FORMER CIA HEADS SAY TOO MUCH INTELLIGENCE MAY HAVE BEEN GIVEN

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00901R000600290012-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 26, 2006
• Sequence Number: 12
• Publication Date: September 13, 1983
• Content Type: PREL

STATINTL, .
Approved For Release 2006/05/29: CIA-RDP91-00901R00
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL.
13 September 1983
ST. LOUIS
FORMER CIA HEADS SAY TOO MUCH INTELLIGENCE MAY HAVE-BEEN. 'GIVE
Two former Central Intelligence Agency heads say the release of
information about the downed Korean airliner is the largest disclosure of U.S.
intelligence capabilities in at least 20 years, a newspaper reported.
In a copyright story in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's Sunday editions, the
two former directors expressed worries the' administration may have broached
national security details previously not discussed in public.
'' It is as high a release as we have seen since the Cuban Missile Crisis " of
1962, James R. Schlesinger said. He was CIA head and secretary of defense
during the administrations of Presidents Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford.
'This was a deliberate decision to release more intelligence details than
had ever been released before, said Adm. Stansfield Turner, CIA director
under President Jimmy Carter.
He said reports out of Japan indicate the Soviet Union already has moved to
limit the sort of eavesdropping that produced the tape recording of Soviet
pilots chasing and shooting down the Korean Air Lies Boeing 747. The plane is
presumed to have crashed with 269 persons aboard Sept. 1.
Soviet officials probably had been aware western intelligence sources could
intercept non-coded radio messages, Turner said.
''But it's a lot different to disclose a specific capability,'' Turner said.
''These people have said that ~t this' time in this place, we intercepted this
message."
Although administration officials attributed the recording to Japanese
intelligence sources, they have sometimes indicated the United States has its
own intelligence 'confirming the. attack, the Post-Dispatch said.
For example, White House spokesman Larry Speakes last week said the
administration had evidence beyond the tapes proving the Soviets could not have
confused the plane with a U.S. spy jet.
He also suggested the government had access to recordings of the voices of
Soviet ground controllers but later denied U.S. possession of any such tapes.
The administration had to acknowledge publicly for the first time that U.S.
reconnaissance jets routinely patrol near the Soviet coast and that one of the
jets had crossed the Korean airliner's path.
By the time Speakes was refusing to answer any more questions about those
jets, it was too late, intelligence experts told the Post-Dispatch.
CONTINUED
MORI/CDF
Approved For Release 2006/05/29: CIA-RDP91-00901 R000600~90012-1