FOURTEENTH NORTHEAST REGIONAL CONFERENCE ON THE SOCIAL STUDIES AND CONNECTICUT COUNCIL OF LANGUAGE TEACHERS CONVENTION
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Collection:
Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST):
CIA-RDP91-00901R000600170006-1
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RIFPUB
Original Classification:
K
Document Page Count:
15
Document Creation Date:
December 19, 2016
Document Release Date:
October 11, 2005
Sequence Number:
6
Case Number:
Publication Date:
October 28, 1983
Content Type:
SPEECH
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DEPUTY DIRECTOR, JOHN N. McMAHON
Fourteenth Northeast Regional Conference
on the Social Studies and Connecticut Council
of Language Teachers Convention
Hartford, Connecticut
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JOHN MCMAHON: Thank you very much. I would like to
thank Ed Reynolds for that very lengthy litany of jobs. I also
would like to thank Ted 1-ibby for the invitation to come up here
and address you. This is certainly a personal thrill for me
because it is not very often that one gets to speak back to so
many teachers.
In addressing any audience, it is always essential for
the speaker to build a bridge between himself and his audience.
Today I'm fortunate in the fact that that bridge already exists.
In fact, there are many bridges which tie intelligence to the
educational world, and certainly to that educational world that
exists here in Connecticut.
In front of CIA's front entrance to the headquarters
building stands a statue of a young man, a Connecticut Yankee by
the name of Nathan Hale. Nathan Hale, like you, was a teacher.
Like me, he was an intelligence officer. And in behalf of his
nation, he set forth on a mission to cross Long Island Sound and
spy upon British troops. Unfortunately, he was captured and was
hanged. But before he went to the gallows, he said those
immortal words, "I only regret but I have one life to live for my
country."
That statue is a reminder to all of us in CIA of a true
patriot and the dedication that it takes to be an intelligence
officer.
There are other bridges that go back to the very
foundation of our nation, in which New England payed and played
such an important role. We speak today of the need for early
warning to thwart any missile attack by the Soviets against the
United States. New England had its early warning system in a
gentleman by the name of Paul Revere, the first early warning
system of our country. And George Washington, when he wrote
General Clayton back in 1771, in speaking of intelligence, said
that the need for the procurement of good intelligence is so
apparent, I need not urge it further.
And as intelligence has gone on in our government over
the years, it has shifted and expanded, contracted. And today we
face an awesome task.
After World War II, it was rather simple. We were
called upon to thwart the Soviet subversion of Western Europe and
give the Europeans the opportunity to have the Marshall Plan take
hold. We put a man-to-man defense against the Soviets in Europe.
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They went into labor unions, we went into labor unions. They
went into schools, we went into schools. They went into reli-
gious organizations, political organizations, we went in to
thwart them. And indeed, the product of that effort is obvious
in what we see in Europe today.
But there was something going on in the Soviet Union
that we knew little about, The Iron Curtain was indeed down, and
the only knowledge we had of the Soviet Union and what they were
doing in their military installations stemmed from captured World
War II photograph that we obtained from the Germans. And that
prompted President Eisenhower, in those days, in 1953, to call
together a panel of academicians, businessmen, technologists,
government leaders to recommend to him what should be done. And
out of that panel came the recommendation of the U-2 program.
And you're well aware of that.
But the world has changed. It's no longer just the
Soviet Union. It's no longer just our interest in their strate-
gic weapons. They have now postured themselves with conventional
arms and a conventional army and navy which permit them to reach
out across the world.
And look what they have done. They're in Yemen and
Ethiopia, which is a threat to the Suez Canal. They're in
Vietnam, which covers the other end of the Indian Ocean. We see
them in their support base in Cuba threatening the Caribbean and
the Panama Canal. And through their friends the Libyans, we see
the constant threat of the Polisario against Morocco, which
threatens Gibraltar.
We have to watch and be prepared to see where can they
strike next and what do they prey upon. And they prey upon the
very things that you people teach. The social elements that make
up any country, the dynamics that drive it very much play a role
in what happens in that country.
As the Third World has reached out and improved itself
and sought greater demand for energy, energy has loomed very
large in our way of life and very much a requirement for us to
stay on top of. And we've seen what happens when the demand for
oil gets too great and the gas lines that it can cause. And
right now we witness, through the Iran-Iraq war, a possible
threat to the Persian Gulf.
No longer are we just interested in the politics of a
country or the world, but the economic capabilities of each
country.
The Third World, as we call it, is in debt over $600
billion. And what happens when a country has such a large debt
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it can no longer get funds to develop or, for that matter, to
purchase raw materials which it can then fashion in to export? A
tremendous cycle and a tremendous burden on the intelligence
agencies of the government to watch and to prepare our policy-
makers so that they can handle that situation and take action to
counter it.
As you look at the economics of the world, you also
think of the civil technologies. And what is happening in the
world today? We find that markets which were once ours and which
we owned completely are now threatened with competition. In
essence, we have our enemies as much -- our friends as much of a
threat as our enemies. Western Europe very competitive with us
in electronics. Japan. Japan already proved its strength in
Detroit. It's put us on notice that it's coming after us in the
computer world. And in the 1990s that computer world will
represent some $300-billion-a year-business. Can the United
States afford to be second best?
The aircraft industry. We see the threat that the
governments that subsidize the Airbus can do to Boeing. And all
over the United States we see the U.S. firms trying to compete
with foreign industries that are subsidized by their governments.
And when you think of technologies you have to think of
the technology transfer that has gone on around the world and the
tremendous drain of that technology, particularly to the Soviet
Union. We find so much of our technology loss that we have a
$200-plus-billion defense budget to stay even with ourselves.
The Soviets had the plans to the C-5A aircraft before it flew.
They have acquired look-down, shoot-down radar. They have
acquired our laser range finders in tanks. And they have
acquired this both legally through companies that exist here in
the United States that enjoys all the privileges, laws and
protection of the U.S. citizens, and they have acquired it
clandestinely as well.
And when we stop our interest in just looking at what is
happening in the world politically or economically, then we have
to turn to threats such as terrorism. There have been over
12,000 people killed or wounded in the last 15 years by terror-
ists. At one time, Americans overseas, particularly American
businessmen, were sought out by terrorist groups as hostages.
The terrorist groups, when they needed funding, would kidnap an
American, acquire some ransom money, and they were good for the
next fiscal year.
Now the terrorism in the world has taken on another
threat, and that is simply murder. And Americans are no longer
the targets for their funds, but targets because they are
Americans.
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It was no coincidence last year at the Versailles
Economic Conference that the American school in Paris was bombed,
that Bank America was bombed, and that American Express was
bombed. And we bear the burden throughout the world of trying to
know about those events and to neutralize them and interdict them
before they can happen.
And then we see narcotics, which continues to be a
plague to any society, including our own. There are 41 million
Americans who spend $80 billion a year in this country on illegal
narcotics. And your intelligence organizations are called upon
to try and stop that. And it's extremely difficult because the
funds are so great. You stop one traffic route, there are 12
others. A trafficker is arrested, there are thousands to take
his place. When a farmer in Latin America is paid 60 or 70
dollars a month for his crop, when he can be making $1300 a month
growing marijuana, it's obvious that's where he turns.
And somehow, we have to get a handle on how that money
flows. How is it legitimized? How does it end up in shopping
centers and condos and apartments? There's a tremendous movement
of funds internationally, and our job is try to find that out.
Because if we can thwart the movement of those funds, then maybe
we can help dry up the narcotics.
As you look at the intelligence that is required, there
is one key factor in back of all of it, and that's people.
Intelligence is a people organization. It's made up of people
that has an appreciation For the very subjects you teach. How
can anyone talk about Lebanon, for instance, if they don't
appreciate the cultural dynamics that go into that country, the
religous tugs and pullings that go on there? And that is why
whenyou look at an organization like CIA you're, in essence,
looking at a middle-sized university. We have people that reach
the entire spectrum of knowledge: anthropologists, geologists,
social science, political science, cryptographers, computer
scientists, you name it. In fact, CIA brags that it could easily
staff a middle-sized university. And indeed it could.
But we don't do it just by ourselves. We reach out in
our analysis and touch into the academic talents that exist
around the United States. And we draw from the universities, in
a consultative fashion, the competence that exists there.
This was denied us during Vietnam, and fortunately has
come back. And I think it's making our intelligence product that
much better. If you sit in the ivory tower of CIA, you can
become very focused, in not only your opinion, but how you view
things. And by having this outside influence, it keeps our
product much sharper and pointed in the direction that it has to
point.
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We, as an agency, can recruit a considerable number of
people. Last yea we had 250,000 applicants, applicants from all
walks of life. We can bring in the scientists, the economists,
what have you. The person that makes up the operations officer,
the one who does the spy work or espionage, as you call it, is
usually a young person 25 to 30 years old, has an advanced
degree, and at one time we demanded that they had a language.
Our academic institutions, as you people can well appreciate,
have failed us in recent years and languages no longer became
requirements for advanced degrees. And as a result, we're
content if we can find a person with a language aptitude which we
have to teach them ourselves.
And I am delighted that we have with us here today
language teachers. And I hope that your industry is a growing
one. And I urge you to sell our product. We are losing through
retirement and attrition that second-generation American that had
the second language from the kitchen. And that is no longer a
privilege and an opportunity that we face. And as you can well
imagine, language is an ingredient for us not only in doing our
business overseas, but also in analyzing events that happen
there. The language brings an insight into the culture and the
thinking of people that you can't get any other way.
Back in 1780, right here in Hartford, Connecticut, there
was an eclipse of the sun. In those days, the people were highly
religious. And when that eclipse occurred in mid-afternoon and
darkness fell, many fell to their knees, thinking that the end
was in sight. The Connecticut House of Representatives was in
session, and there was a great clamor to retire and run outside.
The Speaker of the House, one Colonel Davenport, rose to his feet
and silenced the din with these words. He said, "If Judgment Day
is upon us, then we must accept it. If it is not, we need not
worry about it. But if it is coming, I would like to be found
doing my duty. So please light the candles so we can enlighten
this hall of democracy."
In the past 200 years, that hall of democracy has
prevailed in the United States. And really, it is the best
calling card that we in intelligence has. And you look around
the world, the people of the world envy the United States, envy
the open society that we have, and envy that democracy. And that
helps us encourage people to work for us, of all nations, because
they look upon the United States as something they aspire to and
they would like their country to be that way.
We have a very glib saying that goes, "We do not recruit
spies. We recruit patriots." And indeed we do. And it's the
people of the world, throughout the world, providing their
intelligence which permit us, as a nation, to maintain that light
of democracy around the world.
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You educators have an enviable role in that democracy.
Through your education, you're able to keep democracy very much
alive in the United States, to keep it an open society, to cause
the youth to think, to reach out beyond their grasp, to expand
their minds, to worry about other people. And that is one thing
we have going for us, is an appreciation of the dignity of the
human being and the individual. And it is through the education-
al process that that will be fostered and maintained.
I'm proud to be with you today. I admire your goals. I
applaud your accomplishments. I'll be pleased to stand still
while you ask questions. I only note that I find no indiscreet
questions, only indiscreet answers. And if I feel I can't answer
you correctly or accurately, I will tell you so and not give you
the thousand yard treatment.
[Applause]
[Comments about microphones]
MAN: I was interested in your comments when you talked
about the hot points of the world, Suez, Gibraltar and Panama.
And then you also switched to questions of industrial competi-
tion. And at least as I heard you, the suggestion was that we
have difficulties with friends, in terms of the Japanese relative
to Detroit and in terms of the Airbus.
Are you suggesting that the CIA has a role in this kind
of foreign activity?
MCMAHON: Good question. It doesn't have a role in what
I would call industrial espionage, to go get the plans to the
next plane or next computer that the Japanese are going to build.
What we do do, though, is stay on top of the various technologies
in countries around the world so we can advise our policymakers
in commerce, or what have you, the capabilities that we see
growing in a country, so that they can make sure, in their trade
and in their decisions regarding that country, they keep that in
mind.
They also have a mechanism where they advise the U.S.
industry as to growing technologies around the world, so that the
U.S. industry can either move there to acquire that technology or
begin to build a competitive capability itself.
There's a saying that our case officers have, at least
at the moment. If you can appreciate a case officer lives
several lives overseas, hopefully his life as an intelligence
officer is the quiet one. What he must put out in front of why
he's there and what he's doing, and it's usually not his primary
purpose. So a great deal of his intelligence gathering takes
place at nights and on weekends, and usually in the rain. And
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it's very hard on the home life. And our officers will often say
that they're more than happy to give that up for Uncle Sam, but
they're not so sure they'd do it for General Electric.
MAN: Could you tell us something about the difficulties
and achievements of intelligence gathering in Lebanon?
MCMAHON: Lebanon, as you can well appreciate, is a
beehive and a see of activity, often conflicting. The greatest
intelligence on Lebanon is an appreciation of how Lebanon got to
be what it is, and the aspirations and desires of the various
relgions and ethnic groups that make it up. Lebanon has a very
difficult course before it. It requires a great deal of help.
It requires a great deal of compromise by the various factions
within Lebanon who are willing to concede something they hold
dear at the moment for the greater good of Lebanon.
I think that the world appreciates how difficult it is,
but the alternative is pure chaos. And I think it's incumbent on
us, Europe, and the various elements within Lebanon to try and
make it work.
If you have an unstable Lebanon, then you have a threat
in that portion of the Near East, a threat to Israel, a threat to
the stability throughout there.
MAN: Would you comment, from a personal viewpoint or
from the agency viewpoint, about the controversy surrounding
ex-CIA peoople writing memoirs and sharing information that might
be embarrassing or injurious to our nation's security?
MCMAHON: Unfortunately, history is replete with black
sheep in every family. And for an intelligence officer to put
pen to paper on his operations is anathema to us. The only way
that we can operate with our sources overseas is to develop an
element of trust. Trust and confidence is very integral to that
relationship. It is for that reason that we are frightened by
the Freedom of Information Act. We're all for the freedom of
information, we're all for having Americans, academicians,
historians have the legal access to our product. What we want to
protect, though, is the review of our operational files where the
names of our agents take place.
Right now, when we get a Freedom-of-Information-Act
request, we must review the agent's file for information, and
someone makes a determination, line-by-line, what may be re-
leased. And what we fear is, through inadvertence, something
will be released which permits identification of that individual.
And that's why we want to protect the operational files.
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When a former CIA employee writes, he begins to violate
that very principle. He, himself, begins to reach into those
operational files. And I deplore any intelligence officer who
writes about his operationsor his knowledge of the people. I
don't mind them writing about their experience overseas and how
they viewed policies of one country or another, including our
own; but not writing anything operationally. And it just bothers
us tremendously.
And this is why we were gratified with the identities
legislation that was passed last year, which permits us to
prosecute anyone that exposes the names of either our own people
or our sources.
WOMAN: Would you speak a bit about the United Nations
and the role that it's playing in the world today? And yesterday
Harrison Salisbury [inaudible].
MCMAHON: Well, I'm very grateful for the United Nations
because a lot of criticism that would fall on intelligence falls
on the United Nations.
[Laughter]
MCMAHON: The United Nations is not an efficient
organization. A good many people will also argue to its effect-
iveness. But to me, it's an essential forum for people of the
world to express themselves one to another.
A key to resolving problems and to understanding various
positions that nations have is communications. And the United
Nations forum provides a forum for such communications. I think,
ineffective as it is, the fact that little nations have as much
clout as big nations or that big nations can dominate little
nations, with all its inefficiencies, the United Nations, I feel,
is essential. And it's a mechanism for world peace. It's a
mechanism by which people can talk to one another. And I just
hope that maybe someday it will improve. And I give a vote for
the United Nations in spite of its imperfections.
MAN: Do you feel that there are any major misunder-
standings that the American public has about the missionof the
CIA or the effectiveness with which the CIA can carry out that
mission?
MCMAHON: I do. If I were every to forget, every
newspaper in the country reminds me every day.
We have an excellent intelligence service. We don't
have all the answers. Sometimes our analysis comes out wrong,
but it doesn't come out wrong because we analyzed the facts we
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had. It's that we failed to anticipate the random or the
floating decimal point. And it's those situations that get you
in trouble.
We can constantly improve. There's no question about
it. And this is why I think it's necessary for the CIA to have a
very aggressive program outside the agency, in going to univer-
sities, in having research done there, encouraging professors to
spend their sabbatical in the agency, which they do; and also
reaching out to the various institutes and industry.
We by no means have all the answers. We do have an
insatiable audience for our product. The policymaker in the
United States, the United States Government is breathtaking in
what it wants and what it needs. They speak of an intelligence
gap in Grenada. An intelligence gap. There were a couple
hundred more Cubans, maybe? And how do you stay on tap of little
islands? Do we put CIA people all over those islands? We're not
that big.
So there's a lot of things that are going to happen.
There'll be a dust-up in the Beagle Channel, and we may not know
it. But we don't have too many people that want to paddle around
the Beagle Channel looking for it.
[Laughter]
So we have to decide where are our priorities, where
should we concentrate on, and make sure that we don't miss the
big ones.
MAN: Mr. McMahon, in your remarks you mentioned various
kinds of CIA operations, including postwar involvement in trade
unions and other things in Europe, and you mentioned the U-2
program. One of the things about intelligence is that I think it
raises an ethical question about how far an intelligence opera-
tion should go. Where do you draw the line as an American
intelligence officer?
MCMAHON: Well, I think we have to have a common base of
ethics between us before I can really answer that question
correctly. If you don't believe in war, if you don't believe in
defending yourself, if you can't take a page from holy war
theology, then there's no base for answer that.
But intelligence is a way of defending yourself.
Intelligence is the least harmful way of defending yourself
because it permits you to take action which, hopefully, avoids
conflict.
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I maintain, and I think rightly so, that our intelli-
gence provides more of a peace-keeping and peacemaker role
throughout the world than it does an aggressive one. And I think
that knowledge is something that should be shared. Anyone in the
academic community will argue that knowledge aught to be shared
worldwide. Our intelligence oganizations are just interested in
that intelligence that people don't share. And that's why we're
here.
MAN: In a New York Times article earlier this week
President Reagan was characterized -- and the article was talking
about the process he went through in reaching the decisionto
invade Grenada. He was characterized as being a legend in his
own staff for being a President who [unintelligible] his own
counsel and makes decisions very privately.
How would you characterize him as a user of intelligence
of the nation or an appreciator of the intelligence of the
nation, say compared to the last two Presidents?
MCMAHON: One thing I've learned early on...
[Laughter]
MCMAIiON: ...is that a true intelligence officer has no
political allegiance and that the President is his boss. And
what he does is respond to the needs of his boss, regardless or
however the boss may decide he wants that intelligence to come
forth.
President Reagan is an avid intelligence consumer. And
we feel that we are well exercised in trying to satisfy his
needs. It's a very healthy environment for an intelligence
officer because it's great not only to be wanted, but also have
the feedback and the iteration that takes place at the highest
levels. And that's nice.
We provide the President every morning a document on
things that we feel he ought to know that day. And often the
analysts involved will get a feedback follow-up on that very
point. And that's very stimulating to the analysts involved.
I would say in recent years we have never really felt
that we weren't used. It was a question that we couldn't satisfy
enough of the need. And a great deal of that was caused by the
tremendous cuts prompted by budgets and other things in intelli-
gence. In the 1970s, your intelligence organizations were cut 40
percent in manpower and 50 percent in dollars. And we got down
to rock bottom.
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And oddly enough, it was Congress that decided it had
gone too far, and began to rebuild. And we have been rebuilding
in the last three years. And I think that's good. We're
nowheres where we'd like to be, but we're a lot better than the
direction we were going.
And I mentioned Congress. Let me prevail upon your
question a little longer. People make a lot of fun of Congress.
In fact, just being in Washington, you can do that. But it's a
unique instrument of government. The best thing that CIA has
going for it is congressional oversight. It is not only a
confidence factor for you to know that CIA is doing the things
that you want it to do and that you want your elective represent-
atives to do, but it's also a tremendous protection for the
institution.
This past spring and summer, when the furor over Central
America, if there had not been congressional oversight, CIA would
have been hung out to dry. But because so many congressmen and
senators were with us, they were there far the takeoff....
[Cassette turned]
MCMAHON: ...to exist in an open society that we want,
with the proper restrictions and controls. And you'll find that
most people in intelligence are great advocates of congressional
oversight.
It's also nice to know if you're going to go to jail,
you're going to take a long of congressmen and senators with you.
[Laughter and applause]
MAN: Mr. McMahon, this morning I listened to Caspar
Weinberger being interviewed on CBS News, and he was questioned
about the U.S. involvement in Grenada. And he was particularly
asked about the buildup of arms, a warehouse full of Soviet
armaments that apparently we weren't aware of. And he stated in
one breath that, really, there was no intelligence-gathering
--there were no intelligence-gathering facilities on the island
because we weren't represented there. And then in the next
breath he turned around and said that intelligence sources told
the American -- well, revealed that the intelligence students
were in danger there.
There seems to be a contradiction here. Could you sort
of clarify this for me, please?
MCMAHON: I don't think it's a contradiction. All you
had to do was witness the events that happened. Bishop, who was
not really our friend -- in fact, had been -- installed himself
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under a military coup with the support of the Cubans -- was
basically an illegal leader of a country. But he began to
be-come dis -- he became disenchanted with the Cubans. And I
think that was the beginning of the end for him. And when Coard
and Austin and that crowd decided that they were going to take
over and Bishop was killed or executed, and a number of his
ministers, we were left with a little country there that was run
by murderers.
And the students in the colleges, you must recall, were
controlled under a curfew. And the Canadian -- the Grenadians in
charge said, "Well, we'll let an airplane in today," and today
came and went. No airplane was allowed in. The Canadians tried
to fly a plane in to bring out the Canadian citizens, and they
were denied. And I think the President was very concerned as to
what was happening. It was on a downward path. And he did not
want to suffer another Iranian hostage situation.
And I think the greatest evidence of what was going on
in Grenada was to look at the expressions of those students when
they saw the U.S. military and when they got back to the United
States and kissed the ground and when those who proclaimed
themselves as doves said they never wanted to hear anyone speak
against the United States military again. I thought that was
tremendous and I thought that was true vindication of the
President's decision.
MAN: ...one of the concerns that I have is in giving,
rather than a bipolar view of the world, a sort of a multipolar
view of the world. [Unintelligible] questions of points of view
of legitimacy which the United States claims in the world.
Perhaps too political a question. But tell us, do top officers
of the CIA, in presenting information to the executive, argue
questions of the political legitimacy? In that sense, I'm
thinking about the CIA's involvement in Chile in '72, where an
elected regime was overthrown.
MCMAHON: The CIA, as I mentioned, is a willing servant
of the head of state, the chief executive of the United States,
the President. We're part of the National Security Council and
we take our directives from them.
CIA does not get involved in the policy decision. We
point out the options. We point out the possible consequences.
But the decision of whether to go to Chile or not to go to Chile
is not for CIA. We don't get involved in that discussion.
MAN: Hopefully, we all learn from our experiences.
What are the lessons that our intelligence community learned from
involvement in Vietnam?
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13
MCMAfiON: [Laughter] I could have gone all day without
hearing that.
[Laughter]
MCMAHON: I'm not sure if we, as a nation, has learned
anything. I have an opinion that if you go to war, go to war.
Don't try to fight half a war. We fought half a war in Korea.
We fought half a war in Vietnam. Our military was constrained as
to what it was going to do. When the aircraft went in on the
bombing runs, they were instructed by Washington what routes to
fly, and they had only so many avenues to approach military
targets. And as a result, those avenues were loaded with
antiaircraft, rockets, SAM systems, and what have you. And so we
were fettered in our fighting.
And I think that the lesson comes from there is that,
you know, if you fight a war. And the U.S. had formed such a
part of the South Korean structure that when it withdrew, that
structure collapsed.
I think history will only have the true visibility into
Vietnam in years out. But one thing is true of Vietnam. It was
scoffed at back in the '60s, the early '70s. But the domino
theory proved factual. After Vietnam came Laos. After Laos came
Cambodia. We even see the Vietnamese in Kampuchea today oc-
casionally lobbing shells into Thailand. And if you really want
to find believers of the domino theory, go to Southeast Asia and
see what the Malaysians and the Indonesians feel about Vietnam.
MAN: ...Two fairly quick questions. One, an Army
colonel in Grenada yesterday said that the only map they had of
Grenada was a map put out by a tourist bureau. And I'm wondering
why, without spy satellites and so forth, we didn't have a more
accurate map to give our military.
Secondly, in the late '60s and early '70s, when the CIA
was under attack, weakened by Congress and the media and public
opinion, did the NSA and the DIA, were they able to take up the
slack because the CIA had to back off?
MCMAfiON: No, they were not. They have entirely
different missions and they couldn't fill the void there.
And as far as our colonel with the tourist map, I really
don't have an answer for that. I don't know why that's all he
had. But maybe when he went down there he had other things in
mind.
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[Laughter and applause]
[Presentation of gift]
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