Unintelligent Carping?

Reports of vigorous behind-the-scenes campaigns to influence the selection of the director of the Central Intelligence Agency are understandable. Whatever President-elect George Bush might do, retaining the present leadership or installing a new leader, there will be controversy.

One campaign has been mounted by veterans of the intelligence community itself, and is intended to win dismissal of William H. Webster, the present director, and substitute for him someone more sympathetic to clandestine operations. That particular campaign raises issues that are important, crucially important, to the future of the CIA.

We can make no independent judgment of Webster’s performance as an administrator. The leaders of this campaign, according to a former senior CIA official, portray him as “a dilettante who doesn’t work hard or have control.” But the validity of that view is challenged by other reports of strong support from senior members of his present staff.

More important, we think, are the questions that are being raised by critics on his handling of the agency’s efforts to clean house after the Iran-Contra arms scandal, and the more restrictive procedures that he has put into place for authorizing and controlling covert operations. Some intelligence veterans are angry because of Webster’s actions in disciplining staff members who apparently exceeded their authority in cooperating with the secret arms arrangements sponsored by Oliver L. North. Others in the intelligence community regard the new procedures on covert operations as cumbersome and reflecting more reserve in the use of clandestine operations.

On these points it seems clear to us that Webster is right and his critics are wrong. As a matter of fact, a case can be made that he has not gone far enough in disciplining those involved in the North conspiracy. The Iran-Contra affair demonstrated an extraordinary need for tighter procedures and controls over clandestine operations. The defects of CIA covert operations go beyond that case and include other failures like the ill-considered mining of navigable waters around Nicaragua.

Perhaps most important, Webster has demonstrated respect for the most fundamental requirement of the agency: He has refused to participate in the making of policy, limiting his function, as prescribed by law, to the presentation of intelligence data to those who make policy, and to implementing only the operations that are authorized by the President. Had his predecessor, William J. Casey, respected the law, kept hands off policy issues and insisted on rigorous standards, the terrible setbacks flowing from the Iran-Contra scandal would have been avoided. But, of course, Casey’s intent was to create his own secret arm of government. And his ability to do what he did underscores the importance of reinforcing and perpetuating the reforms that Webster has now put into place.

We are troubled by another aspect--the role among the critics of Donald P. Gregg, a former CIA official who himself is one of those considered a candidate for the directorship. He is the national-security adviser to the President-elect, ostensibly in a position to influence this decision, yet he comes from under a shadow of suspicion regarding his own role in the Iran-Contra scandal.

Bush, as a former director of the CIA, has made two reassuring commitments: He has insisted that the intelligence agency be removed from domestic political pressures. And he has written that the director “should go out of his way to avoid even the appearance of getting involved in policy making.” What he does now will show how seriously he takes his own counsel.