SPEECH BY LT. GENERAL VERNON A. WALTERS BEFORE PITTSBURGH COUNCIL ON WORLD AFFAIRS THE CIA AND WORLD AFFAIRS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00901R000700050007-2
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 28
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 26, 2006
• Sequence Number: 7
• Publication Date: December 10, 1975
• Content Type: SPEECH

Approved For Release 2006/07/28: CIA-RDP91-00901 R000700050007-2
BY
LT. GENERAL VERNON A. WALTERS
before
PITTSBURGH COUNCIL ON WORLD AFFAIRS
THE CIA AND WORLD AFFAIRS
PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA
Approved For Release 2006/07/28: CIA-RDP91-00901 R000700050007-2
 Approved For Release 2006/07/28: CIA-RDP91-00901 R000700050007-2
to talk, but if we get an opportunity to present
Ladies and Gentlemen:
I'm delighted to be here. In the old days we wouldn't
have considered doing anything like this, but in the world
we live in today, if we're going to function as an organi-
zation--which I think performs an essential function for
the United States Government--we'can't do it unless we have
the support of the American people. We have no public
relations campaign; we do not go out and seek invitations
our side of the story, for a change, we do not turn that
opportunity down. And in a community as important as
this: the World Affairs Council, with the prestige. that
this one has, I shrink with awe when I think of some
of those who have spoken here in the not distant
past. I am very happy to have this opportunity to come
here and talk to you a little bit about the CIA and its
role in world affairs.
People often ask me what is the fundamental purpose of
the CIA, and if I could sum it up on one sentence, I would
say: It is in order that the United States not be surprised.
:Many years ago at Pearl Harbor we were surprised. We
were able to survive and recover from a naval Pearl Harbor.
Approved For Release 2006/07/28: CIA-RDP91-00901 R000700050007-2
 Approved For Release 2006/07/28: CIA-RDP91-00901 R000700050007-2
I just wonder if we could survive and recover from a
nuclear Pearl Harbor. And so, our basic job is to make
sure that the United States is not again taken by surprise.
A great deal of the atmosphere in which we move is
related to the threat the American people feel. If the
American people feel very threatened, they want many
things to be done; if they do not feel threatened, they
want many fewer things to be done and with a less degree
of intensity. It is odd that today, there is not a
great feeling of threat to the United States and yet,
if you go on the basis of capabilities--I am not talking
about intentions--today we have a situation that has
not existed since the Revolution.
No nation since the Revolution has had the capability
to strike the heart of the United States crippling or
perhaps mortal blows. That capability is poised thirty
minutes away from this room. I don't say they're going
to use it, but it's there. One of our early Presidents
said that, "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty."
But he was talking about a country that had a two-month
cushion on each side of it. In the old days the United
States was regarded as unreachable and, therefore,
Approved For Release 2006/07/28: CIA-RDP91-00901 R000700050007-2
 Approved For Release 2006/07/28: CIA-RDP91-00901 R000700050007-2
unbeatable. Unfortunately, that is no longer true. We
are reachable; we are very much reachable. And so, we
need, to a degree never felt in the past, intelligence
about potential threats to our country.
It is the fundamental duty of every society to try and
survive and enable its people to, live in the kind of a
society they have selected for themselves.
There is a great effort today--I would even describe
it as a massive onslaught--on the intelligence community
of the United States. There is a massive effort to try
to make us believe that there is something immoral or
un-American about intelligence. Well, intelligence has
existed and been used. from the very beginning of our history.
Perhaps one of the greatest users of intelligence in our
history was George Washington.
George Washington, in a letter to his chief of intelli-
gence in New Jersey, Colonel Elias Drayton, in 1779 said
this., "The need for procuring good intelligence is so
obvious that I need add nothing further on this subject.
All that remains is for me to tell you that these matters
must be kept as secret as possible; for lack of secrecy,
these enterprises, no matter how promising the outlook or
well planned, generally fail. I am, sir, your obedient
servant. G. Washington."
Approved For Release 2006/07/28: CIA-RDP91-00901 R000700050007-2
 Approved For Release 2006/07/28: CIA-RDP91-00901 R000700050007-2
-4-
Now we live in an atmosphere which tells us you must
tell everybody everything.
One day George Washington had spent the night at the
home of a_ revolutionary sympathizer and as he was
leaving, the sympathizer's wife said to him, "Oh,
General, where do you ride tonight?" And he leaned down
in the saddle and said, "Madame, can you keep a
secret?" And she said, "Of course." And he said, "So
can I. Good day, Madame." And rode on.
But now we're told this is cover-up, this is secrecy and
we shouldn't be doing this because it isn't American. I
would just like to make a few quotes from a few Presidents
of the United States.
In our building there is a portrait of each President
of the United States since our Agency was created in 1947.
On Mr. Truman's he wrote, "To the CIA, a necessity to the
President of the United States, from one who knows."
President Eisenhower said, "Your activities have no
aggressive intent but rather they are to assure the safety
of the United States and the free world." Mr. Kennedy
wrote, "You are destined to have your failures trumpeted
and your successes passed unnoticed."
Approved For Release 2006/07/28: CIA-RDP91-00901 R000700050007-2
 Approved For Release 2006/07/28: CIA-RDP91-00901 R000700050007-2
Intelligence is an activity which is distasteful to
many. As a matter of fact, many of us regret the need
for it, but we have to live in,the real world. This is
not a new feeling in America. Nathan Hale, before he
went off on his mission behind the British lines, in a
breach of security told a friend'that he was going to do
this and the friend looked at him aghast and said to him,
"How could you stoop so low?"
So this kind of view is not a new one. Incidentally,
outside the CIA we have a statue of Nathan Hale. I was
not in favor of putting it there. I think he was a very
noble and very brave young man, but any agent who gets
caught on his first mission and has all the evidence on
him, I am not sure he's what we should be holding up to
our young trainees.
But, nonetheless, the fact is that we live in the real
world where we need it. rVe need intelligence; but what
is intelligence? Well, intelligence is vital infor-
mation, vital information of a military, political,
economic nature, painstakingly collected, painstakingly
analyzed, and disseminated to the people in the United
States who have to make the decisions in timely fashion.
Approved For Release 2006/07/28: CIA-RDP91-00901 R000700050007-2
 Approved For Release 2006/07/28: CIA-RDP91-00901 R000700050007-2
because if you don't do it in timely fashion it isn't
intelligence, it's history.
In the earlier years of the United States what happened
abroad affected us relatively little. For instance, a
whole new era of economic intelligence has come into being.
In the old days, economic intelligence was part of a
military capability study. It wasn't anything in itself. But
today, with the:billions of petrodollars and billions of
Eurodollars moving around the world in ways that can affect
the livelihood of American workmen in Pittsburgh or Houston
or any other place in the United States, we must do what
other nations have done in the past.
Now we Americans have always had this feeling about
intelligence. To give you an idea: in 1942 I was transferred
out of my military unit in Camp Shelby, Mississippi, and
taken to the United States Army Military Intelligence
Training Center at Camp Ritchie where we were training
people in intelligence. The Commanding Officer of the
U.S. Army Military Intelligence Training Center at
Camp Ritchie was a British colonel. That was the state
of preparedness of American intelligence.
Approved For Release 2006/07/28: CIA-RDP91-00901 R000700050007-2
 Approved For Release 2006/07/28: CIA-RDP91-00901 R000700050007-2
In each of our wars we've developed a superb intelli-
gence capability. At the end of each of our wars we've
gone about dismantling it. We wound up World War I with
an excellent intelligence establishment. We demolished
it thereafter. This time, because of the Korean
and Vietnamese War, it took longer for the wreckers. to
get to work; but the wreckers are at work. They will not
succeed because I think the American people fundamentally
understand that the real issue before them is not the
alleged misdeeds that occurred a quarter of a century
ago or twenty years ago, the real issue before the
American people is: will the United States have eyes
and ears to see and hear as it moves into the last quarter
of this century or will we stumble into those last 25
years deaf and blind until the day we have to choose be-
tween nuclear blackmail and abject humiliation.
We have made a number of mistakes as a people, but I
think the existence of our nation, what it is today, makes
quite plain that the American people over the longer
period of time are a very wise people.
Now why do we need this intelligence; what do we see
facing us'? We see the Soviet Union deploying at the
present time four new types of inter-continental ballistic
missiles of a brand new generation; we see them building
Approved For Release 2006/07/28: CIA-RDP91-00901 R000700050007-2
 Approved For Release 2006/07/28: CIA-RDP91-00901 R000700050007-2
larger submarines able to launch more intercontinental
missiles; we see them building large aircraft with a
capability against the United States; we see them upgrading
their conventional forces, their army divisions, their
conventional naval forces to a tremendous degree. We see
four million people under arms in the Soviet Union. We
see the Soviet Union spending more money on its defense
establishment than the United States, out of a gross
national product less than half of ours, which means its
a far greater effort.
We see these things in the Soviet Union. We see the
beginnings of them in the Chinese Peoples Republic. And
really the four great questions that I regard as essential
for the CIA to try and answer are: who will be in control
of the Soviet Union five years from today and what will
their disposition be regarding us and regarding our allies
and the rest of the world; what is there in Soviet scientific
research and development today that will impact on us five or
ten years from now; and the same questions arise for the
Chinese Peoples Republic. They are behind the Soviets
and they are behind us, but they, too, are moving in all of
these fields.
We have something else we have to watch. We have
to watch nuclear proliferation. Many people who
Approved For Release 2006/07/28: CIA-RDP91-00901 R000700050007-2
 Approved For Release 2006/07/28: CIA-RDP91-00901 R000700050007-2
in the past may have trusted U.S. guarantees--and this
is one of the prices for leaving Vietnam that I think a
lot of people have not thought about. Some of those
people may feel they have to defend themselves by their
own means and this may lead them to seek to develop nuclear
weapons.
Now nuclear weapons are a threat to all mankind and this
is going to be something we are going to have to watch
even more vigilantly in the future than in the past.
How did we get the CIA in the first place? Well, the
last great investigation of this type that we had was in
1945-46 when Congress looked into Pearl Harbor, how it
happened and why. That investigation lasted seven months
and was filled with recriminations and accusations. And
they came to the conclusion that actually there was
enough intelligence in the various parts of the U. S.
Government to have at least lessened the impact of Pearl
Harbor if not to have avoided it. But each person who had
it--whether it was Army, Navy, or State, or FBI, was
squirreling their own little piece of intelligence away.
There was no central point to which these could have been
brought, and this was what led to the creation in the National
Security Act of 1947 of the Central Intelligence Agency. It was
Approved For Release 2006/07/28: CIA-RDP91-00901 R000700050007-2
 Approved For Release 2006/07/28: CIA-RDP91-00901 R000700050007-2
part of the re-structuring of the whole U.S. defense
effort and this is why the oversight committees of the Con-
gress that have oversight over us in these matters are
basically the Armed Services Committees and of course
the Appropriations Committees and, to some degree, the
Government Operations Committees;and the Foreign Relations
Committees. Now from our oversight committees we have
no secrets; there is no question that we will not answer
to them. And I must say that as far as our own oversight
committees are concerned, we have never had any leaks.
This Congressional oversight is a unique American phenomenon.
We are the only nation in the world in which the Congress
oversees the intelligence service, except for Western
Germany and theirs was modeledon ours after World War II.
Now we can live perfectly comfortably with this; we can
live with any form of oversight the Congress chooses to
adopt. We can live with any guidelines they choose to
adopt. Now what guidelines did they give us in the 1947
Charter? They said that we would collect intelligence and,
quote-: do such other things as the National Security
Council may direct. Unquote. They gave us no further
guidelines. Now the Congress created us knowing full
well that among other things we would engage in espionage,
Approved For Release 2006/07/28: CIA-RDP91-00901 R000700050007-2
 Approved For Release 2006/07/28: CIA-RDP91-00901 R000700050007-2
but they didn't want to say it in writing. In my opinion
they won't want to say it in writing tomorrow either.
They won't want to take that kind of a responsibility.
But this is the Charter that they gave us.
Now, as the perceptions of the American people of
the threat changed, so did their perceptions, as I mentioned,
of what they wanted done.
Not long ago we had a group of people from the Hill
out at our Agency and the question of assassinations came
up. And someone said, "Well, if anybody could have
assassinated Hitler in '44 'or '45, he would undoubtedly
have been ' the _first -joint- recipient of
the Congressional Medal of Honor and the Victoria Cross."
One of the young gentlemen from the Hill said, "Yes, but
if you could have gotten him in '35 or '36, think how
many lives you would have saved." And I said, "Congressman,
are you advocating assassination in peace time?" "Oh," he
said, "no, that's different." Well, that's the whole
issue--it's different because then they were scared and
they wanted their enemies done away with at any cost.
Personally, my own feeling about assassination is that
it's wrong on three counts: it's against the law of God;
it's against the law of man; and, it doesn't work. Bullets
kill only men, never ideas. And it's a futile exercise.
Approved For Release 2006/07/28: CIA-RDP91-00901 R000700050007-2
 Approved For Release 2006/07/28: CIA-RDP91-00901 R000700050007-2
-12-
You've heard all about the assassination report and
all the allegations concerning us concerning the
assassination report. What almost didn't get mentioned--
at least it was mentioned--is that nobody got assassinated.
It's just like the toxins we were supposed to have stored
away. It also came out they were never used on anybody.
Now one may ask: why were these things discussed.
The staff of any nation in the world has what is known as
"contingency plans"--what they will do in case they have
to invade one of their neighbors. They may have no
intention whatever of invading their neighbors, but you
draw up contingency plans for everything. Someone took
one of these contingency plans and said, "Did your general
staff draw this up?" "Yes." "Was it approved by the
head of your general staff?" "Yes." "Was it approved by
your Minister of Defense;l" "Yes." "Aha! Then you
intended to invade this country."
In regard to the drugs, for instance. Why did we test
the drugs? Well I think you have to go back to the
environment of the times. We saw around the early 1950s
a man like Cardinal Mindzenty in Hungary who had resisted
every threat, every torture, every imprisonment by tha
Nazis, bravely and boldly. Suddenly he appeared hollowed-
eyed to confess everything his Communist masters wanted
Approved For Release 2006/07/28: CIA-RDP91-00901 R000700050007-2
 Approved For Release 2006/07/28: CIA-RDP91-00901 R000700050007-2
r
him to confess. I thought, and I think most people who
remember that time thought, that this was done with
mind-bending drugs. We were afraid these would be used
on our people--our diplomats, our armed forces--we had
to know something about it and be able to retaliate. So
we studied this. Not just the CIA or the armed forces.
Many of the most distinguished institutions of learning
in the United States didn't see anything wrong with
experimenting in this area.
The toxins. Several times the Soviets killed Russian emigres in
Western Germany by using these toxins. Here again was
the question: how do we defend ourselves against this and
how do we retaliate if they are used on us? So there was
study of this, but the toxins were never used. In fact,
we discovered the toxins back in the bottom of some old
building and we were the ones who told the Congress that
these were there.
So you have all of these things that could be given
publicity--adverse--to the basic mission of our organiza-
tion which is to collect the intelligence that could
prevent the United States from being surprised. I might
add in passing that the United States prior to World War II
had undertaken not to use poison gas. This did not prevent
Approved For Release 2006/07/28: CIA-RDP91-00901 R000700050007-2
 Approved For Release 2006/07/28: CIA-RDP91-00901 R000700050007-2
the United States from having several million poison gas
shells to use for retaliation in case it was used against
US.
A foreigner said to me the other day,
"You Americans are a great people, but I think the least
attractive trait of your national character is a certain
pharisaical quality which says, '0h, all that dirty stuff
is all right for the dirty old British, Russians, French,
Germans, but not for us pure Americans; we don't do that
sort of thing.'" Well, in this Bicentennial Year I've
done a little research on what we have done in the past
and you'd be surprised. George Washington mounted three
separate attempts to kidnap Benedict Arnold, and I think
we all know what he would have done with him. George Washington
mounted an attempt to kidnap Prince William of Britain--
the third son of George III who was a midshipman in New
York in 1782. Benjamin Franklin, for three years before
the Revolution, when we were all loyal subjects of George
III, was the Assistant Postmaster of British North
America. You know what he was doing? He was opening
that British mail like crazy. When they caught him and
fired him, he joined the Revolution and he went to Paris
as the representative of the American Revolution.
Approved For Release 2006/07/28: CIA-RDP91-00901 R000700050007-2
 Approved For Release 2006/07/28: CIA-RDP91-00901 R000700050007-2
While he was there he designed and had the French build
him a special printing press. _Do you know what he printed on
the printing press? British currency, British passports
and fabricated atrocity stories.
You hear all about this terrible thing about political
action. Just how does anybody think we got Texas or
California? And when they're condemning political or covert
action, I would advise most Americans not to be too
enthusiastic about this. After all, if the French hadn't
had 17,000 men ashore in worth America before they declared
war on Great Britain, I'm not positive we would be
celebrating our Bicentennial this year.
The first proprietary, which is the so-called companies
that are owned by intelligence services--the first one of
which we have record in history, was a corporation called
Hortalaz Corporation which was founded by Benjamin
Franklin and Monsieur de Beaumarchais who was the author
of The Barber of Seville and The Marriage of Figaro. The
purpose of this corporation was to buy arms clandestinely
for the American revolutionaries in France and in Spain.
So we have a great idea that we didn't do any of this stuff
in the past and it just is not historically correct.
A nation must survive. We don't want to rival
other nations by using Hitlerite methods or anything else.
Approved For Release 2006/07/28: CIA-RDP91-00901 R000700050007-2
 Approved For Release 2006/07/28: CIA-RDP91-00901 R000700050007-2
-16-
But the simple fact is that if you're fighting with a
man and he is using brass knuckles and you're trying to
fight by the Marquis of Queensbury rules, you just may
not win that fight.
We hope for the guidelines from Congress, but we hope
the Congress will give us guidelines that will have some
mechanism for change as the perception of the American
people of what is right and what should be done in their
defense changes.
Today, thank God, you can't run a segregated school
in the United States. Twenty years ago you could; and
forty years ago, if you tried to run any other kind of
school, you would have been in deep trouble.
If we persist in looking at yesterday through the eyes
of today, we will not only misunderstand the past, we
will misunderstand the present and the future.
Just one word on the past transgressions. The
Rockefeller Report, the part which is not much quoted,
said, "A detailed analysis of the facts has convinced this
Commission that the great majority of the CIA's domestic
activities comply with its statutory authority. The
Agency's own actions undertaken for the most part in
'73 and '74, before these hearings began, have gone far
Approved For Release 2006/07/28: CIA-RDP91-00901 R000700050007-2
 Approved For Release 2006/07/28: CIA-RDP91-00901 R000700050007-2
to terminate the activities upon which the investigation
was focused."
We are spending all this time on the Fifties and
Sixties. Your freedom and mine is going to be decided
in the late Seventies and early Eighties. I can't tell
you that we haven't done things we shouldn't have done,
that we haven't engaged in certain questionable activities;
but if you consider that through our Agency have passed
50,-60,-70,000 people in the last 27 years, if you put
our record up against that of any town of 50,-60,-70,000
people, or if any other organization in the U.S. Govern-
ment: was submitted 1D the kind of scutiny that we were
submitted to, I submit that we would not look quite as
horrible as we are portrayed.
Another great thing we have is that we alternate between
periods of "we're the greatest; we're the strongest" and
periods of "we're the worst, and everything we do is bad"
and so forth and so on. The head of a friendly European service
said. to me the other day, "You know, I always used to think
that the Flagellantes and the Penitentes were small
religious sects in Arizona and New Mexico, but," he said,
"now I see huge colonies of them flourishing all over the
Eastern seaboard."
Some people think that everybody's going to look at
this and say, "Isn't this great? Look at the Americans
Approved For Release 2006/07/28: CIA-RDP91-00901 R000700050007-2
 Approved For Release 2006/07/28: CIA-RDP91-00901 R000700050007-2
exposing all of these things, nobody else would do it, what
a fine system they have, what a great people they are."
The reaction I get abroad is: "How can you be this naive?
How can you be this stupid? You're not denigrating the
CIA, you're denigrating the United States." The same man
said to me, "Don't you have a law in America against indecent
exposure, against taking off your clothes in public?" I said,
"Sure." He said, "Tell me, why do you practice internationally
what you prohibit domestically?"
I'm not an old CIA man. I came there three and one-half
years ago and I must tell you that I marvel at the people
there. They are Americans just line other Americans and
they live by the same standards. There is an attempt today
to create a new caste of untouchables in the United States :
people who work in intelligence who are unfit for association
with other human beings and should be given no employment after
they leave there. And we see people doing everything they can
to foster this kind of discrimination. Well, all I can tell you
is that I see these people under a bombardment that has no equal
in American history--I don't think the worst part of the McCarthy
time was anything like this. These people continue every day
to produce what I believe to be the finest intelligence in the
world.
Now, they have published some of our post-mortems that
we've put out on intelligence failures. We are the ones
Approved For Release 2006/07/28: CIA-RDP91-00901 R000700050007-2
 Approved For Release 2006/07/28: CIA-RDP91-00901 R000700050007-2
-19-
who did those post-mortems; we weren't directed to do them.
We realized that we had failed here or there or in another
place, and we made these studies. Unfortunately, we do
not do post-morterns of our successes. I have suggested to
our Director that we undertake now some post-mortems of
our successes so the next time we're asked, we can produce
these.
Well, we live in a world where we all have hope that
detente will lead to a true lessening of tensions between
the Soviet Union and ourselves. But we must live in a real
world and.without illusions.
There was an amusing Russian story that was told about
two young Americans who went to Moscow and were being taken
around by a young Soviet and he took them to visit the
Kremlin, and the Cathedral of Basil the Blessed,
University on the Lenin Hills. Finally he took
the zoo. And here in a large cage they found a
a huge Russian grizzly bear--and a small rather
looking lamb who appeared to be in good shape.
thought it was odd to put these two in the same
and the
them to
Russian bear--
worried-
And they
cage and
they said to the young Russian, "Why do you do this?"
"Oh," he said, "this is to prove that peaceful co-existence
is possible." "Well," the young, American said, "it's
pretty impressive" and his buddy said, "it sure is
Approved For Release 2006/07/28: CIA-RDP91-00901 R000700050007-2
 Approved For Release 2006/07/28: CIA-RDP91-00901 R000700050007-2
convincing." The young Russian looked around and seeing
no one, he said, "Of course, you understand, every
morning we have to put in a new lamb." Then he added a
second, cruel, punchline: "For a nation of sheep, this
should not be difficult." So we have to watch this.
Another one which was told to me by the head of another
friendly European service, which I think is really a great
story to illustrate a little bit this puritanical "Lord
I thank thee that I am not as other people like that
publican over there" and adulterer and so forth. This
story is about the cannibals on an island in the Pacific
who captured a Frenchman, an Englishman and an American.
The King of the cannibals said to them, "I have bad news
and good news for you. The bad news is that I am going
to eat you all for lunch tomorrcw and you're going to be
executed in the morning. And after that you need some
good news and the good news is that I'll give you anything
you want short of setting you free. So he turned to the
Frenchman and he said, "What do you want?" And the
Frenchman said, "Well, if I'm going to be executed in the
morning I think I would just as soon spend the remaining
time with that beautiful cannibal girl over there."
They said okay and they untied the Frenchman and he
Approved For Release 2006/07/28: CIA-RDP91-00901 R000700050007-2
 Approved For Release 2006/07/28: CIA-RDP91-00901 R000700050007-2
- 21-
and the cannibal girl went off in the woods. Then they
said to the Englishman, "What do you want?" The English-
man said, "I want a pen and paper." They said, "What
do you want a pen and paper for?" He said, "I want to
sit down and write a letter to the Secretary General of
the United Nations and protest against the unfair, unjust,
and unsporting attitude you have adopted towards us." So
they untied the Englishman, they gave him a hut and. pen and
paper. Then they said to the American, "What do you want?"
The American said, "I want to be led into the middle of
the village, I want to be made to kneel down, and I want
the biggest cannibal here to kick me in the rear end."
They said, "That's a very odd request but the Americans
are a very odd bunch and since we promised, okay." So
they led the American into the middle of the village, they
made him kneel down, the biggest cannibal took a running
leap, kicked the American in the rear end and knocked him
ten feet. Now the American had been hiding a submachine
gun under his clothes and at this point, he took it out
and he shot down the local cannibals and the rest fled.
The Frenchman hearing the gunfire came out of the woods;
the Englishman hearing the gunfire came out of the hut.
They looked at the American and they said, "Do you mean
to say you had that gun the whole time?" The American
Approved For Release 2006/07/28: CIA-RDP91-00901 R000700050007-2
 Approved For Release 2006/07/28: CIA-RDP91-00901 R000700050007-2
said, "Sure." They said, "Well, why the heck didn't you
use it before now?" And this is the foreigner telling
me the story, he said, "The American looked at them with
an expression of deep sincerity and he said, 'but you
don't understand, it wasn't until they kicked me in the rear
end that I had any moral justification for this sort of
thing.
Well, every day when I go to work I walk by, at the
entrance of our building, a series of stars cut in the
stone and they commemorate the people of the Central
Intelligence Agency who have fallen in the performance
of their duties, and they have died for your freedom and
mine as surely as anybody who lies in a military cemetery.
And across from them there is the coat of arms of the
Central Intelligence Agency which contains a quotation
from the Bible which says, 'Ye shall know the truth and
the truth shall make you free." But in the world in
which we live today I am not sure that shouldn't be
changed to: You must know the truth for only the truth
will keep you free.
My generation was told by Winston Churchill that
the only companions we would have on our journey would
be "blood, and swea`, and tears, and toil." As we
Approved For Release 2006/07/28: CIA-RDP91-00901 R000700050007-2
 Approved For Release 2006/07/28: CIA-RDP91-00901 R000700050007-2
-23-
journey into this last quarter of the century, I think
all. of the men and women who work at the Central
Intelligence Agency hope that we will have three
companions on our journey: Faith, which lights the
road ahead, for dark is the road of the man who walks
without faith; Enthusiam, which moves the young and
keeps the older young; and, finally, Courage, which is
the greatest virtue of all because it is the guarantee
of all the others. If we do not have the courage to face
up to what must be done to ensure the survival of this
nation, because this nation is not a status quo nation
like the Soviet Union which wants to maintain things
as they are. There is in this nation all the mechanism
for bringing about all the change that we need to make.
The only thing is we want to make that change ourselves;
we don't want to have it imposed upon us.
I can only say that after the three and one-half
years I have been at the Central Intelligence Agency,
if I were asked to sum up my feelings, I would sum them
up in one word: reassurance. Reassurance at the competence
reassurance at the continuity, and most of all reassurance
at the people I find there. We do not attempt to have a
Approved For Release 2006/07/28: CIA-RDP91-00901 R000700050007-2
 Approved For Release 2006/07/28: CIA-RDP91-00901 R000700050007-2
crystal ball and predict that on the 17th of October, this,
that, or the other is going to happen. Our basic task is
to try to broaden the understanding of the people who make
the decisions in the United States as to what must be done
if this nation is to survive as a free nation.
We have many shortcomings. Sometimes I think we tend
to exaggerate them ourselves. If you look at our history,
our nation fought a number of great wars in this century.
We have not taken any territory; we have not compelled
anybody to become an American citizen who did not want to;
there is no parallel in recorded human history for the
effort this nation has made to help those it has defeated.
This nation is the only nation in history that has ever
financed its competitors back into competition. We
have shortcomings; but I don't think we should let them
blind us. I think all of us understand that we live in
a society which is the result of our national experience;
we wish to move ahead in that society; we wish above all
else to keep peace in order that our people may enjoy the
fruits of our work. But if we are not vigilant that
opportunity will not be given to us. We must never let
our nation be surprised. This is the charge that weighs
heavily on us.
Approved For Release 2006/07/28: CIA-RDP91-00901 R000700050007-2
 Approved For Release 2006/07/28: CIA-RDP91-00901 R000700050007-2
This is not an easy time. It reminds me of a poem
I once read which said, "It is not difficult in good
days to carry the flag forward before the proud ranks.
Only when the storm blows and the flag is in tatters
do the empty and the weak fall by the roadside and the
true and the loyal show themselves as such." This
is such a time for us.
People often ask me, "How are people taking this
at the Agency?" Well, what I must tell you is that they
continue to do their work and do it superbly. We have
four times as many people applying to work with us--
young people coming out of the universities--as at any
time in the past. The older people we were worried about
because they've lived all their lives in anonimity and
silence. We thought they couldn't stand it. We have had
less requests for resignation than in almost any year in
the past.
M:r. Truman once said, "If you can't stand the heat,
stay out of the kitchen." I, who am not an old CIA man,
never cease to marvel at, how many kitchen volunteers we
have who, through this torrent of mud and accusations and
innuendos of all sorts, continue to serve our nation
silently, in comradeship and in partnership, with those
who also work in the field of intelligence--with whom
Approved For Release 2006/07/28: CIA-RDP91-00901 R000700050007-2
 Approved For Release 2006/07/28: CIA-RDP91-00901 R000700050007-2
we work very closely and not in compartmented fashion as some
people would tell you--in Defense, the FBI, in Treasury, in
State, and all those other people who have some part in
making sure that our country is neither blind nor deaf.
I am proud to be associated with such people. I
believe that the way they have been. portrayed to us as a
threat to our freedom is a great dis-service to the people
who serve the United States anonymously, and very much
without visible rewards.
One might think that one would have reason to be a
pessimist; but if you look at the whole recorded history of
mankind in 6,000 years of which we have record, the whole
flow of human development has been in the direction of greater
freedom and dignity for the human individual. Many tyrants
in the past have stopped that flow temporarily. None has
ever stopped it permanently. I do not believe that the
various modern tyrannies under the various forms of
Communism will escape the inexorable laws of history. I
believe that we have just begun.
Not long ago I was in Taiwan. They took me through
the Museum of Natural History of China. And my guide
was a young girl, a Chinese University student, who spoke
good English, and at the end she said, "What do you think
of all this?" And I said, "It leaves me thoughtful as I
Approved For Release 2006/07/28: CIA-RDP91-00901 R000700050007-2
 Approved For Release 2006/07/28: CIA-RDP91-00901 R000700050007-2
contemplate the 6,000 years of your history compared
to the 200 years of our history." And she smiled and
she said, "Yes, that is only half a dynasty, isn't it?"
I said, "Yes, but in that half a dynasty we went from
an empty continent to walk alone the silent face of the
moon."
So while we have storms and while we have difficulties,
I have no doubt that the greatest period of our nation's
history lies ahead, not behind us.
Thank you very much.
Approved For Release 2006/07/28: CIA-RDP91-00901 R000700050007-2