PRESS CLIPPINGS FROM GENERAL WALTERS ADDRESS TO THE DALLAS COUNCIL ON WORLD AFFAIRS

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Collection: 
Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 
CIA-RDP80R01731R002500020020-5
Release Decision: 
RIPPUB
Original Classification: 
C
Document Page Count: 
6
Document Creation Date: 
December 14, 2016
Document Release Date: 
January 28, 2003
Sequence Number: 
20
Case Number: 
Publication Date: 
September 19, 1975
Content Type: 
MEMO
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PDF icon CIA-RDP80R01731R002500020020-5.pdf404.77 KB
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25X1 TO, 1. Attached are press clippings resulting from General Walters' address to the Dallas Council on World Affairs (DCWA) which he asked be forwarded to him. 2. The luncheon was an unqualified success. A number of Dallas 25X1 3. General John Torrey, Executive Secretary of the DCWA,.has advised that WFAA-TV in Dallas plans to do a spot special on the CIA during 20 September 1975. This will run on several occasions and will include excerpts from General Walters' address. General Torrey has arranged to secure a tape-recording of General Walters' address from WFAA which he will make available to this office sometime during the week of 22 September. General Torrey advised that as a result of technical difficulties the tape may not be complete, but he believes most of General Walters' talk was recorded. This tape will be forwarded for General Walters' office when received from General Torrey. 25X1 5. General Walters mentioned that he is planning to give an address in Houston on 6 January 1976, but he did not recall the name of the sponsor for his visit there. It would be appreciated if this information could be ascertained from General Walters' office for forwarding to the Houston R0. 25X1 OPTIONAL FORM NO. 10 MAY 1882 EDITION GSA FPMR (4f C1' I) 101-11.8 UU HUL'HI L Fvoo ft 3/0'2127 : CIA-RDP80R01731 R002500020020-5 UNIT hW RY" .Memorandum Ex.cutivei.Reg1etry DAL- DATE: 19 September 1975 SUBJECT: Press Clippings from General Walters' Address to the Dallas Council on World Affairs 0 Attachments Approved For Release 20 2500020020-5 .Bu U. S. Savings Bon as . ,egu .ar y on the Fayroll , avangs Plan 25X1 Approved For Release 2003/02/27 :,ClP-RDP80R01731R00250002002Q-5 Editorial Page Dick. Pest, Editorial Director THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 1975 The CIA: Life in the Qoldfish Bowl . The Senate Intelligence Com- mittee having opened its hearings to the press. and public, the sins, such as they are, of the Central Intelligence Agency will now be on regular display. Not that any great note is yet being itaken of the hearings. Plenty of seats were unfilled at the first session; nor are the networks affording us gavel-to-gavel coverage, a la Wa- tergate. Still, the implications of the Inquiry remain disturbing. It is all very well, perhaps, for Sen.. Church, the panel's chairman, to rebuke the CIA for failing to de- stroy a large store of deadly poisons it was ordered to de- stroy. The trouble will come if the committee conveys to, the public, through osmosis, the im- pression that CIA agents are just so many wild men running loose and endangering our civil liberties. Not yet has anyone proved against the CIA anything very ter- rible. There was much talk at Church's hearing earlier this week of a deadly pill that CIA.agents are sometimes given In, case of capture. So what? Is it suggested that the CIA meant to poison the whole population of Albania? Of course not; then to what benefi- cial end is all this ,talk of intelli- gence method? No one wishes the CIA to run amok; no one denies Congress' le- gal right to supervise its opera- tions. There ought, however, to be better supervisory techniques than full-dress investigations that serve more to embarrass the United States than to bring the CIA into line. It is as the CIA's deputy di- rector,' Vernon Walters, said in Dallas the other day: "Other coun- tries investigate their intelligence operations, but they don't do it in a goldfish bowl." Approved For Release.2003/02/27 : CIA-RDP80R0i 731 R002500020020-5 The News, oldest business institution in Texas, was established in 1842 while Texas was a Republic Approved For Release 2003/6627,: CIA-RDP80R01731 R002500020020-5 By DOTTY GRIFFITH Lt. Gen. Vernon A. Walters, deputy director of the Central Intel- ligence Agency, warned Tuesday attacks on the CIA are creating a ,,new racism, a new caste of un- touchables - people in intelligence service." Speaking to the Dallas Council on World Affairs, Walters spoke of "deliberate attempts to blind our own country" by CIA critics who charge the spy agency has over- si.epped its bounds by interfering with other nations' internal affairs. Walters said ongoing congres- sional investigations into CIA op- erations "can be healthy, if they're not used as TV theatricals." "We're willing to be responsive to guidelines that provide enough flexibility for change," said Wal- tees, who was appointed to his post by President Nixon in 1972. `'9ther countries investigate their intelligence operations," he said, "but they don't do it in a goldfish bowl."' Walters warned against falling behind the Soviet Union in military . weapons under the aegis of detente. In response to a question in, re- gard to reports, the latest of which was Tuesday that President Ford may limit CIA intelligence ac- tivities and shift secret political op- "One thing we will never know erations in foreign countries to an- as a result of' the hearings," other agency, Walters declined charged Walters, 52, "is the num- comment. conditional form," said Walters. ` come forward and didn't." "Until I have more information, I He warned if current criticism can't comment. We have no indica- against 'intelligence activities be- tion that is the case." comes restrictive, congressional He . complained that revelations hearings in 1990 might be investi- about United States intelligence ac- gating things the CIA neglec:md tivities have jeopardized informa- "ins~teao of sins of commission." tion sources. Although he stopped short of of- "Our foreign friends are aghast fering a wholesale defense of CIA at what's going on. Some people use of human guinea pigs in LSD who might otherwise help us fear experiments and assassination as they will hear their names revealed an intelligence operation, he asked in the hearings or see them in that such incidents be viewed "in print. the context of time." Approved For Release 2903/02/27 : CIA-RDP80RO1731 R002500020020-5 CIA official Vernon Walters .. . ... agency exposes own wrongs Approved For Release 20053t1f427A 3M-F 1 "trumpeted all over the world." But successes, he said, are very difficult to talk about. "If you talk about it, people know what You know . . . and if somebody knows that somebody is looking through the window, he'll pull down the blinds and turn off the light. "On a number of occasions in my own experience we have brought coun- tries together that were on the edge of war. One of then thought the other was going to attack. "We have been able, through good intelligence, to convince country 'A' that it was not going to be attacked by country 'B.' We have been able to bring sometimes the head of intelli- gence of these countries together. I can't hell you what countries these are or we couldn't. do it again." Walters, who was appointed to his post by, former President Richard Nixon more than three years ago, testified last year against,White House Chief of Staff II. R. Haldeman in the Watergate cover-up trial. , He reached the Tank of major general in the U.S." Army and traveled extensively with former President Nixon in 1969: He also accompanied Mrs. Nixon during her visit to Peru in the wake of disastrous earthquakes . there in 1970. Walters emphatically denied pub- lished reports of any link between the CIA and the accused assassin of President Kennedy, Lee Harvey Os- wald; "There is no link between Lce Harvey 'Oswald 'and the CIA in any shape, form or size. And there never has been to my knowledge." fie termed the idea. that then Atty. Gen. Robert Kennedy would conspire to abort the investigation of the death of his own brother "an aberration." Iie said the major questions facing intelligence agencies concern the SovIct Union. "We see there modernizing their missiles . . . We sec then] building See CIA on Pape 2131 Approved For Release,2003/02/27: CIA-RDP80R01731R00250$026620-5 RICHARD MACKENZIE Agency (CIA) as a "power for peace," the agency's deputy jdirector says the security of the United States and its survival is "far too precious ?tq be the vehicle" f o r individual political ambitions. Referring to intelligence agents as a new form of "untouchables," Lt; Gen. Vernon A. Walters said most shortcom- ings and wrongdoings on the part of the CIA have been' exposed by the agency's interval probes. He pi'edicted ' during a luncheon meeting Tuesday in Dallas that new guidelines to emerge from current congressional investigations would be little stronger than those outlined in the agency's original charter, "(to do) such other things as the National Security Council may prescribe." He said the successes of the agency's operations could not be outlined to counteract negative pub- licity received in recent months. "I can't tell you that of the 50,000 or 60,000 ' people who have passed through this agency in the past 25 years we haven't had some bad apples," he said in defense of the CIA, 1 comparing it to a city of 60,000 persons. "I'm not saying that we haven't done things that were wrong - but they're few and far between. And most ot them 'came to light as a. result of our own investigations - not as the result of someone finding there out against us." Walters also issued a stern warning about the ramifications of "disman- tling" American intelligence gathering. "intelligence is knowledge and knowledge is power. People have always thought in the past of itttclli- gencc as being a power to make war or a power to threaten or over-awe someone. But, the world has changed. Intelli- gence is a power in another sense. It's power for peace." Ile said that CIA failures are Approved For Release 2003/02/27 :, CJA-RL7P8~OR01731R002500020020-5 d e e. d S C*1 ild - Cdulinued k'roiu Page 1 ',? $ 'larger submarines with more capabil , , S sties for launching missiles; we see them building new, modern aircraft with capabilities against the United States; we see them adding tanks to every Soviet motorized rifle division around, the' world, and we see them improving the training of their forces, the logistics of. their forces and the over=all capabilities of their forces. . e "'t'his has gone far beyond what they require for defense or deterrence. It leav7es us with the great question of what do they plan to do with this." Addressing the subject of CIA involvement in assassinations, he said that a person who succeeded in killing Nazi leader Adolf Hitler at the beginning of World War II would have been the first joint recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor and the Victoria Cross. ~ - - 41101-ai9110-R1 f'titru((} t:r u 3~(}j Approved For Release 2003/02/27 : CIA-RDP80R01731 R002500020020-5 UNCLASSIFIED INTERNAL 0 -USE O L ^ CONFIDENTIAL ^ SECRET 4proved For R > /0A (I ORAF R002500020020-5 SUBJECT: (Optional) Press Clippings from General Walters' Address to Dallas Council on World FROM: Affairs EXTENSION NO. DATE 25 September 1975 TO: (Officer designation, room number, and building) DATE OFFICER'S COMMENTS (Number each comment to show from whom RECEIVED FORWARDED INITIALS to whom. Draw a line cross column after each comment.) 1. Do 726 Hqs. 2. 3. 4. DDCI 7E-12 Hqs. &4 ~ 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. FORM USE PRE'v/n~~.~u, r d leas 0 DP8 1' QJW500 2 3_62 610 EDITIONS SFELR81'DE~~7 USE ONLY LJ UNCLASSIFIED