The Political Psychology Division (PPD) is a Central Intelligence Agency component that produces psychiatric and psychological evaluations of foreign leaders for the use of U.S. policymakers. It was founded in the 1970s by Dr. Gerald Post, who originally joined the CIA as a staff psychiatrist treating CIA case officers in psychological crisis.[1][2]
The division remains operational. “It’s a lasting legacy at the CIA — it’s still there.”[3]
Origin
Post’s original CIA role was as a staff psychiatrist treating case officers who suffered psychological breakdowns. After observing that “there aren’t that many that go crazy, really,” he proposed a new function: long-distance psychiatric evaluation of foreign leaders.[1]
Function
The division’s principal output is short psychiatric profiles — typically 500 words — of foreign leaders, embedded in finished CIA intelligence products that are distributed to the President, Vice President, Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, and National Security Advisor.[4]
Subjects profiled include Saddam Hussein, Deng Xiaoping, and other heads of state and government across the agency’s areas of interest.[4]
The division also produces operational recommendations for the exploitation of foreign leaders visiting the United States. Example: “Oh, President so-and-so is an alcoholic — so get him liquored up, and that’s when you want to start the trade talks.” In a documented operation involving an Allied leader during the Clinton administration — known to enjoy chess and to be an enthusiastic consumer of sausage — division analysts proposed that the leader be served sausage during a state visit to the point of satiation; the resulting drowsiness was expected to make him chatty as he attempted to remain awake during a subsequent chess match with President Clinton, who would ask a list of prepared sensitive questions.[2][5]
Ethics
Issuing a psychiatric determination on an individual without an in-person examination violates standard professional ethical guidance for psychiatrists and psychologists. The division proceeds on the basis that “this isn’t a perfect world.”[6]
In practice
A CIA case officer or analyst writing on a particular foreign country requests profiles from PPD as needed. “I’d call over there and say, ‘Hey, I need 500 words on Saddam Hussein,’ or ‘I need 500 words on Deng Xiaoping,’ and then they would do their psychiatric evaluation in 500 words and I would include it in my bigger piece, and then it would go to the President, the Vice President, Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, and the National Security Advisor.”[4]