MORGAN'S COMMENT

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00001R000100300039-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 9, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 9, 1998
• Sequence Number: 39
• Publication Date: May 12, 1966
• Content Type: TRANS

Fcproved ForpIft" 2R )JJ/Ag : F , 1P75-00001 R000100SO6& 9-2/
PROGRAM Edward P. Morgan
DATE May 12, 1966
CPYRGHT
7:00 PM
STATION WMAL RADIO
crrv Washington, DC.
MORGAN'S COMMENT
EDWARD P. MORGAN: "Americans are constantly worried
about the nation's image. In 1960 John F. Kennedy made a
major campaign issue out of the punishment to US prestige
by the government's bungling of the U-2 spy plane incident,
the subsequent collapse of the Paris Summit Meeting, before
it began, and the cancellation in the face of ugly protest
riots of President Eisenhower's goodwill visit to Japan.
"Just the other day, ex-Vice President Nixon, who as
Kennedy's opponent six years ago, tried to rebut those
charges, took the offensive and accused the Johnson Admini-
stration of letting American prestige in the world sag to a
new low.
"The issue is a valid subject for debate. But the
dialogue can only be meaningful, if all hands recognize and
accept a brace of qualifying facts. In the first place, the
power and the wealth, of the United States make it inevitably
a sitting duck target for all kinds of criticism at home and
abroad.
"Never in history has a world power escaped being thus
chartered. We Americans invite more than the usual drum fire
of such. attacks, perhaps, because other nations are suspicious
of our generosity, resentful of our demands for gratitude for
favors bestowed and furious over what they take for our self
r ighteousness. They may be inclined to be self righ.teous too,
but what heightens their frustration is the fact that we are
strong enough. to inflict or at least appear to try to inflict
our self righteous values on the rest of the world.
"This leads to the second vital qualifying fact in arguin?
the issue of image. We must be careful not to mistake shad-
ow for substance. This I think, is really the key to our diffi-
culty. We abominate war, we sanctify sovereignty and. decry
intervention into the affairs of other nation's states.
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"Like our forefathers, who signed the Declaration of
Independence, we hold as self evident, the truths that all men
are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with
certain inalienable rights, including life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness.
"We loathe injustice and despite the practices -- depise
the practices, I should say, of spying and subversion, dark
arts, we prefer to leave to our enemies. In short we're pretty
grand. In fact, of course, we can behave with. just about as
much cussedness as our neighbors, or so it seems to them.
"We make war in Vietnam, intervene in the Dominican
Republic, observe international law, only when it suits us.
Agree in practice, that some men are created more
equal than others. We cheat and engage in espionage, in the
name of national security. And of course, invoke God's bles-
sing on all our enterprises, almost as automatically as we
stamp, 'In God We Trust,' on our coins.
"In short, we're human like everybody else. The
trouble is, we are not inclined to admit it. We're living
on a double standard. We have ideals as we should, but we
sometimes talk ourselves into believing, that mouthing them
is living up to them. The answer is not to abandon principle
but to realize how far away from principle, some of our prac-
tices are getting us.
"That brings us to the problem of the Central Intelligence
Agency. As a recent series of articles in the New York Times
made plain, the CIA has too often gotten monstrously out of
hand. It is also plain, that it's registered some monumental
achievements and that the savage state of civilization being
what it is in the world, we cannot abolish it. But it does not
-- it does need to be brought under more rigorous Congressional
control.
"This is more easily said than done, four subcommittees
of the Armed Services and Appropriation Committees of Congress,
now somewhat vaguely review the funds and functions of the
CIA. A rigid watchdog committee may not be the answer. In
any case, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee move today,
toward approval of a proposal by Senator McCarthy of Minnesota,
to add three members of that committee to the group now privy
the CIA affairs. The key to success of any such. group, is the
quality of its members. In this tricky and often dirty business
of espionage, however, there is a danger of the CIA and the
country for that matter, becoming subverted by it own subversion.
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"As a prominent University President recently remarked
privately, the episode in which.th.e CIA wormed into a Michigan
State project to train police in Vietnam, was shocking and dis-
graceful, not just because the spy agency was involved but
because it indicated too, that Michigan State didn't know what
it was doing. Why, Senator Fulbrigh.t has demanded, of Admiral
W. F. Rayborn, CIA's director, why was the fact supressed, that
the auth.or of a recent scholarly article on the Viet Cong, in the
quarterly foreign affairs, was in the employ of the agency?
Why, indeed?
"Innocent as this instance may have been, the possibilities
of sinister subterfuge in similar ones, are breathtaking.
"America is probably neither so arrogant as Senator
Fulbrigh.t fears, nor so pure as President Johnson avows. But
if the nation is to consolidate its position in between, it
must regard itself with candor and take an honest inventory.
Then it will have a credible image, warts and all."
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