CIA IS A NECESSARY EVIL

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00149R000800170023-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: November 11, 2016
• Document Release Date: April 30, 1999
• Sequence Number: 23
• Publication Date: February 4, 1966
• Content Type: NSPR

ST. PAUL DISPATCH -February
Sanitized -Approved For -February ease CIA
St. Paul Dispatch
Leave The pies Alone
1A Is a Necessary Evi
By FRANK GETLEIN particulars last week, com- In a democracy such ex-"
In the swelling crop of this plained that "Wrapped in its pressions face special prob.
year's probable misses in cloak of secrecy, the CIA has, lems. But man's ingenuity is
Congress, two proposals com- in effect, been making foreign equal to the challenge of
mand especially high odds policy . has assumed re- power in whatever guise.
against their ever getting any- sponsibilities w h I c h were Hence, the CIA. Its predcese-
where. heretofore solely those of the sor, the OSS of World War Submitted by Democratic President and Congress .. II, was a schoolboy gambol,
Senators Young of Ohio and has gradually taken on the with free wheeling scholar
McCarthy of Minnesota, the character of an Invisible gov- gypsies wandering through d
proposals would attempt to ernment, answerable only to 'enemy-occupied .Europe with
bring the Central Intelligence itself." bags of gold tied round their
'.Agency under congressional There have been times middles.
t' scrutiny. Never. when many Americans have The change, a profound one,
The CIA is difficult to ex? wished the invisible govern- required signification and the
plain as an inviolable island ment would be a little more transformation of the OSS into
-in the midst of a government invisible, but neither Young's CIA did the trick.
usually subject to congression- conclusions nor those of Sen.' At that, we're lucky. His--;
al shot and shell. Who likes McCarthy, follow in the least torically most great powers ,
spies? Despite recent romant- from their premises. es. use their symbols of power. {
is literature on the subject, against their own people.. So
most Americans probably THEY LEAVE out the thing far at least,'the CIA is `!Mitt-'
still hold to the old-fashioned - that makes it all possible, ly for foreigners::
belief that spying is some- even inevitable. We are now
thing we'd rather not do. a great power. Power, to be
Right there is pact of the realized at all, has to be abso-
reason for the great latitude lute. And absolute power has
accorded the CIA. *The agen- to be basically unaccounted
cy, like James Bond, is li- for and carried on in a high, ,:
censed to do the dirty work. degree of secrecy. .
that needs to be done. The This is the fundamental
rest of us, including our elect- principle of the secret police.. d']
~,ed representatives, don't have. In czarist Russia as in So
to think about` it and hence viet Russia, a great deal of ,
are, obviously, not responsi- the impact of the state upon
'?ble fot it. it's not .us. It's the citizen-subject has been
that crowd of. spooks out In, through.the secret police,,"
Virginia , answerable, to no p u, b,1 I'd
~,. ? Sen. Young; in.i. big bi I' o(. body. ?~*' i?
STATINTL
Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00149R000800170023-4