ADMIRAL TURNER'S ADDRESS AT OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY COLUMBUS, OHIO

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80B01554R002800110001-3
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 16
• Document Creation Date: December 9, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 16, 2001
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: April 13, 1978
• Content Type: STATEMENT

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Admiral Turner's Address at Ohio State University
Columbus, Ohio - 13 April 1978
After I introduced the Peloponnesian Wars at the War College
curriculum, one of the wives came up to me one day and said, Admiral
why are you making my husband study those mexipolynesian wars? It is
really stimulating to be back on a university campus, I'm grateful
that you would have me here tonight.
As an intelligence officer, it makes me recall the long, warm,
and normal relationship between the intelligence community of our
country and the academic community. One has to recognize in recent
years there has been some fraying of that relationship due to the
public criticism of past intelligence activities. We've come to the
point where I think we need to mend that relationship and I'm trying
to do all I can to build it back to its proper and warm position.
It's very important to us in the intelligence community that
we have good relations with academia. So much of what we do is not
the over-played spy drama, but the plain old research and analysis,
pulling together the pieces of the puzzle which you have gained by
going out and collecting intelligence and information. In our business,
just as in research on the campus you always need to be stimulated
from the outside. You need to have somebody who comes and questions
your assumptions and asks you why did you put this in and how did you
logically get to that conclusion. So, we need very much the stimulus
and contacts with the academic community.
I hope also, it's a two-way street. I hope that when academics
are in contact with our analysts they too gain something, some insights
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over the actual operations of the governmental process in our country
and others, and contact with the world of current events, current
developments as we see it from the governmental perspective. In
addition, we very much need good relations with academic campuses
because the life blood of the intelligence organizations of our country
is the annual infusion of a few good, high-quality people from our
campuses. We don't need too many, we need some of the best. I hope
that in time, some of you will give consideration to joining one or
another of our intelligence organizations. I would assure you that
there is no more intellectually demanding profession in our country
today than intelligence. It really is an exciting area of work. If
you ever give consideration to it, I'm sure you will ask yourselves
some of the questions that I did a year and a quarter ago when I was
thrust into this profession. I asked, what do we do to ensure that
we are collecting and analyzing intelligence that is going to be of
value to our policy makers not right now, but two, five, or ten years
from now rather than doing what was appropriate five or ten years ago.
And I ask myself, how do we go about using intelligence today while
respecting traditional American values and the rights of our citizens
under the Constitution. I am happy to say that in the year and a quarter
of looking on these questions and exploring them, I'm convinced that
we are in the midst of an important transformation that has been going
on for a year or two in our intelligence activities in this country;
the transformation that is bringing about a new model, a uniquely
American model of intelligence. This is reflected in four trends or
changes in intelligence activities that I would like to describe to
you this evening.
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The first is a change in our product. Now when we first
established a central intelligence activity back in 1947, the primary
product, the thing we were concentrating most of our attention on was
military information about the Soviet Union and perhaps about its
satellite countries. With this kind of an audience, I do not need to
emphasize how much our nation's interests and concerns have extended
from that set of horizons 30 years ago. Today, our country has important
relationships with most of the 150 countries in the world. Those
relationships today are much more political and economic than they are
military. As a result, we have had to re-orient much of our analysis
and collection effort in the intelligence community, we've had to get
new academic skills, we've had to broaden our horizons. It has been
exciting, it has taken us into areas as diverse as anti-terrorism,
anti-drug trafficking, world economic and energy prospects and interna-
tional politics and all its facets. Now, don't let me overstate this
to you. The number one priority in American intelligence remains, today,
the military position of the Soviet Union--and it must. But we have
simply had to expand from that and enter into these new areas in
addition, which present great intellectual challenges to us.
The second new trend in intelligence today is the change in our
production line. What I mean by this is that historically, the main
element of the production line of intelligence has always been the human
agent, the spy. Remember way back when Joshua sent two spies into
Jericho before he captured it with his trumpets. Well, that has been
the primary element of the intelligence production line, so to speak
over many, many years. In the last decade and a half, however, we have
had almost a revolution in intelligence collection. We now have
sophisticated, technical collection systems that bring in vast quantities
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of data. I'm sure it poses a problem for us that is very analogous to
the problem researchers have in the academic world. Here too, you face
a proliferation of data of information that is available to you and the
challenge of how you go about digesting it, sorting it, storing it,
deciding which pieces really fit into the puzzle. We have that same
challenge in front of us today. Interestingly, the advent of the new
technical systems and the proliferation of information they provide
has led to a greater accent on the traditional production line, the
human agent. Why? Because generally and broadly speaking what the
technical systems tell you is such-and-such happened yesterday or
today in some foreign country. When you give that information to a
policy maker he looks at you and says, why? Why did that happen and
what is going to happen tomorrow? Now the forte of the human intelli-
gence operator is always to find out what people are thinking, doing,
planning, and what their intentions are. So today, our production line
has changed, but it has changed because we now have several pieces of
machinery and we must bring them together in a well-oiled, well mannered
system. This presents new challenges to us because we must manage better.
We must be sure that this system, the technical system, fills a gap that
that the information provides us. We try this technical system supple-
menting a given system and work it back and forth until we meet both our
economic needs for the resources and efficiency in getting the very
maximum out of it. It is a very demanding and stimulating challenge.
Now the third new trend is one that has a direct bearing on
anyone in the academic arena.. It is a policy of greater openness.
Traditionally intelligence has always been performed under maximum
secrecy and minimum disclosure. Today in my view, that can no longer
be our policy. Today, the American public wants to know more about our
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intelligence activities and, I believe, has a right to share more in
what we are doing and what the results are. As a result, we are out
speaking more, we are participating more in academic symposiums, we
are answering the media questions more completely, and we are publishing
more. What we do today is conduct a national intelligence estimate, an
evaluation of some situation in the world. When we finish it has a
label on the cover -- secret, top secret, or destroy before reading;
we then ask ourselves what do we need take out of this that would give
away the sources of information in it, because if we give that away
those sources won't be much good very long--what do we need to take
out of it because it is information which, if held uniquely by our
policy makers, would be of great advantage to them. When we take those
two types of information out, if there is enough left to be of substan-
tive value to the American public to help improve the quality of
American debate on important issues, we publish it in unclassified form.
There were over two publications a week, all of last year. Topics like
the world energy outlook, prospects for the Soviet economy, prospects
of international terrorism, the oil situation in China, the world steel
outlook and many, many others. Some of these I think are of great
value to you on college campuses, university campuses, and I hope they
are of value to the general American public.
Again, let me not overstate this case. We must, we must maintain
a great deal of secrecy in the intelligence organizations of our country.
There are things that we simply cannot do if they are not done in
secrecy. But I believe that by espousing the policy greater openness
we can better protect the classified information which must remain
classified. You understand that when you have too much that is classified,
nobody respects the classification labels. So, by narrowing the amount
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of classified information, I hope to engender greater respect for that
which must remain classified. I believe sincerely that we have come
to a crossroad in this country where we must understand the importance
and the necessity for some secrecy, even in our very open society.
Because of the lack of respect for classified information, we have too
many people today who believe they can take it upon themselves to
release to the public information which the government believes should
be held classified. I think this has great dangers in it. I must
fully acknowledge that there have been instances when people have
released information that was being improperly withheld and it has
benefited our country. But if you carry that to its logical extreme,
it means that every one of the 215 million of us would have the right
to determine what the government may keep classified and what it should
not. I think the time has about come when we must begin to place a
modicum of trust again in our elected and our appointed public officials
and not just assume that they will uphold things in order to protect
themselves or cover up errors they have made. Now at the same time, I'm
not just asking you to take us on our word, because the fourth trend in
intelligence today is greater oversight.
Out of this crucible of three years of intense public criticism,
we have forged an oversight procedure, or a set of oversight procedures
which, I believe, gives the public good assurance we are not either
doing things that we should be doing or withholding information that we
should not withhold. Bear in mind that I have just decided the importance
of retaining secrecy--clearly we cannot have full public oversight of
all our activities; we cannot let the public into everything that we do.
So what we have established instead is a process I have labled surrogate
public oversight. Now the first surrogate for the public is the President
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of the United States and the Vice President. Today they regularly keep
close track of what is going on in intelligence. They hear from me
weekly and they give me explicit guidance. The second. surrogate, which
was established two years ago, is in the form of an Intelligence
Oversight Board: three distinguished impartial gentlemen, a former
senator, a former governor and a prominent lawyer. They report only to
the President of the United States and their sole function is to check
on the legality, and the propriety of the activities of the intelligence
community. If they find things are wrong, you write to them, one of
my employees writes to them; it doesn't go through me, I don't know
about it; they investigate it and report to the President on whether
they think something should be done. We also have oversight mechanisms
in the Congress. In both the Senate and the House of Representatives
there is a committee for oversight. These committees in turn, interrogate
me, check on what we are doing, ask very probing questions and are kept
quite well informed by us of what our intelligence activities are.
Let me point out now that I have described oversight procedures
in the Congress in the Legislative Branch, several oversight procedures
in the Executive Branch; it would take a log of collusion from a lot
of people to prevent these mechanisms from working in some way to protect
the rights of our citizens. Today, if someone wants to whistle-blow
because they think I'm withholding things to protect myself, I would
only suggest that if they would blow the whistle to these established
oversight procedures first, and see if they did not get satisfaction
that would both protect the interests of the country and meet their needs.
They always have the recourse of blowing it to the public if they want,
if the procedures do not work. I have yet to find a so-called whistle-
blower who took advantage of these procedures. Now, let me point out
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at the same time that there are still risks in all of this. We have
established this oversight, but out of it, because more people have to
be involved in the process - have to understand these new procedures,
comes the risk of leaks. The more people who know something, the more
likely it is to leak out. Secondly, out of this necessity for informing
more people may come from us inside the organization a sense of timidity,
an unwillingness to take risky actions that are in the best interests of
our country. So we must be careful as we proceed that we don't have
so much oversight that we have too many leaks or intelligence by timidity.
We are not there yet, but I believe we are working out the right
balance between oversight and these risks, but it's going to take
several years to establish if that's the case. We are on the track,
however.
Last January, President Carter, recognizing these four and other
trends in our intelligence activities, recognizing. the emerging new
model of intelligence, directed a reorganization of our intelligence
community to make it conform to this, to make it more efficient. He
gave to the Director of Central Intelligence, which is my job, to coordi-
nate all of the intelligence activities of our country as opposed to my
job of running the Central Intelligence Agency--I have two separate jobs.
He gave to the Director of Central Intelligence authority over all the
budgets of the national intelligence effort; authority to task or to
tell all the collection agencies of the government what intelligence to
collect; and the authority to coordinate the analytic agencies of the
intelligence community. Let me say one word of caution on this latter
point. While I can require these intelligence agencies to help analyze
a national problem, I cannot direct them how to do their analysis or
what conclusions to come to; because we want very much to have separate
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centers of independent analysis, competing analysis, so that different
views come forward--competing ideas and divergent opinions. Finally,
the President set over the whole structure a committee of the National
Security Council which is to give all of us our direction, our sense of
priority, because I do not establish the priority for collecting and
analyzing intelligence, I'm not a consumer. On this committee are the
Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the National Security
Council Advisor to the President and other key policy makers who now get
together regularly and say, Turner you are off the track here, we don't
need that, we need more of this over here. That's very helpful to us,
if it involves enough policy makers in this process. I'm confident
that out of these new trends, out of this new set of orders from the
President we are building a stronger and stronger intelligence capability
and that we are today the best intelligence organization in the world.
I am confident that at the same time we are building the necessary level
of oversight procedures to ensure that we are doing our work in accor-
dance with what the American people want and the protection of their
rights and interests. I can assure all of you here tonight that I am
dedicated to keeping us number one in the world in intelligence, but in
doing so in a way that will only strengthen our wonderful democratic
institutions in this country.
Thank you for having me with you.
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Q&A - OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY - 13 APRIL 1978
Q: Inaudible.
A: The question is, does the President understand the serious military
threat that we are faced with as a result of the buildup of Soviet forces
of various types and what is he going to do about it? Well, my job is to
ensure that the President is aware of that threat; aware of the facts of
the case and what is being done. It's up to him to evaluate what risk
this is to our country, of course, because he has the overall picture. I
can assure you that he is very well informed of what the Soviet military
position is. This President, in particular, has a fantastic grasp of
facts, a fantastic memory. Sometimes he'll get the facts one week, and
two weeks later I hear them recited back verbatum, because he really is
very interested in all these matters. I believe that he is well aware
of the threat, I believe he appreciates the dangers that are inherent in
it and that he is maintaining and will maintain an adequate combination
of military and diplomatic positions to counter it. Those are all
opinions at the end, but the real answer to your question is yes, I do
believe we are keeping him well posted on it and recently, just the day
before yesterday, I met with him and discussed one of the facets of this
situation you have described in some detail. I meet with him weekly to
do this kind of thing--not always on military issues, but when the
occasion demands, it is.
Q: I don't have a lot of high-paid public relations people and I may
not come across quite so slick. But I would like to talk to you and ask
you a question about the CIA's continuing role in destabilization of
countries which are not "commiserate with the United States." Specifically,
it came out the CIA was working with ITT and Chile. What are you doing
now, what are you doing to make up, what have you done in Guatemala? How
can you stand there with the bloody history of all this pressure on your
hands and tell us this. How can you sit there and laugh?
A: A perfectly reasonable question. Can you all hear in the back? This
young lady wants to know how I can stand here with the history of CIA
..(interruption)....CIA has been disturbing to the stability in a number
of countries.... (interruption)... .try my best to answer this. What the
young lady is talking about is the thing that has caused us the greatest
adverse publicity, the greatest problem. This is not intelligence, it's
political action. Political action is trying not only to find out what
goes on in another country, but to influence those events. Really, what
happens.... (interruption).... If you bear with me, I'll get to that and
I'll answer any question you want, and when I come to the end you can
re-interrogate me, all right? May I continue? I told you that we were
concentrating on Soviet military intelligence. Now what happened was that
the Soviets used their military force outside the Soviet Union. What they
did was they tried to subvert and intimidate. As they did that, the
United States started to respond and part of that response, back in the
1950s and 60s, was to direct political influence activities abroad,
attempting to counter.... (interruption).... It happens they decided upon
the Central Intelligence Agency. Over many years, the Central Intelligence
Agency conducted these activities, some of which have been properly
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described here tonight, some of which have been improperly described in
recent years. We have now established a series of controls on the
political action element of the Central Intelligence Agency. Specifically,
if we are to do any influencing of events, as opposed to collecting
intelligence, I must be given an order, signed by the President of the
United States after he has been advised by the National Security Council.
I must then advise appropriate committees of the Congress of the United
States. If I undertake, as Director of CIA, political action to
destabilize any country today, I am against the law if I have not gone
through these procedures that have the President's approval and notified
Congress. Ladies and gentlemen, I assure you I am no more anxious to go
to jail than are any of you. I am a law-abiding citizen and we are not
conducting any political action today that has not been duly authorized
by these procedures. We are not conducting any extensive political
action with any of them. You could go back to the Bay of Pigs, you could
go back to Chile, and you can go back to Guatemala. I'm neither here
to defend nor to wear a hair-shirt with respect to those previous activities.
In many cases you are judging from today's standards and today's morality,
events of many years ago. Nobody raised much of a voice in this country
when the Bay of Pigs was executed, except the fact that it was done
poorly. But in retrospect of 15 years we are willing to doncemn it. We
wouldn't do that kind of thing today. But, I'm here not to atone for the
sins of the past or apologize, I'm here to tell you what we're doing to
support you and this country today and how we are going to do it in the
future .... (interruption).... I'm not giving you my version that we are
not doing illegal things, I'm telling you that if we are doing something
illegal the chances are so high that one of my own employees would report
this to one of the oversight panels that we could not get away with it,
and I'm not going to object.
Q: What power do these boards have? They say, OK, you're doing it wrong,
you've done something illegal, I'll tell the President and then he will
slap you on the wrist. Can they put you in jail? Who's going to go to
jail, who decides who's going to go to jail, who decides when they are
going to go to jail?
A: What did the Attorney General announce on Monday this week? He
announced the prosecution of the people in the FBI whom he thinks have
broken the law. The President has no option, he has to turn it over to
the Attorney General to prosecute or he is going to be subject to the law.
Ladies and gentlemen, these are matters of jail or not jail. These are
not matters of games that we are playing.... (interruption).... You have
stretched things very much here, by not taking my admitting that the CIA
did some things that were ill advised, that were improper, that were
against the laws of this country. You have not established the facts that
the laws of this country were broken by these people.
Q: Would it be correct to say then that there are intelligence gathering
undertakings that are not now being undertaken due to questionable people
around, although they would have a direct bearing on national security?
In other words is there a danger that it is going to go too far the other
way?
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A: Of course there is a danger that it could go too far the other way,
and I mentioned that we could have intelligence by timidity. I don't
think we are in that position today, but admittedly, if you think things
are going to be loose, you're not going to do them. We have found the
Congress to be very trustworthy and I think we can continue with what is
necessary for our country, but it will take, in my opinion, several years
for us to have that assurance.
Q: Inaudible.
A: Do I fear losing a competitiveness with the Soviets because sometimes
they have been ahead of us and because I have reduced the size of the
Central Intelligence Agency by 820 people. The answer is no. I made
the reduction because I sincerely believe the Central Intelligence Agency
would be more efficient and capable without them. The people were removed
from the Headquarters overhead and not from the operating elements out in
the field. So, what we have is less supervision, less direction, less
overhead. That's what we've done. It has been long recognized as necessary.
It has also been done to provide greater incentives to people like your-
selves to come in and join us, because we now have .... (interruption)....
Q: Inaudible.
A: Will I comment on the story on an alleged 1965 implantation of a
nuclear device in the Himalayan mountains by CIA. One of the most trying
things about being in the intelligence profession, is your inability to
defend yourself in many instances against false accusations. If, when you
didn't do something, you say that you didn't do it, and then you're asked
if you did something that you did do and which must be kept secret and
you can't deny it, you obviously identify the one that you did. In this
case I have to follow the standard procedure, which is, we do not comment
on actual or alleged past or present intelligence actions.
Q: Inaudible.
A: KGB activities in the United States today. Those activities are
expanding. They are taking advantage of the increased opportunities which
they have today to come visit our country in trade delegations, as tourists
and all sorts of other activities. They have mounted for many years a
tremendous human intelligence effort in terms of the quantity and expense
that they will go to. It is a serious problem for us and one to which we
must be continually alert.
Q: Could you give us an idea of what this administration's bottom line
global policy is and in particular in Africa?
A: What is our bottom line global policy, particularly in Africa? I have
to make a point here, that one of the most difficult things for intelligence
is that we in the intelligence profession stay clear of policy making. Why?
Because if you ever believe that I happen to support an activist policy,
let's call it, in Africa or a non-activist policy or a hard line on
strategic negotiations or a soft line, then you will be concerned that I
am subverting intelligence to that purpose. The one thing we must have,
the reason we established the Central Intelligence Agency, is that is the
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only intelligence element in the government not supportive of policy
makers. I'm not a policy maker, so I simply provide intelligence
support. I cannot comment on policy like that without contravening my
profession.
Q: Inaudible.
A: My current views on human intelligence collection? I thought I
outlined those in my talk by saying that the human intelligence collection
element has become increasingly important with the advent of the new
technical systems because they do not tell you people's intentions and
that's what human intelligence does for you. I have no intention of
reducing our human intelligence capability and do not believe I have. In
fact, I believe I've strengthened it.
Q: Inaudible.
A: What was my charter when the President called me and asked me to take
this job; what did he expect out of me; what was he looking for; what
direction and instructions did he give me? I can't honestly tell you why
he picked me. I had known him at the Naval Academy and afterwards some-
what because we were classmates there, but not extremely well, but he had
known what I had done in the Navy. Presumably, I would think that he
wanted someone he had confidence in as far as his integrity was concerned
and someone whom he thought was a good manager, because it's a big
operation. His charter to me was, "take charge Stan, of the community,
and not just the CIA - I want to bring this community together." Before
I even got there he had put out the directive I described to you of last
January, reorganizing the community and strengthening my hand somewhat.
Those are the things he told me to do. He did not tell me to cut these
people. The newspapers reported the Vice President told me, or a fellow
named David Aaron told me, and I can only tell you that's nonsense. When
I was ready to do it, I informed the President and the Vice President at
the same time and said this is my intention - to give them the opportunity
to tell me no. They did not, and I started off and did what I thought
was best.
Q: Who do you think is going to succeed Brezhnev after he leaves? How
will his successor's military policy change?
A: I believe we feel that one of the prospects to succeed Brezhnev is
Yerlenko or somebody like this who will immediately succeed; or possibly,
in some kind of a corporate group like a triumvirate as when Stalin
died, you remember. Over a period of time this will sort itself out
until some younger man comes along and becomes the Brezhnev of the future.
The people at the top right now, Brezhnev's top assistants, are all about
the same age bracket. I think it is going to have to go through a transition
period. We have predicted in one of the studies I mentioned to you, a
forecast of the Soviet economy. They're in for some serious economic
problems in the next five or six years. The demographic situation is such
that they have a lesser increase in their work force; their capitol inputs
to their economy are becoming much more expensive and particularly their
oil which we think will peak in three or four more years and drop off.
So we believe in three or four years they are going to have to face some
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difficult economic choices if they are going to keep their economy moving
and modernizing. They won't be able to earn the foreign exchange that
they need, they won't be able to find the manpower unless they reduce the
military. That may be just the time they face the problem you've raised.
It may be very difficult for a transitionary leadership during this period
to take the difficult economic decisions that have to be made. These
could have very important impacts around the world. For instance, one
way to overcome their energy problem is to sell less oil to the Eastern
European satellites. That may leave them hanging out::
Q: Can you predict when the Soviet Union will put a man on the moon?
A: We don't see any inclination of the Soviets to put a man on the moon.
....(remainder of answer inaudible due to background noise)....
Q: Inaudible.
A: I think you have to say yes. I think you have to say that human
rights has become an important intelligence topic today. It is easily
recorded by the developments we see around the world in human rights--
responses to the President's initiatives--what countries are either being
repressive or what progress has been made.
Q: Inaudible.
A: The Freedom of Information Act is a good Act, but it's being abused.
...(interruption).... There are also deletions where we can, when we
believe national security interests would be harmed if there were these
releases of information. You could take us to court and prove that that
really shouldn't have been withheld. There have been 32 cases and we have
been sustained in every one of them. We are not divulging information
that really doesn't matter. It does hurt the intelligence activities of
our country to have to fulfill or answer these requests, because many
other people feel that they don't want to participate with us any longer
if they are likely to have their names disclosed of their activities
disclosed through this Freedom of Information process. It is worthwhile
for our country, but it is being abused.
Q: Inaudible.
A: You've asked me a whole series of policy questions which I really
can't tackle.
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