Lights in here, because youre all going to be on tv. Cspan is taping tonight. Im kidding, youre not going to be on cspan, the speaker will be on cspan. When we get to the q a, they usually want to bring a mic down so they can record it. So if you have a question, just try to wait until they bring the mic to you so we dont have to repeat it. The speaker will repeat the questions so you can hear, but this is so they can hear it or however they work it. Our speaker tonight is david robarge, received a phd at columbia university. After teaching at columbia, banker david rockefeller, media studies at columbia, he joined the cia in 1989 and later became a political and leadership analyst on the middle east. Dr. Robarge moved to the cia history staff in 1996 and was appointed chief historian of the cia in 2005. Hes published several classified works as well as unclassified mono graphs on supersonic Reconnaissance Aircraft and intelligence the American Revolution and biography as director of Central Intelligence was declassified. His articles and book reviews on cia leaders, counterintelligence covered action and technical collections have appeared in studies in intelligen intelligence, Intelligence National history, oxford intelligence and National Security. Hes taught intelligence history at George Mason University and Georgetown University and written a biography of chief justice john marshall. Please join me in welcoming our speaker tonight and enjoy the program. Good evening. I appreciate everybody turning out tonight. Its good to have such a large audience for what i hope youll find to be a pretty interesting presentation i spent a good deal of time studying directors. I did a biography of the director during the 1960s, during vietnam war, Jfk Assassination and run up to the cuban missile crisis. I got very interested in looking at the different ways in which shaped by political environment and in particular their focus with the president. I should say before i start, what im not going to be covering today, a lot of current stuff. Im not going to be talking about the president and his relations with the agency currently, because thats not histo history. Ill look at that in a few years. Ill have another talk on the update, which will be very, very interesting. What i would like to concentrate on are the ways in which the president s interact with directors and vice versa. A couple of things to leave you with, fundamental points for the evening. President s like highlevel choices, cabinet members of certain offices, often which are political payoffs or people who have some lobby behind them and kind of foisted on the president. Thats not the case with the directors. President s pick the type of director they want to establish certain aspects. Dom sticks are a driver behind what the cia can do, what the president can have it do and the way in which the agency can effectively or ineffectively carry out its mission. The choices president s make about who will run the agency is an important index into how president s are going to run Foreign Policy. We know enough about history since world war ii to realize that different president s have had different Foreign Policy agendas, out loose on the world, foreign policies and many have been preoccupied with domestic so Foreign Policy has been an afterthought. In other cases its been at the forefront of what the United States is doing in the world, combating communism, ending the cold war, whatever, fighting the global war on terror. This the time president s pick particular types of directors to do certain things with the agency you wont find other president s doing at other times in our history which is why we have a mix. Diversity isnt the first word that will come to mind when you look up there. We dont have any with beards yet. Im hoping that will change sometimes in the future. They are all white men. We now have gina haspel who i will be talking about in a few years. The other point i want to leave with you, this really is a diverse bunch of leaders coming from a wide variety of backgroun backgrounds. Each of them brought to the agency a particular skill set, body of experience, in some cases inexperience they have applied to running the agency in the way the president s who pick them want them to. Thats a very Cardinal Point i want you to leave tonight with. Secondly, we dont want to exaggerate the influence that directors have on Foreign Policy and president s they serve. This is fodder for movie, tv series and fictional important trails. One director, helms, will tell you flatout director of Central Intelligence is one of the weakest fix in washington because hes totally dependent on the president for his influence. The president can use him, lose him, forget him, dump him, misuse him. Again, thats all the president s call. Thats the theme of our discussion while getting started, i saw you gazing up trying to figure out who these people are. So i thought we would spend a few minutes playing directors jeopardy jeopardy. It may fall flat or spend the rest of the night doing this and i can trash the presentation. Lets start with this, i am the longest serving director of cia. There he is there. Conversely, i am the shortest serving director. Pompeo. No. Pompeo was in for the better part of a year as was george bush. Schlesinger almost. No, in for a year and a half. We have to go way, way back to somebody im sure youve never heard of unless youre a history geek. The first one sidney sowers. He was a crony of harry trumans. He made it clear when he took the job he only wanted to serve a few months because he wanted to go back and run the Piggly Wiggly grocery chain in missouri which whence he came. Though he wasnt an experienced Intelligence Officer, served as an at shtache. He was an experienced leader but he wanted a figurehead new cig, Central Intelligence group up and run. Okay. Lets see. I am the only convicted felon. Richard helms regrettably. He was caught in what i have to say was a pretty nasty gotcha episode. He was testifying before Senate Confirmation hearing before he went out to become ambassador to iran. He was asked by a senator, who knew full well what the answer was but for whatever reason was grandstanding to the public, did we try to covertly overthrow the government of chile. This was an open hearing. Richard helms should have said i cant answer that in public, we have to go into private session. For reasons he never explained to me, i helped him with his memoir and writing, he goes ahead and says no three times. This was a flatout lie. As youre aware, we did quite a bit to overthrow the government in 1970. He winds up with a twoyear suspended sentence and a relatively small fines of a few thousand dollars, which a group of friends pay on his behalf when they had a celebration at the country club after his sentenci sentencing. Okay. I had my security clearance pulled. And one more. Where is he. I cant see him too well. Deutsche. John deutsche. He had laptop trouble and wound up losing clearance the fact he had classified material on his laptop, his son was using the laptop to also connect with internet sites that i wont discuss in any did etail with t audience. Lets see. I am the only career analyst to become director. Robert gates. Now, brennan was an analyst for most of his life. He also had a hitch as chief of station. Then he left the agency to become president obamas Homeland Security and terrorism adviser and then he came back to run the agency. Lets see, here is an easy one. I am the only director to later become president. Bush. Bush. Okay. Good. That was the 100 question, not the 40,000 question. Lets see, i was dproowight eisenhowers chief of star during world war ii. Smith. I could also ask a tougher question, i resigned as dci to take a better job. That was also smith. The better job, interestingly, was undersecretary of state, which back in 1952 and 3when this happened was a much more prestigious position than the director of Central Intelligence. I later became chief of staff of the air force. Check out the military uniforms. We only have two air forcers up there. Ill also add, i am the only dci who became the namesake for an important military post, military installation. Vandenberg air force base. Thats hoyt vandenberg, who took the job as director as a stepping stone to becoming chief of staff of the air force. It was a different worked back in the 40s which is why i say sometimes in our history the director of Central Intelligence was not a very prestigious position. Here is one with four answers. So youll at least get one right. I served in the oss. Okay. We have i heard dulles, thats correct. Who else . Thought bush. Did i hear colby out there . Yes. And bill casey. We have four, this is an important point, four directors who used to serve in one of the predecessor organizations. So they bring to their experiences as directors on the ground in the war intelligence experiences, which was influential for many of them. I am the only former fbi director bill webster. I am the only judge webster. Piling on. Okay. I was the classmate of the president who appointed me. Turner. And president carter. Lets see. I used to be white house chief of staff. Good. I used to be a congressman from california. Leon panetta. Okay. Good. I used to be one of the Senior Executives at the bechtel corporation. Thats a final jeopardy question. John macone. He was a classmate of steven becht bechtel berkeley where they were both studying engineering. I was the only person to be director of cia and director of the nsa. Michael hayden. I used to be an officer in our directorate of operations before i changed careers and served in another capacity for a number of years and then became director. You can say that of any oss, this is director of cia position. He was a case officer for about 10 years. No, gates was an analyst. Potter goss. He worked in do as medical officer, had to leave for medical reasons and became a local politician in florida and then a congressional representative, ran the House Oversight committee for a while and then became our director. I am the only person up here who is both director of Central Intelligence and director of the cia. Goss again. He was running the agency when the dni position was set up. The intelligence terrorism and intelligence excuse me, intelligence reform and terrorism prevention act irtpa passed in 2004, effective 2005. It abolished the position of dci and for the first time in history created statutorily position of director of the Central Intelligence agency. Well talk a little bit later about the effect that had in the prominence of the dci, vice dcia and the different authorities that they had. Okay. I think thats a pretty good warmup. Yall did pretty well. Super job. So let me do go on and talk about main points of tonights presentation. When the cia was set up, a couple of different models came to mimain points of tonights presentation. When the cia was set up, a couple of different models came to for the leaders. You had allen dulles, who at the time had oss experience. He thought based and British Service in world war ii that cia should be run by a careerist, somebody who grew up in the agency and was wedded to, devoted to that particular line of work. Now, weve only had a few directors who were careerists. That is people who started at the agency and worked their way all the way up to be director. Bill colby, Richard Helms, gina haspel and bob gates, though not directly because he did do a couple of tours of nsc. Youre talking direct from desk to the fifth floor, we have only those three. That was one model. Whats come about is the one Dwight Eisenhower specifies here, which is and hes using the world peculiar in a variety of meanings here, not just strange and not strange and oddball but peculiar in the sense of requiring special capabilities. What i think he was getting here is that and well see this as our talk goes on, that you have to be able to pick a certain type of person to run the agency at a particular time to fulfill your president s Foreign Policy agenda. Thats what became the pattern. These individuals were neither elitists from small cadre like the british model but rather drawn from all walks of life as well see. It became an important element of their strength that they had this variety of backgrounds. Taking a quick snapshot of them, we see their region of birth for what its worth as a determining factor is concentrated into a couple of parts of the country. We now have our First Southern born director, gina haspel. Previously nobody from that part of the world. Who is the only overseas born one . Any idea . That was john deutsche. A lot of degrees, doctorates, schlesinger and gates and deutch had them. We had one outlier, he only went to high school. Like they say anybody in america can grow up to be president. Anybody in america can grow up to become director of intelligence or dci. Ironically this is one of the most influential directors ever. If you go back and look the a his records were still living with his accomplishments. This is walter smith. The reason hes so influential he established the directorate structure of the agency where we had analysts, operations officers and support officers in separate directorates and a decade later science and technology created and that was our structure from 1963 on until the modernization that occurred under director brennan when though those directorates exist it occurs in 12 Mission Centers that fuse together major components of those different directorates as a way of encouraging collaboration, getting rid of stove pipes, that sort of thing. Now, this is where the diversity really comes into play. If you look at those variety of backgrounds, and of course some people did more than one thing in their careers, we have 25 directors, dcis or dcias, this number is more than 25, so a variety of backgrounds. This is a strength for them, because they were able to bring, again, based on what the president s wanted at particular times a specific kind of expertise and background to bear on the president s Foreign Policy agenda. All three branches of government are represented as are three of the five military services. Perhaps one of the keys that distinguishes many of these directors, in fact, almost all of them, 24 out of 25, from other cabinet appointees, many of whom when you think about it really dont have much experience in the Cabinet Department area of responsibility that they are running. I mean, they werent farmers, they werent involved in the energy industry, they didnt have anything necessarily to do with the military directly and on and on it goes. But with the exception probably of William Rayborn who served 1965 and 66 and johnson picked him largely because he didnt have alternatives and was trying to pick someone he was familiar with. He wanted to give Richard Helms who he did a year of grooming. So helms is Deputy Director and in that much more prominent position in a whole year getting responsibility and raborn is elevated by 1966. What i mean by direct experience here was an individual was either a practitioner of intelligence, that is an analyst, a case officer, or they ran an intelligence organization. Like they were head of air force intelligence, in the case of vandenberg. They were a senior in military intelligence service. Like general hayden was air force attache. Youre a director or have run an organization. Indirect experience means a person who was a consumer or user of intelligence in a Foreign Policy or National Security position. Noot practitioner but someone who had all the clearances needed, used it. General raborn was really the only individual with no background at all in intelligence. Some people would argue that leon panetta didnt, other than peripherally engaging as chief of staff in the white house, no direct or indirect contact with intelligence in any depth but thats an arguable proposition. Its a definite job for the middle agers, though we do have a bit of a range of ages there. Who do you think was the youngest dci ever . James schlesinger. He was 41 when he became director in 1973. Who do you think was the oldest . Casey. Casey was in his 70s when he was appointed. But the central tendency of the spread is definitely toward that mid50s age range. Its not a job with a lot of security, though. Now, we do have, again, a bit of a scatter plot. We have dulles serving over eight years, helms six, thats at one end of the spectrum. Offsetting that, almost like figure skating scores, souers, bush with 11 months, so forth. Three years is about as long as they last. I did h its kind of moving in the downward direction lately, but for the most part youll see why president s change or dont change directors when they are elected, when they become president s or why if they are reelected they might choose to maintain a director rather than pick agnew one instead of the usual kind of cabinet shuffle. Thats an interesting factor here is the surprising, i think youll see, durability of directors through transitions or through reelection periods. Now, when youre talking about the director being placed in the washington political environment, a couple of things need to be kept in mind. One is that as allen dulles said, a lot of intelligence people dont know much about intelligence. They come to it as overseers and managers of the agency being chief executive, overseers in congress with misapprehensions of what intelligence is, what it can do, what its capable of, how long it