WILLIAM WEBSTER'S EXPECTED IMPACT ON CIA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000201820003-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 20, 2012
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: May 20, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

SST Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201820003-9
RADIO TV: REPORTS, INC.
4701 WILLARD AVENUE, CHEVY CHASE, MARYLAND 20815 [phone]
PROGRAM All Things Considered STATION WETA Radio
NPR Network
May 20, 1987 5:20 P.M.
Washington, D.C.
SUBJECT William Webster's Expected Impact on CIA
RENEE MONTAGNE: Former Judge and FBI Director William
Webster was confirmed by the Senate yesterday as the next
Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Recently, the relationship between Congress and the CIA
has been an uneasy one because of questions about the role the
late CIA Director William Casey played in the Iran-Contra affair.
New York Times reporter Steven Engelberg says many observers feel
William Webster's appointment will improve communications between
the CIA and Congress.
STEVEN ENGELBERG: He's a new kind of animal. He is
obviously someone the President knows and is going to, you know,
be comfortable with, but you wouldn't call him a political
intimate of the President's. And he's also not, you know, the
career intelligence professional, a guy who's spent his whole
life in that kind of field. The problems of collection,
particularly all these various technical systems that we use,
which, by the way, is the kind of major area that we spend our
money on in intelligence: satellites, photography, signals
intelligence interception -- that's where the money is. And he's
going to obviously have to learn a whole new kind of technology,
a whole new set of issues. And it's not going to be an
instantaneous process.
MONTAGNE: In confirming Webster, the Senate took a
position that he was well suited to repair the relationship
between Congress and the CIA. That seemed to be the overriding
concern there.
ENGELBERG: Well, indeed it was. And I think Judge
Webster, whatever he may or may not know about the intricacies of
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technical collection, is a man of impeccable reputation with the
Congress. Through his nine years with the FBI, there has never
been any question about the man's integrity, his honesty, the way
he runs the agency.
When things have gone wrong within his agency, as they
have on occasion -- with, say, the Jackie Presser case -- he's
been very forthright with Congress, and what he said has held up.
And I think people -- some of the same people who are on the
Intelligence Committee have been on the Judiciary Committee
watching Judge Webster perform. And I think that was his key
qualification. He was a man with just unimpeachable integrity.
And in addition to that, he's a man with a reputation of
running things by the book. You're not going to see a lot of
kind of wild off-the-books kind of thing that you saw with Bill
Casey. And they felt that, to some extent, the Agency's tendency
or -- I shouldn't say "the Agency" at all. I should say Mr.
Casey's tendency to run things out of his hip pocket was very
disturbing to them. And they know that Judge Webster will never
do that.
MONTAGNE: Could we explore for a minute what the
relationship has been between the CIA and the FBI?
ENGELBERG: Well, the history of their relationship is
an interesting one. When J. Edgar Hoover was in charge of the
FBI, the relationship was nonexistent to worse. Hoover wanted
nothing to do with the CIA, wanted very little to do with
counterintelligence in the United States, chasing Soviet spies
around. And there was very little cooperation. Which, of
course, is a terrible idea, since the spies the CIA chases
overseas, Russians who might be diplomats, say, in the embassy in
Prague, eventualy come to the United States. And there needs to
be a great deal of coordination between the two of them if you
want to have any kind of, you know, reasonable
counterintelligence.
More recently, things have gotten better. Everybody
agrees the relationship is much better than it was under Hoover.
There are still times -- and, in fact, some recent reports by the
Intelligence Committees cite some examples of this -- when the
two of them don't get along as well as they could.
MONTAGNE: Well, is that sort of communication much more
likely now that William Webster is head of the CIA?
ENGELBERG: Oh, I think you'd have to say so. I mean I
think one can be a little bit cautious in making assumptions. I
mean Webster is going to have to deal with a culture out there
which is longstanding. I mean this is the intelligence profes-
sionals of the Agency, and they have a view of life and they
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don't -- I don't think they, intrinsically, want to just run
across the street to their friends the cups, which is how they
view the FBI. But clearly, I mean, Webster's going to have much
less reticence about telling the FBI things than any of his
predecessors.
MONTAGNE: Su, where will the FBI be once William
Webster goes from one building to the other?
ENGELBERG: If they don't fill that job reasonably soon,
you're going to have a leadership vacuum over there much like the
CIA has had. And if you don't have somebody in charge, and
firmly in charge, and confirmed and so on, I think it slows the
work of the agency down.
MONTAGNE: Steven Engelberg is a Washington
correspondent for the New York Times.
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