ADMIRAL STANSFIELD TURNER

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01070R000200730003-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 11
• Document Creation Date: December 21, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 27, 2008
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: June 5, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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STAT
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RADIO TV REPORTS, INC.
4701 WILLARD AVENUE, CHEVY CHASE, MARYLAND 20815 656-4068
FOR PUBLIC AFFAIRS STAFF
PROGRAM From the Editor's Desk STATION WETA-TV
PBS Network
DATE June 5, 1983 11:30 A.M. CCTV Washington, D.C.
RICHARD HEFNER: I'm Richard Hefner. Each week I chair
our editorial board, as we bring those who make the news of the
world together with the editors and the commentators who inter-
pret it, who shape the news, mould it, who do or do not make it
part of our public awareness, our public opinion.
Joining me today is Robert Bartley, Editor of the Wall
Street Journal. Also with me here at the Editor's Desk is
Mitchell Levitas, Editor of the New York Times' Sunday Week in
Review. And our guest in Washington is Admiral Stansfield
Turner, Director of Central Intelligence in the Jimmy Carter
Administration.
It is not its intelligence-gathering activities, secret
or otherwise, that have brought the CIA's public reputation into
question in recent years. Rather, it is role it is said to play
in so-called secret wars, in Cuba, earlier in Vietnam, now
perhaps in Central America, that concerns at least a Congress
that wants in on the larger, and what it insists must be the
public, issue of war and peace.
It may be appropriate, then, to ask Admiral Turner
whether in this matter of secret war, President Reagan uses the
CIA any differently than Jimmy Carter did. Admiral?
ADMIRAL STANSFIELD TURNER: Well, I think the Reagan
Administration has made one serious mistake in using the Central
Intelligence Agency in covert action. That is, getting involved
in a covert action on which there was not genera consensus in
America. Specifically, working against the government of
Nicaragua, allegedly using supporters of former dictator Somoza.
I don't think the United States was united on being willing to
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use Somozans to overthrow Marxist Sandinistas.
HEFNER: Does that mean that every time the CIA has used
covert actions, it's been in the interest of what a majority of
Americans have wanted?
ADMIRAL TURNER: Since 1976, when we've had good
oversight of intelligence, if you tried a covert action on which
there wasn't consensus, it was going to leak. There are enough
people today who have to know about these, both in the Admini-
stration and in the Congress, that if it is highly divisive, it's
going to leak and it won't be covert. And therefore you can't
have a covert action when it's a public knowledge.
HEFNER: Bob Bartley, editorially, you've had some
things to say about that.
ROBERT BARTLEY: I take it, Admiral, you think there is
a place for covert action in the CIA.
ADMIRAL TURNER: Oh, yes. Yes.
BARTLEY: Could you give us a hypothetical, for example?
I mean why do we need covert action?
ADMIRAL TURNER: Well now, let's understand, Bob, that
covert action is not always overthrowing governments. For
instance, it's propaganda that puts out the American opinion on
different subjects, but not attributable to the United States.
There are a lot of countries where they just can't get straight
news. But if they get it from the Voice of America, they think
it is biased. So that's a very legitimate covert activity.
Another is financial support for democratic parties in
countries where there is communist-financed opposition giving
them a hard time. And yet those democratic parties may not want
to acknowledge that they're receiving support from the United
States. That may be counterproductive politically for them.
Then, I think, when there are instances when the country
genuinely sees other nations being overrun by communist military
power, for instance, that they may be willing to unite together
in providing support to the genuine freedom fighters who are
opposing such communist intervention.
MITCHELL LEVITAS: Admiral Turner, I gather from what
you've said in your opening remarks and now that your objection
in American involvement in Nicaragua is less a matter of princi-
ple than a matter of practice.
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LEVITAS: (A) It was leaked. And (B) we shouldn't be
backing Somozistas against Sandinistas.
ADMIRAL TURNER: That's absolutely correct. I find
there is no principle, no rule of morals that governs inter-
national behavior of nations.
LEVITAS: Well, wouldn't a covert action almost always
be divisive, to the point of having its cover blown, where the
object was to involve America in an attempt to topple a foreign
government?
ADMIRAL TURNER: Well, I certainly think there must be
cases where the foreign government is so onerous to the United
States that if you could do it by covert action, the country
would unite behind it. Now, most of those cases -- take Castro
in Cuba. The CIA's previous efforts to do that, to overthrow
Castro by covert action, just didn't work. And I don't think
covert action will work there today. So I would not recommend
it. But if someone came up with a covert plan that was really
useful, could be done, I'd be all for it.
BARTLEY: Well, Admiral, don't you think it would surely
ADMIRAL TURNER: I think that in the case of Cuba, it
probably would, because of the past history there. But I
certainly can think that there might be other instances that
would develop in the world where some nation was really causing
the United States a lot of trouble; and if we had the capability,
we could use it and the country would unite behind it.
LEVITAS: Let me put this question on another level. Do
you think that the Sandinist government is a threat to the
security of the United States, to the point where deep U.S.
involvement is warranted or wise?
ADMIRAL TURNER: No, I do not. I don't think the
Sandinista government is firmly in power. The Sandinista...
LEVITAS: Not lately, anyway.
ADMIRAL TURNER: Well, but even without CIA support,
there are two factions of Sandinistas who've broken off and are
now trying to unseat the Marxist government there. Marxism,
Cuba, the Soviet Union cannot satisfy the economic-social
aspirations of the Nicaraguan people. They threw out Somoza.
They got something just as bad now. It's not going to satisfy
them.
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The problem will take care of itself. We can try to
contain it. But I don't think it's so critical that we need to
try to use the dirty tricks department on it, with, I think, some
very serious consequences I'd like to outline for you if you
would like it.
ADMIRAL TURNER: First of all, last December the
Congress passed a law saying you can use covert action there, but
not to overthrow the government; only to try to stop the flow of
arms. Well, the line there is very thin between one and the
other, and people are already accusing the CIA of breaking that
law. I don't think the people in the CIA are the kind who break
laws. And this is bad for their image, their reputation in the
country, which we tried so hard over the last few years to bring
back again.
HEFNER: Admiral, do you think that the CIA has now
broken the law in that regard?
ADMIRAL TURNER: I don't think so. But I think they
will constantly be accused of it. Because, after all, the best
way to stop the Nicaraguan government from sending arms to El
Salvador is to throw the Nicaraguan government out of power. But
that's against the-law.
HEFNER: Well, if it is the best way, why are restrain-
ing ourselves?
ADMIRAL TURNER: Because the Congress has said so. I
believe, for the reasons we discussed before, that they perceive
this to be giving the United States a bad image throughout Latin
and South America, an image of wanting to put Somozan-type people
back in power again. And that is hurting the United States,
because what we should be doing in that area is buttressing
Mexico and Panama, which are countries of great importance to us,
where Nicaragua is very unimportant. And we can't work closely
with those other two countries if they see us trying to put
dictators back into power.
BARTLEY: Admiral, if you were a congressman, how would
you vote on that restriction, yes or no?
ADMIRAL TURNER: I would vote on the restriction that
was passed, the Boland Amendment. But now what I would do if I
were the Congress, I would pass the law that they proposed in the
House of Representatives just cutting off all covert activity
down there. It's gone too far, in terms of becoming public.
We've got to cut our losses and get out.
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And you know what's also happening that's really going
to hurt intelligence here, is both of the Intelligence Committees
of the Congress are now proposing that in the future they must be
notified in advance of any covert action taking place. That is
going to be a serious curb on the CIA's capability to do genuine
covert actions that the country wants done.
HEFNER: Admiral Turner, let's break away from the
Editor's Desk for a moment, and then we'll come back.
LEVITAS: Admiral Turner, I'm afraid I'm a bit confused.
You've just said that it would be a curb that would be unwise for
Congress to be pre-informed of covert activities undertaken by
the CIA.
LEVITAS: And yet you've also said that CIA activities
should have more or less the unanimous support of the American
people, or at least the Congress, or, one assumes, the Intel-
ligence Committees of Congress, before they're undertaken, lest
they be blown and become divisive.
LEVITAS: Can you resolve that contradiction?
ADMIRAL TURNER: Certainly. I think an Administration
should be smart enough to know, by its own understanding of
public opinion in a country, that an issue will sell or won't
sell. And it shouldn't undertake one that won't sell, as the
Nicaraguan one has not.
But during the Carter Administration, we undertook some
covert actions which I would not have even proposed had I been
required to give prior notification to the Congress. And the
simple reason is that you cannot look a man in the eye and say,
"Co into a situation where you might lose your life. I'm only
going up on Capitol Hill and notify 30 or 40 people."
Now, I don't care whether those 30 or 40 people are on
Capitol Hill or in the CIA. You can't be a responsible person
and put a man's life at risk and tell 30 or 40 people more than
absolutely need to know in order to conduct the operation.
LEVITAS: But how do you know that it's not going to be
divisive? There were serious people who thought that the Bay of
Pigs was the wrong thing to attempt, even though it was under-
mined by trying to do it with less equipment and less manpower
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than was originally envisaged by the CIA, that it was wrong in
principle and lousy in practice. But that's not the point.
ADMIRAL TURNER: Well, in the first place, there are
only a few cases where you don't want to notify them in advance,
and those are ones where it's a very time-urgent operational
issue, generally. Something like trying to overthrow a govern-
ment takes a long time, and there's no way that you can or should
hold that back, because there isn't this element of timeliness,
this element of human life being so much at stake.
So, I don't think it's really an issue that is a serious
one at all. I believe that the Congress can be notified most of
the time in advance. But if they pass a law and say that it has
to be in advance, they're going to deny the country some impor-
tant opportunities.
You take a situation like the hostage rescue effort. to
the extent that there was any covert action requied with that,
you simply could not people who weren't required to know that
information.
BARTLEY: Well, Admiral, I have to agree with Mike that
it -- it seems to me that your position here gives you kind of
the worst of both worlds. I mean you're not willing to rule out
covert action, but you say that the test ought to be whether or
not there's a consensus, and the real test of that is whether it
leaks. It just seems to me, in the realities of the country
today, you're giving a veto power to a group that's very opposed
to any kind of covert activity. So that you have a position in
which you're not willing to rule out covert activities, but you
impose conditions that make them impossible to carry out.
How do you react to that?
ADMIRAL TURNER: I really just don't understand your
argument. I'm not imposing any conditions that make it impos-
sible to carry out. In fact, I'm saying in those cases where
it's extremely sensitive, you don't notify the Congress in
advance.
BARTLEY: At least it would, as a practical matter, rule
out trying to overthrow a hostile government. Is that right?
ADMIRAL TURNER: No, not if the country would gener
--would, as a whole, support overthrowing that particular hostile
government. I think that the government should go ahead with the
covert action if it would be useful, if that is a very important
thing for our country.
BARTLEY: But, clearly, there are elements in the
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country who would not unite behind any -- I happen to think a
relatively small minority, but nonetheless some in the country
and in the government who would not unite behind any such plan.
Don't you agree with that?
ADMIRAL TURNER: Oh, yes. But, you see, we're not
talking about telling the country. We're talking about telling
the committees of the Congress. And they have been, in my
opinion, quite responsible in this regard.
HEFNER: Admiral, I think that Bob is probably referring
to the committees of the Congress too. I don't want to put words
in his mouth. But I wondered how you reacted to an editorial
assessment of the Wall Street Journal this week. It said, "In
any case, the proper place to make those kinds of risk assess-
ments is within the Executive Branch." He seems to be saying
keep it out of the Congress.
ADMIRAL TURNER: Well, that's trying to undo what
President Ford and George Bush, as Director of the CIA, started
in 1976: congressional oversight, Executive Branch control of
intelligence. And I think, in view of the errors that were
uncovered in 1975 in the Church Committee, that we need some form
of controls. And we have worked out a very delicate balance
here, a set of compromises in which the Congress does know enough
to exercise oversight, but not so much as to blow the necessary
secrecy of intelligence.
HEFNER: About controls. Your own dispute with the CIA
right now [unintelligible] about your new book. How do we
explain that?
ADMIRAL TURNER: I don't have any dispute. I resolved
all the issues with them last Tuesday. I now have a manuscript
-- everything I've written for my manuscript, rather, is cleared
by the CIA. They asked me to take out some things that I don't
think are classified, and I'm appealing that to Director Casey.
But I do have my manuscript basically cleared. And that's got to
be a give-and-take, because people have different opinions about
what is secret and what's not.
ADMIRAL TURNER: Mr. Casey. Or if -- you know, if it
really comes to a complete showdown, it's just like anything else
in our country of this nature. It goes to the courts and the
courts decide.
LEVITAS: If I may change the subject from secret wars
for a minute to a discussion of nuclear strategy. If you were a
member of the Congress, would you have voted in favor of the
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recommendations of the Scowcroft Commission, roughly to finance
the MX and to plan in 10 or 20 years for a single-warhead
missile? I know you're opposed to the MX. I wonder how far you
would have gone with Democrats who also are against the MX, but
thought it would be useful at the bargaining table, maybe.
ADMIRAL TURNER: Well, I'm not a politician; and I don't
know whether, as a Democrat in Congress, I would have gone alone
because I'd be worried about the 1984 election. That would be
the only factor, it seems to me, that should swing somebody
behind the MX.
The President's promises on arms control I don't think
are something one should give him an MX in order to get. The
Administration should have been serious about arms control long
before this, and they shouldn't be bought off by an MX vote.
In addition, buying the MX is directly contrary to the
Scowcroft Commission recommendations on the direction we should
be going in arms control, and which the President has bought
--that is, to be going towards missiles that are small, mobile,
and single warheads. And here we are building a big, unmobile,
multi-warhead missile in order, somehow, to get the Russians to
go in the opposite direction. It just won't work.
LEVITAS: Do I take that -- are you opposed, then, to
the Trident II, the submarine-launched MX?
ADMIRAL TURNER: I think the Trident II is a reasonable
move to go ahead with because we do nee some hard-target capa-
bility -- not very much, in my opinion -- in this country for the
indefinite future. We don't want to rely on that as our primary
deterrent because it isn't necessary. But we need some just as
an emergency, just as a reserve, because you don't know what the
future is going to be like.
BARTLEY: Admiral, unless I misunderstand the treaties,
a small mobile missile would violate SALT I. What do we do about
that?
ADMIRAL TURNER: It would violate SALT II, I believe. I
know it was in SALT II. That we have to negotiate in START, that
is going on right now.
HEFNER: Admiral Turner, thank you so much for joining
us today on From the Editor's Desk.
In just a moment we'll come back to the Editor's Desk to
see how my colleagues will set in perspective what we've just
heard.
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HEFNER: Gentlemen, your comments. Mike?
LEVITAS: I think that the Admiral nees more lessons in
political reality. Even the case in which he cites, of freeing
the Iranian hostages, as a nonpartisan, unanimously-supported
question -- Cyrus Vance, the Secretary of State, resigned over
it. I don't think there is a covert activity that would be
supported to the degree he demands for success. I really can't
think of one.
BARTLEY: Well, I think, as a society, we've got a
terrible dilemma here. I think that we're witnessing a kind of
aggression by communist forces, particularly in Central America.
I mean the Boland Committee itself agrees, the Democratic
majority agrees that the Salvador insurgency is being generated
and supported from the outside. And we've got to find some way
to deal with those sorts of contingencies without plunging in by
sending a bunch of Marines. And covert action seems to me a
reasonable kind of approach in this kind of a world.
But I don't see any realistic way that we're ever going
to have it unless you can get a majority of Congress to cut
Congress as an institution out of the process, or at least to
very much reduce its oversight.
LEVITAS: I don't think you can cut Congress out of the
process, Bob. And also, all you'll get if you pursue covert
activities of this kind is hypocritical denials that America is
involved, when the logical consequence and other readings will be
that it doesn't come from outside this Earth, that there is an
acation to bring down the government of Nicaragua I think you're
kidding yourself.
BARTLEY: We lived with all those things for a genera-
tion and a half after World War II. And I think we can go back
-- we'd better off if we went back and lived with them again.
HEFNER: Are you suggesting, Mike, no covert actions?
LEVITAS: I'm suggesting that if we think that the
government of Nicaragua is a clear and present danger, then we
ought to say so and put the Marines in and call it what we ought
to call it and what we did when we supported Greece against the
Greek communists, and so on. I don't think you can have it both
ways.
BARTLEY: Well -- and I'm sure that if anyone proposed
any such thing, the New York Times would be beating down the
barricades.
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LEVITAS: I'm not speaking for The Times. I'm trying to
speak -- no, no. I think...
HEFNER: All right, gentlemen. That's the point at
which I say thanks for joining me today.
HEFNER: It's easy, though correct, too, of course,
proudly to say that ours is a government of laws, not men; and
that however much we may or may not trust those who command our
intelligence agencies, they must not be above the law, but
instead thoroughly constrained by it.
Well, such noble sentiments have the ring of truth about
them, to be sure. They sound so right and so democratic, too.
Yet they do fly in the face of much of our nation's real-life
experience. And we probably do wrong, not well, when we lull
ourselves into even thinking that our leaders ever act purely in
terms of such platitudes when it comes to matters of national
security.
The fact is that no nation in the real world of flesh
and bones and an awareness of mankind's nastier intentions can
afford to be without its evasions and its secrets. And we
dangerously delude ourselves if we think that in the final
analysis, indeed even maybe long before that, there is anywhere a
leader charged with the responsibility of great power who won't
resort to something less than thoroughly open government, who
doesn't at times elide matters of state and stealth, shall we
say, when he perceives that those times are perilous for the
nation and require something more than a rigid adherence to the
letter of the legislative act openly arrived at.
The fact is, then, that ours is a society of men, as
well as of laws. And what we must do to accommodate that bit of
reality, as well as our ancient fictions, is to make certain that
we pick for high places and endow with great power only those men
whose intelligence and understanding and probity we thoroughly
trust.
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