COLBY SAYS DEFENSE BUDGET CAN BE CUT

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP99-00418R000100150013-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 15, 2012
• Sequence Number: 13
• Publication Date: March 28, 1990
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

S1 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/15: CIA-RDP99-00418R000100150013-2
The Washington Post
The New York Times
The Washington Times
The Wall Street Journal
The Christian Science Monitor
New York Daily News
USA Today
The Chicago Tribune
E(L. Aq
Date da my A"?
Colby says defense budget can be cut
By JIM McDONNELL
Advocate staff writer
The United States could afford to cut
defense spending in half and use that
$150 billion a year "peace dividend" for
many endeavors more worthwhile than
building weapons systems that can
never be used, former CIA director
William Colby said Tuesday night.
Ten percent could be used to double
our foreign aid budget, he said.
The rest could go toward better
education, a better environment and
dealing with other domestic difficulties
such as the drug problem, Colby said
during a speech at LSU.
Colby, who directed the CIA from
1973 to 1976, said there is a place in this
rapidly changing world for relatively
small, but high-quality military forces
backed up by reserves.
Drug lords and terrorists who hold
American hostages should "live in
terror" of American special forces units
showing up in their back yards, he said.
But large-scale military power has
been rendered useless in the
relationship between superpowers
because they are unable to exercise it
against each other, he said, adding the
world's economic giants should focus
their efforts on working together
toward economic betterment.
Colby compared present-day
realities to the late 1940s, when the
United States financed the rebuilding of
war-ravaged Europe.
The United States' best approach to
the challenges and opportunities of the
1990s, he said, would be to join with
other major economic powers in an
effort to build up the underdeveloped
nations of the Third World as well as
those emerging from Communism.
The situation in the Soviet Union is
now obviously "very delicate," Colby
said.
He compared the central government
in Moscow and the Lithuanian
government in Vilnius to "two scorpions
in a bottle, both looking at each other,
somewhat afraid of each other, but both
acutely aware that the destruction of
one would probably mean the
destruction of the other," he said.
"Some screaming incident could
occur, some flamboyant incident that
could throw the whole thing up in a
mess," he said.
"But the Soviet Union is not going to
suppress the Lithuanians. It's going to
let them go. It's talking about the
modalities of letting them go."
The Soviet Union, he predicted, will
work its way through the current
Lithuanian crisis as well as other crises
bound to materialize as other ethnic
minorities follow the Lithuanian lead
and demand independence.
"It's not hard to hold power," hd said.
"It's not even that hard to grab power.
What's very difficult is to release power
because you immediately set up
competing appetites... you immediately
divide the country into compete blues
and groups."
Other countries will take more t:me
to progress.
"The North Koreans have been f n,zvn
in time for years," he said. "We've gut t
wait until the great leader Kim 11 Sun.,
goes to his just or unjust reward. At that,
point I think somebody will shoot his son'
and they'll open the borders."
The topic of Colby's address,
"National Security in a Changing World:
U.S. Policy Options in the '90s,'was
part of a *tries sponsored by the
Bienville House Center for Peace and
Justice, Common Cause, the Uniting
Campus Ministry, Peace Links, the
YWCA and the League of Women
Voters.
32.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/15: CIA-RDP99-00418R000100150013-2