[SPEECH BY GENERAL WALTERS TO THE INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS INSTITUTE AT FORT MEADE, MD. ON 16 SEP 74]
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Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST):
CIA-RDP80R01731R002000090001-4
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RIPPUB
Original Classification:
K
Document Page Count:
48
Document Creation Date:
December 15, 2016
Document Release Date:
September 30, 2002
Sequence Number:
1
Case Number:
Publication Date:
September 16, 1974
Content Type:
SPEECH
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, ~,~,,~?
Speech by General Walters to the
International Affairs Institute at
Fort Meade, Md. on 16 Sep 74
DDCI Speech
16 September 1974
MODERATOR: On behalf of the officers and members of the.
IAI, I'd like to welcome you to this first in the 1974-75
lecture series. And before I forget, I should mention that one
of the traditional rules of the IAI, for today's speaker as well
as subsequent speakers, is non-attribution. Everything's off
the record.
When the newly elected officers of the IAI met
for the first time a few weeks ago to come up with our slate of
speakers for this year, we resolved that we would do our very
best to ensure that the first speaker in particular was the best,,
and so we were delighted when Lt. General Vernon Walters accepted
our invitation to meet with us today. I think some of you know
General Walters personally. I think probably everyone knows him
through achievement and reputation.
It's virtually impossible to identify General.
Walters with any particular professional label. He is a man of
many parts. I think he personally would prefer to be thought of
primarily as an Army man, a military officer. And he has had a
distinguished military career. It began in May of 1941 when
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Private Walters enlisted in the Army Field Artillery. About a
year later 2nd Lt. Walters, U.S. Army Infantry, was a leader of
a, reconnaissance and intelligence platoon. In November of '42
he participated in the assault landing in Morocco, for which he
was awarded the Legion of Merit. From there it was Algeria,.
Tunisia and, eventually, Italy, where first he served as aide to
General Mark Clark and later on as the combat liaison officer to
the First Brazilian Infantry Division, and so on, through to the'-
present, a truly distinguished military career, including service
in Vietnam in 1967.
In addition to being a military officer, he is
an Attache. As a matter of fact, in the view of many he is'
been Army Attache in Rio de Janeiro and Rome.
11V. WVt1u. r1G laa~
He was Attache at
large under Ambassador Harriman, with duty station-in Paris, and,
eventually, Defense Attache in France, a post he held until May
of 1972.
He is a linguist -- and that's probably the
understatement of the century -- expert linguist (standing all)
at his truly remarkable feats and accomplishments inihe linguistic _
field.
When I first laid eyes on him it was several years
ago. He was standing on the podium on the White House lawn
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flanked on the one side by the President of the United States
and on the other side by the President of France, translating
for both of them over international radio and television. He's
done the same thing countless times whether the language was
Portuguese, Italian, French, German, or what have you.
He is a diplomat. He has, among other things,
served as assistant to the President of the Geneva Conference in
1953. He has been, variously, aide, staff assistant, special
assistant, to people such as George C. Marshall, then Secretary
of State; President Truman; President Eisenhower and President
Nixon. He has accompanied Vice Presidents and Presidents on
countless round-the-world historic missions, including for
example the meeting between President Truman and General MacArthur
on Wake Island.
It goes without saying that he is one of the
foremost intelligence officers in the United States. His career
in the intelligence field was capped in May of 1972 when he was
sworn in as Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, the post he
now holds.
He has (been) all these things, and more. And
the reason he comes to meet with us today is the fact that he,
for the last 25 years, has. been an extraordinary statesman for
the United States. People that we here know of as legendary names
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he knows as intimate friends. World leaders over these past 25
years have come to seek his advice and counsel on countless
occasions. And so we are proud to have him here today. And it
is a great pleasure for me, and privilege, to inroduce to you
truly a man for all seasons, Lt. General (Dick) Walters.
[Applause.]
DDCI: After an introduction like that, I don't know where
I can go except down. Jerry was kind enough to say that I was
a diplomat, but I have it on higher authority that I am not.
[Laughter.] One day I was standing in a parade in Brazil along-
side the Soviet Ambassador, and he spoke very good English. He
had been in the States for six years. And he said to me: "The
trouble with you Americans is you never bother to learn anybody
else's language. Always you demand that people speak English to
you." And I thought, he hasn't read my biography like I've read
his. I said: "That isn't true any more. It may have been true
20 years ago, but it's not true any more." Then he said, "Oh, yes.
And besides us people you do not have gift for languages like we
(Slavs)." So I said to him -- I hope there are no Russian-.
speaking ladies in the audience. I said to h'm, ,[T F a ~"+ --
which I would loosely translate as garbage in English except that
isn't the literal meaning of it in Russian. [Laughter.] "And I
am astounded that an intelligent man like you, who's lived outside
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the Soviet Union, continues to believe these fairy tales of
Communist propaganda." So that shook him. [Laughter.] And I
stepped in for the kill, and that's where disaster struck. I
said to him in Russian, "Mr. Ambassador, would you like to try
Portuguese?" knowing that I spoke it much better than he did.
And he looked at me and he said, "Walters, you may be good
soldier; diplomat you are not." [Laughter.] So I have it on,
you know, fairly high authority.
I might add that one of the first things I did when
I came into my present job was to ask, "Where is Andrey
that's one thing for sure." [Laughter.]
Andreyevich Fomin?" And they said he's Ambassador to Bangladesh.
[Laughter.] And I said, "Well, he's not going up the ladder,
You have very good speakers out here all the time
with whom I couldn't possibly compete. But I thought I would
talk a little bit about people, people that the various oddities
of my jobs have run me into from time to time, because I think
sometimes we tend to get fascinated with the technological aspects
of intelligence and forget a little bit the human aspects. And
I think this is particularly true in dealing with foreigners.
You know, Americans are very organized -- we have disclosure
policies and policies for this and policies for that. Well, my
experience is that relatively few other countries have policies --
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if they like you, they'll tell you and if they don't, they won't.
And the human aspect plays perhaps the more important part inthe
intelligence business with other people.
I know when I was Attache to France -- I'll tell
you one amusing story (that) the Head of the French Intelligence,
Military Intelligence Service, told me after he retired and he
was asking me to help him get a job. I went to France in 1967
just about the time we got thrown out of the bases and so forth
there, and he said to me -- This is, (well), many years after-
wards. He said: "You know, when you came here, under those
circumstances, with a long French background and knowledge of
France and the French language, we were sure that the Americans
had sent you here to stir up the Army for NATO.and against
De Gaulle." And he said: "The fact that you were a bachelor
opened the possibility of two handles we might get on to you,
so-we watched you closely. And finally when neither of them
worked out, we came to the conclusion that you were like the
traditional Bishop -- never in your own diocese." [Laughter.
Applause.]
It's not often that the Head of the other side tells
you something like this. But one of the things the French said
to me: You never ask awkward questions when you visit a military
unit. Why not? Well, I said, I figure France is a sophisticated
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country, and when I go somewhere, you send a note to the commander
of the unit and tell him what he can tell me; and if he doesn't
tell me, it's because he's not authorized to. And why should I ask
a question that will embarrass the guy when he has to tell me he
can't answer and embarrass-me when he tells me he can't answer.
I am more interested in projecting a favorable image of my country
and the service I represent, because I have found that if you do
this successfully you get a great deal. And in fact, when I
arrived in France in 1967, it was a pretty hostile and a pretty
cool environment. Before I left,.I'd been into the French missile
silos and into the submarine (). I did ask for that, however,
but I had to connive.
The French Chairman was coming to the United States
and they asked me what he wanted to see, and I already was thinking
ahead. I said he undoubtedly wants to see Minuteman silos. And
the Americans wrung their hands and said, "Oh, that's very difficult."
And I said, "I know, but he wants to see them," and we showed him
Minuteman silos. A couple of years later General Wheeler was
coming to France and the French said to me, "What does General
Wheeler want to see?" I said he wants to see silos. And they said,
u rave
"Oh, that's very difficult." I said, "Oh no. General Fo
saw our American silos." So we got into the French silos [Laughter] -
which shows that you need a little advance planning in some of these
things.
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Well, what I thought I would do is talk about the
human dimension and some of the people (in) some of the ways:
.they reacted to various things, obviously drawing on my own
memory and experience with them for various things, and by
watching these people you learn a lot about, you know, how to
deal with people. I was very young at the time of some of these.
I remember I went to the Bermuda conference in 1953,
and Sir Winston Churchill was there, and the French were asking
for help in Vietnam. And at the meeting Churchill kind of put
them down rather harshly and suddenly he realized what he was
doing and he decided that he was going to pay a tribute to the
Frenchman, who was [sp?], who had been the President of
the National Council of Resistance inside German-occupied France
during the war since the Prime Minister got sick. And he said -
in (tlies4) marvelous Churchillian tones he said: "If I say what
I say, it is because for 40 years I have stood alongside our
French comrades as they sought to preserve themselves from the
mortal peril that threatened them. But let us never forget that
g IDpaV%
Mr. B.e.edo here sitting with us living during the whole long night
of the occupation of those four dreadful years in mortal peril
of his life for every hour (of) every minute (in) every day, and
in so doing --" No. "And then when we reached Paris he was
there waiting for us under the Arch of Triumph, and in so doing
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he earned the undying gratitude of the entire free world." By
this time there wasn't a dry eye in the conference hall.
:{Laughter.] Churchill was sobbing, Eisenhower was sobbing,
the Frenchman had his face buried.in his hands, and I was so
strangled with sobs I couldn't translate for a few minutes. And
then Mr. Eden spoiled everything. He said, "George, after a
bouquet like that you've got to do something" --. [Laughter] --
which really let it down.
But anyway, that Frenchman - Churchill had said no
to him all morning but he didn't go away from that conference
with the impression that he had been told no, or if he did, it
was much more mitigated than if he'd been told nothing. Which
leads me to another observation I make about these things, which
is that anybody who says "flattery will get you nowhere" has
never had any. [Laughter.] Throughout a long career I have seen
used with extreme skill. I would say the greatest form of
flattery I know is to quote a man to himself.
Recently I went to Portugal to see General Spinola.
And I went on the night train -- not secretly, but it was a little
more discrete than coming in at the main Lisbon airport and I
AAD
spent all night reading "Portugal the Future" by General
Spinola. I gout out of the train at 10 o'clock and at 11 o'clock
I was in Spinola's office and at regular 10-minute intervals I.
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would drop a quote from "Portugal in the Future." We had a
great time. [Laughter.]
I must say that while T was talking to him I was
bothered by one thing. I had heard a Brazilian story -- and the
Brazilian stories are always a little bit hostile to the
Portuguese in their way but you can,'t join in, but they always
sort of portray the Portuguese as hayseeds -- and while I was
talking to Spinola I kept looking at the monocle and remembering
what the Brazilian said, that the monocle was the Portuguese
version of the contact lens. [Laughter.] But I must say, he
was rather impressive and he wasn't at all the sort of dramatic
type that you might expect from that.
During the war I remember that Mr. Churchill came
to see the Brazilian division I was with, and they had not yet
fired a shot. Oh, Mr. Churchill got up there, Sir Winston got
up there, and he said to them, "Brazilian and American comrades =
in arms." Well, once he'd said that, it didn't matter what else
he said-. The fact that they had been called "comrades in arms"
by Churchill before they fired a shot was all that was required
to put them in a very happy frame of mind. And he was a most
extraordinary man.
Once I was talking to a Frenchman, and he came up,
and I withdrew discr e ely because I thought he could speak French
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(he)
(and) would talk to him, and I stepped off at some distance.
And finally he said a few words and then he beckoned me back
'and he said: "Until I was 70 I could speak French; now it is
more difficult. Come back here." [Laughter.]
One of the other people with whom these things
(were) very important was De Gaulle. I first met General
De Gaulle in 1942 when I took him a message from North Africa.
I saw him on and off at various times during the war. Once I
was in (Fifth) Army, and he came, and they'd told me to be
sure and be there because he didn't speak English. And when
I protested that he.must have because he had been living in
London for four years, they showed me a newpaper article that
said he didn't. And in those days I was young and naive and
I generally believed what I read in the newspapers. [Laughter.]
So I went up into the van with General Clark with him, and they
were discussing the withdrawal of the four French divisions in
Italy to go into the south of France. And it was soon pretty
clear to me that he didn't-speak English, because General Clark
would say no, and General De Gaulle would say [.n Fyenrh]~ and I
would say [ Imo=--~= T] , [Laughter.]
So I was a little emboldened by this and I began to
add some comments in English, such as: General De Gaulle says"yes
but I don't think he really wants to do it; or, he says'1no but I
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think if you push him a little harder he'll give. [Laughter.]
And at the end of the meeting he stood up and he turned to
General Clark and he said, "General Clark, we have had a very
interesting conversation." [Laughter.] "I am sure the next
time we meet it will be on the liberated soil of France."
When I stepped aside to let him out of the van -- and it's a
metal wall in the van, but I'm sure the print of my body, which
was much thinner in those days, is still imprinted on the van --
he tapped me on the shoulder and he said, "Walters, you did a
very good job." That was the last time I have ever dabbled with
anything I was translating. [Laughter.]
When I went back to Paris in 1967, I saw him at a
lunch and he said, "Oh, I see you're back in Paris.", "Yes."
He said, "How long?" And I almost said, "Well, it was on that
biographical slip, the (DST), put on your desk earlier before
lunch." But I thought it was better not to, so I told him. And
he said: "Let me see. The last time I saw you was in Italy in
General Clark's van in Ift a village named, ah, ah -- well, I can't
remember, but it was in General Clark's van, wasn't it?" And I
said, "Yes, General, it was." And I could see for a minute he
thought, and he said, "The village's name was ( J ub,&4 '^ a) ,
wasn't it?" And that was`l'yearslater. He named the village,
and I don't think that any of the French Services could have given
him that particular fact.
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But he was an interesting man to talk to, and I
participated in a number of interesting conversations between
==him and General Eisenhower. One night at (Rambouillet) Castle
they both put on their bathrobes and sat in front of the fire
and talked about -`ghat about during the war; why didn't you
tell me; did you know; yes, I did, but Roosevelt wouldn't let
me, and so forth and so on. And (he) got on to French atomic
policy, and I think this is something that has been greatly
reflected in whatever the French have been doiri.g.since then.
General Eisenhower was assuring him that he didn't need nuclear
weapons, that the American umbrella would take care of everybody,
and he said, "Yes, it will-now --" We're in. 1960. He said:
"It will now because you still have what essentially amounts to
a monopoly. But as the Soviets develop the ability to strike the
cities of North America, you're not going to war - one of your
successors is not going to war, nuclear war, for anything short
of a strike against North America. And when that happens and
the Russians attack with-2.00 divisions in Europe, I need the
means of turning what your successor may want to be a conventional
war into a nuclear war." He said: "Understand. me clearly. I
don't intend to compete with SAC or the long-range air army)
I simply want to have the means of forcing them to do something
they don't want to do. And you must understand that the addition
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of new centers of decision for the use of nuclear weapons will
multiply the problem (and) the uncertainty of the Soviet planner."
,.He said: "You tell me I don't need these things, but if you
don't have them, you don't count in the world." And he said:
"I cannot accept that it is dangerous for me to have'something
that a thousand Soviet corporals already know when you know I
ht with you in the crunch." He said, "Remember, 1I
will fi
g
-roou eOeic{eAt$ A 4'41
didn't do this. The socialists decided titis e
said -- and this is very interesting because he hadn't announced
the withdrawal from Algeria yet -- he said: "I'm going to with-
draw that French Army from Algeria as we've already withdrawn
it from Indochina. And if I don't give those armed forces a
sense of having a mission in the second half of the 20th century,
I'm not going to have armed forces on my hands; I'm going to have
600,000 armed malcontents. French democracy won't last."
And he told General Eisenhower in September 1959,
in my presence, that he would detonate his first nuclear weapon
on the-13th of February 1960. And 'on the 13th of February 1960
he detonated his first nuclear weapon. He had said what kilo-
tonnage it would be, and it was that kilotonnage. But in that
conversation he had'given away the intelligence, which with
General Eisenhower's permission I passed on to a very restricted
group of people in the U.S. intelligence community, Bait he did
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tell (him) the exact date on which he would set off (a) weapon.
Now, obviously, weather helped him, and everything else, and
'everything worked out favorably. But he had set the 13th of
February as the target date for it L,,4, OIr "? t J
Another interesting thing occurred at the conference
of the U-2. I was there as the American-French translator. And
we got there, and De Gaulle had seen Khrushchev, who had read a
long statement in which he demanded that Eisenhower apologize.
And De Gaulle said, "That's silly. He's not going to be able to
do that." And Khrushchev said that he must, he must, he must.
So the day of the conference came, and De Gaulle was
running the conference in the (Elysee), and we went in to the
conference room, and the Russians were all over in the corner
and, unlike, you , at most of these things (when) everybody
a, r,44
shakes hands w t-he. stayed bunched up, and the
British, French and Americans talked to one another anddwe sat
down. General De Gaulle opened the conference and he said that
General Eisenhower is the only member who is here, besides myself,
of course - De Gaulle - who is also a Chief of State, so I propose
to let him talk first. And Khrushchev said, "No. I want to talk
first." So after some shilly-shallying around, he let Khrushchev
talk first. And Khrushchev stood up, and his hands were trembling,
and he read the statement which he had read to De Gaulle the
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previous day, and De Gaulle was obviously very bored with
1
hearing it a second timed m*NWP as Khrushchev read 9V
I was told not to wear a uniform because this was
a peace conference, but I was at the extreme right of the U.S.
Delegation and immediately adjacent, to me was Marshal of the
Soviet Union, Rodion Malino,/sky [\], wearing 54 medals,
including the U.S. Legion of Merit. [Laughter.] I know
because I counted them.. JCO Khrushchev became more and more
indignant about being overflown, and finally he raised his
voice, and De Gaulle interrupted and turned to the Russian
interpreter and he said: "Will you please tell the Chairman
that the acoustics in this room are excellent.. Everyone can
hear him clearly, and there is no need for him to raise his
~o
voice." Well, the Russian interpreter turned ale [Laughter]
fre -
with this. And I saw De Gaulle watching his Russian interpretert.St?b u6.
checking the translation of the Ran interpreter to see
whether he was really translating it.
Khrushchev looked kind of nonpluled, sviauZ' he
went on.' And he said, "And I was overflown." De Gaulle said,
"So was I. Today." And Khrushchev said, "By your American
allies?" De Gaulle said, "No! By you." Khrushchev said,
"What do you mean?" And General De Gaulle said: "Well, that
satellite you launched to impress all of us, the day before
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you left Moscow, overflew France 18 times yesterday without my
permission. How do I know that you did not have cameras in it?"
Khrushchev raised his hands to heaven and he said - [In Russian] --
"God sees me. My hands are clean. You don't think I would do a
thing like that." [Laughter.] And General De Gaulle said,
"Well, what about those pictures of the far side of the moon
that you showed us with such pride?" And Khrushchev said, "Oh.
Well, in that one I had a camera." And De Gaulle said, "Oh, in
that one you had a camera. Proceed." [Laughter.]
So he went on, raving to the end. And then he said
that unless Eisenhower apologized he would not go on with the
work of the conference. And I could see Eisenhower -- I've
heard all about General Eisenhower's temper but, frankly, (in the)
many years of working for him I never saw it burst out. But
there was a red flush that came up from the neck and over the face,
and when you saw that, you knew that the wisest thing was to break
off whatever subject you were discussing., In fact, by looking in
v ti e V\~ I - testa,,
the morning I could tell you lc.o ,- s not the day to take up
serious business on some particular subject.
T64 Khrushchev sat down. And De Gaulle said: "Well,
when the U-2 was shot down I sent my Ambassador to Moscow to see
you and ask you whether this conference should be held. And you
said, yes, it should; it would be fruitful. And you knew then
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everything you know now. You have now made demands that the
President of the United States clearly can't accept, and that
this conference, if you persist in this, is doomed to failure.
And for this reason you have brought Mr. McMillian [sp?] here
from London; you have brought General Eisenhower here from the
United States; and, what is more, you have put me to grave
personal inconvenience" -- [Laughter] --which was clearly the `^4\o_
-'6A eM
.serious offense of the three. [Laughter.] He said, "This is
an affair of minor espionage Chiefs of ~ State shlt
r,CC tit I K4
And Khrushchev said, "What devil has put
the Americans up to this?" And De Gaulle said: "The same
devils that have put you up to all sorts of other different
things -- [Laughter] -- but this conference should be above
devils." And he said, "I propose we meet tomorrow afternoon at"-
whatever the time was. Khrushchev said, "I won'-Lt go!" and
stomped out of the room. And General De Gaulle took General
Eisenhower by the arm and me with the other arm, and he took us
out on,the stairway and he said: "I don't know what's going to
happen or what Khrushchev is going to do. But whatever happens
and whatever he does, I want you to know we are with you to the
end." And Eisenhower was, obviously, very moved by this.
When I came back to France seven years later, after
we'd been ordered out of these bases, I wondered what had led us
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from that to the ordering out of the bases. And I had a lot of
friends in old General De Gaulle's entourage -- I never
talked to him really directly about this, except after he'd left
(power). And I came to the following conclusion, and IGNommAt --
This is my own personal conclusion, and I can't prove it by two
and two or anything else. But it's my conclusion that at the
time of the Cuban crisis when President Kennedy sent Dean Acheson
and Sherman Kent over to see De Gaulle and tell him that we
might have to do something to Cuba, De Gaulle, unlike most of
the other people, said, "Well, if you feel it's necessary, go
ac~tt rS ~'~
right ahead." When we didn't, he said to his: "If they're
not going to fight for Cuba 95 miles away, why should we believe
-eve--rP
they'll f
ight for Europe 3500 miles away? An& I must draw the
60, ttAl
consequences."
i " if `yoi ore list?e ingv,care#t~lly..at a great
drsta ea;r yo hea:rd.,..csnen of;..:the conseque s,,-yesterday -,&r-the...,day
`-befor.e,,,This is when he became convinced he'd have to have his
own trigger. He did say, right up to the end, when I saw him
privately, that - you know,. he disapproved of many of the things
that we were doing, but in case of a general war he would fight
for the West, since he had no other possibility of a course. He
did not really believe that he could remain neutral in such a
circumstance.
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He was a complex man. And as I say, he seriously
meant at this conference that the really bad offense was not
bringing Eisenhower from the United States but having him,General
De Gaulle, set up this conference which wasn't going to work.
He once said to Mr. Murphy, Ambassador Murphy, that
the trouble with Mr. Murphy was that he didn't understand France
and the French. And Ambassador Murphy said that he'd lived in
France and he thought he did understand France and the French
since he'd lived there for 17 years;. And De Gaulle said,
"Seventeen years. I've lived here for 2000," and (you) really
believed it. [Laughter.]
One of the other odd people I had to deal with at
one time was Mr. Mossadegh, who was the Prime Minister of Iran.
I went there with Mr. Harriman. He was sent by President Truman
to try and mediate the Anglo-Iranian oil dispute, and this was
really a lesson in some of the things, you know, that were mind-
boggling to an American, who thinks of policy as being something
carefully worked out and everything else, because at one time
Mossadegh was demanding more money per barrel than oil was selling
for in the Persian Gulf. And Mr. Harriman in exasperation said,
"Dr. Mossadegh, if we're going to talk about these things seriously,
we must have agreement about certain fundamental principles."
And Mossadegh said, "Such as what?" And Mr. Harriman said: "Such
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as nothing can be larger than the sum of its parts. We can't
give you more per barrel than oil is selling for, and they'll
buy it in Kuwait or Saudi Arabia." Mossadegh said, "That's
false." Mr. Harriman said, "False?" Did he say false?" I said,
"Yes, he said false." [Laughter.] He said, "Explain yourself."
"Well," said Mossadegh, "consider the fox. His tail is often
much longer than he is." And that made a reasonable argument to
him as to why you could get more than the sum of the thing.
[Laughter.]
Another one, (when) Mr. Harriman would point out that
something that he was doing would cause frightful trouble to Iran
this was all done in French because he didn't want any Persian
interpreters to know what he was offering -z:s-- All of
these discussions were held in French. And one of his favorite
phrases when you'd point something bad out to him, fte'd say -
-- which I translate4loosely as "To hell with us.
Down the drain we go." And that seemed a perfectly acceptable
option:
And then I got involved in translating for the British
and him. And at one point the British negotiator was a rich - a
m
ll
onai
l
b
i
R
h
d
i
i
V
a
or
1-C.,
ic
ar
J vexes L }-, and he was
with Mossadegh -- and again this was going on in French and I was
translating it -- and Mossadegh said: "The trouble with you is
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that you're a Catholic; that's why we can't come to an agree-
ment." And Stokes said, "What has that got to do with this?"
And Mossadegh said: "Well, you see, in your religion you don't
have any divorce, but in ours all you've got to do is say three
times to your wife 'I divorce thee' and she's divorced. And you
don't understand that we have divorced the Anglo-Iranian Oil
Company." [Laughter.] And Stokes' was equal to the occasion.
He said, "Dr. Mossadegh, quite true. But remember, you still
have to pay her alimony until she remarries." [Laughter.]
You know, these things sound crazy but they're the
basis on which some of these decisions and some of these things
are done, and it sounds absolutely outlandish and mind-boggling
to us but a lot of these people reason 4t6(,J - I mean, there is
a sense of humor in all this and everything. B ut the point I'm
trying to get is that all of their decisions are not made--'on the
basis of cold, calm, quiet study of something; there is a much
higher emotional content than is normally the case with us, and
0. re de r l - PC) Y1 A
the atmospherics of these things .
When Mossadegh came here --
Mossadegh was deaf
in one ear and I had great trouble hearing him, and he'd always
receive Mr. Harriman sitting in bed with a Mao-type camel hair
tunic buttoned up to this. And when you went into the room he'd
greet you with a flutter like this and you could tell what kind
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of a day you were going to have. If you got a real cheery
flutter, it was going to be all right. If you got sort of a
=languid one, you were in for trouble.
And Mossadegh had defeated Lenin. Lenin once said
you've got to take a step backward in order to take two forward.
But Mossadegh had perfected the art of taking a step forward in
order to take two backwards. [Laughtar.] You would negotiate
all day with him to get him from B to C, and when you came in
the next day, he wasn't at C, he wasn't even at B, he was back
at A. And this was a very exasperating business.
I remember he came over here and I was assigned to
him, and everybody went through a phase of "I can settle the
Iranian oil problem" -- the State Department, the White House,
the Defense Department -- everybody. And I was talking with
Mossadegh with Ambassador McGhee who was the head of
Greek-Turkish-Iranian Affairs in the Department of State, in the
Waldorf Astoria. But in order to maintain his thing of a simple
underdeveloped country he had a camp bed moved into a luxury
suite in the Waldorf Astoria so (he) could be photographed in this
camp bed, showing that he was living a very proletarian existence
in the rich, prosperous United States. So Mr. McGhee had to go
back to Washington, and - I might as well tell you his name -
Ambassador Ernie Gross who was American Ambassador to the
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United Nations, decided that he could solve the Iranian oil
problem. So he came to me and he said, "Colonel Walters, I
want you to make an appointment for Dr. Mossadegh this afternoon."
Well, I knew that the State Department didn't want anybody else
dabbling in, but he was an Ambassador and what could I .do? So
I made the appointment. And by this time Mossadegh was convinced
he'd come (to) the United Nations, that the United Nations was
a tool of British imperialism which was going to tell him to give
back this oil, and he was very upset with the United Nations.
So I went in with Ambassador Gross, and we got a
very, very poor flutter [Laughter],and he said, "Dr. Mossadegh,
I'm your friend. I want to help you," and "I'm Ambassador Ernie
Gross." And Mossadegh looked at him over this enormous nose
that made Jimmy Durante's look like an amputee [Laughter] and he
said, "Ambassador? What are you Ambassador to?" And Gross said,
"Oh, I'm Ambassador to the United Nations." With that, Mossadegh
let out a shriek as though he had been stabbed with a butcher
knife and went into a convulsive fit of weeping, repeating over
and over"The United Nations. Oh! my God, the United Nations."
$L ankly, I'd seen a lot of quiet crocodile tears but I'd never
seen this violent outburst before. So I said to Ambassador Gross,
"I think we'd bette leave." Well, he was horrified by what he'd
IBC.. +04- t .Yts %4JOA.
set off, and ti _ ' ' "*' s b' ' , )~ and went out the door. And
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outside in the corridor he looked at me and he said, "Does he
do this often?" [Laughter.] And I told him the truth. I said,
"I've seen lots of quiet crocodile tears but I seen a
convulsive outburst like this." He said, "You haven't? Then you
must never tell anybody he did it for me." [Laughter.]
I just want you to know what's behind some of these
things.
You know, they all look
tg-than
this
I went to see him
! try
&4 Ur
more organized and.-ry-
the last day he
in Washington,Ito see him
PrevI00Stom,'
several timesI with people
and it was clear we were not going to come to any solution. And
finally on the last day he. asked me to come up, and I thought,
1'I can see the headlines now: Obscure Lt. Colonel Solves
Iranian nil Problem fT .,
hte
ug
r ]
ht
S
`L0.ug
ei1 . ]
o I went up to Dr. Niossaaegn's suite and we had ''(-
At
Persian tea and (milled) around for a while, and he said, "Can
I ask you something?" I said, "Sure." He said,, "May I kiss you
.goodbye?" [Laughter.] So.I thought about it for a minute and
I said, "If it's only on the cheeks and nothing else is involved,
go right ahead." [Laughter.] So I said to him, "Don't you
realize you're going back to Iran after all these three months
of expectations of hope with nothing to sell?" He looked at me
and he said, "With the crazy fanatics I have in my country, don't
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you realize how much safer I am going back with nothing to sell?"
(Well) in the middle of all this there was foxy thinking going on.
.;But as I say, you know, we tend to think of all these political
decisions as being made somewhat.the way we make them, but they
are not. And when we read and we listen and we hear what people
are saying and we have other technical indications, these are not
always the only basis on. which these things are operated.
Not long ago I went to
see General Franco, about
a month before he got sick, and he was very feeble and he was
shaky from Parkinson's disease, but the questions he asked were
very clear and very.lucid ones and at (a) high level. And I said
to the Prime Minister afterwards, "Does he keep abreast of every-
thing?" He said, "No. He just wants to be the master in the big
things." And he looked at me and he said, "And in the big things,
he still is."
General Eisenhower once asked him what he thought of
the Communist world, and Ttmosn, he gave a most dispassionate and,
detached accounts
Another time I was sent to see him and talk to him
about what would happen when he died. And if you can think of
an awkward subject (of) discuss*.a with anybody, it's their own
death. And I must say, he discussed it as though he were talking
about Marshal Tito or Mao Tse-tung and not himself. And he
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said: "I have created a mechanism, I have appointed the successor,
and I have appointed him without becoming a lame duck, and when
the time arrives all of this will operate smoothly." It remains
to be seen whether it will or not.
But I must say, he impressed me as being a most
un -- You know, we expect Spaniards to be excitable and so
forth, and he's the most calm, relaxed Celt, or Kelt, from the
northwestern part of Spain. He did say that he expected to be
around for a while. His father died at the age of 96, under
rather compromising circumstances [Laughter], sip he didn't have
any immediate plans for leaving.
Not all of these things have gone off as well as
I've been telling you. Sometimes I (have) frightful disasters.
Shortly after I arrived in Paris as the Military Attache in 1967,
I got a call from an old British friend of mine who had been at
SHAPE with me in the early 'SOs. And since he wore a monocle and
a Iplacatch kilt he was a little more conspicuous than most of
the other British officers.there. [Laughter.] So he called me
up and he said, "What's happened to you, old boy?" So I told him
about all my triumphs and campaigns and promotions, and I wound
up by saying: "And I am now the new American Military Attache to
Paris. I am now a Brigadier General. But just between us, I'm
on the list for Major General." And I said to him with some
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condescension, "What's happened to you, old boy?" He said,
"Old boy, I am the Governor General of New Zealand." [Laughter.]
And as I paused for breath he said', "And I knighted my Prime
Minister before I left.." [Laughter.] I said, "Bernard, I will
never play one-upmanship with you again. [Laughter.]
Not long ago I went to see Peron, and I saw him
alone for an hour and 45 minutes. I'd known him many years
before. And I'd talked to a lot of medical people about his
conditions and I was told what to look for. And I saw none of
the swollen ankles, and the dilated blood vessels, and the loss
of thread of what he: was talking about, and so forth and so on.
And I came back and reported that, you know, he was (in) splendid
(self) and would last for a long time. He died one month later.
-CWw Lsa S
[Laughter.] So 4uy distant diagnosis 4 a good one.
PA him
But I had an interesting conversation ?since within
CIA I had had a considerable discussion with some/~of our people
who had drawn up an estimate in which they said they felt that
Peron would be forced by circumstances to move very far left, to
a position extremely hostile to us. And I said I didn't think
this would be the case for a number of reasons. First of all,
when he came back he chose to be inaugurated in uniform (cam) aS a%_
Lt. General, and that was an indication. Then, when they had the
attack on that army post, he went on television to denounce it, t Uv\
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in uniform. Then he fired the commander-in-chief of the army,
who had given us a great deal of trouble at the conference of
the American armies. And I felt that all of these meant that
what they said was a distinct possibility but it wasn't - and
they used the word "inevitable." So I disagreed with (it).
And when I was talking to Peron, he said: "I have
never been a man to kill people, but now I must kill people.
If I do not kill these terrorists, they will kill Argentina. I
will exterminate them to the last man, since I have no choice.
If I don't, they will kill Argentina." A month later he died,
tP 5 (A Jt
and szhe succeeded kli
I must add that the great disappointment of this
trip was that I did not get to see her. I saw a very large car
outside (of a special body) and I said, "Is that his?" And they
said, "No. That's hers." My own impression is that she'll be
there for quite a while. She bears the magic name, she is the
Constitutional President, there are no acceptable alternatives.
And in'a machismo country like Argentina the fact that she's a
woman will convince all the power groups that she will be more
easy to influence than any man would be in that job, and I think
they're wrong -- she won't.
Peron was a very remarkable man. I was astounded
at what apparent good health he was in when I saw him. He talked
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for an hour and 45 minutes, he never got up and left the room,
he never lost the thread of what he was saying, and he was very,
=very lucid. He was talking about the Cubans and he was wondering
CA5tR?
why we didn't be nicer to the Cubans. And he said: "P-eron [sic]
is a barking dog. Why don't you throw him a bone?" And I said,
"Well, he's the kind of a dog that bites the hands that throw him
bones." He said, "No. You should try and separate him from the
Russians." I said, "What makes you think that's easy?" He said:
"Well, I recently saw the Cuban Ambassador to Argentina, and he's
a great theoretician of the Cuban Communist Party and he (has)
just come back from-the Soviet Union. And I said to him, 'Did
you see the Soviet leaders?' He said yes. And I, Peron, said
to him, 'What did you think of them?"' And again I hope the
ladies will excuse me. He answered in Spanish, [In Spanish] --
are the ors of the great fwhore)> " And he said,
"They
"If the theoretician of the Communist Party feels this way about
them, it shouldn't be that difficult to (fry ate-) them
away.4~J,t,,, Soviet
So I said: Well, I have some doubts. The last time
Fidel came to the United States, in 1961, to go on a radio/tele-
vision" -- and we still had diplomatic relations and things with
him, not when he came to the United Nations and killed the chicken.
(But) he came to go on "Meet the People" program. And the American
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Government was a little bit confused as to what to do with him.
Nobody had invited him. But he was the Prime Minister of Cuba,
.so they decided that he'd see Vice President Nixon and Secretary
of State Herter. And they reached around for somebody speaking
Spanish, and guess who it was, to excort him around for three
days. And he went in to see Mr. Nixon and he said, "Why am I
criticized for shooting war criminals?" Mr. Nixon said: "You
know, any time you arrest anybody at eleven, try him at twelve
and shoot him at one in the national stadium in front of the
televisions cameras, you're likely to be criticized. [Laughter.]
And Fidel said,"Yes,., but public opinion approves of it." And
Mr. Nixon said, "Well, German public opinion approved what Hitler
was doing until quite late, but that still didn't make it right."
And there we lost Fidel. To him the criterion was what public
opinion approved, and this is what condition(s) his decisions
rather than any abstract philosophy, even of Communism.
And I must say, he appeared to me to be under
tremendous stress all the time. He twitched and moved constantly
in his chair. And when he came back from the television program
he said, "I made a bad impression." Well, he really had. He had
not done well at all. Besides, maybe the best thing was not to
say anything at all.
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One of the other people that was of some interest
was Pompidou, whom I had some dealings with. During the time
that I was Military Attache in Paris, quite early, in '69, I
was used by Dr. Kissinger as an intermediary with the North
Vietnamese in the secret negotiations which ultimately led to
what passes for a cease-fire. But this was a very complicated
thing. He said to me, "Can we do this without the French
knowing?" And I said: "No. France is a sophisticated country.
They watch the North Vietnamese, they watch us, they watch every-
body. You can't do it. You've got to let them know." "Well,"
he said, "how can I do this, because if it becomes public they'll
break off." I said: "The answer is, you go to Mr. Pompidou and
you ask Mr. Pompidou to keep it in the upper levels (of) the
French intelligence community so that it doesn't seep down, and
only a few people know it." So we did, and this was effectively
done.
RACI- PS
An =th 1 out in a new book by Tad Szulc -- not
all of .it, but the facto is out.
Ajoi 15 times I brought him into various isolated'air
Phis * 5-t f W5 d
dromes in France and brought him into~4my apartment; he spen4 the
night and the next day he'd go out and talk to them.
And it was a fascinating experience to watch these
negotiations over a long period of time and to watch some of the
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repartee. One day he came expecting to find Le Duc Tho [sp?],
who's a member of Hanoi's Politburo, and he wasn't there and
1 ul
instead the North Vietnamese Ambassador ,;;fie, Xuan [sp?J,
was there. C Dr. Kissinger came in, he looked around the room
and he said, "Where is Le Duc Tho?" And he said, "He's not here."
And Kissinger said: "I'm the Special Adviser to the President of
the United States and a very busy man, and I've come 3500 miles
to see you people and I expect some one of your Politburo here."
Then Xuan 'tea. said, "I am the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plen-
ipotentiary." And Henry looked at him and he said, "So is Bill
Porter." He turned around, walked out, went back to the airfield
and went back to the United States. The next time we came Le Duc
Tho was there.
One interesting episode -- and this I hope doesn't
get out of this room -- that occurred during this was, one night
IJwas told that Henry would be coming on U.S. Air Force 1, ostensibly
on a training flight but something went wrong with the airplane,
which, "as we all know, never happens on airplanes of the U.S. Air
Force, but on this occasional, rare case it did.. So I began to
get desperate calls in the afternoon telling me that I should do
something. "Well," I said, "the airplane's in the air. I cannot
alone cover all the airfields in Western Europe.. When you tell me
where he's going to land, I'll do something." Rio this led to
further consultations. And finally they told me he was going to
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STATOT
STATOTH
So, you know, I don't want you to think all these
things are decided, you know, on a basis of supreme intellectual
study of the national interest. [Laughter.] Other factors, other
of these rather human and rather unpredictable factors govern a
great many things. But I would like to tell you one last story
and then I'll try to answer any questions (you) have. But I think
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this story comes under the heading of "Don't underestimate the
Local Service," and this is the fruit of two experiences of mine.
When I went to Italy as Military Attache in 1960, I
was briefed both in the Pentagon and at CIA, and everybody said:
Well, the Italians have got a good little shop, but they don't
have much money, you know, and it really isn't, you know, one of
those tremendous things, and I mean they do what they can, but
it's - all right. Fine.
So I arrived in Italy, and my first call was going
to be on the Third Corps in Milan. So I made arrangements with
the Chief of Service, General De fie. Lorenzo [sp?], whom some of
you may have known, who wore a monocle and looked morllike the
chief of spies than anybody Hollywood or James Bond ever cast in
the role. And it was all set up, and I took off from Rome,
driving my own car, and I spent the night at the U.S. base at
Leghorn, and then -- That was before the autostrada was open.
And the normal way to Milan would have been up the coast to Genoa
and then up.
But I suddenly, the next morning, remembered a great
restaurant in Florence that had the ''best green lasagne I could
remember. Then I thought, (I may be) two hours late in Milan,
but nothing scheduled. So I turned off and I went up-to Florence.
And usually, as an Attache when I drove, I kept my eye on the rear
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vision mirror to see whether I saw the same face behind the
same or other wheels, or other wheels with different faces, and
I, didn't see anything. And I drove into Florence and I parked
the car in the square in front of the station.
Now, Florence is a city of 750,000 people. It's a
big city. And I walked two or three blocks to this restaurant,
and I went in and I ordered the green lasagne. And while I
was sitting there, a man walked up to me and said: "(Senor
`o~o~n211 n
Ge ello.), I am carabinieri warrant officer so-and-so, and
there have been several changes in your program in Milan and
the Chief of Service wanted to make sure you got them before
you got to Milan." So I understood that what I was getting was
a demonstration that he could find me in a city of 750,000 people
with no difficulty.
And a couple of weeks later I saw him in Rome and I
asked him whether he knew - in a different connection, whether
he knew what the Bulgarians and the Poles and the Rumanians were
doing, and he said, "Walters, do you remember the Othello [
restaurant in Florence?" I said yes. He said, "Well, if we do
that for our friends, try and imagine what we're doing for the
STATINT
others." [Laughter.]
STATINT
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in Rome, I complet(A my business on Friday evening, I ~ due in
Paris Monday morning; I thought I'll hire a car, I'll drive to
Florence, go look at my old World War II battlefields above
Florence, take the night train from Florence, be in Paris Monday
morning for my meeting. So, accompanied by three people, I drove
to Florence. And we got checked in at the hotel and wit
settled; then we went for a walk. And it was about one o'clock
and I found myself in front of the station, and this brought back
memory of great green lasagne and I said let's go to Othello
for lunch. So we went to Othello'sfor lunch, and we hadit,The
green lasagne was as,.good as ever but four times as expensive.
And at the end I called the waiter and I said, "May
Sc rJor
I have the bill?" And he said, "te1.[e (I was in civilian
clothes'. He said, "(S General),, there is no bill." I said,
"What do you mean there is no bill?," A young man ut the next table
... M ev~~ct~el(,
stood up and he said: "(Senor General), I am Captain [tea
In order that you may know that in 12 years the Service has not
lost it"s skill [Laughter] once again you are the guest of the Chief
of Service." [Laughter. Applause.]
The great lesson of that -- and it was confirmed by a
story I told earlier at lunch -- at the age of eight I was arrested
in France for riding a bicycle without a license plate. Forty
years later they reminded me of it. So the only point I'm trying
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to make by those twoAis, don't underestimate the local service.
[Laughter.] I think if one does not, one is less apt to fall
into either temptation or mistakes.
A lot of this has been personal reminiscence about
people. But really one of the things that has impressed me is
how relatively few people work out these things on the basis on
which we work them out, and sometimes when we try to analyze
what people are doing and we have hard material factor'A,B,C
and D, sometimes that human factor, E, may be not an additive
but a multiplies that affects the whole equation, and that is
one of the harder ones to predict. This is why I have always
harped on the importance of biographical information, since it
is really a tremendous adjunct to any other form, of intelligence
if you know how the man is going to react.
When I was an Attache, biographical information was
one of my prime concerns. As a matter of fact, when I came to
CIA they put in front of me, as I went down to our Reference
Section,, a biography of a Brazilian General written in 1960
saying: This man will probably become the President of the
Republic. And it was General Emilio Medici, and it was written
by me. And I thought this was a pretty good selection, and I also
thought it showed excellent judgment because I'd said this of at
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least four other people and they did not put that in front of
me. [Laughter.]
But these human factors are of tremendous importance.
There isn't any hard, definite point I'm trying to make, except
that there is a mixture of things that go to make up the way that
people behave and of which we should never lose sight and think
that we can calculate these things with simply mathematical
precision. There is precision involved if you know enough about
the man to know his reactions and how he may react under certain
circumstances. That will help you to arrive at a more exact
final calculation as to what he is going to do.
And finally, since I happen to be here and I happen
to occupy the job I do now, I just cant to tell you how much
everybody in the Central Intelligence Agency appreciates the
incredible job you are doing for the United States and the
incredible input you put into arriving at the decisions that
govern our policies into which many of us Americans don't like
to believe there's a human input, but my experience has been
there's more than we sometimes like to accept.
Now this has been a very confused, very disorderly,
very unorganized presentation, very (nonconducive) to questions.
But if you have any questions you'd like to ask me and if there
is any time left -- I'm not sure where I am in relation to my
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time. You can ask me about questions from anything from Watergate
to the texture of the green lasagne. [Laughter.]
Pause]
I guess they figure that I told them everything I
knew. [Laughter.]
Yes?
Q: (I don't know if this will be of interest -- maybe
it might). Back in (1965) we had an Iranian - the oil problem,
..... suddenly became (Assistant Secretary or Deputy) .....
He wasn't a diplomat, but within six weeks he had the problem
solved. (Do you know how he did it?)
DDCI: Well, there had been a change in the government in
Iran [Laughter] which was not unhelpful.
But you know the old story of the difference between
diplomats and ladies, I'm sure, that when a lady says no, she
means maybe; when she says maybe, she means yes; and if she says
yes, she's no lady. [Laughter.] And when the diplomat says yes,
he means maybe; and when he says maybe, he means maybe; and when
he says no, he's no diplomat. [Laughter.]
A number of factors contributed. The Iranians had
been trying to sell (this) oil, and, really, the cartel of the
world oil companies was still working in those days and people
just wouldn't pay them. I had a little experience of this.
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Mossadegh went to the World Court at The Hague, and I was sent
there to work on (it). And I checked in at the Hotel (De Zaim),
.which was a nice old hotel in The Hague, and I had no trouble
getting a room. And I said, "What room is Dr. --" It was,
at that time, the hotel in The Hague. And I said, "What room
is Dr. Mossadegh in?" They said, "Dr. Mossadegh is not in this
hotel; there's no room for him." I said:. "There's.no room for
him? But I arrived a few minutes ago without any reservation;
there was room for me." He said to me, "(Mineer), this hotel
belongs to the Royal Dutch (Shell Company)." [Laughter] "There
is no room for Dr. Mossadegh in this hotel." [Laughter.]
I think it was a combination of a change of govern-
ment and the fact the Iranians could not sell the oil simply because
none of the great oil producers would
I+ The Iranians had no
tankers in which to move it, and mne of the great oil companies
would touch it andJkmore or less made acompact that, though. they
414 d~
competed among themseleves, they'd have-o-hold t. is line or some-
wl.~( a17 0' L-It-9
thing terrible happen, 14...has happened recently.
I don't know the details of how he solved it, but I
think it was a combination of various things that enabled him to
do so. Furthermore, Mr. Hoover is a very prestigious name, and
foreigners are very sensitive to use of prestigious names. They'll
do something for somebody well-known that they may not do for
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somebody who is less well-known. There's less sense of surrendering,,
according tothe importance of the man you're dealing with.
Q: [Inaudible.]
DDCI: Well, I think it's changing. My Director, Mr. Colby,
speaks Italian, French and Swedish. So it isn't necessarily a
hindrance in the organization (where) I work. The new Deputy
Director for the intelligence community, Sam Wilson, Major.Sam
Wilson, soon to be Lt. General Sam Wilson, is a fluent linguist.
One of the things that concerns me very much in our
Organization, I'm sure must be a little bit of a. problem here,
is the whole question of language. Until now we've been able to
rely on the children of the immigrants. But the children of the
immigrants are now retiring, and the grandchildren of the immi-
grants don't speak the old language. And I see rather serious
problems coming up on providing really good linguists -- because,
you know, you're trying to, let me say for instance, listen to a
conversation in which you are not participating; it's about twice
as hard'and requires twice as much knowledge of the language as
talking directly to someone where you see the facial expression
and the gestures and so forth that accompany (them). And this is
going to be, I think --
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You'll probably have ilittle) difficulty in getting
people to learn Chinese and Russian, because they're big world
languages. But one of the problems I see down the line is getting
people to learn languages that are spoken in relatively restricted
areas. First of all, in our particular business the people will
say: "Oh well, I'll always go to 'Cambodia, or anywhere else for
that matter." And I think this is going to be quite a serious
problem. And many people oppose proficiency pay for language,
but I think we're going to have to come to it sooner or later if
we're going to have the kind of qualified l-aigaa*es we need. This
may be totally contrary to the policy of this Organization --
[Laughter] -- it may be totally contrary to the policy of CIA, but
in my opinion that's where we're going to have to go eventually.
Now don't all line up to see General Allen as you
leave. [Laughter.] I can't commit him.
w~f1~' K~Po~
But I think there'* less and less of this4difficulty
and more and more recognition of this. I don't think language
by itself is enough; you've got to have other things as well.
It's like the old story of the man who went to Bismarck
and insisted that Bismarck see his young son. And Bismarck said:
"Well, I'm a busy man. I'm the Chancellor of Germany. Why do I
have to see your young son?" And he said, "He's going to have a
fantastic future." Bismarck said, "What makes you so sure he's
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ATINTL
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It worked. [Laughter.}
going to have a fantastic future?" He said, "Well, he speaks
seven languages." And Bismarck said: "That's great. He's
going to make a wonderful concierge for some hotel or head
waiter for some restaurant." [Laughter.]
So you've got to have more than that. The language
knowledge is not enough. But on the other hand, I think people
(don't sufficiently) understand that knowledge of (a) language
is not enough. You must understand what you're talking about.
I was once asked to give a missile briefing for the
United States, to translate it, and I said, "I can't do it."
And they said, "Well, we thought you spoke French." I said: "I
do, but I cannot translate what I don't understand. If you want
me to do this you have to send me to guided missile school." STATINT
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I think one of the great temptations that we all have
to guard against is, we get fascinated with some particular facet
of intelligence; no one facet will give you the real story --
you've got to have all of them, or as many as you can get. The
more you get, the better relief, the better color, the better tone,
you get. If you're operating on just one, you get one thing. But
if you can complete it with other indications -- And I mean, I
know that you people probably furnish an overwhelming percentage
of the total amount of input that there is, but it's rounded out
and put into (a sense) of perspective and depth by the other things.
None of them can do the job by itself. And this building and the
people in it are a monument ID the American people's belief in the
importance of what you're doing here.
Yes?
Stop me if I'm running out of my time.
Q: [Inaudible.]
DDCI: He never talks down to'foreigners. I repeat, to
foreigners. [Laughter. Applause.] He always uses self-
deprecation, but would be outraged if they believed it. [Laughter.]
And he is very, very smart and (add a fourth) very, very patient.
He understand things.
The other day I went to a WSAG at the White House on
the environment. (Dr.) Kissinger knew more about the paper under
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discussion than the environmental specialists who were sitting
there. How he retains this, I don't know. He obviously has
superb retrieval of information, and the input has to be only
slight but it's engraved.
I would say that he never talks down to foreigners,
he deprecates himself constantly with foreigners -- none of them
have shown any signs of believing him, fortunately (for) the
negotiations -- and he's very smart and very patient. Those talks
in Paris went on for three years. The talks with the Chinese went
on for two.
But the human element. When I first contacted the
Chinese in Paris, nobody - we had to talk (as Americans and)
Chinese for years. They asked me questions like this: what does
the State Governor do? can he belong to a party different from
the President? So I finally gave them the World Almanac, and I'm
sure they got 500 intelligence reports out of it. [Laughter.]
Now, you know, maybe that was available somewhere in Peking, but
it wasn't available in the embassy in Paris. And Dr. Kissinger
was
To give you an idea why I think he doesn't like them
to take this deprecation seriously. When I would go there, the
Chinese I would be met at the outer gate by a junior official;
he would walk me across the yard, the garden, to the main gate,
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where I would - the door of the building, where I would be met
by a higher ranking person. I would then be led into what I
called the Fu Manchu Room, because it was hung with red velvet
and it looked exactly like the scenario of a Fu Manchu meeting,
and I would sit there and at 90 seconds exactly the Ambassador
would appear in the door with a (ne how). And when I took
Dr. Kissinger there the first time, the scenario was somewhat
different. The two lower ranking people met us at the outside
door of the garden, and when we got to the entrance to the
building the Ambassador was waiting there. And after we left
this place, Henry said to me, "When they receive you, is it
exactly the same?" And I said no, and I described what happened.
And I said, "And besides, I never get either music or incense."
[Laughter.] And I could see the smile of relief.that at least
the Chinese had some respect for hierarchy even in the (Yalutarian)
society. [Laughter.]
MODERATOR: (General Walters, the IAI) ..... [Applause.]
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