SPEECH TO THE HARVARD CLUB OF NEW YORK CITY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80B01554R002700340001-9
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 13
• Document Creation Date: December 12, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 6, 2001
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: December 8, 1977
• Content Type: SPEECH

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HARVARD CLUB OF NEW YORK CITY
8 December 1977
Ken, thank you very much. Mr. Ambassador, ladies and
gentlemen. As Ken said, I did that Naval Academy Course in
3 years instead of 4 along with 832 of my classmates. I did
Harvard in 13 weeks. But let me tell you, that while I was a
simple naval officer when I went to Harvard,.I learned my first
good lesson in secrecy and deception while I was there. My
classmates seated down here at these tables remember Professor
Tom Kennedy taught us One of the ways he did was
he would divide us into teams of six and we went off into different
rooms, and six were management and six were labor and they had
a problem and we pounded the table and we swore at each other,
and we negotiated. Then in the middle of negotiations Kennedy
would send in a telegram, "your strike fund is broke, you got an
order for 10,000 witches, must sell, the strike can get going, and
so on. Then we'd go the classroom, great big blackboard and the
Professor would lay it out, team made 5? an hour, 2 weeks leave
for vacation, team b, 8~ an hour. He wanted us each to experience
both the labor and management side. So, we had a second go-round
on this. And in the second go-round, we came down the blackboard,
it was 5~, 74, 30~. So he called on the leader of that team.
Why did you'. fall so far out from everybody else? And he answered,
well, you know when that telegram arrived--and the Professor looked
and said, telegram, I didn't send any telegrams today.
I'm going to try to convince you today, that we're not always
deceptive in intelligence, in fact what I really want to talk about
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is the efforts we are making today to share more with you on an
honest and open basis. And one of the areas that might be of interest
to you, major leaders of our business in this country, is what we are
doing in the international economic sphere.
Let me start by giving you a few examples of the new emphasis
on the analysis of the international/economic situations that the
Central Intelligence Agency is engaged in.today. The point is.this,
you may have heard that last March we produced a study on the
energy prospects for the world in the next 7 or 8 years. Now, that
study simply said that in our view the world is not going to be
able to bring out of the earth, to pump up from the wells, as much
oil and gas as the world is going to want to burn on the surface in
the next 7 or 8 years. It didn't say the reserves are going down,
so fast that we are going to run out, that nobody's lamp will burn
in the future, it simply said there isn't enough indication that
their going to be able to get enough gloves? on the line to meet
the rising demand curve. As a result, you and I and everyone in
the world will be faced with a choice between conservation and
pressure on prices. We think and hope that publishing that
publicly has at least helped the quality of national debate on
this very critical world issue.. We may be right and we may be
wrong, but were having a lot of fun in dialogue with oil companies,
think tanks and experts in the oil exploration field, and out of
that we are trying to get better, finer analysis and find out
where the indicators are that we-may be wrong so we can target
our intelligence on that fact and revise our. estimate, if it isn't right.
A few months later we published another study on the world
steel situation. We simply said that the figures today show that
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the most developed countries in steel are operating well-below
capacity, 78% here, 72% in Japan, 60% in the European economic
community, 48% in Sweden, and if we don't see in the next 4 or 5
years the demand curve here rising enough to fill up this excess
capacity. In fact, we see the lesser developed countries
continuing to build more steel producing capacity, such as we
think there will be a 60% drop in the imports of some of the
major lesser developed countries, South Korea, Brazil, Mexico
in the next few years, and some of those countries will turn from
net importers to net exporters. We think all this has major
implications for many of you.
Last July under the auspices of the Joint Economic Commitee
of Congress, we published to the -public a very important study on
the feature of the Soviet economy. We study the Soviet economy
regularly, we always thought the economy had enough capability
and resilience to do three things: to support the Soviets considrable
effort and investment in military power to try to obtain at least
a position of parity with us; secondly, to improve if not dramatically
the quality of life of the Soviet Union and; thirdly, to be able
to put enough capital investment into the economy to keep it growing.
The.review this year startled us, it makes us conclude that the
prospects for the Soviet economy in the next few years is more
bleak than it has been any time since the death of Stalin.
Why? Because we think they have succeeded in continuing an increase
in productivity over these years by a simple formula by continuing
the increasing contributions of labor and capital and this is
approaching a dead end. In the 1960's they had a very low dip in
births in the 1980's the rate of growth of their labor force will
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drop from the present 1 1/2 percent a year to about 1/2 a percent.
In addition, a lot of the increment of population will come from
the central Asian areas and its hard to get those fellows down from
the farm and into the big cities. Similarly I think a lecture to
you on the increase in costs of the other resources that go into
developing an economy, the Soviets are going further into Siberia
for iron ore and our energy study pointed out that one of the major
factors in the pessimism we have is to meeting our world situation
is the fact that we think the Soviet energy oil production will
peak in about 1980 and drop off precipitously. Why? Because they
are, simply not developing reserves at the rate they are producing
today a rate commensurate with their production. Their emphasizing
current production even to the extent of hurting the long term
position of the reserves they will get out of their existing wells.
Where does this leave us? It leaves the Soviets, I believe, with
some difficult pragmatic choices in a few years. They can, of course,
reduce the number of men in their military and try to make up some
of that forthcoming problem, they can reduce the investment in their
military, they can fail to deliver the M1.6 bbl or oil a day
that they plan to sell to the Eastern European satellites, they can
of course try to borrow more on the Western markets to maintain
the infusions of western technology that are important to the growth
of their economy today. Which of these courses, if any, they will
take, I don't know, but I would point out that there is a hard
probability that when the difficult decisions are going to have to
be made, the Soviet Union should be in the midst of another kzgx
major change of leadership. None of us can predict how that will
go in that kind of government, but it may not be the optimum to make
difficult choices. But we don't predict that, it may well be that
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they make just the right choices, it may well be that they accept
the right sacrifices and they come out well. But whichever they
do, it's going to effect you and it's going to effect me. If they.
reduce their armed forces it will effect the amount of investment
we put into ours, if they go onto the world markets for hard currency
borrowing, it's going to be a real question here for this city,
what will our national policy be in responding. If they reduce
their inputs to Eastern Eruopean satellites, what effect will it
net
have on the political stability there. If they become a/ importer
of oil rather than exporter what will that do to the pressure of
we emphasize
world prices. Again,/iKr?uglKmxi&g hY.gxxi&xXxzi we don't pretend we
know the answers, but we do hope we are helping by publishing
these studies in the public domain to get the public to focus on
the right issues, and benefit tremendously from the dialogue that
ensued, such as I mentioned from the energy study. If you are
surprised that an intelligence officer is standing here and
suggesting to you that he wants more dialogue from the public, or
exchange of information, you're right it's unusual, it's different.
The tradition in the profession is maximum secrecy, and yet. as'you
can see as we move forward in this area of international economics
more information can be exchanged, and where this exchange can,
I believe, be valuable to the country it is difficult not to want
a policy of: greater openness. So what we do today, when we do a
study an estimate, an evaluation, we take a look at it carefully
and we say--can we remove from that those clues as to how we
got the information, can we compromise those sources in the picture,
can we remove from it such kernels of information that are valuable
to our policy makers because only they would have- and still have
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something of sufficient substance left to be of value to you
the general public. Well, the answer is yes, as it was in these
three cases and a number of others recently, we go ahead and publish.
Well, now don't let me mislead you, the bulk of what we do
is secret and must remain secret. There is no way we can open up
an intelligence agency total, we must have our own ability to
preserve our secrets and our chances for it, for maintaining it
secret. And I would suggest by opening up as much as we are doing,
we are in fact at the same time helping to preserve secrecy.
Winston Churchill said when everything's classified secret,
nothing is kept secret. And we, today, in this country have
too much classified information, and hence, not enough respect
for it. So, by narrowing that corpus of classified data we
sincerely hope that we will engender respect for what remains.
Let me suggest that we badly need to regenerate that kind of
respect. I'm involved in media these days with controversy
over a young disgruntled former CIA employee. He just published
a book without honoring his oath and his promise to me personally,
to let us see that book for security purposes. I would suggest-
to you that the ultimate of the Ellsburg-Snepp syndrome as I
call it can only mean that each one of us, each one of the 215
million Americans has the right to determine what should be
classified and what should not in this country, that would be
chaos. Your Harvard men and women, let me remind you, one of
your distinguished magna cum laude graduates of 1951, was one
of our most distinguished employees, who had risen to the top
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of his profession and was our chief of station in Athens, Greece,
and two years ago next week he was gunned down in the streets,
because a traitor had revealed his name in the press. We cannot
tolerate that kind of approach to life in this country, in my
opinion, and continue to have the necessary effective intelligence
services that we require. I suggest the time has come to remeber
that Watergate is behind us and to replace some confidence in
your elected officials and the public servants whom they appoint.
Now, I don't aske you to trust us entirely, secrecy is a very
dangerous thing and its one that must be delicately handled,
criticism of
for we are today, in the aftermath in the crucible of the/intelligence
community in this country over the last 3 years, building a series
of checks and balances on our secrecy and on our procedures.
We cannot as I have intimated have full public oversight of
what we do, but we are developing today what I would call surrogate
public oversight. The first surrogate is the President of the
United States, the second is the Vice President. I can assure you
that they each take an active interest and role in our intelligence
and that I keep them fully and completely informed. Another set
of surrogates is two committees of the Congress, the Senate Select
Committe on Intelligence and a recently constituted parallel commttee
in the House and they are a very good oversight process. The check
on us. They call me up, and have me account to them, and at the same
time they are a sounding board to me and I go to them with my
problems and I can discuss them and ask them for the feel of what
the country wants and will accept under these circumstances.
There are other forms of oversight, but let me simply conclude
by saying it will be a jcgc a year, two, maybe three, until we settle
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out on this new, what I call American Model of Intelligence.
The model that will try to find a proper balance between more
openness on the one hand, and adequate preservation of secrecy
on the other. Between more oversight and control on the one hand
and sufficient initiative and risk taking on the other.
As we evolve that model, while it's still risky I'm confident
it is going well and will come out properly, we are going to
need confidence and the understanding necessary from the
American people. That's why I'm very grateful that you have shown,
the interest to come here to listen to me today.
Thank you very much.
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QUESTIONS E1 ANSWERS Harvard Club, New York City
Stan, your comments today as well as your efforts over the
last 9 or 10 months, I'm sure instill confidence in your
ability and the ability of the Central Intelligence Agency,
and the ability of the United States Government to instill
in the 215 million of us a renewed confidence in our great
country and I thank you for that.
Q. inaudible
A. Can we get an honest evaluation of our clandestine and covert
activities when the people judging them are in the same
organization? There obviously is a problem here, but let
me say that I think that's what we are creating this oversight
process for and we have these checks and balances. The
committees in Congress keep track of these operations, they
know what we are doing in very good terms. I failed to mention
something called the Intelligence Oversight Board, Governor
Scranton, Senator Gore and Mr. Farmer report only to the
President of the United States. Any member of the Intelligence
Community can bypass me and go to them with a communication
and say, look that fellow Turner is running amuk down there
he's doing things in the country that he absolutely shouldn't
be doing. They will investigate it, make a recommendation only
to the President who will then decide what to do. So, that
increased interest at the top of the Executive Branch, we have
a committee with the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense,
the National Security Council Advisor to the President, Secretary
of Treasury and myself who review on a regular basis what we
are doing to collect intelligence and how well we are doing in it.
We must make semi-annual reports to the President. So there are
a series of these checks and I think take care of what your saying.
Q. Inaudible
A. Why was ULTRA kept secret for 30 years? I'm not really sure
that I ever thought about that one or heard about that one.
You sure this may not have been tied to the 30 year law in the
United Kingdom for releasing data?
Q. To the Ambassador. (Mr. Ambassador do you think that would be
tied into it?) Your talking about the ULTRA code breaking situation..
There was also some unfortunate thing called MKULTRA that we
got involved in. It is difficult sometime to explain why we do
want to keep information classified that is historical. For instance
if you make a pact with an individual or corporation or country,
a liaison arrangement with the different nations,-to exchange
intelligence information and it does become historical after a while.
The information is no longer a of secrecy. But the fact
that you had that partnership, t ai~t cooperation and you made an
agreement and it was to keep this quiet and particularly, today
c_tcx
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with what I think is often unreasoned knee-jerk reaction
in opposition to anything to do with the CIA or intelligence.
You at least embarras that other individual, or corporation
or country and also you then endanger your ability to get
that kind of agreement again, not necessarily with that person
but with any. Let me tell you quite candidly, Mr. Snepp
published his book a couple of.weeks ago. The next morning
we received a phone call from a foreign agent, working for
us, in our interest, against his own country, and he said
I'm quitting, if your going to have people publishing names
and activities of your intelligence operations, I'm not
going to stick my neck out for you.
Q. Inaudible
A. The-Ambassadors country and himself are very discreet
people and I'm not going to be indiscreet enough to infringe
on their discretion.
Q. Inaudible
A. Your darn tootin I thought about it. Anytime someone suggests
that I might go to jail, I think about it. Seriously, I
think about complying with the laws of this country, I think
about com plying with my own sense of integrity and honesty.
I'm in a much better situation than Mr. Helms was, because
I have these two committees of the Congress today who are
my mentors and who are my go-betweens between me and the
rest of the Congress on matters of intelligence procedures.
Information on what's going on in the world I willingly
provide any committee:of Congress, but information about how
I do my business is funneled through these two committees,
so I could havestood up before the Foreign Relations Committee
that Mr. Helms was before, and said when asked a question
about what activities were going on in Chile, sirs, I would
request you go to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
because I share that with them to the degree that it can be
shared, and I would have been required by the procedures
under which we conduct covert action today. That was a covert
action that was not an intelligence operation, action being
influencing events abroad, covertly without it being known
who is doing it, and there are very, very tight controls on
that today that. did not exist in his day. I must get this
cleared by the National Security Council, I must get the
President's signature and I must obtain notify 8 committees
of the Congress and'those are reasonable controls on our
doing something without authorization.
Q. What incentives do you have to declassify non-crucial information
at the CIA and who has the authority to decide what generally
should not be classified.
A. This is one of the most difficult questions in government as
to who is-authorized to classify and who is authorized to
declassify information. It is very, very hard to set precise
rules, we are trying to do so now, under the new Executive Order
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on classification and try to set some levels on which
people, according to their station in the organization,
can set different levels of classification. For some years
now we have had rules about automatic downgrading after
so many months and so many years, and this sort of thing
looses its classification, so obviously our procedure is
to prevent that. It is very complex and very diffcult
the incentives you asked for, what is the incentive to
declassify, I think it is my conviction that too much
classification leads to disrespect and that we must
not allow ourselves to get into that position. I wish
there were a very simply answer here, but there just isn't.
Q. Inaudible
A. Your question is, to the overall television media
Is the media particularly the television media fair in its
coverage of us and secondly, your referring to an article
I had in the op ed page of the Washington Post yesterday
in which I took exception to Random House and CBS's
surreptiously participating in the publication of this
book on the CIA. I took exception to that because it
wasn't very good investigative reporting, when they only
looked at one side of it and when the reason they filmed
the show some 3 or 4 months ahead of time and secretly hid
it away and did the same with the books, was that they were
afraid that if we found about it, and clearly we were not
trying to find out about it because we don't investigate
American citizens in the United States and we had taken
Mr. Snepp at his word not his oath. They were afraid we
would have obtained an injunction against the publication.
I'm not sure I agree with trying--fie-aveidethics of trying
to avoid the legal processes that are instituted to
protect the citizens of this country, I don't admire that
but I think the media of the country treat us as fairly as.
they do most organizations, but I think there is still an
unfortunate knee-jerk reaction when you can put the word
CIA into a headline that it automatically draws readers.
And if you'll note carefully in the future, when you see
that happening please read the dates of the activities inside
will you because I'm concerned about what happened in 1950,
and I'm concerned about what happend in 1960, but I'm
only concerned about it as lessons for the future and you'll
find that a lot of these articles have very few lessons
in them.
Q. Inaudible
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A. None overstaffed. I told everybody three months ahead
of the announcement of the individuals.to be asked to leave,
we were going to do that, nobody complained. Nobody said
this is a bad idea. We asked too few people. I do not feel
that as a responsible public official that I should charge
you taxpayers for 820 people more than we need, nor do I
feel that I can motivate the young, marvelously capable
dynamic people we have and are fortunate to have at the
Agency. They are overmanaged and under utilized, that's
the situation that exists. These cuts coming entirely
out of overhead, entirely out of the headquarters, they are
reducing the active overseas clandestine service that we
conduct. We are only cutting overhead. We are not relying
more on technical means of collecting intelligence, we are
trying to improve our human clandestine collection capability.
I have full confidence that these people are patriotic,
dedicated Americans and even if in November we have 212 of
them to leave, sometime next spring, I do not have any concern
that they will go and turn over to Agents for the KGB
or publish classified information. 632 were released
in 3 months in 1973, by then Director Schlesinger. No ill
effects came from that. Its the disaffected, Snepps, Agees,
Stockwell who cause us the problem in-the public arena,
not dedicated loyal employees such as these. Of the 212,
150 can_ retire, I estimate we will replace another 30 in
either other components of the CIA or other components of
the intelligence community and there will be a very small
residue that will not purposefuly or with great contention
be asked to leave the organization.
Thank you very much.
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