ADMIRAL STANSFIELD TURNER 'THE CIA AND NATIONAL SECURITY' SEPTEMBER 13, 1983 NEWPORT R. I. SPEECH

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00901R000600430020-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 20
• Document Creation Date: December 19, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 15, 2005
• Sequence Number: 20
• Publication Date: September 13, 1983
• Content Type: SPEECH

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Admiral Stansfield Turner
"The CIA and National Security"
September 13, 1983
/l/~ PoAr X Z7
SPEEcK
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ADMIRAL STANSFIELD TURNER: Thank you very much for this
marvelously warm welcome back to Newport. Pat and I couldn't be
more thrilled to be in one of our favorite places.
And may I say a special welcome to all of you in Pringle
Hall. I understand they have a video over there. And I wish we
could all be together in the same room.
This is very touching to me. It reminds me, of course,
of that first Spruance lecture just a little over ten years ago
tonight. It was also the evening that we dedicated this hall in
the honor of Admiral Raymond Spruance. And what a galaxy of
stars we had on the platform that evening. Over there was Samuel
Eliot Morison, the great naval historian who wrote so much about
Spruance. And next to him was Commander Tom Buell, here at the
War College writing at that time the definitive biography of
Spruance. And Mr. Herman Wouk, then writing the book, the novel
"War and Remembrance," in which Spruance figures so prominently,
and who then was the first Spruance lecturer.
But the star of the evening, the height of the whole
thing for all of us was a wonderful, charming, dignified lady,
Mrs. Raymond Spruance. She just took the stars away from all of
the other eminent people. And all of us who had never met
Admiral Spruance came away from that evening feeling that we had
had some small contact with him through his lovely lady.
I can remember that as the eulogy poured out for Admiral
Spruance, I was concerned at whether it would be too emotional
for her. And as I looked over, there was nothing was going to
spoil the poise and the dignity of this wonderful lady. She was
the epitome of what the Admiral stood for.
And we all know that Tom Buell, in his book, called
Admiral Spruance, in the title of the book, a quiet warrior. He
eschewed flamboyancy like Halsey. He gave the credit for his
victory at Midway to his chief of staff and other officers in
much greater degree than they deserved.
And today we should think about that quality of Admiral
Spruance, because our present senior military leaders may not
have the opportunity to be as self-effacing as Raymond Spruance
because they are forced into the fishbowl of public limelight.
But let's hope that some of you here, as military officers
heading into senior positions, can try, at least, to emulate
Spruance in the quietness, the dignity, and yet the profession-
alism with which he did his job.
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There's one other characteristic of Spruance that I
suggest to you officers that you try to emulate, and that's the
very breadth of his understanding of our profession. Here was a
man who was trained as a surface officer who on almost no notice
went: to sea in command of a carrier task force that fought
successfully at the Battle of Midway the most significant navy
aviation battle in history. There are few officers of any
service today who make that extra effort to escape from the bonds
of specialization which so necessarily confront us in the
military profession today. So few officers try to learn even the
full. component of their own military service, let alone the other
military services. And yet this country is going to need in the
future leaders with the depth and breadth of Raymond Spruance.
He was a great man, and I'm honored to be able to honor
him tonight.
I would also like to pay tribute to another naval
officer who demonstrated much of what we admire in Raymond
Spruance. Captain Hugh Knott (?) came to the War College as
chief of staff in 1972 and remained here in either a full- or
part-time capacity until his untimely death last January. If
there was ever an officer with whom I've had the privilege of
working who had that same broad view of the profession, it was
Hugh Knott. Whatever was being done, he kept into perspective.
If it were junior officers coming to him pressing for something,
if it was myself coming and proposing some wild scheme, Hugh
always knew how to keep us pointed in the right direction.
I believe sincerely that Hugh's contribution for the
good of this college over the 10 1/2 years that he remained here
has been greater than that of any other single indivdiual since
World War II. He is and will be sorely missed.
Now, I can't stand behind this podium tonight without
remembering that it may well have been from behind this podium
that my naval career began to come to an end. It came to an end
because in 1974 I invited a classmate of mine, the then-Governor
of Georgia, Jimmy Carter, to come here and stand behind the
podium and address the student body.
Now, the reason I say this may have been the beginning
of the end is because I hadn't really remembered this classmate
from Annapolis all that well.
[Laughter]
But 2 1/2 years later, President Carter woke up one
morning, I'm told, and remembered me. I was on duty in Naples,
Italy. I received a phone call that said the President of the
United States wants to see you tomorrow. Well, I called in my
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three closest advisers, two Navy commanders and an Army lieuten-
ant general -- about equivalent.
[Laughter]
And as they made preparations to get me on an airplane,
I said, "What do I think about across the Atlantic? What's the
President going to talk to me about or ask me to do?" We went
over a lot of possibilities. In the middle of it, I said, "Let's
ask about the CIA. I read in the paper two weeks ago that the
President's original nominee for the position withdrew after the
Senate objected to him."
So we discussed, very briefly, the possibility that I
might go to the CIA. But the discussion terminated when the
lieutenant general said, "Stan, the President is your classmate
and friend. He wouldn't do that to you."
[Laughter]
Well, the next morning he did. And when I walked out of
the Oval Office, not much more than 24 hours from the time I had
been alerted, I knew that 31 1/2 years of a naval career were
behind me. I was in a new career as chief of the spies.
Initially, I found it really wasn't very different. The
CIA has a lot of military characteristics. The people are very
dedicated. You never worry about calling them in at twelve
o'clock on Saturday night. The organization is very operational-
ly-oriented. I am as proud of some of the secret operational
accomplishment in my time at the CIA as I am of any military
operational accomplishment in which I've participated. And the
CIA has very high standards of professionalism and very high-
quality people. So, in these respects, I did feel at home.
It was not very long, however, before I began to
appreciate that the CIA was different, quite different from the
military or from any other element of our government. It's
unique in three ways.
First, it operates outside the normal process of our
democratic governmental system.
Secondly, it's not really one CIA, it's three semi-
autonomous agencies in one.
And thirdly, it is, and it should be, more independent
of higher authority in the government than any other agency.
Let me look at each of those, starting with the fact
that the CIA has to be an exception in our democratic process.
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Our government is run on the principle that the citizens
are the ultimate authority of what the government will and will
not do. Citizens, though, simply cannot see enough of what the
CIA is doing to exercise that ultimate control, through the
Congress, through their President. This is a price of the
secrecy that is essential to so much of what the CIA does for us.
Now, the secrecy in the CIA, though, is different than
the secrecy in the military. In the CIA, it is the core, the
basic activity of the agency that is kept secret. In the
military, it's really something on the periphery, the charac-
teristics of our weapons systems, except in wartime, not the
basic principles of how we're planning to defend the country.
Thus, from its founding in 1947, the CIA was implicitly
given authority to operate outside the normal checks and balances
of our governmental process. That is a fundamentally unsound
situation. Unaccountable power is subject to misuse. How any
individual is apt to be less careful, less thorough when he
believes that what he is deciding to do will not be subject to
outside scrutiny, that he will not be held accountable. And the
record shows, unfortunately, that the CIA made some mistakes of
not being thorough.
There were some ill-advised intelligence efforts that
were fruitless: the Bay of Pigs, the opening of U.S. mail, the
administering drugs to unwitting Americans. When actions like
these were uncovered in the investigations of intelligence in
1975, the country decided to set up a series of oversight and
control procedures for intelligence. In effect, we established
surrogates for the citizens as the ultimate control. The
surrogate of the Congress, the surrogate of the White House, or,
really, the National Security Council, the NSC.
Now, oversight was a revolution for the intelligence
professionals to accept. I believe, however, that it worked well
and that it has achieved two objectives for our country.
First, it has reduced the possibility of abuse of this
special trust of being allowed to operate with less control and
supervision than any other element of government. It is less
likely today, for instance, tha someone in the CIA may run off on
his own initiative and undertake some ill-considered operation
without the Director's approval. To begin with, he would know
that he would be disobeying an explicit presidential order to
clear sensitive operations with the NSC. Beyond that, he would
know that he might have to testify under oath before Congress
about what he has done, and he would not want to have to disclose
to the Congress what he might have withheld deliberately from his
Director.
The second objective that oversight has achieved is that
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it forces the CIA into a greater judiciousness in planning what
it is going to do. This can make our intelligence more effec-
tive.
I found, for instance, that when proposals came to me
for risky secret operations, they were better thought out when
the staff believed that I was going to have to take those and
sell them to the NSC. And I, too, prepared better and insisted
on thorough preparation, because I knew I was going to have to do
that job of salesmanship.
So there are benefits to the quality of our intelligence
from having an oversight process, from having accountability.
Some of the staunchest supporters of intelligence today,
however, do not understand this. They have paid attention only
to the fact that oversight can lead to leaks of secrets, though I
don't believe it has led to serious ones. Thus, some of these
supporters want today to relax all controls, to unleash the CIA,
to go back to the good old days.
For instance, when the Reagan Administration came into
office, they tried to weaken the presidential executive order on
intelligence written originally by President Ford, strengthened
somewhat by President Carter. The changes they proposed were so
substantial that even Senator Barry Goldwater, a marvelous man
and a strong supporter of intelligence, hardly a flaming liberal,
objected to these changes. The Administration ended up loosening
control around the periphery, on the fringes; but even then,
quite unnecessarily.
At the other end of the spectrum today, though, there
are still some civil libertarians who want to tighten those
controls even more. Fortunately, they're quiescent for the
moment. But there is, I believe, a deep latent distrust of the
CIA in a significant segment of our society. And that distrust
could erupt at the least excuse.
It is time for us, as a country, to abandon either of
these extreme attitudes. The one side needs to recognize that we
do have oversight, that it is effective, though it will never be
one hundred percent insurance against excesses or mistakes. the
other side must recognize that oversight is a strength to
intelligence, not just a risk to secrecy. Too little oversight
could risk reoccurrence of improper or illegal actions. And
that, in turn, could unleash that latent distrust on the left.
I happen to believe that another round of intense public
criticism of the CIA could be fatal.
Unfortunately, the second unique characteristic of the
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CIA leaves it less well prepared to avoid errors of the past or
to produce the best intelligence that we can have. that charac-
teristic is that it is three agencies, not one. Why? Because
there are incompatibilities in the five basic functions assigned
to the CIA: spying, or human intelligence; technical collection,
like photographs or electronic eavesdropping; analysis or
interpretation of this information collected; counterintelligence
overseas -- that is, preventing there being so-called moles
inside our intelligence organizations -- and covert action,
really not strictly an intelligence function, but one assigned to
the CIA, influencing events in foreign countries without it being
known who's doing the influencing.
Now, if we look at the first three of these, which are
the basic functions of intelligence -- spying, technical collec-
tion, and analysis -- we can see their incompatibilities. Spying
demands great secrecy. You've got to protect the identity of
your agents. Secrecy, though, has historically led to abuse and
has generated the demand for oversight.
In contrast, analysis has very little risk. There's
very little need for oversight. It does need some secrets, of
course. But on the other hand, it needs a great deal of open-
ness. The analysts must be able to interchange with people in
the academic world, the business community, and even the public,
or you find they will get very cloistered, they will get very
self-centered and very overconfident of their analyses. In sum,
the needs, the outlooks of the analysts are quite different fromt
hose of the spies.
Now, the technical-collection people come out somewhere
in between. Yes, they need secrecy for their inanimate inven-
tions, their devices. Not quite as vital as protecting human
life. Yes, they need some oversight because these technical
devices can intrude into the lives of Americans improperly. So
the needs and the outlooks of the technical-collection people are
closer to those of the spies than the analysts, but they're not
coincident with either.
It is because of these differing requirements that the
three departments of the CIA have grown up over 30 years with an
intense desire to protect their special interests. They have
built a vast network of bureaucratic rules to protect their
independence from each other and their independence from the
Director of the CIA, lest he adjudicate between them. They
prefer to take their chances on compromising their differences
than in having them adjudicated in favor of one or the other.
They're accustomed to having a Director who manages the external
relations, relations with the Congress, the President, the
public, but who leaves the management of the CIA to the three
department heads.
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This, it seemed to me, was an unworkable and unwise
position, particularly to have decentralized and divided author-
ity when we were in a new era of oversight. The CIA needs
well-coordinated planning to insure that its resources are being
used to the best advantage of the country, not to one of these
departments. Spies must dovetail with the technical collectors,
and both of them must be sure they're collecting what the
analysts need to interpret. If they don't have this kind of
planning, the Congress, which now, under oversight, does review
the CIA's budget very carefully, is not going to give them the
resources that they need.
The CIA also needs to insure that these three depart-
ments are not so independent that ony they pass judgment on
whether what they are doing is within the bounds of propriety and
legality. The Congress and the National Security Council are
going to find out if they are doing things they should not much
sooner than they would have in the past.
To correct this situation, I brought into the CIA an
excellent administrator as the Deputy Director, Ambassador Frank
Carlucci, later the Deputy Secretary of Defense. We attempted to
establish sufficient centralized control and planning mechanisms
to give us the assurances we felt we needed. We made a lot of
progress, but the bureaucrats resisted pretty hard. Not really
out of willfulness or spite, but out of a conviction that good
intell=igence demands decentralization.
Now, as hard as I could search, I could not find
evidence to support that. I could not find anything that really
told me that the wild schemes of the past, under inadequate
supervision, had actually produced significant intelligence.
What I did find was that the secrecy of spying engenders
a mystique, a mystique that misleads people into believing that
you can only spy if you are totally unsupervised. And that just
is not so.
Some Director of the CIA needs to complete this transi-
tion to one agency instead of three, and soon, if the CIA is to
achieve the effectiveness that it should. It's important to our
national security interest that this be done, because the United
States has built its entire intelligence operation around the CIA
as the cornerstone. The reason for that is that the CIA is the
only element of our intelligence community that is not associated
with a policymaking department of our government.
Our intelligence community, as we call it, is made up of
the intelligence components of a number of different departments
of government. There is the Bureau of Intelligence and Research
in the State Department. There is an intelligence element in the
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FBI. You are well aware that the Department of Defense has a
Defense Intelligence Agency, the DIA; the four service intelli-
gence organizations, and the National Security Agency. The
Departments of Treasury and Energy also have intelligence
operations.
Note, though, that all of the parent organizations here
are very much a part of the policymaking, decision-making process
in our government. Now, that raises problems. The very worst
kind of intelligence is that in which the policymaker is told
only what he wants to hear.
There's a strong ethic in American intelligence that
even those intelligence organizations that are a part of a
policymaking department must stand tall, must be willing to tell
it like it is, even if they can't support their department's
policies. That's nice in theory. It's not always easy in
practice.
One way, then, that we try to buttress that ethic and
try to insure there is not bias in our intelligence is to have
competition in anaysis or interpretation of the intelligence
information. We never want only one agency to do all the
interpretation on a given topic, lest it be influenced by its
poli.cymakers.
So, for instance, if we're going to study a political
issue, some political trend in the world, the lead will probably
be done by the State Department. The CIA has a very strong
political element. And the DIA will also participate. If it's
an economic issue, the CIA has the greatest strength here. The
State Department does respectable economic work. And, of course,
the Treasury Department will come in to. If it's a military
subject, the DIA will take the lead, normally, and the CIA will
play a very, very important role as well.
But there are several weaknesses in this system of
back-up intelligence analysis. The first is that the State
Department, while it does excellent intelligence work and is very
seldom influenced by policy considerations, is such a small
intelligence operation that it can't do justice to everything
that, we'd like to have it participate in.
But the major weakness of this back-up system is the
inability of military intelligence to provide truly competitive
analysis. There are two reasons for this. One is a lack of
capability and the other is an inability to divorce from policy.
The lack of capability goes back to the origins of the
DIA. Mr. McNamara simply took people from the service intelli-
gence organizations and put them in the DIA. Now, there were
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lots of exceptions, but in general, the services didn't give up
their best people. And much of that attitude prevails today. A
service military intelligence officer would always prefer to be
assigned to his basic service intelligence organization than to
the DIA. It's more career-enhancing. As long, in fact, as we
have four separate service intelligence organizations, we're not
going to have a really solid DIA.
Parenthetically, I happen to think that we don't need
four service intelligence organizations, at least above the
tactical level.
The problems of conflicts between Defense Intelligence
and policy influence are even more serious issues than those of
the competence of the DIA. As I've said, the ethic of intel-
ligence is independent from policy. But look, the ethic of the
military profession is responsiveness to command. The commander
once he's made up his mind and enunciated his decision. Sup-
porting him is a must, if we're not going to have chaos on the
battlefield. And thus, the intelligence officer who tries to
buck the system with unpopular conclusions is often looked on
poorly in a military environment. And whether deliberately or
not,, the military hierarchy can impose enormous pressures to
conform.
Let me give an example. Every year the intelligence
community produces a number of what are called national intelli-
gence estimates. These are studies or interpretations of one or
several major issues facing the country. They're done by the
entire intelligence community, with everyone who's concerned
participating. Now, of course, with that many participants there
are seldom total agreement. So we come to a big issue of how do
we present the disagreements, the differing views, which is, of
course, the essence of having competitive analysis.
If you put too much emphasis on the dissenting views,
you end up confusing the policymaker who reads the study. If you
put in too few, maybe you've overlooked that dissenting view
which really is the important one. I felt that what was impor-
tant: was to put in as many views in these estimates as could
explain exactly why they disagreed with the majority view, so the
decision-maker could clearly see the contrast and the reasoning
between the different outlooks. The weakness, however, was that
I could seldom get the Defense Intelligence Agency to produce a
meaningful explanation of its position. They believed what they
believed, and they believed it very strongly, but they couldn't
give reasons for it. Sometimes that was due to a lack of
competence, sometimes it was due to the pressures not to produce
anything that would endanger some military policy, would enanger
some military program what was up before the Congress for
decision.
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What this has unfortunately meant, then, is that United
States military estimates today are built on CIA analysis much
more than they should be. The DIA should be our best source of
military analysis. The good professional officer today who wants
unbiased intelligence, then, should appreciate the benefits of
using the CIA as a foil by calling on them for a second option.
Why is it important that you and I, as citizens,
understand these three points of uniqueness of the CIA? Because
I think it should be obvious to all of us that intelligence is of
growing importance to our defense and foreign policy in this
country.
Look just 13 days ago, when we had the unfortunate
incident of the Korean airliner. Twenty years ago, if that had
happened, the Russians would have got away with it. Our intelli-
gence would not have been capable of giving the specific evidence
that we have adduced in this case.
Look, for instance, at the fact that for well over a
decade we've been engaged in serious arms control negotiations
with the Soviet Union. We simply could not even countenance that
did we not have superb intelligence systems that can peer into
the Soviet Union and check on whether they are fulfilling the
obligations of a treaty.
Look, for instance, at the fact that for 38 years now we
have lived with a delicate balance of nuclear terror between us
and the Soviet Union, and yet we have somehow found that toler-
able, because it's our confidence that our intelligence will
prevent the Soviets from pulling some surprise that could put us
at at disadvantage.
If the United States is going to continue to have the
benefit of such intelligence, it needs a more sophisticated
approach to how to manage our intelligence systems.
The attitudes of the American public tend to swing from
one extreme to the other, from drumbeat condemnation of the CIA
to not being able to do enough for the boys in the spy cloaks.
Neither is a sensible attitude if we try to understand the nature
of the responsibilities that we have placed on the intelligence
professionals in the CIA. First we ask them to operate largely
outside the checks and balances of our governmental system. That
permits them unusal freedom and subjects them to temptations that
no other government agency has. Next we assign them five
intelligence functions, each of which drives them to react in a
somewhat different manner. And third, we make the CIA the
cornerstone of our intelligence activity, expecting it not only
to carry out much of the production of intelligence, but also to
keep the entire system honest, to free it from improper influence
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by policymakers.
The professionals of the Central Intelligence Agency
deserve great credit, in my view, for having done as well as they
have done since its inception in 1947. These 36 years are ones
in which we needed a centralized intelligence service, which we
did not have ever before. We learned that from the unfortunate
lessons of our failure to predict the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Today we have a centralized intelligence service, and
it's a good one. But after giving the CIA that deserved credit,
I want to add that we must also recognize that these three
hazards of doing intelligence the American way will continue to
exist, to one extent or another, into the indefinite future. If
the eternal vigilance is the motto of the United States Navy,
something akin to that should be our approach to American
intelligence. Not because we should mistrust the CIA or its
people, but because we should recognize that we have given them
an exceptional challenge to meet. And we should each want, very
much, that they continue to meet that challenge every bit as well
in the future as in the past.
Thank you.
[Applause]
I'd be happy to entertain
your questions.
Q: What is your opinion of why Admiral Innman may have
ADMIRAL TURNER: The question was what is my opinion of
why Admiral Inman left the CIA.
I have not spoken to Bobby about that, so I have no
firsthand knowledge. I do know that Bobby Inman, very sincerely,
wanted to leave the government at the end of the Carter Admini-
stration. Not because of the change of Administrations, but
because of that point in his particular life and career.
And I'll tell you an interesting story of how he became
to be the Deputy Director of the CIA. Because one day, my
deputy, Frank Carlucci, in the waning days of the Carter Admini-
stration, had been designated to be Mr. Weinberger's deputy at
Defense. And he came and mentioned to me that he had asked Bobby
Inman to take a job in intelligence inside the Pentagon rather
than over at the National Security Agency, where he was.
The next day, Mr. Casey and I were having a meeting
during the turnover phase, and he said, "Carlucci tried to steal
Inman from me." He said, "I topped him one. I went to the
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President and got the President to call Inman to keep in as
Deputy Director of the CIA."
So, I think it was the sense of rivalry here, and poor
Bobby was trapped. Because when a President calls you, as I told
you earlier in the evening, it's hard to say no. So I think he
was there under something of duress. And I don't think there was
great friction or such forth. I think he genuinely wanted to get
out into the business world.
[Asides about use of microphone]
Q: Admiral, could you comment the pros and cons of
having a permanently-appointed Director in lieu of a political
appointee, with particular regard to the goals of having that
continuity of supervision and insulating the agency from the
political pull and tug in Washington?
[Asides about use of microphone]
ADMIRAL TURNER: I do not believe it would be wise to
have a set term of appointment for the Director of Central
Intelligence, as there is for the Director of the FBI. The
reason is that the Director of Central Intelligence is an
immediate adviser to the President of the United States. If you
do not have a personal rapport with the President, you're not
going to be very effective. The President deserves to have
someone in whom he has full confidence in that position.
Having said that, I certainly agree that there is too
little continuity in the office. And that is very injurious to
the kinds of things I have been suggesting.
I believe, therefore, that it would be desirable if new
Presidents would try to tolerate the old Director for maybe six
months and see if they could get along. But I don't think there
should be any implacable rule here that requires a President to
keep a Director on.
And finally, I will say, in all candor, but not with
criticism of George Bush or Bill Casey, that they were bad
appointments. Not because of the men and their capabilities, but
because they were political figures, highly partisan political
figures. There was no way that Jimmy Carter could keep George
Bush, who asked to stay on and eschewed any further political
office, if he could. But there was no way Jimmy Carter could
keep him in his inner councils, as former Chairman of the
Republican National Committee. There is no way a future Demo-
cratic President will keep Bill Casey, the former campaign
manager of President Ronald Reagan.
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They're good men. I'm not criticizing them. But I am
urging that we understand that we should find people of less
political stripe. Jim Schlesinger was a good example, John
McCone, of non-CIA professionals who held the job and stayed
where they could shift with different Presidents, and so on.
Q: Admiral, do you feel we've compromised any of our
intelligence sources or capability in the recent disclosure of
some of the information during the Korean airplane situation?
ADMIRAL TURNER: Yes, we certainly have. We have never
given out information about our intercept capabilities in this
kind of specific detail. It, ironically, came the very day that
President Reagan sent a memorandum to 2.6 million governmental
employees saying, "Keep the secrets better."
[Laughter]
I'm not saying that, though, in full criticism. I think
it's too early to tell -- and in point of fact, you and I will
never know -- whether this was worthwhile or not, because you
have to take two factors into account. One, how much harm will
this do the Soviets? How long will this opprobrium last? I
happen to think not long and not much damage, but that remains to
be seen. Secondly, you and I will never know how much harm it
really does. The Japanese have revealed that they only get 60
percent of the intercepts today that they received before the 1st
of September because the Soviets have taken countermeasures.
And what really is more serious is not what we gave
away, but what now oozes out around the fringes. People, like
me, start talking when they shouldn't. The Secretary of State
has talked. They've had recordings in the United Nations. Other
intelligence officers then begin to feel, "Well, we can talk
about this," but they get a little bit over the line and some-
thing comes out that should not. It already has. I won't invite
your attention to it because there might be a Russian spy in the
audience.
Q: Admiral, how would you, if you can do so diploma-
tically, assess the intelligence capability of our principal NATO
allies as being reliable partners with us in this line of work?
ADMIRAL TURNER: Oh, it's the first time anybody
expected me to be diplomatic. Thank you.
A very interesting element here is to recognize that
there are only two complete intelligence services in the world,
the KGB in the Soviet Union and the CIA and the rest of the
intelligence community in the United States. Only those two,
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for instance, have satellites, have all the plethora of listening
stations around the world, have all this capability. Only those
two even attempt to have total worldwide coverage of intelligence
matters.
Now, beyond that, to address your question, some of the
European countries have quite good intelligence services within
the limits of their physical capability, of their resources. I
would say, however, I don't believe any compare in quality, let
alone size, with that of the United States.
Q: Would you say that the United States CIA, as it is
now, with its present restrictions, is capable of [inaudible].
ADMIRAL TURNER: The microphone may not have worked. Is
the CIA, with its present restrictions, capable of competing with
the KGB, the Soviet intelligence service?
Undoubtedly. There are the three elements of intelli-
gence that I mentioned: human spying -- it's hard to measure
this. You never can measure it very accurately. The KGB does a
lot more than we do. They get caught at it now and then. We do
a good bit. We get caught at it once in a while. But I think,
on balance, in my opinion, we're as clever, as astute as they
are. That's a very subjective qualitative judgment.
Much less subjective is the fact that we have superior
technology in the United States, and therefore our technical
systems for collecting intelligence are far superior to those of
the Soviet Union.
Thirdly, and most importantly, the Soviet Union is a
totalitarian society. If you analyze the intelligence informa-
tion collected incorrectly, in accordance with Soviet doctrine or
policy, you may find yourself in serious trouble. I have
emphasized to you tonight that we have trouble with policymaking
influencing intelligence, but that it is the basic ethic, the
basic foundation of our intelligence operations in this country
that intelligence analysis must be able to say the truth as it
sees it. That is a tremendous strength for our intelligence and
a weakness for the Soviets. It.makes no difference how many
spies you have. If you can't interpret what they're telling you
right, you're not going to be very well off.
Q: Admiral, should the CIA be in the covert action
business? And if so, why?
ADMIRAL TURNER: Covert action has, of course, got the
CIA into more trouble and criticism than probably anything else.
I think it has to be in the covert action business because you
don't want to create a new agency to do covert action, because
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then it will certainly want to do it. At least if you keep it in
an existing organization, it can go up and down in accordance
with the needs of the country; not like the Corps of Engineers,
that has to build more dams every year because the Corps exists.
Boy, I'm giving the Army a hard time tonight. I'm
[Laughter]
I really love them, but.
And I do think that there is a role for cover action in
our arsenal of diplomatic tools. You don't want to skip from
diplomacy to war if you can accomplish your means by covert
techniques. There's nothing immoral with trying to influence
events in another country. We do it by not doing anything,
sometimes. We are too important in the world, to influential int
he world not to bear lots of influence, whether we want to or
not.
So the question is, how deliberately do we want to do
that influence, and what kinds of things do we want to do?
One principle that has been violated recently is that
with the oversight procedures that I've described to you, you
cannot do a covert action that is highly controversial, because
it is going to leak out. And that is one limitation, that is one
sacrifice that we have made in this country to have oversight of
intelligence. It's the only serious one that I know of. And I
don't think it's too serious, at that. But it is a definite
limitation.
We should never have gone into Nicaragua on a covert
basis, because we were supporting, or at least appearing to
support, supporters of former dictator Somoza. That was going to
be controversial. It was going to turn a covert action into a
non-covert action by the publicity it was bound to receive. And
the CIA is going to end up the fall guy for the United States in
this situation if that covert action isn't totally successful.
And I doubt very much that it will be or can be.
So, we have a limitation today, because of oversight, to
smaller-scale covert actions that can be kept covert because they
are not highly controversial.
Q: Admiral, now that you have a chance to reflect, why
do you think Khomeni released our prisoners on the last day of
the Carter Administration?
ADMIRAL TURNER: Because he's an S.D.B.
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16
[Laughter and applause]
ADMIRAL TURNER: In September of 1980, in reflection, it
appears to me that the Iranians -- whether Khomeini himself was
involved, we'll never know -- the Iranians made up their minds it
was time to get rid of the hostages. Why? Because during the
whole process of the hostage issue, from November 4th, 1979 to
September 1980, the Iranian revolution was still a revolution.
They had not settled their internal power structure, and they
were using the hostages as a ploy in that. Any faction that came
about "let's get rid of the hostages" was labeled un-American
[sic], so that they could build up power within Iran by criti-
cizing the "Great Satan" and so on.
But by September, they'd got their parliament, they'd
got their president, they'd got their structure organized. And
this now was a petard around their own neck, and they were
willing to get rid of it. They were so incompetent that they
wanted to do it before the election, thinking they could get more
out of Mr. Carter as a pre-election affair, but they couldn't
pull it off. So they stumbled around and we just barely missed
it.
Then they didn't know what to do, 'cause who was really
the President of the United States, from their point of view?
And then, because I think he is an S.O.B., they decided to do it
in this ignominious way, waiting until one minute after President
Cartier was out of office.
Q: Admiral, could you comment on the problem of
technology transfer to the Soviet Union?
ADMIRAL TURNER: That's a very tough one. It's easy to
stand up, wave your arms and say, "Let's stop all this technology
transfer. They're building up their military."
My personal feeling is that we absolutely must stop the
transfer of the capability to manufacture high-technology
materials. But it's almost impossible to stop the sale of some
of those materials themselves: components, tubes, chips, and so
on. I mean when we put the kind of chips we do into a video
game, how can you, you know, keep those out of the Soviet Union?
But you can keep out the machines that make the chips.
I think that's about the best we can do, except for
those rare items where we have a near monopoly on the capability
to manufacture them. When the Japanese and the Europeans and
others get it, we're up the creek.
In addition, you do want to be careful that you don't
shackle our own industry, our own inventiveness, our own momentum
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17
to move ahead in all of these areas in order to deny the Soviets
something that they're probably going to get by an end run.
Q: Admiral, is it inconceivable to think that that
Korean airliner could have had spying equipment on board?
ADMIRAL TURNER: No, it's not inconceivable. It's
inconceivable to me that the United States, in any way, would
have participated in such an activity. I can't tell you on a
stack of bibles that the Koreans weren't doing it. I see no
reason that they would. One has trouble being sure you under-
stand the logic of another country well enough to even surmise
that that is certainly true.
It would have been totally irresponsible for an American
intelligence officer to use an airplane with 269 people as bait
for intelligence collection. It just would not have been done,
particularly with these oversights and controls that I've told
you about. So I can't see that. Plus we have alternative ways
of getting that kind of -- the information that an airplane
presumably would be able to get. So I doubt it very, very much.
I can't explain why the airplane was off course, more
than anyone else, I don't believe. But I think the fact that
they had the other incident five years before and that this is a
very regimented society and one in which discipline and account-
ability is exercised meant that when they had this incident, the
commander on the scene didn't want to end up in the same hoosegow
as his buddy was five years before. And I think their system
went into reaction and I think they've told us the truth, that
the man on the spot made the decision. Two and a half hours, he
undoubtedly let Moscow know something was going on. But he
didn't get a veto. He went a head in a rather mechanistic way,
which certainly was foolishg from the Soviet point of view in
terms of the cost that it did cause them.
Q: Admiral, given your comments this evening regarding
the problems of having a political appointee as head of the
agency, and given that the agency is not part of a politica -- or
a policymaking body, and theoretically should be totally removed
from politics, what is your feeling of having the Director of the
agency being a professional from within the discipline or someone
who's come up through the ranks of the agency?
ADMIRAL TURNER: Oh, that's fine at its right time. I
believe the agency is the kind of organization where it is very
desirable to have outsiders from time to time. But I think you
also have to be sure you have intelligence professionals from
time to time. It's got to be that carrot that sits out there for
them. And they are very well qualified, in some cases, for it.
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I would say to you that I don't think -- I don't want to
sound egotistical, because I'm not talking about me, I'm talking
about my being an outsider. I don't think an intelligence
professional could have brought the CIA through the period of
shakedown of oversight as well as an outsider. It happened to be
my fate to have to do that. But it's hard for an insider to
reform his native organization. If he moves in this direction
he's accused of favoring whatever was his element in that
organization -- analysis, spying, whatever -- before. if he
moves in that direction he's accused of doing something else.
In my personal view, some of the most important reforms
in the United States Navy, well back into history, have come only
because of civilian direction and interference. We cannot reform
ourselves.
I hope they're having you read....
[Cassette turned]
ADMIRAL TURNER: ...adapt to filling in where the
technical systems cannot serve you. The illustration I always
give is if you suddenly on your photograph see a new factory on
the outskirts of the capital of Country X and you think that has
some characteristics of a nuclear processing facility, the next
thing you do is you take the eavesdropping people and you turn
them loose and you say, "With whom is that factory communicating
in the capital of the country? Listen to the radio signals."
And you find it is the Ministry of Nuclear Affairs. At that
point, you hire a spy and you send him into that building and you
say, "I want to know whether that factory is tied to the right-
hand end, which is nuclear power, or the left-hand end, which is
nuclear weapons."
Now, what you have done is you've made the spy more
important. He is really focused on what you want, rather than
the old days that he had to get all of the intelligence that
there was. He's more valuable to you in this mode than he was
before. So you don't neglect him.
And, sir, I fired 17 spies. And they were terribly
overstaffed before that. And the people of your age were
complaining to me they couldn't move anywhere because there were
so many people overlooking them. And as a naval officer, I knew
that oversupervision is the one thing that will demoralize a
junior officer.
So, we lost nothing in terms of great skill, and so on.
All of them who left the CIA under my aegis -- because there were
others who were asked to retire early, 150 or something, a couple
years early. Those in the 17 were all in the bottom five percent
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on the fitness reports. And they told the world that we'd lost
the great [unintelligible] memory of the Central Intelligence
Agency. Hardly so.
There is a place for both. But I will tell you the real
problem -- [inaudible].
[Laughter]
ADMIRAL TURNER: The real problem that the human-intel-
ligence people have not been willing to recognize these facts and
adapt. They are behind the times.
If you're going to do what I described to you, when you
go out and recruit spies, you don't go recruit the first guy you
can get. You go out and find a nuclear physicist. You go out
and find, when you recruit, somebody whom you think is going to
hell) you fill that blank in what the technical intelligence
systems are going to get you. It's a whole retooling of the
approach to human intelligence.
Those people prefer to complain they're being neglected
than to adapt.
Finally, I'd like to say not only thank you for having
asked me here, but I want to compliment you on the improved
technology at the Naval War College. All of the two years that I
was here, I never could get these two clocks to run in sync.
[Laughter and applause]
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