WILLIAM COLBY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01070R000301400014-7
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 28
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 14, 2010
• Sequence Number: 14
• Publication Date: September 27, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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RADIO IV REPORTS, INC. P"-~
4701 WILLARD AVENUE, CHEVY CHASE, MARYLAND 20815 [phone]
FOR PUBLIC AFFAIRS STAFF
PROGRAM The Larry King Show STATION WTOP Radio
Mutual Network
DATE September 27, 1984 12:05 A.M. CITY Washington, D.C.
SUBJECT William Colby
LARRY KING: Our special guest in the first hour and a
half will be the distinguished American, William Colby, the
former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. He is
currently senior adviser to something with the longest name in
Washington, Political Risk Assessment and Risk International
Business Government Counselors, Incorporated. I think it's so
big it didn't even have initials. We'll ask Bill Colby about
that in a moment and the Conference on the Fate of the Earth,
which was just concluded here in Washington. We'll talk about
that and nuclear disarmament.
KING: We welcome to our microphones William Colby,
former Director of the CIA.
What is Political Risk Assessment and Risk International
Business Government Counselors, Inc.?
WILLIAM COLBY: It's the application of the intelligence
business to the private sector, because intelligence today isn't
just the spy business. Intelligence today is the collection of
all the information. And we live in an information age, there's
lots of it all over the place. You bring it to one place, you
look at it, and then you analyze it. And that's the second
process, thinking about it, what does it mean, what's the
significance of some of the things.
KING: Can you give me like a hypothetic? Company A
would use you for what?
COLBY: Sure. Somebody has an investment in the
OFFICES IN: WASHINGTON D.C. ? NEW YORK ? LOS ANGELES ? CHICAGO ? DETROIT ? AND OTHER PRINCIPAL CITIES
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Philippines. They're worried about what may happen after Mr.
Marcos. What's going to happen? Is it going to go left? Is it
going to go Moslem? . What's going to happen? Are they going to
be just thrown out,"their money taken away? We're asked to look
at it, think about it, see whether they ought to be doing
something today to protect themselves against the future, but
also to think whether maybe the situation the Philippines won't
be terribly different in the next ten years.
KING: You, therefore, have to have your own sources
COLBY: You send people out to talk to people who know
about the Philippines. You think about it.
KING: What took you to intelligence? You were in the
Foreign Service, primarily, in the State Department. Right?
COLBY: Well, I came out of intelligence in World War
II. I parachuted into France.
KING: CIA? I mean OSS?
COLBY: OSS. I parachuted into France and Norway and
got into intelligence in that time. Then I went back into it
after the Korean War and served in various places around the
world in intelligence jobs.
KING: Was Donovan, Bill Donovan, equal to his reputa-
COLBY: Yes. He was a fine fellow. I' knew him quite
well. I didn't. really know him durin'g the war, but I worked for
him after the war in his law firm. And he was a very courageous,
intelligent, thoughtful, probing man. He really was looking for
the answers all the time.
KING: Didn't fit that nickname.
Right?
COLBY: No. He was a very mild fellow, very quiet
fellow, walked through a room carrying a drink or something.
Never drank it, but carried it. And he just sort of walked
around and was very soft and mild with everybody. But enormous
courage. Medal of Honor, Distinguished Service Cross, Dis-
tinguished Service Medal, all the tickets.
KING: Were you surprised when they asked you to head
COLBY: Yes, because I was a career officer, and
normally career officers don't end up in the head of the CIA,
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just as military officers don't end up as the Secretary of
Defense. You put a political officer in, normally. But there
was a particular set of circumstances that they came down to me.
KING: It was Gerald Ford. Right?
COLBY: Mr. Nixon nominated me.
KING: But Ford kept you on. Right?
COLBY: For a while.
KING: Were those happy days?
COLBY: Very interesting, stimulating, enormously
exciting, challenging days. Yes.
KING: Before we talk about the fate of the earth and
nuclear disarmament, I would be remiss if I did not ask you,
Bill, about one thing in current events. And that's security at
embassies. What's going on?
COLBY: Well, terrorism is a tough subject. But -- and
you do the best you can to penetrate into the groups that are
planning these things. But they're normally very small groups
and there are very few people in them. They keep their activi-
ties very secret, so it's hard to get a man inside. And the
great technological intelligence that we have doesn't help you
very much, because the satellite photographs don't show you some
saboteur with a bomb.
What I think you have to do is prepare yourself for the
eventuality, set up your protective devices, just as we've set up
.the screening systems in the airports and all the rest. And
obviously, there was a failure in that in the last thing in
Beirut.
KING: The Washington Post said today, what about simply
no trucks within 300 yards of an embassy, period?
COLBY: Well, that's one way. The other way is to make
a truck stop, back up, and then go in. I mean set up the blocks
so that you can't just wiggle back and forth to get through, but
that you have to physically stop and then back up in order to get
access to another place.
There are all sorts of gimmicks you can use like that.
KING:. That wouldn't cost any money, would it?
COLBY: Well, you can put big dump trucks around so that
you can't get through them without conforming to their
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KING: This is the real world, huh?
COLBY: It's the real world. It's unfortunate.. It
makes an American Embassy look like a fortress, which we don't
like. But nonetheless, in these days in some parts of the world,
we really have to anticipate that these crazies are going to do
this sort of thing.
KING: One other thing. George Will said today that
someone had to be to blame for this. There had to be some
warnings, there had to be some fears. And there never seems to
be-.blame assessed when these things happen. They seem to happen
and they go away, and we worry about it again when the next thing
happens.
COLBY: Well, in the old days, when people made a
mistake or something happened wrong, they relieved people, they
fired them, they kicked them out. We haven't been kicking enough
people out. I think we ought to kick- a few people out now and
again, just to encourage the others.
KING: Obviously, somebody goofed here. Right?
COLBY: Sure.
KING: Bill Colby is our guest. We'll talk about this
Conference on the Fate of the Earth, his thoughts on nuclear
disarmament.
KING: What was the Conference on the Fate of the Earth?
COLBY: It was a discussion of the necessity to do
something to protect ourselves from being destroyed.
KING: In any way?
COLBY: By nuclear warfare.
KING: That was primarily its emphasis'.
COLBY: Primarily. Primary, yes.
The fact is that we have these weapons nowadays, we have
25,000 nuclear bombs in the United States and about 25,000
nuclear bombs in the Soviet Union, anyone of whom is bigger than
the one that destroyed Hiroshima or Nagasaki.
KING: Any one.
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COLBY: Any one.
Now, this is a situation which we've lived with for a
while, and we think'that it's been fairly stable. Both countries
have been very careful about them. We haven't had any get loose
by mistake or anything. But the fact is that the weapons are
getting increasingly more sensitive and more dangerous. The
flight times are going down. We now, here in Washington, are 30
minutes away from a nuclear missile in the middle of the Soviet
Union. Now, that gives 30 minutes from the time that one lifts
off until it lands here. That sounds like a long time. You
might think it's a short time, but in real terms...
COLBY: ...it's a fairly long time for the machinery to
pick it up, identify it, be sure that it's really a weapon coming
here, and all the rest; then go to the President, get the
President's approval to shoot ours in retaliation before they're
destroyed by the ones landing here. Now, that's fine.
But the recent change is that in the European theater,
the Soviets have put in the SS-20s, we've put in the Pershings.
Those weapons. have a flight time of seven minutes. There's no
way you can go through the process of identification, confirma-
tion, making sure there isn't a false alarm, going to the
President, getting his approval, and shooting the answer. You've
got to turn it over to the computers.
Now, we've had a lot of computer alerts that have been
force. We have a screening system that selects them out and
makes sure that we don't react wrongly when there is a false
alarm. But with this time of a short'fuse, you're getting near
to the situation where you could conceivably destroy the world
through computer error.
KING: So this conference hoped to do what, discuss
these things, [unintelligible] and discuss them?
COLBY: Primarily, to start the process of limiting and
stopping the further growth of these weapons.
First, I happen to believe in the nuclear freeze, mutual
and verifiable. Not a unilateral one, not just we stop and hope
that the Russians will be nice and they'll stop, not that; but a
deal between us that we both stop. Now, the Soviets have already
indicated that they're ready to accept that. We have not because
we have some false idea that, somehow, they're ahead of us and we
have to catch up, when in reality we both have more than enough
to do the job of deterring the other. So the important thing
today is to stop building new ones.
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KING: Was there opposition to that at this conference?
COLBY: No. No, the conference was obviously most
people that are sympathetic to it.
KING: Dedicated to it.
COLBY: Yes.
KING: Do you think most of the public would agree with
COLBY: Well, 60 percent. of the delegates at the
Republican National Convention in Dallas did agree with that.
Now, that's an amazing fact, because the Republican National
Convention was fairly conservative, to put it mildly.
KING: All right. Let's say we both had this, the
panacea, we both say we stop. They stop, we stop, all building
stops. That doesn't take away this seven-minute computer error,
does it? That's still there.
COLBY: Well, it limits the further growth 'of it. It
stops at where it is. Then we -can begin to negotiate about how
to reduce it. And it's a very complicated business, because
there's some things that they're a little stronger than we are,
there are some things we're a little stronger than they are. And
the computation of how to make it even on both sides and reduce
it evenly is a very complicated negotiation. But at least you're
not building new ones while you're negotiating.
KING: Then, I gather, also, while you're building, it's
very hard to negotiate to reduce when you're building.
COLBY: Well, it's impossible because the one gets ahead
and the other says, "Oh, I got to catch up." And that's been the
history of it the last few years.
KING: Is this new thinking for you, Bill?
COLBY: No, I've been thinking about this for a long
time. I happen to think that the purpose of intelligence is to
understand what's happening in the world. We have had some
miracles of increase in knowledge of the world, thanks to
intelligence: the satellite photographs, the electronics, all
the rest of it. We now know things that we couldn't have dreamed
of knowing of a few years ago. -
We don't ask a spy to slink out of Hong Kong and work
his way up to the Manchurian border and tell us what may be going
on there by some great difficult communications system. Instead
we look down there. We see the troop units on both sides. We
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count the number of planes, tanks, artillery. We see them move
from time to time. We know exactly what's happening with a
precision and a scope of knowledge that we wouldn't have had in a
million years a very few years ago. And the purpose of that is
so that we can make wise decisions on a basis of knowledge.
speech?
KING: Were you encouraged by President Reagan's U.N.
COLEY: I think the spirit that he indicated, that he
wanted to move toward negotiations, is certainly to be commended.
I don't think there was much content in it in terms of a clear
indication that he was prepared to make some very clear con-
cessions to the Soviets to match their concessions so that we
could make a deal. A deal has to be on both sides, not just on
one side.
KING: Those opposed to a mutually verifiable freeze say
what: If we stop, they have more than us and they're going to
plan something sneaky and win?
COLBY: No. They say, basically, that they're ahead of
us in certain regards, and therefore they're stronger, and
therefore they can impress us if we stop. And the fact is that
that's nonsense because we have more than enough to counter
anything that they do. Our retaliation capability is absolute.
There's no question about it, that if anyone used a nuclear
weapon against us, we could retaliate with overwhelming force.
Now, even the Scowcroft Commission that looked into this
a year ago said, well, yes, they have some heavier ones and they
have some that are different from ours; but there's no question
about it, we have the submarines, we have the bombers, our
retaliation is total.
And therefore, we're both stalemated on this. So why
don't we stop building new ones?
KING: It is a kind of insanity, isn't it?
.COLBY: It's an adolescent, it's playing king of the
mountain. You know, I want to get higher than you. And mean-
while you build up these terrible amount of terrible weapons,
oceans of them, 25,000 on each side, and you take the risk that
it get out of control.
KING: Do you buy the scenario -- a psychologist offered
this -- that if one side keeps building and the other side keeps
building, and the other builds and the other builds, one day a
rational head of state will first-strike?
COLBY: No, I don't think a rational head of state would
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first-strike, because, again, the retaliation is absolute. A
first strike, theoretically, knocks out our land-based systems.
But we have submarine-based, we have airborne systems, we have
cruise missiles, we have many ways of retaliating.
KING: Therefore, you don't think it's ever going to
happen.
COLBY: No, it's not going to happen.
KING: But this is a better preventative than the other?
COLBY: What I'm not worried about is a World War II
scenario, where a Hitler or a Tojo decides to conduct a Pearl
Harbor. No, that's impossible today.
KING: What are you worried about?
COLBY: What I worry about is a World War I scenario,
where the various nations in World War I began the process of
mobilization, putting their forces into position to move, began
to shoot at each other, and sooner or later they were all in a
big war. Now, that war lasted four years, it killed 20 million
people, and nobody knows what the war was all about.
KING: Still don't.
COLBY: The politicians lost total control to the
mechanistic systems of general mobilization and of the military
there.
KING: What about a third party with a nuclear weapon?
COLBY: Not a great problem yet. The fact is that if a
third party had a nuclear weapon -- there are a few that do. But
if a Mr. Qaddafi used a nuclear weapon on Cairo or something, it
certainly would be disastrous for Cairo, but it wouldn't be the
end of the world.
KING: It'd be the end of Libya, wouldn't it?
COLBY: Well, it'd be the end of both- Egypt and Libya,
perhaps, but it wouldn't be the end of the world.
What I'm mainly concerned about is the massive arsenals
of the Soviets and ourselves. That's the problem.
KING: You told me before we Went. on -- I just asked you
off the cuff, are you optimistic or pessimistic? And you said
optimistic. That makes me feel better because you know a lot
more than I do about what's going on. But after what you've just
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said, with all these arsenals, how can you be optimistic?
COLBY: Well, because they're stalemated for the moment,
and I happen to think that there's enough good sense .in the
American people and various of the other peoples in the world
that they're going to insist that this sort of madness be
constrained, be controlled, be reduced. And I think that's the
process.
I think the President's. speech the other day at the
United Nations is an indication of his recognition of the
strength of this feeling in the American people that he must lead
us to some kind of a decent arms control relationship to the
Soviet Union.
KING: I guess if we could have a worldwide referendum
with the simple question of a mutually verifiable freeze of the
superpowers...
COLBY: It would win hands-down.
KING: It would be a joke. The public don't want this.
COLBY: It would win hands-down.
But Madame Gandhi said something rather interesting, you
know, when people were telling her not to develop a nuclear
weapon. She said, "Look, don't you great powers give me sermons
about nuclear weapons until you get yours under control." And I
think that makes a lot of sense, that if we will show the
example, the Soviets and ourselves, of putting our nuclear
systems under control and not continuing this kind of madness,
then we can insist on the others adhering to that kind of a
system.
KING: Are you concerned that the two men currently
involved in this are both in their mid-seventies and are not
likely to be affected by it?
COLBY: No, I'm not concerned, because they're both
responsible leaders of their countries. And as I say, the
Soviets have indicated that they're prepared to move to a freeze.
They're very concerned at the continuation of this race. They're
very upset at the President's Star Wars. idea because they have
enough respect for the American technological capability that
they're convinced that if we really wanted to do it, we probably
could do it.
Now, there are a lot of scientists who say we can't do
it, but the Soviets are not sure of that. And so they're
frightened of the possibilities.
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KING: You say we've had a couple of misses, the
computer was wrong or something. Aretwe accident-free?
COLB-Y: We have a whole series of controls, checks,
cross-checks, all the rest of it, to make sure that the false
indicator that comes in is not then used immediately as a
response. We have fail-safe systems and all the rest of it. And
they've worked to date. Even though we've had the false alerts,
the confirmation requirements have been such that we have not
gone to war by mistake.
But as I say, if you get down to shorter terms, then you
begin to eliminate the human selection of whether it's right or
not and you begin to depend on the machines more and more.
KING: William Colby is our guest.
KING: Our guest is William Colby, the former Chief of
the CIA. He is currently senior adviser to -- we had the old
name of that firm. The correct name is International Business
Government Counselors, or IBC.'
We're ready to go to your phone calls, and we begin with
Fairfax, Virginia.
WOMAN: ...You remember the Phoenix program in Vietnam?
WOMAN: Did you run that, or was it Robert Komer?
COLBY: No, I ran it. And it was a program to try to
improve our knowledge and intelligence on the Communist under-
ground there.
KING: Second question.
WOMAN: I am very glad you've come to the nuclear freeze
position. But in Vietnam the war went on so long, with so much
loss of life, was there ever any question of using any nuclear
weapons there?
COLBY: No. Absolutely not. No.
KING: Never even discussed?
COLBY: Not that I recall. Absolutely not.
KING: Atlanta, Georgia.
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MAN: I have many questions, but I shall limit them to
three. One -- and I don't remember the guy's name, but whoever
the head of North Korea is, allegedly...
COLBY: Kim I1 Sung.
MAN: ...has decided that he is going to, before he
dies, take South Korea. The man is old. What's happening there?
COLBY: Well, he'd like to, but he's deterred by a very
substantial South Vietnamese [sic] army and an American force
that's there. And our government has decided to keep our forces
there rather than reduce them. And I think that's an effective
deterrence against his ambitions to take South Korea. He's still
going to try, but he just has to be stopped.
KING: How old is he, close to 80?
COLBY: No, no. He's around 65 or 70. He's not that
old. But his son is going to take over. And he's, if anything,
worse than his father.
KING: Second question.
MAN: Second question. Mutual and verifiable. How do
you propose to verify?
COLBY: Because our intelligence system these days is
tellin.g us what kind of weapons the Soviets has, whether there's
an agreement between us or not. It's doing .a good job. We know
exactly what the Soviets have. We haven't had a surprise for
20-odd years, and we can tell these things long before they
become a strategic threat to us. ' !
Now, this kind of intelligence is made easier by a
treaty because there are a lot of provisions in the treaty that
are designed to facilitate that monitoring.
KING: Because we only have one hour we're going to
limit the callers to, tops, two questions each.
We go to Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
MAN: I have a couple of questions here. One, there was
a growing concern, I guess, back in 1981 that President Reagan
had signed a bill into law allowing the CIA more domestic spying
in the U.S. to zero in on subversive organizations and people who
are potential John Hinckleys. Now, has this started any? And if
so, to what extent or...
COLBY: No, not the CIA. The CIA's job is abroad.
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MAN: It is abroad?
COLBY: It is abroad.
KING: By law, by edict.
COLBY: By law and by presidential directive.
Now, what we did do is relieve certain of the restric-
tions put on the FBI for some of the activities here in the
United States that can be dangerous to our Presidents or to our
fellow citizens.
MAN: My second question is regarding the issue in
Central and South America. How are we keeping abreast of the
troop movements that are by Soviet and Cuban troops? And was the
CIA in any way involved in Grenada prior to...
KING: That's two questions. Just the Central America.
COLBY: Well, on the Central America thing, we have a
very extensive intelligence coverage of shipping, of aircraft
movements, of logistics movements. We cover various kinds of
indications from communications, from observers in various
places. We have techniques. of flying over certain areas and
seeing ships that are on the ground there. We have a variety of
ways of covering what's happening in that area.
KING: Do former CIA Directors keep in touch with each
other and the current CIA Director? Are you pretty much aware of
what's going on?
COLBY: No. I don't want to know the secrets because
that's no my business these days. I've talked to the present
Director, Mr. Casey, and I've been out there a few times. But I
let him run his own business.
KING: Toronto, Canada.
MAN: Considering Canada's special relationship with the
United States, its involvement-in NORAD and NATO, do you see
severe diplomatic limitations on what Canada -- what role Canada
can play between peace between the U.S.S.R. and the U.S.?
COLBY: Canada and the United States have a very close
alliance. We're totally involved with each other. And we have
the utmost confidence in the Canadians and, the Canadians support
to our mutual defense. There are many things the Canadians can
do to help us, and there are many things we can do to help
Canada. And that's the way it ought to be.-
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COLBY: Right.
KING: Bethesda, Maryland.
MAN: Mutual assured destruction. Valid or invalid?
COLBY: Basically, valid for a while, although it's a
silly way to keep the peace. We'd do better not to have weapons
like that. But if the other side has one and we have one, then
the two threatening each other mean that neither dares use it.
And that's the way the peace has been kept for a number of years.
The problem is that it's getting very fragile because the
potential for a so-called first strike is coming out of the
improvements of technology, and we have to stop this race in
these weapons before that happens.
. MAN: Well, how about the Soviets' [unintelligible]
versus ours. I know that we are not effective in hitting their
hardeneded silos, which they are most effective in hitting ours.
And that is the imbalance in the first-strike capability.
COLBY: Well, we have had a greater accuracy than they
have for a long time. The fact is, we chose to have small
weapons rather than big ones because we had greater accuracy.
The problem is that they have increased their accuracy in recent
years; and, with their large weapons, they've'become dangerous to
our silos.
But that's a very esoteric subject. The fact is that
these weapons are so dangerous to both sides that neither can use
them.
KING: With William Colby, former Director of the CIA.
New York City.
WOMAN: I'm hearing nothing but technology. Luckily,
I'm not a technological person. I understand the value of it.
So is the inter-human relations of when you have talks. Are you
effective -- not you, personally -- but whoever represents the
U.S. of A.? We do not have a Churchill nowadays who can drink
Stalin under the table.
KING: What's the question?
WOMAN: ...the people all over, including England and
America. Now, that's where it's at, as far as I can see, apart
from the arguments back and forth, you know, of how many...
KING: What's the question?
COLBY: We have people who speak Russian, who understand
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the Soviet Union, who can deal with them very straight across the
top of the table.
WOMAN: Is Solzhenitsyn being consulted, for example?
COLBY: Well, Solzhenitsyn gives everybody his views. I
don't think he has been consulted.
KING: We do have Russian experts, although our chief
Russian expert has never been there. Does that matter to you?
COLBY: No, not necessarily, because one can study the
Soviet Union in great detail. I think he should visit there, and
I arranged for a number of our experts to visit the Soviet Union,
even as tourists, not to get involved in a particular operation,
but to be tourists.
KING: William Colby. He attended and spoke at the
Conference on the Fate of the Earth, just concluded here in
Washington, speaking in favor of mutual and verifiable freeze.
He is senior adviser to International Business Government Council
and the former Director of the CIA. By the way, he has been
decorated with the National Security Medal, the Distinguished
Intelligence Medal, and the Norwegian St. Olaf's Medal, among
many others. And he wrote a hell of a book in the late '70s,
Hon-orable- Men-:- _ -My -Life- -in- -t-h-e -CIA, which Simon and Schuster
published.
KING: Madison, Wisconsin,
MAN: Mr. Colby, I have a 'question about the CIA's
hiring practices. I was recruited by the Company about a year
ago at the University of Wisconsin, and my'recruiter was the
Deputy Director in the Office of Central Reference. Now, he told
me that if I was to be denied employment, that I would not be
told what the reasons were. Now, I feel very strongly that I was
qualified, but I was denied consideration. I suspect also that I
didn't fit the, quote, mind-set that is in the organization.
My question is this: Is it still true, as former CIA
administrators have contended that have written about this
problem, that the CIA recruits largely either from conservative
Ivy League type colleges or from people with conservative
political orientations?
COLBY:. No, that's not true. The present recruitment is
all over the country. When I was in the CIA last, I counted the
12 senior members of the agency around my table in the morning
meeting. Ten of them. came from non-Ivy League colleges, two of
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them came from Ivy League colleges.
The fact is that they don't seek conservatives. We've
had liberals. If anything, CIA was known to be kind of a liberal
institution for a number of years.
KING: It's known in Washington, first of all, it has
more Ph.D.s than any other governmental agency.
COLBY: Well, it probably has enormous number of
advanced degrees. But it's neither liberal nor conservative.
It's professional.
KING: To Springfield, Illinois.
MAN: I'd like to ask Mr. Colby if the American people
will ever know what happened to Nick Shaddren?
COLBY: Well, I don't know that anybody really knows,
outside the Soviets, what happened to Nick Shaddren. There have
been several books written about it, several investigations. But
I don't think -- I certainly don't know what happened to him, and
Idon't think anybody really knows,' other than perhaps the Soviet
Union.
MAN: So you think they grabbed him in Vienna?
COLBY: I suspect that may have happened. Yes.
KING: We go to Allentown, Pennsylvania.
MAN: Let me first of. all say thank you for your
dedication and effort.
KING: That's to you, Mr. Colby, not to me.
MAN: Going back to '64, I'm'curious what the effect of
a Dr. Strangelove had on this, and maybe you personally, and just
the system in general.
KING: Did that movie have any effect?
COLBY: No. It was an interesting movie and it was a
fictional account, but there are all sorts of fictional accounts,
from War and Peace by Tolstoy on up. There are lots of fictions
that are very dramatic and they have an impact, but not a direct
impact.
KING: I discovered, from having visited the CIA, one
looks at the bulletin board that employees look at and put up.
It has a great sense of humor, that agency. Most of the cartoons
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COLBY: Oh, sure. Well, you want to tell people what's
being said about them.
KING.: Atlanta, Georgia.
MAN: I have a seven-year-old grandson that visits me on
the weekends. And one night not long ago we were sleeping
side-by-side in the twin beds, and he woke up in the middle of
the night screaming and crying and yelling, "They're going to
kill us all. They're going to kill us all." And I calmed him
down and found his teacher had been talking about possible
nuclear attack in this country, and she was telling him what to
do, you know, get under the desk and get downstairs and all that.
What psychological thing is this going to have on our
children, the threat of nuclear attack?
COLEY: Oh, it has a considerable psychological effect,
both on our children and on Soviet children. This happened 20-30
years ago when it was believed that if you hid under the desk it
would help you. Now it's really pretty well understood that that
doesn't help much. But you'-re getting more dramatic presenta-
tions, like the film "The Day After," and so forth, that frighten
a number of children who are afraid that they're not going to
grow up, that they're going to die in a nuclear attack..
KING: Children of both nations are scared.
COLBY: Of all nations. Yes.
MAN: One more question. What can I do, as an individ-
ual, to stop this insaneness of nuclear buildup?
COLBY: I think speak out among your neighbors, speak to
your friends. Get involved in some of the programs, the activi-
ties, the associations and organizations that are trying to do
something about it. You make the choice as to the one that seems
to represent what you think, and support 'em.
KING: Brooklyn, New York.
MAN: Mr. Colby, I' have two comments, plus a question.
One on, supposedly, the arms race and one that's happening in
Beirut.
You don't take the fact that they have the ABMs, the
Soviets, which would violate the ICBMs., they could also hit us
from Siberia within five-six minutes. I- mean, you know, the
Soviet Communists don't compromise. They only compromise what's
in their benefit.
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KING: Then what's your answer, sir? ,
MAN: I'll say something about that after I finish.
In Beirut, why don't the CIA try and infiltrate the
Islamic Jihad, these crazies?
COLBY: I am certain the CIA has tried to infiltrate it.
It's very tough to infiltrate a small terrorist group. On some
occasions, I think we have infiltrated them and we stopped the
operation. Now, that doesn't get much publicity because you
don't brag about it. You just stop it and that's the end of it.
The time you fail, they run the attack. Therefore you have to
have a protective device in addition to intelligence.
KING: One of the great problems with the CIA is we
don't know of its successes.
COLBY: Well, President Kennedy said that your successes
are silent and your failures are heralded. And that's a fact of
life in the intelligence business.
KING: Our guest is William Colby, the former Director
of the CIA.
KING: Bethesda, Maryland.
MAN: Mr. Colby, are you familiar with the core of the
KGB's military headquarters in Moscow, Department 8? I was told
by a Jewish emigre that they have one thousand soldiers in almost
an impenetrable fortress that guards the military communications
of the entire military command in the Soviet Union and if there
were a coup or someone in the Politburo were to assassinate
someone for a military coup. Could you explain? Do you think
that would be a problem on a fictional basis -- I mean on a
reality?
COLBY: Well, the KGB is responsible for the security of
the leadership of the Soviet Union. The KGB is not the opposite
number of the CIA, it's the opposite number of the CIA, the FBI,
the Secret Service, the border police, everything else, the
Bureau of Prisons and so forth. They even have full divisions.
And one of their jobs is the protection of the senior leadership
against coups. And their job is to protect the communications
line, also, to the outlying districts of the Soviet Union.
KING: When people complain that the KGB is much larger
than us, they don't take into consideration that it encompasses
all of those.
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COLBY': That it has all those jobs, yes. Although its
foreign operations are also larger than our foreign operations.
KING: How well. are the Russian embassies protected?
Nothing ever seems to happen to Russian embassies.
COLBY: Well, they don't -- occasionally you get a
terrorist or something against a Soviet Embassy, but not very
often. They take their security very, very carefully. They have
lots of protection around their embassies.
KING: Chicago, Illinois.
MAN: Three quick questions, yes or no. Do we have any
operatives, active agent operatives still within the Soviet
Union?
COLBY: I hope so.
MAN: Second question. How much did Stansfield Turner
hurt the CIA when he took over?
COLBY: I don't think he hurt it. I think he changed a
few things, like any Director does, and he was controversial in
some respects. I was controversial on other respects. Bill
Casey is controversial. Any leader is going to be controversial
about various things he does.
MAN: Third questions. The real hangup about a mutually
verifiable freeze is the question of mutually verifiable. And
hasn't that been the real crux, the Soviets' unwillingness to
allow on-site inspection?
COLBY: Well, your right that the crux has been the
verifiable question. The fact is, I think that the freeze is
verifiable. Now, if you accept the fact that you're not asking
that we get the last item of evidence for a court of law, but
that we're really ihterested in protecting our country, then I
can guaranty that any substantial threat to our country will be
identify long before it becomes actual and give us plenty of time
either to negotiate about it or to react and counter it. That's
the fact of verifiability.
KING: Winnetka, Illinois.
WOMAN: Mr. Colby, considering the fact as far as
stopping this nuclear insanity on the part, of this Administra-
tion, particularly, but on both sides of the aisle, when it comes
up talking about these arms, the senator and the representative
are always for that limit -- I mean are often for that limita-
tion, except when it's in his constituency and it
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means jobs and votes. Do you not think that is a problem?
COLBY: It's a problem, but there was a congressman down
in Arkansas who voted against the resumption of the manufacture
of poison gas, even though the factory was going to be in his
district. I think he deserves a great deal of credit for that.
KING: Is there a lot of that, though?
.COLBY: Yes, there is considerable of that kind of a
--it's the people in Utah and Nevada who. stopped that idea of the
racetrack protective device for our MX missiles.
KING: Two very conservative states.
COLBY: Yes.
KING: Alexandria, Virginia.
MAN: Mr. Colby, there's a great deal of talk about the
necessity for the President retaliating in the case of terrorism.
One of the things that is essential is very precise and accurate
intelligence. Now, what do you feel -- I'd be very interested in
your viewpoint on what the CIA, that is constantly being un-
dressed in public, requires in'the way of protection in order to
provide that kind of intelligence so we can act, or. rather react,
in a way that is effective and expeditious, such as we've seen in
the case of Israel, for example.
COLBY: Well, I would say that the first point is that
we ought to protect our national sources, just as our journalists
insist on protecting their sources. That doesn't mean we have to
protect everything about the CIA or make it totally secret, but
we do have to protect our sources. I
Secondly, with respect to retaliation, I happen to think
that if somebody is my declared enemy, he declares it, and I get
hurt, then I can retaliate quite legitimately at him without
having to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he actually did
the deed. Because if he stands up and says -- states his
hostility, then he's responsible for anything that happens to me.
KING: A fair assumption.
Burlington, Massachusetts.
MAN: Mr. Colby, my question is, what courses of study
would you suggest or recommend for any future recruitment
candidates?
KING: Good question.
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COLBY: I think a course of study of foreign affairs,
languages. We have a crying need for languages: Arabic,
Chinese, Soviet -- Russian, all that. sort of thing.
MAN: I see. But I speak Serbian and German fluently.
MAN: And I'm interested in the Foreign Service. I took
a test last year, in December, and I missed it by a couple of
percentage points, as far as the grade that's required for
consideration. And the intelligence community has interested me
for many years, through reading and through the newspapers. And
I was hoping someday, that if not one, the other.
COLBY: Well, there are advertisements in some of the
press that give an address for one to send in one's application
to the CIA. And the DIA is recruiting people. There are a lot
of different agencies that recruit people for intelligence work.
KING: His languages help him. Right?
COLBY: They help a great deal.
MAN: The average age,' sir, of...
COLBY: Generally a little over the normal hiring age.
In other words, they like to take people who have done something,
not just gone to school.
KING: Twenty-five?
COLBY:. Twenty-eight, 29.
MAN: I'm 26, so that would give me three years to
get...
COLBY: Sure.
KING: We have a half-hour to go with William Colby.
.KING: We're going to go right back to your calls.
Houston, Texas.
WOMAN: Bill, I
think that any hope for
mented by the support of
and ability. And I just
m a longtime admirer and friend. I just
world peace can only be done and aug-
someone with your experience and stature
want to say thank you for your
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COLBY: Well, thank you very much. It's awful nice of
KING: Nice when you get compliments, huh, Bill?
Buffalo, New York.
MAN: I'm pleased with your positions on nuclear freeze.
My question is this: In view of the fact that the Western
European countries spend a much smaller part of their GNP on
military, is it possible that they take over the lion's share of
.defending Europe to save us some of the expense?
COLBY: Well, the Germans, for example, do contribute
considerable. Some of the other countries do not, but some of
the other countries will point out to you that they have the
draft and we don't, which makes a big difference in some of them.
It would be preferable that they contribute more. It
probably would be preferable that we contribute more to the
conventional level of defense there. But at the moment we're at
about a' balance point, not as-good as we should be, and we ought
to do better.
Norfolk, Virginia.
MAN: With the number of Russian atomic submarines
patrolling the East and West Coast of the United States,and
considering the amount of trouble that they've had, what do you
think would be the effect on both the government and the people
near the coast if one of these submarines would explode with a
force of about ten megatons, either accidentally or by design?
COLBY: Well, if they blew up out at sea where they are,
several hundred -- a couple hundred miles out at sea, not very
much on the initial stage, although you'd have a fallout problem.
On the West Coast that fallout would come toward the coast. On
the East Coast the fallout would go out into the Atlantic.
MAN: What do you think the response of the government
would be? '
COLBY: Of our government?
COLBY: If it were an explosion and not a direct attack,
then I think we would try to work our way around the explosion
rather than take it as an attack.
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KING: We would treat it as an accident.
COLBY: Right.
KING: Williamstown, New Jersey.
MAN: Sir, a question to a great American patriot, whom
I missed meeting on your recent visit to Southern Pines.
COLBY: Oh, thank you.
MAN: I asked my mentor, General William P. Yarborough,
this question, and he did not know. Are you the man who led the
remarkable 50-man Norwegian operations group for OSS during World
War II?
COLBY: I read -- yes, I did lead a group up into
Norway, operations group for OSS there. It was not the so-called
heavy water operation. It was an operation against a railway in
Northern Norway. We went in in the spring of '45 and blew up the
railroad a couple of times.
KING: Is that what won you the Norweigan St. Olaf's
MAN: Sir, you.might be interested in knowing, in a book
that's going to be coming out entitled The Devil's-Bodyguard,
that?operat-ion will be mentioned.
COLBY: Oh, thank-you.
KING: Minneapolis.
WOMAN: It seems unconscionable that the CIA funded
experiments on unsuspecting Canadian mental patients.
WOMAN: And one must -- well, I must then question
whether similar experiments that use things. like ECT -- shock
treatments, in other words -- drugs, or behavior modification
techniques were also done on United States psychiatric patients.
And I'm wondering whether you would care to comment on this
possibility.
COLBY: During the investigations of CIA ten years ago,
.a few cases showed up where CIA was involved in some tests of
various kinds of people, the potential use of drugs and so forth.
The motivation was to find.out what those drugs did so that we
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could protect ourselves against a hostile use of them, and
sometimes the possibility of using them in our interest.
Now, it is totally unconscionable that those were used
in a violation of the standards on experiments, medical experi-
ments. The rules have been made very clear since that time that
CIA will stick to the rules proper to the medical profession for
experimentation on patients.
KING: We'll be right back with William Colby.
KING: Canton, Ohio.
MAN: First I'd like to say that Mr. Colby is white-
washing the CIA, and I think it's a criminal organization, a
secret police for the transnational corporations. I do believe
that this doubly underscores the absolute necessity and credi-
bility of a nuclear freeze and how mild as milk such a policy
would be. And even the fact that most people don't realize that
the Soviets have refused to ever strike first, they've officially
renounced that. We have not renounced that. They've called for
a nuclear freeze. We have refused that nuclear freeze. They've
said they'd get rid of all of their nuclear weapons within Europe
if we counted the British and French weapons which could destroy
the Soviet Union. And Reagan has refused to do this.
KING: What's the question?
MAN: Do you believe that most people don't realize
this?,) I think because much of the media are not bringing it to
their attention. And yet they support even a unilateral freeze
within this country. Do you think this could be strengthened if
these facts got out to the people with the help of a media that
is, I think, fronting for Reagan and the military.
KING: Rather than make a speech, if you ask a question
it's much more effective.
COLBY: I think I got the question. I don't think that
the media has misled. I think the subject is so complex that the
ordinary citizen has a tough time distinguishing the various
positions.
As for the Administration's position, I think they've
been a little sticky on a few things, although I give them
good-faith concern about the safety of our country. I think we
should move ahead to a negotiation of a mutual freeze. And I
think the Soviets are ready because it's very much in their
interest to achieve it, and it's very much in our interest to
achieve it.
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. COLBY: Yes, but we do. The fact is that there are
secrets in the world, and the secrets can be dangerous to us, and
we have to discover those secrets.
KING: Rockville, Maryland.
MAN: Two questions, please. Mr. Boyce, who handed the
Soviets the satellite technologies book in Washington state,
could you tell me the extent of damage that did and if it had any
effect on the start of the White Horse system or any of the
satellite-killer systems?
And the second question. There was an explosion in the
North Sea about -- I think it was in early March or April, about
35 percent of the Soviet nuclear missile depot at a naval base
was destroyed. Could you tell us -- elaborate on that, please?
COLBY: Well, the explosion was up in the northern part
of the Soviet Union. Obviously, a weapons depot got out of
control and it was an enormous destructive -- it was an accident,
apparently. They are fairly sloppy in the way they handle those
sorts of things.
And I think with respect to the Soviet naval activities
generally, they are not as efficient as our Navy. There's no
question about it.
KING: What about the gentleman in Seattle and the
handing over?
COLBY: The movement -- Mr. Boyce's operations certainly
did hurt us. I wouldn't say that they put us behind the Soviet
Union, but it was one of those things that exposed something that
we were using against them that now they can counter fairly
easily.
KING: Pittsburgh.
MAN: Mr. Colby, this is a little different, but some of
my friends and I were often wondering about this. If you can't
answer this question, nobody can. When the Soviet Union invaded
Czechoslovakia in 1968, the two prominent Slovaks in power or
running the country at that time were Dubcek and Swoboda, I think
his name was. What ever happened to them? Were they executed or
are they still alive?
COLEY: I can't answer the question, I'm sorry. I just
have forgotten. I really don't know.
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MAN: ...find out that out?
KING: I'd-call the Czech Embassy.
COLBY: I think Dubcek died, but I'm not sure.
KING: To Springfield, Massachusetts.
MAN: The President likes to speak about the window of
vulnerability. Since it's been pointed out on this program that
there's a fair amount of parity in weaponry between us and the
Russians, I wonder if he's deluding himself. That's my feeling.
COLBY: Yes. There is no window of vulnerability. If
there were, the Soviets would exploit it. . I don't have any
sympathy for the Soviets, and I know they're tough and hard. The
fact is, we have the weapons that can prevent the Soviets from
using their weapons against us.
KING: Omaha, Nebraska.
MAN: On the strategic defense initiative, how do you
think we would deal, or the Russians would deal, with the
unfissioned plutonium fuses on the warheads that would theoreti-
cally be destroyed?
COLBY: Well, I think the strategic defense initiative,
the so-called Star Wars, is probably not really feasible in any
realistic sense. It's 25 years ahead, it's $2*5 trillion ahead,
and it probably wouldn't be more than 90 to 95 percent efficient,
which if a thousand missiles came toward us, that would leave 50
or 100 landing on us.
So, the fact is that once we actually hit a number of
those in the sky, or in space, you would have the plutonium
there. It would have a certain poisonous effect, but it would
have a lot less poisonous effect than the weapon landing in the
United States.
KING: Marshall, Minnesota.
MAN: I just wanted to call and compliment you on a job
that's being well done by the CIA. I really appreciate what
you're doing to counter what our enemies are trying to do to us.
And that guy who called earlier and called the CIA a criminal
organization just doesn't know what he's talking about, you know.
I think you guys are doing an effective job.
COLBY: Well, I appreciate that. I've retired from it,
but I'm sure the people still in it appreciate your sentiments.
KING: Chicago for William Colby.
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MAN: Mr. Colby, much has been made of the nuclear
threat and the danger surrounding nuclear proliferation.
Balanced against this possible danger, I think, is the present
slaughter of millions of innocents by the Soviet Union and the
continuing enslavement of almost a billion human beings by those
despotic cretins in the Kremlin.
My question is, how does Patrick Henry's statement,
"Give me liberty or give me death," jibe with your support of the
nuclear freeze as a method of reducing the possibility of the
nuclear threat, and your total disregard, at least on this
program, for the sea of human beings which are enslaved right now
by the Soviets? We seem to be in frenzied activities to save our
own necks. What are we doing for the life and liberty of those
poor people?
COLBY: Well, the Soviets and ourselves are both exposed
to destruction and the elimination, plus the other countries, by
the present nuclear stocks. The fact is that if we had a freeze,
we could then begin to communicate with the Soviets and not live
in quite so much fear of each other. As we have in the past
times, sometimes when we have made a nuclear agreement, as Mr.
Nixon did, it has opened the possibility to change in the Soviet
Union. When we are in a firm hostility, there's no change in the
Soviet Union.
KING: What is your alternative, sir?
MAN: Well, I think that we should make positive plans,
first, to defend ourselves and bring ourselves to as large a
state of invulnerability as possible.
MAN: Exert some kind of an economic or a pressure
against the Soviet Union.
COLBY: Well, we do have our protections; and there's no
question about it, we are going to maintain our protections
against the Soviet Union.
As for changing within the Soviet Union, I think the
main thing is to open them up. And it is precisely through
agreements such as this that one opens their habits and them to
outside influences.
MAN: Mr. Colby, what do you feel are the full implica-
tions of the story that's come out in the -last 'few months that
the English Navy threatened to use atomic weapons against
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the Argentine city during the Falkland Islands war, and that's
why the Argentines pulled out of the war?
COLBY: The British Government has denied that. And I
don't think that the British Government was contemplating the use
of nuclear weapons there.
KING: Boston again.
MAN: Mr. Colby, I fully agree with you on the issue of
the nuclear freeze. However, in my opinion, the real threat to
world peace currently is proliferation. To what extent does CIA
try to prevent people like the Islamic Jihad or Muammar Qaddafi
from getting an atomic device?
COLBY: Well, in the first place, we try to follow
what's happening in this field. We try to see what other
countries are developing nuclear possibilities, trying to follow
terrorist groups and any plans that they may make.
The fact is that proliferation is a secondary danger.
Because if a small country gets a few bombs, it's dangerous to
its neighbor but it's not dangerous to the world. The massive
stocks that we and the Soviet Union have are dangerous to the
world. And Madame Gandhi once?said, rather pointedly, I thought,
that we shouldn't give her lectures about the nuclear weapons
until we got our own arms race under control. I think there's a
certain amount of logic to that position.
KING: Toronto, Canada.
MAN: I wanted to ask Mr. Colby two rpoints that I'd like
him to respond to. He's been talking very much about verifi-
ability, and all I have to work with is Jane's, and not his
immense experience in the field. But given that warhead sizes
are now down to about a cubic meter or a little under that, how
does he propose that we can keep track, of simple swapping
operations on things like torpedoes, cruise"missiles? It's very
difficult to determine whether they're nuclear-armed or not.
And the other point that I wanted to make was you can't
verify what's going on in a laboratory by national technical
means. The American deterrent seems to me to rest purely on the
invulnerability of its submarine base, and not on the missile
base. So, if the Russians are continuing to develop anti-
submarine technology, what assures --.what enables you to
continue and to keep that edge?
COLBY: The fact that the warheads are getting smaller
certainly does present a problem, but it's not an insoluble
problem, because it's not just the warhead,.it's the whole
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support structure that maintains a warhead. These stocks, the
depots, the protective places to store them, and all the rest of
it, that give indications as to whether nuclear warheads or
ordinary warheads are there. And it's that kind of hint that you
can get, put little bits and pieces together.
Now, secondly, if it's absolutely impossible, you can
adopt a system with the Soviets where you count anything that
could have a nuclear warhead as having one. That's what we did
with SALT I. Anything that looked like it, had ever been tested
with it was counted as having a nuclear warhead. This is a
device, but it's a way of handling that kind of a problem.
On the submarine situation, we are far ahead of the
Soviets in anti-submarine warfare. There's no question about it.
We are going to keep on. The fact is that our submarines are one
of the ways we have to retaliate. One is the land-based
missiles, one are the bombers, and one now are going to be cruise
missiles. So you have a variety of ways to retaliate, if
necessary.
KING: Last call for William Colby. St. Petersburg,
MAN: Mr. Colby, a quick hypothetical question for your
regarding employment. I don't know how far you were aloof from
the employment at the CIA. But let's say a person was approached
and eventually filled out the applications for employment, you
know, in the electronics end of it, and a couple of months later
he received notification that he was wanting to -- they wanted
him to fly to Washington. What are the possibilitis of employ-
ment?
COLBY: Well, if they've gone that far, to invite you to
fly to Washington, then I think the chances are pretty good.
It'll depend on the interview, but they've obviously looked at
the background, they think there's enough there to make it
attractive, and they want to see the person and look into him.
They then will have a security clearance. They then will have a
psychological test to see about stability, to maVe sure that we
don't hire people that are unstable. There are a number of other
tests. But if you've been invited to fly there, the chances are
pretty good.
MAN: Thank you very much.
KING: Bill, I want to thank you very much. It's been a
great pleasure meeting you. I've. admired you for many years.
COLBY: Thank you. It's a pleasure to be with you,
Larry. Thanks a lot.
Approved For Release 2010/01/14: CIA-RDP88-0107OR000301400014-7