Since I've been here, I've listened to and talked with groups and individuals and find there is a great deal of opinion that the Directorate of Operations is overmanned and has a lot of people who are under-employed.

Let me emphasize that this reduction is an effort to be leaner and more effective.

It will be carried out in as considerate a way as we possibly can.

Welcome to the rest is classified.

I'm Gordon Carrera.

And I'm David McCloskey.

And that was CIA director, Stan'sfield Turner, as you could probably tell

for my accident, an admiral. It was your Navy accent, Gordon. Navy accent, Oxford Road Scholar accent.

And he was speaking in the CIA's auditorium, The Bubble, on August the 7th, 1977 announcing his

reductions, or should we say purge of the CIA.

As we look at this story about purges and political control of the CIA in the context of

what's going on today under the Trump presidency, but looking in particular back through

the lens of history and what becomes known as the Halloween massacre under President Carter

and his CIA director, Stansfield Turner. And David, last time we looked at Stansfield

Turner, this kind of slightly intellectual, aloof figure coming into the CIA, a culture clash,

and he's going to kind of bring with him a desire for change, his own people and a desire to kind of cut the place down to size.

Well, that's right, Gordon.

And last time we talked about how one of the things he did when he arrived, which, you know, of course, in any organization, immediately ingratiates you to the rank and file was he fired a few people who worked on the seventh floor and it's off to just kind of this really rough, bad start with the CIA.

Now, one of the things that Turner does that is going to really accentuate this clash is that he brings in outsiders to kind of staff his seventh floor and to help him run

the place. I'll say this is something that never ever sits well at the CIA. Now, there was a

director of the CIA under George W. Bush named Porter Goss. He was very briefly

the CIA director. And he had been a CIA case officer, I believe, back in probably this time,

...