HOSTAGES, HINDSIGHT, & LIFE IN THE CIA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP99-00498R000200030027-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: April 5, 2007
• Sequence Number: 27
• Publication Date: October 1, 1982
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Approved For Release 200 (A NCIA-RDP99-00498R00020
Tulane University (LA)
Fall 982
Uotage, llinIig
& Lite in the CIA STAT
A Conversation with Stansficig Turner
by Garry Boulard
A s snow fell in Washington that
brisk Sunday morning in January
1981, Stansfield Turner, then head of the
Central Intelligence Agency, sensed the
mounting pressure and excitement -as he
and his wife neared the White House.
"1 knew there really wasn't any reason
for me to be there," the fifty-eight-year-
old Carter appointee recalled. "There
wasn't anything for me to do, but I just
felt like I should be with the people I had
worked with all those months in one of
their most important hours."
An official White House photo released
later in the day captured the drama of the
moment: Turner, still in his overcoat, sits
in a corner of the Oval Office, while such
one-time heavyweights as Walter Mon-
dale, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Ed Muskie,
and G. William Miller await the latest
word on the release of Iran's U.S.
hostages-an ordeal that had plagued so
many political careers.
In the middle of the photo stands the
man who in two days would no longer be
this country's commander-in-chief. Some-
what beleaguered. almost certainly tired,
President Jimmy Carter appeared to be
lost in thought.
Despite the high drama of the situation,
Turner remembered a few funny and even
emotional incidents that occurred before
the hostages were released and Ronald
Reagan was sworn in as the next
president. "We were, for the most part,
just sitting around, hoping for some new
breakthrough, trying to remain calm.
We'd all go into another room for coffee
and to chat, then the phone would ring,
and we'd all run back into the Oval Office.
It got to be a little ridiculous after a
while."
Even as Carter's final hours as
president dwindled, he continued to
perform some of the ceremonial functions
required of that high office. Turner vas
slated to receive the National Security
Medal for his almost four years as chief of
the ever-controversial CIA.
"1 left a message with the White House
that they didn't have to go through with
the ceremony. I knew the president was
tired and I thought they could just mail
the medal to me," said Turner. But Carter
was adamant. He wanted to personally
thank the CiA director for his service to
the country. For Turner, a man not given
to sentimental display, the gesture was
heartfelt.
In New Orleans this summer to address
the Tulane Founder's Society, Turner, a
devotee of twelve-hour workdays who
seems to gain energy as the day wears on,
held an hour-long press conference,
appeared on a local television show,
hobnobbed with local officials, and in
between it all raced back to his hotel
room to make several business calls to
New York.
A graduate of Annapolis, where he
ranked ahead of classmate Carter in 1946,
Turner also graduated from Oxford
University before assuming a variety of
naval duties ranging from commanding a
minesweeper to running a guided missile
frigate.
After twenty years of naval service, he
was promoted to rear admiral in 1970 and
later became commander of the Second
Fleet in the Atlantic. He became known
as something of an innovator in that
position and made a practice of checking
up on the readiness of his ships by making
surprise helicopter visits.
When Carter tapped Turner to head the
CIA in 1977, that agency had just gone
through one of the most difficult periods
of its thirty-five-year history. A congres-
sional investigating committee headed by
former senior Democratic senator Frank
Church of Idaho had recommended
sharp controls over what it viewed as the
CIA's rampant abuse of the privacy of
American citizens and the covert action
taken against governments such as those
of Cuba and Chile, where certain political
movements thought to be anti-American
were ruthlessly squelched or attacked.
One result of that congressional
recommendation was the 1974 Hughes-
Ryan Amendment, which stipulated that
before the CIA undertook any operation
which would involve it in the business ofa
foreign country, the president of the
United States would have to justify that
activity as essential to the security of this
nation and then officially inform various
congressional committees.
Such balance-of-power juggling acts
would later prompt Carter to complain
that every time he wanted to conduct any
sort of covert action, he was obligated to
inform seven or eight congressional
committees.
Presently lecturing across the country
and appearing on NBC as a military
correspondent, the graying, physically fit
Turner refutes George Bernard Shaw's
description of top-level government offi-
cials as "people who have no souls, and
are born stale."
On the contrary, in a wide-ranging
conversation with Tu/anian, Turner proved
that he's not afraid to express his
opinion, whether the subject is the press
("Most reporters are looking for that big
Watergate-like story and if they don't find
it they'll practically make one up') or the
present foreign policy of the Reagan
Administration ("it has been primarily
one of poor planning and mixed signals.")
Tulanian: The battle for the Falkland
Islands seems to be, for the time being
anYwat', settled. Were there an} lessons
for us to learn from this struggle?
Turner: There were a lot of them. First
and foremost: don't get involved in a war
when you don't have a vital interest
involved.
 Approved For Release 2007/04/06: CIA-RDP99-00498R000200030027-1
Tulanian: United
Nations Ambassa-
dor Jeane Kirkpat-
rick criticized the
official U.S. action
of coming out in
favor of Great Brit-
ain as early as we
did. Do you agree
with her outlook?
Turner: No. I disagree strongly. We had
no choice but to side with our most
important ally. We had no choice but to
work within the NATO framework rather
than the Latin American framework. On
top of that, the Argentinians were the
aggressors, and the United Nations has
condemned that aggression. So I think we
did the right thing. To me the only
question is if we should have come down
on the side of Great Britain even earlier
than we did. It might have been more
effective in toning down the Argentinians
if we had come out against them from the
beginning.
Tulanian: Where do we go from here with
respect to Argentina? Many reports have
shown what seems to be a very arrogant
stance by both the old and new Argentine
governments in the sunset of their defeat.
Do you see any hope for a renewed
relationship between the United States
and Argentina?
Turner: No, clearly not in the near future.
There are great feelings of anger and
bitterness on the part of the Argentine
government and its people against the
United States, so at the present I don't
think we'd be well advised to spend a great
amount of time and effort in such an
endeavor. In time we might want to be
useful to the Argentinians in helping to
rebuild their economy. They're deeply in
debt. . .the economy is not running well,
and if the new government is receptive to
some advice and aid and some reschedul-
ing of their debts, I think we could be
helpful there. %Ve can provide that help.
The Soviet Union cannot. And, of course,
we want to keep the Soviet influence in
the hemisphere to a minimum.
Tulanian: One of the upshots of the
Falkland crisis seems to be the tremen-
dous amount of speculation were hearing
about the condition and potential of our
naval capabilities. As a former naval
officer, do you have any insight into what
our weak and strong points are?
Turner: One major lesson of the war,
which should not be a lesson, is that ships
are vulnerable to missiles and this is the
advanced missile age. I say it should not
be a lesson in that we should have clearly
known that a long time ago. There have
been a number of ships sunk in war by
missiles in the past; any serious capability
study would show that. But our navy has
not taken those factors Into consideration
and is still building very large, very
expensive ships. I think that's unwise. I
think we would find that modern
technology will permit us to perform
almost as well with smaller ships as with
the bigger ones.
In the Falklands case, the very low
performance airplanes that the British
had on their small carriers did remarkably
well against high performance jets from
the Argentine side, largely because they
had a very capable U.S. air-to-air missile
to do the fighting for them. We must also
not forget the importance of supplies. The
whole war, really, was a war of "Could the
British get enough men and supplies onto
those islands?" Once they did, there was
no question as to who was going to win.
Tulanian: Was using the luxury liner
Queen Elizabeth a sign of desperation on
the part of the British?
Turner: I thought it was a sign of
ingeniousness. You see, had they tried to
maintain that size of ship for that amount
of transport for troops as a purely naval
resource, it would have been very costly.
As long as they felt confident to call
upon it, it seemed to me that it was not an
unreasonable move to make. Now, they
called on lots more merchant ships to
carry cargo down there. I don't think the
United States ought to be quite that
dependent upon the merchant marine.
First of all, we don't have that kind of
control over our merchant marine.
The battle of the Falklands was a battle
between a sea power-Great Britain-
and a land power-Argentina. Argentina
had a strategic advantage of being close,
but had a strategic disadvantage of having
to fight over, islands when it was a land
power. Once the British cut the islands off
with their submarine blockade, the only
question in the whole war became
whether or not the Argentine air force and
navy could prevent the British from
getting the men and supplies on the
island. And they had a reasonable go at it.
But they weren't able to sustain their air
force attacks on the fleet. The Argentine
air force wore down faster than did the
British navy. and that's why the war came
out the way it did.
Tulanian: Do you think Britain should be
gallant in victory and negotiate for a
settlement of who should and who should
not have eventual control of the islands?
Turner: Yes. I think the British are making
a very serious mistake in victory and are
going to lose the peace as a result. If they
continue with their intransigent stands,
the Argentines will certainly maintain
their position that they will reattack...
sometime. That means that the British
will have to garrison the islands with
troops, ships, and equipment at consider-
able expense to them and to their NATO
obligations. I believe the British public
will tire of that expense sooner than will
the Argentines. It will cost the Argentines,
also, because they will have to rebuild
their army, navy, and air force. But they
would probably do that anyway.
Any British garrison of this nature
would look very much like colonialism to
most of Latin America, and it will make it
more difficult for Great Britain.. .and, to
some extent, to us, to resume normal
relations with all the rest of Latin
America. So if the British refuse to
negotiate the fate of the islands, it will be a
very serious mistake.
Tulanian: Would your former boss,
President Carter, have done anything
differently in this crisis?
Turner: Well, it's pretty hard to speculate.
I don't think there are any ideological
differences between Mr. Carter and X.
Reagan on this ...well, let's see: Mr.
Carter was, of course, much stronger
against Argentina for its human rights
record, so maybe he would have come out
initially for the British instead of waiting
to see what would have happened with
the negotiations. It's just so hard to
speculate about what might have hap-
pened in a given situation.
Tulanian: You were the tenth director of
the CIA in a thirty-year period.
Turner: 1 was only there two and one-half
years when I became the longest director
in tenure except for Mr. [Allen] Dulles
and Mr. [Richard] Helms.
Tulanian: Considering that record-what
might seem to some to be a great amount
of turnover in a top government agency-
does it seem to you that the CIA has had a
history of instability in its uppermost
offices?
Turner: Oh no. I think there's a great
continuity in the agency among all the
professionals there who are very capable
people. But 1 do agree with the point
 Approved For Release 2007/04/06: CIA-RDP99-00498R000200030027-1
you're making, and that is that the tenure
of the directors has been short. The
number went up considerably because
Mr. [James] Schlesinger stayed only
about six months until the president
decided to move him to the secretary of
defense slot, and Mr. [George] Bush
stayed only a year because there was an
election change, and because Bush was
such a prominent Republican it became
very difficult for a Democratic president
to keep him.
I think the one thing that concerns me is
that the appointment not be seen as
political. While Mr. Bush and Mr.
[William] Casey, the present director, are
very capable people, I think there's a risk
in appointing men who have such pure
identifications with a domestic political
party, because they don't carry over into a
new administration very easily. One could
hardly expect whoever the next Demo-
cratic president is to accept the former
Republican chairman as his intelligence
adviser. When you put a political person
in there, you build in a turnover rate
which is unnecessary.
Tulanian: When you were first appointed
by President Carter to become the head of
the CIA, one national journal asked if
you, a person who had not worked within
the CIA, would be able "to run the
company, "or if the "company would run
you. " Which happened?
Turner: (Laughs) I don't have any doubt
that 1 ran the company. The company was
a pretty loyal organization. Now any
bureaucracy is difficult to move, to
change... but that doesn't have to be the
CIA. I had just as many troubles in the
navy, as far as causing change goes, as I
aid in the CIA. But that's just a normal
bureaucratic effort. I found the people
there to be quite understanding of the fact
that they were working for a director who
was not a professional intelligence officer.
Tulanian: When you look back on your
involvement with the CIA during the
Iranian hostage crisis, was there anything
that should have been done that wasn't?
Was the U.S. wrong in negotiating and'
bartering as it did?
Turner: If I had it to do over... based on
hindsight...1 would have tried the
hostage rescue operation sooner. I think
we could have pulled it off. We had very
bad luck; it didn't work. But I think it
was the right thing to do anS I think in the
long run it had some impact on Iran's
decision to give the hostages up. It was a
frustrating experience because there was
nobody in Iran whom we could negotiate
with. Yet we tried to negotiate for a long
period of time. But what we found, and
this was not easy to predict, was that each
time the negotiator "Gentleman X" told
us something, "Gentleman Y" would
come out and oppose whatever we had
negotiated with, because by opposing it
and making Gentleman X appear to be a
friend of the United States, he'd gain
political stature inside Iran. They used us
a foil for domestic politics.
Tulanian: That must have been a very
maddening, tiring situation.
Turner: It was. -1 think the six months
between the taking of the hostages and
our hostage rescue effort were the most
wearing, trying six months of my thirty-
five years in government. It was the only
time I can recall that at one stage I was
physically worn down. 1 really overtaxed
my stamina... my ability to hold stamina.
Tulanian: That's a feeling you haven't
experienced often?
Turner: No. I've learned over the years,
particularly when, you're out at sea and
there's a lot of activity and pressure, that
you must pace yourself so that you don't
wear down. The sailor knows that the
battle may still come tomorrow. In the
middle of January 1980 1 was tired
enough that I actually took five days off
and went out west to play tennis.
Tulanian: Some reports had it that
President Carter consulted with Israeli
military officials in the Iranian raid. And
that they told him it would be almost
impossible to accomplish what he hoped
to do-that is, free the hostages.
Turner: Well, it was a very different raid
from the type that they conducted in
Entebbe, that's true. But considering
what we've learned from the hostages
since they've come back, l believe that had
we got to Tehran, we would have had a
better chance than we thought of
extricating the hostages. We knew there
were risks at every stage... but there also
weren't many alternatives. We were,
frankly, concerned for the hostages' lives.
Those who were holding them were not
rational people. At any point during this
whole thing, we knew that they could
have been tortured or killed and we felt an
obligation to do something to ward that
off.
Tulanian: After the Church Committee
hearings, which did not exactly put the
CIA in the best light, do you feel the
agency can still be effective?
Turner: I think the CIA is very effective
today. The reports on the constraints are
much exaggerated. In fact, many of the
controls that were placed upon the CIA in
the mid-1970s have actually strengthened
the agency. When an agency has to
operate in secret and is not under any
controls, there are dangers to the agency
and to the country. The controls that have
been put in place make the agency think
more carefully when it proceeds to
develop a plan of action and give it some
opportunity to bounce those ideas off
either the White House or the congres-
sional committees. That can make it a
stronger, more vibrant agency.
Tulanian: Arthur Schlesinger has criti-
cized the CIA's cloak-and-dagger life,
writing that he thought in every president
there was a "James Bond signalling to get
out. " In the early 1960s, Harry Truman,
who helped create the CIA, said that if he
had known what was going to happen, he
would never have created the agency in
the first place.
Turner: I've never heard of that. Harry
Truman said that?
Turner: I've never heard that kind of
quotation before. I just don't know what
Harry Truman had in mind. In 1960 he
said that?
Tulanian: In 1963. And he had earlier
expressed concern over the Bay of Pigs
fiasco.
Turner: Other than being upset over the
Bay of Pigs, I don't know what Truman
might have been thinking of. To me, the
CIA has run a remarkably effective
service for our country over thirty some
years. On the cloak-and-dagger territory,
which is the most controversial as
opposed to the collecting and interpreting
of intelligence, I think on balance the
cloak-and-dagger operations have pro-
vided more good than harm. The CIA
had made a great mistake in publicizing
some of those operations because it has
led people to think that it can do more
than it can and can accomplish more than
it can accomplish. A lot of people think
we can overturn any government we want
to overturn as long as we turn the CIA
loose on it. That wasn't true in the
beginning; it's less true today.D
Garry Boulard is a staff writer in the
Office of University Relations.