TRANSCRIPT OF TAPE MADE AT JFK SCHOOL OF GOVERNMENT

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80B01554R002900140001-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 19
• Document Creation Date: December 9, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 1, 2001
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: December 20, 1978
• Content Type: SPEECH

Final Version
20 Dec 1978
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Transcript of Tape made at
JFK School of Government
30 November 1978
I'm very pleased to be back at Harvard, and to have an opportunity
to share with you some of the excitement that I feel in the intelligence
process of our country today. There are few public institutions in
history that have undergone such thorough public scrutiny as has the
intelligence community of our country in the last four years, particularly
of course, the Central Intelligence Agency.
The CIA is and should be our most secretive government agency.
The fact that it has undergone this public scrutiny is really extraordinary.
Perhaps it is the first time in history that the world has had opened
up to it a major intelligence organization in almost all of its aspects.
It has been a somewhat traumatic experience for those of us in the
intelligence community. It has damaged morale. The typical intelligence
officer, for instance, feels that he is performing a difficult patriotic
task and one that requires a lot of sacrifice on his part. And when he
finds his activities exposed in the public media he feels sometimes as
though the country does not appreciate what he is attempting to do.
The trauma also extends to the fact that it is more difficult to
do our job in these conditions. It has damaged our capability to
perform the intelligence functions authorized by the laws of our,
country. When we cannot insure adequate secrecy, foreigners who are
willing to work and support our country; foreign governments whose
intelligence services are willing to work for us, are certainly much
less willing to do so.
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It has been a traumatic period for the American public also.
The American public likes to view the world in idealized-terms and yet
the world is not idealized. It is not an open,free society. The world
is highly competitive and more nations than not are closed and totalitarian
societies. And not all countries, by any means, are willing to inform
us in advance of.what they are going to do even if it may be inimical
to our national interests. Let me remind you only of the great Soviet
wheat steal of 1972, where we simply lacked the statistical data base in
that situation in order to drive the proper bargain for our national
interests. So, today if we are going to protect those interests and
our pocketbooks I believe that we must have good information about what
is going on in the rest of the world. I believe, it is in fact, much
more important today than ever before that we have such good information.
Thirty years ago when the Central Intelligence Agency was founded we
were the preeminent military power in the world; we were a totally
independent economic power and many if not most of the free nations of
the world took their political cues from us. How different is the
world today. We are one of several economic powers that are interdependent.
We do not dominate the world political scene. Small nations and
large are activist and independent and we are much closer of course
to military parity. In these circumstances, the leverage of good
intelligence, of good information, so that our decision-makers can make
the best decisions is much greater than it was in days of economic,
political, and military superiority.
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Yet, if we are going to have the better intelligence that we
really need today than in the past, we are also going to have at least
as much secrecy that we have had in the past and the ability to keep
national secrets. There is, of course, a contradiction between this
importance of secrecy and the exposure of the last four years. And
there is, of course, a great danger because secrecy can lead to uniden-
tified power. Power in any form can be abused, but unidentified power
has a particular potential for abuse. How then, can we, are we, going
to provide for good intelligence for our country and yet insure against
abuse?
On the one hand, we can under-react and simply assume that a
relatively limited number of abuses of the past will not be repeated
because we are more conscious of the problem today. On the other hand
we can over-react and so attempt to control potential abuses that we
handcuff and handicap our intelligence effort out of business. Either
course would be shortsighted, obviously. What we need to do is to
achieve some balance here. The best way, I think, to achieve that
balance is to have a system of accountability. Accountability to the
Legislative branch of our government, accountability to the Executive
Branch, and in addition, accountability to the public. But we must do
this in a way that does not handcuff our intelligence capabilities at
the same time.
I would like, briefly, to look with you at how this accountability
is being structured in all three of these segments of American society
and to try to determine whether there is an adequate basis for the
kind of accountability the country needs in order to be insured against
these.
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First, the public sector. In the past public oversight, public
accountability was an impossibility. There was simply not enough
information shared with the public. Today that is no longer true. The
recent revelations, the public inquiries and investigations, the
Freedom of Information Act, have all made our intelligence community
much more accesible to the public than heretofore. In addition, over
the past several years we have made a very definite and deliberate
effort to be more open as an intelligence community. My presence here
with you tonight, something that probably would not have taken place as
recently as four or five years ago, is an earnest of that effort to
keep the public as well informed as we can within our limits of secrecy.
In addition, we are responding to the press more forthrightly than ever
before. Clearly, we cannot answer every question, but I can assure you
that the needle is not stuck in the groove that says no comment.
In addition, we are publishing more and making more anaylses and
estimates of the intelligence community available to the American
public. Obviously we are doing that in those that can be downgraded
from high security classifications to unclassified. In that process I
happen to hope that we are also assisting ourselves and protecting our
classified information better. The big problem we have is there is too
much classified information and it therefore does not engender the
respect that is due to it. So if we can remove and declassify as much
as possible I hope we will garner that respect for the remaining
highly classified material.
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Finally, in the public sector we, of course, have the free press
-- a very major assist to the public in its effort to hold the American
intelligence community accountable. People like Woodward and Bernstein
and others.have of course performed yeoman service in helping the
public to keep track of governmental activities. There are, however,
potential problems here. When something is made known to the press it is
automatically made known to a potential enemy. And unlike a court the
press can find you or me guilty through accusation alone. The power to
accuse in the public press or on the airwaves of our country is a
profound power and one that is subject to at least as much abuse as any
other form of power. This is particularly a problem with respect to
intelligence, because, at least I hope, the press never has the full
information that we have on any given subject. All of our secrets, I
hope, have never leaked. That means that any member of the media
writing about our activities always must do so from an incomplete
evidenciary base. It is a very difficult position for the press, it is
a very difficult one for us as well. We do though have some things in
common with the media. One of them is the absolute necessity that both
newsmen and intelligence officers be able to protect their sources. I
know how ardently the press holds to that principle in their case;
sometimes I am dismayed when they don't recognize it in ours. Let me
cite an example. A few weeks ago in a national newspaper, on the front
page in column three there was a story about an impending trial with
two officials of the ITT corporation for perjury before the Congress in
testifying about ITT activities in Chile. The thrust of the story was
how bad it was that the Central Intelligence Agency might frustrate
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NW .
that prosecution because of an unwillingness to release certain informa-
tion. Over in the next column was another story about a trial that was
underway in New Jersey in which a man was accused of murder and claimed
that in order to defend himself properly he needed the notes of a
New York Times reporter, and that reporter had refused to produce those
notes. That trial was completed, the reporter went to jail for awhile
but never did provide the notes. These cases may seem different to you
but they are analogous in that they both stand on the principle of
protecting sources of information. And yet, I am dismayed at times when
the media does not recognize the similarity here and I believe it is
symptomatic of the fact that throughout our country there is not really
an adequate recognition of the legitimacy of some degree of secrecy.
Let me move on to surveying the second means by which we are held
accountable. The Executive Branch. There are a number of accountable
processes in the Executive Branch, but let me just focus on those
revolving around the Presidency. Today, no President can really
establish the doctrine of plausibe deniability that we-have seen in-the
past. The President is required personally to sign the authorization
for any covert political action. The President is kept informed of our
sensitive intelligence activities. And this President has been very
strong in supporting the concept that the Congress must be given
adequate information in order to perform its oversight responsibilities
(which I will talk about more in a minute) and this attitude is a very
vital one to the whole process of accountability. In addition, the
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rr'
President has what is known as the Intelligence Oversight Board, a
Board composed of three members outside the government, at the moment
it is former Senator Gore, former Governor Scranton and a Mr. Tom
Farmer of Washington, D. C. These three men appointed by and reporting
only to the President have the sole charge to look into the legality
and the propriety of the activities of the intelligence community. Any
of our employees, any of you, anyone who feels like it may report to
them what they believe is an abuse of the intelligence privilege. This
Board will look into it and report only to the President as to whether
something should be done.
Let me move now to the third accountable process, that of the Congress.
Many people are skeptical here, feeling that the record of the Congress
is no better than that of President's in exercising accountability
over intelligence. Yet, let me point out that the Congress is a
body elected separately from the President and operating totally
separately from the Executive Branch of our government and having
accountability in both of these branches is, I think, a reinforcing
assurance. There are two committees in the Congress, one in each
chamber dedicated exclusively to this task of overseeing the intelligence
process. In the past intelligence information was only shared with a
few members of the Congress and effective oversight was really impossible.
I would like to refer to a statement by Vice President Mondale recently when
he summed up this situation by quoting your eminent Massachusetts
senator of the past, Leverette Saltonstahl. At one time when he was a
member of the subcommittee to oversee the Central Intelligence Agency,
the senator said:
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"It is not a question of reluctance on the part
of CIA officials to speak to us. Instead, it is our
reluctance to seek information and knowledge on
subjects which I personally, as a member of Congress
and as a citizen would rather not have."
I can assure you that attitude is not very prevalent in our Congress
today. On top of that the two committees I have mentioned conform very,
very closely to requirements laid out in a recent book by your own
Dean Graham Allison in stating what he felt were the prerequisites for
good Congressional committee oversight of the intelligence community.
Let me tick off a few of the standards that Graham set forth:
That the committee should stand permanently (They do.)
That they should be specifically concerned with intelligence (They are.)
That they should receive all relevant information (They do)
That they should be subject to rotating membership (While this is
not yet an established rule, the chairman of the Senate Select
Committee on Intelligence, last January, stood down from his
position to establish this principle and concept and I think
it will take hold).
That they should review and approve the intelligence budget
for our country. (They do, they are now what is known as the
authorization process in the Congress for intelligence.)
And finally, they should propose statutory charters to prescribe
our authorities and our limitations. (This is underway at the
moment and hopefully will be enacted by the forthcoming Congress.)
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Let me just go back to what I said in the beginning about the need
for balance: balance between accountability and balance between an
ability to conduct effective intelligence. Have we achieved that
balance today? I don't know. I think it is too early to tell. I
think it will be several years before we know whether we are on that
right part of the tightrope and in particular until the charters
are enacted by the Congress and are put into being. If we do find this
right balance we will truly have achieved a revolution in intelligence,
for never before in history will any major intelligence activity have
been subject to the degree of accountability we are conducting today.
I believe we are on the right track. I believe this can work in our
country. I would remind you that it will require some understanding
and some forebearance. Forebearance, for instance, against having such
detailed laws and regulation that we will find ourselves in a straightjacket
unable to conduct intelligence activities adequately. And here, let me
just pause to give you two examples of how this can go astray.
When I came to the Central Intelligence Agency there was a regulation
on the books that we would not establish any paid, contractual relationship
with any accredited member of the United States news media. I was
only there a few weeks when I received a letter from the American
Translators Association. They said, hey, you just fired a whole bunch
of stringers to the news media who are also part-time translators
That really
didn't make any sense. So what did we do. When we rewrote the regulation
for other reasons, we put a loophole clause in it. It said, we
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will not have any paid contractual relationship with any accredited
member of the American news media, unless, the Director of Central
Intelligence personally makes the exception. Now, there are those who
feel that is no regulation whatsoever, that I can make an infinite
number of exceptions. I don't think that is the case because I want
to remind you that we do have the oversight process, and I am subject
to being interrogated by the Intelligence Oversight Board, the President,
and by two committees of Congress as to what use I have made of this
loophole clause with respect to the media.
In sum, let me say it is not a perfect world, it is not an open
world. It is a world in which we must balance our idealism and our
realism in international affairs. We must be sure that the check of
accountability is there so that we do not overdo our realism. We must
ensure that the check of accountability is made sufficiently flexible
that we do not overdo our idealism. I say to you, we are not there
yet, we are moving strongly in the right direction. It is an exciting
period, an important period in American intelligence. A period when we
are, in effect, evolving a new uniquely American model of intelligence,
one tailored to the values and standards of our society, and yet one
also designed to ensure that we can remain what we are today, the
number one intelligence service in the world.
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Questions & Answers
JFK School of Government
Q. Inaudible
A. We are very pleased to take your appeal and handle it as expeditiously
as possible. Nice to see you. Thank you.
Q. How did the CIA and other groups miss out on the situation in Guyana,
Jonestown and do you take responsibility for those 900 Americans?
A. No, I don't take any of the responsibility for the following reasons.
Already, without charges, we have very express executive order
regulations governing the ability of the intelligence community to
pry into the lives of American citizens contrary to their constitutional
rights. And, I am not allowed to do that except under extraordinary
circumstances where there is a formed threat, and I have to go through
very established procedures at that time. This happened overseas,
which is generally my province as contrasted with the FBI which is the
United States, but it was entirely an American activity, and therefore,
I am forbidden by these regulations from inquiring into it, from delving
into the privacy of those American citizens and I think that's how it
should be.
Q. Would you comment on the extent of MIG-23 presence in Cuba -- and secondly,
would you comment on the MIG-25--(inaudible.)
A. We are being much more open these days, but we are not disclosing
all our intelligence secrets, so I can't tell you that. The
President responded to a press conference inquiry on the MIG-23s
today and, unfortunately, I was in a conference and didn't have an
opportunity to see it directly, but he acknowledged that we had
known for some time that MIG-23s have been in Cuba and he indicated
what his policy position was with respect to those. I really don't
want to quote it, because I haven't heard it directly, but I am
sure it will be in the evening or morning newspaper and give
you the most complete information that is available.
Q. Director Turner you speak very much about the tremendous need for
secrecy and as far as it is paid off gainst accountability. I am
concerned about secrecy versus performance and as we have seen a
little bit less protection of the secrecy today, we may see a
little bit better performance, particularly the example of the
Soviet wheat field. I think an additional example may be what we
read in the papers about the insufficient information on the
situation on Iran during this particular crises --that with more
information about the CIA the nation and the Congress knows a bit
more about exactly what their normal day-to-day activities are and
perhaps through less secrecy can get better performance in the CIA.
Do you care to comment please?
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A. That is a reasonable argument, but as in all these things there has
got to be a some balancing point. When I cannot persuade human
beings in foreign countries, who are willing to risk and sacrifice
on behalf of the United States to do so because they fear they will
be exposed in the American media shortly, I can assure you that our
ability to provide warnings of events in foreign lands will go down
markedly. So, there has got to be some compromise here, and I am
trying to say to you that we are trying to open up so that we do
have that accountability both to the public in a more limited
degree than to Congress and to the President so that there will be
that pressure on us to perform and to perform properly. We can't
just open up the flood gates and let out all the secrets any more
than these newmen in the front row here are willing to walk up and
disclose all their sources of information and hope that they can
still do their job well. It is a difficult compromise, it has to be
made on each individual issue.
Q. The CIA may be the best intelligence agency in the world. How much
of your credibility suffered as the result of these revelations
in the last few years?
A. It suffered very much. The leaks that have occurred, classified
information, clearly worry foreign intelligence services who work
with us, because they don't want to see their information appear in
the public. And yet, I would say that I am confident that our
principal liaison relationships are very strong today, we work very
closely with the principal allied intelligence services and they
are very cooperative with us. But I do say to you that we are
threatened in the long run, if we cannot staunch the flow of
unauthorized classified information that reaches the public in our
country.
Q. Admiral Turner what do you know about the debate inside the
People's Republic of China on the question of foreign military
transfers to that country?
A. That is a tough one, I thought you were simply going to ask about
the wall posters. That is a good question and clearly it is an
area where our intelligence is less complete than many others
because of the lack of personal contact with the Chinese over these
many years. We don't have the opportunity, have not had. I think
the best that I can say to you is we certainly see the Chinese on a
shopping spree and we're clearly interested in this. At the same
time, I think it is going to be fascinating over the next year or
two to see how the Chinese balance the modest amount of foreign
exchange they have between industrial development and military
development. And it is going to be, I think, a difficult position.
There are some few weapons you can almost say are purely defensive,
but almost anything can be turned around and used in what can be
termed an offensive mode. You know, something like a land mine,
which is difficult to think of as offensive but you can consider
some applications of it as offensive perhaps. I think it is a
quagmire, and I think you just have to judge in a sense how threatening
a military system appears to those around it, as to how dangerous
it is to sell or transfer it.
2
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Since your province is the overseas Admiral Turner, do you feel
that the United States has the duty to act either overtly or
covertly with regards to the current situation in Cambodia. Or
should the United States remain aloof to the internal affairs of
other nations, even if a holocaust, as has been mentioned in
Cambodia is occuring
A. One of the tenants of being an intelligence officer is to keep
yourself aloof from issues of policy, and the reason for that is
very clear. If we associate ourselves with a policy of intervening
in Cambodia, or not intervening in Cambodia, then the intelligence
that we produce with respect to what is going on in Cambodia can
easily be charged as being slanted to the policy that we are about.
So we don't have and I don't have, at least I don't discuss a
policy position on an issue like that, because it is not either my
job with the government nor is it one that will preserve this
independence of the intelligence position.
Q. Do you want to respond to your position on the Harvard Guidelines
for academic affiliation with the CIA?
A. My position on the Harvard Guidelines is that Harvard is certainly
privileged to make its own regulations for Harvard people. IBM
makes them for IBM people, CIA makes them for CIA people.
Harvard Guidelines don't apply to the CIA, the CIA regulations don't
apply to Harvard, I'm sure you're pleased. Let me say though, that when
dealing in a Harvard environment, my intelligence officers are instructed that
if they are working with a member of the Harvard faculty for instance,
they are to remind them of our understanding of what a Harvard faculty members
obligation is under the Harvard Guidelines, specifically, as I understand it
he should report the association with the intelligence community to-the
Harvard administration. If the member of the Harvard faculty says he does
not intend to follow the Harvard Guidelines and make such notification,
it is certainly not my job to force him on to require him to do that.
That is a Harvard and Harvard faculty relationship and problem. We do our
best to respect that relationship and advise people we work with on
any campus that we would prefer that they conform with those rules.
We don't object to their notifying the administration here or in any
other university that they have a relationship with us, but that is an
individual matter. Many professors around the country prefer to stand
on their right to free association and don't want to conform to those
guidelines and most universities around the country have failed to pass
such guidelines for that reason. I don't anticipate any change in my position.
Q. Could you direct comment please to the Russian competition with the
United States and the part that the intelligence community plays in
this competition? Could you particulary focus on the Russian
mentality towards American will to survive? And, whether, perhaps
in your mind or in anyone else's mind, there is the actual potential
for nuclear war?
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A. Of course there is a potential for nuclear war when two sides have
large arsenals of nuclear weapons. I can see no prospect that the
leaders of either side feel, or are likely to feel that it would be
a rational move to initiate strategic nuclear warfare between the
major superpowers. Nor do I see the Soviet mentality you have
described as to questioning our will and in effect devloping from
their point of view a more complete war fighting capability in the
nuclear field than we are developing. That is, looking at the full
consequences if the war broke out--the civil defense, the shelters,
the recovery program--I don't see that that has put the Soviets
in a mentality or in a position to feel that they could successfully
initiate nuclear warfare without unacceptable damage to themselves.
There is here a different mentality, however, in that they feel
that the best deterrent is to have as complete a fighting capability
even in a strategic nuclear field, as they can develop. We rely on
a different sense of deterrent which is a full, retaliatory, second
strike capability.
Q. The CIA does-not make any recommendations concerning policy.
A. That is correct, we do not.
Q. So you are carrying out the policy of the Executive.
A. Well, in this sense. My job is to provide objective information on
which policymakers can base their decisions. And also when they
are debating a policy move it is my job to say to them: I think
you are making that on the best information we have available; and
to say to them, it is my estimate that the consequences of what
you are planning to do would be the following as far as the reactions
and responses of other countries are concerned. Then whatever they
want to do, it is not my job to argue and say you are doing the
wrong thing.
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Q. You have restricted yourself to talking in terms of information.
Does this mean that the CIA is no longer engaged in forms of
covert and overt coersion and influencing of situations throughout
the world?
A. No, that is not correct and you have a valid point and it opens
up a whole area of discussion that I will try to cover quickly.
May I explain to the rest of the audience who may not be sure what
covert action is here because we have to have our terms here very
clear and it will take me just a second. Covert action is not
really an intelligence function. Intelligence is collecting and
evaluating information and providing it to the decision makers.
Covert action is attempting to influence events in other countries;
influence the course of events without it being known whose doing
the influencing. It is not intelligence, but from 1947 until now
Presidents have only assigned that function to the Central Intelligence
Agency when they wanted it attempted.
Q. It seems to me that the record of the intervention of your organization
throughout the world shows that the people who are concerned with
people who are socialist, communist, they are lots of other things.
It seems like the main focus of your activities are against people
who think of themselves as socialists, as communists and sometimes
as very strong nationalists. Primarily, all of these groups have
one thing in common: they are going to restrict the possibility of penetration
on the part of US corporations and the success of their profit taking ventures
in those countries. This is what I get from examining the record of CIA
intervention throughout the world. Now, if you elaborate on where there
is a record, where this--in other words, this is the policy of the
US government. If it is true that this is what the CIA has been up to
and it continues to be up to, then this is from what you say the policy
of the US Government to smash, to liquidate, to kill socialists, communists
and anyone who is fighting those kinds of changes. Where is that policy
articulated? In other words if that is the policy of the US government,
where is that policy articulated, so we can go to it and refer to it
and see however it is laid out, and also..(inaudible.)
A. The President must personally sign for any covert action that is undertaken.
This is required by the law, something known as the Hughes-Ryan Amendment,
Leo Ryan of the recent Guyana problems, passed in 1974. It requires not
only that the President each covert action that is undertaken, but that
I notify up to 8 committees of the Congress that we are doing this.
There is, therefore, a clear unequivocal written track record of any
covert action undertaken by the Central Intelligence Agency on behalf of this
government. I can assure you ladies and gentlemen, that I am not about
to undertake covert action not authorized in that manner because the consequences
of that are jail for me and I'm not going to do that.
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You have restricted yourself to talking in terms of information.
Does this mean that the CIA is no longer engaged in forms of
covert and overt coersion and influencing of situations throughout
the world?
A. No, that is not correct and you have a valid point and it opens
up a whole area of discussion that I will try to cover quickly.
May I explain to the rest of the audience who may not be sure what
covert action is here because we have to have our terms here very
clear and it will take me just a second. Covert action is not
really an intelligence function. Intelligence is collecting and
evaluating information and providing it to the decision makers.
Covert action is attempting to influence events in other countries;
influence the course of events without it being known whose doing
the influencing. It is not intelligence, but from 1947 until now
Presidents have only assigned that function to the Central Intelligence
Agency when they wanted it attempted.
Q. It seems to me that the record of the intervention of your organization
throughout the world shows that the people who are concerned with
people who are socialist, communist, they are lots of other things.
It seems like the main focus of your activities are against people
who think of themselves as socialists, as communists and sometimes
as very strong nationalists. Primarily, all of these groups have
one thing in common: they are going to restrict the possibility of penetration
on the part of US corporations and the success of their profit taking ventures
in those countries. This is what I get from examining the record of CIA
intervention throughout the world. Now, if you elaborate on where there
is a record, where this--in other words, this is the policy of the
US government. If it is true that this is what the CIA has been up to
and it continues to be up to, then this is from what you say the policy
of the US Government to smash, to liquidate, to kill socialists, communists
and anyone who is fighting those kinds of changes. Where is that policy
articulated? In other words if that is the policy of the US government,
where is that policy articulated, so we can go to it and refer to it
and see however it is laid out, and also..(inaudible.)
A. The President must personally sign for any covert action that is undertaken.
This is required by the law, something known as the Hughes-Ryan Amendment,
Leo Ryan of the recent Guyana problems, passed in 1974. It requires not
only that the President each covert action that is undertaken, but that
I notify up to 8 committees of the Congress that we are doing this.
There is, therefore, a clear unequivocal written track record of any
covert action undertaken by the Central Intelligence Agency on behalf of this
government. I can assure you ladies and gentlemen, that I am not about
to undertake covert action not authorized in that manner because the consequences
of that are jail for me and I'm not going to do that.
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How has the role of your spies, your field operatives, changed
with your increased reliance on satellites.
A. It has changed because way back in biblical days the only kind of
intelligence collectors were spies. That was the system more or
less until World War II or so. Then we began to have this mix and
the more the capabilities of the technical systems evolved and
increased, and they are very, very fine, the more we have to
think about segregating and giving to the human intelligence
problem just those things that cannot be achieved by the technical
satellite, or other intercept type systems. There is no reason to
risk a spy in getting information that could be had by a satellite.
So, what we are trying to do much more today than ever before is
to make sure there is a complementarity here. We don't
send out a human agent to look for things that can be had in other
ways. That is I think, a principal difference. It doesn't mean
that the human intelligence fellow is less important, because
generally speaking technical systems tells you something that
happened sometime in the past, but you also need to know in
addition what is going to happen tomorrow and why that is going to
happen. That, of course, is the forte of human intelligence activity.
Q. When you say your main function is to collect intelligence,
do you have a different standard to apply to "friends
of the US and enemies of the US". I wondered whether the term
enemies is applied to those who violate the human rights standards
that Carter is standing for now or whether it is pretty much
in the socialist/capitalist dichotomy?
A. That is a very good and difficult question to respond to, in this
sense: Our policy makers today, because of the economic/political
interdependence of the world that I mentioned at the beginning of
my remarks, have a legitimate interest in what is going on in
many, many countries of the world. If you could see the intelligence
reports that go out of my desk and up to the President today. The
countries that we're involved with, the countries whose names we _
didn't know--Namibia, who would have ever thought we would be
interested in Southwest Africa. But this is a major concern today
as to whether this African continent is going to remain stable.
or not. So, we have to target our intelligence collection in
accordance with where we think the pressures are going to be and
in accordance with how open a society is. Why would we go spy on
Great Britian? We would go ask Mr. Callahan if we want to know
something about Great Britian and I am sure he would tell us. So,
I have to adjudicate the priorities of collecting intelligence
with how much money we have, how many satellites there are, how
many other thing we have got and apply them as best we can to the
priorities that go across 150 countries. Some have a low priority,
because they are open and we know about them, some are very low
because they are inconsequential, we don't think we will be
involved with them, others change overnight. One of my difficult
tasks is not to get caught out a couple of years from now, because
I haven't built the foundation today, not anticipating that it
would be very important in a couple of years.
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Q. As the Director, do you feel you have adequate knowledge
of all that happens in the bureaucracy below you. In short, is it
reasonable to fear that practices condemned by you may still be carried
out covertly someplace else?
A. I would be very foolish to stand here and give you, just a categorical answer
that I am totally confident. I am confident. I have been there
20 months and I have not found any effort to conceal things from
me. I have not uncovered any activity that was contrary to what
were my directives or those of my superiors. And yet, I want. to
assure you that I think the essence of my job is to be constantly
alert. You do that by your sixth sense; you do that by asking a
question here, a question there; you do that by asking yourself
the question when you go to bed at night, where could problems
develop. When I say that I am really not suggesting that I think
intelligence agency people would invidiously attempt to subvert
policies. I am saying that some of the kinds of positions I've
just described are very delicate and two men looking at it with
the same purposeful intent may come to different answers. Finally,
I can only say to you that everybody in the Central Intelligence
Agency knows today, I can assure you, that if they don't conform
to the policies and regulations, they are going to be unemployed.
I think you have to take a very tough position on this. Because
if I find there is one person in the Agency who is out of control,
who is not carrying out the rules, and the ones I have found were
on relatively small issues, but when it was an issue of deli-berately
not telling a superior something that the superior was entitled
to know, my answer was, that man is out of control. If he is
out of control I can't demand that his superior and his superior
be under control, so I can't tolerate that individual in the
organization and a few of them have gone. So, you can only by
constant vigilance, by constant establishment of a clear firm
direction, ensure what you ensure. I am confident, I am happy, I
am comfortable with it, but I am always looking and alert.
I am very pleased and gratified for your courtesy, and the opportunity
to be here with you on the Harvard campus. Thank you so much.
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