DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF CIA, FRANK CARLUCCI COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00901R000100190005-5
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 15
• Document Creation Date: December 14, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 6, 2001
• Sequence Number: 5
• Publication Date: January 19, 1979
• Content Type: SPEECH

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PUBLIC AFFAIRS STAFF
Deputy Director of CIA, Frank Carlucci
Committee on Foreign Relations
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
January 19, 1979
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[Introduction.]
DEPUTY DIRECTOR FRANK CARLUCCI: ...I understand and
appreciate the fact your sessions are very informal. So let me
try and tick off just a few thoughts on the major problems that
are facing the Intelligence community today. And as I try to
sort 1-hem out in my own mind, I think they come down to approxi-
mately four problems.
Number one is the nature of the external theat. Number
two, the changing character of the intelligence business. And
number three, I will refer to, briefly, rather directly, I guess,
the need to reconcile the demands of a secret agency to the pre-
cepts of a free society, a free and open society. And number
four, which follows from number three our ability to maintain
the, secrets which we obtain.
The first doesn't need a lot of elaboration.... But
in the early 1970s, I dare say, that a number of us held out
some hope that our principal adversary might have changed his
ways and we could reach some sort of understanding. I suppose
the word "detente" is still not dead. But certainly there's
a changed perception of the nature of the adversary. In fact,
It was only recently brought home to us two weeks ago with the
invasion of Cambodia by Vietnam, which was clearly acting as a
Soviet proxy. Soviet adventurism in Africa serves as an all-too-
visible reminder that communism is an imperialistic philosophy.
And I was able to witness this personally in Portugal. And when
we ask about the fact that the Soviet Union over the past ten years
has devoted enormous resources to what we call defense, but which
when you look at the Soviet Union could better be called offensive
weapons, we have a serious problem.
We in the United States spend approximately six percent
of our GNP on defense. The Soviet Union spends approximately twice
that. Our defense effort, in real terms, has been going down over
the past ten years. Theirs has been going up at a rate, a real
rate of about four or five percent. Measured in terms of what we
would have to spend to buy what they are equipping their forces
with, their effort is probably somewhere in the neighborhood of
35% to 40%.
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What does that mean in terms of the intelligence world?
Well, the first thing we have to recognize is that we are now,
indeed, in an era of what is called strategic parity; in more
graphic terms, a mutual balance of terror. No longer are we in
a position, as we were some five or ten years ago, when we could
afford to make a mistake, where we had a margin. Now we have to
be very careful. We have to keep our eye on them very closely.
And every little piece of information can be important. It might
be the critical margin of difference. And that's why you see
our military commanders these days so interested in what they
call indications of warning, early warning systems, because
the difference between a couple of days' notice and ten days'
notice can mean a lot in that strategic pattern.
It's quite clear, if you read what the historians have
to say, that there was available evidence the Japanese were going
to attack and that the Japanese intended to turn back if they
were discovered. But there was no organization to put all the
pieces of evidence together, what the Japanese were saying in
their codes, what the Japanese Ambassador was reporting, the
fact that some of their ships couldn't be located. If anybody
had sat down and pieced all these together, Pearl Harbor might
not have happened. And the result of that, of course, was the
formation of the OSS and a successor agency, the Central Intelli-
gence Agency.
Since those days the nature of the intelligence business
has changed rather dramatically, which now brings me to my second
point. Sure, we still have to worry about the strategic balance,
and we have to count the Soviet missiles, although just counting
missiles doesn't mean very much these days. You've got to count a
lot of other things. And yet we have to look at individual coun-
tries. But we also have to look at a lot more. We have to look
at regions. We have to look at evolution. What is happening, for
example, in the non-aligned movement? Where will that be five years
from now? What is the change in character of the non-aligned move-
ment?
Or if you look at a situation that's been every day in
the papers, Iran, it does no good to analyze Iran in isolation.
We just came back from Thailand where they're worried about Iran.
And indeed, if you look at developments in that whole area, you
you start with Afghanistan. Then you can run all the way to Angola.
And each development in one country Is linked with developments in
another country. Nothing is simple. There is no master plot, but
there're an awful lot of opportunities, and intelligence has to try
and assess what those opportunities are.
There're a lot of issue oriented questions that we have
to deal with that never occurred to us at the time the Central In-
telligence Agency was established. We see a lot about the SALT
treaty, SALT II. The central issue in the Senate on SALT II is
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going to be the verification question. And that's an Intelli-
gence question: how much information can you get in terms of
their capability?
Or to look at another area, nuclear proliferation. Our
policy is to try and stop it. You can t stop it unless you know
what you're doing. And there are a number of countries in the
world that are developing a nuclear capacity and doing It co-
vertly.
Still other areas, one of which touches us rather
closely: the question of drug traffic. Most of our information
on drug trafficking overseas comes from Central Intelligence Agency
sources. Or terrorism, a phenomenon which, fortunately, has not
touched the United States, but has hit our people overseas. And
the only way, the best way to stop terrorist groups is to penetrate
them, to know where they're going to strike. That's a whole new
kind of operation, but we have been successful. And the fact is
that we have stabilized it through our intelligence capacity.
Or take an area that those of you in the economic sec-
tor are familiar with, the whole question of energy and natural
resources throughout the world. A couple of years ago nobody
thought of those as vital to our national security. Now they're
subjects of our attention every day. And some of the studies that
the Central Intelligence Agency has put out on oil reserves are
controversial? But I don't think you can deny the fact that we
need to know in the interests of our security.
And finally, there s a whole new technical world of
intelligence collection. And there are those who say "Oh, you
have these marvelous systems to study everything that's going on."
You see newspaper articles that say we can tell when people have
shaved and when they haven t shaved. Yeah, we do have the capa-
bility, but that isn't sufficient. Those kinds of systems can
tell you what's happening today and what happened yesterday,
more or less, but they can't tell you what people's intentions
are. And if we are going to protect our security, most of all
we have to know what people?s intentions are. And that means
the human element. The human element wi l I always play an impor-
tant role in the intelligence business.
And I suppose it I s this human element that has led us
into some of 'the controversies we've seen the past four or five
years. That brings me into my third area of consideration, the
whole question of trying to define the role of a secret agency in
a free society. You've heard a lot of criticism about the Central
Intelligence Agency, other intelligence agencies; some of it accur-
ate, some of It false. Unfortunately in an organization like the
CIA, you're never able to deny certain charges, because obviously
you'd be denying every charge, but maybe one or two that you can't
deny, and in so confirming, you may put I ives at stake.
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But there is, there has been created, an impression
in this country that the CIA is some kind of rogue elephant.
And I don't want to try and answer directly those charges. But
let me just for the record indicate to you what some of the com-
mittees are quoted as saying. The Church Committee itself said
that the rogue elephant charge is a distortion. The Pike Com-
mittee said, and I quote: "All evidence suggests that the CIA,
far from being out of control, has been utterly responsive to in-
structions of Presidents and National Security Advisers." Senator
Inouye, the first Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on In-
telligence, said "There is no question that there're been a number
of abuses of power, mistakes In judgments and failures by the
Intelligence agencies. In almost every instance, the abuses
that have been revealed were the result of directions from above,
including Presidents and Secretaries of State. Further, in almost
every instance, some members of both houses of Congress assigned
the! duty of oversight were knowledgeable about these activites."
So to blame the Central Intelligence Agency for some
of these activities is the equivalent of blaming the Marines for
the landing in Lebanon in the mid 1950s, or the landing in the
Dominican Republic. But be that as it may, those of us In lea-
dership positions in the CIA recognize that we have a [words
unintelligible], and we've tried to move to correct it. And
I can stand before you tonight and, in all honesty, say that
we do have a sufficient number of safeguards. One of President
Carter-'s first acts, which followed on a similar act by President
Ford, was to establish an executive order regulating the intelli-
gence agencies, indicating what the limits of their programs were.
He also established an Intelligence Oversight Board, consisting
of three distinguished Americans -- Bill Farmer -- Tom Farmer,
excuse me, Washington lawyer Tom Farmer, former Senator Albert
Gore, and your own ex-Governor, Bill Scranton, empowered to hear
complaints of abuse from anybody, anybody in this room, or any-
body in the Central Intelligence Agency, or any other intelligence
agency, without reference to his supervisor. And that board re-
ports only to the President.
We also have established such mechanisms, strengthened
such mechanisms for the expression of grievances. And perhaps
most importantly, the Congress moved to strengthen its oversight
mechanism. And we welcome congressional oversight. And by and
large, we have found this constructive. They don't always agree
with us. Indeed, they're liable to cut off our thumbs. We may
disagree. But the more we learn about the intelligence business,
the more we find that that kind of endorsement by the Congress is
helpful.
And we would like to take It one step further and do
something that has never been done in any other country in the
world. And that is try and develop a legislative charter for
the intelligence community. I'm not sure this could be done.
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I'm not sure the current Congress is going to be in a mood to
do it. But I think it would be helpful for our people to know
that the representatives of the American public have put the
stamp of approval on our activities, have tried to define certain
processes and certain authorities in practice. But it ought to be
broad legislation and not micro-management. And indeed we do have
examples around of congressional micro-management. Just to cite
one case, there is something called special activities, which,
to most people, used to be called covert action. Congress has
agreed that the United States ought to have some option between
a diplomatic note of protest and sending in the Marines. That
is, we ought to be able to help some of our friends without an-
noucing it to the world. But we have arrived at a point where
we have a contradiction in terms, because every time we want to
engage In a covert operation, we have to get a presidential deter-
mination and then brief seven committees of Congress, up to 140
members of Congress. And we get ourselves into an absurd situa-
tion.
Not so long ago during the Moro kidnaping, we got a
request from the Italian government for some U. S. assistance.
They wanted some experts on terrorism. They called and said "Do
you have a psychiatrist who understands terrorism?" And we said
yes. "Well, will you send him to us?" I said "Sure." Our general
counsel came in and said "No, no, you can't do It.,, I said "Why
not?" He said "Because that's a special activity." I said "What
do you mean?" "Well, to do that, you've got to go to the President,"
who happened to have been in Brazil at the time," get a presidential
finding, and then go brief your seven members of Congress." So I
called the State Department. I said "Do you have a psychiatrist
who understands terrorism?" And they said yes. I said "Will you
please put him on an airplane and send him to Italy?." which they
did, and the problem was solved.
But I can think of even more difficult situations where,
quite frankly, we have been hobbled by these kinds of restrictions.
Let's say in country "X" there's just been an election, a democratic
election. A group of generals don't like the candidate and they're
toying with the idea of overthrowing his election. And we have an
agent in that country that happens to be a general. And he comes
to us and says "Should I go with those generals who are plotting
the coup, or should I support the election?" And we say, "Well,
wait a minute; we've got to go back to Washington, have our meeting
of the National Security Council, get a presidential determination,
brief our committees of Congress, and then we'll come back and tell
you." An absolutely absurd situation, but, legally, that's the kind
of position we're in.
And hopefully in this legislative session of Congress
we can straighten some of that out.
Now, the question of defining the role of the agency
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in a free society is perhaps the most complex. The most Important
as far as maintaining our intelligence capability is concerned,
is our ability to protect our sources and methods. Now to most
of us that's very simple. Nobody overseas is going risk their
lives by giving you information if they think they're going to
read about it in The Washington Post, the New York Times or some
congressional hearing. It is axiomatic that the greater the num-
ber of people who know a given piece of information, the more
likely it is [words unintelligible] to have access to what is
going on in the intelligence business today.
And indeed, we have our own problems with former CIA
people who decide they want to write books. Or to take it to
extremes, a former CIA agent named Agee, who is now making a
career out of publishing on DuPont Circle a bulletin, a monthly
bulletin called "Covert Action," designed exclusively to expose
the names of CIA officers abroad. And the light of some of the
violence that has taken place, we have some concern about this.
But our laws to deal with this kind of situation are totally in-
adequate. It's a criminal offense to give out crop futures in
the Department of Agriculture, or to give out information from
the Department of Commerce, or the Controller of the Currency.
There are some thirty laws which automatically make it a criminal
offense to give out information from certain government agencies.
There is no such law with regard to national security.
In order to prosecute somebody for giving out national
security information revealing the name of a CIA agent, for example.
you have to prove intent to harm the United State, intent to commit
sabotage. And that, in turn, for those of you who are lawyers, in
terms of the New York Times' definition, is extremely difficult
to prove.
So the question is very simple. We, the American people,
have to decide whether we want to have an intelligence capability.
And if we want to have it, we have to recognize that there has to
be some secrets, that things like the Freedom of Information Act
don't really apply for an intelligence agency. We're willing to
give out our finished product to the publisher. The very con-
cept of an intelligence agency to open its files or its sources
to whomever writes in, and usually it's people with a vested in-
terest who write in -- and we spend 2.6 million dollars a year
and 109 man years answering these requests -- is alien to the
idea of intelligence.
And if we decide we want to have an intelligence capa-
bility, then we have to decide that there should be a certain
amount of secret.
Now contrary to what the press would have you believe,
secrecy is not a concept that is totally new to the American
society. There's the lawyer-client relationship, the doctor-
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patient relationship. A number of you are bankers, and you have
a certain amount of secrecy in your business. There's the grand
jury concept. Why should anyone who wants to give information
to the U. S. government be denied that same right to secrecy?
Indeed, we find recently that the press is insisting on its
own right of secrecy, to protect their sources. And ladies
and gentlemen, we ask nothing more. We sympathize with them.
Except there're a couple of differences. Their claim to be
able to defend their right to the secrecy of their sources is
based on a constitutional interpretation, which is still open
to some litigation. Ours is based on a very specific practice
that says we have an obligation to protect our sources. But
perhaps even more importantly, if the name of their source gets
out, they lose Information. In many cases if the names of our
sources get out, we lose lives. And I can assure you that that
has happened.
I'm frequently asked how we stand up against our adver-
sary in terms of the intelligence business....
[End of Side 1.1
...I think we have a better analytical capability, be-
cause they carry an awful lot of Ideological baggage. And part
of the name of the game of intelligence is bringing bad news to
the decision-makers. It's a lot easier to bring bad news to Pre-
sident Carter than it is to bring bad news to President Brezhnev.
So we suspect that their analysis has a certain distortion.
All in all, we think that we're ahead. But we're
going to work very hard to stay ahead.
And then the fourth thing that I think is crucial --
let me close on this thought. Coming down on the plane I read
the Wall Street Journal editorial. It said in effect, we've
been worrying a lot about the protection of individual liberties.
And that's very good, and I agree with it. But we also have to
be worrying about the competence of our intelligence organiza-
tions. And I agree with that. That could be vital for us too.
I could assure you that we have an awful lot of talent and dedi-
cated people who work with very Iitte fame or glory. Many of
them can't even tell their families what they're doing. They
work because they think they're doing so in the best interests
of the country. It's very hard for us to go out and say exactly
what they're doing. But I can assure you that they're doing
very good work and that they merit the support of the American
people. And with this support, I am sure that we can continue
to keep our intelligence organization the most effective in the
world,.
Thank you very much.
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[Applause.]
CHAIR: First question? Howard?
Q: Well, you used the phrase several times. A
certain amount of secrecy is not like being a little bit preg-
nant. And is it necessary in an organization such as yours to
have total secrecy or not to be able to function? Whereas if
you have a certain amount of it, who is to decide how much and
in what areas?
CARLUCCI: That's a very good question.
Q:
I always ask good questions.
CHAIR: Next question.
[Laughter.]
CARLUCCI: The old line professionals in the intelli-
gence business would say just that: "Mr. Carlucci, you shouldn't
be here talking. Your name shouldn't even be known." The name
of the head of MI6 in the U.K. isn't even known. And there're
very few other intelligence organizations where even the name of
the head of the organization is known. They don't go before Par-
liament; they don't testify before Congress. They don't talk
to the press. So we've had a certain evolution in our society
as the result of whatever -- Vietnam, Watergate, scandals, the
excesses. And indeed, some of them -- I'm claim some of them --
with responsibility of certain individuals, a minority it's true,
in the Central Intelligence Agency.
But I think we're reached the point where we do have
to explain to the American public what we're all about. But we
would like to do so In the sense of the law and not by being
obliged to reveal what our sources are, which is the constant
pressure from the press. Obviously if we tell you where we
got a piece of information, we're not going to get it. It
seems to me a very simple concept, but it's a very hard one
apparently to the press.
On the other hand, we think where we do do studies,
such as we have done on the steel industry in China, oil reserves
throughout the world.. industrial development in the Soviet Union
-- there were some 150 of them last year -- that these can be made
available. And we think that there is a difference, so to speak,
between a finished product, where we have sanitized out any re-
ference to sources, and throwing open our files, as the Freedom
of Information Act really would have us do.
My answer to your question is I suppose in the ideal
intelligence world [words unintelligible]. But in the context
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-9-
of the United States today, we have to strike some kind of balance,
and that's what we're trying to do.
Q: Yes. You made a statement sir, about bad news
being able to get to the President, but Brezhnev would not get
bad news. What is your source on that?
[Laughter.]
CARLUCCI: I really can't trace it. But it is a
fact that the Soviet intelligence agencies and Soviet agents
and Soviet diplomats are very hesitant about giving accurate
assessments to the Kremlin. And another thing, another problem
that they have is they just can't believe that the amount of in-
formation that comes out of the U. S. press is accurate. They
think that some of it's got to be misinformation....
[Laughter.]
They are hesitant to go back with accurate assessments
of situations. They make their mistakes. I watched them person-
ally make mistakes in Portugal.
Q: Well, the follow-up question on that would be then,
did anybody from the CIA get the word to President Carter about
the problem in Iran?
CARLUCCI: That needs more than just a yes or no answer.
And some of you may have heard the President yesterday when he com-
mented that it's very difficult to predict this kind of upheaval.
Virtually nobody predicted the dimensions of the upheaval in Iran.
And it's not really the job of any Intelligence organization any-
where in the world to go around trying to predict coups. They're
very difficult to predict. If they were easier to predict, there
wouldn't be very many of them.
We would define that more as one of projecting longer
run -?- dealing with longer-run trends, where you give the policy-
makers more time to make choices. One comment the President made
the other day when he was asked, "Well, would you have done any-
thing differently?" was that time was very short.
And with regard to Iran, there have been some erroneous
articles in the press. There were a number of articles, a number
of intelligence pieces that supposedly were put out that warned of
the deteriorating situation. At the same time it is true that there
was an assessment that had been drawn up which said the Shah was
reasonably secure. That assessment never left the agency. And both
the Director and I rejected it. By the time we sent it back for
re--drafting, events had overtaken us. And then we find ourselves
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in a curious position, because if something happens that we didn't
predict and we sent it back, we're suppressing intelligence. In
this case we sent back something that happened to be erroneous
and the public perception is that that erroneous document was
the CIA position. So once again, just because we're in the
intelligence business, we're in a rather messy situation.
But in fairness, I do not think we did -- I think we
could have done better -- let me put it this way -- in seeing
the dimensions of the situation in Iran and seeing it earlier.
And we are engaged, and I personally am engaged, in an assess-
ment of that particular problem. And we're looking at a number
of other countries....
Q: Much of the discussion has been concerned with
the matter of gathering information. I don't think there are
many Americans who are concerned with gathering information.
Certainly someone in my business cannot be concerned with
getting intelligence. We just hope it would be better.
The issue that many Americans have deals with something
else. And you know what I mean. If principles or a charter that
you referred to were drawn up, what kind of principles ought to
be considered with respect to the activity of agents of this
government with respect to changes of other governments? And
in that study, what weight would be given to the likelihood that
our involvement would at some time come out and discredit the
government we put in? The recent events in Iran are not ir-
relevant here.
CARLUCCI: Every situation, of course, is different.
And there are those who would like to write into the legislation
that we shall not create special kinds of plague; we shall not
overthrow democratic governments. I don't know of anywhere where
we tried to create epidemics of plague. If you start to write in
"You will not overthrow democratic governments," who in this room
can define a democratic government for me as we look around the
world, outside of certain countries of Western Europe? Is the
German Democratic Republic a democratic government? They think
they are. It's almost impossible to put those kinds of strictures
on the covert action capability, what are called special projects.
At the same time, virtually everybody is agreed that
we need a capability to help our friends without it becoming known.
And there are any number of cases where friendly countries, even
some that are not so friendly, come to us and say "We need your
help, but for political reasons we can't take it overtly." That's
an understandable situation. In each of those cases we have to
weigh what the U. S. interest is and what the risks of disclosure
are and the consequence, then, for U. S. foreign policy.
The answer to that is to try and come up with a respon-
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sible process. It really begins with an election of a President
of the United States, the nomination of people to responsible
positions, such as the Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense,
Director of the CIA; the confirmation process, which is becoming
increasingly thorough; and then a process to decide on how these
things are determined, just how they're produced. They are run
through the National Security Council. They go to the President,
of course, for determination. And they are briefed, as I said,
with seven committees of Congress. And I think it's absurd
briefing seven committees of Congress. It's a contradiction
in terms to say you can handle something clandestinely and brief
seven committees of Congress.
But I am strongly in favor of briefing the two over-
sight committees. And they can stop it. They, in effect, are
the surrogates of the American people in this process. So If
you agree we ought to have this case go -- there are those who
argue we shouldn't -- but by and large the Congress has agreed,
and the President has agreed that we ought to have this capability
to help our friends. And I can give you -- I can't give you;
I'd like to give you a number of specifics, and I'm sure you
would accept them as constructive actions to help our friends.
Then the best way to deal with it is through a surro-
gate process that has sufficient checks and balances in it.
[Question Inaudible]
CARLUCCI: Well, let me turn your question around a
little differently, because it's very important that the intel-
ligence apparatus of the United States government be separable
from the policy-making process. Indeed, this was one of the
questions that I was asked at my confirmation hearing, because
I am a Foreign Service officer and had been on the policy side
of the business. And I now have to divorce myself from policy.
If we become tainted by policy, we cannot provide objective in-
telligence. And we find that we are operating under no retraints.
We have no problem delivering bad news. You can just see some of
It come out in the newspapers in off-the-record sessions. The
whole question of the order of battle of North Korea: that's
an intelligence assessment which is going to cause the President
serious problems in the Congress with regard to his policy of
withdrawing troops from South Korea. We made the assessment.
We said to the President "This is it as we see it...."
I can assure you that the Director and I have strict
instructions that we're to call the shots as we see them, because
if you don't do that, an intelligence organization is of no use
to the President.
CHAIR: George?
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Q: Mr. Carlucci, should we not be concerned by the
fact that in some parts of the world we are perceived to be an
ally incapable of taking strong action at a time when they
suddenly occur; to wit the French had to go into Zaire to
rescue the Europeans because there was no resolution for the
Americans to do so, and the British were somewhat in the same
position. Granting the fact that we should have an intelligence
gathering organization, what is the answer to providing a U. S.
presence to resolve situations of this kind?
CARLUCCI: Well this whole area I think is a policy
area, and I probably shouldn't answer the question. But I
will, following on my last comment.
Our country has just been through a very traumatic
experience where we over-did the exercise of our power abroad.
And we haven't quite recovered from it. Indeed, we went to the
opposite extreme.
I, for one, don't believe we should be intervening
everywhere in the world. I think direct intervention is a last
resort. If you take a case like Zaire, certainly the Belgians
and the French had a far more vital interest at stake than we
did. We should be coordinating with them, and we helped them.
But your overall point that America is perceived as having a
lack of resolve is a valid point. But when you get legislation
coming out of the Congress to take the Clark Amendment angle,
which says that from now until eternity the U. S. government
should provide no aid to any political faction in Angola without
the full Congress voting on it, that takes us to the other extreme,
and everybody knows that they are insulated from any conceivable
American action in Angola. And the increasing tendency of the
Congress to put constraints on the President's foreign policy
flexibility seems to me to be a major problem.
That flexibility ought to be used judiciously, much
more judiciously that it was perhaps used in the past. But the
fact is if we don t have it the perception that we don't have
it automatically leads to a power vacuum. And to a certain
extent, in my judgment -- I m speaking personally, not as an
official -- to a certain extent that is happening. And I think
the President has spoken quite frankly about that, that we have
a clear shift in the balance of power in our government, from the
executive branch to the legislative branch. And quite frankly,
535 members can't make foreign policy. And you have to get back
to the point where those 535 people confirm -- and they can put
us through any kind of confirmation process they want -- to confirm
people to conduct that policy, and then give them the authority to
do it.
CHAIR: One more question. Yes.
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[Comment inaudible.]
CHAIR: Yes. Mr. Wesley.
Q: Ambassador Carlucci, earlier in your remarks, you
referred to 'communist imperialism. As we look around the world
today, we see people like Carillo in Spain making speeches about
supporting NATO; the Soviet planning group in Odessa, according
to good sources, apparently, dedicated to planning the military
action against Yugoslavia, should that started upon, and the Yugo-
slavs planning to defend against it. China, of course, Romanian,
and so on What is your perception of the adversary?
CARLUCCI: Well, I didn't mean to imply that the ad-
versary was monolithic in terms of the communist world. In fact,
not so long ago I was giving a talk and somebody got up and asked
"Isn't the Sino-Soviet split a deception?" Of course it s not.
It's very real. And Eurocommunism is a phenomenon which has
caused them a great deal of trouble. Yet I don't really believe
there is such a thing as Eurocommunism. I think you have various
national forms of communism as they have sprung up, ranging from
Yugoslavia to China to Vietnam and Laos to the Italian Communist
Party, each with their own Interests.
I have yet to see in any of these, including Santiago
Carillo, who Is probably the most anti-Soviet of all, that would
really be very congenial to American interests if they were to get
into power. And I have yet to see a demonstration that once in
power, having achieved power through democratic means, they would
willingly give up that power, which is the concrete test. And
certainly the Kremlin, which is by any standards overwhelmingly
our major adversary, has not given up or substantially changed....
So it's Soviet Imperialism.
CARLUCCI: Soviet imperialism is what I was talking about.
But I am very mistrustful of national communist parties as well.
CHAIR: We have time for one more question. And I guess
that question seems to have been pre-empted by my wife.
[Laughter.]
Q: [Inaudible.]
CARLUCCI: Well, you've named three different countries.
The constitutions and perceptions of national interests and per-
ceptions of collective defense do tend to vary among those three
countries. But certainly they are cooperating. And in the In-
telligence business we have a full exchange with them. At the
political level we have a very good cooperation. We just had
the meeting at Guadeloupe, where there was excellent coordination.
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And I think the answer is, by and large, that the alliance between
the, two countries is probably as healthy as It ever has been. And
there is a common perception of the nations.
CHAIR: Before we adjourn, I'd like to thank Miss
[name unintelligible], who works for Mr. Carlucci, for the ar-
rangements or help in getting him here. And she has some material
if you'd like to read it. And she'll make it available to you....
And of course, we're all greatly appreciative of the
fact that you came, sir.....
[Applause.]
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