COURTING A RELUCTANT ALLY - National Intelligence University

officers assisted by 20 civilian clerks. 16 Complicating the personnel issue for ONIwas the fact that many naval officers saw little value in doing intelligence work.Consequently, there were relatively few intelligence professionals among thenaval officer corps since most believed multiple assignments in intelligencewould be detrimental to their careers. Even the Director of Naval Intelligence(DNI) position was looked upon with disdain. VADM Kirk, who as RADM Kirkwas DNI from January to October 1941, has noted in retrospect that[t]he average tour of the Director of Naval Intelligence, in the ten yearsbefore we went in the war, was less than two years, always. Nobody wasstaying. It had very poor standing in the Navy Department, not becauseof the calibre [sic] of the officers, but everybody sort of thought NavalIntelligence was striped pants, cookie-pushers, [and] going to parties. 17VADM Kirk’s views were echoed by one of the few officers who did multipletours in intelligence at that time, Rear Admiral Ellis Zacharias, who felt thatthe high turnover rate of the DNI’s and their relative lack of experience withintelligence matters, were two factors that significantly limited the effectivenessof ONI. 18Another major problem ONI had to contend with was the dichotomy betweenits positive intelligence functions and its security and counterintelligence functions.Lacking the resources to do either job adequately, the effort dependedlargely on who held the DNI position. Throughout much of the 1920s and 30s,DNIs primarily focused on ONI’s security role at the expense of the positiveintelligence mission. 19 Undermanned, ONI was forced to use untrained reservistsand volunteers to augment the personnel involved with security in the country’svarious naval districts. While it is true that the Navy faced potentially significantproblems from radical elements and labor agitators throughout the 1920s and 30s,much of the workforce involved in the domestic intelligence mission was nottrained in proper investigative techniques. This situation caused friction with theFBI, which was concerned about ONI’s poor evidence-handling procedures andviolations of civil liberties. ONI’s lack of arrest authority also hindered its efforts16Packard, 17-19; Bath, 9-10; Dorwart, Conflict of Duty, 77.17Columbia University, The Reminiscences of Alan G. Kirk (New York: Oral History ResearchOffice, 1962), 183, Operational Archives, Naval Historical Center, Washington, DC. Cited hereafteras Kirk Reminiscences.18 Captain Ellis M. Zacharias, Secret Missions; The Story of an Intelligence Officer (New York,G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1946), 82. Zacharias retired from the naval service as a Rear Admiral.19Dorwart, Conflict of Duty, 5.5