ADMIRAL STANSFIELD TURNER, DCI, REMARKS AT PRINCIPIA COLLEGE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP99-00498R000200130018-0
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 7
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 15, 2007
• Sequence Number: 18
• Publication Date: February 5, 1980
• Content Type: REPORT

Approved For Release 2007/03/15: CIA-RDP99-00498R.0002
0130018-0
JAamiral Stansfield Turner
Director of Central Intelligence
Remarks at Principia College
Elsah, Illinois
5 February 1980
Thank you, President Andrews, thank all of you. Having been
in Christian Scientist since I was five years old, I have known a
lot of Principians, and have learned a lot about Principia. I am
really excited at this first opportunity for me to be here on the
Elsah Campus.
By coincidence, it was just 3 years ago this week that I
received what proved to be a rather fateful telephone call. I was
sitting in my office in Naples, Italy when I received a call
telling me that the President of the United States wanted to see me
in Washington the next morning. I was a classmate and friend of
the President, but I'm not sure he knew where I was when he asked
to see me.
All the way across the Atlantic I wondered what he would ask
me to undertake. Would it permit me to continue to work toward the
goals that I wanted to see accomplished in the United States
military establishment? I admit that it did cross my mind that two
weeks before, the President's first nominee for the Director of
Central Intelligence Agency had not passed muster with the Senate.
But, I rejected that out of hand and continued to think about
the things I wanted to try to accomplish in the United States
military.
The next day, in the Oval Office, the President told~me
he wanted me to take over the Central Intelligence Agency. I
remonstrated and tried to say that I would prefer to stay in my
military profession, but you run out of argumentation with the
President quickly. As if across a screen, I saw 32 years of naval
experience flash by, going, going, and then before me was a
stark new challenge.
I mention th?is~to you only because many of you will be undertaking
a new challenge this summer when you graduate. Others of you are
already thinking ahead to what you will seek as your first
challenge in the working community. I would suggest that, as
happened to me, you will make that very important decision when
you leave this college and embark on one field, one profession, one
endeavor. But don't think you will be making that decision just
once. You will make it over. and over again during your life. No
one set of preparations, no one.set of skills will be adequate to
prepare you for the kinds of opportunities that will come your
way.
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I believe there are three particular preparations that will be
very helpful to you in adapting to new opportunities. One is to
have defined your objectives. Another is to have established your
work habits. And still a third is to have thought through and
understood the ethical standards which will guide your conduct in
your working life.
I was fortunate in this shift from a military career to a
career as an intelligence officer. My objectives did not have
to change. They have always been to serve this country. I don't say
that in any altruistic or absolute way. I joined the Navy during
World War II when it was popular to serve one's country. Immediately
thereafter, it was not my objective to continue to serve. It wasn't
until I had been in the Navy 8 or 9 years that I truly felt the
enthusiasm, the stimulus, the sense of reward of being part of our
national security apparatus. When that realization came to me, I
became dedicated to serving my country as long as it had use for me
in the government service. You will need to define and redefine
your objectives as you go along, and watch them so that when new
opportunities do offer themselves you will know whether or not they
lead you in the direction that you ultimately want to go.
As far as work habits were concerned, as I rose progressively
in the Navy I found my capacity for work continued to increase. The
time and effort I was willing to devote to my work reached a point that
when I became the Director of Central Intelligence I couldn't
imagine that there was more that could be asked of me. But, there
was. And, somehow, I found the time and the energy to do more.
You must also decide whether you can or want to expand your
capacity for work as you rise in seniority and importance.
This is not just a question of capability. This is a question
relating to the quality of your life. Most top businessmen and
government officials in our country work too hard. So, as you
go along, you must balance your sense of ambition and objectives
and your sense of the quality of life that you want to lead.
That should be a conscious decision, one that you have thought
about most seriously.
As for ethical standards, I was also very grateful that my
military career had prepared me very well for the kinds of ethical
dilemmas I have had to face in intelligence. A military man must
ask himself, does the Golden Rule always apply? Does it apply
equally to my country's enemies, as well as its friends? Or do I
treat enemies differently? If so, how differently, and what are
those ethical limits? You must ask yourself if American ideals are
worth fighting for. Are they worth killing for? Similarly, as
Director of Central Intelligence, I must ask myself what risks we
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should take for our country. How important is it that we gain
certain information? You too need to lay the foundation early in
your working careers as to what ethical standards are going to be
the basis for your approach to the problems of your career. It is
too late to wait until the dilemma arises to establish ethical
standards.
Let me move on to share with you a little of what it was like
after I left the Oval Office that day three years ago, and what it
has been like since, being the Director of Central Intelligence and
the head of the Central Intelligence Agency at this very special
time in the intelligence history of our country.
One thing, perhaps unfortunately, that being the Director
of Central Intelligence has not been like is James Bond. I
said unfortunately. My wife, who is sitting there in the fifth row,
thinks it is very fortunate that I don't have the exotic experiences
of James Bond. If there is any similarity between the the Director
of Central Intelligence, the DCI, and 007, it is in the kind of
gadgetry we use. Mine isn't a rear firing gun or blades that
stick out from the hubcaps of an Aston-Martin. Mine is exotic
satellites, listening devices that hear signals that are going
through this room right now from radars, radios, and all
kinds of other electronic devices. The United States is
blessed in having the scientific expertise to give us the very
best of intelligence collecting devices, the gadgets.
Technical intelligence collection, collection through electronic
wizardy, has one interesting characteristic. It is phenomenally
capable, yet it cannot do the job of acquiring information about
other countries alone. Generally, a photograph shows you something
that happened in the past. The interception of a radar signal
tells you that yesterday, at that place, on that frequency, with
that power, a certain radar was operating. When I present that to a
policymaker, he will say, but Stan, why did that happen? What does
it mean is going to happen next? To learn people's motives, why
they are doing something, and what they are planning, we turn
to a human being, a spy. Only a human being can talk to
the people making the decisions in another country, probe their
minds and bring back their intentions and plans. So, today,
despite technology, we continue to need spies. We have them and
they are very good. Nonetheless, it is here, with the spies,
where many of the most difficult decisions must be made.
Unlike James Bond, my decisions are not whether or not to jump
out of the airplane without a parachute. They are not that straight-
forward. They are not as clearly right or wrong. The essence of
C;
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spying is risk taking. Each time I must judge whether the benefits
of spying will be worth the risk we must take. The risk might be
of embarrassing the country if we are caught. There is the risk of
actually complicating our diplomatic efforts. There is the risk to
human life. When I make a decision to conduct a spying activity, I
must ask myself, is the information really valuable? Will it
actually help the President, or the Secretary of State, or the
Secretary of Defense? Could we obtain that information in a less
risky way? If the answer is yes it is that valuable, then of
course, we do our best to get it. But if my staff says, yes it is
valuable, but with much less risk you will have a 30 percent
probability of getting what you want. Do I take that 30 percent
chance, particularly if in taking it I foreclose the higher probablity
option - and the higher risk - because there won't be time to do
both? Or do I decide to take a greater risk and be surer of
obtaining the information we need?
Then, there is the question of to what ethical limits will we
go to obtain the information? Is there some threshold below
which I will not go? Perhaps more important, do the ethical
standards that apply vary with the quality and the importance of
the information that you are likely to obtain? Are there things I
would do to obtain information that would prevent World War III
that I would not do to find out about Soviet intentions to enter
the grain market and cheat us as they did in 1972? There is no
formula. There are no set rules for these kinds of tough decisions.
It is personal judgment, and it is that ethical foundation, that
sense of what you will or will not do, that counts. Managing a
spying organization is an intellectual, thoughtful vocation not one
of adventure and daring-do.
Collecting information, either by technical systems like
satellites and photos, or by the human spy, is only half of intelligence
work. Once you have collected the information you need to do
something with it. You need to interpret it, analyze it, study it,
and come up with some kind of an assessment that will help the
policymaker make a good decision. This is very much like your
writing a term paper, or the research department of a major corporation
looking at future business prospects, or like the research done on
a college campus. At this time in our country's history it is
especially interesting to be involved in the intelligence analytic
process.
For the first 30 years after World War II, American intelligence
focused largely on the Soviet military threat. But, today,.this
afternoon for example, we are closer to being at economic war with
the Soviets than we are military war. Political and economic
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considerations are very important to our country. Therefore,
intelligence must put more emphasis on them than we have in the
past. Although the Soviet Union remains our number one priority
intelligence target, look this evening at where we are concerned
about impending crises in the world.
In Southeast Asia the Vietnamese have invaded Kampuchea. They
are pushing next door to where they may spill into Thailand. Look
at the pending elections in Zimbabwe, Rhodesia. Look at the
possibility of a revolution in El Salvador. Look at the quirks of
a 79 year old Shiite cleric in Iran, and next door, look at the
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the threat that represents to
India and Pakistan. These are all non-Soviet areas of the world.
They are largely in the Third World, an area of growing importance
to us. So, there are difficult but interesting choices to make
today in trying to decide where to put our effort.
To further complicate the picture, we must also try to look
ahead and ask ourselves if the crises of 1985 and 1990 will be the
same kinds of crises that we are facing today or will they be
generically quite different. Will we be more concerned with food
to feed the growing population of the world proliferation of
nuclear weapons to small countries, or terrorism, or international
narcotics trafficking? We must then ask ourselves if we are
developing the right satellites and the right listening posts, if
we are training our spies adequately to collect information on
tomorrow's problems. Are we developing the right analytic skills
and talents, the languages and academic skills that will be necessary
to analyze this kind of information? It is an exciting and demanding
challenge to try to look ahead in that way.
There are two other facets of being the Director of Central
Intelligence and the head of the CIA which I would like to describe
briefly because they relate to my responsibility to the American
public as a whole and to the Congress in particular. You, as part
of the American public, have a right to know as much as possible
about what your government is doing. It is not easy for a necessarily
secret agency to keep you informed but we do the best we can. I am
here tonight, I give speeches around the country, we join in
academic and business symposia, all to share as much of what we are
doing, in a general sense, as we can with the American public.
Only if you are aware of government activities can you make
good decisions about your government, and lend support where
it deserves and needs it.
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One of the most frtLuent means of such communication with the
public is through the media. This is an exacting and time consuming
element of my work. In interviews on television or with the press,
I must be very careful, very well-prepared. An erroneous
impression can be given to foreign countries or individuals
if language is imprecise. It is time consuming also because the
relationship between anyone in government and anyone in the media
is fundamentally an adversarial relationship. It is adversarial
because, generally, the media wants to get out of you more information
than you are normally willing to share. It is a healthy relationship
and it should be adversarial. But, I would suggest that, since Watergate,
that relationship may have become more adversarial than is good for our
country.
The relationship that I have with Congress is quite new.
It is part adversarial and it is part cooperative. The amount of
interchange between the Congress and the Intelligence Community
is vastly greater today than ever before. Two foreign affairs
committees and two armed services committees need and deserve to be
up-dated on what's going on around the world as they make their
decisions. The two budget committees and the two appropriations
committees need to know why we need the money that we ask for.
And, just in the last two years, there have been established two
oversight committees dedicated exclusively to supervising the
intelligence function of the country. These committees in particular
give us guidance, sometimes in law, sometimes in advice. In the
process they share the responsibility for intelligence activities.
They are your surrogates. Because we cannot reveal enough to you
for you to be able to be assured we are doing our job, we reveal
our activities to these Congressional committees and they act for
you in seeing that we are properly and fully utilizing the authority
that we have, and that we are not ignoring the restrictions that
have been placed on us by the Congress and the President.
All of this raises a tremendously complex question. Are
secrecy in intelligence and openness in a democratic society
compatible? Today, this country is involved in a bold experiment
in finding a balance between secrecy and openness. We are being
more open to the public than any intelligence organization in the
history of the world has ever been. While protecting national
secrets, we are, at the same time, being more open to the public than
any intelligence organization in the history of the world has ever
been. We are being totally cooperative with the Congress. In
addition, we have had spelled out for us by the Congress and the
Executive over the last two years more strict regulations on what
we can and cannot do than have ever been legislated for intelligence
bodies.
We are not sure yet that this mix of secrecy, regulations and
openness is exactly what it should be, but we are moving in the right
direction. We are trying to achieve an appropriate balance.
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Ur: the one hand if, because so many people are looking over your
shoulder, you are afraid to take risks, then we will have no
intelligence at all. If, because our most sensitive secrets are
revealed to too many people, those secrets leak and our allies
and agents around the world do not have confidence in us, we
will have no intelligence at all. If, because we have to clear
our actions through so many bureaucratic processes that we have
no flexibility and cannot act quickly in a crisis, we will not be
up to the task.
Interestingly, just a few days ago, the President in his State
of the Union address to the Congress, asked for two things. The
first, was for charters to codify the rules under which the intelligence
community operates. They would consist of three parts: what we
are the authorized to do; what we are restricted from doing; and
how the oversight process would work to balance the first two. At
the same time, the President asked for a relaxation of some of
these restrictions that have been placed on us. I think the fact
that he could ask for these changes, and that he received a strong
round of applause from the Congress, indicates how far we have come
in rebuilding both Presidential and Congressional confidence in the
Intelligence Community since the investigations of the intelligence
process from 1974-1976. Those investigations did uncover some
abuses. There were not as many as the media would have you think,
but enough that the country reacted by imposing many of these
restrictions which the President is now seeking to have eased.
In the debate which will go on in the Congress for the next
an effort will be made to balance explicit restrictions
few months
,
are inflexible in moments of emergency with
once legislated
which
,
,
more generalized restrictions which, although offering less control,
will be overseen by the Congress and thus adequately controlled.
I think too, that the applause from the Congress indicated a
greater recognition, in the Congress as well as throughout the
country, of the very great importance of good intelligence for our
country and for its policymakers today. Our responsibility is not
only to our own people but to all the people in the free world.
We will, in the next two or three years, move surely and
progressively toward a good balance of controls and flexibility.
uniquely American model of intelligence. That will be an historic
accomplishment.
Personally, I have found it very challenging and rewarding to
have been wrenched from 32 years of experience and preparation and
hopes and aspirations, and forced to expand my horizons and to take
leaving Principia to think ahead and to recognize what preparation
you will need for the changing opportunities which will present
themselves to you all through your working life. Thank you
very much.