CIA DIRECTOR WILLIAM WEBSTER INTERVIEWED

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP99-01448R000401650023-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 14
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 24, 2012
• Sequence Number: 23
• Publication Date: February 1, 1989
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
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RADIO TV REPORTS, INC.
4701 WILLARD AVENUE, CHEVY CHASE, MARYLAND 20815 [phone]
FOR PUBLIC AFFAIRS STAFF
PROGRAM The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour STATION WETA - TV
PBS Network
DATE February 1, 1989 7:00 P.M.
Washington, D.C.
SUBJECT CIA Director William Webster Interviewed
JIM LEHRER: William Webster is first tonight, with his
first television interview since becoming Director of Central
Intelligence two years ago. George Bush held that same job,
himself, under President Ford. And one of the first decisions he
made after his own election as President was to ask Mr. Webster
to stay on the job. Mr. Webster had been Director of the FBI for
nine years when chosen by President Reagan to take over the CIA
in March 1987. He was a federal judge in St. Louis before that.
The interview was taped earlier this evening. The first
question: Do you agree with Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov
that the odds are against Mikhail Gorbachev surviving as the
leader of the Soviet Union?
DIRECTOR WILLIAM WEBSTER: Well, I suppose if you want
to look at the long term and look at all the obstacles that face
this one leader, a safe bet would say that no ordinary person is
going to make it. But this is no ordinary person. And I don't
think we ought to base our policy conclusions on the assumption
that he is not going to make, in the course of his career, very
substantial and significant changes in Soviet Russia.
LEHRER: Are the obstacles the obstacles we've all heard
and talked about? I mean just the reality of what the Soviet
Union is now. Or are they internal political problems, that
other people in the leadership don't want him to succeed? What's
the scope of the problem?
DIRECTOR WEBSTER: Well, in the first place, he faces --
many people call them, for conversation purposes, conservatives,
who believe this is a major departure from the Marxist-Leninist
ideology, that he's getting dangerously close to democratic
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institutions and practices. Glasnost, for instance, and all the
freedoms it implies. A concern that he will not and should not
try to decentralize many of the decision-making processes. The
Soviet Union deals in management-by-command, from above. And
this is what they're used to. It's a very entrenched bureau-
cracy.
So, these are the political resistances that he's
experiencing.
In addition to that, as he moves forward with new
thinking and new ideas, he runs into problems both on the
economic as well as on the political side.
On the political side, he confronts reactions in those
states who are now free to criticize, or at least think they're
free to criticize. It's not correct that they're free to
criticize. But that's coming home. He can't repress it in the
old way because that would be contrary to glasnost.
Then when you have the ethnic problems, as we do in
Azerbaijan and Armenia, aggravated by dissatisfactions with the
way that the Armenian earthquake was handled, all the displaced
people, these add to the question of whether or not this is
really worthwhile, from the point of view of the consumer, who's
not seeing his lifestyle improve, and the politician, who's
questioning the methods.
I haven't even talked about the military problems and
coming to grips with what do you do about adjusting military
spending.
But those are all on the down side. There are many plus
sides that he's doing that are altering the face of national
strategy and perspectives.
LEHRER: Is it your feeling that if he were to go
tomorrow, that he has set in motion a freight train that cannot
be stopped in certain of these reform areas? Or would they go
boom the minute he goes boom?
DIRECTOR WEBSTER: If he goes boom tomorrow, I think the
LEHRER: That's an overstatement. Right.
DIRECTOR WEBSTER: Well, I think time frame has some-
thing to do with this. He has many supporters -- Shevardnadze,
for instance; there are others -- who could carry on the program.
But he has -- at this stage, I would say, if I were a betting
man, that the Soviets would probably quickly return, as quickly
as they could, to old ways.
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But every day that he survives, every new program he's
able to put in place, every change in the political structure
that gives him the ability to do it and to around the bureaucracy
improves the likelihood of more permanence to those programs.
LEHRER: You said that Gorbachev is no ordinary man.
Robin MacNeil interviewed George Kennan recently and he asked
Kennan, "How did that system, produce such a remarkable man?" And
Kennan said, "That's the great mystery."
Is it a mystery to the CIA? What is your all's theory
about how he came to be what he is?
DIRECTOR-WEBSTER: I think there are a thousand opinions
on it, and mine's no better than anybody else's.
He brings an unusual level of energy. Now, this is the
first time they really dropped down into the younger generation
for leadership. He'd been waiting for this opportunity. He knew
what he wanted to do, largely what he wanted to do, at least for
the near term. There's some question as whether he -- how long
his vision is. He knew he wanted to stir the stew. And that's
exactly what he's done.
He's an adroit politician and he knew what sinews of
power he had to grab in order to make it happen, to keep from
being subverted. And he almost lost it a couple of times within
the last two years.
LEHRER: Was there a couple of very serious things?
DIRECTOR WEBSTER: Yeah. The moral is, don't go off on
vacations.
LEHRER: Yeah.
DIRECTOR WEBSTER: And...
LEHRER: You mean when he was gone, when he left the
country, he got in trouble.
DIRECTOR WEBSTER: When he was gone or on vaca -- there
was extended vacation, he was writing his book. Conservative
forces were beginning to speak out against his programs. The
Liqachevs, the Chebrikovs, and so on, were speaking out.
I think it's probably fair to say that in his last major
move to consolidate his power, he did so while the opposition was
on vacation.
So the moral is, don't go on vacation in Russia.
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LEHRER: And the other moral is, some things haven't
changed, too.
LEHRER: How has Gorbachev, prestroika, glasnost changed
the role of the CIA, in what it does for the United States
vis-a-vis the Soviet Union?
DIRECTOR WEBSTER: For many years, the Soviet target,
because it represented the greatest potential threat to our
national security, occupied a very significant percentage of our
resources.
Then, over time, within the last decade or so, I saw it
begin to drop, as regional problems around the world consumed our
interest, and policymakers needed more and more information on
which to make policy decisions.
With the advent of Gorbachev and perestroika and
glasnost come unusual demands. We have a state of not only
ferment, dynamism that hasn't existed in the past, changes,
initiatives taking place that call for policy, either responses
or counter-initiatives.
The glasnost era has introduced enormous amounts of
information that was not previously available to us. We monitor
some 800 publications in Soviet Russia, which are now discussing
labor unrest, other kinds of economic and political problems they
wouldn't have been allowed to discuss just a few years ago. And
we have to sort through that, as well as the other forms of
technical and human intelligence that we work with, to understand
what is really true and what they want us to hear that may not be
as accurate as the kind of information we try to develop. So,
those demands are great.
DIRECTOR WEBSTER: Another major challenge to intelli-
gence. We're going through negotiations: the INF treaty; now
we're starting the START treaty. Tremendous new initiatives in
terms of on-site inspections, both in their country and in our
country. Dealing with that is a compelling responsibility.
Not only do we have that, but -- and I don't know
whether you would ask the question. I certainly would want to
say that despite all of these detente-type initiatives of
Gorbachev, the intelligence-collecting activities of the Soviets
has, if anything, increased around the world. And that calls for
an increased counterintelligence capability on our part.
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LEHRER: Now, how do you figure that? Why would they
at the same time do, as you call it, the detente activity, at the
same time up their spying?
DIRECTOR WEBSTER: Well, we are -- we continue to be in
a kind of race, a race to stay ahead in technology, race to make
sure that our military capabilities, our defensive capabilities
are equal and better than theirs. They have the same challenge
in dealing with us. So they have an interest in stealing our
secrets and knowing our intentions and our capabilities,
recruiting assets in order to provide them with that information.
LEHRER: They're still doing that? Business as usual?
DIRECTOR WEBSTER: Well, business as usual. Maybe more
than as usual. They're more careful about how they do it.
There's more openness about their intelligence agencies. They're
humanizing them, at least in print.
LEHRER: Explain that. What do you mean? Give me an
example of that.
DIRECTOR WEBSTER: Well, can you imagine a few years
ago when the Director of the KGB would allow himself to be
interviewed, or would grant an interview with our ambassador for
two hours? Not long ago, a previous Director quoted from one of
my speeches.
You know, it's a kind of exchange and discussion that's
designed, I think, to humanize the KGB. Which is far vaster --
more vast than, in responsibilities, than the Central Intelli-
gence Agency. They have an enormous internal security network,
and are feared as a kind of police-state-enforcing agency. And
so that may account for some of their activities.
But it's a much easier, looser activity, but it doesn't
mean they've stopped working.
LEHRER: Because you're getting more information, it is
more readily available to the United States, how has that changed
the U.S. as far as looking assets? Meaning people, Russians, to
give us secrets, etcetera? Has it changed anything at all along
those lines?
DIRECTOR WEBSTER: Well, I know you don't want me to
talk about the details of our collection activity around the
world. But it is still important for us to have reliable sources
of information in areas that are not being discussed in the
public press, matters that are important to the United States to
know: sensitive, what we would call classified, information.
We're not getting that in the newspapers.
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DIRECTOR WEBSTER: What we're getting in the newspapers
and the magazines is a flavor of what's on the minds of the
people, including the dissidents, in Soviet Russia. But it
doesn't substitute either for what human intelligence can provide
us, or for what our satellites can provide in observing what
they're really doing. In all of the peace initiatives, it's very
important to our policymakers not only to listen to what is being
said, but to watch their feet and see what they are really doing
or not doing.
LEHRER: Do your professionals at the CIA feel they have
a better fix on these kinds of things now in the Soviet Union
than they've ever had before?
DIRECTOR WEBSTER: Well, I think our collecting capa-
bility is far more sophisticated, particularly our national
technical collection. Some of the same traditions of'hum*dn
collection, clandestine services, is the same but getting better.
Those things are relative to the challenges. And the changes
that are taking place in Soviet Russia, the changes in approach
to not only that, but to military defense activities, require our
staying up to speed.
We have to develop new and better techniques to monitor
activities that become the subject of treaties. Mobile missiles,
for example. We didn't have mobile missiles a few years ago. A
new challenge. How do we know where they are? How will we
recognize them when they've been camouflaged?
I don't like to use the word game, but they take
defensive measures, denials and deceptions: and we do too. We
want to deny them information that we don't want them to have.
They want to deny us information that they don't want us to have.
And therein is the challenge of an effective intelligence
collection agency.
LEHRER: But you take a question, like the first
question I asked you about Gorbachev, what his staying power is.
In the past, either privately or publicly, CIA and all other
officials of the U.S. Government were reluctant to be very
specific about anything as far as the Soviet leadership was
concerned, that there was so little that was known about what was
going on n the Kremlin and the Politburo, etcetera.
Has Gorbachev changed that? Is there more knowledge
about the leadership than there has ever been?
DIRECTOR WEBSTER: Well, there's certainly more know-
ledge about the individuals, more ways in which we can understand
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the people that we're dealing with. There are still mysteries
in the Politburo, for example, but we're getting a better
picture.
I don't want to give the impression that all of the
intelligence collecting is out on the fringes around the world.
We have thousands of scholars, analysts, who are taking small
bits and pieces of information and making it meaningful to the
policymakers of this country who have to make the decisions for
us.
LEHRER: I bet for someof them this must seem like a
bonanza, though, for new information on the Soviet Union.
DIRECTOR WEBSTER: Well, that's right. But at the same
time, it's -- you've got to be sure that you've separated the
garbage from the important information, and be able to retrieve
the information you thought was garbage when it becomes apparent
that it was important later on.
LEHRER: As head of the CIA now, you are suddenly
working for a man, the President, who's held the job before.
How's that change -- has it changed your life in any way? Has it
changed the job in any way for you?
DIRECTOR WEBSTER: Well, I think it's too early to
predict what changes are taking place. We had a great deal of
support from President Reagan, particularly in growing, support
for a growth of intelligence capability. We're now dealing in an
area where we're not looking for a lot of growth, because of
budgetary constraints, but we're looking for the most effective
use of our resources.
And this President, as you say, has had experience in
intelligence. He understands it, he believes in it. He wants to
keep it away from policymaking, but he wants to use it as the
foundation for good policy decision-making.
So, he's interested and reactive. And I find it fun to
work for him, just as it was a privilege to work for President
Reagan.
LEHRER: Are you still briefing him every day, when he's
DIRECTOR WEBSTER: The agency is briefing him every day,
Just as he was briefed when he was Vice President. And I go when
it's appropriate. I was there this morning. And it's on -- he's
very good at taking in the information, asking the useful
questions, and making sure that we are tasked to keep him up to
speed in the areas of interest to him.
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LEHRER: I know -- I'm not going to ask you, and I know
you wouldn't tell me if I did, and specifics. But what is the
nature of that briefing? Is it what's happened in the world
the last 24 hours, or where there are little troubles that may
have popped up in the last 24 hours? What's the nature of the
briefing?
DIRECTOR WEBSTER: Well, I don't think I should discuss
the details of the briefing. It's a highly classified briefing.
The National Security Adviser and his deputy and the Chief of
Staff have been present for these briefings.
They are designed to give him that information that we
think he needs to know currently on a wide range of subjects,
depending on what we think he needs to know.
LEHRER: You choose the subjects, though.
DIRECTOR WEBSTER: We choose the subjects. Perhaps the
subjects command the disclosure, but we choose the subjects.
DIRECTOR WEBSTER: If he wants more, he gets it. If he
asks for something, he gets a response. If it wasn't covered, we
supply it.
LEHRER: Are you comfortable with his stated position
that he does not want the CIA, or he does not want intelligence
involved in policy as much as it has been in the past, as you've
said?
DIRECTOR WEBSTER: I am very comfortable with it, and I
have been every since I came over to the CIA almost two years
ago. That's been my view of it. I think you can't put a wall
between them and have us running off developing intelligence on a
subject we're interested in, when the policymakers are concerned
with something else. There's got to be an interlink.
But we have to present our national estimates -- and
these are estimates that go beyond what's going to happen
tomorrow. It's looking down the road and projecting our best
assessments of particular problems. We have to do those in a way.
that they are seen to be objective.
And so, by pulling away from being part of the argument
and not being an advocate for a particular policy, it lends more
credibility to the integrity of our work product. We have no ax
to grind. We tell it like it is: Here it is. You decide which
way you want to go.
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LEHRER: You're not going to -- are you concerned about
your not being a member of the Cabinet? Which is another thing
of his.
DIRECTOR WEBSTER: When I came over, I asked President
Reagan to not serve as a member of the Cabinet. I have never
served as a member of the Cabinet. I'm invited to Cabinet
meetings where national security issues are discussed. But I
have no problems. I participate in the National Security Council
meetings. I have access to the President. I meet regularly with
each of the policymakers -- Secretary of Defense, Secretary of
State, and the National Security Adviser -- separately, and spend
time with them making sure that our intelligence is serving them,
and briefing them on matters that they need to have more direct
awareness of.
And I think that's my job, not to try to make them do
something or not do something.
If there's a problem, I point out the problem. And in
National Security Council meetings, I make sure that our intel-
ligence is heard.
LEHRER: What is your current attitude about, or what is
the CIA's attitude about covert action and where it fits into the
role now, in the current climate and this new President?
DIRECTOR WEBSTER: Well, I'm glad you waited to ask that
question till now, because many people think that's all we do.
It represents about three percent of our resources.
I think it's important that the United States have a
covert action capability. Covert action to implement covertly,
secretly, the foreign policy of this country, the overt foreign
policy. Not to have a separate CIA foreign policy, but to
support what the President and his national security advisers
have determined is the policy of this country.
We do it through a very structured, disciplined
approach, in which I require a covert action review committee to
scrub the proposals, which are usually...
LEHRER: Scrub the proposals.
DIRECTOR WEBSTER: To examine them, test them, as the
package comes forward, to be sure that they are -- not only they
can be done and they have some hope of success, but that they are
lawful, under our laws, that they're consistent with our foreign
policy. And I ask them to think about, "Now, if this becomes
public," as so many do, "will it make sense to the American
people?"
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And then when it goes forward to the National Security
Council for processing, the same kinds of questions are vetted.
The Secretary of Defense is sitting there, Treasury -- rather,
State, Attorney General, can tell the President exactly what they
think about the proposed finding -- because that's what it's
called, an authorization to do this.
And after it's been approved by the President, we take
it to the two special committees, the Select Committees of the
Senate and the House on Intellgience, and disclose to them what
we propose to do and what the President has authorized us to do.
So, there is a -- while there may not be total agreement
in the Hill, or maybe even in the President's Cabinet, it's a
process by which it is better managed and mistakes are more
likely to be eliminated, and if it's a bad plan it's apt to be
rejected.
And so, I think that's the way we control secrecy in
this country: Ultimately telling the elected representatives of
the American people, through the surrogate committees, what it is
we're doing.
That's a long-winded way of talking about covert action.
But when you think about the Iran-Contra circumstance, do not
think about covert action in that way. That was action taken out
of an organization that wasn't desianated to conduct covert
action.
LEHRER: Are you satisfied when you go home from work
now every day that there are no -- I ask this question in light
of Iran-Contra and the Church Committee hearings and hundreds of
spy novels that have been out on this subject. Are you satisfied
that there are no rogue agents, no rogue activities going on in
the CIA that you don't know about, that somebody's doing and say,
"Well, let's don't tell Webster. Let's protect him so he can
deny it"? All that kind of -- you know how that runs. Do you
feel that you have that control of the agency and you know what's
going on?
DIRECTOR WEBSTER: I have great confidence that these
programs are being run according to the guidelines that have been
given to the people who have to run them. I have great confi-
dence in the people who have the responsibility for managing
those programs and reporting to me.
I appointed the Deputy Director for Operations, brough
him back, respected by traditional officers and respected by me
and others who are not traditional officers. I have preached
again and again the importance of not being surprised. And I do
not accept plausible deniability for individuals, either me or
the President. Plausible deniability for a country, yes, because
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there are reasons for that. But I'd rather know than be
protected by not knowing. Or I would -- and they know that the
-- I can't vouch that every operation will go exactly according
to Hoyle or that someone won't make a mistake.
But I am sure that we are dealing with dedicated men and
women who are anxious to comply with the rules, as they under-
stand them. We've made the rules just as clear as we can. And
we support them. They're operating in hostile environments.
They have to have some discretion. But they do not have discre-
tion to cross the rule line. As long as they're inside the rule
line, I'll defend them to the Congress or to anyone else, because
they're doing what is expected of them.
LEHRER: On the other side of this, during the time
between -- between the time President Bush was elected and the
time he asked you to stay on as head of the CIA, there were a
couple of stories, particularly in the Washington Post, that said
that some former and present members of the clandestine service
of the CIA were lobbying for you not to be asked to stay on,
because you had set too many rules and regulations on the
clandestine service and all of that, and you were too cautious in
this area.
DIRECTOR WEBSTER: Well, I really don't know. I'm glad
it's behind me. I read the same articles that you did. In a
time of transition, there are always people that hope for someone
else or have other ideas.
I do know that I have not put impossible rules in place,
and they've been put in place with the support, and often the
drafting, of senior managers who are intersted in protecting our
men and women.
A rule that protects our men and women from having to
skirt around questions, difficult questions, in testimony before
Congress is not a restrictive rule. It authorizes them to not
answer the question and say they have an answer, but they're not
authorized to give it, and come back and let me argue the case
for them. That's not a rule that inhibits them.
LEHRER: I'm sorry. I didn't understand that. This is
a rule that allows a CIA employee to refuse to answer a question
from...
DIRECTOR WEBSTER: It's instructions on how to deal with
questions in hearings that imperil sources and methods. And
instead of, as was supposed to have been the case in the past, of
trying to dance around questions, perhaps be disingenuous, to
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avoid answering them, I simply say, "Tell them you're not
authorized to answer. Tell them you'll come back and discuss it
with your superiors, and give a quick response to them. And
sometimes I'm the one that has to take the case to the committee
chairman.
But we're developing a reputation for truthfulness in
the Congress. Truthfulness breeds trust. And trust is the
essence of our ability to do the things we need to do. In other
words, to be allowed to do covert action aggressively, as long as
we do it according to the ways that have been set out and have
been approved.
LEHRER: Do you trust the Congress now to keep your
DIRECTOR WEBSTER: I trust the two committees, and I
trust most of the rest of the Congress. But I've been here too
long not to know that things leak. They don't leak just on the
Hill, they leak in the White House and they leak in the depart-
ments that we work with. And there -- I read a leak on the front
page of the paper yesterday, and it's for a reason I don't
understand.
So, I don't...
LEHRER: Which one was that?
DIRECTOR WEBSTER: Well, it was the one about Mexico and
the letter from President Salinas.
LEHRER: Oh, right. Right.
DIRECTOR WEBSTER: Yes, I trust the leaders who are
responsible for the protection of sources and methods. I do know
that there is -- with all the staff and with all the individuals
who sometimes talk -- don't realize when they're saying something
they're giving away something important.
You know, something as simple as using the fact of an
intercept to justify an action taken may disclose the fact that
that -- that intercept may have been encrypted.
LEHRER: You mean a wiretap or through a satellite, an
electronic...
DIRECTOR WEBSTER: Yes.
LEHRER: Any kind of...
DIRECTOR WEBSTER: Just to say, "Well, we have an
intercept in which so-and-so said this." Now, if that were an
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encrypted message, that person unwittingly gave away the fact
that we had broken a code. And the code's gone. And it takes
years to do that.
So, there are little things that I think were not
malicious, but were careless. And so we work to build up an
understanding of how perishable our sources and methods are.
Particularly, we need to protect our live sources, people, or
we'll not -- if we don't have that reputation, we're not going to
be able to recruit live sources.
LEHRER: Finally, a personal question. How have you
found the world different, in terms of running the FBI, as you
did for several years, now running the CIA?
DIRECTOR WEBSTER: Well, I don't suppose the world's
changed very much. Some of my responsibilities have changed. I
have a much better understanding of the kinds of things around
the world that impact upon the quality of our life and our safety
and security in this country, a much -- I was responsible for all
the foreign counterintelligence in the United States, and I had a
high appreciation for it. But I have a new awareness, a more
sensitive awareness of the great importance that an agency that
collects and analyzes and produces finished intelligence has to
the policymakers of this country, our leaders, who have to depend
on us to gather that information in a timely, useful and
objective way, so that they make the right choices for our
country. It's extremely important.
You hear only about our failures. We cannot talk about
our successes. I've seen a lot of tremendously important work
done by very brave and dedicated and brilliant men and women,
scientists, linguists, clandestine operators, the whole range of
talents.
And in a society that is open, the challenge to deliver
on our mission in a secret way is quite a challenge. And I have
the greatest admiration for the men and women who are willing to
take the hits, and still keep the secrets of their successes.
LEHRER: Do you enjoy the job?
DIRECTOR WEBSTER: Of course I enjoy the job.
LEHRER: More so than the FBI?
DIRECTOR WEBSTER: Oh, no. You know,...
LEHRER: Oh, I know. I'm not going to...
DIRECTOR WEBSTER: ...I've liked everything I've ever
done. I feel privileged to have been in both organizations.
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 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/24: CIA-RDP99-01448R000401650023-8
And you know, one of the nice things I look back over
the last 10 or 11 years, when I first came here, Stan Turner was
the Director of Central Intelligence. We had been classmates at
Amherst. And we decided that we had to demonstrate the desire
for the two agencies to work together. It hadn't always been the
case. And so in our personal relationship, in our meetings and
in our work, we set out to do that.
thing.
When Bill Casey came along, we agreed to do the same
And I think what people in both agencies would say that
there's never been a time when the FBI and the Central
Intelligence Agency have worked better together. And I feel very
good about that.
LEHRER: All right.
Mr. Webster, thank you very much for being with us.
DIRECTOR WEBSTER: Thank you, Jim.
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