NATO DEFENSE COLLEGE COURSE 54 CIA AUDITORIUM

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80B01554R003000100001-1
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 16
• Document Creation Date: December 9, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 25, 2001
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: May 1, 1979
• Content Type: SPEECH

Approved Fo - elease 2001/08/07: CIA-RDP80B015W003000100d0'~4y 1979/
1st Draft
NATO DEFENSE COLLEGE COURSE 54
CIA Auditorium
24 April 1979
Good afternoon. It is sort of nostalgic for me to start thinking in
NATO terms again, and I would not be missing the mark much if I admitted
to you that there are some times when the relatively placid scene of
Naples and NATO appeals to me. I enjoyed that assignment very much. I
enjoyed talking with one of your predecessor classes in your headquarters
in Rome and, indeed, the fabric of the alliance which is cemented by the
camaraderie, the study, and the mutual understanding that you develop in
this course is critical to the freedom of the western world.
We are trying to help with that freedom by providing the best possible
intelligence. And with no denigration of any other intelligence service,
I have to say that we feel the great responsibility to you and your
countries, as well as to ourselves, because of the tremendous cost of
intelligence today, and the fact that we and the KGB are probably the
only two intelligence services in the world who can afford the full
panoply of sophisticated intelligence equipment. And, therefore, the
integration of our intelligence contributing in those areas of technology
where expenses cannot be borne by the rest of the alliance coupled with
very important inputs, both analytic and collecting inputs from your
countries, is very important to us.
Approved For Release 2001/08/07 CIA-RDP80BO1554R003000100001-1
 Approved Fo elease 2001/08/07: CIA-RDP80BO15S003000100001-1
I want to spend most of the limited time we have today responding to
your questions. Let me just talk to you about two aspects of what I do.
One, what my role is--and I should say roles--and the other is, what are
some of the important changes that are taking place in American intelli-
gence today.
To begin with, I have two roles. I am the head of the CIA and run
that agency, but I am also the Director of Central Intelligence charged
with coordinating the overall American intelligence effort. The CIA is
the only intelligence organization in the United States not associated
with a policy making function. The State Department, Defense Department,
and Treasury all have intelligence activities but all of them participate
in formulating policy. We are supposed to be those detached theref"e
and, hopefully, that much more impartial and objective. The main jobs
here are to collect intelligence, primarily by means of the human intel-
ligence activity--spying--but also, a major contribution in some of our
technical fields as well.
Secondly, to analyze the intelligence collected and we do have
beyond any doubt, and as an ex-military man I think I can say this better
than others, a better analytic capability here in almost every field of
intelligence than anywhere else in the United States Government. We are,
of course, particularlyood in economics where we are by far the strongest
international economic analytic organization in our government. We are
very good in political intelligence working to complement and doubleback
the State Department. We are very good in military intelligence, partic-
ularly the technical end of military intelligence, not, of course,
getting down into the battlefield tactical side. And, again, backstopping
and doublechecking on the Defense Department.
Approved For Release 2001/08/07: CIA-RDP80BO1554R003000100001-1
 Approved Fo elease 2001/08/07: CIA-RDP80B01W 003000100001-1
Our third activity is covert action. It is not really an intelli-
gence function. It is the effort to influence events in other countries
without the source of influence being recognized. We are the agency of
the United States Government that has traditionally been charged with
such activity when it is authorized.
However, I am also the Director of Central Intelligence because in
our country intelligence is spread over many organizations; each has its
own priorities, each has its own interests. They must be made to dovetail
together. In doing that dovetailing, I first am interested in making a
good team out of our various collecting efforts. Make sure the photos
from the satellites and other instruments, the signals intercepts, the
human intelligence activities all meld together and that we don't go
rushing off with a spy to find something that can be found by photograph
from a satellite. It is too risky, it is too costly, and it is a waste
of a v-ery valuable asset to target a human agent onto something that can
be obtained more readily by other means. But by the same token, it is
very clear there are lots of things that photographs and signals intercepts
will never tell you and there is where we must specifically focus the
human activities. And bringing all that together with these human and
technical capabilities spread across several major sub-agencies of
Defense, the CIA, the State Department, the Treasury Department, and so
on, is in fact an important coordinating effort. We must not let it drop
through the cracks. We must not spend more than we need.
Secondly, I must try to coordinate the estimating process, the
analytic process. Here very carefully, not being given authority to
3
Approved For Release 2001/08/07 : CIA-RDP80B01554R003000100001-1
 Approved Fo.lease 2001/08/07: CIA-RDP80BO159P03000100001-1
direct the analysis of the other agencies, particularly State and Defense,
because we want the conflicting views to come forward because none of us
has infinite wisdom. So on the one hand, I have the responsibility for
coordinating the collection for bringing together, with divergent views,
the estimating and being sure we are focusing and doing estimates where
our principal policy makers need them, but not trying to suppress or
direct the way in which the estimating and analysis is done in other
agencies than the CIA.
On top of being this coordinator for collection and estimating, as
the Director of Central Intelligence I am also the principal intelligence
advisor to the President and bear a particular and personal responsibility
for giving him, directly and personally, the best advice that I can. Let
me say to those of you from the non-American NATO countries that this
second role as Director of Central Intelligence is, I believe, unique in
our country and whether it is good or bad I leave to you to judge after
you have seen how we do things. But it is a problem for me in that I do
not have a counterpart in any of your countries that I know of and it is
a difficult problem for me to know where to go sometimes in one of your
countries to get what I need to get in the way of collaboration and
support, because sometimes I go to the Secret Intelligence Service,
sometimes I go to the Internal Security Service, sometimes I go the
military for SIGINT, and so on.
Approved For Release 2001/08/07 : CIA-RDP80B01554R003000100001-1
 Approved Fo*lease 2001/08/07 : CIA-RDP80B015-003000100001-1
We are trying, with the aid of some changes that are underway, to
strengthen the role of the Director of Central Intelligence so that
there is a central point of focus to which you can come and which will
direct our overall activities. So one of the major changes that I want
to point out is that, as of a year and a quarter ago, my role was strength-
ened as the coordinator. I am now in charge of the budgets of all of
these activities. I am in charge of directing the collection activities
of all, whether they are housed, managed, run by the Department of
Defense, State, or others, or the Central Intelligence Agency.
Quickly though, there are a couple of other changes I would mention
because you are aware of them and I want to just give you my view on
them. One is that this country is in a process of establishing oversight
procedures for its intelligence activities such 0a+ave never been
established before in any country with a major intelligence activity.
The oversight resides in the Executive Branch--the President, a special
Oversight Board that he has created, and in the Legislative Branch with a
committee in each of the two chambers of our Congress. Clearly there are
hazards in oversight but let me emphasize there are also strengths.
Strengths particularly obviously in a democratic environment. I happen
to think that we are moving in the right direction here and that a
certain oversight which does lend to judiciousness on the part of intelli-
gence officers is useful and desirable. So much oversight that judicious-
ness turns into an inability and an unwillingness to take risks is
clearly too much.
Approved For Release 2001/08/07 : CIA-RDP80B01554R003000100001-1
 Approved Forlease 2001/08/07: CIA-RDP80BO15003000100001-1
We have not settled on our oversight procedures yet. We are working
them out. It is like sailing a sailboat, we are trimming the sail a
little here, a little there. It will be several years before we settle
on course. I think we are doing well. I think we are moving in the
right direction. I would suggest that what we are doing may be a
forerunner for what will happen in many of your countries. In the
Federal Republic of Germany it is already part of the process as I
understand it. In Italy the move of the intelligence service out from
under the military and some of it back up into the prime minister's
office was a move toward oversight. I suspect there are other examples
of which I am not aware.
A third change, besides increased authority to coordinate, besides
oversight, is greater openness in our intelligence process. This stems,
of course, from the revelations'and accusations--some of them founded,
some of them unfounded--of excesses or abuses of intelligence in the
past. It is very difficult.for us. It is very difficult for the intel-
ligence professionals. It is a traumatic experience to go from a unsuper-
vised, unoversighted almost service to one that is much more in the
public domain today, and it is difficult to make that adjustment. I can
understand that but I do believe that this adjustment to greater openness
can be done without harm to our process. I would also suggest I think
this is happening in many of your countries as well. Admiral, I think
the United Kingdom is seeing some strains in its official secrecy act and
that which goes. behind it.
Approved For Release 2001/08/07 : CIA-RDP80B01554R003000100001-1
 Approved Fo0lease 2001/08/07: CIA-R0P80130150 003000100001-1
We are being very cautious. We are controlling the openness because
there are things about the intelligence business you can talk about,
there clearly are things that you cannot. We can make available more of
what we study and analyze and produce when we take out of it that which
cannot be shared with the public. We cannot share with the public
anything about how we collect our information, be it by satellites,
signals, or human agents and we draw that line very carefully. You may
not believe that we do that because we are in a phase in our^whe a leaks
are our biggest problem. But we must differentiate what I am calling a
policy of openness which is deliberate openness on our part, where we
selectively decide what is to be released, and these unconscionable leaks
and Philip Agees who run around publishing books deliberately trying to
destroy our intelligence service, which is another and a very serious
a/vt
problem that we have andAworking to combat.
The Congress of the United States is now considering what we call
charters for the Intelligence Community. Legislation which will supplement
existing legislation, or replace it, that will give us our authorities on
the one hand and set the boundaries, the parameters within which we must
work on the other. That legislation is difficult to draw. You have to
be very careful because when you put it in a law, you cannot just change
it overnight if you find it was incorrectly worded or there is a difference
of interpretation. We are drawing it up very finely right now. I suspect
it will take another several years before it is enacted by the Congress.
Approved For Release 2001/08/07 : CIA-RDP80B01554R003000100001-1
 Approved ,eiease 2001/08/07: CIA-RDP80B01qV 003000100001-1
But that will, I hope, by that time set us on the course I have
described so that we have the right balance between enough oversight,
enough openness on the one hand to assure judiciousness on our part to
ensure the American public against potential abuses of the intelligence
process. And on the other hand, enough freedom to take the risks which
we must take and which are inherent in our business. Without a proper
balance there we cannot, at the same time, protect our democratic standards
and compete in a world which is composed more of closed than of open
societies and in which only a critical, a sharp, an alert, risk-taking
intelligence process can protect the free and open society like yours and
ours.
Admiral, I'm ready and happy to try to respond. Who would like to
Approved For Release 2001/08/07 : CIA-RDP80B01554R003000100001-1
 Approved .eiease 2001/08/07 : CIA-RDP80BO15&003000100001-1
QUESTIONS & ANSWERS
Q: (Inaudible)
A: I wish I could answer that, I really do. The best we have been
able to track it down, the report came to the United States and
somehow escaped from one of our departments into the Italian media.
I cannot make that connection at this point. We are, of course,
investigating and trying to find it. We are trying to find the
motive, who would do that. There are a number of types of leaks that
we have. One, leaks that try to undermine policy that is going
against the way some bureaucrat wants it to go. Maybe he's not
getting enough aircraft carriers, they leak some piece of secret
intelligence they think will support that. Terrible, but it happens.
I don't know how this could have been in that category. Another is
leaks that come from people who get overly flattered by talking with
newsmen, you know, like to be a big-shot. But this was a whole
report that was released. It wasn't something casually done in a bar
by being too verbose. So I really don't know and I am very regretful
it happened and I can only say that there is nothing more on my mind
than stopping this kind of thing.
Q: (Inaudible)
A: Well that is, I guess, what I'm paid for is to make those judgments
as to whose estimate I believe most and when it is important enough
to reach my level, I call the analysts in, I try to look at the
evidence, and I have to exercise my own judgment. But, I have made
it a tom my time here that when there is a genuine minority
view, it must be well presented to the decisionmaker. It used to be
Approved For Release 2001/08/07 : CIA-RDP80B01554R003000100001-1
 Approved Fo.lease 2001/08/07 : CIA-RDP80BO150003000100001-1
that whoever lost to the DCI's decision because the estimates are
mine and they must have crisp decisions in them in my opinion. So I
make a crisp decision and I say I think that there are 500 Cubans in
and I believe so for the following reasons. The Defense
Intelligence Agency, I will then say, believes there are 300 and they
think so for the following reasons. You see, I want those reasons to
be comparable. It used to be that if you lost to the DCI, your 300
went in a footnote. You wrote the footnote, the DCI's people wrote
the text. They usually weren't comparable. The assumptions behind
the one were different. You had 500, including civilian medical
technicians, and you had 300, not including civilian medical ... and
that kind of thing. I insist that in these instances where there are
genuine differences, that it be right up in the text because the
value is really explaining why you differ. That gives the decisonmaker
something to grind on. The example you cited is a perfect..Zv good
one but it is not good from my point that I'm trying to make to you
because it was purely numerical. It's fairly cut and dried and
you've got ... and so on. When you are going to decide whether the
enemy is going to attack on Monday or on Friday, the worse thing you
can do is pick Wednesday because you've got evidence for each but
you've got nothing in the middle. So I'm against consensus intelligence,
particularly in the nonmilitary fields because explicating the
differences in economic and political intelligence and military
intentions is really the essence of doing good intelligence much more
so than making precise predictions.
Approved For Release 2001/08/07 : CIA-RDP80B01554R003000100001-1
 Approved For Release 2001/08/07 : CIA-RDP80B01554R003000100001-1
0 ?
Q: (Inaudible)
A: Well the cross of an intelligence officer is he's always to blame
if things don't go the way he said. And yes, we'd like to have done
better in Iran. The newspapers have played this as an intelligence
failure all out of proportion to the fact. From my point of view,
clearly we were advising people that there were problems in Iran long
before the eruptions of November last year. We said there are
problems here because people are disturbed with the overturning of
religious procedures. There are problems here because its been a
great increase in wealth in the country not permeated evenly. There
are problems over here because people are left out of the political
process and so on. We did not appreciate that a multitude of different
forms of dissent would coalesce under the aegis of a 78 year old
ex~patriot cleric. And even when we saw that beginning to happen, I
know I said to myself in October of last year, the Shah's got SAVAK,
the Shah's got a large military force, the Shah's got nobody to
report to besides himself, when the time comes he will take care of
these bubbles of dissent. I can't tell you whether and why that
didn't happen, but it's what I expected, it's what I think most
people expected. Clearly what the Soviet Union expected because they
didn't get off the Shah's bandwagon until it was pretty well into
December, because if you were in the Soviet, you would certainly
expect that because that is the way you would have handled it. So
yes, we did not predict the eruption to the degree that it took
place. We certainly predicted the Shah was having considerable
Approved For Release 2001/08/07 : CIA-RDP80B01554R003000100001-1
 Approved Forllease 2001/08/07 : CIA-RDP80B015*03000100001-1
problems. Predicting that kind of an eruption is a very difficult
thing particularly in what I believe now was a truly revolutionary
process. Truly revolutionary, not a thing foisted from outside.
You've seen the revolution crumble now because it did coalesce for a
very temporary period around the figure of an individual man and
around a religious principle. But they are not sticking with any
religious principle now. They did that as a expediency because the
coalescing factor was not the Ayatollah, it was not Islam, it was
anti-Shah. Now that that coalescing factor is gone, we see the
revolution disintegrating in a rather traditional pattern. So we'd
like to have done better but I don't guarantee you that we'll do the
next one. But just let me say one last thing, we'll try. One last
thing is that what if in September or August we had really predicted
right on the ... 16 January the Shah would be gone. First of all,
nobody would have believed me. Secondly, there was nothing much the
United States could do at that stage. We must, I believe, look
further down the line in intelligence today than ever before. It's
the only way your countries and mine can influence events in other
countries, I believe, is t hit over the longer run. You've got to
get in two and three, four years before an eruption like this and
start trying to help them shape events that are going to be important
to you. And therefore, the nature of intelligence is changing. We'd
be much less putting our finger in the dike and more seeing these
undercurrents of long term trends.
Approved For Release 2001/08/07 : CIA-RDP80B01554R003000100001-1
 Q: Sir, r dkRrcfzost4~1/9eWceClR RA0.FA1554R003000100001-1
He is not an American and we can only rely
on the information released by different nations. On the other hand,
stands between them. Do you
think that ?
A: No, and I know that very well. As your Commandant has said I was
a NATO commander and obviously I had my US sources of information and
I had my NATO sources of information and I could compare them, a-
m. And it is a terrible problem for us and I am
working on it to see what I can do. But you have to appreciate that
it is very sensitive when you do have means of gathering information
that you believe the Soviets do not recognize and appreciate. Some
of the systems that are most difficult to share are ones where we
don't share inside our own organization and our own government on
anything but a very limited basis because you only have, in any
intelligence collection system, a limited amount of time before the
counter to it develops. You have to try to preserve that lead when
it is uniquely valuable. I don't think the discrepancy is perhaps as
great as you say or you think because we can sanitize a lot of that
down and it isn't essential for people to know how we got it. We do
that to the best of our ability. And, of course, in wartime, if
there is really a war, the floodgates will open and I realize that
that is not a good answer to your question because you can't go from
50 miles an hour to 5,000 miles an hour overnight. So we are, and I
am personally, very actively involved in trying to Vee what we can do
to make it at least a smaller jump that will have4 t.~Gaken at the last
minute. It is not easy. If you turn around the other way, I'm sure
the BND does not share with NATO information that it gets from its
spies
Approved For Release 2001/ I07 : CIA-RDP80BO1554R003000100001-1
 Approved For ease 2001/08/07: CIA-RDP80BO15541* 3000100001-1
and the Germans and
other nations in Europe follow in this policy in most of the years
CIA or United States and I think if United States make a
step in the direction of I think I believe
the other nations will follow.
A: That is possibly true. We have more at stake too to be candid with
you. But we've got to all move in that direction as best we can and
we each have equities we have to try to protect for the good of the
alliance too.
Q: (Inaudible)
A: You're not talking about the CIA supporting the Bakhtiar government,
you're talking about the United States government supporting it.
That may have been a bad decision. I don't know but that's out of my
province as I tried to say at the very beginning. I'm the one
organization in the town that doesn't play a policy role and decide
whether we support Bakhtiar or somebody else. It's my job if we are,
as a nation, supporting Bakhtiar to play what role there is for
intelligence or covert action in supporting him, but that was a
decision at a far higher level than mine.
Q: Sir, I wonder if you could give us, as far as you're able, your assess-
ment of the Soviet intelligence gathering effort ?
A: I think the Soviets have the most extensive human intelligence
gathering effort in the world. They really make a major effort
Approved For Release 2001/08/07 : CIA-RDP80B01554R003000100001-1
 Approved For ease 2001/08/07 : CIA-RDP80BO1554103000100001-1
here and we've just seen some of it uncovered in Brussels and in
Germany in recent weeks indicating that they are very active.
They are very active in our country. I always say that detente,
while I think it's a net plus, is a net minus for intelligence.
They have more opportunities to penetrate us proportionately than we
do them. On the other hand, I would say that we in the Western
intelligence services are more clever, more astute at the human
intelligence function than are the Soviets. They sometimes are
clumsy. So I think we do reasonably well in that sphere compared
with them. In the technical fields of photography and signals
intelligence, we're way ahead. We just are more sophisticated. But
where we have the biggest edge is in analysis. It doesn't do you any
good just to get raw data, you've got to do something with it, and,
in our society where dept is encouraged, where freedom of speech
is encouraged where you come together and hammer out different views
and aren't afraid to speak up as to your different attitudes toward
a given problem, you are going to have better analysis than you are
in the KGB's headquarters where if you come up with the wrong
solution, you may not only not get promoted you may not work there
tomorrow or whatever. So, I feel confident that overall we have a
better intelligence capability than the Soviets. More scrupulous,
less accented on the human spy activity but adequately so accented
in my opinion. Last question please, I'm afraid I'm going to have
to run to a meeting.
Approved For Release 2001/08/07 : CIA-RDP80B01554R003000100001-1
 Approved For Release 2001/08/07 : CIA-RDP80B01554R003000100001-1
Approved For Release 2001/08/07 : CIA-RDP80B01554R003000100001-1