HOOVER RECOMMENDATIONS ADOPTED

Mr. ROONEY. Have the recommendations of the so-called Hoover Commission, with regard to this phase of the activity of the Department of State, been fully complied with?

Mr. ARMSTRONG. They have, in full. Every recommendation of the Hoover Commission has been carried out, several of which were already in effect when I appeared before this committee last year, but several additional have been put into effect since that time.

I might mention one or two of them, as they do bear upon our ability to pin-point the requirements of the top officials and the operating officials of the Department.

We have established an intelligence adviser in each of the bureaus and the main functional areas of the Department.

Mr. ROONEY. You did that a year ago, did you not?

Mr. ARMSTRONG. We were in the course of doing that last year; it has been completed in the past year, and we have men in each of those jobs carrying on day-by-day liaison between the consumer, so to speak, and ourselves. We have completed the staffing of the estimating group that the Hoover Commission recommended, and that has been functioning now for months, and has been able to produce a number of significant studies that have been of value to the Assistant Secretaries, the Under Secretary, and the Secretary.

In addition, I and my immediate staff have been drawn more heavily into the immediate office of the Secretary by way of giving him daily a briefing on important developments in the political and sociological scenes and on the developments of the military situation. in Korea and elsewhere.

All told, during the year I feel I can safely say that we have moved forward a great deal both from the standpoint of organization and in terms of fulfilling the requirements of the Department's operating officials, and that, I believe, will continue to improve.

FUNCTIONS OF INTELLIGENCE OFFICE

Mr. ROONEY. In view of the fact that we have a new member on this committee, you might briefly state what work you do in the Department.

Mr. ARMSTRONG. Our work is three general kinds: Those are really laid out in the presentation here, as falling into actually seven categories, the first of which is to provide general assistance to the Secretary on all matters where he must deal with intelligence, such as in his membership on the National Security Council which controls the coordination of all intelligence in the United States Government, and being the personal adviser to the Secretary in such matters.

Second, we are responsible for handling what we call intelligence co-ordination for the Department in intelligence matters, that is, coordination with the three military intelligence services, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Atomic Energy Commission, and to a limited extent, insofar as it affects foreign intelligence, the FBI.

Third, we carry the responsibility for special liaison; that is, obtaining highly sensitive and specialized reports from other agencies for the Department, seeing that they are properly handled within the Department; and we conduct external research activities; that is, trying to

farm out to private institutions, universities, and so on, work that can be done by them which would save the Government the cost of doing it. Mr. ROONEY. What sort of work? I understand and the other members understand, but our new member could not be expected to understand very much from the generalities contained on page 31 of the justifications.

SPECIALIZED RESEARCH

Mr. ARMSTRONG. Well let me be more specific, then.

In the external research function we seek to use the skills and manpower that the universities and the private institutions, research institutions have and which can be brought to bear on problems affecting the Department, primarily those of political, economical, and sociological

Mr. ROONEY. Give us an example.

Mr. ARMSTRONG. An example would be a study of the tribes and tribal customs in Burma, where an anthropologist is required who has been there, lived there, and knows the body of facts that are available and could prepare studies that would not have to be classified but would add materially to our knoweldge of the political scene in Burma. Mr. ROONEY. Do you have universities and research institutions do any work in connection with classified matters?

Mr. ARMSTRONG. In very few instances. We have arrangements with three or four where they have provided the physical facilities, and where they handle classified material, where their staff has been thoroughly investigated by the Department's security people as fully as the employees of the Department.

Mr. ROONEY. Is there an FBI investigation of those people?

Mr. ARMSTRONG. Yes. That would be for whatever the Security Division of the Department requires, which does include full investigation by the FBI.

Mr. ROONEY. In every instance?

Mr. ARMSTRONG. I would have to refer that to Mr. Humelsine, but I think it does.

Mr. HUMELSINE. I do not think so, Mr. Chairman; I mean, using the FBI in each instance. Of course, I cannot speak specifically, but I think it would be quite possible we would put our own security man on the investigation, and we take the responsibility for clearing people for that work just as we do for most of the employees of the Department.

REFERRAL OF CLASSIFIED MATERIAL

Mr. ROONEY. Have you referred any classified material to the Institute for Pacific Relations?

Mr. ARMSTRONG. NO.

Mr. ROONEY. Or any similar organization?

Mr. ARMSTRONG. Not to my knowledge.

Mr. ROONEY. To whom have you referred classified material? Let us put it that way.

Mr. ARMSTRONG. We have one contract with International Public Opinion Research, Inc.

Mr. ROONEY. Where is that located?

Mr. ARMSTRONG. I believe it is in Princeton.

It is known as the IPOR; it is a classified contract.

We have another one with Harvard University.

We have one with MIT. That is all. Three institutions.

Mr. ROONEY. Do you wish to make any further description of your operations?

Mr. ARMSTRONG. Another large activity is that of collecting and distributing throughout the Department the raw intelligence information that comes in from the field and from other intelligence units. Mr. ROONEY. Where do you get the biggest bulk of your intelligence?

Mr. ARMSTRONG. The bulk of the raw intelligence comes from the Foreign Service, from the entire foreign establishments of the United States, diplomatic and consular. They provide us with most, the largest part, of the raw information that we use.

Additional information comes through the military collection. system, through exchange with friendly governments, of which there are few in the category with which we would exchange, and through the collection abroad of a considerable volume of periodicals, newspapers, published magazines of one kind or another.

RELATIONSHIP WITH CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY

Mr. ROONEY. Will you explain your relationship to the Central Intelligence Agency?

Mr. ARMSTRONG. Yes. The Central Intelligence Agency is the agency created by statute to coordinate all Government intelligence. We are one of those agencies coordinated by it. We meet with the Central Intelligence Agency, and have been meeting with General Smith, and we have been working with and cooperating with them extremely closely. We engage at certain times in the production of what is called national intelligence by contributing to it the political and politico-economic sections of the intelligence estimates.

Mr. ROONEY. Have you ever been requested by other intelligence agencies to take assignments with regard to that particular matter? Mr. ARMSTRONG. Yes; we have, fairly frequently, and we have complied with the requests.

PERSONNEL FOR BIOGRAPHIC INFORMATION

Mr. ROONEY. How many people do you have working in the Division of Biographic Information?

Mr. ARMSTRONG. We have 53 on duty, and we have an authorization for 53; I think they are all on duty.

Mr. ROONEY. How many officers and how many clerks?

Mr. WILBER. I have it over-all for each office. Is that all right? Mr. ROONEY. No. I am now concerned specifically with the Division of Biographic Information. The reason I ask the question is because I have been noticing it now for several years, and I wonder if by now you should not have the biographies of everybody all over the world and not now need to carry on an office with 53 people each year.

Mr. ARMSTRONG. That is a good question.

Mr. ROONEY. I think it is.

Mr. ARMSTRONG. We have at the present time biographies in our central files on approximately 350,000 people, all foreigners, and we

add around 50,000 to 60,000 a year. We also take out, by virtue of deaths and disappearances, a considerable number, although less than we add, because the file is growing. However, when you consider the population of the world and the number of people who have to be known before they are prominent and put in your file to have the file useful, that is still far below what would be of maximum use to the Department.

We attempt to identify a foreigner when he comes into his first position of prominence, not by the time he has become a cabinet member or a chief of state, but so that we will be able to have a knowledge of him as he advances through the grades and up through the years.

Mr. ROONEY. Why would not that better be handled at the particular embassy, legation, or mission?

Mr. ARMSTRONG. Primarily because the information on foreigners comes from all around the world. The embassy would be the source in the country in which he lives, but frequently facts concerning him turn up in a different country, on a different continent, and these flow into Washington, into the central office, and can be assimilated, digested, catalogued, and filed far more efficiently than if we then, in turn, had to send them back to the embassies.

In many embassies we maintain biographic files of people of interest to them in their own work in those countries, but the central file, where you would be able to have immediate access to it, as a basis of efficiency, seems better located in Washington.

Mr. ROONEY. Does your shop hire the services of any clipping agency?

Mr. ARMSTRONG. No, sir.

We do our own clipping.

OVERTIME

Mr. ROONEY. Tell us what you mean by the sentence on page 34: The above increased production has contributed heavily to the substantial increase in the total amount of hours of overtime (paid, compensatory, and voluntary) performed by intelligence employees.

Mr. ARMSTRONG. That goes back to the increase in workload which involved a considerable increase without an increase in personnel, and we computed the man-hours and then, to account for the origin of those additional man-hours, this breakdown was made. In other words, the overtime in the second 6 months of 1949 was 15,236; in the first 6 months of 1950 it was 11,560. Then, from July to December 1950, basing it upon only the 2 months we had available at the time this budget was computed, it would have averaged 21,000, or rather would have totaled 21,000.

Mr. ROONEY. Have you computed it in minutes per day per employee?

Mr. ARMSTRONG. No, sir.

Mr. ROONEY. Well, what are these figures following the sentence I just read-July to December 1950, 17,790? You are talking about man-hours; are you?

Mr. ARMSTRONG. Yes, sir.

Mr. ROONEY. You have 275 people?

Mr. ARMSTRONG. That is correct.

Mr. ROONEY. And for a 6-month period, taking 120 days, it would amount to about half an hour a day apiece?

Mr. ARMSTRONG. Well, on working days, if you take 5 days a week, 4 weeks is 20 days. One hundred and twenty days; yes. That is right-half an hour a day per person.

Mr. ROONEY. One-half hour per day per employee would be about 33,000 man-hours on a yearly basis; would it not?

Mr. ARMSTRONG. Yes, sir.

Mr. ROONEY. And one-half of that would approximate this figure? Mr. ARMSTRONG. Approximately; yes.

Mr. ROONEY. So it amounts to about half an hour a day.

Mr. ARMSTRONG. Per person.

Mr. Chairman, I now have the information you requested on the Biographic Division. The breakdown between professional and clerical is 35 professional and 18 clerical employees.

COLLECTING, EVALUATING, AND DISTRIBUTING RAW INTELLIGENCE

Mr. FLOOD. Mr. Armstrong, your job is primarily that of acquiring information; is that it?

Mr. ARMSTRONG. That is the first step, and then

Mr. FLOOD. Do you evaluate it?

Mr. ARMSTRONG. Yes, sir.

Mr. FLOOD. Do you reach conclusions?

Mr. ARMSTRONG. We do, sir.

Mr. FLOOD. Then, not only are you reporters but you are editorial

writers as well.

Mr. ARMSTRONG. We are analysts in the sense of working on the information to arrive at conclusions.

Mr. FLOOD. When you refer to "raw intelligence," I suppose you refer to the material that you have collected from varied and many sources before anybody works on it.

Mr. ARMSTRONG. That is correct, sir.

Mr. FLOOD. When you collect this raw intelligence, do you keep it all to yourselves, or do you pass on the raw intelligence to anybody else? If so, to whom?

Mr. ARMSTRONG. We pass much of the raw intelligence on as of immediate consequence to the operating officials in the Department. Mr. FLOOD. Who determines who gets it?

Mr. ARMSTRONG. Our Acquisition and Distribution Division has the job of determining who ought to get it.

Mr. FLOOD. Then the Acquisition and Distribution Division of your office has the power of deciding what is done with raw intelligence coming to you from every conceivable source from which you get it? Mr. ARMSTRONG. Yes, sir; that responsibility is delegated to them. Mr. FLOOD. To them?

Mr. ARMSTRONG. To that division.

Mr. FLOOD. Who is the chief of that division?

Mr. ARMSTRONG. The chief of that division is Mr. Nordbeck.

Mr. FLOOD. Who is he?

Mr. ARMSTRONG. Mr. Nordbeck is a professional intelligence officer.

Mr. FLOOD. What does that mean?