Meeting of Admiral Stansfield Turner with Vice Chair Hamilton

November 26, 2003

When he first met President Carter, Admiral Turner noted that the President told him he
would not only be the head of the CIA but the Director of Central Intelligence. Turner
said he told him in that very first meeting that the DCI needed more authority or he
would not be able to do his job. Carter took note, and he issued an Executive Order that
gave Turner two distinct authorities:

• First, that the DCI would submit the Intelligence Community budget to the
President. The DCI would consult with agency heads, but ultimately it was
his call - and his alone - as to what the 1C budget would be. He and Harold
Brown might - and did - fight later on budget questions, and Harold often
won, but Turner had the initial advantage because he got to make the budget
submission first;

• Second, Turner received tasking authority from the President. As DCI, he had
exclusive ability to direct collection, and he exercised that authority regularly.
He sometimes got into fights with Bobbie Inrnan (Head of NSA), who would
always be agreeable and say "fine" and then do whatever he wanted to do
anyway.

After a while, these gains eroded. Brown had a successful reclama on the budget
question, and it was under Carter that the TIARA program was created. After Turner,
and under Reagan, the budget process was changed again, and the DCI lost more ground
to DOD. Turner found it ironic that DIA, for example, preferred the system with the
DCI in charge, because DIA felt it got fairer treatment when considered head to head
with other intelligence agencies and not in competition with tanks, planes, and soldiers.

Hamilton asked about Turner's views today on the authorities of the DCI. Turner
endorsed the recommendations of the Scowcroft panel - that the DCI, or DNI, whatever
you want to call him - needs to have budget and personnel authority over the military
intelligence agencies. Hamilton asked whether this was realistic. Turner said that the
President could not direct the Secretary of Defense to accept such a change in authorities;
only the Congress could make this happen. Hamilton noted that Goss, Graham, and
Selby supported these changes, but that the Armed Services Committees were very
powerful, certainly more powerful than the intelligence committees, and therefore he was
doubtful whether the Congress would agree to such a reform. Hamilton mentioned
favorably Bob Gates' ideas about a halfway reform; Turner thought it constructive.

Discussion turned to the relationship between the President and the DCI. Tuner said that
he saw the President 3 times a week, for half an hour each. His purpose was to brief the
President on longer-term items, not current intelligence (covered in the daily PDBs), to
try to give the President a sense of the longer-term issues coming at him. Later in the
Administration, he saw him twice a week, then once a week, and then not at all in the
1980 election campaign.

Hamilton asked about the importance of the DCI's independence. From his perspective,
the ideal model would be the Federal Reserve Board, where the President appoints the
Chair and members of the Board, but they have very great institutional independence, and
Presidents tread carefully in their dealings with the Chairman. Turner agreed, that this
would help stop politicization of intelligence, as occurred in the run-up to the war with
Iraq. Nonetheless, Turner thought it important that a President have the ability to pick his
own DCI, who would carry out collection and analysis consistent with the President's
priorities. Turner did not endorse the idea of a 10 year term for the DCI.

Turner emphasized the importance of the DCI's personal relationship with the President.
Turner usually briefed Carter with Brzezinski and sometimes Mondale in the room, but
the President was very good about telling him that he could always see him one-on-one,
and sometimes he did that. He also said that Carter was very good about responding to
new information as it developed. For example, Carter came to office pledging to cut the
number of US troops in Korea. When intelligence came to light that the North Korean
military was 20% bigger than we had thought, and Turner became convinced that the
analysts knew what they were talking about, Turner went to the President. Carter
listened, and changed his mind.

Hamilton asked about the divide between foreign intelligence and domestic intelligence
collection, and whether this concerned Turner. Turner said he was very concerned, on a
number of levels. First, there needs to be a far better flow of information from the 1C to
cops on the beat, and vice versa. This is what TTIC and DHS are supposed to do, so far
not very well. Second, Turner specifically opposed turning the task of domestic
intelligence over to the CIA, because the culture was not one attentive to rule of law.
The CIA, accustomed to working in the overseas setting, is not trained or acculturated to
working in a domestic setting where the rule of law is paramount. Turner and Hamilton
agreed that Bob Mueller is good man carrying out the right reforms, but the question is
whether the changes will outlast his tenure, and whether the FBI is up to the job. Turner
noted that he has given some ideas to Howard Dean on the creation of a domestic
intelligence capability.

Hamilton asked about whether there should be more money spent on HUMINT. Turner
said this was an easy one for him: the answer is "of course." It doesn't take a lot of
money to hire and train an additional 200 officers, especially in comparison with the vast
costs of satellite programs. Turner said that he gets chided all the time for his "firing" of
CIA officers. He laughed about a Wall Street Journal piece blaming him for wrecking
HUMINT, and said that he had written back: do you mean to tell me that I created such a
mess, that 6 Directors and 20 years later Turner is the problem? Turner said that, in
point of fact, he eliminated some 800 positions, but this resulted in exactly 17 people
losing their jobs, as everyone else was reassigned. Moreover, there was no reduction in
overseas case officers; all the positions eliminated were Washington positions. So he
does not feel he was treated very fairly by some of the press on this question.
Hamilton asked how accountability can be improved. Turner thought that the
Congressional Committees did not do a very good job; they simply accepted what the
Administration told them. This was in evidence with the run-up to the war with Iraq, but
there are many other examples of poor oversight as well. Hamilton noted that the
Commission has responsibility for improving Congressional oversight, but thought that
the answer must involve much more than changing term-limits on the Committees. The
question came down to increasing interaction between the Intelligence Community and
the public, including the academic community. Turner agreed, but did not have specific
recommendations.