CHECKS AND BALANCES IN INTELLIGENCE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP79T00827A000500030001-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 27
• Document Creation Date: December 12, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 6, 2000
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: November 25, 1966
• Content Type: SPEECH

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5 November 1966
ADDRESS By the DDC1
Si. LOUIS, 29 Nov 1966
CHECKS AND BALANCES I N INTELLIGENCE
I*his is an unusual opportunity for me, because
I: m brand new in the Cen'Lral Intelligence Agency, and
both the Congress and the President share our
view that the atmosphere most conducive to success in
intelligence activities is cne of reticence and anonymity.
Unfortunately--as is the case with most important
hdeavors--we are not at liberty to fashion our environ-
ment.
And our critics and detractors--as is the case with
most critics--are under considerably less restraint. For
the most part, they are neither restrained by responsibility,
nor circumscribed by knowledge of the facts.
As a result, the Central Intelligence Agency is apt
to be blamed or credited, as the case may be, for just about
anything that happens anywhere in the world.
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Being a home-town boy here, and St. Louis being
what it is, I feel that I'm in a safe and congenial environ-
ment tonight.
in less friendly environments, however, the CIA has
been cited as responsible for a variety of events, ranging from
the course of a hurricane over Cuba, and the collapse of a
bank in Lebanon, to the difficulties of the French in their
former African empire, and the seizure by Ghana of a plane-
load of diplomats from Guinea.
It is a general rule in the tradecraft of intelligence
that you neither confirm nor deny involvement. From time
to time, of course, there are events where it may appear both
logical and obvious that CIA is involved, and where it would
seem relatively harmless to acknowledge responsibility.
The trouble is that once you begin to confirm or deny,
you begin to build a pattern. The time will come when, at some
critical juncture, your answer or even your silence is going to
give the opposition useful information.
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This creates problems for the intelligence service of
democracy. Senator Saltonstall of Massachusetts, in a
later to his constituents earlier this year, commented: We
Americans like to know what's going on, but sometimes in
the interest of our own security all the facts cannot be made
pu5l Remember, in a free country, when we tell our own
a_ritizens we are also informing our enemies, for they read
ohr newspapers too."
So I am not going to tell you whether CIA did, or did
not, send a couple of hurricanes zigzagging back and forth
across Cuba in the past three years. It should be obvious,
however, that if we have the ability to steer hurricanes, we
would have had a word with Flora in 1963, and with I nez
this year, to persuade them to stay away from Florida and
the Gulf Coast.
There has, however, been one persistent line of
criticism, originating to a large degree within our own
country, which cannot go unanswered.
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That is the charge that the Central Intelligence Agency
constitutes an "Invisible Government, " making its own
rules and policies, and that it is answerable to no one.
This has been refuted by every President since
Mr. Truman, and the actual facts are a matter of open
record in the laws of our country.
So, while we are supposed to be a silent service, in
this particular matter we can and do speak out,
--because we can do so without giving anything away to the
enemy:
--because we do not have to violate security to answer;
--and because we are an instrument of a democracy, and
the people are entitled to know how they are being served.
We do not make policy; we are an instrument of the
policy of our government, and we are bound by it, just as
the Armed Forces are.
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And we do not carry on operations except at the
.behest of, and with the approval of, the duly constituted
leaders of our government.
Let me dispose first of the charge that the Central
Intelligence Agency is under no controls.
The CIA was created by the National Security Act of
1947, which gave the Agency five functions:
1) To advise the National Security Council--and of course
the President--on intelligence matters relating to national
security;
2) To co-ordinate all foreign intelligence activities of our
government;
3) To produce and disseminate finished national intelligence
within the government;
4) To provide what we call "services of common concern"--
functions which serve several, or perhaps all, of the ele-
ments in the government, but can best be undertaken
centrally; and finally,
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1)i To perform such other services as the National Security
Council may direct.
I n the "Cold War" which has existed for even longer
than there has been a C I A, we face an enemy adept at con-,
spiracy and subversion, with worldwide clandestine assets,
skilled agents, and no compunctions about undermining or
overthrowing any government which resists the spread of
Communism.
There are apt to he occasions when it will be important
nor the United States, in order to counter these Communist
offorts, to have its own.capabi I ity to respond by covert or
clandestine operations. This is not necessarily because the
United States would be ashamed of either the objectives or
the methods. It is primarily because it sometimes takes
clandestine methods to beat clandestine methods--just as a
killer submarine is one of the best weapons to use against
another submarine.
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This is the shadowy, twilight zone of government
operations that Congress had in mind when it directed the
CIA to perform "such other services" as the National
Security Council might direct.
Our critics would have you believe that ever since
o ajrdss gave CIA this authority in 1947, we have done as
we pleased, without regard to official policies or objectives
of the United States government, and sometimes in dia-
metric opposition to those policies.
Whenever the CIA carries. out a covert operation
overseas, it is with the prior approval of an Executive Com-
mittee of the National Security Council. This committee
has had various names and various incarnations through
the years, but essentially it is chaired by the President's
Special Assistant for National Security Affairs, representing
the President.
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STATINTL
He meets once a week--or more often if necessary--with the
Director of Central Intelligence and representatives of the
Secretaries of State and Defense--normally the Under Secre-
taries or Deputy Under Secretaries of those two departments.
Each and every operation which the Agency is going
o condduct overseas, whether it is political, psychological,
economic, or even paramilitary, is presented to this com-
rittee. It either wins the approval of the committee, or it
does not take place.
When covert operations are approved in advance by
representatives of the President, the Secretary of State,
and the Secretary of Defense, it is obvious that these opera-
tions are not going to be contrary to--or outside of--the
guidelines established by United States Government policy.
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n a military theater of operations, our people in effect
become a service component under the control of the
Theater Commander.
Our undertakings must also have the approval of tile
of the Budget. Specific individuals of that Bureau
have !,een given full clearance to inquire i4-,to all of the
activities of the Central Intelligence Agency in detail-
---and believe me, they make full use of that authority.
I n addition to such prior approvals, there are other
elements of the executive branch'which have the same full
clearance to monitor our continuing operations, and con-
duct post-mortems on those which have been completed.
Some of these have been ad hoc groups--the Clark
Committee and the Doolittle Committee, for instance; Hoover
Commission task forces; and several special investigating
!bodies for specific purposes.
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On a permanent basis, all of the intelligence opera-
ions of the US Government are under the continuing
scrutiny of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory
Board. This Board was formed in January, 1956, under the
chairmanship of Dr. James Killian of M. I.T., and is now
oadcd by one of our prominent fellow townsmen. Mr. Clark
Clifford. It is a very knowledgeable assemblage of dis-
tclinguished private citizens appointed by and reporting to the
President. It meets for two or three days every six weeks
to examine--in depth and in detail--the work and the
progress of the entire US intelligence program.
The present Board under Mr. Clifford includes
--former high Government officials such as Ambassador
Robert Murphy, former Under Secretary of State; Mr. Frank
Pace, Jr., former Secretary of the Army and Director of the
Budget; Mr. Gordon Gray, who was President Eisenhower's
Special Assistant for Ntional Security Affairs;
--former military men, General Maxwell Taylor and Admiral
John Sides;
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--amen from the academic world like Professor William
Langer of Harvard; and
--prominent leaders in business and technology, such as
Dr. William 0. Baker of Bell Telephone Laboratories; Dr.
Edwin Land, head of Polaroid; and Mr. Augustus Long,
former hoard chairman of Texaco.
Between regular meetings, these men also serve on
subcommittees to carry on continuing investigations of our
successes and failures in intelligence.
We are not only under effective control by the Execu-
tive Branch---whatever you may have read to the contrary,
we are also under the continuing scrutiny of the Legislative
Branch.
Ever since CIA was first established, the Director of
Central Intelligence has been authorized by the President,
and in fact instructed, to make complete disclosure of CIA
activities to special subcommittees in both the Senate and
the House of Representatives.
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The Congress has created very select subcommittees
of the Armed Services Committees in both the House and
Senate to hear these reports. Incidentally, another prominent
St. Louisan, Senator Symington, is a member of the special
subcommittee in the Senate. %
Also, as you may have surmised from my reference
to the Bureau of the Budget, our operations sometimes re-
quire some money. Our headquarters are in Langley,
Virginia, not at Fort Knox, and our appropriations have to
come from Congress, like those of all government agencies.
We do not want to hand out free information to the
opposition, so our funds are lumped in--we hope incon-
spicuously--with appropriations for other agencies. They
are discussed in full, however, with special subcommittees
of Senate and House Appropriations. These officials are
also authorized complete access to all of our operations.
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After they have scrutinized and passed on our requirements,
they then see to it that my salary is not inadvertently
eliminated by somebody who may believe he is only reducing
the Federal Government's consumption of paper clips or
carpeting.
Some of the confusion over CIA's relations with
Congress arises from the fact that these special subcom-
mittees, and only these--about 25 legislators in all--are
authorized to inquire in detail into all of our activities and
operations.
JVe will, of course, brief any congressional committee
having a jurisdictional interest on our substantive intelli-
gence from alI over the world. `I n 1965, for instance, there
were about 20 such committee hearings--and some of them
ran as long as three full days. We also brief individual
congressmen frequently at their request.
But discussion of CIA activities, methods, and
sources is another matter.
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It involves the lives of people who work with us, and the
efficacy of our methods. National Security Council directives
specify that these matters will be discussed only with the
special subcommittees designated for these purposes. This
is not arbitrary or bureaucratic; it is simply recognition that
the risk of inadvertent disclosure rises with the number of
people who have access to sensitive information of this type.
Where disclosure is authorized, it is complete. I n
1965, for instance, in addition to those 20 hearings on
substantive intelligence, the Director or his senior aides
met a total of 34 times with the special subcommittees to keep
them informed on the operations of Central Intelligence.
So much, then, for the charge that CIA is under no
controls and that nobody in Washington is told what CIA is
doing.
As for the charge that CIA makes policy, let me
reiterate that intelligence is one of the ingredients of policy
making, but does not formulate it.
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We support the people who actually make the decisions. Our
role. is to supply the information, the evaluation, and the
estimates which they need to arrive at an informed decision.
Intelligence, you know, is really an everyday business,
not confined to governments. When Mother listens to the
weather forecast and then makes Junior wear his rubbers or
galoshes to school, she is using an intelligence estimate to
arrive at a policy decision.
The Cardinals and Charlie Winner may think that
they are going over the scouting reports in preparation for
next Sunday's game at Dallas. I n ou r language, they are
examining. current intelligence on the capabilities and in-
tentions of the enemy, in order to formulate contingency
plans for the outbreak of hostilities.
Now, the weather bureau will talk in terms of the
likelihood--the probability--of rain or snow. It leaves the
decision on rubbers or galoshes up to Mother.
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Similarly, that scouting report will deal with possible
weaknesses or vulnerabilities of the Dallas Cowboys, and
warn about the nature of their principal threats. The
decision on how the Cardinals are going to cash in on the
information is left up to the coach.
It is the same in government, and intelligence.
It is fashionable, when we speak of our national
strategy, to refer to "options, " or "alternatives." This is the
"in" way of saying that you should never paint yourself into
a corner. It means that whenever the President is called
upon to make a policy decision, he must always have two or
more realistic choices.
The role of intelligence is to provide the President
and his advisers with factual, and above all objective, informa-
tion which in the first place determines whether the options
are, in fact, realistic, and then enables the policymaker to
compare his options and make an informed choice.
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i i the orqanization which gathers the information becomes
an advocate of one particular option--one proposed course of
action--then the intelligence which it provides is necessarily
suspect. It is no longer acceptable per se as objective. Whether
or not the depth of partisan advocacy consciously or unconv
.ciousiy builds a self-serving bias into the intelligence re-
portirng, the decision ma leers must take this possibility into
accou nt.
[hat is the reason why CIA is not engaged in policy
formulation, would not want to he, and would not be allowed
to be.
Information is our business--the collection, analysis,
and evaluation of information., as accurate, and as compre-
hensive, and above all as objective as possible.
I f we become advocates of pol icy, we lose our c red i bi I ity,
which is our most useful asset in serving the government.
If the policy makers permit us to take part in policy
formulation, they must start by discounting the objectivity of
the intelligence we furnish them. Any advocate of an alter-
native course of action can provide information to support his
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proposals, hut because he is an advocate, the information
becomes a tendentious argument, not an objective apprecia-
tion of the facts and the probable consequences.
By the National Security Act of 1947, the Director of
Central Intelligence is the principal intelligence adviser of
we President. He reports to the National Security Council,
jrhic t in effect means that he reports to the President. He
is not beholden to any other department of the Government.
Even in the National Security Council, he is an adviser, not
a member.
I n the minds of the Congress, this was the only
sensible way to establish the CIA and the position of Director.
It is the only arrangement which gives the President, who
must make the ultimate decisions, an adviser and a source
of information completely divorced from the competing and
sometimes parochial views of the advocates of alternate choices.
This principle does not require the checks and balances
that I have listed which monitor the covert operations of the
CIA, because it is a principle which has been welcomed and
implemented by every man who has held the office of Director
of Central Intelligence. _
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This has been attested to in public by every President,
aid by officers at the cabinet level who would be the first to
complain if it were not so.
There is one concept which operates as a control
mechanism in this respect. and that is the concept of the,
intelligence community.
`y`ou may never have read of the inte!ligenre community--
it doesn't fit into a headline as easily as CIA, and it doesn't
have the same Juicy appeal to the information media. If there
were no intelligence community, however, the CIA might
never have been created to coordinate its work.
Obviously, the function of intelligence in the United
States Government did not begin with the Office of Strategic
Services in World War I I . Intelligence is one of the oldest
professions, dating back at least to Noah and the airborne
reconnaissance mission he launched from the Ark. I n our
own country, George Washington found spies to be not only
necessary but exceptionally useful during the Revolutionary War.
Down through the years, there have been intelligence
components in the Navy, the ^rmy, the Department of State,
the Federal Bureau of Investigation, even in such comparatively
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mosaic offices as the Department of Agriculture and the
Department of Commerce.
These intelligence agencies, however, existed pri-
marily to serve the needs of their particular departments.
/1s (# result, there has been a natural tendency for their
if gterests and their competencies to he somewhat parochial.
-ork e 'departmental Intel ligence was developed by diplomats
or economists who might be unfamiliar with weapons. Other
departmental intelligence may have been derived, through
military activities, from persons who were more conversant
,!pith order of battle or with weapons -ystems than they were
with the political or economic developments. But this
specialization was not the main weakness.
The significant failing of such an apparatus lay in
the possibility that one of the intelligence components might--
by unilateral decision--consider a given piece of information
too marginal, too unimportant, to be passed along to the de-
cision makers, or even laterally to the other intelligence
components.
One of the lessons we learned from Pearl Harbor
was that information must not only be exchanged and
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coordinated among all of these disparate intelligence elements:
there must also be a clear responsibility for bringing that
intelligence to the attention of all of the men in our govern-
ment who need to know it.
As a result, the men who make the decisions for our
national government today want what we call national intelli-
ence. This is the a reed synthesis of all the intelligence
available to the government from all possible sources, analyzed
against all of expertise and all of the background information
we can bring to bear.
The National Security Act of 1947, which created the
Central Intelligence Agency, did not put the State Department,
or the armed services, or the commercial and agricultural
attaches, out of the intelligence business. Instead, it rounded
up all of the intelligence assets available to the government,
and established the Central Intelligence Agency to coordinate
the work of this intelligence community.
Mr. Helms has the title of Director of Central I ntelli-
gence, not only Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
He is the principal intelligence officer of the Government, and
when he reports to the President, or the National Security
Council, he is delivering the intelligence developed by all of
the assets of the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agen
cYr Navy,
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Army and Air Force intelligence, and the intelligence com-
ponents of the Department of State, the FBI, and the Atomic
Energy Commission.
This is what we mean by the intelligence community.
When finished national intelligence goes forward, it is the
agreed and considered evaluation by all of these components--
or at least if there has been disagreement, the dissenting
views are set forth in footnotes for the guidance of the policy-
maker.
I should add that except for the representatives of
CIA, the members of this community come from departments
and agencies which have a legitimate role in policy formula-
tion. When they act as intelligence community, however,
they are under strict injunction to come up with an objective
and impartial appreciation of the intelligence picture, the
interpretation of its significance, and the estimate of possible
future developments.
The intelligence community includes enough of these
non-CIA elements so that, in any disagreement, it is virtually
certain to have representatives from agencies on opposite
sides of the fence. This in turn provides the safety mechanism
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that I mentioned. With the opposing sides represented,
ot
is inconceivable that there would not be loud complaints
if
the finished national intelligence were not completely objec-
tive. It is a viable dialogue that provides the same sorts
~o .of
checks and balances that our own Dialogue of Democracy"
does, to borrow a phrase from Emmet Hughes.
Finally, if I may, I want to devote a few moments to
the types of people who work for the CIA.
The fact of the matter is that James Bond and his
colleagues of the spy movies and novels never worked there.
A commentary in the London Economist last month
discussing the British intelligence service, makes my point
pretty well with this summary: "Modern intelligence has to
do with the painstaking collection and analysis of fact, the
exercise of judgment, and clear and quick presentation. It
is not simply what serious journalists would always produce
if they had time; it is something more rigorous, continuous
and above all operational--that is to say, related to something
that somebody wants to do or may be forced something
Y to do.
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Our appetite for information is catholic and enormous.
Our basic background information on foreign countries, com-
piled in what we call the National Intelligence Surveys, al-
ready adds up to more than 10 times the size of the Encyclopedia
Britannica.
Much of this is hardly secret, covering such prosaic
matters as economic statistics, legal codes, sociological condi-
tions, and transport facilities. The information has to be on
hand against the contingency that Country X, seemingly re-
mote and of little current concern to our national security,
may some day erupt onto our list.of critical situations. Against
that day, we must have not only the information, but the
experienced and knowledgeable experts to interpret and apply
it.
Take French Somaliland. After the recent riots there,
President De Gaulle announced that French Somaliland should
have the right to decide between remaining under French rule,
or becoming independent. I s this of no concern to us?
Ethiopia and the Republic of Somalia have each announced that
if France sets its Somalis free, either Ethiopia will seize the
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area to keep it out of Somali hands, or vice versa. Now, the
United States has a very close relationship with Ethiopia,
and the Soviet Union trains, equips, and advises the Somali
armed forces. If there is, then, even the remotest possibility
of a direct confrontation in this area between the United States
and the Soviet Union, it behooves us to know toda r, not at
some time in the future, such matters as harbor facilities in
Djibouti, the terrain in the hinterland, the capacity of the
railroad, and the composition of the population.
The result is that the CIA employee is a much more
academic man than the public realizes. We may have a few
men with the debonair aplomb of Napoleon Solo, but we have
more than 800 senior professionals with 20 years or more of
intelligence background. Three quarters of our officers speak
at least one foreign language. About 15 percent have graduate
degrees. Six out of every 10 of the analysts who have direct
responsibility at headquarters for analysis of a foreign area
had lived, worked, or traveled abroad in that area even before
they came to C IA.
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When you combine all of the years required for graduate
study, foreign experience, and then add 10 to 15 years of intel-
ligence work, it adds up to an impressive depth of knowledge,
competence, and expertise at the service of our government.
We could easily and adequately staff the faculty of a
university with our experts, and in a way, we do. Many of
those who leave us join university faculties, and others take
leaves of absence to teach, and renew their contacts with the
academic world.
I have discussed with you how the Central Intelligence
Agency serves the government, how it is controlled, and
briefly, what manner of,man works there. I have left to the
end one final question: "Why?"
For the answer, let me cite a couple of outside witnesses:
Secretary of State Rusk last December told a public
meeting of the White House Conference on International
Cooperation:
"I wou id emphasize to you that CIA is not engaged i n
activities not known to the senior policy officers of the Govern-
ment. But you should also bear in mind that beneath the level
of public discussion, there is a tough struggle going on in the
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back alleys all over the world. It is a tough one, it's un-
pleasant, and no one likes it, but that is not a field which
can be left entirely to the other side. And so, once in a while,
some disagreeable things happen, and I can tell you .that there
is a good deal of gallantry and a high degree of competence.
in those who have to help us deal with that part of the struggle
for freedom."
I n April, 1965, President Johnson put it this way:
"We have committed our lives, our property, our resources
and our sacred honor to the freedom and peace of other men,
indeed, to the freedom and peace of all mankind. We would
dishonor that commitment, we would disgrace all the sacrifices
Americans have made, if we were not every hour of every day
vigilant against every threat to peace and freedom. That is why
we have the Central Intelligence Agency."
I would add to this only my strong personal view that--
in this day and age--if we did not already have a CIA, we would
certainly have to invent something very like it, or perish as a
nation in the face of an international conspiracy that has only
one objective--the destruction of our society--and no scruples
whatsoever as to how best to achieve it.
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Approved For Release 200.1/03104: CIA-RDP79T00827A000500030001-9