NOTE FOR STAN FROM ROBERT R. BOWIE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80M00165A000400010002-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 16
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 1, 2004
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: December 13, 1977
• Content Type: NOTES

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Executive cutive RE
THE DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE
Deputy for National Intelligence
NOTE FOR: The Director
13 December 1977
I am forwarding Jim's memo and draft letter since he
has been working with you on this.
For my part, the proposed project of seems
extremely grandiose and overblown. I wou wisn him well
on it but not get involved. Hence, I do not like the first
sentence (or the last) of the second paragraph of Jim's
draft letter.
Someone should be able to write a relatively succinct
paper raising the issues which might be used at Aspen
or Arden Hous
e
Attachment
ow-
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 STAT
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-9X3 G
9 December 1977
MEMORANDUM FOR: Director of Central Intelligence
VIA
: Director, National Foreign Assessment Cente
FROM
: Coordinator for Academic Relations
SUBJECT
: The Secrecy Project and your letter to
1. Action Requested: None; the following is the comment you
requested.
ck round: The impact of my talk with
STAT on 28 November is that the general discussion pnase in w ich
you are interested has been deferred (in thinking) for about
1 year -- until the summer of 1979. I touched on this phase in paragraph
9 of my memo but did not expand upon it because it played ver little part
in our talk. When it did come up, near the end, readily
agreed that there should be extensive workshop-type discussions not only
at Aspen but also at Harvard and a number of other universities.
I' suspect that this change in the planning is a consequence of
STAT decision to assume responsibility for launching the study himself,
though with some expectation (and considerable hope) that he will be able to
STAT persuade the new President to assume sponsorship eventually. I
noted in my memo that he is planning to change the name of his committee so
as to avoid the implications of the expression "anti-communist"; he is also
planning to employ funds currently available to his committee for the
financing of the first phase, which he described as a "feasibility study."
It is obvious he is reaching for both Simon-purity and the kind of compre-
hensiveness that will put the study plan beyond reproach on grounds of narrow-
ness or bias.
STAT 4. indicated in an aside to me at the meeting (which II
STAT was out of the room) that he thought F_ scheme was much more promising
than the Aspen approach, mainly (I gathered) because the subject would not fit
the Aspen format without a lot of preparatory work in any case.
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SUBJECT: The Secrecy Project and your letter to
5. I suggest you consider adding to your letter to
paragraph substantially as follows:
I have received report on your discussion
of 28 November with interest but also with some disappoint-
ment. I appreciate your wish to make certain that a sound
base for the study of official secrecy is laid before proceeding
to the phase of open discussion. Nevertheless, in view of my
own reading that the public climate is already favorable, I
hope that you will find ways to speed up the process. I should
feel much better about the secrecy project if I could expect the
open discussion to be launched next summer rather than nearly
a year later. I also urge that full advantage be taken of
the Aspen Institute as a setting for the discussion, though
naturally I do not object to the use of other arenas as well.
6. There is obviously some risk that your disenchantment will be
communicated to E_ I and dampen his enterprise. But you may
consider that ris worth along if I have interpreted your impression of
the current opinion climate correctly.
STAT
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 MNNI VVCU rWICOOC LVV'II IL/LL . VIM-FU-IF UJIVIVV WVVV'+VVV I VVVL-V
SUBJECT: Tip Rprrar%, Di~n 4n^+ and your letter to
Distribution:
Orig. - Addressee
1 - A/DDCI
1 - D/NFAC
1 - Exec. Reg.
1 - NFAC Reg.
2 - NFAC/CAR
NFAC/CAR/
(9 December 1977)
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Cassette 23
Side A, 5/8 - 1
SEC
,311
STAT
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? The Director
Central Intelligence Agency
TAT
Thanks for your nice letter. I was certainly disappointed
that you couldn't get to the Council on Foreign Relations talk
in Chicago but fully understand. It would have been nice to
have had a visit.
With regard to our project on secrecy in our open society,
I am quite excited at the moment. The distorted revelations by
Mr. Frank Snepp in his new book, Decent Interval, have been rather
interesting. CBS, who put Snepp on its "Sixty Minutes" program,
has received a great deal of correspondence complaining about the
irresponsibility of a man who gives out classified information
like this. I have just written an article for The Washington Post
and am enclosing a copy of it for your information. In short,
I think the time is ripe for the project we are discussing.
All the very best.
Yours ,
STAT
Attachment
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Secrecy and Society
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
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_lat r
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 even 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 CIA 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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TNF Mar no nc
CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE
Deputy for National Intelligence
STAT
STAT
30 November 1977
NOTE FOR: The Direc r
I hope-we-would not get involved
in the ro'ec covered by this report
from ibefore a careful look.
Attachment
Robert R. Bowie
D/DCI/NI
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D
MEMORANDUM FOR: Director of Central Intelligence4i
VIA . Director, National Foreign Assessment Center
t-KUM
Coordinator for Academic Relations, NFAC
SUBJECT :-Meeting with
V
oug t
to e subject. of secret intelligence in a free society. He recalled that
-.he-had tried and failed to convince the last four presidents that the subject
called for a Blue Ribbon Commission. But he had also learned that there were
six ways to get to the other side of a mountain: around it (two ways), over
it, under it, through it -- and "around the world." He said that what he had
come up,with was an around-the-world-approach -- a sort of surrogate for a
..Blue Ribbon Commission, as I gathered.
3. The major elements of this appeared to be the following. First, it
must be pr.imar.il.y..a legal project.' Second
it should be done b
,
y experts
.
Third, it should begin-with. a major "feasibility--study" to determine, the nature
and scope. of the problem and how,-it should be approached. Fourth, he had
decided.-to take ,.it on himself as a, project of his the name of ST
which.-he? proposed..changing to " He indicated that it ST
would probably.take-six months. e change. He also said he hopes to
i.nterest..thel who might adopt the project as his own,
perhaps forming a special ommittee to take over sponsorship.
4. II said. his objectives were "to pre-empt the field", recruit the
best posse e talent, collect all the available information, and to be sure
that every aspect of the problem was examined from all possible angles. In the
course of the next year, he said, he would expect to complete a plan of approach
so thorough and so widely accepted that there could be little question of obtain-
ing support for the required study. At the same time (though this received less
emphasis in his explanation) he would be preparing the way both for the conduct
and for the acceptance of the ultimate study itself.
1. Action requested. None; this is for your information.
2. Background:
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TAT SUBJECT: Meeting with
5. The immediate project, then, is for a-"feasibility-s?tudy." ~
repeatedly stressed this description and title, saying that it provided o0
proof protection from critics and opponents of all varieties, who could be
countered by saying in effect: "What's your beef? We want your inputs too."
This study will be financed with funds available in his committee, It will
proceed in two or possibly three phases. In the first phase, r
number of contacts (including Henry Kissinger
his committee will hire a "civilian professor, El J uauly Ct yourly d
'
law professor, to provide an outline lan prom, 1-
90 days. (of the feasibility study), in about
y,, While that is being done a second professor will be hired to
critique, expand and refine the plan, also for about.90 days. If it then seemed
desirable, he said, a third professor might be recruited for the same purpose.
In the end, his committee should have a virtually unassailable plan, touching
on all relevent considerations and representing all legitimate points of view,
If it was lucky, he said, it would also have a functioning working committee
STAT consisting of the three professors and a staff director (with staff? -- this
was not discussed).
STAT
STAT
STAT
7. 01 that the mentioned ST/
at our luncheon meeting in October is-much broader - than. our .interest _b.ut..that .
(2).IImight, contribute helpfully to feasibility study. said. STAi
to. me...afterwards that he considered pan much more solid anp
promis?ing..than:th,e- idea of pursuing .t e: -same objective through. the-0 format, STA
STAT 8.
aid- he from-the CIA:
(a) Everthingr public on.. the- subject--of Intelligence,
starting with an unclassified index. suggested that
most of the materials assembled for t e ite House-in-connection
with the.propos:ed:.Executive Order (or for the Select Committees?).'
probably, could be declassified. It occurred to me that much of
the materials assembled for or-by-the-Church Committee might-be
available-and useful.
(b) Access to the CIA clipping service and public releases.
(c) A list of all professed experts on Intelligence,
especially lawyers, so that they might be consulted in the
course of the feasibility study,
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SUBJECT: Meeting with
My impression of the above is that wants everything that has been
printed,.,pro and con,.on the genera su sect of Secret. Intelligence in a
Free ..Society.
at-..Harvard,_: Aspen,.. Berkel ey, etc.
support for the study itself, it-should be possible to hold a ,series of-workshops
end of 1978. By- the summer of~.1979, assuming early success in gaining.foundation
9. On scheduling: The feasibility study should be-completed: by the
10. In view of the diminished role suggested for Aspen we obviousl need
another short title for the project. May I suggest we call it "The Project."
I_.shall..explore the possibility, feasibility, and legality of provi ding the- ST
assistance- requested-,.I am already persuaded, though, that he would be
better- advised. o engage a- clipping and reference service than- to.rely upon us
in-that regard.
STAT
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STAT
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