SYD STAPLETON DEBATES WILLIAM COLBY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP99-00418R000100100006-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 11, 2012
• Sequence Number: 6
• Publication Date: August 6, 1976
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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y THE MILITANT (SOCIALIST WORKER'S PAHLY)
6 AUGUST 1976
STAT
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On April 11 some 1,000 students at Southern
Illinois University at Carbondale attended a
"Debate on the CIA" sponsored by the Graduate
Student Council.
On one side was William Colby, former director
of the Central Intelligence Agency.
On the other was Syd Stapleton, national
secretary of the Political Rights Defense Fund
and a member of the Socialist Workers party
National Committee. The PRDF is a civil
liberties organization publicizing the multi-
million-dollar suit filed.by the soeialisti #i*inst
government spying and harassment.
The event was originally scheduled to be a
ic::ture by Colby. i :at after protests by an ad hoc
j.roup, the Graduate Student Council and Colby
ag,?ced to change the format to a debate.
Colby and Stapleton had previously debated at
Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, March
?.
The debate brgun with p,-cpared ......arks by
both speu%:ers.
Following are excerpts from the rebuttals and
';`t8 lawn-arlo-aeswer period that followed the
niiiai' presentation. Th.e remarks were trans-
eribed and edited for grammatical smoothness.
Neither speaker has had the opportunity to
revise his comments for publication.
Colby. With respect to some of the specific
all, gettions-the CIA helping to overthrow Al-
len1c.:'lo, the CIA did not have anything to do
wit i the irilitary coup against Allende.
What we tried to do was to support the
democratic forces and media in Chile, looking I
Assassination is a very flamboyant kind of a
word and I think that most Americans and I
myself are against it. I was against it in the early
1960s. I turned down suggestions to that effect.
Shout from the audience. "What about the
Phoenix program?"
Colby. I'll answer the Phoenix program if you
want to. I'.ve been against assassinations all
along.
But if you will read the Senate report on the
subject you will find that the CIA didn't
assassinate anybody. [Uproar from audience.)
There were five pages in the report that stated
that there were only two assassination attempts
where the CIA did try to go out to see if they
could kill somebody, but neither of them died.
[Laughter from audience.]
:on the question of prosecutions of our people
which :Ir. Stapleton raised, no, there haven't
been any prosecutions and I don't think there
should be. Because the activities that were
undertaken were undertaken in the belief that
they were approved at the top level of the
government-that is, that they reflected the
consensus of what the American people, and the
Congress, and the executive were thinking at the
time.
In respect to accusations abut the FBI, I'm not
going to comment; I wasn't, in the FBI.
I believe the Constitution of the United
States, if we follow it and if we apply it, will
reflect what our American people want and what
they expect as things that should be done and as
things that should not be done.
Stapleton. Mr. Colby said that the CIA was not
involved in the overthrow of the Allende regime.
I think that's just not true.
The CIA has been involved in the overthrow of
governments in the past, and I don't see that
there has been any reexamination of the CIA's
policy that has led it to renounce that, course o
action.
Now, on the allegation that the CIA has never
killed anybody.
In fact, Operation Phoenix was a program
aimed at the suppression of the political structure
of the National Liberation Front in South
Vietnam. It resulted somehow in the deaths of
20,000 people, according to a number of indepen-
dent accounts.
continU
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Now, the last point was that people shouldn't
be prosecuted for activities that were supported
by the executive branch and by Congress. I don't
think it accomplishes anything to eay these were
bipartisan policies, as a way of exculratir.g the
people who carried them out.
Question. What kind of Neanderthal justifica-
tion exists for the CIA to give money to an
Italian political party?
Colby. The basic answer to your question I
cannot discuss specifically, since I am con-
strained by certain bonds of secrecy. [Laughter.]
But I did refer to the fact that the CIA did assist
various democratic and socialist forces in free
Western Europe when it was threatened by
possible political subversion supported by the
Soviet Union during the forties and fifties.
I believe that I have said publicly that we have
not given one dime to the Italian parties in the
past ix months to a year.
Stapleton. When the debate at Cornell took
place, one of the points that Mr. Colby made was
that the United States had the right and
responsibility to carry out activities around the
world to insure its security.
The CIA's conception of the security of the
United States is not to protect democracy in
Europe. It's to 'support friends of the United
States, including the same kind of people that
Lockheed was supporting in Japan and in
Italy--not friends of democracy, but right-
wingers verging on fascipm.
Question. Mr. Colby, are you saying that
operatives who were involved in illegal activities
should be let off the hook, but if one of the
operatives leaks information beforehand, making
an assassination not a reality, then that person
would be thrown in prison?
Colby. I think the question is really, should the
CIA keep secret something that was wrong? I
think President Ford has stressed several times
that he will not allow secrecy to be used to keep
secret something that was wrong, meaning
illegal.
If it is wrong, meaning a wrong policy, it can
be discussed behind closed doors with the
committees of the Congress representing the
American people.
Stapleton. Of course, it's interesting that you
say we should not allow secrecy to hide some-
thing wrong. The only problem is, we have to
find out about it 'first lefbre we can know
whether secrecy has been used to hide something
illegal.
That's the difficulty with that formula.
On the question of assassination, take the
CIA's role in the murder of Patrice Lumumba. I
don't think that question has been explored
adequately. It's simply not true that the people
the CIA targeted for assassination som&ow
managed to survive. Because Patrice Lumumba
did not.
Colby. Patrice Lumumba was killed by totally
separate forces in Africa. It had nothing to do
with any group the CIA was in touch with.
Stapleton. How do we know?
Colby. I do know. [Laughter.]
Question. I'Jould each of the speakers comment
on the Daniel Schorr matter?
Stapleton. I think what we're seeing in the
attack on Daniel Schorr is an- attempt' by the
intelligence agencies to intimidate critics of their
activities.
As information has come out through people
like Daniel Ellsberg and Daniel, Schorr in the
past few years, there has been an increasing
a..?areness in the United States that the govern-
ment has been carrying out policies which the
ccople of this country have not been asked to
approve and have not approved.
The answer of the intelligence agencies is not
to open their files. to respond to the requests for
information about their activfties. Instead they
try to create a hysteria about the threat of lost
secrets and damage to our "intelligence capabili-
ties."
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whoever leaked the information' should be
defended` as someone who was doing an impor-
tant- and immeasurably valuable service to the
American people.
Colby. I, of course, have already publicly
defended Daniel Schorr. But I think the people
who gave him the information should be pun-
ished.
Question. Mr. Stapleton, do you think the KGB
does a better job in protecting the interests of
Russia than the CIA?
Stapleton. I don't know, the KGB may be more
or less efficient than the CIA. It isn't a matter of
concern to me particularly. I think as Americans
we have a problem to deal with. Our government
lh..: t--t }~ .};~ tt~'i x likw the CIA. which i'+ having
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In fo pr CIA Director William Colby's answer to
a `gt.stion during the debate, the sleuth cams
within a hairbreadth of openly stating for the first
time that "Operation Phoenix," which he headed
while assigned to Vietnam, was in fact a massive
program of political assassinations.
Colby was trying to substantiate the allegation
that the Thieu regime in Vietnam had mass
support, and he cited various steps that were taken
at the CIA's insistence to shore up the puppet's
Image. In the course of his remarks, Colby said,
"And the. Phoenix was part of it. Phoenix was an
effort to identify who the communist cadres and
leaders were and to stop bothering their
an inimical effect on the rights of people in this
country and around the world. And that's the
problem we have to deal with.
Question. Mr. Colby, are you in favor of ending
all spying activities against the Socialist Work.
ers party? And what is the CIA doing to protect
us from the Democratic and Republican parties?
[Sustained laughter and applause.]
Colby. I can assure you the CIA wasn't doing
anything to protect you from either the Demo-
cratic or the Republican party in the United
States, and I'm pretty sure that it hasn't done
anything since I left.
Now, on the second part of the question. I
wouldn't give any party an absolute carte
blanche. I would look at the question of whether
there is any foreign support or manipulation, and
I would say that it is reasonable for the CIA to
look at whether this is happening.
Within the United States that's the FBI's job.
Outside the United States that's the CIA's job.
Stapleton. Well, there's obviously a dual
standard being used here because there are
certain institutions that operate overseas, like
Gulf Oil, that engage in political activities in the
United States and that aren't subject to surveil-
lance and infiltration by the CIA and the FBI.
So some become a target and some don't. And I
don't think the criterion is foreign links. The CIA
and FBI target those people whose activities are
inimical to the interests of the rulers of this
country.
Question. Mr. Colby, what's the status of the
files on domestic dissidents being held by the
Colby. The president of the Senate and the
speaker of the House wrote' me a letter asking me
that I destroy nothing. I've directed my people to
comply with that letter, but I also said that I
hoped we would have the biggest bonfire I knew
of as soon as that letter of restriction was lifted.
Stapleton. I assure you that officials of the CIA
and FBI would like to have a big bonfire of all
the files we. haven't seen, and they're going it) !: Y
and organize it as soon as possible.
Question. then should the CIA overthrow
foreign governments?
Colby. In the first place, there is a perfectly
practical matter. You don't overthrow a foreign
government, you help somebody in that country
who wants to overthrow the government do it.
(Laughter.)
I think that's an important fact, because
there's an image that somehow you just pull a
string in Washington and-bang!-it' goes.
That's not true.
The second answer is when. I think it should
be used sparingly.
I think there are situations, however, where a
force in a country indicates it will turn the
country into a force hostile to the United States,
that you can perhaps avoid a more serious
problem later by operating through some assist-
ance to friends.
It's not an ideological urge to go over there and
remake the world in our image. It is a matter of
the direct interests of the people of the United
States.
Stapleton. This is precisely the point I w~.s
trying to make earlier, that the CIA and its
defenders continue to claim the right to try to
overthrow governments.
And that's a very important point Mr. Colby
made about how they don't try to create images
of the United States around the world. That's
completely true.
They don't try to establish constitutional
freedoms around the world. They don't try to
establish a bill of rights in Brazil or Uruguay or
Greece or Chile.
The CIA is trying to support people it feels are
"friends" of the United States, people like
Chiang Kai-shek, Pinochet, and the rest.
Question. I am an -Iranian and I and other
Iranians think that the CIA had a lot to do with
the coup in Iran in 1953. 1 would like to know if
Mr. Colby will support our right to !ook at CIA
files and see for ourselves what the CIA has done
to our country and why we don't have any
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dictatorship. [Sustained applause.]
Colby. The Freedom of Information Act gives
a citizen of the United States an opportunity to
go to the government and get hold of government
documents, with a few exceptions outlined in the
act. I do not believe that the CIA should be
rcsponsive to every foreigner who comes to the-
front door and asks for a look at his files.
(l:vplausc.j
Question. For Mr. Colby: what is subversion,
foreign and domestic?
Colby. I think the word subversion, there are
quite a number of different definitions "of it-no
very precise ones. It basically means working
underneath to pull out from under the structure,
the. things that hold something up, to penetrate
it, infiltrate it, and co forth.
That's the general meaning but I don't have a
pat answer for that question.
Stapleton. It's a very good point that subver-
sion is not a very precise term It's used by the
FBI, for example, to target peoplefor harassment
whom the FBI considers "subversive." And
there's no telling what they mean. It just means
they want to get you.
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