ARE WE INTERFERING UNDULY?

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80-01601R001200370001-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 9, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 30, 2000
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: May 14, 1971
• Content Type: NSPR

HARTFORD, CONN.
CATE Oi~
i T j? E WIease 2001/03/04: CIA-RDP80-01
MWqvqA
Y~e Inter" yp;
A critical review of this country's
foreign intelligence organizations is'said
to-be under consideration by President
'Nixon. They cost too much (several bil-
lion dollars a year), and their perform-
ance has too often been seriously at
fault. At important turns, they have pro-
vided inadequate or misleading informa-
tion.
The latest example of this was seen in
the invasion of Laos. The preparatory
intelligence indicated that there would
not be massive resistance. But that is
precisely what Saigon's forces ran into-
35,000 of Hanoi's troops as against
17,000 of Saigon's. The result was a rout.
That intelligence failure had been pre-
ceded by others. One concerned the sup-
posed presence of American prisoners of
war at Sontay. An elaborate and danger-
ous raid was undertaken; it was fruit-
less. Then, ' there was the supposed
presence of a major Hanoi headquarters
just over the Cambodian border. It was
never found. Also, the massive Tet of-
fensive some time back was altogether
unexpected.
Indeed, the Vietnam war as a whole
may fairly be characterized as a failure
in intelligence. Thus, Ambassador Ells-
worth Bunker gave an interview in Sai-
gon this week, in which he said, "We
really didn't understand the kind of war
we were engaged in. So it was difficult,
it took time." And this after the notori-
ous experience of the French in Vietnam,
the British in Malaysia, and others' else-
-where in Southeast Asia. Despite our
.,costly intelligence, we just didn't know
what we were getting into.
But perhaps more momentous. for the
future is what the Central Intelligence
Agency is commonly believed to be doing
in other countries, particularly those in
Latin America.
WEEKLY - 82,000
All kinds of chicanery and violence are
arbitrarily attributed to the C.I.A. That
agency is represented as pracoth', om-
nipresent and omnipotent, as well as to-
tally unscrupulous and malicious. It
would appear that in Latin America, for
example, there is a prevalent obsession
with the- C.I.A., and everything adverse
-with
exe
the
~
e
Ma
s4
storms
C.I.A., much as, in our own country, a
Communist plot is seen by some as ac-
counting for anything from an early vot-
ing age to alate spring.
However, it is not only the feverishly
imaginative and the bitterly anti-North
American in Latin America who charge
that the C.I.A. is interfering in the in-
ternal affairs of the countries to the
south of us. This is also alleged by per-
sons well informed, well balanced, and
well disposed to us. _
They are troubled by what they see as
the intensification of Yankee economic
imperialism in the Latin American world.
This, they say, is what is effected in the
last analysis by all our aid and develop-
ment programs. Such undertakings are
professedly designed to help the econom-
ic, social, and political progress of the
indigent Latin American masses.-But in
fact they do nothing of the sort. Rather,
they serve :the immediate advantage of
the already highly privileged oligarchies-
in the various countries, and enable
North Americans to exert still more con_
more wealth from it.
it? More and more people in Latin Amer-
ica are convinced, 'rightly or wrongly,
that the C.I.A. is safeguarding the in-
ordinate North American economic in-
terest in the Latin American countries
by secretly acting to keep complaisant
regimes in power and to destroy native
reformist or revolutionary movements.
The alleged means run the gamut from
the arrangement of political murder to
the infiltration of the universities. It has
been said that a turn to the left in Chile,
Peru, and Bolivia has been facilitated by
STATINTL
resentment of C.I.A. interference in the
domestic affairs of those countries.
'Sorting fact from fantasy in such mat-
ters is not easy. But at the very least it
must be recognized that a popular im-
pression of C.I.A. intervention in the in-
ternal business of friendly nearby coun-
tries is damaging to American prestige.
If, while we are fighting a bootless battle {
on the other side of the world, we are
alienating our neighbors by meddling in
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