A FEW KIND WORDS FOR THE CIA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP70B00338R000300030004-8
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 19, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 1, 2005
• Sequence Number: 4
• Publication Date: April 18, 1967
• Content Type: NSPR

Approved For Release 20 &21 : CIA-RDP70B00338R000300030004-8
April. ; 8, 1967
A former Ambassador says
'
IT
S OPEN SEASON ON THE Central intelligence Agency. Just about
everybody, from the California New Left to the Arizona Old Right,
h
b
ki
as
een ta
ng potshots at onef Goh'
agency o ourvernment tat cant
talk back, The revelation that it has helped finance through founda.
Lions some cultural and student groups sccims to haye aroused even
more lndignatlnn 11181 11110 DRY of PIPS N AN plx yertro ago, Editorial.. Ii
page cartoonists' are again caricaturing the foxy.facod littla?men in
t
h
renc
coats with GIA on the htbddifh
iraans, an any menton o te
A
i
gency
s good for sik thkili
ancer one cocta-party crcuit. CIA is once
more a dirty initial.
And as usual, the CIA has had to keel) quiet. It's the silent. service
that is never able to brag about its frequent successes nor confess its
occasional failures. Even its friends on the outside have to be careful
about what they say for fear of violating security: And yet, having-
seen quite a bit of CIA operations during my five years as a U
S
Am-
.
.
bassador, from 1961 to 1966, 1 feel like saying that I'm sorry about
the recent furore and sorrier still ,shout its possible consequences. For
the expose in Rampammagazir1c'. has succeeded in doing what Communist propagandists have trial for years, in vain, to accomplish: the
slandering of American students and scholars abroad and the dis
crediting of much of the good work done by our private foundations- .
freedom' accruing from these-exposes of the CIA ... great enough to
I don't believe that anybody should answer gives" to this q iestinn
without nest taking the following insufficiently appreciated facts into
cidti
onseraon:
[ion of intelligence from a variety of sources. Its 1.5,000 employees
are neither spooks, jackasses nor supermen, as they are so often and SO
? variously depicted in fiction; they are for the most part calm, studious,
deskbound professionals who never do the kind of things James Bond
does. Nor is the Agency by any stretch of the imagination "aninvisible : 1
government." Abroad, CIA people assigned to our overseas mission
Ai R. au t ,@l tfo?>?lRfSb~iiV ti?nbR!ft u . PTr~ a iington, I O.g300048
'.: activities are cleared, approved and supervised by the interdepart-,
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2. The CIA is also in the bi.irainess of watching and countering the
actions of the Soviet xci; and other Communist intelligence services.
Unhappily, the cold war is by no means over. I have seen at firsthand
and close range in Africa how much effort and money is spent by our
adversaries to bribe, deceive, subvert and undermine the potential
leaders of these new young nation. And I have been gratified, as an
American, that we have been able to alert our friends and help protect
African independence and nonalignnx+nt--thanks in part to the Cm.
The information we {rave been ahlr to furnish free governments about
the identity and aetivii`ies of ttiC:l4 agents among others has been in.
valuable. For the latter's activities are both far-flung and intensive.
Between 60 and 70 percent of all Soviet-bloc diplomatic personnel in
Asia and Africa are intelligence agents in disguise. And among Com
!...monist newsmen, the proportion is evci higher, Compared to the';,
opposition, we are quite thin on the ground; but then, our mission'in :
these countries is not to subvert but to help prevent subversion.
3. Indirect CIA financing of student and cultural activity has been;,
negligible compared to what the other side has been doing. The Rus? i'
sians alone are estimated to be spending $10 million a year in recruit-'
ing and proselytizing youth groups, Total CIA subsidies to counter this
campaign since the early 1950's have been less than a third of this,,
sum. The beneficiaries of funding have not-as implied in the recent a
exposes-been bought, badgered or corrupted by the CIA. In fact, most
of them didn't even know where the money was coming from. Unlike.
their fellow students from the they were not expected to tnke i
orders, perform espionage fun(tic,ms or even promote official
j views on foreign policy.
Then why all the fuss? I think part of the reason is that the CIA
has both an undeservedly sinister reputation and the wrong kind of
name to be in the business of supporting activities that are peripheral
t to its intelligence-gathering mission, '1'he British perform this function
more discreetly. Student, youth and cultural affairs are handled by
the British Council, a privately run but government-supported institu-: ,
tion. The French work through their Ministry of Education and the
1. Alliance Francaise. Their CIA counterparts manage to, keep far away
and out of sight-which is wherv they belong. This is not to say that
Britain or France are "closed" sr eieties, It's just that, being more ex- '
!' perienced and sophisticatbd, they appreciate the importance of self
,.imposed restraint on publicizing intelligence operations.
we Americans don't-perhaps t'cr~cnse we feel guilty about. the
~:. CIA. I don't think we have any reason t o, but then I've had more chance
than most of my fellow citizens to see how the Agency works.
So what do we do now? Admitting that the CIA and our top
t',' Government officials were naive in thinking that these indirect subsi-
dies could be indefinitely hushed up, we,still .should not jettison the
activities they made possible-not if wo care about enlarging world-'
wide understanding of America and what we stand'for.
I believe that it's up to the Congress, which holds the, purse
I,strings, to repair the damage. You can hear plenty`of patriotic cold-war ,
oratory on Capitol Hill, but when it comes. to appropriating funds
needed to wage the cold war, our representatives don't always suit
.:
their actions to their words, except where military expenditures are
concerned. Let's hope the recent furore will impel our elected reprc?:
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sentatives to realize that Vietnam is only one front in this war-and
by no means the most important-and that being niggardly about for.
eign economic assistance, about USIA operations and about the kind of
activities that should be handled by the State Department's Bureau of
Educational and Cultural Affairs is the most shortsighted kind of
economy at this time in history.
leadership in this revolutionary world.
A h'I ,
scrupulous opponents to 'convert and subvert a new generation of
The job the CIA had been doing covertly needs to be done overtly,'
perhaps by an agency with a less cloak-and-dagger-sounding title
"`
.
,..' Otherwise, we will only make it easier for our determined and un? ?
WILLIAM
A,T7WQQD, EDITOR N
I.C}, ,r I'. a .r.~~.~+1.~.~1..awi~ ~ ~,.~ _.. ~1 ?i'... { Qi4A'Jr
nd w e we ponder now to do it, lets also hope .the muckrak-
.era get on -a new tack, We've-done ourselves enough damage already, ;
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