[ADDRESS BY LIEUTENANT GENERAL VERNON A. WALTERS TO U.S. ARMY SECURITY AGENCY TRAINING CENTER & SCHOOL]

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80R01731R002000100009-4
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 29
• Document Creation Date: December 15, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 3, 2002
• Sequence Number: 9
• Publication Date: July 16, 1975
• Content Type: SPEECH

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by
Lieutenant General Vernon A. Walters
Deputy Director of Central Intelligence
U. S. Army Security Agency
Training Center & School
Fort Devens, Mass.
16 July 1975
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It was 34 years ago I was last at this post. I was driving a
truck. I came into the Army and I was interviewed by a Master
Sergeant who was very very interested in these various languages
I knew and he sent for a Major, and, you know, you didn't see
very many majors in those days. The Major came and he asked
me a lot of questions about all these languages.
This was the time when the Army was expanding. They were
making the President of General Motors a Lieutenant General. The
President of RCA was a Brigadier General in the Signal Corps,.
And I figured they were going to make me a Lieutenant Colonel, but
if they offer me a Majority I'll accept it since we'll, soon be in the
war and everybody has to make sacrifices. So at the end of this
thing everybody was comparing MOS' s and I looked at my thing and
I saw something, as I recall, that said 0506. I thought this was time
to exercise some of this leadership I was going to be called on., so
I turned to one of the other guys and said, "Go find out what 0506 is."
It worked like a charm. He went away and came back with a puzzled
look on his face. He said, "0506 is a truck driver." I said somebody's
made a mistake. Nobody had. Guess who drove a truck for quite a
while.
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Then I went to Officer's' Candidate School. Then I went into a new
Infantry Division, and then an Army without computers suddenly reached
in and got me for a special intelligence detail, the Military Intelligence
Training Center. To tell you the state of American Intelligence, the
Commander of this Military Intelligence Training Center was a British
Colonel.
I am supposed to talk to you about the future of intelligence but I've
got to talk to you a little bit about the past of it. Right now there is a lot
of effort around the world to make it appear that intelligence is, un-American.
or immoral and the founding fathers didn't approve of it. Well I have news
for you. They not only approved it.'
They used it widely and they did some
things that I'm not sure the Senate Select Committee would have liked.
George Washington organized three: kidnap operations to kidnap Benedict
Arnold. And you know what he would have done with him if he had got him.
Benjamin Franklin, for three years before the Revolution, was running
a mail-intercept service on the British. And he got in trouble. He lost
his job as Assistant Postmaster General of the Colonies for that. So I
guess the predecessors of the Senate Select Committee caught up with him.
There are a number of these things that were going on. However, we
Americans have had only one peculiarity. We've always started a war
without intelligence and immediately the war is over we've disbanded.
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You know, in 1932 when Mr. Stimson -- this gets right into your area --
was Secretary of State, they offered him some intercepted messages
and he said, "Gentlemen don't read other gentlemen's mail." But about
seven years later when he was Secretary of War, he couldn't lay his hands
on enough "other gentlemen's" mail. So, you know-, we have these various
phases in our national existence when we think, "this is terrible; this is
awful; you know we shouldn't be doing this; it's alright for the dirty old
Russians, British, French, and Germans to do it but we pure Americans
don't do this sort of thing." Well, the fact is, we've had to in the past
and, if we want to remain a free nation, we're going to have to in the
future.
Just a few words about intelligence. What is it? Intelligence is
information that is vital to the U. S. Government, collected, analyzed,
evaluated, and disseminated. Why do we need it? We need it because
probably not since Valley Forge has the United States been in as
relatively a bad power position vis a vis other powers. I don't think
since Valley Forge any nation has had the capability to destroy the
United States until the very recent past and right now. And this is why
it is more important to us than ever before. We hear all about detente
all
and we/hope detente works. I myself hope it works, but supposing it
doesn't. At every indication that I can see from where I sit is the
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Russians are pursuing two tracks. One of the tracks is detente and the
other track is not detente. I must tell you about a little detente story I
heard in Europe not long ago. Someone said. two young Americans were
visiting Moscow and they were taken to the zoo by a young Russian. They
were shown the various animals in their cages and so forth and finally they
came to this cage and there was a huge Russian bear in the cage and he had.
teeth that long, claws that long. In the same cage was a rather worried
looking lamb, but he appeared to be in good shape. The young American
said to the Russian, "Why do you put those two in the same cage? That's
a very peculiar combination." The young Russian said, "This is to prove
that peaceful co-existence is possible." The young American said,
"Well, that's very impressive." And his buddy said, "It sure is
convincing. " The- young Russian looked around to see if anybody was
there, and not seeing anybody, he said, "Of course, you understand,
every morning we have to put in a new lamb." So, if you don't run out
of lambs, you know, it's in great shape. We hope it will work, but as
we look at the Soviet Union, what do we see? We see the Soviet Union
right now deploying four brand new systems of ICBM' s, third generation
ICBM's. We see the beginning indication of a fifth system of ICBM's.
We see the Soviets building larger more powerful submarines,
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developing missiles for those submarines that they can fire from
Soviet parts into the heart of the United States. We see them building
these submarines both in European Russia and in Asiatic Russia. We
see them building an intercontinental bomber, or at least, a bomber
that could be used against the United States. We see them in vastly
improving the equipment and the training of the red: army. They have
just gone from about a twenty percent increase in the tank strength of
the Soviet rifle division. We see them building up tremendous force.
If the Soviets build up to the full strength the number of missiles allowed.
to them by the Vladivostok Agreement, within three to five years they
will have five times the throw weight on their missiles as the United
States has on its. This is force far in excess of what is required for
deterrence. It is force far in excess of what is required for defense.
So the question rises, what use will the Russians make of this enormous
strength that they are building up. This is the question for which the
government of the United States must turn to the Intelligence Community
to Defense Intelligence, to Central Intelligence. What use will they make
of this? Now, we have various means of collecting intelligence. We
collect an enormous amount of intelligence overtly;, through reading
the newspapers, through listening to broadcasts, through various things
like this. We have old gals who can read the Minsk Pravda and tell you
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who is coming up in the Politburo and who is going down. We have these
tremendous overt -- the U.S. Embassies all over the world are overt --
collectors. Then we have the technological collection. Technological
collection such as what you do, technological collection such as is done
overhead of all sorts, and various other technical kinds of intelligence.
These are tremendously important. I think probably the greatest
contribution the United States has brought to the intelligence business
have been in the field of technology and analysis. Some of our Allies --
the British -- have been in this business since the late 1500's. We have
brought to bear the technological skill of the United States in all of these
areas, in the Signal area, in the reconnaissance area, in the overhead
area, and in many other areas. We, have done things that are well nigh
miraculous. But if we were to tell them and anybody knew we were
looking through the window, all they would have to do is pull down the
blindsor turn out the lights. This is one of the great problems. As
Colonel M said, we try' and stay off TV. It's very difficult
nowadays. I went down to Atlanta the other day to give a speech to the
Rotary Club and there were three live television cameras in the room
and 12 microphones on the desk. So it's a real problem. Nevertheless,
you hear an awful lot about what' s going out, but, thank God, everything
we have is not going out. This is very important because it makes a lot
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of people nervous. We have these investigations going on. I would say
that we are now embarked on a great experiment to determine whether
any nation, any great nation like the United States, can run its secret
intelligence service, so to speak, in a goldfish bowl. Now we may
is
succeed because we are a very unusual people. But if we do, it/going
to be just like going to the moon.
We'll have been the only people who
did it. All of these accusations and everything else , . of course, one of
the things that bothers me is one of the efforts that is coming out of this
present thing is to create a caste system in the United States whereby
if you've ever worked for CIA, you're either an infiltrator or an
assassin and are unfit to work anywhere else. Of course, the net effect
of that is going to be to try and knock off our recruiting so we can't get
any good people and thereby knock our efficiency down. Then you have
these myths that go out. For years we had this myth, the CIA. was living
and making money off some kind of drug trade in Southeast Asia.. The
latest myth is we infiltrate other government agencies. We have never
infiltrated any government agency. Mr. Butterfield never worked at the
CIA, for the CIA or with the CIA in any way. Yes, we have people in
other agencies. Generally, because the head of those agencies or
someone very senior in those agencies didn't have a space and he
thought we could bear the burden and put the people up. We have no
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people working in any U.S. Government Agency anywhere who are not
known to those people. Now I dordt say that they walk around in their
job carrying a sign around their neck saying,, "I work for the CIA."
the type of myths that we have going around.
I am happy to tell you that these' things are not as effective as you
might imagine. One of the startling things to us has been that ever
since the Seymour Hersh article was published in.the New York Times
accusing us of massive domestic espionage, we have had roughly four
But there is. no attempt to keep them, they do not report back to the
CIA on what is going on in the Agency where they are. These are, again,
times as many people applying to work at the CIA as at any time in the
past. Nearly all of them young. Well, now, some of that may be the
economy. Some of that may be what the old Hollywood movie? star.
said that she didn't care what they said about her as long as they spelled
her name right. It' s pretty difficult to spell ours wrong. There are only
three letters in it. Even to us that has been a rather startling and a
rather reassuring thing. As a matter of fact, the other day a newspaperman
in Atlanta asked me whether when this was all over I thought whether we
could regain the confidence of the American people. And I said I wasn't
conscious that we had lost it. Certainly not the applications to work there.
Statistics
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In any case it is within the American system to have this kind of
oversight and this kind of investigation and we hope it will work. We
think it will work if it is conducted in a serious, responsible, and
positive fashion and not used as a political football. I personally
think that intelligence is much too precious to the United States to
be kicked around as anybody's football. So we will work with this.
We will accept any form of oversight the Congress wants to set up.
The Central Intelligence Agency came into being as the result of the
National Security Act of 1947. As a matter of fact, the last kind of
these investigations we had was in 1945-46. There was a seven-month-
long investigation about Pearl Harbor and that investigation discovered
that almost all the pieces of the puzzle that would have told us what was
going to happen were available in various parts of the U. S. Government.
But everybody was jealously squirreling away his little piece and not
telling anybody else. Hence, the word Central, the idea was to have a
central repository where this would be brought together and someone
could go to the President and say, "Look, this is going to happen."
A s a matter of fact we have exactly such a procedure right now. It's an
Alert Memorandum. If we see a situation building up and we deem that
it's going to be troublesome, we talk to DIA, we talk to the three services,
and we go the President and the White House with an Alert Memorandum
saying, "Watch Somaliland, watch this, watch that, watch the other." as
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we see this. Now we have a great thing of these intelligence post
mortems, but intelligence post mortems are only held when we weren't
successful. If we did give them warning, no one suggests that we have
a post mortem. So this is one of the problems in the intelligence
business. You always get investigated and criticized for the things that
you fail to do or didn't do right. Very rarely do you have a post mortem
that says you did a fantastic job on this. You gave us warning; you told
us it was going to happen. We don't have them on those.
Now, I was talking about the means by which we collect intelligence
and I said we had the overt means and we had the technological means.
We also have a third means, which is the human means, which is the
agent, the spy, the clandestine services. Now, why do we need these?
A 11 the technology in the world and all the overhead reconnaissance in
the world won't get you inside a business, nor will it tell you what's
inside a man's head. For example, during the Arab-Israeli War of
1973 we saw and knew exactly what the forces were on both sides of
the Suez Canal. What we were not privy to was the decision to go on
the 6th of October. I might add, however, that we had a report in
CIA in late May 1973 that said, "Egypt and Syria will start war against
Israel on the 6th of October." We duly reported this. But one of my
experiences with the intelligence business has been that the analysts
generally shrink from telling you something really unpleasant and
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in
ever after we try to fit every piece of intelligence/to show that it wasn't
going to happen on the 6th of October. We finally got ourselves
convinced that it wasn't going to happen on the 6th of October. As a
matter of fact, I'm the guy that signed the Watch Report that said it
wasn't going to happen, that Saturday morning, and, it happened that
Saturday afternoon. So there is some tolerance for mistakes in the
U. S. Intelligence Community.
To get back to some of the stories about the CIA., yes, we've been
criticized for some things that we probably did that we shouldn't do in
the light of what the standards are now. We've probably done some
things wrong that we wouldn't do if we had to go back over them. But I
submit, if you took the Department of Agriculture over the last 27 years
and submitted it to the kind of scrutiny that we've been submitted to you'd
find something of the same sort. If you took a town with roughly the
population of the number of employees of the Central Intelligence Agency
I think you'd find some things not unlike what we've found. We hope for
guidelines from these Congressional investigations, that they will give
us a guideline of what's acceptable and not acceptable because, as I
say, the standards change. Mr. Stimson in 1932 thought it was awful
to read other people's mail. Mr. Stimson in 1939 thought it was great.
"Give me some more. " What I'm worried about is that about 1995
someone will come and say, not to me, but, to one of my successors,
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"What were you doing back there in 1975?" Not what were you doing,
why weren't you doing this, that, or the other. So we hope these
guidelines, whatever guidelines the Congress gives us.-for intelligence,
will include some means of incorporating changes in public attitudes.
A s these various standards change, you know, we gloss over a lot of
this in our history. When the State Assembly of Maryland was about
to vote Maryland out of the Federal Union and into the Southern
Confederacy, Mr. Lincoln sent troops over and closed down the State
Assembly of Maryland. There were 1100 people killed in New York
in the Copperhead Riots. We close ; our eyes to these things , and, oh,
no, they didn't happen. But they did happen. The other day we had a
group of Congressmen out at the CIA and we got on to the question of
assassination. Mr. Colby, our Director, said, you know this is a
question of perspective. If anybody in 1943 or 1944 could have shot
Adolph Hitler, he would have probably been the first joint recipient
of the Congressional Medal of Honor and the Victoria Cross in history.
And one of the Congressmen said, "Ya, but if you could have got him
in '35 or ' 36, think how many lives you would have saved." In ' 35 and
'36 we weren't at war with Germany. And here is this guy suggesting
that we do in the past what he disapproved of our doing now, or of our
even considering doing now.
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One of the other factors is in an Agency like ours obviously all sorts
of contingencies are discussed. So if we discuss something and they say
did you discuss it, or even if it was discussed at the lowest level and
somebody wrote a paper with a GS-7, we have to say yes, we considered
it. But the fact is none of these people have been killed by anybody in
the CIA. There was some discussion about it. But on the assassination,
Director Colby's position has been: It does not do the United States any
good to put the finger on anybody in the Agency, outside the Agency, or
above the Agency. All the facts are being given to the Congressional
Committees and they can decide what they want to do. We do not think
it is in the national interest for us to point the finger at anybody. They
can make whatever decision they want in that respect.
I can only say that as far as I know, and I have access to a considerable.
amount of this, I do not know of anything of this type that is legally subject
to prosecution. You can't prosecute people for thinking about things.
The fact is, Mr. Fidel Castro is still alive. Everybody forgets that at
the time these. discussions were going on, Mr. Fidel Castro was shooting
people everyday in the National Stadium in Havana in front of the
television cameras. I saw it. And he was very proud of this. So, some
of the moral outrage I don't totally share at this sort of thing.
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Then you hear a great deal about the Rockefeller Report. This is
much quoted. Now, in my turn, I' d:like to quote a part of the Rockefeller
Report that the media have not been giving any publicity to, and I quote
directly:
"A detailed analysis of the facts has convinced the
Commission that the great majority of CIA's domestic
activities complied with its statutory authority."
I give another quote from the Rockefeller Report:
"The Agency's own actions terminating activities
on which this Commission focused....."
In other words the Agency terminated many of these activities, nearly
all of these activities, long before these investigations started. As far
back as 1972 Mr. Helms put out a directive (whowas then the Director)
and said, "Assassination is not the policy of this Agency. It will not
be considered as a solution." A similar policy was put out by Mr.
Schlesinger in '73 when he was Director. Many of these things that
they object to which were perfectly acceptable at the time that they
were being done have been terminated by us following our perception
that the American people are no longer prepared to accept this, that,
or the other policy. So, one of the things that concerns us very much
is that Mr. Colby is down there day after day testifying on events of the
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1950's or the early 1960's. I'm very concerned about the late 1970's
and 1980's because that's where your freedom and. mine is going to be
decided. It's like talking to Gerald Ford about something Harry Truman
did. This is the kind of time frame that they're talking about. They're
talking about events in ' 52, ' 58, '60, '61. Almost none of these events
are beyond '61.that they are talking about. So I think it is proper and
appropriate to look into these events and if the Congress feels that-any
of them should not be done they should give us guidelines, clear
guidelines so that the responsibility will rest with them as to what was
done and what was not done. Because the only guidelines we got were in
the National Security Act of 1947 which said, "The Central Intelligence
Agency will do such other things in intelligence as directed by the
National Security Council." If you want my honest opinion, I don't
think we have any chance whatever of getting any clearer guidance
this time around. No one is going to want to say you should or should not
do this particular thing. We're going to just have to go on with it again.
The people in the early 50's and the early 60's were operating on the basis
of the last investigation of the CIA which was conducted by General
Doolittle and his Committee, with General Mark Clark and various other
people. They concluded that the United States was facing a ruthless and
implacable enemy that was determined to use all means to destroy the
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United States, and our only hope of survival was to match their dedication
with our dedication and their ruthlessness with our ruthlessness.
The idea that the United States can fight the KGB and the GRU
by using Marquis of Queensberry rules is like sending someone out to
fight somebody with brass knuckles: fighting Marquis of Queensberry
rules. However, if the American people want us to do it that way,
that 's the way we 111 do it. Now, one of the other things you have as
an impression'tshat we were sort of an invisible government doing
things by ourselves without telling the Congress. The National Security
Act of 1947 set up -- because it was within the framework of the National
Security Act -- the Armed Services Committeesof House and Senate as the
Oversight Committee. For many years the Armed Services Committees
of House and Senate did not go into, great detail, but we always were
responsive to their questions. We [always told them anything they wanted
to know. We reported fully to them. We held nothing back from them,
and we have never had a leak out of either of those Armed Services
Committees. Because the Appropriations Committees vote money, we
had the same relationship with them. To give you just some idea, this
year so far Mr. Colby has testified more than 40 times before 18 different
Committees of the House and Senate. On other than the investigation of
the CIA, I can't tell you how many Congressmen or Senators come to us
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and say, "1m going to Russia," or "I'm going to China. ' Would you
give me a briefing on it." We do. Groups, or Committees, or anything
else. They'll come to us and say, "Well, now, what about this Turkish
business.. What will we lose if the Turks throw us out of the installations?
We go down there; we spend four or five hours telling them what we'll do..
Now, when following the Watergate, some questionable activities
came to light, and I say questionable because I can't take a position of
whether they're legal or illegal or right or wrong --- all of that is a
question of historic perspective and time -- Dr. Schlesinger, who was
then the Director, went out and asked everybody who knew of anything
questionable to help. We got a report. We took that report down to the
Senate Committee and to the House Committee. And we briefed them.
You'd be surprised how many of them don't remember that they were
briefed, but we have a memorandumof conversation and briefing listing
who was there and the questions that were asked by some of the people
who don't remember they were briefed. We've made great progress in
medical science, but I don't think anybody has yet discovered a
vaccination against selective amnesia.
You know, one of our problems as a nation is that we spend a great
deal of time flagellating ourselves and pointing/our own shortcomings
to ourselves, and we do have shortcomings. We're trying to correct
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those shortcomings. Someone once said, what was the nationality of
Adam and Eve. The answer was, they didn't have a stitch of clothing
on their back, they didn't have a roof over their head, they didn't know
where the next meal was coming from, but they thought they were in
Paradise so they could only have been citizens of the Soviet Union.
We know there are things wrong with our society and we are trying
to fix them and correct them. Not long ago a European said to me, "I
used to think that the flagellantes and the penitentees were two small
sects in Arizona and New Mexico, but now I realize you've got them all
over the United States." And you have all these people telling us how
awful we are. Not long ago in Atlanta, a girl came up to me and she
said, "Don't you think that all of these activities by foreign powers
against us are in retaliation for what we are doing to them? " And I said,
"Well, if you take the view that the' United States is a hostile, imperialist,
aggressive power, probably you can rationalize it that way. But since I
don't take that view, it doesn't make much sense to me.
When you think we've won a number of great wars this century. and
not only have we taken nothing from the vanquished, but in all human
history the victor has never done more for the vanquished than we did.
We're the only people in history that have ever financed our competitors
back in business with us. And if Volkswagen is selling cars in the
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United States today and taking business away from Americans, it's
because under the Marshall Plan, in which I was working, we put the
machine tools back in that Volkswagen factory. And that's true of the
Fiat factory or the Citron factory, or any of the other factories in
Europe. So I really don't have the appropriate guilt; complex about the
United States that I think we should.
One of the problems we face is that we are facing a new kind of
war that we have had no experience in. Twenty-five: hundred years ago
a. great Chinese writer by the name of Sun T zu wrote a book called the
Art of War . And he described how to undo your enemies. It's a very
difficult book to read because it's in the form of a Chinese dialogue and
if you're not Chinese it's pretty hard to read. I always describe it as
something like swimming in a pool full of molasses, but there is an
awful lot of real sugar in there. He has a series of Commandments
he puts out on how you undo your enemies, and he says, as a first
general consideration. "Fighting is the most primitive way of making
war. " And he then has 13 commandments, "How you undo your enemies."
I'm only going to give you four, so don't worry. The first is, "Cover with
ridicule everything that is valid in your opponent's country." The second
is, "Aggravate by every means at your command all the differences
existing in your opponent's country." The third is, "Denounce their
leaders and at the right time turn them over to the scorn of their fellow
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countrymen." The fourth, "Agitate, the young against the old." There are
nine more. And he winds up with this general summation. He said, "The
supreme excellence is not to defeat your enemies in a hundred battles; the
supreme excellence is to subdue your enemies without having to fight them."
We keep looking for an old fashioned conventional battlefront. And we don't
find it. We find a different kind of a battlefront. Cover with ridicule
everything that is valid in your opponent's country. The campaign against
the Armed Forces, for instance. They say, oh, we don't want the CIA
to do that in the United States. The, FBI should do it. But when the FBI
tries to do it, they denounce the FBI. They call the FBI's attempts to
obtain evidence in national security, cases burglaries. That's like calling
in
executions by the State murder. Some people view them/that way, but I
don't think that's the general consensus of how it should be viewed.
But nevertheless, this is a real problem for us. How do we face and
counter these new forms of war? We see within the United States today
an attempt to create a caste system whereby anybody in intelligence
is some sort of a second class citizen. He isn't to be trusted. They
use the word spying all the time. So and so was spied on. Anybody's
welcome to spy on me. I don't worry about it. This is the constant
hammering attempt. The real attempt, of course which is long term,
is to prevent the recruitment of good people into intelligence . In my
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view today the real issue is not the truth or falsehood of these allegations
of 15 or 25 years ago. The real issue is will the United States have eyes
and ears for the future or will the United States have to stumble into the
future, into the '80's, a blind and deaf giant until we come to the day
when we have to choose between nuclear blackmail or abject humiliation.
This is the real issue we have to decide on. Whether we're going to go
forward unable to see what' s happening, unable to know what' s happening.
Again, as I say, we're a remarkable people. Not long ago I was
talking to my French counterpart, and this was before the Mayaguez
incident, and he said to me, "Did you hear the story about the Frenchman,
the Englishman, and the American who were captured by cannibals on a
Pacific Island?" I said, "No." Well, he said, the three of them were
captured by the cannibals and the cannibals informed them they were
going to eat them the next day for lunch but before they ate them they
were going to give them each one wish, not including setting them free.
So they said to the Frenchman, "What do you want?" The Frenchman
said, "Well, if I'm going to be executed in the morning, I would just as
soon spend my remaining time with that beautiful cannibal girl over there."
So they untied him and he and the cannibal girl went off in the woods. Then
they said to the Englishman, "What do you want?'" The Englishman said,
"I want a pen and paper. " And they said, "What do you want a pen and
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paper for? " He, said, "I want to write a letter to the Secretary General
of the United Nations to denounce the unjust, unfair and unsporting
attitude you have adopted towards us. " So they took the Englishman
into a hut and they gave him a pen and paper. And then they said to the
American, "What do you want? " The American said, "I want to be led
into the middle of the village, I want to be made to kneel down and I want
the biggest cannibal here to kick me in the rear end." The Chief said,
"That's a very odd request, but then the Americans are very odd people,
and I promised, so okay. " So they led the American into the middle of
the village, they made him kneel down, they untied him, and the biggest
cannibal took a running kick at him and knocked him about fifteen or
twenty feet. The American had been hiding a submachine gun under his
clothes all the time so at this point he whipped out the submachine gun
and cut down the cannibals. The rest of the cannibals fled. The
Frenchman, hearing the gunfire came out of the woods; the Englishman,
hearing the gunfire came out of the hut. They looked at the American
and they said, "Do you mean to say you had that submachine gun the whole
time? It The American said, "Sure." They said, "Why didn't you use it
before? " The American looked at them very earnestly and he said, "But
you don't understand. It wasn't until he kicked me in the rear end that I
had any moral justification for it. "
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When all this is said and done, I am absolutely confident
in the future of intelligence. We cannot do without it and it is a
fascinating and rewarding career. Rewarding in my case; rewarding
in the case of Lieutenant General Graham, who is the head of DIA;
Lieutenant General Sam Wilson, who is the Deputy Director for the
Intelligence Community, and many other officers. And, really, I
don't know anything more fascinating than working in this highly
technical, highly skilled area. To know what's going to be in
tomorrow morning's newspaper before it's there is really a fascinating
thing. I always feel that the great thing in life is not how much money
you earn, but that everymorning when you get up you feel a challenge.
It isn't, oh, God, what' s it going to be today. It' s something you think,
what is it going to be today? This has the additional advantage of not
only being interesting, not only being fascinating, but giving you the
feeling that your contributing to the things you really believe in. And if
I had to make the decision over again, I'd make exactly the same
decision. Sometimes I feel I'm a sort of Jonas at the CIA because
barely had I arrived when Watergate burst upon us. Barely was
Watergate over when this stuff started. I've spent the last three and
a half years testifying and all this sort of business and I'd still do it
again. It's worth it. And as I say, it gives you a feeling of contributing.
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One thing I want to make clear is that as far as we're concerned
in the Central Intelligence Agency, we have no part in the formulation
of policy. When I go down to the White House to a meeting of the
White House Special Action Group, I am instructed not to take part
in the discussion on what we do. All I tell them is what will happen if
you do A, what will happen if you do,: B, what will happen if you do C.
They ask me a few technical questions and that 's it. I do not take part.
We are not a policy forming organization. We do not take part in the
formulation of policy. They ask us a question. We answer it.
The other thing I would like to say is that good intelligence doesn't
necessarily mean sound policy. It would be very difficult to have sound
policies without good intelligence. And I must say one of the satisfying
things is to know that the first document that the President sees every
morning when he gets up is the Presidential Daily Bulletin that we
prepare for him containing the most secret intelligence we have on
matters susceptible of being of interest to him. And he sees that every
morning before he even reads the newspapers.
I think the future of intelligence is going to be bigger and more
important than ever in the past. Simply because the threat is bigger.
The threat to the very existence of the United States exists to a degree
greater than at any time, as I said, since Valley Forge. We have got
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to produce the best. We've got to use our best people. We've got
to find out what's going on. We've got to be able to tell our
government, which has responsibilities all over the world, what's
coming up next. Because the only alternative is slavery. I often
chide my newspaper friends and say, you know, in my view, America
can never be defeated from the outside. America can. only be defeated
from the inside by convincing Americans that their cause is unjust.
The other day I talked to the National Press Club. I talked for 40
minutes and I answered questions for an hour and they never printed
one word of it. I said, you know, a lot of you used to worry when
President Thieu would close or suspend one of the five opposition
newspapers in Saigon. I have news for you. This is no longer a
problem. There are no opposition newspapers in Saigon anymore.
This is so often what they forget. They told us it was wrong to support
this repressive government; it was wrong to support this dictatorship.
Well, I only wish they could talk to the people of South Vietnam now..
and find out what kind of shrift the opposition gets there.
But, in any case, I think the important thing for all of us, and one
of the consoling things to me, is to see how all parts of the intelligence
community are working together in the United States more closely than
ever before. I knew it when we just had the three service agencies and
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the CIA. We didn't even have DIA. Many people think we live in
separate compartments. The people in DIA and CIA, ACSI, ONI,
and AFCIN read the same telegrams, the same information every
day. The idea that we live in watertight compartments is nonsense.
We have a secure conference net whereby the analysts in CIA, DIA,
and the services can talk to one another and discuss anything. Many
of the estimates that we put out, part of it is drafted in one of the
agencies, part of it is drafted in the other. I lived in a period, when
I was an Attache, when we had greatparochial rivalry. As a matter
of fact when I was the Attache to France, I found out who the next
Head of the French"CIA was going to be, so I went up and told the CIA
Station Chief and he looked at me rather pityingly and he said, "That's
nonsense. It's going to be a General, or a Prefect. It's certainly not
going to be a civilian." 'I said, "Okay." About three months later, he
dashed into my office and he said, "Do you know who is going to be the
new head of the French CIA." I said, "Yes, Alexandre de Marenches."
He said, "How did you know? " I said, "I told you. He showed me a
letter from the President saying he was going to be." He said, "That's
right. What do you know about him?" I said, "Plenty. And just as
soon as my telegram to DIA has been sent, I'll give you a copy." We
don't have that kind of nonsense anymore. We don't have that kind of
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nonsense even within the intelligence community of which the Director
is the head. He feels very strongly that the primary responsibilities
of military intelligence is military. Yes, we in the CIA should retain
an independent assessment capability. But fundamentally, it is a
military responsibility. I can tell you that I have been in intelligence
thirty years and I have never seen the relationship between the various
parts of the intelligence community better than it is today. We have
really experienced people. We have really good people working in it.
We have really dedicated people. I've been at CIA three and a half
years. I have not spent my whole adult life there. People often ask
me, "How do you feel about it after three and a half years? " And I
say, "Well, I can sum up my feelings in one word. And that word is
'reassurance'." Reassurance at the competence of the people I've
found there, reassurance at the continuity of people staying for years
on the same subject, but reassurance, most of all, at the integrity of
the people that I've found there. I found there Americans -- one of
the things they try and do is claim that the people in. the military in
general and intelligence in particular are some kind. of different
American. We are not different Americans. We're a slice off the
same cake. We live by the same standards as other Americans.. The
same things are acceptable to us that are acceptable to other Americans.
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We are not a breed apart living/ ahwhole mythology of our own.
Every day when I go to work at the Agency, I walk in the door
and on my right I see the stars carved in the stone wall that
commemorate the members of the Agency,that I have the honor to
be Deputy Director of, who have fallen in line of duty on the silent
battlefield of intelligence, which is silent. but never quiet on which
we are condemned to fight not by our own choice, but by those who
would destroy us. And on the other side of the wall I see a sign,
an inscription which is the motto of the Agency, which says, "Ye shall
know the truth and the truth will make you free." I think perhaps its
dangerous to fool with biblical quotations, but as I have mentioned earlier,
times change, and I'm not sure we shouldn't change that motto slightly
and have it read, "You must know the truth for only the truth will keep
you free." Thank you very much.
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