Brent Colton is a retired CIA operations officer now in the employ of the Creighton Corporation, a privately owned think tank that advocates various opinions on world issues, but it’s his clandestine job to solve the dirty problems for their private clients for a million dollar fee with no questions asked. When recovering stolen technology from a Vietnamese industrialist, Colton obtains evidence that he secretly partnered with a U.S. Senatorto rig the recent presidential election and elect him to the nation’s highest office.

CAN THE CIA REINVENT ITSELF YET AGAIN?
by Terry Heath, 2006

President George W. Bush’s selection and subsequent approval by the Senate of an active Air Force general to be the new director for the Central Intelligence Agency has raised concerns among civil libertarians who apparently don’t want any unwarranted military influence on the civilian intelligence organization. It comes amidst controversy that the new DCI was the head of the super-secretive National Security Agency when it began collecting telephone call records on millions of Americans in the days after 9/11 in their claim they are tracking via those calls suspected terrorist cells inside our borders and the dual loyalty a military man may have to those at the Pentagon over the civilians employed in the spy group.

Even though he has been approved there are still many in Congress who are complaining about this perceived military takeover of the CIA by the selection of four-star Air Force General Michael Hayden, since the CIA is ostensibly a civilian agency now under the jurisdiction of the Director of National Intelligence, and should not be receiving any unwanted influence from those at the Pentagon on how intelligence is gathered and analyzed or how operatives work in the field.

Hayden’s entire service career has been spent in the field of intelligence, with his current position of being a deputy to John Negroponte, the current Director of National Intelligence, after his previous leadership of the National Security Agency in the timeframe after the 9/11/2001 terrorist attacks when all of the intelligence agencies began to dramatically increase the monitoring of suspected terror groups in and outside the nation.

But Hayden is not the first military official to run the nation’s sixty year old spy agency that was founded in 1947 under President Harry Truman as the country’s first civilian intelligence group to monitor the growing threat from the Soviet Union in the beginnings of the Cold War. It replaced the wartime Office of Strategic Services (OSS) that sent agents into Europe to disrupt Nazi Germany’s war effort and in its early days was under the direct influence of military leaders of that World War Two generation.

Of the 19 previous men to lead the CIA since its founding there have been six active military officers who served in the director’s chair.

Rear Admiral Sidney Souers served as the head of the agency when it was known as the Central Intelligence Group for a few months in 1946 upon its creation. He was replaced by Army Air Force General Hoyt Vandenburg from 1946-47 who ran the organization until it officially became known as the Central Intelligence Agency.

The first official director for the CIA was Rear Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter who served in that position from 1947 through 1950. He was replaced by General Walter Bedell Smith who occupied the spymaster’s chair from 1950 through 1953 when his tenure ended as President Truman left office.

Curiously, Souers, Vandenburg, and Hillenkoetter were also listed as part of the founding members of Majestic-12 involving the alleged crash of a UFO near Roswell, New Mexico in July, 1947; but the documents to support that supposition have never been confirmed. But it seems plausible that if such an incident took place then those at the top of the intelligence echelon would take part in such an endeavor at the request of President Truman plus the military and scientific leaders of that era.

Vice Admiral William F. Raborn, Jr. took over the director’s slot from 1965 to 1966 when Lyndon Johnson was president. The last active military man to serve as the head of the CIA was Admiral Stansfield Turner who held the position from 1977 to 1981 when Jimmy Carter was president.

The first four served when the organization was truly just an intelligence gathering facility as it was being started when we were in the early days of the Cold War struggle against the Soviet Union. It was not until Allen Dulles, a civilian, became DCI when Dwight Eisenhower took over as president that the agency starting doing most of the functions that is still done today and is mostly known for by the American public and other intelligence entities across the world.

Hayden was nominated to replace Porter Goss as the twentieth DCI after the former Florida congressman unexpectedly submitted his resignation to President George W. Bush on May 5th. Additional problems now exist for the embattled spy agency when Kyle ‘Dusty’ Foggo, the third in command in Langley who was placed there by Goss, also had submitted his resignation several days later. Then, on Friday May 12th, officials of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Internal Revenue Service raided Foggo’s CIA office and his personal residence to look for evidence in a growing lobbyist bribery scandal that involves a defense contractor named Brent Wilkes who is a life-long friend of the now ex-CIA official. So it’s obvious the spy agency has major morale problems among its top hierarchy of personnel that has apparently spread throughout much of the organization

But the big problem facing Hayden upon taking over and was addressed during his May 17th appearance before senators who sit on the Intelligence Committee who subsequently approved his selection to run the CIA were the revelations made in the May 11th issue of the USA Today newspaper. It claimed that many of the major telephone companies have been turning over the call records of millions of Americans to the National Security Agency while he was its director in an attempt to track down calls being made by suspected terrorist organizations in and outside the perimeters of the United States following the terrorist attacks on 9/11 and Hayden’s lack of candor in explaining the program in open session. So it’s unclear how he will proceed as head of the CIA by emphasizing space satellite surveillance and electronic eavesdropping versus human intelligence with operatives on the ground around the world.

But the main question Hayden must determine is the Central Intelligence Agency’s future role in providing information to the president on the situations in the world and if its duties should be placed under direct military control by those at the Pentagon.

When the CIA was created its sole directive was to provide information to President Truman on the growing threat we faced from the Soviet Union in the days after the two Allied friends won World War Two but bitterly split apart afterwards in the struggle known as the Cold War.

But the agency’s failure to prevent or even discover the 9/11 attacks and the bogus information on Iraq’s alleged ‘weapons of mass destruction’ tarnished the CIA’s reputation and its importance and power was demoted when the Department of National Intelligence was created and the agency was placed under it.

The DCI used to be the individual who briefed the president on the world’s intelligence matters on a daily basis but in the governmental re-organization that took place the DCI reports to the Director of National Intelligence who collects the data of the CIA and fifteen other intelligence agencies and the DNI is the one who now directly speaks to the chief executive.

So what will the CIA’s new role in this nation’s ‘war on terrorism’ ultimately be? Can the agency focus its resources on potentially dozens if not hundreds of potential enemies instead of successfully concentrating all of its might against the KGB which it did for five decades?

The year and a half tenure of Porter Goss to re-organize the agency was an obvious bust since dozens of high-ranking long-term officials quit after Goss and his staff arrived. So can Hayden’s military background and closeness to DNI Negroponte finally turn things around for the CIA five years after 9/11 when it is still trying to determine its proper place in the chain of command?

Can the CIA change its notoriety as DCI Hayden suggests from itself constantly being in the news to that of quietly gathering the information on world matters needed to give to the president? Or has it outlived its usefulness as an independent civilian organization and should its functions be turned over to the experts in the military?

Terry Heath California E-Mail readermail@terryheathbooks.com