WILLIAM COLBY: INTELLIGENCE CAN BE AN ADDITION TO PEACE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP99-00418R000100150008-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 15, 2012
• Sequence Number: 8
• Publication Date: June 3, 1990
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Si Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/15: CIA-RDP99-00418R000100150008-8
STAT
WILLIAM COLBY:
intelligence can be
an addition to peace
William COLBY. former director of the Central Intelligence Agency from 1973
to 1976, was in Moscow for the first time last week as a participant in a two-day
press seminar sponsored by New York University's Center for War, Peace and the
News Media. His tenure with the CIA was marked by tension over Vietnam, and a
period when the organization came under increasing fire from both the American
public and the Congress. He now serves as a legal and political consultant to various
organizations.
In an exclusive interview with Moscow News, Colby speaks with reporters Andrei
BEZRUCHENKO and Wendy SLOANE. "Intelligence tells you what's happening,
and then you can negotiate," he claims. "It's an addition to peace, if you do it right."
-`! 'Vasnington Post
The Now York Times
TM Washington Times
The Watt Street Journal
The Chrlatlan Sc*" Monitor
Naw York Daily Nawa
USA Today
T hitapo Tribune
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 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/15: CIA-RDP99-00418R000100150008-8
~~ E L `DERSTA`D THIS IS
YOUR FIRST TIME IN THE
SOVIET UNION. HAD YOU
THOUGHT OF TAKING PART IN
SUCH A VISIT ITV THE PAST?
Well, obviously I've studied the
Soviet Union for many years, and
have tried to look in from the outside'
to know what it is like. I have always
wanted to visit 'pour country, but on
my previous jobs it really wasn't very
convenient. But I am a very strong
believer that an intelligence officer
should visit the country he studies. so
that he can get a sense of what the
pe )rile look like and the circumstances
of the towns and countryside. It helps
ou to interpret what is happening. the
re.,lity .i~, distinct from what the rep-
orts tell you. I have sent our analysts
on ordinary tourist trips here in the
past The} don't do anything they
shouldn't do but they just go on their
own, to look. Sometimes the autho-
rities knew that they worked for the
CIA and sometimes they didn't, I don't
know. one way or another, they just
came and acted as tourists. I tried to
gee if I couldn't arrange somehow for
Mr. Andropov to visit the United
States-somebody with those respon-
sibilities, I think, should visit the
country that he's obviously concerned
about.
WHAT DO YOU THINK OF
THE KGB? DO YOU CONSIDER
THEM TO BE YOUR ALLIES?
No. thes_'re not our counterpart. be-
cause the KGB has internal responsi-
bilities. your borders. your secrets.
protection of your high authorities
We divide those into different organiz-
at!ons in America. We have had out
successes, we've had our failures.
they've had their successes, they've
had their failures.
SO THE KGB IS NOT YOUR
ENEMY?
No. Any intelligence service is going
to do what its governmenttells them.
And if its government maintains a
good relationship with another gover-
nment, then the intelligence services
will retain a friendly one. Intelligence
services today are a very important
element to successful arms control, of
the verification problem, and it is re-
sponsibility of the CIA to measure the
compliance to the SALT agreement,
the ABM treaty, all the other treaties.
WE WERE INTERESTED IN
WHAT YOU- SAID AT THE
SEMINAR TODAY ABOUT THE
SOMEWHAT DIMINISHING
ROLES OF INTELLIGENCE
AGENCIES. DO YOU THINK
THAT THE PRESENT TIME IS
MORE CONDUCIVE TO DOING
THINGS OPENLY?
Absolutely. Things are carried in the
front page of Pravda and Izvesda that
we wouldn't have dreamed of,
wouldn't have known five or ten years
ago. You have to then evaluate what
the information means. We've always
had that as the central part of our
intelligence system, the analysis.
FOR MANY YEARS, SOVIETS
HAVE HAD A CERTAIN IMAGE
OF THE CIA. ARE YOU SURE
THAT EVERYTHING YOU DID
W AS PROPER. DURING ALL THE
YEARS YOU WERE HEAD OF
THE CIA?
Any intelligence service is going to
do what its government tells it to do.
If the government says to support
somebody in the intelligence service.
we'll do it.
WERE THERE TIMES WHEN
YOU FELT ANY PERSONAL
CONFLICT BETWEEN WHAT
THE GOVERNMENT TOLD YOU
TO DO AND WHAT YOU
WANTED TO DO?
No. I could work it out.
HOW DID YOU WORK IT
OUT?
Well, I objected to some things, and
said, no, we don't do that. And we
also have a situation now, and your
KGB is going to come into this one,
where we not only have to do what
our President tells us, but we have to
report it to our Congress, to commit-
tees of our Congress. And if they don't
like it, they are going to tell you so
and stop you. They will say no, I don't
care if the President says you can do
that, you can't do it. In some situ-
ations we have supported right-wing
people where they have been opposed
y left-wing people who were sup-
ported by the Soviet Union.
WHY?
Because there wasn't anybody else
to support. And otherwise it was a
matter of letting the Soviet-supported
people take over the country. I worked
in Italy for five years between 1953
and 1957. At that time Italy was a
great battleground, not violence, but
politically, between the Communist
party, the Communist trade unions,
the Communist cooperatives, the
Communist intellectual groups and all
the rest of them. And the Soviet
Union was supporting them. The
question was, will it ever become a
Communist country? If it did, it would
have been a disaster to NATO, the
whole hope to strengthen Western
Europe. We were resolved no, so in
that case we did not support the right-
wing, we supported the center, the
Social Democrats, the Christian
Democrats, the Liberals, the
Republicans, but not the right win`.
We supported them to meet the chal-
lenges put up by the Communist mo-
vements. If they had Party Congresses,
we could have Party Congresses, if
they could have publications, we could
have publications, if they had a youth
group, we could have a youth group.
And intellectual groups, we could have
intellectual groups. That's what the
political struggle over Italy was all
about. It wasn't a violent one-war-
but it was a subversive one. We stop-
ped it.
I was in Vietnam before I was there.
we were supporting the South
Vietnamese government to try to
strengthen its defenses against the
North Vietnamese attacks.
DO YOU THINK WHAT YOU
DID IN VIETNAM WAS RIGHT?
I just finished writing a book a few
months ago about the Vietnam war. I
think we made some mistakes in the
way we did it. but I think that the idea
was proved by what happened since
the Communist victorv. Almost two
million Vietnamese have left the
country as refugees, they don't want to
live in that society.
SO THE VIETNAM WAR AS AN
IDEA WAS CORRECT?
Yeah. We did it wrong, we did it
wrong. I think we should have been
supporting the peop : +n the villages
against the so-callea )pie's war and
we really insisted on fighting a
soldier's war, whereas Ho Chi Minh
and his friends said that they were
fighting a people's war. When we fin-
ally got a strategy going to mute that
level of the war, the political level in
the rural communities, we were wrong.
But then the Americans were so dis-
gusted at the whole experience that we
gave up and we left, and the North
Vietnamese won by invading, not poli-
tically, they invaded with regular
troops.
DO YOU THINK THE
CURRENT CHANGES TAKING
PLACE IN EASTERN EUROPE
AND THE SOVIET UNION NOW
CAN SERVE AS A
JUSTIFICATION FOR WHAT THE
UNITED STATES DID IN
VIETNAM?
I don't think they'relate particul-
arly. I think of the changes in Europe,
what is going on is a successful pro-
gram of containment in Europe over
the last 40 years. In the 40's we said
that we have to seriously prevent the
further expansion of Stalin's commun-
ism into the rest of the 'world. And
eventually things will change if we just
stop it and o on further. Well, it took
40 years for the eventual but we
avoided it. For example, when
President Eisenhower won, you then
had the Hungarian revolt. He res-
trained, and he said that it may be
tough on the Hungarians, but we do
not want World War Three. It was a
proper decision at that time to keep a
sober, serious containment, but not to
go into adventure.
DID THE CIA HAVE ANY
HAND IN THE EVENTS IN
HUNGARY AND CZECHOSLO-
VAKIA?
No. essentially not. One of my
bosses in the CIA really became ment-
ally unstable after the Hungarian
revolt because he was so disgusted that
here was this opportunity to help the
Hungarians and his orders were no, to
stay out. and he did.
DO YOU THINK THE CIA IS
ACTIVE IN EASTERN EUROPE'
We can't even keep up with it
Eastern Europe went all by itself. The
CIA did start up one of the programs
that had results: Radio Free Europe.
Radio Free Liberty. Those were orig-
inally started up as CIA programs.
The fact was that we did support those
and get them started, but then in the
last ten years, like many other CIA
programs, they have been turned over
to the open world, and Radio Free
Europe and Radio Free Liberty have
no connection with the CIA anymore.
they are run entirely separate.
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WE HAVE READ IN SEVERAL
WESTERN NEWSPAPERS THAT
THE KGB HAS TAKEN PART IN
ETHNIC CONFLICTS IN SOME
SOVIET REPUBLICS. DO YOU
BELIEVE THE CIA HAS HAD
ANY PART?
I doubt it. As I already said, the
CIA does what the government wants
it to do. And the United States gover-
nment now wants to support President
Gorbachev solve his problems. We
would never want to do anything to
harm Gorbachev and his plans for the
future.
IS IT IN THE INTEREST OF
THE CIA TO SUPPORT
GORBACHEV?
It's not in the interest of the CIA.
but in the interest of the United States.
I think if Mr. Gorbachev can get a
hand on the economy and firm up the
political system, then the Soviet Union
can really succeed. If it remains a
closed society with a dead economy
it's going to fail, and that's dangerous
to everybody.
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