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.

WHAT IS THE DNI’S OBLIGATION TO HIS PRESIDENT?
by Terry Heath, 2006

What is the responsibility of the Director of National Intelligence to his boss, the President of the United States, in keeping him informed on events taking place in the world? He serves at the president’s pleasure by keeping him up to date on all threats facing this country. But he must also be the bearer of bad news and become the individual who must tell the chief executive the truth on a matter when White House aides have already put their particular spin on the same issue.

Nineteen DCI’s met with their chief executive boss on a regular basis for the last sixty years with a briefing on world matters until a change was made in 2004. The DNI then replaced the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency as the top briefer to the president once the government intelligence chain was re-organized as a result of the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission.

You would think that in the six decades the DCI directly briefed the president on global issues that everything would go smoothly between the two politicians who were usually of the same political party and beliefs. But, more often than not, that wasn’t the case.

Allen Dulles was the DCI from 1953 to 1961 under the eight-year term of Dwight Eisenhower and first ten months of John Kennedy’s administration. Admiral Stansfield Turner ran the agency from 1977-81 when Jimmy Carter was president. And we can now compare their respective thoughts on how a DCI/DNI should act when advising their president since both had the distinction of being the only two DCI’s to serve for the entire term of their respective bosses.

Dulles’ historical memoir ‘The Craft of Intelligence’ has been re-published and it offers a fascinating juxtaposition to Turner’s 2005 tome entitled ‘Burn Before Reading,’ a tongue-in-cheek expose about the often tempestuous relationship between a DCI and his boss, the president, since the agency’s creation as the main intelligence gathering entity for the executive branch.

It’s been common knowledge over the years that most of the chief executives have had trouble with their DCI’s because the head of the CIA could not properly determine in his position as head of civilian intelligence if he was to tell the president what that White House occupant wanted to hear or what the spy agency had determined to be accurate about a situation at that particular time. So what is the DNI as the replacement to the DCI’s obligation to his boss in keeping on top of all events in the world?

Does he become a yes-man to his boss? Or is his duty to the citizens of the nation to report the events of the world as interpreted by his staff, even if it is damaging to the goals of the president’s political aspirations?

This re-issue of Dulles’ book makes one take a new examination of the function of the DCI when the CIA started all of the things it’s known for today and presumed to still be doing. Even though four DCI’s served under Harry Truman the tenure of Dulles for Eisenhower best typifies what the CIA has now become known for.

Dulles was the ultimate ‘remain in the shadows, behind the scenes, backroom negotiator’ that was so prevalent in the first half of the 20th Century political world. He must have been inspired to be that way by the antics of Colonel Thomas House who was the inside advisor to President Woodrow Wilson when Dulles’ own uncle Robert Lansing was the nation’s Secretary of State. And Dulles was in government work when politicians were still trusted by the public yet doing the nation’s dirty work that was generally not revealed to the masses at that time.

The first four DCI’s to Truman in the years 1946-1953 came directly from military service when the agency was getting started and was only seen as an intelligence gathering entity. It was when Eisenhower took over and appointed Dulles as DCI that the CIA began covert operations and inserting itself into the matters of foreign governments for America’s presumed benefit.

Dulles had his followers as he attempted to implement Ike’s plan of containing the spread of communism. But he also had his detractors as he put forth America’s intelligence presence throughout the world during his tenure. He was obviously well thought of by Eisenhower since he served as DCI for the entire eight years of the 34th president’s term. But his career ended in forced retirement when newcomer chief executive Kennedy blamed the CIA for the April, 1961 ‘Bay of Pigs’ fiasco after Cuban freedom fighters launched from Florida were defeated on the beaches of Cuba by Fidel Castro’s Army.

Dulles never made derogatory comments about JFK after his removal even though he must have had an opinion about it. So isn’t it ironic that three years later he served on a commission to investigate the assassination of the very man who fired him!

Anyway, to get a read on Dulles as the holder of the nation’s secrets you must look at every photo of him. You will observe that he always has a smug look on his face as if he knew he wasn’t telling the whole truth to the American people but recognized he was still getting away with it.

Everyone in the spy business read the book when it came out in 1963. Even 007 himself, James Bond, studied the work while on an assignment in Japan in Ian Fleming’s classic novel ‘You Only Live Twice’ so he could pick up tips on how to be a better spy!

But it’s apparent from forty years of hindsight and the declassification of many CIA files from that era that Dulles wrote this book in a matter which presumed us naive citizens still believed and trusted their leaders in what was being told to them was actually true. So his tome now comes off in a somewhat condescending manner with the revelations that most of what the CIA presumed about the threat from the Soviet Union and the state of the world for the last sixty years have been proven wrong or were grossly inaccurate to justify the excessive and unneeded military expenditures for our side.

Admiral Turner’s book offers a more realistic, yet sometimes humorous examination of how the DCI works for his president and tries to explain the often combative relationship between each DCI and their respective boss. He candidly reveals that many chief executives did not trust or even like their CIA chief which seems odd because the DCI is hired and works at the president’s own behest.

He writes that Lyndon Johnson and Bill Clinton refused to see their DCI’s on a regular basis and Richard Nixon had apparent contempt for his three DCI’s whom he viewed as the enemy.

LBJ was in a quandary over the course of the Vietnam War because he knew his military advisors were only telling him what he wanted to hear. Turner writes that DCI Richard Helms and his two predecessors in Johnson’s administration tried to warn Johnson that the military’s braggadocio was both absurd and unrealistic with a reluctant president acknowledging his DCI’s warning. Yet the besieged chief executive was unwilling to do anything about it and risk division within his administration on how to end the Asian conflict. He left office as a broken man because he could not end the war.

Nixon came into office with what he believed to be a mandate from the voters to change things in Washington. But instead of bringing in a new guy to run the CIA he left Helms in that position which was surprising because he barely knew the man. Turner states that action was done so Nixon could have a fall guy to blame in case anything went wrong in the early days of his administration. Nixon had also devised a plan to make National Security Agency director Henry Kissinger in charge of all covert operations Nixon wanted done to keep those CIA ‘Ivy Leaguers’ he despised from knowing what was going on in the Oval Office.

The Watergate debacle occurred on Nixon’s watch yet the true role of the CIA in that political scandal have never been fully explained. But, with Gerald Ford taking over after Nixon’s resignation, the agency was forced to disclose the ‘family jewels’ of its worldwide covert operations and the nation was appalled at what was revealed.

The CIA was then blamed for all sorts of nefarious activities for the previous thirty years. Some were true, some were fanciful tales. Yet all put a negative light on those working in Langley.

Turner writes that his own time as DCI under the newly elected and CIA reform minded Jimmy Carter in 1977 was a unique challenge because of the many changes in intelligence gathering as required by the new laws enacted by the Congress at that time in an attempt to restore the agency’s credibility that took place during his watch.

But he admits that while he was trying to make those changes he was in constant conflict with the military bureaucrats at the Pentagon who wanted matters done their particular way, even if it was to later prove detrimental to a president’s specific policy.

Turner’s greatest accomplishment as DCI took place during the 1979-80 crisis with Iran when the CIA was able to get six of America’s embassy personnel out of Tehran through subterfuge after the rest had been detained by the invading student hostage takers who had overrun the U.S. Embassy.

George H.W. Bush is unique in that he was a DCI for one year under lame duck Gerald Ford before becoming a president. So he claims he valued what the briefings gave him when he occupied the Oval Office because he had been on both sides of the aisle during the dissemination of the information presented and could rely that what was told to him was credible. But it was during his term as chief executive that the CIA failed to predict the fall of communism across Eastern Europe in 1989, Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 that led to the Gulf War and the attempted coup in the Soviet Union in 1991 which ultimately resulted in that superpower’s dissolution as a nation.

Has George W. Bush learned from his father’s advice with his intelligence briefings in that he should pay attention to what is being told to him since he’s now on his third intelligence czar? And it’s still debatable on who is to blame when the expected cache of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction was not found after the 2003 Iraq War ended.

How will a DNI interact with the next president? It obviously depends on who gets elected and what he/she chooses to believe when they get their daily briefing. But is it expected for an embattled president when things go bad that they should always blame their director of intelligence for a failure of their own potentially unrealistic policy goals?

Is it inevitable that the relationship between the DCI/DNI and the president will ultimately go sour and become unworkable? Maybe Allen Dulles was the best DCI/DNI we will ever have. He knew how to brag when necessary yet stay in the shadows when needed to keep his president happy.

Terry Heath California E-Mail readermail@terryheathbooks.com