In Hong Kong, an agent of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency slips into a railroad yard and checks the wear on ball hearings of freight cars coming in from China to try to spot unusual troop movements. Meanwhile, another agent goes to the Hong Kong central market and buys a large order of calf's liver from animals raised in China to run a lab test for radioactive fallout.
In Eastern Europe, a CIA team tries to obtain a sample of a Communist party chief's urine. Purpose: to determine his state of health. The CIA did this successfully with Egypt's late King Farouk but failed recently with Yugoslavia's President Tito.
THESE are only a few of myriad missions that the CIA has performed around the world. The agency is also constantly accused of fantastic James Bondian exploits that more often than not it has nothing to do with. The fact is that no nation can any longer accept Secretary of State Henry Stimson's bland dictum of 1929 that "gentlemen do not read other people's mail." In a nuclear-ringed globe, intelligence is more vital than ever. Nor can a world power automatically limit itself to such a passive role as mere information gathering; trying to influence events may at times be necessary. But it can no longer be done with the crudity and arrogance displayed in the Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961, or the attempt with the International Telephone and Telegraph Corp. to sow economic chaos in Chile in 1970. To harness the CIA's excesses and yet utilize its immense capabilities for keeping the U.S. abreast of world developments, the Nixon Administration has ordered the greatest reorganization in the agency's 25-year history.
Cooperate. Reports TIME's Diplomatic Editor Jerrold Schecter, who has been keeping a watch on the CIA: "For the first time since its founding the CIA is undergoing a thorough shakeup of personnel and redirection of mission. The two main targets of U.S. intelligence activities continue to be the Soviet Union and China. But a rapidly developing détente with those countries has created different demands on the intelligence establishment. Along with traditional estimates of the missile and military capabilities of Communist countries, the White House is insisting on a new emphasis on assessments of their political and strategic intentions. The entire intelligence estimating process is being refined to include more stress on such developments as Soviet and Chinese grain outputs and computer advances."
To chart this new direction. President Nixon has turned to a tweedy, pipe-smoking economist and military strategist, James R. Schlesinger, 44, who in February took over as director of the CIA. Aides quote Schlesinger as saying that "the entire intelligence community can produce a better product with a lower level of resources." In short, the nation's spy network should generate better intelligence for less money.