HPSCI TESTIMONY, 30 NOVEMBER 1977

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80B01554R003400020022-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 7
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 22, 2006
• Sequence Number: 22
• Publication Date: December 6, 1977
• Content Type: MF

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6 DEC 1977
MEMORANDUM FOR: Legislative Counsel
FROM: Director of Central Intelligence
SUBJECT: HPSCI Testimony, 30 November 1977
I obtained agreement from the House Select Committee to
let us review the transcript of my testimony last week. When
you do so, please be sure that my statement on the DDO cuts is
unclassified except for the tables with the specific numbers in
them. -
STAT.
S
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Secrecy and Sociey
by Stansfield Turner
There have been stories in the media in recent weeks concerning
a new book that is critical of the CIA's role in the closing days
in Vietnam. The media play on this publication questions whether the
CIA had the right to review this book or, by extension, any work before
publication, and if so whether it had the right to excise portions it
reasonably. considered damaging to national security.
The answer to the first question is unequivocally yes. The CIA
had the right to review this book because the author had signed a
specific agreement to that effect as part of the terms of his employment
with the Agency. At no time prior to publication did he challenge the
validity of that agreement. Rather, he claims there is some higher
right which gives him the privilege of breaking that oath. Yet, all of
the evidence upon which he bases that rationale was available to him when he
met with me on the 17th of May. In that meeting he explicitly promised
me that he would fulfill his written obligation to provide us his manuscript
for review. More than that, he reaffirmed this obligation a few days later
in writing. The Central Intelligence Agency, and I as its Director,
accepted this man at his word. We made no effort to monitor the
progress of his activities. He simply violated both his own oath and
our trust. Moreover, his publisher, Random House, and his initial TV
interviewer, "60 Minutes," have also acknowledged that they were party
to this deliberate evasion of written and spoken promises.
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Why do people and organizations feel that duplicity is justified
in circumstances like these? Because, I suspect, of an erroneous
premise, clearly expressed in some of the newspaper articles on this
case, that government employees inevitably place covering their and
-their agencies' reputations above their duties and evert above the law.
This is a common, anti-establishment reaction which has become so
familiar in recent years. Its fallacy lies in the absence of any
evidence that the CIA, over the past year and a half when Mr. Snepp
was writing his book, deliberately used secrecy to protect its reputation.
To the contrary, the public record attests unequivocally to the Agency's
willingness to face the past squarely whatever the effect on its public
reputation. The self-revelations last July of the MKULTRA drug abuse
activities of the 1950s and the 1960s are only the most recent examples
of this forthright policy. What is at stake, however, is a fundamental
issue for our society. If the society cannot trust the judgment of its
public servants regarding what should or should not be withheld from
the public, then the society can in fact have no secrets at all. The
logical extension of the Ellsburg-Snepp syndrome is that any of our
210 million citizens is entitled to decide what should or should not be
classified information.
Secrecy is, of course, dangerous. It can be abused. Yet, some
things must be secret. Someone must be trusted to decide what truly
is secret. Clearly there must be checks and balances on those who
decide. But because these judgments are difficult does not mean that
the chaos of no regulation at all is to be preferred. I believe that
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the public recognizes the necessity for some secrecy in our modern
society. There is no question that we each recognize it in our
individual lives. Nor is there a question that we recognize it in
the activities of corporations. Surely, it is not difficult to make
the extension to government. None of us is so naive as to believe that
we live in a totally open and benign world. Many of our efforts, like
those directed toward strategic arms limitations, which could move us
closer to the open and peaceful world which we all desire, would be
impossible if we tried to negotiate from a position of total openness.
Nonetheless, how much secrecy is necessary and who should decide what
will remain secret are vexing issues.
How much must always be a matter of the subjective judgment of
human beings. The best we can do is build into our system, as we
have in the past few years, a series of bureaucratic checks and balances
that will. control secrets and secret activities, yet at the same time
protect the public from any abuses which excessive secrecy can
encourage. Beyond that, another check is the ballot box where the
public exercises ultimate control over the quality of individuals in
public office. And, also, the free media in our society can assist
the public in ensuring against excesses of secrecy. However, such
vigilance does not best proceed from the unsubstantiated assumption of
evil motives on the part of all public servants. Investigative
reporting does imply some measure of investigation. No one from
Random House or CBS, for instance, contacted me or anyone in the CIA
to investigate the other side of this story. It would appear
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that they feared that we might have obtained an injunction against
publication. Yet, an injunction is a legal mechanism of our judicial
process. It, too, is a means of protecting the public. Should
corporations be encouraged to skirt the legal mechanisms of our country
by subterfuge?
This case in itself is not worthy of this much discussion. It is
only of interest as an example of our dwindling capacity to maintain the-
minimal level of secrecy essential to the effective operation of our
intelligence apparatus as well as many other organs of our government.
It is remarkable today, and I say this with no self-pride because I
am a newcomer, that the Central Intelligence Agency can operate as
effectively as it does despite these circumstances. President Carter
has said, "One of the greatest surprises to me in coming to office
is how effective the CI-A -is." The concomitant of this fine performance
is the fundamentally healthy and patriotic attitude within the Agency
despite its being a frequent whipping boy. There is no question in my
mind that the people of the United States recognize the need for good
intelligence and can appreciate the destructive effect the carping of a
Snepp can have. It is time, instead, to concentrate on the constructive
role of oversight of the CIA and other agencies of the government.
I hope that the public will join with us in the CIA in seeking
constructively to understand and build our role for the future.
We need less encumbrance from national self-flagellation over the past
and more interest in how we can achieve a workable balance between
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necessary secrecy on the one hand and oversight on the other.
Perhaps that venerable statesman, Averell Harriman, is overly generous
when he often says, "The CIA is our first line of defense." But he
is not far enough off that we can afford less than a constructive
approach to what the Central Intelligence Agency should be providing
for the defense of our country and its institutions.
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