According to CIA veterans, the most loathed Director of Central Intelligence was James R. Schlesinger. Schlesinger was head of the CIA for President Richard Nixon for 150 days in 1973, one the shortest directorships in the Agency’s history. It was also likely the most combative, with some staffers going so far to call Schlesinger’s leadership a “reign of terror”—an interesting turn of phrase for people involved in establishing actual reigns of terror around the world.
According to political scientist Christopher Moran, Schlesinger had to have extra bodyguards assigned to him as he traveled to and from CIA HQ in Langley, Virginia. Agency bulletin boards “were replete with unflattering caricatures.” Moran also notes that “reportedly, a special closed-circuit television camera was installed opposite his official portrait because of fears that it be vandalized by disgruntled employees.”
By accounts, Schlesinger was “abrasive.” His Harvard classmate and fellow Nixon administration member Henry Kissinger, no shrinking violent himself, “conceded him pride of place in arrogance.” Made assistant director of the Office of Management and Budget by Nixon in 1969, Schlesinger quickly built a reputation for slashing budgets and not caring what people thought about it. Or him.
“An avid birdwatcher, he kept binoculars by his office window so that he could spy on the car park and reprimand staff who arrive late for work,” Moran writes.
But it wasn’t just Schlesinger’s personality and budget-cutting that alienated CIA staffers and threw the Agency into turmoil.
Schlesinger had outright disdain for the CIA’s can-do cowboy culture. He thought the future was in SIGINT (signals intelligence), not human intelligence (HUMINT). The era of “Wild Bill” Donovan, first head of the CIA’s predecessor, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), was over—along with nutty schemes like trying to make Castro’s beard fall out.
Then there was Schlesinger’s order for a list of all activities, past or present, that “might be interpreted as being outside the CIA’s legislative charter.” This was because the break-in at the Democratic National Committee office in the Watergate complex in June 1972 had CIA fingerprints all over it: two of the burglar/wiretappers were CIA veterans, a couple others had been anti-Castro Cuban CIA assets.
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The resulting report, nearly 700 pages in length, came be called the “Family Jewels.” The revelations included instances of the CIA’s violating its charter with assassinations, coups, dirty tricks, human drug experimentation, and domestic spying, especially on opponents of Nixon’s war in Southeast Asia. The report had long-term implications for the agency’s reputation, its oversight, and debates over the place of secret services in democracies. It would be leaked to Seymour Hersh in 1974; by then, the man who had pulled the report together for Schlesinger, William Colby, was DCI, but Schlesinger was blamed for dredging it all up in the first place. (The report wouldn’t be officially released until 2007.)
If Schlesinger had stopped here, he might be considered a great CIA director by those outside the agency. But Schlesinger was also “Nixon’s axe man,” and as such, he worked hard to make the CIA a tool of the administration.
Nixon held a personal grudge against the CIA. Moran describes it as a “pathological hatred.” The East Coast prep school/Ivy-League country club types who dominated the early CIA were, Nixon believed, “Langley liberals.” He blamed them for tipping the closely-run 1960 presidential election to John F. Kennedy.
In theory, intelligence shouldn’t be political, but intelligence officials have to answer to politicians, not least as their budget-masters. This has resulted in some messy relationships. Scandals about cooking the evidence for political agendas have battered intelligence agencies here and abroad.
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And when a president acts above the law? An intelligence service can be a dangerous weapon in the hands of someone like Nixon, whom Moran describes as “mean-spirited, sore loser, bad temper, vindictive.” In the hands of an avowed autocrat, of course, it’s an even greater threat to democracy.
When DCI Richard Helms wouldn’t comply with Nixon’s demand that the CIA stop the FBI’s investigation of the Watergate break-in, Nixon pushed him out and replaced him with Schlesinger.
“I’m here to make sure you don’t screw Richard Nixon,” Schlesinger declared on his first day at Langley. Seven percent of the workforce was immediately fired or forced into early retirement. Moran notes that the purge may have “accelerated Nixon’s resignation by encouraging angry employees to leak” details of the Watergate cover-up. Blow-back can come in many forms.
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