CIA IG to Move On

Frederick P. Hitz, who has served since 1990 as the Central Intelligence Agency's inspector general, has announced that he will leave in mid-1998 to spend two years heading a project on the future of intelligence at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

As the first CIA inspector general since the 1950s, Hitz, 57, received much attention during the Aldrich Ames spy case, which involved investigating 17 people over a year's time. Though the total number of employees in the IG's office remains classified, Hitz said he expanded his staff to three times what it what it was when he came aboard--and the existence of congressional oversight in the wake of concerns over the Iran-Contra affair allowed "a certain measure of independence from the party line."

But Hitz has also attracted controversy. A panel of the President's Council on Integrity and Efficiency is reviewing his office's 1991 inquiry into Janine Brookner, a former CIA station chief who received a $400,000 settlement over allegations of sex discrimination and a campaign of disinformation that she blames partly on Hitz.

"During his tenure we have witnessed the most intense period of investigation of the intelligence community since the 1970s," said Steven Aftergood, an intelligence specialist at the Federation of American Scientists. "He's been in a pivotal role. Giving him the benefit of the doubt, the fact that he has irritated all parties at one point or another suggests that he was on the right track. But the difficulty in assessing his work is that the overwhelming majority of it is inaccessible to the public. In a real sense, we don't know how much Mr. Hitz accomplished."

In an interview, Hitz explained his impending departure by saying that, "to be quite honest, seven years is a long time to be in this kind of job. I won't say it's too long, but I'd say that when you start encountering the same kinds of management problems the second time, it's probably time to think about doing something else." He added that the opportunity to teach about government service would aid "one of those neglected professions that's been under attack for the past 10-20 years."

Hitz received an undergraduate degree from Princeton in 1961. After teaching law in Nigeria on a Ford Foundation grant, Hitz joined the CIA in 1967, serving in various positions in the CIA's directorate of operations, including an African posting, until 1973. He later held posts in the departments of State, Defense and Energy and the White House. Hitz returned to the CIA in three positions: legislative counsel to the Director of Central Intelligence, deputy chief of the Directorate of Operations's Europe Division and finally as President Bush's choice to be inspector general.

In an interview, Washington attorney Victoria Toensing called Hitz's investigation of Brookner, Toensing's client, "a farce." "Here is a woman who reported a man for beating his wife and ends up the subject of false allegations," she said. "All you have to do is look at the IG report. On its face, it's incompetent. I would have fired anyone who brought in a report as poorly prepared as that one was."

Hitz contends that studies by two federal entities--the CIA's Office of Equal Employment Opportunity and the Justice Department--have cleared him of what he said were the most serious allegations, including reckless disregard of an investigation's target and inappropriate breaches of privacy. Hitz added that the President's council "may well" find that the Brookner investigation did not meet all of its standards, but he argued that much the same could be said about any investigation. "I can say we've made a number of changes since" the Brookner investigation, he added.

Hitz said the issue "did not come up with the dean" when discussing the Wilson school job offer. In an interview, Wilson School dean Michael Rothschild said that "the faculty is well aware that he has dealt with many controversial matters and that not everybody loves the way in which he has dealt with them." Rothschild added that the school hired Hitz for two reasons. One is that he has "seen at very highest level what the agency has and hasn't done well. If anybody has the ability and experience to really seriously examine the problems with American intelligence, it's Fred. Second, as a public policy school, we continually face a problem about teaching management, and the CIA has to be an interesting case."

Aftergood noted that the CIA is the only agency with an inspector general that does not have subpoena power. It rarely publishes even the declassified results of its investigations. "Where we do know about his work, such as the Ames affair, he has made an impressive contribution," Aftergood said. "I don't doubt that Ms. Brookner had a horrendous experience, but I am not convinced that its was representative of Mr. Hitz's work.... There's no question that the country was better off with him at the CIA than without him."

For his part, Hitz said he and other CIA employees are hopeful that agency's new director, George Tenet, will--unlike most of his recent predecessors--remain in the top job to steer the agency through turbulent, post-Cold War waters. The recent leadership changes have been "very distressing," Hitz said.

"To have absorbed the necessary changes would have been a major undertaking under the best of circumstances, but in reality they were not in the best of circumstances--they came right in the middle of a revolving door at the top..." he said. "My hope is that we've hit bottom and are on the way back. Getting healthy again is not going to happen overnight."