FORMER SPY MASTER SAYS CIA ESSENTIAL AGENCY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00806R000100390010-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 9, 2010
• Sequence Number: 10
• Publication Date: January 25, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/09/09: CIA-RDP90-00806R000100390010-7
JACKSONVILLE ii?`S- \IU\ (r )
,5 January 198)
I en
Former spy master says CIA essentia ag V
By Nancy Price
Staff WOW
"Hi, I'm Bill Colby," the bespectacled e
man said with a smile, reaching out to hands.
Where were the cloak and dagger? The
hidden microphones in the hotel suite?
Could it be that this thin, gray-haired man
with the professorial manner once parachut-
ed behind Nazi lines into Norway and
France, directed pacification efforts in Viet-
nam and headed the Central Intelligence
Agency for four years?
William E. Colby seems like such a nice
man Who'd ever figure him for a master
spy? ut don't be fooled by his mild-mannered
demeanor. Colby started spying during
World War II, and after joining the CIA,
served in Stockholm, Rome, and Saigon as
chief of the CIA's Far East Division.
Repercussions from Watergate forced
President Nixon 'to reshuffle his Cabinet,
leading to Colby's appointment as CIA di-
rector in 1973. Colby was removed by Presi-.
dent Ford in '1976.
Colby, 64, now works as an attorney in the
Washington office of Reid & Priest, special-
izing in international legal matters.
He. was in Jacksonville yesterday to
speak at Florida Junior College's Kent Cam-
pus. His talk, an insider's look into the- CIA,
was part of the Forecast '85 Lecture Series
sponsored by the FJC Institute for Private
Enterprise. flannel suit and
Colby, attired in a gray
navy blue tie, admitted with dry humor that
he is hardly a James Bond lookalike.
"I know what you're thinki~9 oesn t
look like a spy, with glasses hair,"
he told his 500' listeners. "You're thinking,
'Where's the cloak? Where's the stiletto?
Where's the blonde?'."
No, he said,bis appearance was not a cov-
er.
"The profession of intelligence is different
than it used to be," Colby said. "And it was
here in America that the changes were
made."
After 1945, when spying behind the Iron
and Bamboo curtains became more and
more difficult, the United States turned to
aerial photography, first with U-2 planes.and
later using satellites, he said. Hong
Instead of sendtng a spy through
Kong to the Manchurian border be-
tween the Soviet Union and China,
"we can look down at the tanks, the
aircraft and artillery assembled
there. We know when they move
from time to time. We know what 100
spies could not tell us."
In the mid-1970s, CIA operations
underwent a metamorphosis - "we
now insist on operating under the
Constitution, not outside it," he said.
"Congress has two committees in
the House and Senate that have the
right to know what the CIA is doing.
We have developed a special court, so
we can go before a judge and get a
warrant to conduct an activity.
"If we run it this way, it's clear the
decisions are American decisions -
not a CIA rogue elephant running
loose, and not just the president act-
ing. And when congressional commit-
tees have put up barriers to certain
activities, it has stopped certain ac-
tivities."
I. In an interview yesterday morning,
Colby said intelligence gathering and
analysis is an essential function of the
CIA and critical for the nation.
"You can't live in modern times
i without intelligence," he said. "The
-CIA is needed to collect information,
analyze the world and make sensible
projecti
ons"
Colby, who said he supports the nu-
clear freeze movement, said arms ne-
gotiations would not be possible with-
out CIA-supplied intelligence.
"So you've got to look at the plus-
ses as well as the minuses," he said.
A CIA manual distributed to
Nicaraguan rebels that advocated
"neutralization" of enemies was a
mistake, not an indication that the
CIA is out of control, Colby said.
"Mistakes happen once in a while,"
he said. "If the Air Force makes the
mistake of paying $7,000 for a coffee
pot, that doesn't negate the need for
the Air Force."
The word "neutralization" was an
unfortunate choice because it has
several connotations, Colby said.
"In dealing with guerrilla prob-
lems, you have to think in terms of
discrediting the leadership," he said.
"The term 'neutralize' originally
came from China. It didn't mean kill-
ing, it meant political neutralization
- putting. a dunce cap on those peo-
ple to be discredited and ' making
them ride around in a cart-
"It should not have been written us-
ing that term, because it has a double
meaning. But it's hard to control the
far ends of a guerrilla war. I should
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/09/09: CIA-RDP90-00806R000100390010-7