I I comment....

II

Our CIA Problem and Theirs

The problem of an unresponsive political leadership has particular meaning for social science, not because it has been studied for so long, but because it can be dealt with by establishing an alternative source of power and legitimation. Value neutrality should not be equated with value indifference. Social science in the twentieth century has matured in a self-imposed ethical vacuum. In the process of professionalization, social science has turned from the gods of the temple to the gods of the market. It has come to pass that worthwhile social science is only that which can be traded. In this sense, the CIA is doing nothing unusual in hiring social scientists, system analysts, consultants, and contractees to gather and rationalize the information it wants. It has simply entered the market late and is compelled to pay high prices for scarce talent. The dilemma arises when social scientists want to eat their cake and have it too. They want the high status that comes with high wages, but they also want the high status that their university-based colleagues persist in granting to nonoperational independent scholarship. And this is a dilemma for the CIA as well. They too need decent scholarship, but cannot compromise their directives to secure the big truths. The disclosure that the CIA has reached into the National Student Association, the AFL-CIO, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Michigan State University, and a hundred other places hallowed by intellectuals has one aspect that is particularly tragic. It is not that the CIA supported research in sensitive areas, but that nearly all the *'respectable" agencies lacked either the wisdom or the funds to support such research. In a nation where mass participation in democracy is low and faith in science-including social science--is high, lack of political action below and absence of candor above have resulted in misinformation and miscalculation. 2

W e have come to the point where politics has ceased to embrace the entire range of social affairs, and has come to mean instead government operations, where experts can hold sway over instead of through vox populi. Mass pluralistic politics is a moral activity; elite politics firmly and clearly separates politics and ethics. The repeated calls for a cleanup in Congress must sound naive in the operational arms of government which are touched rarely if ever by elections or public pressures. It is salient that the claims of morality come most often in the one area of government most closely linked to electoral processes. The CIA has learned to keep social science subordinated to the "black" bureaucracy. It has done this skillfully. The social scientists who knew they were on the CIA payroll were almost as powerless as those under them who were betrayed and did not know where their research was going until the CIA cover was blown. This subordination has often meant low scientific productivity, which is not surprising, but it has also meant limiting research so severely that frequently the conclusions are built into the research design. When the CIA was preparing to invade Cuba, the immediate parallel that suggested itself was the successful invasion of Guatemala. This was so tempting--and the parallels are there--that no overall assessment of significant differences among the "Banana Republics" was made. Guatemala worked, therefore Cuba would work. But there had been a coup d'&at in Guatemala, in contrast to a popular revolution in Cuba. Uncommitted research could have easily shown this. In the absence of any popular movement to do the job, social science has had thrust upon it the burden of providing legitimation for rational, nonviolent solutions to major problems. If the point is reached where the violent solution is the only rational one, the need for social science is over, and the

gunsmiths and the soldiers can step in. The CIA involvement of intellectuals has reintroduced old controversies of value involvement versus value neutrality. But this question has been settled when everyone from R A N D executives to radical educators piously asserts the need for relevant social science on a giant scale. Auntie Marne's secretary, Agnes Gooch, said upon returning from her first sexual encounter: "I have lived, lived, lived, lived! Now what do I do?" Social science might well ask: "We are relevant, relevant, relevant! Now what do we do?" One thing we can do is begin making distinctions between application and policy formation. The former would explain how best to suppress or inspire revolution, while policy formation would provide counsel for or against revolution. It is no longer possible to make a case for a pristine social science untouched by concrete events. W e must learn when application spills over into policy. More forcefully, we must learn what policies stem from what actions. Here morals roar back into social science, If application is needed to test our principles, what criteria are available for testing the application? Precise distinctions between theoretical, applied, and policy-oriented research need to be made so that the government and the scientist both know what the limitations are--no less than what the requirements a r e - - i n social science research. As matters now stand, the need for funds compels social scientists into procrustean beds. Many policy makers mistakenly assume that inferior or inexact results are a flaw in social science methodology rather than a result of organizational fumbling. The question is not bringing man back into science or values back into science, but rather what sort of man and what sort of values we are bringing back. The age of innocence is over for social science and indeed was a myth. Some of us may have missed that golden age while at the funeral of Socrates, or visiting the interned Machiavelli in his house in San Casciano, or the exiled Hobbes in Paris, or listening to Spencer lecture on the evils of industrial safety laws. The need is not so much for the CIA to get out of the social science business - - a t best a fatuous d e m a n d ~ b u t more to the point, for every agency of government to get into the habit of using social science personnel to seek out social science data. Only thus can pluralism be grounded in government operations.

Irving Louis Horou,itz Lee Rainwater TRANS-ACTION