The Craft of Intelligence

by Allen W. Dulles

  . . . the President, the Vice President, and the Speaker of the House . . . undertake to coordinate a course of action for the purpose of halting the rapid erosion of our national intelligence effort. . . . Officials in Moscow, Peking, and Havana must applaud our stupidity in announcing publicly facts which they would gladly spend huge sums of money endeavoring to obtain. Responsibility on our part is urgently required.3

  3 Congressional Record, March 7, 1963, p. 3549.

  I, of course, recognize that in connection with appropriations and other legislation, particularly our defense budget, committees of the Congress need to receive a substantial amount of classified information from the executive. Does it necessarily follow that this must be published in great detail? It is often the intimate and technical details that are the most valuable to the potential enemy and of little interest to the public. I question whether, with respect to these technical details, there is a public “need to know.”

  It is also often said that Congress can’t keep a secret. Past history belies this. The Manhattan Project, through which the atomic bomb was developed and billions of public funds spent, was a well-kept secret in a vital area of our national defense.

  The reader may object that secrets can be kept in time of “hot” war but not under mere Cold War conditions. From almost ten years of experience in dealing with the Congress, I have found in my contacts with the subcommittees for the CIA of the Armed Services Committees of the House and Senate, and the Appropriations Committees of the two houses, that secrets can be kept and the needs of our legislative bodies met. In fact, I do not know of a single case of indiscretion that has resulted from telling these committees the most intimate details of CIA activities, and that included the secret of the U-2 plane. It is true, of course, that it is more difficult to preserve secrecy on matters which have to go before the entire Congress and receive its vote of approval. But it is not necessary to include intimate details of the kind that may have to be disclosed to certain Congressional committees by the Department of Defense in connection with its exhaustive budget presentations.

  I would conclude that if this whole subject were discussed frankly and fully between the executive departments and the Congress, a method could be found for preventing the flow to hostile quarters of a part of the information which the adversary now obtains. There would still be a substantial trickle, to be sure, but not the great flood of information which is now made available. Is this not worth exploring?

  A more difficult area is that of the press, periodicals and particularly service and technical journals. I recall the days when the intelligence community was perfecting plans for various technical devices to monitor Soviet missile testing and space operations. The technical journals exerted themselves to give the American public, and hence the Soviet Union, the details of radar screens and the like, which for geographic reasons, to be effective, had to be placed on the territory of friendly countries close to the Soviet Union. These countries were quite willing to cooperate as long as secrecy could be preserved. This whole vital operation was threatened by public disclosure, largely through our own technical journals, to the great embarrassment of our friends who were cooperating and whose position vis-à-vis the Soviets was complicated by the publication of speculations and rumors. Except for a small number of technically minded people, such disclosures added little to the welfare or happiness or even to the knowledge of the American people. Certainly this type of information did not fall in the “need to know” category for the American public.

  Undoubtedly it is of the greatest importance in this nuclear missile age to keep the American people informed about our general military position in the world in ample detail. Of course we should have an informed public opinion, backed up with hard facts, authoritatively presented. There has been at times too much talk about bomber and missile gaps and the like. Personally, I am convinced that at no time has our military position been inferior to that of the Soviets. It is well that our people should know that and the Soviet Government, too. But what we don’t really require is detailed information as to where every hardened missile site is located, exactly how many bombers or fighters we will have or the details of their performance.

  If the giveaway is generally a result of our practice of conducting government in the open, both contrived and careless leaks can be attributed to interests and acts of special groups or individuals within the government. The contrived leak is the name I give to the spilling of information without the authority to do so, and it has occurred most often in the Defense Department and at times in the State Department. There have been cases where subordinate officers felt that their particular service or the policy which it is promoting was being unfairly handled by the press or even by higher officials of government because “all” the facts were not available to the press and public. It is, in effect, an appeal by subordinates, over the heads of superiors, to public opinion. This occurred once in connection with the transfer of major responsibility in the whole field of strategic missiles from the Army to the Air Force. At other times, information regarding State Department policies has been leaked by subordinates who disapproved of what was going on or by other agencies, generally the military, where there have been differences from State Department policy.

  Douglass Cater cited a particularly disturbing leak of a private memorandum written by Secretary of State Rusk to Secretary of Defense McNamara, in which Rusk allegedly proposed that even “massive Soviet attacks on Europe should be met with conventional weapons.” The story, Cater reports, “had not been based on the memorandum directly, only on an ‘interpretation’ of it, supplied by someone in the Air Force who was obviously hostile to the Secretary of State’s position.” He adds that it took an estimated one thousand man-hours of investigation before the Air Force general suspected of leaking the Rusk memorandum story could be identified, after which he was “exiled” to Maxwell Field, Alabama.

  The careless leak, one not due to malice or plan, may be the result of someone talking thoughtlessly out of turn, perhaps encouraged by an astute reporter. By questioning enough people, the latter is often able to put together the true story of highly classified developments or programs in the making. All this is hard to deal with because reporters, who are directly or indirectly the beneficiaries of such leaks, refuse to disclose the sources, and it becomes almost impossible to obtain conclusive evidence as to who the guilty party, or parties, may be.

  Very recently I found among the papers of my uncle Robert Lansing a most interesting letter and memorandum which President Woodrow Wilson, some fifty years ago, addressed to Lansing’s predecessor as Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan.4 This proposed a “panacea” to prevent leaks of secret White House–State Department correspondence. Here we see Wilson, who coined the phrase “open covenants openly arrived at,” trying, in his day, to deal with the protection of our high-level diplomatic correspondence. The “misplaced” memorandum enclosed with the President’s letter of February 8, 1915, to Secretary Bryan was obviously typed by Wilson himself and has somewhat illegible interlineations in his own handwriting. Undoubtedly Bryan passed this correspondence on to Lansing when, a few months later, Lansing took over the office of Secretary of State.

  4 The originals of Wilson’s letter and memorandum together with certain other Wilson-Lansing papers of World War I days, which the author recently found, have been given to the Library of Princeton University.

  Woodrow Wilson, like all his successors, found only frustration in this field of protecting secrets. He lived to see, in 1919, at the Paris Peace Conference, one of the biggest diplomatic leaks of the century. Then the terms of peace handed to the Germans at Versailles were, despite security precautions, prematurely leaked to the American press.

  Here is his 1915 plan to keep secrets from disclosure.

  THE WHITE HOUSE

  WASHINGTON

  February 8, 1915
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br />   My dear Mr. Secretary:

  Here is the memorandum of which I spoke to you some time ago and which at that time I had misplaced. I submit these suggestions for safeguarding the more important diplomatic proceedings for your consideration.

  Cordially and faithfully yours,

  Woodrow Wilson

  enc.

  Hon. William Jennings Bryan,

  Secretary of State.

  MEMORANDUM.

  One person to draft all despatches which it is thought wise to keep safe from publication.

  One (and the same) stenographer to transcribe all such despatches and their ciphered or deciphered versions.

  One (and the same) official to do all the enciphering and deciphering of such despatches.

  No flimsies of such despatches; only one or two copies; a copy of the most important despatches to be sent to the President, to be returned for file always.

  In brief, a single, clearly defined inner circle to handle these matters always, without variation of method or personnel, with the most carefully guarded exclusiveness, so that it may always be possible to fix the responsibility for a leak definitely and at once.

  The only person outside this circle allowed even to handle such despatches nominated to be the head of the Index Bureau.

  The despatches sent to the President to be sent always in sealed envelopes to the White House, never to the Executive Offices, where it is impossible to prevent their passing through several hands.

  W. W.

  February 12, 1915.

  My dear Mr. President:

  I have your letter of February 8th, enclosing your memorandum of suggestions for safeguarding the more important diplomatic proceedings of the Department. I think it will be entirely feasible to confine the matters of which you speak within the circle of you and myself and Mr. Davis, the Chief Clerk of the Department. Mr. Davis has been looking after these matters for some time, is familiar with the various ciphers used by the Department, and can also attend to the necessary typewriting of the despatches. This will seem to keep these most important matters within a very circumscribed circle which will be most advisable.

  I am, my dear Mr. President,

  Very sincerely yours,

  (Sg) William Jennings Bryan

  From the earliest days, the effort has continued to protect secrets by keeping knowledge of them to the fewest possible persons—on the “need to know” policy. Excellent as is this principle, it is generally defeated by the complications of modern governmental procedures. There are just too many who “need to know” or, what is worse, think that they do.

  During my eleven years of service with the Central Intelligence Agency, I have attended scores of meetings at the highest level of government where a scene like the following has been enacted. It has been quite the same whether the administration has been Republican or Democratic. A high official of government, often the very highest, would come into a meeting brandishing a newspaper article and saying something like this: “Who is the so-and-so who leaked this? It was only a couple of days ago, here around this table, that a dozen of us reached this secret decision, and here it is all out in the press for our enemy’s edification. This time we must find out who is responsible and string him to the nearest lamppost. We can’t run a government on this basis anymore. This thing must stop. Investigate and report and this time get us some results. I don’t propose to tolerate this sort of thing in this administration any further.”

  And then the wheels start to move. A committee on security whips into action; the FBI may be called in if it is surmised that a violation of a Federal statute is involved. In due course, the investigation comes up with the following results.

  It is found that the particular decision of government which leaked out was set down in a secret or top secret memorandum of which, initially, there were perhaps a dozen copies for distribution to the various departments, agencies and bureaus of government which might be involved, on a strict “need to know” basis. Several hundred people then had access to this memorandum, because it was reproduced in multiple copies by department heads for the information of their subordinates. Messages also might have been sent to officials in various parts of the world where action might be required. When such an investigation has been concluded, it is often established that anywhere from five hundred to a thousand people might have seen the document, or heard of its contents and have talked about it to X, Y and Z. No official will ever admit a violation of security was involved in this process, and no newspaperman or publicist will ever give away a source.

  After the investigation is closed, the verdict is that the offense has been committed by a person or persons unknown and undetectable. Somewhere in the course of this proceeding, the Director of Central Intelligence is generally reminded that the law setting up the CIA provides that it shall be the duty of the Director of Central Intelligence to “protect intelligence sources and methods from unauthorized disclosure.” He is then asked what is being done to carry out the mandate of the law.

  His reply generally is that the law has given him no investigative authority outside of his own agency and, in fact, has made it expressly mandatory that he shall exercise no internal security functions. Furthermore, this particular provision of the law, as the history of the legislation shows, was primarily intended to place upon the Director of Central Intelligence responsibility to see to the security of his own operations.

  I have to admit, and do so with a mixture of regret and sadness, that during my years of service in the CIA I did not succeed in making much progress in this field. I did not find an acceptable and workable formula for tightening up our governmental machinery or slowing down the tempo of frustrating leaks of sensitive information of value to a potential enemy. For one must do this in the face of the understandable but sometimes uncontrolled yen of the press to know everything.

  However, it should be possible to improve the situation, and I have felt that a frank discussion of the problem was in order. The British, through their Official Secrets Act and other related procedures, have a better legal system in this particular field than do we, and they are a country which prizes and protects the freedom of the press as do we. They have shown, however, that their practices in hiring and retaining personnel leave a good deal to be desired.

  I start from the premise that nothing should be attempted which would affect the freedom of the press. Freedom, however, does not necessarily mean complete license where our national security is involved, and the First Amendment of the Constitution never intended this.

  It will be difficult to try to deal with this phase of the problem of security through legislation, except in the tightening up of some of our espionage laws, as I shall explain. Rather, the government should put its own house in order by an understanding between the executive and the Congress and then seek the voluntary cooperation of the press.

  Here is a possible order of procedure: (1) the executive branch of government, particularly the Departments of State and Defense and the intelligence community, should do what they can to prevent the unnecessary publication of information that is valuable to our enemies and to deal more effectively with the leaks from the executive branch; (2) in conference with Congressional leaders and in agreement with them, steps should be taken to restrict the publication of sensitive hearings in the field of our national security, particularly in the military field. After some progress has been made in (1) and (2), there should be quiet (hopefully) discussions between selected government officials most immediately concerned and the leaders of the press and other news media, radio, television, technical and service journals, to determine to what extent there can be mutual agreement for setting up machinery to keep the press confidentially advised as to the matters in which secrecy is essential to our security, particularly those pertaining to military hardware and sensitive intelligence operations.r />
  Before doing this, it might well be worthwhile for the interested members of government and of the press to take a look at what has been accomplished in Great Britain through the D notice system, whereby on a voluntary basis the press cooperates with the government to prevent compromise of military secrets. In suggesting we study this system, I recognize that there are vital differences between the situation here and that in the British Isles, where there is such a large centralization of press and publications in one great city, namely, London. There is in this country no comparable center of authority in the matter of press and publicity, and it would be harder here to find any relatively restricted group of men in the field of news media whose judgment would be accepted by the press in all parts of the country. And in all fairness, I should also point out that the cooperation of the British press with the government is the result of the enforceability of the Official Secrets Act and is not in all cases purely voluntary. Newspapers frequently consult the government to be sure that material they intend to publish does not run counter to security standards. The D-notice system is over fifty years old, having been set up a year after the coming into force of the Official Secrets Act of 1911. It has no formal legal sanction but it operates through a committee consisting of four government representatives—the permanent heads of the War Office, the Admiralty, the Air Ministry and the Ministry of Aviation—and eleven representatives of the various news media. Where there is a sensitive national security matter which might well leak to the press, the secretary convenes the committee and the facts are presented. If all the press members concur, the notice goes out to the press. In urgent cases, the secretary is authorized to issue a D notice on his own responsibility but with the concurrence of at least two press members. If later other press members object to the D notice, it may have to be withdrawn, although this situation has never arisen, since the emergency powers have only been exercised on the rarest occasions where time was of the essence. The range of subjects covered by D notices are military matters, the publication of which would be prejudicial to the national interest, but the press does not insist on a rigid interpretation of this formula. A recent report of a committee headed by Lord Radcliffe, which was reviewing British security problems, also considered the effectiveness of the D notice system. It commented that “There have been cases of non-observance . . . more often accidental than deliberate and they have never been persisted in after the secretary has taken the matter up with the responsible editor.” By its operation, the Radcliffe report indicates, the British government has succeeded “year in and year out in keeping out of newspapers, radio, and television a great deal of material . . . which needs to be concealed and which would be useful to other powers to possess . . . and which so far as we can see could not have been kept out in any other way.” The Radcliffe report, in stressing that the D notice procedure “appears to suit the needs of both sides,” added that according to the evidence before the committee “neither side wishes to amend the present system” and it recommended the continuance of the system along the present lines.