Time: Thu Oct 02 09:22:21 1997
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Date: Thu, 02 Oct 1997 09:09:08 -0700
To: (Recipient list suppressed)
From: Paul Andrew Mitchell [address in tool bar]
Subject: SLS: Ex-Director: CIA Should Cut Staff (fwd)

<snip>
>
>Thursday, September 18, 1997; 3:14 a.m. EDT
>
>         Ex-Director: CIA Should Cut Staff
>
>         By John Diamond
>         Associated Press Writer
>
>         McLEAN, Va. (AP) -- One of the CIA's legends, Richard
>         Helms, came to the agency's weeklong birthday party to
>         meet old friends, accept an award and make an unusual
>         proposal: cut the spy agency's staff.
>
>         The former spymaster who headed the CIA from 1966 to
>         1973 is usually considered one of the CIA's biggest
>         boosters. The agency, in honoring Helms as one of its 50
>         ``Trailblazers,'' called him ``a uniquely eloquent
>         advocate of CIA.'' Indeed, Helms spent much of his
>         speech Wednesday at a 50th birthday celebration touting
>         the CIA's accomplishments.
>
>         But as he spoke to some 4,000 agency retirees under a
>         tent set up in front of the agency's sprawling
>         headquarters complex in suburban Virginia, Helms
>         reflected on the growth of the nation's spy bureaucracy.
>
>         ``Could it not be that the time has come at this 50th
>         anniversary to take a hard look at the numbers of people
>         employed by the Central Intelligence Agency, or, put
>         another way, at the size of the bureaucracy as it has
>         developed over the years?'' Helms asked.
>
>         The same cut-the-fat program could be applied to the
>         Defense Intelligence Agency and other military elements
>         of intelligence gathering, Helms said.
>
>         Cuts are needed not because the government needs less
>         intelligence, Helms said, but because it needs better
>         intelligence.
>
>         ``A serious case can be made for sharpening the focus on
>         important targets and by reducing the number of hands,
>         or layers if you like, through which every operational
>         decision or analytical disagreement must pass,'' Helms
>         said. ``It is not numbers of people who produce good
>         intelligence, prevent another Pearl Harbor.''
>
>         The number of people who work for the CIA is classified,
>         as is the agency's total budget.
>
>         Historian David Wise, author of several books on the
>         CIA, says the agency has about 17,000 employees.
>
>         CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield said the agency has been
>         undergoing steady personnel cuts since the end of the
>         Cold War, mostly through attrition.
>
>         ``From 1990 to the end of this decade, the CIA's
>         workforce will have decreased by nearly 23 percent,''
>         Mansfield said.
>
>         These days, however, ``we're hiring,'' Mansfield said.
>
>         Steve Aftergood of the Federation of American
>         Scientists, a group that has been critical of the CIA,
>         said his best estimate is that agency manpower has
>         declined from about 21,000 to just over 16,000.
>
>         ``What the CIA will not tell you is that there has been
>         a corresponding increase in the number of consultants or
>         contract employees who are not on the books or included
>         in that 16,000,'' Aftergood said.
>
>         Nevertheless, Aftergood said it was significant that a
>         CIA veteran such as Helms is talking about reducing the
>         intelligence bureaucracy.
>
>         ``What's interesting about that is that it is an
>         implicit acknowledgement that CIA has become
>         overbureaucratized,'' Aftergood said. ``It's a polite
>         way of saying that CIA's performance needs to improve.''
>
>         Helms' career in intelligence began during World War II
>         with the Office of Strategic Services, predecessor of
>         the CIA. In his speech, he recalled the early days,
>         working in sweltering temporary buildings on the
>         Washington Mall.
>
>         He recalled the efforts of Allen Dulles, director from
>         1953 to 1961, to build the CIA's new headquarters
>         building. Helms noted that even when the CIA first moved
>         into the headquarters in the early 1960s, the complex
>         could not house all the agency's employees. Nor could
>         the enlarged complex, completed in the 1980s.
>
>         ) Copyright 1997 The Associated Press.
>
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===========================================================================
Paul Andrew Mitchell, Sui Juris      : Counselor at Law, federal witness 01
B.A.: Political Science, UCLA;   M.S.: Public Administration, U.C.Irvine 02
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