COLBY BACKS US IN EL SALVADOR, PRESSES FREEZE OF NUCLEAR ARMS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-01208R000100050037-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 22, 2011
• Sequence Number: 37
• Publication Date: January 18, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/02/23: CIA-RDP90-01208R000100050037-8
A.RT I C7 L ' I c -i:?1
18 JANUAPY 1983
ba C*ks
Salvador,
resses freeze of
iuciear arms
By Paul Aaron
Special to The Globe
WASHINGTON - He is a devout Ro-
man Catholic who believes the
church's "just war" doctrine should
help guide a nation's military conduct.
Yet during the 1960s. his name became
synonymous with Operation Phoenix.
an attempt to destroy the Viet Cong in-
frastructure that critics charged led to
a vast. indiscriminate campaign of po-
litical murder.
While CIA director. he delivered up
the agency's secrets to the Senate's
Church committee and struggled to es-
tablish a framework for permanent
congressional oversight of the intelli-.
genre community. He was dismissed by
President Gerald Ford and reviled as an
apostate by those CIA professionals
who still swore allegiance to the cult of
the clandestine.
Today a successful Washington law-
yer with the firm of Reid and Priest, he
is a staunch supporter of the nuclear
freeze, and his testimony has grown in-
creasingly prominent as debate intensi-
fies over the strategic balance and the
nuclear arms race. At the same time, he
defends US involvement in El Salvador.
where the hearts and minds of peas-
ants can be won through applying
techniques that. he says. produced
positive results in Vietnam.
William Colby is the man who em-
bodies these contradictions. At the end
of an interview, during which he held
forth on intelligence. arms control and
assassination, what seem jagged edges
of sensibility and experience fit togeth-
er into a smooth, even placid. charac-
ter.
Collective common sense
The nuclear freeze. Colby argues, re-
presents collective common sense mobi-
lized against the hocus-pocus of an un-
accountable elite: "My thesis is that the
subject of nuclear war has been so awe-
some, so frightening. so complex that
ordinary citizens have left it to the
priesthood to handle. But the priest-
hood has failed, and people looking at
outlandish ideas like the -racetrack in
the desert the original-MX basing
model, or now, dense pack. ask. 'My
goodness. are the experts who designed
Intelligence, which began as an ad-
junct to military operations, has
moved, Colby maintains, from a "mere
contest with the enemy to helping us
make decisions about the world we live
in." Colby contrasts the deadlock over
the 1946 Baruch Plan, the Initial ex-
periment to curb atomic weapons that
failed because the United States could
not persuade Stalin to authorize inspec-
tion teams, with the SALT I agreement,
which both sides Were able to sign and
monitor thanks to satellites and other
sophisticated data-retrieval systems.
"Or look at the electronic sensors in
the Sinai in 1973 that buttressed a
truce so that neither the Egyptians or
the Israelis had to stand at their bor-
ders with their fingers on the trigger.
Each side could have confidence that
ample warning would be available
should assembling of forces occur.
That's the crucial role for intelligence:
to keep the peace, not just aid In war."
Colby denies that a freeze would lead
to Soviet deception or cheating. "We're
going to maintain surveillance on Sovi-
STAT
steppes producing what we suspect is a
new whiz bomb, and we ask the Soviets
to let us take a look at it. they'll tell us
to mind our own business. Under a
freeze. if we think a factory is produc-
ing a new nuclear weapon. we can go to
them, and say, 'You've got to reassure
us youre under compliance.' "
No.ironclad guarantees
Colby admits, however, that iron-
clad guarantees against subterfuge
cannot be made. "But would it be possi-
ble for the Soviets to violate a freeze to a
strategically significant degree?" he
asks. "I don't think so. We have a var-
ied array of capabilities to protect
against major violations."
Colby asserts any attempt by the So-
viets to, mount a decisive evasion of a
freeze agreement would not only run
risk of detection by US surveillance,
but might also be jeopardized by disclo-
sures from the Russian people them-
selves. A small cabal of conspirators
would be inadequate Jo carry off a ploy
so substantial as to tip the strategic
balance, he said. Instead, widespread
coordination would be required, there-
by Increasing the chance that a partici-
pant, appalled by his government's du-
plicity, would bring the secret to the
West. "The Kremlin has to remember."
Colby said. "that [Oleg] Penkovsky. [a
Soviet army colonel who. during the
early 1960s, handed over more than
10.000 highly classified documents on
Soviet missiles to the CIAI acted out of a
wish to put a brake on what he felt was
reckless political leadership."
Irresponsibility and the inclination
et weapons in an v case. With a treaty, to engage in an arms race, are not, in
_. L__a?- TL.e~e (nlh.?'c ,?io~. rwruli~r to the Soviet
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