SPEECH BY LT. GENERAL VERNON A. WALTERS BEFORE KIWANIS INTERNATIONAL/MIDWINTER CONFERENCE THE CIA AND WORLD AFFAIRS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80R01731R002000120008-3
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 22
• Document Creation Date: December 14, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 6, 2002
• Sequence Number: 8
• Publication Date: January 25, 1976
• Content Type: SPEECH

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SPEECH
by
LT. GENERAL VERNON A. WALTER.S
before
KIWANI5 INTERNATIONA L/MIDWINTER CON]~,ERENCE
WASHINGTON, D. C.
25 January 1976
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International President-Elect, Governor Shulman, Govf>rnor-Elect
Rossa, Lieutenant Governor, Lieutenant Governor Smith...
Thank you very much for that introduction. I would :Like to talk to
you about something that's on the front page of a.ll the newspapers right
now and that is intelligence. What is intelligence? Why does the
United States need it? How do we go about getting it? What do we do
with it? And what about al.l this stuff you're hearing about?
Well, what is intelligence? Intelligence is information concerning
the actions, po.licie s, capabilities of foreign countries #:hat may have
an impact on the United States of America and on our people. In the old
days that sort of inte.l.ligence was always thought of in just purely
mi.lita ry terms , but now we've got to think of it in othe x' terms . There
are billions of petro-dollars, and oi.l-dollars wandering?; around the
world and the way they're invested and the way they're used may affect
the livelihood of American working men al.l over our country, so we have
an additional requirement in the field of economic intelligence.
You know, we Americans have a long tradition in ini:e.l.ligence. It's
a .long tradition of building up great intelligence structures during our
wars and then dismantling them in the periods in-between. Just to give
you an idea -- in August 1942, right at the start of the war -- I was
assigned to the U.S. Army Military Intelligence Training Center at
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Camp Ritchie, Maryland, and the Commandant of the U'. S. Army
Military Intelligence Training Center was a British Co.lone.l.
That was the state of American intelligence at the outb:t~eak of the
war. Now, we paid dearly for that. We paid for it at :E?earl Harbor.
We had many losses of ships, many losses of .lives. Biat we recovered
from Pearl Harbor and we went on to win, but in the world we .live in
today, the great question that arises is, can you recovr:~r from a nuclear
Pearl Harbor? T'he most important thing is obviously to deter that any
such attempt ever be made against us and one of the surest ways of
deterring that it be made is for other countries to knov~~ that we have
the capability of watching them and keeping track of anything they may
do that may threaten our country. That is one of the greatest guarantees
and securities we have.
At a big investigation after Pearl Harbor we found that in various
parts of the U.S. Government people had little pieces of information
which, if they had a.ll been brought together, might not have avoided
Pearl Harbor, but certainly would have made it a .lot .lE~ss costly to us.
And as a result of that, we decided we had to have a central place to
collect, and to study, a.l.l of the intelligence that came i.n so that it could
be transmitted to the people who have to make decisions in the United
States as to what we're going to do.
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Now, why do we need intelligence? We need intelligence because
the world is still not an ideal place to live in. We need intelligence
because there are nations in the world with enormous power, enormous
strength which they're building up. A s a matter of fact:, right now
we see the Soviet Union deploying five different types o:t' third gene ration
missiles, intercontinental missiles that can reach the i:Jnited States. We
see them spending vast sums of money to improve thei~? conventional
forces, their army, their navy, their air force, to give' them new
equipment, better training, better everything. In the last couple of
years, the United States Armed Forces have gone down. by a million
people. The Armed Forces of the Soviet Union in the same period
have gone up by a million people. We face a situation where, if God
forbid, we ever have to fight again for the first time since the Revolution,
we will be fighting somebody who controls greater resources than we do.
We don't say they're going to use these but we have to take into account
the fact that they're building these up. In fact, in my v'.iew they are
spending more money out of a gross national product, more absolute
money, out of a gross national product that is less than half of ours.
That gives you some idea of the effort they are asking their people to
make to build up these forces.
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Now, it's important that we know what these threats may be.
China is building up her forces; China. tomorrow will have the same
kind of capability. It is our responsibility to keep track of that.
You know, people often think of intelligence as merely being a
form of making war on your enemies, but it's also a form of making
peace. No President of the United States could sign an arms .limitation
agreement limiting the number of missiles, limiting the number of
strategic arms unless we had the absolute capability of verifying
whether that agreement was being kept or not. This is the only thing
that makes it possible for us to discuss these arms lirr.~itations with
the Soviets.
There is another thing which you'1.1 never see in the newspapers
but sometimes several of our friends may get involved in a fuss and
each one thinks the other one is going to jump him. Ar-d we have been
able a number of times in the past to go to both parties and say, "He is
not going to jump you. We know what is going on; he's worried that
you're going to jump him, but he is not preparing to jump you." You
never get any headlines for that, but it is still a force :E'or peace.
But it is this intelligence capability that gives us an ability, an
ability to make other countries know that we are watching and thereby
to inhibit anything they might do.
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Now, you've heard a great deal about intelligence. What has been
happening to intelligence? Well, in the United States Government
ixzte.lligence gets less than one penny out of every do.lla:r. that is spent
by the United States Government. And that is the rneaxi.s of telling
us what others have, what we need to match. It is only through good
intelligence that we can know how much is enough for ourselves.
If we did not have good intelligence as to what the other side had,
the probabilities are that our defense expenditures wou'Ld soar out
of sight. When you are preparing to face something that is unknown,
you have to go as far as you can to try and face up to it. It is
because that we have good intelligence that we are in a position to
know what is sufficient for us.
Now obviously we hope that we can work out some agreement with
the Soviet Union and .limit the expenditures that both nations are making.
But we can consider such an agreement only because we have the means
of verifying it. Now we a.l.l 'hope that detente will bring a le s sening of
tensions between the two countries, but a friend told me a Russian story
that I think is not a bad one. He said two young Amerir,:ans went to
Moscow and they were being taken around by a young Russian. And he
took them to the Cathedral of Basil the Blessed and to the Kremlin
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and to the Stadium and to the University and finally he gook them to the
Zoo. And they were looking at the various animals in t:he cages and they
fina.l.ly came to a cage where there was a great big Russian bear, enormous,
seven feet high. And in the same cage there was a ratl~.er worried-looking
lamb. But the .lamb appeared to be in good shape. One. of the young
Americans said to the young Russian, "Why do you put those two in
the same cage? That's an odd pair to put in the same cage. " And the
young Russian said, "This is to prove that peaceful coexistence is
possib.le." The young American said, "We.l.l, it's pretty impressive."
And his buddy said, "It sure is convincing." The young, Russian, looking
around and seeing no one, .leaned over and whispered tc~ them, "Of course
you understand, every morning we have to put in a new lamb." And a s
long as you don't run out of lambs, there is no probllem..
Well, the problem is, we don't want to be lambs. Good intelligence
provides a firm basis for the foreign policy of the United States. If we
know what's going on around the world we're in a position to draw up our
policies so they can meet the various circumstances, the various require-
ments and the various contingencies. While I'm speaking of contingencies,
good intelligence enables us to make the contingency p.l