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IP: [Spooks] CIA Losing Its Best Operatives



From: [email protected]
Subject: IP: [Spooks] CIA Losing Its Best Operatives
Date: Sat, 19 Sep 1998 21:43:13 EDT
To: [email protected]

Subject: 
        [Spooks] CIA Losing Its Best Operatives
   Date: 
        Wed, 16 Sep 1998 22:51:13 -0500
   From: 
        Bob Margolis <[email protected]>
     To: 
        Spooks <[email protected]>




WASHINGTON (AP) -- The CIA is pumping money and people into  
recruiting efforts to battle a trend that the agency's departing 
inspector general says has sapped the clandestine service of its 
most experienced hands. 
        Agency officials outlined Tuesday initiatives that CIA Director
George Tenet announced internally last month to increase pay, 
provide hiring bonuses and shorten the waiting time for job offers. 
        ``There are plenty of headhunters out there ready to pounce on  
strong candidates,'' Tenet told agency employees in his 
announcement. ``To delay is to lose.'' 
        The program is intended to combat a problem outlined in an op-ed  
article by outgoing CIA Inspector General Fred Hitz who said the 
CIA's Directorate of Operations, the clandestine spy service, is 
losing its best people amid organizational drift and declining 
morale. 
        ``The picture is not encouraging,'' said Hitz, the CIA's chief  
watchdog from 1990 until this year. Writing in an op-ed article in 
The Washington Post, Hitz said the Directorate of Operations ``has 
been shrinking in size and capability since the end of the Cold 
War.'' 
        A recent study showed departures from the agency due to  
attrition ``involved high-quality officers the agency could not 
afford to lose,'' Hitz wrote. 
        The number of CIA employees is classified, but the Federation of
American Scientists, a Washington-based group that follows 
intelligence matters, estimates it has shrunk from more than 20,000 
to about 16,000 since the Cold War. The clandestine service is 
estimated at several thousand. 
        Agency and congressional officials said the critique may be  
outdated as the CIA pumps new money and energy into recruiting. But 
one knowledgeable congressional staffer said the problem got so bad 
that an entire incoming class of operatives -- perhaps a few dozen 
recruits -- had to be canceled for lack of money. 
        Hitz pointed to the difficulty of recruiting in a booming  
economy and to low morale as a result of ``the lack of a clear 
mission'' at CIA. 
        ``Nobody worth his or her salt is going to join an organization
that has lost faith in itself, is confused about its mission and is 
trapped in the sclerosis of a middle-aged bureaucracy,'' he said. 
        Rep. Porter Goss, R-Fla., chairman of the House Intelligence  
Committee and a former CIA clandestine operative, said an instinct 
to blame the CIA every time a risky intelligence venture fails is 
taking its toll. 
        ``With so many unyielding critics, the CIA has become gun-shy,''
Goss said. 
        Sen. Bob Kerrey, D-Neb., vice chairman of the Senate  
Intelligence Committee, said Hitz has been a leading critic of the 
clandestine service and may himself be partly to blame for low 
morale. Still, Kerrey agreed recruitment is a serious agency 
problem. 
        Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., the committee chairman, said the  
CIA must focus more clearly on defining its mission and outlining 
how it will use field operatives to combat terrorism, weapons 
proliferation and drug trafficking. 
        In recent months, the House and Senate Intelligence Committees  
have pushed for more money for the CIA's so-called human 
intelligence efforts, including its field operatives. 
-=-=-    
                           AP NEWS
               The Associated Press News Service
             Copyright 1998 by The Associated Press
                      All Rights Reserved

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