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But the CIA believes NOCs are the best way to carry out many clandestine operations. A foreign-intelligence service usually has no trouble spotting CIA officers operating under an embassy's cover. Not so for NOCs. ``If you're working drugs, thugs or tech transfers, you're going to be in banks all the time looking at financial transactions''--jobs often better suited for an officer under corporate cover, says a CIA contractor. NOC officers also have had more luck spying on ``hard targets'' such as Iran, Iraq and North Korea, where the U.S. has no embassies in which to hide CIA operatives. In some countries, Time has learned, the CIA is even experimenting with setting up two stations. One would be under the traditional embassy cover to serve as a decoy, while another much more secretive station would handle the NOCs.
Carns, whose confirmation by Congress is likely, will have a lot of people looking over his shoulder as he directs his new spies. The White House has appointed an independent commission, headed by former Defense Secretary Les Aspin, to produce a report by March 1996 on future directions for the entire U.S. intelligence community. The House Intelligence Committee is preparing a similar report, while Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Arlen Specter announced he is drafting legislation to reorganize and cut overlap in intelligence collection. Carns promised last week that the operation ``will be leaner, but at the same time we will do more of the more important things.''
However, the CIA is a byzantine organization made up of secretive fiefdoms that have walled out other directors who came from the outside. If Clinton isn't re-elected, Carns may end up being only a caretaker for two years until another President appoints a new spymaster.