The Socio-Educational Composition of the CIA Elite: A Statistical Note

Abstract

Attitudes within United States towards CIA have played a governing role in its history. Preconceptions about social and educational background of Agency's employees, and particularly its ?lite, have formed one dimension of those governing attitudes. Within intelligence community, therefore, concern about educational standards in CIA has manifested itself for public relations reasons as well as in connection with efficiency. For example, Doolittle Report on covert activities took note in 1954 of prevailing complaint that there was too much dead wood in Agency. The Report indicated that 47 percent of Agency employees had a B.A. degree or equivalent. In event, this turned out to be not dramatically below a figure of 5 2 percent arrived at for Foreign Service in 1959. But senior CIA officials continued to be defensive: in 1965, much-criticized CIA Director, Admiral Raborn, told President Johnson about merits of Agency's 50 senior officials: Their academic credentials are impressive. Eighty percent of them held degrees, and ten percent doctorates.1 Other commentators, outside as well as inside CIA, looked at Agency more from a social, or socio-educational perspective. Retired CIA Director William Colby recalled that in 1950s we were... cream of academic and social aristocracy. The journalist Stewart Alsop agreed that pre-1960s generation were the Ivy Leaguers, Socialites, Establishmentarians.2 Alsop and Colby found this all very congenial and, indeed, one might argue that a tightly knit clique close to traditional sources of power and relatively immune from outside penetration is ideal group to be in charge of foreign intelligence.3