What does it take to be a good CIA director?
According to David M. Barrett, he or she should be tough, attentive and committed to not undermining the law to carry out a covert operation. And for good measure, throw in a little imagination.
And Barrett, a Villanova University political-science professor, should know a thing or two about the Central Intelligence Agency. The Havertown resident recently penned "The CIA and Congress: The Untold Story from Truman to Kennedy." The 542-page work recently won the professor the D.B. Hardeman Prize for best book of the year focusing on the U.S. Congress.
Barrett will present a program about his book at the Tredyffrin Public Library on Thursday, Nov. 9, 7:30 p.m. A book-signing will follow the talk.
Barrett researched material for the book for about 10 years. "I went to about two dozen archives around the country," he explained during a recent interview. Praised by The Washington Post as "a triumph of research," Barrett's book is based on newly declassified documents, interviews and other sources.
The book covers the agency from its founding in 1947 to 1961. Republican Sen. Edward Robertson feared, "The proposed agency has all the potentialities of an American Gestapo." But Congress authorized the agency's formation as the memory of Pearl Harbor just six years earlier was still fresh on many politicians' minds.
Barrett said he originally intended to write about the CIA during the Truman-Eisenhower administrations, but decided to include the early years of the Kennedy Administration in order to include the Bay of Pigs. He said the 1961 plot to overthrow Castro in Cuba was originally hatched during the Eisenhower years.
"Basically the Eisenhower people handed it over to the Kennedy Administration," he pointed out.
And speaking of the Bay of Pigs, Barrett believes that event was the biggest intelligence debacle of the CIA. He said the then-director, Allan Dulles, was enthusiastic about overthrowing the Communist dictator, so much so that he underestimated Fidel Castro's ability to resist an invasion with his police and military forces and apparently did not pay heed to intelligence experts within his own agency who warned against such a daring tactic.
"Castro was ready for us," he maintained.
Dulles later resigned.
Barrett's book also details the distrust of Army intelligence and the FBI regarding this fledging espionage organization. Barrett writes that when the CIA employees showed up for their surveillance assignments in Latin American countries, where CIA agents replaced FBI agents, they would find empty offices and destroyed documents.
The historian devotes many pages to Congress' effects to oversee the CIA. Barrett said after a series of ineffective informal subcommittees to provide oversight - especially in light of the agency's failed intelligence to predict Russia's ability to test an atomic bomb in 1949, its invasion of Hungry in 1956 and launch Sputnik in 1957 - both the House and Senate created large committees - a system still in place today. Nonetheless, the author questions whether a bipartisan, joint committee would provide better oversight. (Barrett ends his book on a note of irony by pointing out that in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the call went out for creating a joint congressional committee on intelligence.)
Today the CIA is under the newly created Director of National Intelligence, who is responsible for coordinating all intelligence agencies. Barrett described the new director as tough and energetic. But he believed it is too soon to conclude whether the new intelligence structure will help or hinder the CIA's mission.
"I hope it is performing better," said Barrett.
Barrett's previous books are "Lyndon B. Johnson's Vietnam Papers" and "Uncertain Warriors: Lyndon Johnson and His Vietnam Advisers." His next book will be about the Kennedy era, encompassing the presidency, Congress and the CIA. In the meanwhile, Barrett, who has been teaching at Villanova for 16 years, teaches courses on national-security policy and the presidency. Next semester he is planning to teach a new course on U.S. intelligence.
Reservations are required for the Nov. 9 library book talk. To register, call 610-688-7092, or stop by the library's information desk. The library is at 582 Upper Gulph Road, Strafford.