SENATOR MCCARTHY QUIZZED ON CIA CONTROL

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00149R000500020024-2
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 9
• Document Creation Date: December 15, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 30, 2003
• Sequence Number: 24
• Publication Date: May 29, 1966
• Content Type: TRANS

RADIO-TV MONITORING SERVICE, INC.
3408 WISCONSIN AVENUE, N. W. WASHINGTON, D. C. 20016 244-8682
PROGRAM:
DATE:
MEETING OF THE MINDS
29 May 1966
STATION OR NETWORK:
TIME:
NBC Television
12:00 Noon
SENATOR MaCARHY IZZED ON CIA CONTROL
MODERATOR: Cokie Boggs
GUEST : Senator Eugene J. McCarthy (D-Minn. )
PANELISTS: Students from Italy., Soviet Union, Korea, Israel
MODERATOR: (Addressing Korean student) Do you have such an
intelligence agency In your country, and is it controlled?
KOREAN STUDENT: Yes, we.do have an agency like that. As a
matter of fact, it has the some name.--the CIA--and as you know,
in 1963, we had this changeover from military rule to civilian
rules to elections, and we're in the process of broadening these
sort of. democratic bases, *.but we. haven't come up with the ques-
tion of more control,-stricter control, greater control by civil-
Ian government on this agency. The agency is responsible to the
president directly, but we may In the long run face the some
problem, but I don't really have an opinion on that.
ITALIAN STUDENT: I think I would not agree on that, because,
you know, the CIA is some sort of very peculiar thing. It's a
tool, I should say, in the hands of the government, so it, a up to
the government to make CIA or something like that work. Now, for
the Congress, to check on this very delicate Instrument, I think
would be complicated. You know, we have an old saying in my
country; "Too many cooks spoil the food." And this Is my point
of view, I think.
ISRAELI STUDENT: Before the Senator answers this question,, I
would like to raise another question, because we in Israel have
something similar to the CIA, Central Intelligenoe Agency, but it' s
controlled by the Prime Minister, and by the government, directly,
and I therefore would like to ask the Senator, don' t you think that
a control, a parliamentary control on the CIA, on every intelli-
gence agency, c ould affect the efficiency of operation and informa-
tion of the agency?
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SENATOR McCARTHY: Any more questions before I answer that?
(LAUGHTER) Well, I think that we have _to make a, number of distinc-
tions--first of all, the difference.between the ministerial system,,
the cabinet system of government, and the kind of government we
have, In theory, at least, when you have a cabinet system, the
ministers are the agents of the parliament, and.consequently are
reapcv Bible to the parliament. We don't have that system here; we
really have a shared responsibility, and supposedly, therefore, the
authority . ought to be shared in the conduct of foreign policy and
all of the other responsibilities of government. With reference,
therefore, to the CIA, the question of how efficient it is really
cannot be left only to the -executive branch of the government,
since Congress is also held responsible for efficiency and for the
quality of the administration of government policy.
The Central Intelligence Agency is more than that, however.
It' a a large organization. It gathers infofmation; it's consulted
by the military and also by the State Department. It therefore is
a force in helping to formulate policyr. I don't say it Sfts policy;
you get into the question of ;what the word make means, so on the two
counts, one, if it's bearing as a force, dove oping and influencing
.foreign policy, and the other, its. operation as an agent of govern-
ment in the field of foreign policy; both of these, I think, make
it subject to some kind of Congressional control and some kind of
Congressional direction. It would be almost as logical to say the
State Department should not be subject to any_ kind of Congressional
control or supervision because' it' a an instrument of the 'resident,
of the executive branch of the governunt. It. really ion t; it's
also an instrument or an agent of the Congress.
The difficulty we have, I think, is--right now, particula ray --
is in working out procedures and techniques w1 reby responsibility
for decision as well as for execution can be shared between the
President and the Congress, especially in the field of foreign
policy and in the field of foreign intelligence.
QUESTION: What do you- mean, by some kind or control?
MoCAR7iiY: Well, what we' re proposing in ihi-s resolution is the
--that this agency, which now does report to the Armed. Services Com-
mittee--it accepts that. It has a responsibility to report to the
Armed Services' Committee; the argument could be made that it ought.
not to report to that committee of the Congress, if this is danger-
ous to its operations, and to its security.
When it was set up after the war, It was. primarily an agency
that operated--it grew out, of military intelligence during .the
war, and almost 20 years since that time, it8s become a very dif-
ferent kind of agency, one which Is less important to military
operations than it was, and much more important and significant
to foreign policy and the conduct of foreign affairs. Consequently,
the early practice of having it report to the Armed Services
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Committees I think, will now have to be broadened so that a limited
measure of Congressional control can be exercised over it through
the device .of a committee which includes members of the Foreign
Relations Committee.
QUESTION. But, with all respect, of course, due to the CIA,
area" t you overrating this agency? In o then words, you' re,.putting
the CIA on the same 19 vel as the State Department .... In my views,
CIA should be just a tool in the hands of the State Department and
the White House, and so on, of the government--just a tool, you
know.
McCARffIY: Perhaps. It should be, but there's good reason) `P''
think that it's more than a tool, that it' a become a posit1I' C'
especially in some of these smaller countries, and in the areas of
somewhat unstable governments. The tieore tic al danger is one which
.I think everyone will understand. It a not just a. question of
.whether it becomes Independent of executive control. It might .
very well bb controlled by the executive, and everyone says it In
controlled by the executive; I don' t me an to di spute ' that. Even if
it were, it would not satisfy, it wee e to- -, the demands of our
constitution for a sharing of power with Congress. You - might have
a situation in' whTaU. fully controlled by the President, an agency
of this kind could carry on foreign policy activities which were,
we'd say, unconstitutional-or at least unconstitutional in the
sense that the kind of Congressional approval that should be--
effective 'Senate approval in the field of foreign policy, had in
no way been ob tained or in no way been indicated.
QUESTION: Senator, what is the opinion of the President on
the subject?
McCAR IHY: Well, I don't know. We haven't had any public
statement. by tre President. The general record has been that men
who later became president who were in the Congress were generally
in favor of exercising some kind of Congressional control over
this agency and over other agencies, but that once they were elected
to the presidency, they seem to have a slightly different view of
how the agency should be handled,
QUESTION: Senator, sim e you have offered that resolution,
what do you think are the prospects for this resolution to pass
through the : Senate, on a roll call?
MoCAR4HY: Well, it's a little bit difficult to say. I'd like
to--I am the author--I don't think It 11 really be the author of
what will come out of the Foreign Relations Committee. I've taken
the initiative in trying to get action on this matter in this
session of. Congree_s, but the proposal to have some kind of
Congressional control over the Central Intelligence Agency has
really been before the Congress in some form since at le ast 19550
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The Hoover Commission Report of that year recommended a
joint committee to exercise supervision over the agency, and their
interest was in it primarily as an intelligence gathergng, to some
extent, and operating agency, but the involvement in foreign policy
has. really grown tremendously since that time, I think, and this
was the motivation for the resolution which I introduced this year.
I don't know how it would go if we would have a vote. 'I would think
that we would have a relatively close vote. Whether: it would be
approved or not, I'm not sure. We haven't really taken a count
yet. It's not considered in good form to go around counting votes
too for in advance of the actual taking of a vote.
QUESTION: But how about the efficiency this congressional
control will. have?
McCARlRY~ Oh, it depends on how you control it. We don' t
have in mind Any kind of day-to-day supervision. ' Those who oppose
our resolution give you the picture' of the Central Intelligence
Agency being' followed by a member of Congress every step of. the.
way (LAU(iTER) and they're getting in the way of him and fouling.
up his activities. This is not what we had in mind, but if there' a
a question . of--well, let's take something like the--Guatemala, for
example. 'Supposedly the Central Intelligence Agency* nearly ten
years ago, was involved in the overthrow of what was pretty close
to a legitimately elected government. Well m here's a policy
question on which really the President doesn' t have authority to
ac t--overthrowing a government.
Now whether, if we'd had control over the agency, we could
have asked some questions, say, "What's this operation all about?
You don't have to tell us who your sources are and whether you're
supplying guns and this sort of thing, but is this a policy de-
cision to overthrow this government? If it in, we are--as repre-
sentatives of the Pbreign. Relations Committee at least ought to
know about i t.
QFS.TION:. . Why (attack?) the government?
McCAWIRY: Why do we what?
QUES TIO N: Why the government?
McCAR 1HY: Which government?
(LAUGHTER)
QUE:!TION: i a an imagine, Senator, that the CIA is not happy
with your proposals.
MoCAR7Y!Y: I haven't heard whether they're for it or against
it. the indications are that the men who are opposing it are,
saying about the same things that they said in opposition to a
somewhat similar resolution ten years ago. I think the CIA has
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changed significantly since then, but the arguments against con-
trolling it that are being made today are the same arguments that
were being made back in 1956, and I would say that the men who
have argued against it--the speeches they have given sounded as
though they were their own.
QUESTION: Senator McCarthy has talked about the foreign
policy making role of the Congress and the Importance of Congress
in foreign policy making. Can you tell us in this regard what
kind of coverage is given in Korea to the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee hearings and what the reaction to them has been?
KOREAN STUDENP: Well, I must say there was a great deal of
Interest in the hearings, at least where I come from. Our news-
papers have very limited space, but my stories and the stories of
my colleagues have been given very good press. That shows--of
course in my country, which is in a very special position regarding
the Viet am problem--we have troops there--but anyway, I think
the hearings impressed many observers in my country and countries
of Asia about the depth of, shall I say, democracy or the extent
that dissenting opinion can be expressed in this country. Maybe
i t' a not very strange to you, but to many people in many other
parts of the world it's vei+y important.
But on the other hand, we Koreans have the worries about the
future of the Viet Nam war, and we're a little bit puzzled about
how to go about engaging (SIC)the extent of opposition in America
to the government policy.
STUDENP: I fully agree with you that this le-a. very good.
lesson in democracy, but even after, and I think our papers in
Israel carried large coverage on this subject, on the hearings,
especially on foreign aid things, because we are clients, but
even after the hearings I think that the A eric an people are not
enough informed about the subject of Viet am, foreign aid, and
so on and so on.
STUDENT: I agree on that perfectly, but I must tell you
another thing. This is a very good lesson in democracy, but it's
.a dangerous one in a way. First of all, I don't think Americans
got very well informe :ter these hearings--they got mixed up
even more, I should ea `--and Europeans got mixed up also. You .
know, here you have real freedom in this country add we don't have
such freedom in Europe, but we have a freedom which is our (own?)
one. We also are going to have freedom in the future but not so
far. We are free but not as free as you are in this country. So'
any sign of dissent, of opposition, is understood in European terms.
For instant, this Fulbright hearings, this sharp statement against
government policy, this demonstration, they have been interpreted
in Europe because they have been interpreted in a European way, and
in Europe something like that would be some thing, I should. say,
revolutionary, you know. So Europeans are almost convinced that
the people of the United States are not following this Johnson
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in Viet Nam, as far as Viet Nam poicy is concerned, and they are
wrong on that.
So, in this way, as far as the other countries are concerned,
this hearing I believe has been a good lesson in democracy but it
hasn't been very much help as far as it goes.
SIETDRNT: Do you think this really is a danger? Do you think
the lack of concensus these hearings might have shown have pos t-
poned negotiations in any way?
STUDENT: Well, speaking of the blulbright hearings, I don' t
really believe the hearings had any important effect on the policy
of,. the government in Viet Nam. It was a source of information for
the American public, what was going on in Viet Nam, and the question
Secretary Rusk and Secretary McNamara, as far as their effect on the
White House, I'm not really sure It really had any effect. The war
is going on along the line it started and continues. I don't see
any proposals by the Senators being taken into consideration in
Viet Nam and taken into consideration by the Mite House.
Speaking about Viet Nam, I want to emphasize one point -- I
was really surprised and couldn't understand how the local press--
American press--when covering the Viet Nam situation, they kind of
overlooked very important statements made during the 23rd Party
Congress in Moscow. And, as you probably know, the Party Congress
accepted their resolution and s tatmen t on Viet Nam, which says
that any escalation in Viet Nam will lead to increase of help
from countries to Viet Nam. And then again, what I want to say
we are thinking about the commitment of this country to Southern
Viet Nam, but I don' t think that one should forget ,, that others have
their commitments too and they are going to keep their commitments,
not drop them, and if one doesn't take it into consideration, you
could bring the confrontation of the countries,, the confrontation
of commitments, which will certainly mean the confrontation of the two
countries, which we are trying to escape nowdaya--the confrontation
of our country with the United States. No one wants it--no one
wants It in this country, and no one wants it in my country. I
think the policy should be to avoid a confrontation.
McCARTHY: Well, I think the results of the hearings were
probably somewhat mixed. I think maybe the jinterican people were
somewhat more confused, but that doesn't mean they were less well
informed after the hearings. There's a tendency, I think, to
over-simplify the case before we held the hearings, and the fact
that people were confused--when you're talking about something like
Viet Nam--may mean they have a more objective basis upon which to
pass judgment than they had before you held the hearings, when they
think they know what's going on, when they think there are simple
answers.
So I thought the hearings were justified in this particular
kind of war, when we're calling upon the American people fora very
deep and highly significant kind of moral commitment to this war,
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but the kind of intellectual support of that, in' terms of a factual
basis or reasoned judgment on how it's going to come out, lagged
far behind the commitment we were calling upon them to make.
This was not true in World War II--in fact, the judgment ran ahead
of the commitment there--we realized what we had to do and this
was true in the Korean War as well.
So an effort to close the gap or at 3s as t have the people of
the country realize what great uncertainty there was in high
circles, what great confusion there was--it seems to me does not
do a disservice to the process of democracy, and the fact that
Democrats have been the critics, again I think is not fully
understood by people with Cabinet systems, where they accept that
you -have an opposition party within the party in power. We're not
really constructed quite that way. he Senate has a responsibility
which is quite independent, really, of its identification with a
political party.
Now I suppose that if the Republicans had been critical of our
fbreign policy in Viet Nam,, the Democrats would have stood back
and said, well, the criticism is being made, and so we may have to
defend our administration, but the Republicans--what might be the
opposition party--have really been almost more for the Vietnamese
war than the President himself, and consequently, the problem of
raising questions and creating a kind of opposition, is nothing
else but requiring the administration to justify' Its actions. And
this we did in the hearings, setting up, I Mink, if you could,
an occasional guidepost and say if you do extend the war, at least
every time yo )go by these points that we've laid out, you have to,
bow in our dinec tion. Give us some explanation as to why you resume
bombing, or why you escalate, or why you may change the qualitative
character of the war. We did that, I think. I would agree they've
gone by pretty fast, without much hesitation.
And the third thing I think the hearings did do were to open
some possible courses of action. for the administration -- what are
your alternatives? Well, it's. not 'an alternative, really--it's
not that kind of a simple question--do this and it's all- over?
But the possibility of negotiation with the Viet Gong--this was
the question raised in the hearings. Well, the administration
would say this was not a realistic proposal, and perhaps not.
The United Nations effort, the possibility of using the Gavin
approach of limiting the number of people committed and restrict-
ing the war. All of these were possible courses of action that
were--at least it was indicated to the administration that if they
were to do any of these things, that they would have some strong
support in the Congress--they would not be all alone if they took
the initiative--that they would not be marching up the hill without
anybody following.
So I think these three good things, potentially good things,
did come out of the hearings so far as they've gone.
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STUDENT: But the United btates is asking for support from
abroad, from NATO allies, from French nation, and so on, and these
hearings didn't help very much in this direction.
McC ARTHY: Wells perhaps not, but It d like to think that the
foreign countries, if they were to join us, would join us with a
reasonably objective understanding of what was involved--in the
same way that I think we should undertake to have the people in
this country understand, if they wish to pursue the war, if they
wish to support it, the confusion and the uncertainty and the
very questionable aspects about success.
STUDENT: You mentioned about the commitments of the United
States in Viet Nam. It would be interesting to know if the Viet
Nam war is the real touchstone for fulfilling American commitments
all over the world, especially in the Middle East -- for instance,
in Berlin. I'm really confused. I'm not convinced yet.
STUDENT: The same thing goes in the case of certain parts
of Asia, like Korea.
McCARTfiYs I suppose you have to keep proving yourselves
every six months or so. Some of the People in Asia would have
doubts, and the Europeans will have doubts, the French say they
have doubts now. I think the record is quite good. Mile is a
rather clear indication of our willingness to make a rather great
effort to honor even what was a questionable commitment on our
part. We were not the only ones who signed up with reference to
Viet Nam-we're not the primary signatories In the area.
Certainly the commitment in Korea--the position we've taken--
we haven't been tested In Europe, I suppose, but as far as you
can expect people to respond to a promise and to a commitment in
a treaty, why we seem to have stood pretty well there. As I say,
you're going to have doubts -- like those Kafka stories, no matter
how secure things look, if you're just quiet you can always hear
a scratching sound somewhere, you know.
S79DENTt You say these are all W. miler commitments?
MOCARTHY: Well, I think that some of our commitments are even-
more binding than the commitment that we had in Viet Nam, and here
was a case where you had a rather thin commitment, and we responded
very strongly, and the effort we're making there Is very strong
not all comparable to the kind we have in Korea or the kind of
commitment we made to the countries of Western Europe, and I say
even to Israel. I don' t think there' a a problem there of our no t
honoring our obligations and our commitments.
STUDENT: The Senator has referred to our treaty commitments
in Viet Nam. There has been a lot of discussion as to whether
SEAM is a treaty that calls for this kind of action. Do you think
that the regional pacts are as strong now as they wee a few years
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and that the Warsaw Pact and NA70 are beginning to fall apart and
disintegrate, leaving the world. with two great powers opposed to
each other?
STUDENT: Well, to the second part of your oue s Lion, are the
Warsaw Pact and NATO, from what I know of being in this country
and from the American press, I know very well that NATO is getting
apart, and as far as the 17arsaw Pact is concerned, there have been
very contradictory reports in the press, about the statements of
President (Johnson)--they've been rejected, denied, and there is
no clear picture of It,
And as far as the first part of your question, about the
regional treaties, it's my opinion that the world would benefit
if all the treaties were abolished,liquidated -- that's the policy
of my government, and the policy supported by my government for
quite awhile -- and I think we can best be . at peace without any
pac to and treaties 'than with them.
McCARThY: In regard to that proposal, I have on here that
we. ought to have some kind of policy for getting rid of statues
around Washington that no longer have any meaning; we might be
able to do this 7 on a kind of worldwide basis to get rid of statues
and also treaties that our outmoded -- clear the decks every now
and then and start over again. .
S IUDENT: Just a dream., Senator, we cannot do It right now.
MODERAZOR: In a. country like Israel, that has not been
aligned with either bloc, do you find now that tae re is more a
spirit of detente, that foreign policy is more flexible in your
country?
STUDENT: American foreign policy?
MODE RARMR: No, that you can deal more easily with every
other country.
S ftTDE$T: To a degree, I think. You know Israel does not
belong to the non-aligned countries, and she's regarded as a
Western country, but I think after the Tashkent conference,
Israel seeks to apply the Tashkent spirit to the Arab-Israel
dispute. .
MODERAIORs On that hopeful note, we'll. have to close the
discussion.
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