This has led to trouble and may have compounded our difficulties in several explosive areas.

I never had any thought that when I set up the CIA that it would be injected into peacetime cloak and dagger operations. Some of the complications and embarrassment I think we have experienced are in part attributable to the fact that this quiet intelligence arm of the President has been so removed from its intended role that it is being interpreted as a symbol of sinister and mysterious foreign intrigue—and a subject for cold war enemy propaganda.

With all the nonsense put out by Communist propaganda about "Yankee imperialism," "exploitive capitalism," "war-mongering," "monopolists," in their name-calling assault on the West, the last thing we needed was for the CIA to be seized upon as something akin to a subverting influence in the affairs of other people.

I well knew the first temporary director of the CIA, Adm. Souers, and the later permanent directors of the CIA, Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg and Allen Dulles. These were men of the highest character, patriotism and integrity—and I assume this is true of all those who continue in charge.

But there are now some searching questions that need to be answered. I, therefore, would like to see the CIA be restored to its original assignment as the intelligence arm of the President, and that whatever else it can properly perform in that special field—and that its operational duties be terminated or properly used elsewhere.

We have grown up as a nation, respected for our free institutions and for our ability to maintain a free and open society. There is something about the way the CIA has been functioning that is casting a shadow over our historic position and I feel that we need to correct it.

SOURCE: http://www.maebrussell.com/Prouty/Harry%20Truman's%20CIA%20article.html

Are Presidents Afraid of the CIA?

By Ray McGovern
December 29, 2009

Excerpt…

Fox Guarding Hen House

The well-connected Dulles got himself appointed to the Warren Commission and took the lead in shaping the investigation of JFK’s assassination.

Documents in the Truman Library show that he then mounted a small domestic covert action of his own to neutralize any future airing of Truman’s and Souers’s warnings about covert action.

So important was this to Dulles that he invented a pretext to get himself invited to visit Truman in Independence, Missouri. On the afternoon of April 17, 1964, Dulles spent a half-hour trying to get the former President to retract what he had said in his op-ed. No dice, said Truman.

No problem, thought Dulles. Four days later, in a formal memo for his old buddy Lawrence Houston, CIA General Counsel from 1947 to 1973, Dulles fabricated a private retraction, claiming that Truman told him the Washington Post article was “all wrong,” and that Truman “seemed quite astounded at it.”

No doubt Dulles thought it might be handy to have such a memo in CIA files, just in case.

A fabricated retraction? It certainly seems so, because Truman did not change his tune. Far from it.

In a June 10, 1964, letter to the managing editor of Look magazine, for example, Truman restated his critique of covert action, emphasizing that he never intended the CIA to get involved in “strange activities.”

CONTINUED...

SOURCE: http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/122909b.html