EXCERPTS FROM SPEECH BY GEORGE BUSH DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AT COMMEMORATION OF THE BATTLE OF GUILFORD COURTHOUSE GUILFORD

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00901R000100040020-3
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 8
• Document Creation Date: December 19, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 10, 2001
• Sequence Number: 20
• Publication Date: March 14, 1976
• Content Type: SPEECH

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Excerpts from Speech
by
George Bush
Director of Central Intelligence
at
Commemoration of the Battle of Guilford Courthouse
Guilford Courthouse National Military Park
14 March 1976
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Intelligence is a demanding craft. I have not been
in this business for very long, but already I can tell you
a few things I have learned. One is that the quality of the
people I have met -- at the Central Intelligence Agency
and in the other parts of the intelligence community --
gives me great confidence. I am impressed with the
competence and dedication of the people in our intelligence
community. They are professionals in the finest sense of
the word. I might add that the spread of academic skills is
remarkable. The CIA alone has enough PhDs to stock a
university faculty with everything from historians and
economists to mathematicians and aeronautical engineers.
Another thing you should know: I am convinced that
the CIA and the intelligence community are under control
and doing their jobs. The agency indeed made some mis-
takes in the past. I am not here to defend them. But I
am here to tell you that the agency itself rooted out
those errors and put an end to them well before they were
publicly revealed.
As I am sure most of you know, President Ford has
issued a new executive order to ensure that the abuses and mis-
takes of the past are not repeated. The provisions of that
order have already been laid down in agency regulations.
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I know many people may wonder what good regula-
tions may do. Well, let me tell you another thing I
have learned about the CIA. Its employees have very
deeply ingrained pride and loyalty. They also have an
extraordinary sense of duty. It is my belief that the
guidelines laid down by the President will be followed
to the letter. I have made a personal commitment to see
that this is so.
Let me turn for just a moment to some philosophy.
Before coming down here to speak with you today, I read
a bit about Guilford County and the kind of people who
first settled here. They were strong minded, moral, law-
abiding, and determined. They also must have known one
very important fact: you cannot legislate morality. You
can write all the laws, regulations, orders, and anything
else you can think of -- and someone else will think of a
way to break them or come up with an idea that isn't covered.
There is no substitute for honesty. There is no
substitute for conscience. There is no substitute for
common sense.
It is not fashionable in these days of tearing down
our institutions to say, "trust me." Yet Americans have
to have faith and trust in some degree or none of our
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governmental systems will work. I do believe that
oversight of the intelligence community is necessary, and
I strongly support the new measures set out by the
President. I welcome the responsible exercise of over-
sight by the congress as well.
But it still comes down to a basic fact. You cannot
conduct an intelligence agency out in the open. There must
be secrecy. Much of what we do can and should be shared
with the public and all branches of the government.
In this job I will cooperate as fully as possible with
the congress , but there are certain pieces of information
that must not be divulged -- and they won't be. I don't
think that the American people really want reckless
disclosure. Sometimes we lose sight of the fact that
secrets are respected in many areas of our lives. Americans
expect confidentiality at the ballot box. They expect it with
their doctors and lawyers and clergymen. We have laws to
protect certain business secrets and even to protect Depart-
ment of Agriculture crop estimates. I am sure that no one in
this audience thinks it is in our national interest to make
public the war plans of the Department of Defense, or the in-
chambers conversations of our Supreme Court.
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I am confident that the vast majority of the
American people support the need for protecting real
intelligence secrets. I am completely committed to working
for such protection. And I do not intend to use the over-
worked words "secrecy" and "national security" to hide abuses
or cover up mistakes. Under the new executive order I am
instructed to do precisely the opposite. I intend to do
that.
In fact, if we can find a way to make more information
available on CIA, I am confident the people will be even
more supportive of our agency and its important work.
There is great misunderstanding about our work. As
a result of the past years's revelations, both true and
false, our intelligence failures -- and there have been some--
have been widely publicized. But the nature of our work is
such that we can seldom talk of our many successes without
revealing our "sources and methods." We do battle with
kidnappers abroad; we struggle against a network of
narcotics peddlers who try to spread their poisons in our
country; we get information on the plans of other countries
to inflate artificially the prices or control the supplies
of vital raw materials; we resist the evils of communist
intelligence services abroad. Every one of those things
could affect you personally as well as our greater national
interests. And it is the real mission of intelligence to
see that our policy makers have solid information so they
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can move to frustrate the plans of those who would harm us.
I believe that indeed the intelligence community has
been harmed by the revelations and investigations of the
past year. Our intelligence people have suffered a vicious
battering. Their families have been under great pressure.
Many of the charges have not been true. I am relieved
that I can stand here today and tell you that American
intelligence is remarkably intact. I wish you could all have
the chance to feel the spirit and pride I feel in the
intelligence community. There is a dedication that is fully
compatible with the spirit of Guilford Courthouse.
As I have begun to get out around the country in this
job, I have also felt that the American people do understand
the need for our intelligence services. Balance and reason
are beginning to,prevail. The very nature of the abuses --
some real., some contrived -- that occurred was so sensational
that it gathered all the attention and masked the very real
contributions that intelligence makes to preserving our
American way of life.
In closing let me tell you about an incident that
occurred shortly before I became the Director of Central
Intelligence. A correspondent I know made the remark on a
talk show that anyone dumb enough to take this job was too
dumb to do it. He got a good laugh out of it among his
fellow panelists -- but to me it was a little sick.
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It displayed an appalling insensitivity to our legitimate
national security needs.
We at the CIA are trying to conduct foreign intelligence,
not to weaken our country, but to strengthen it. It's those
who would disclose the names of our agents abroad; it's those
who believe they can recklessly reveal classified documents;
it's those who would dismantle the CIA, that in reality are
damaging our country.
You all know some of the problems I face in this job
as Director of Central Intelligence, but I wish you could
share in the pride I feel for our intelligence community
and the comfort I get, as an American, from seeing the
tremendous talent we have in CIA and across the whole
intelligence community.
I wish you could talk to some of our employees whose
heads are high after a couple of years of enormous attack.
They are as vigorously opposed to the mistakes of the past
as our strongest critics, but they have retained a
perspective, they know the need for strong intelligence,
and they are prepared to withstand the attacks, if that is
necessary to work for a cause they believe in.
I wish you could have met the son of Richard Welch,
our station chief in Greece who was gunned down following
disclosure of his name by people bent on destroying CIA.
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This young man knew well that his father had died for a
cause in which he deeply believed.
If you could do these things, you would understand
much about the fibre of our country in 1976 and you would
understand much about the fibre of the patriots at Guilford
Courthouse 195 years ago.
They are one. They. are the same.
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