Page 171 - Gobierno ivisible

Date: 4/5/2011 Page: 171 of 237

was that the ambassador now appeared to be in a better position to protest about a CIA program and delay it until
a decision came back from Washington.

These conclusions were watered down in the staff report published by the subcommittee in January, 1963. But the
report did point out that the military services and the CIA tend to "take a restricted view of the ambassador's right
to interpose himself" between them and their superiors in Washington.

And in a cautious observation that might equally have applied to the Invisible Government's relationship with the
government as a whole, the report said:

"To a degree the primacy of the ambassador is a polite fiction."

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* Significantly, many CIA officials estimate that the Soviet Union spends $2,000,000,000 a year on its spy
apparatus. On the other hand, Soviet Secret Police Chief Alexander N. Shelepin estimated in 1959 that the CIA
spent $1,500,000,000 a year and employed 20,000 persons.

* The OCB, the Operations Coordinating Board, was composed of the Under Secretary of State, the Deputy
Secretary of Defense, the President's Special Assistant (National Security Affairs ), and the directors of CIA,
USIA, and the old International Cooperation Administration. They were supposed to make sure the President's
decisions were carried out in their departments. The OCB was abolished by President Kennedy in his first month
in office.

* In the 88th Congress the CIA subcommittee in the Senate was composed of Russell, Harry Flood Byrd, Virginia
Democrat, John Stennis, Mississippi Democrat, and Leverett Saltonstall, Massachusetts Republican, all members
of the Armed Services Committee; and Carl Hayden, Arizona Democrat and chairman of the Appropriations
Committee, and Milton R. Young, North Dakota Republican and Appropriations Committee member. A. Willis
Robertson, Virginia Democrat and Appropriations Committee member, joined the CIA subcommittee on
occasion.

* In a debate on August 14, 1963, Representative Walter Norblad, the Oregon Republican, said the House Armed
Services Subcommittee on the CIA (of which he was a former member) "met annually one time a year for a
period of two hours in which we accomplished virtually nothing."

* In the 88th Congress they were Democrats George Mahon of Texas and Harry R. Sheppard of California, and
Republicans Gerald Ford of Michigan and Harold C. Ostertag of New York.

In the House there was also a CIA subcommittee of the Armed Services Committee. It was composed of Carl
Vinson, Georgia Democrat and chairman of the Armed Services Committee; L. Mendel Rivers, South Carolina
Democrat; F. Edward Hebert, Louisiana Democrat; Melvin Price, Illinois Democrat; Charles E. Bennett, Florida
Democrat; George Huddleston, Jr., Alabama Democrat; Leslie C. Arends, Illinois Republican; William G. Bray,
Indiana Republican; Bob Wilson, California Republican; and Frank C. Osmers, Jr., New Jersey Republican.