DEPUTY DIRECTOR FRANK CARLUCCI FOREIGN AFFAIRS COMMITTEE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00901R000100180001-0
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 16
• Document Creation Date: December 14, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 6, 2001
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: November 18, 1980
• Content Type: SPEECH

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PUBLIC AFFAIRS STAFF
Deputy Director Frank Carlucci
Foreign Affairs Committee
Tucson, Arizona
Tuesday, November 18, 1980
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DEPUTY DIRECTOR FRANK CARLUCCI: Thank you very
much, Hayden, Jay, members of the committee and guests. It's
a pleasure for my wife Marcia and I to be with you tonight.
I hope you will bear with me if I speak rather slowly since
I've got a touch of laryngitis. I told my wife she could
finish my speech if I conk out.
Hayden has told some stories, a story about my
past. Let me tell you one about my early days in Zaire,
then the Congo, shortly after independence. We had a visit
of three American senators, named Gore, Hart and Neuberger.
And as a young Foreign Service officer, I was assigned escort
duty. I had arranged for the President of the Congolese Senate
to invite them to his home for lunch. And in those days, at
least, you very seldom saw a Congolese wife.
But as we came to the door, he came out, and he had
a woman by his side. So I introduced her as his wife. We were
in having cocktails before lunch. I was doing the interpreting.
Another woman came in, shook hands all the way around, went
over and sat down next to the f i rst woman . Senator Gore turned
to me and said "Who's she?" I said "I don't know. Maybe she's
his wife." He said "I thought you introduced that other woman
as his wife." "Well, I don't know. Let me ask."
And to that he replied, "Yes, both of them are my
wives." So the Interest of the American senators picked up
considerably. And the President of the Congolese Senate said
Now, now, you must understand. Here In the Congo, our customs
are very different from yours. For example, where I come from
in the Leopoldville district of the Congo, I'm a big tribal
chief. And as a tribal chief, I would normally be entitled to
five or six wives. But since I'm a Catholic, I have only two."
[Laughter.]
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I have chosen as the context of my comments tonight
intelligence effectiveness in a free society. And if you re-
flect for a minute, you will recall that it's just about a year
since tanks crossed the border into Afghanistan, a virtually
defenseless country. The Soviets took it; they show every in-
tention of staying.
It's been over a year since a former ally, Iran, erupted
in a social revolution and took 52 of our diplomats hostage. As
we sit here tonight, two countries on the shores of the Persian
Gulf, Iraq and Iran, are engaged in open warfare. The United
States does not have diplomatic relations with either. The
leaders of both detest the United States. Those of you down
here in Arizona are obviously very conscious of the efforts that
Castro is making on targets of opportunity in Central America at
the same time that he continues to serve as a surrogate of the
Soviets in Africa.
Poland is caught up in a revolution of rising worker
expectations that could threaten the very solidarity of the Soviet
grip on Eastern Europe. And the Soviet Union Itself, after having
poured approximately twice as much of its gross national product
into defense the past ten or twelve years as we have, has reached
an era of approximate parity. At the same time, its economic
growth rate is slowing down, its oil production has dropped.
And it is facing Internal problems, not the least of which will
be a leadership transition to a new leadership that we, despite
all our efforts know very little about. Nobody can really tell
what the post Stalin generation of Soviet leaders will be like.
Through it all, Western Europe vacillates and waits
to see which way the U. S. goes. The American people, looking
at these problems, have concluded that more effort has to be put
into our national security, more effort into defense. Those who
understand defense also know that all the armor in the world isn't
any good unless you have intelligence on the enemy. The lessons
of Pearl Harbor are etched indelibly on the American psyche.
So the question people are beginning to ask is whether
our intelligence is effective. I welcome that debate. I think
it's high time that we changed the focus of the debate from
the question of intelligence abuse -- not that that wasn't a
problem that should have been dealt with; but it has been dealt
with -- and began to look at the question of our intelligence
strength. Are we going to be able to cope with the very sub-
stantial problems of the '80s that are foreshadowed by some
of the events I've just described.
My answer -- and perhaps I'm biased -- is that I think
we can. We have a number of dedicated people in the intelligence
business. But there're also some things that we the American
people and their government are going to have to do if our
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intelligence is to keep pace with the challenges ahead. And I
hope to be able to lay a few of these out for you.
First of all, what are the characteristics of good
intelligence? Professionals in the business tell the story of
two men trapped on a desert island. A helicopter flew over,
came down low. The pi l of leaned out and shouted "You're lost."
With that, the helicopter ascended and disappeared over the
horizon . And one man turned to the other and sa i d "That p i I of
was an intel I igence officer." The second man said "Well, how
did you know?" "Two reasons. First of all, his information was
dead on, and, secondly, it was totally useless."
[Laughter.]
Well, the first requirement of good Intelligence is
that it has to be relevant. And I think it's illuminating to
note that one of the first things that President-elect Reagan is
going to do in Washington is receive two intel l igence briefings,
because policy-?making i s only as good as the facts on which It
is based. And good intelligence doesn't mean running In with
information on the latest coup or the latest foreign develop-
ment. It means pulling together a I I the Information and putting
it in Its proper context. It means discerning trends. It means
helping the poI Icy-makers decide what the shape of the world
might be two, three, four years from now.
Intelligence accuracy depends on two things: good
collection and good analysis. And contrary to the popular Image,
CIA headquarters at Langley represents less a spy factory, what-
ver that would look like, than it does a small university. There're
a lot of people with advanced degrees doing research, analyzing,
writing vast numbers of papers. Much of their material Is public
sources.
And the legal function is absolutely critical, because
reams and reams of information flow in from intelligence organiza-
tions. And if the pot icy-maker would jump off on the basis of
one report, he would be frequently mistaken in making a decision.
So we have tried over the course of the past three
years to put emphasis on the quality of analysis, to bring in
good people from all different professions. We have psycholo-
gists who look at foreign leaders. We have engineers who look
at telemetry. We have agronomists who look at crops. And of
course, we have economists.
On the collection side, there're essentially two means
of collecting intelligence. One we call the technical systems,
represented by and large by our satellites and highly sensitive
technical collection systems. The press enjoys speculating on
the marvels of these secrets. And indeed, they are impressive.
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But by and large, they can only tell you what happened yesterday
or what may be happening today, if you're lucky. They really
can't tell you what's on the minds of foreign leaders. That
can only be determined through what we call human intelligence.
And I'd l i ke to devote the rest of my comments tonight here
talking about human intelligence, what it is, because I think
it's very badly misunderstood.
CIA people are not James Bonds running around the
world. Nor are they really people who are stationed in other
countries simply to pick up all the information they can. They
are people who are sent to a country with a very specific purpose.
They are what we call [words inaudible] these kinds of sources
of Information.
And the key to the intelligence business Is what we
call the takeoffs. And his function really isn't very different
than the function that many of you have in the business world.
If you want a product, you go out and purchase it. The product
in this case is information, a certain type of information. He
looks around, tries to assess what the sources of this information
might be. He develops a relationship. And that in many cases
includes a contract with that particular source of information.
And not infrequently that contract doesn't involve money. Many
people provide the information for ideological or other reasons.
In some instances It does involve money. In many cases people
want money put away in other countries if they have to leave
their own country.
There are, of course, some unique aspects to that
contract. One is that in many, if not most of the cases the
Individual supplying this information is breaking the laws of
his own country. And the second is that the contract, by neces-
sity, must be secret. No one is going to risk his career, in some
cases his life, his life and the lives of his family, if he doesn't
think the information he's providing is going to be kept confiden-
tial. So secrecy is all important in intelligence.
There are those who decry secrecy in our society today
and say it's un-American, that you should be able to run the in-
telligence business more in the open, that any time you claim
national security, it's some kind of a cover-up. Well, I can
assure you as a nonprofessional -- I've been in the intelligence
business now for a few years -- that it is a very serious matter.
I have seen agents compromised by seemingly innocuous statements
in newspaper articles, or seemingly innocuous statements by poli-
tical figures. "How can that statement possibly hurt?" What they
don't understand is that the adversary, the counterintelligence
services of the adversary may have everything but the final piece,
and that little bit of information will be enough to compromise
an agent.
Now we can't say anything about it. When an agent is
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compromised, you very seldom know what's happened. He just dis-
appears or he breaks off contact. We can't say to a journalist
"You compromised an agent," because that would be confirmation.
So secrecy is very Important to the successful conduct
of the intelligence business. And it's not that alien in our
society. We have secret relationships -- the lawyer-client re-
lationship, the grand jury, bank accounts. There're all kinds
of secret relationships. Indeed, journalists themselves, who
like revealing intelligence secrets, are the most adamant in
protecting their own sources, for the very same reason: they
don't want to lose their sources. There is one difference. If
their source is compromised, they lose a source. If ours is com-
promised, there's very frequently a life involved.
It is also possible to have secrecy in an Intel I i-
gence organization and still protect civil liberties, still have
an oversight function. We are accountable in writing to the
President as an elected officials. And we are accountable to
something called an Intelligence Oversight Board, consisting of
three distinguished Americans, which reports directly to the Pre-
sident. Anybody, anybody In this room, anybody in the CIA, who
knows of any wrongdoing can go in confidence to the board. Their
comments are thoroughly investigated.
We report to two oversight committees on the Hill, one
of which will be chaired will by one of your own senators, who
do a very thorough job of going into all of our activities. And
they do it in confidence. They do it In behalf of the American
pubI ic.
And that is a far more effective way of exercise over-
sight than attempting to make an Intel l igence organization subject
to the Freedom of Information Act, in many respects a contradiction
in terms. We in the CIA receive some 4000 Freedom of Information
requests a year. Each one costs the taxpayer, on the average,
about $800.00. They come, by and large, from a small group, not
from the general public. They can be identified as chronic CIA
critics. Some come on form letters. They also come from for-
eigners. We had a lawsuit the other day Involving one from a
supporter of the Ayatollah Khomeini. We had one the other day
from the Polish Embassy. Indeed, If the Soviet secret police
were to write us asking for information, we would be obliged
under the law to respond within ten days.
That kind of process for an intelligence business
doesn't make a lot of sense. Sure, we can say no on national
security grounds. We've gone to a lot of work. There's a chance
of error. What we do can be reviewed by a judge. And finally,
we can't go beyond the request, so we don't know what other pieces
of the puzzle the requester may hold. Perhaps most Important, the
Freedom of Information Act stands as a symbol around the world for
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a well-known fact: the American government today Is unable to
keep a secret.
And I submit that If we are going to keep an effective
intelligence organization, we have to learn to keep a secret.
There is another activity that's extremely damaging
to an effective intelligence operation. On Dupont Circle in
Washington, not far away from our Capitol, there's a small group
of people putting out a bulletin called Covert Action Information
Bulletin, dedicated exclusively to reviewing the names of CIA
people, our people and their agents overseas.
Now a CIA man named In a newspaper overseas is a CIA
man rendered ineffective. No agent wants to communicate with a
CIA man whose name is on the front page of a newspaper. And yet
despite the fact there're various laws in our government prevent-
ing us from giving out banking information, information on commodity
futures, there Is no law on the books which makes It a crime to give
out the names of CIA personnel. We've asked the Congress for help
on this. We've gotten a bill out of three committees, two on the
House floor this Thursday. People have raised questions of the
First Amendment. But we have framed the bi I I in a way that First
Amendment rights are not abridged. The Justice Department has told
us the bill is fully constitutional. And I am hopeful that even
the lame duck session of Congress will enable us to deal with this
critical Issue.
A word about covert action. When people talk about
covert action, the thing that immediately leaps to mind is Chile.
And because of Chile, a lot of people have wanted to kill the
instrument because they didn't like the product. The fact is that
everybody acknowledges that our government ought to try and influ-
ence events in other countries. In some cases it Is not feasible
to do that openly. Every country in the world has a covert action
capabi I ity. In many cases, we have, and can continue to use, co-
vert action in the interests of creating democratic structures,
not tearing them down.
One shouldn't take one example and draw a straight line
and extrapolate from it. What is needed, once again, is a surro-
gate process, an oversight process. We now have that process.
The Congress has decided to cut down the number of committees
that we report covert action to from eight to two. And I am con-
fident that there is a responsible mechanism in place to enable
the U. S. government to have some tool, as one of my predecessors
said, somewhere between a diplomatic demarche and sending in the
Marines.
Let me close these remarks on a note of concern that's
more general than the CIA. I have been worried about what I would
call the question of experts In government In the 1980s. Any
governmental organization is only as good as its people. I was
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startled the other day when our director of Personnel told me
that the CIA had lost 58% of its senior staff. This is happen-
ing in other departments. Attrition at CIA is a lot less than
it is in other departments. We are still managing to get good
recruits. But there Is a serious problem, though, in government
in Washington. Part of it is related to salary. How could you
run your firm, If you're in business, if everybody from middle
level management up to the vice president level made the same
salary and hadn't received an increase in four or five years?
Or if government were constantly -- or if they were constantly
criticized in the press as being Inefficient, disinterested, it
could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Or if you were so sur-
rounded by regulations and oversight Inspectors that there was
no premium, very little premium on getting the job done.
Now oversight Inspectors, as I've said, are important.
But the approach that people seem to be taking toward government
now Is one of catching wrongdoers, eliminating waste, rather than
getting the mission done. We've got to get back to the point
where the person gets the mission done also. Or, finally, if
you have a retirement system where one's vesting goes up faster
if he retires than if he stays in. It's very difficult under
those circumstances to keep your senior management people. I
would suggest that the new people coming into Washington take a
serious look at that point government-wide.
How do we stand as an Intelligence organization vis-
a-vis our adversary? Oh, the KGB probably outnumbers us maybe
four to one. It certainly puts in far more resources in the
intelligence business than we do. We're ahead of them techni-
cally. I think we've got better people. And we don't have the
ideological problems that they have. It's not hard in the United
States for the intelligence organization to deliver bad news to
the President. It's a damn sight harder to deliver it in the
Kremlin.
I think we can stay ahead. As I've said, we have some
very dedicated people. We have a It of interest in good intel-
ligence in the Congress these days. And I am confident that if
we can have the support of groups such as yourselves, we can deal
with some of the problems that I have described, and that our
Central Intelligence Agency will continue to be the finest In-
telligence organization In the world.
Thank you very much.
[Applause, followed by Q&A.]
Q: ...And is it true, what the critics allege, that
it may take anywhere from ten years to perhaps 60 years to re-
establish a normal and competent organization?
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DEPUTY DIRECTOR CARLUCCI: We try to bring people in at
the entry level, college graduates. About 33% of them have ad-
vanced degrees that are coming in now. We put them through
a training course of about a year. They then go on the job.
And like any organization, we have mid career training courses.
We send people to universities. And then we have senior training
courses for some of our people; the National War College, for
example, Harvard Business School, various other institutions.
So training is a continuous process.
But certainly we have a lot invested in a man when he
reaches the age of 50. And the average retirement age in the
agency is somewhere in the neighborhood of 53, which I person-
ally think is very early. I think we're losing a lot of valuable
talent when people are retiring that early, which is why I say
we have to address incentives for the top managers.
You asked how long will it take to establish a competent
organization. I would argue, sir, that we have a competent organ-
ization. All the indicators that I have seen, and I can't make
them public, are that we're doing better than we have ever. The
real question is how much better could we do if we solved some
of the problems I addressed. And it's really not a question of
unleashing the CIA, as the journalists like to say. We don't
want to be unleashed. We're perfectly happy with oversight.
What we want are the tools of our trade back. And the basic
tool of our trade is secrecy.
My own judgment i s if we can in this or the next
Congress deal with the problems of the Freedom of Information
Act, deal with the problem of the people who reveal the names
of our people and our agents overseas, we w i l l have done a great
deal to ehance the credibility of the CIA around the world and
greately improved our effectiveness.
There's one more thing, too, that has to happen, and
I think that will happen, and that is that we have to change the
atmosphere within Washington where the word "national security"
is no longer a credible term, where people take serious intel I i-
gence information, where it Isn't spread all over Washington,
where everything isn't leaked to the newspapers, and where people
understand that they have a higher responsibility and that re-
sponsibility Is to maintain the integrity of the classification
system. If we do that, you've got the people in the CIA that can
help that organization and make that organization take a quantum
leap forward.
Q: Mr. Ambassador, I think most of us are interested
in a strong CIA. And many of us are aware of cases where covert
agents had very thin, almost transparent cover.
My question is if a relatively small office on Dupont
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Circle can uncover an agent, what good is he? You know, they're
no better than counterintelligence In Djakarta or Rangoon, or
someplace like that.
DEPUTY DIRECTOR CARLUCCI: Well, there's no question
that the KGB, for example, is able to put its people under better
cover than we can, although we are making improvements in cover.
And I can't discuss those for obvious reasons.
But I think the professionals in this room will tell
you that there's always a trade-off between operations and cover.
You can be under the best cover in the world for over a 30 year
career, If you're a successful operator, you're going to leave
a trail and eventually you're going to be uncovered. It doesn't
mean that we shouldn't make the effort.
There's also a distinction between whether a good coun-
terintelligence service discovers you and whether your name is on
on the front pages of newspapers. For its own reason, if the KGB
is aware of the identify of one of our people, it probably is not
going to publish that. But if in Kingston, Jamaica the names of
alleged CIA people are spread over the front pages of a newspaper,
it can render those people ineffective in the local environment
and, as it did in Kingston, result in attempts at violence against
them.
So we need to do both things. We need to maintain the
best cover we can, but, at the same time, we need to have a
statute to make it illegal for these people to engage in this
kind of misguided activity, which has no public merit whatsoever.
I have not seen anyone justify it in any way. It doesn't help the
oversight function. It doesn't add to the public knowledge. The
bill, as we framed it, would not catch legitimate journalists who
want to criticize the CIA, who want to write a story where they
may mention the name of a CIA agent. The people we're after are
the people who engage in the pattern and practice of revealing
the names of CIA people for the deliberate purpose of impeding
our operations.
So I t h i n k the answer to your question i s we have to
Q: It's often assumed, at least west of the falls
of the Potomac, that the sudden overthrow of the Shah was largely
unexpected by Washington. And it's further assumed that this re-
presents an Intel I igence failure.
Would you be willing to discuss the accuracy of this
and whether we have any reason to assume that the same thing
would not occur in Saudi Arabia or Kuwait or the United Arab
Em I rates?
DEPUTY DIRECTOR CARLUCCI: Well, in the intelligence
business, as I've said, your failures are always trumpeted, and
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your successes, by definition, should not to be mentioned. And
it really depends on what your definition of failure Is.
I think it is fair to say that we in the CIA did not
predict the dimensions of the upheaval in Iran. I don't know of
any intelligence service anywhere in the world that did. Nor,
contrary to what I've read in the press, did we hear from any
academics who were predicting the dimensions of the upheaval 1n
Iran. We did accompany the erosion of the Shah's authority
quite closely. We did indicate that he was on very weak ground,
oh, six or eight months before he fell. But the obvious answer
to your question is certainly we could have done better, and we
tried to profit by the lesson learned. I myself participated
with the Undersecretary of State and Dr. Brzezinski's deputy
on a group that took a look at broad reporting around the world
to make sure that we were doing enough in the social area and
in the religious areas, students areas, the labor union area.
And that's not just the CIA. It's the CIA, State Department,
all government agencies overseas.
You also have a problem that is a very difficult one
to answer in countries like Iran, where you've got rulers who are
paranoid about contact with the opposition and you've got a sub-
stantial investment in that country. And if you have too much
contact with the opposition, you put that investment at risk.
How much are you w i l l i ng to put it at risk? The answer is you
probably ought to put it in risk more than we have. It's a balance
that you have to strike with each country, and it has to be done in
collaboration with the ambassador.
I can't give you a categoric guarantee that we can pre-
dict all the social upheavals in the world. I can tell you that
we have a new office to deal with this kind of problem, that we're
bringing on board the best talent that we have, that we've recon-
figured the reporting around the world, and that we will do our
best.
Q: [Question Inaudible.]
DEPUTY DIRECTOR CARLUCCI: So would the KGB like to
know, which is the reason we don't give that out. We try not
to give information to our adversaries that would give them
Insights Into our operations. The Congress considered the ques-
tion of revealing the single figure for the total CIA budget and
decided against it.
I can't comment on individual instances. But let me
say this. If the CIA were half as powerful as the world thinks
it is, it would indeed be an enormous organization. There are
accusations made every day about the CIA. The communist propa-
ganda machine grinds them out. When I was in Portugal, long
before I had anything to do with the CIA, as a career Foreign
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Service officer, nothing to do with the CIA, the Portuguese
Communist Party put out a book on me that thick called "Dossier
Carlucci, CIA," which was filled with lies.
Obviously it's in the interest of the Soviets, par-
ticularly in Third World countries, to blame every conceived
ill on the CIA, trying to stir up these countries against us.
That's something that we have to live with.
That the CIA is meddling -- I don't really know what
you mean by meddling. If you mean by that covert action, every
covert action must now, due to an executive order, go through
the National Security Council, be considered by the secretaries
of State, Defense, Director of OMB and the Assistant to the
President for National Security Affairs. Then it goes to the
President of the United States, who must make a finding, in
writing, and that finding, up until a month ago, was briefed to
eight different committees of Congress. That's over 200 members
of Congress. And I myself did most of the briefing, so I can tell
you it's an exhaustive process. We're now down to two committees.
That means that all of those people, responsible officials, have
decided on that "meddling."
So I submit to you that In most cases it is not
meddling, that there are things that are being done that are
genuinely in the national interest, and they are being done in
support of overall U. S. policy. And the accusations that are
made around the world are greatly exaggerated.
Q: [Inaudible.]
DEPUTY DIRECTOR CARLUCCI: Judge, we have a Supreme
Court decision in the Snepp case, Frank Snepp, a former CIA of-
ficer who wrote a book on Vietnam, who breached his contract.
Everyone coming Into the CIA signs a contract with us that enables
us to review the book, and we can ask that sensitive information
be deleted. Snepp deliberately refused to submit his book. We
took him to court, and the Supreme Court ruled in our favor.
The books are now being submitted to the CIA. What
we have to seek if they violate their agreement, of course, is
a civil judgment. It's not a criminal offense. In the case
Q: Well, I mean with these bills, would they be
criminal then?
DEPUTY DIRECTOR CARLUCCI: Our bill would make It a
criminal offense to reveal the names of CIA personnel and
their agents. It would only encompass revealing the names of
CIA personnel and their agents. It would not encompass other
CIA information. In other words, it's a narrowly drawn bill,
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and it really wouldn't affect the books that are being written.
The books that are being written come under a civil contract.
Q: Mr. Ambassador, if the CIA were to preclude covert
activity, any covert activity, would it survive as a viable,
useful organization?
DEPUTY DIRECTOR CARLUCCI: Oh, it would survive as an
Intelligence collection organization. And mind you, covert action
activities are very seldom inspired by the CIA. In almost every
case, they are carried out by the CIA after having been inspired
by other branches of government -- State Department, Defense
Department -- and, as I have indicated, personally approved by
the President. So these are really presidential foreign policy
activities.
What it is Is a foreign policy activity carried out
in clandestine manner. Now people don't have any problem gener-
ally with trying to influence events in other governments, and
they don't have any problem with an intelligence organization
operating clandestinely. But somehow when you put the two to-
gether, they think it's immoral. That is to say, it's perfectly
moral to steal secrets clandestinely, but it's not moral clan-
destinely to give money to a democratic party, for example, In
a particular country.
I frankly have difficulty understanding that distinction.
I think what we have to look at is the surrogate process that I
described to make certain that covert action activities are ap-
proved by responsible officials and that they're consistent with
U. S. foreign policy.
Q: I think that maybe an example, a good example of
that is that I believe that I'm correct in saying that in the
case of Chile that what we were doing by way of covert action
is we were trying to support the opposition until such time as
there was an election when the opposition would be strong enough
to defeat Allende. I think it's totally incorrect to say that
the CIA had any part in the military, trade unions, whatever It
was, jumping the gun and forcing the issue with Allende.
DEPUTY DIRECTOR CARLUCCI: I'm not an expert on Chile.
I wasn't around at the time. But that's what I've read....
MAN: I think you're right, Hayden. I think the CIA
basically took a bum rap on Chile.
Q: Well, I think the point that I'm trying to get
across is that the CIA was working strictly in accordance with
what was in the best interests of our foreign policy, which was
eventually, in due course of time, to defeat Allende. And that's
as far as we went. We were not involved in precipitating a crisis.
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DEPUTY DIRECTOR CARLUCCI: There are -- quite frankly,
there're a number of covert actions that have been carried out
that, were I at liberty to make them public, you would be quite
proud of .
Q: Mr. Ambassador, in mentioning your two divisions
of intelligence gathering, technical and human, you commented
on the fact that the human has the responsibility to look into
the mind, which leads to this question. How much do you feel
Is the responsibility of the intelligence agency to say what
the intentions of the enemy are, or policies are, and how much
of that Is the responsibility of the policy-makers?
DEPUTY DIRECTOR CARLUCCI: Well, I think it's basically
an intelligence responsibility. We give the policy-maker our
best assessment on what the adversary's intentions are. It is
then up to him to make decisions on U. S. policy.
We have on occasion, but only when requested. provided
the policy-maker with policy options. But we steadfastly refuse
to provide policy recommendations. We think It's important to
maintain the Integrity of the intelligence process and to keep
that separate from pol icy, so that we don't become the handmaiden
of pol icy. We have to be able to cal I the shots as we see them.
Q: Ambassador Carlucci, I'd like you, if you could,
to tell us a little bit about your experience in Portugal, be-
cause you were there at a very critical period. And we hear a
lot about failures of foreign policy and failure of our represen-
tatives. This was an extremely critical period, and evidently we
made some right decisions during that period that have continued
to serve Portugal well, and it's continuing with relative stability
today.
DEPUTY DIRECTOR CARLUCCI: Well, the credit in Portugal
is basically due to two things, the nature of the Portuguese people
themselves and the fact that the communists overplayed their hand.
It's a rather complicated story. The communists badly misjudged
the Portuguese people, who are a deeply conservative, religious
people. The communists allowed themselves to get into the posi-
tion of attacking the Church, which was a mistake. And they went
too far too fast, and the Portuguese people reacted.
We also had the advantage, of course, of geographi-
cally and of association with NATO and economic association with
Portugal.
The U. S. played a role in being sympathetic with the
democratic forces, which we quietly supported, providing aid
at the appropriate moment, in two ways: economic aid, because
the backbone of the country, the economic backbone of the country
had been broken by the communists, deliberately broken, and
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m i I i tary aid to try and reintegrate them to NATO.
With that small assistance, coupled with the assistance
that the Europeans provided, the Portuguese people were able to
take it from there, and they've done a rather remarkable job.
I know of no country that in the course of two years overthrew
a forty year dictatorship, went to the brink of communism, drew
back, and installed a functioning democratic system. And I think
the Portuguese deserve a lot of credit.
Q: What is the CIA's assessment of the United States'
position in the world, economically and militarily? How do we
see ourselves? [Words inaudible.] Are we?
DEPUTY DIRECTOR CARLUCCI: No, by no means. We're
not a second-rate power at al I.
The Soviet Union has, more or less, attained strategic
parity with us. But those of you who are military men know that
there're a lot of factors that go into that kind of an equation,
and you can't make absolute judgments.
But economically, far and away we're the most powerful
country In the world. We have the greatest potential. We have
sufficient armed forces, although I, for one, would advocate
strengthening our armed forces.
I do think, though, that the world has come to question
our resolve in the wake of Watergate and Vietnam, that we have
been far too long working ourselves out of the Vietnam/Watergate
complex. It's particularly true in the Middle East, but we hear
it everywhere we go. People say "When are you going to stand
up and act i i ke the big power that you are?"
I think It's probably -- I don't want to make judgments
on what's going to happen in our pol icy in the near f uture, but
I think there is a genuine hopefulness around the world that
we have put these events behind us and we'll begin to assert
ourselves more.
Q: I have a question that maybe you can help with.
Both you in your remarks here th i s evening and Case Chann i ng
in his introductory remarks commented on the importance of
intelligence in formulation of foreign policy.
Could you tell us just a little bit more about the
interaction between those two components? How is the intelli-
gence information communicated so that it can be implemented in
a wise foreign pol icy way?
DEPUTY DIRECTOR CARLUCCI: We have a structured pro-
cess where once a year we sit down with the key foreign policy
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makers to try and ascertain their priorities. What are the
key questions we're going to be addressing? What are the
areas of the world in which you're interested? And then we
rank these areas of the world, these issues and questions,
and put numbers alongside them. And they are translated into
collection priorities for our people in the field.
The information comes back into what we call a Direc-
torate of Operations. It then moves over toward the analytical
side of the house, where it's collated, analyzed -- computer in-
tensive, in that area. And then we produce what we call the
finished product, which in many cases is an interagency product.
There're two types. One's interagency, and one's the CIA, which
is then delivered to the policy-maker In various forms, depending
on its classification. There's one that goes every day to the
President and just a few of top officials. There're others that
get broader distribution. There are then In-depth studies that
are done of a particular country. And more and more we've moved
into interdisciplinary studies, studies on resource issues, our
oil study for example, one we made public. Many of our studies
are made public. I guess we make public about 150 a year.
[Portion inaudible.]
We also have a system for evaluating the finish pro-
MAN: This might be a good time to mention that on
the table outside when you leave you will see examples of some
of the publications that are made available by the CIA. And if
you see a publication there that you would like to get a copy
of, if you'll let Stormy (?) know or me, we can then do what we
can to get additional copies of those publications for you.
MAN: Stormy, do you have a question?
MAN: That was my point. I forgot to make that announce-
ment. Thanks for doing it.
[End of Q&A.]
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