PROPOSED REMARKS BY WILLIAM H. WEBSTER DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AT THE AGENCY GUEST SPEAKER PROGRAM HEADQUARTERS AUDITORIUM SEPTEMBER 2, 1988

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP99-00777R000302200001-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 10
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 29, 2012
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: September 2, 1988
• Content Type: REPORT

STAT
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DistribL.
Orig. 12DCI
STAT 1
1 - D/PAO
STAT 1 - Jean
1-ER
1 PAO Registry
1 --PAO-Mie-s
STAT 1 I (Chrono)
RE: Your.proposed remarks
at the Agency Guest Speaker Program
2 September 1988 2:00 p.m.
Headquarters Auditorium
STAT
17 August 1988
You are scheduled to introduce William J. Bennett, U.S. Secretary of
Education, for the Agency Guest Speaker Program. The topic of his talk is-
"The Importance of Educational Reform." Proposed introductory remarks and
biographical information on Secretary Bennett, who leaves office on
September 12, are attached.
Secretary Bennett will arrive at your office at about 1:45, to give you a
few minutes to talk before his presentation. The Office of Training and
Education has set up the following schedule.
1:45 Secretary Bennett and his Chief of Staff, John Walters, arrive
at Headquarters et by the Director of Training and
Education, who accompanies them to the DCI's office.
1:55 The group proceeds to the auditorium via the Director's elevator.
2:00 The DCI goes immediately to the podium to introduce Secretary
Bennett as the guest speaker.
3:30 Accompanied by the DCI, Secretary Bennett and Mr. Walters are
escorted from the auditorium to depart CIA.
Attachments:
As stated
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PROPOSED REMARKS
BY
WILLIAM H. WEBSTER
DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE
AT THE
AGENCY GUEST SPEAKER PROGRAM
HEADQUARTERS AUDITORIUM
SEPTEMBER 2. 1988
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IT IS MY.,PLEASURE THIS AFTERNOON TO INTRODUCE WILLIAM J. BE.NNETT
-- UNITED STATES SECRETARY OF EDUCATION AND A CHAMPION OF
EDUCATIONAL REFORM. DURING HIS TENURE AS OUR NATION'S TOP
SCHOOLMASTER, SECRETARY BENNETT HAS LED THE NATION IN REEXAMINING
OUR EDUCATIONAL PRIORITIES AND PROGRAMS. I LOOK FORWARD TO HEARING
HIS VIEWS ON EDUCATIONAL REFORM TODAY.
SECRETARY BENNETT BRINGS TO THIS OCCASION BOTH IMPRESSIVE
CREDENTIALS AND A PHILOSOPHY OF INVOLVEMENT. HE HAS INSPIRED
COMMITMENT TO EDUCATIONAL EXCELLENCE IN ALL SECTORS OF OUR SOCIETY,
VISITING SCHOOLS, SERVICE ORGANIZATIONS AND STATE LEGISLATURES
ACROSS THE.000NTRY. HE ONCE DECLARED THAT HIS SUCCESSOR AS
SECRETARY OF EDUCATION "BETTER LIKE VISITING THIRD GRADE IN TOLEDO."
SECRETARY BENNETT HOLDS A BACHELOR OF ARTS DEGREE IN PHILOSOPHY
FROM WILLIAMS COLLEGE, AND HE EARNED A DOCTORATE IN POLITICAL
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PHILOSOPHY FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AND A LAW DEGREE FROM
HARVARD LAW SCHOOL. HE TAUGHT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN
MISSISSIPPI. THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS, HARVARD UNIVERSITY, BOSTON
UNIVERSITY, AND THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN BEFORE BECOMING DIRECTOR
AND THEN PRESIDENT OF NORTH CAROLINA'S NATIONAL HUMANITIES CENTER.
IN 1981, PRESIDENT REAGAN SELECTED HIM TO BE CHAIRMAN OF THE
NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES, WHERE.HE SERVED UNTIL HE WAS
APPOINTED SECRETARY OF EDUCATION IN 1985.
THROUGHOUT HIS CAREER, SECRETARY BENNETT HAS EMPHASIZED WHAT HE.
TERMS THE "BASIC BASICS" -- TEACHING FUNDAMENTAL SKILLS SUCH AS
READING. WRITING, AND MATHEMATICS AND, AT HIGHER EDUCATIONAL LEVELS,
TEACHING THE CLASSICS OF WESTERN LITERATURE AND THOUGHT. HE ALSO
STRESSES THE NEED TO DEVELOP A STRONG MORAL SENSE IN AMERICA'S
YOUTH, AND HE ENCOURAGES PARENTAL CHOICE AND INVOLVEMENT IN
EDUCATION.
SINCE HE TOOK OFFICE IN 1985, SECRETARY BENNETT HAS VISITED OVER
100 ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY SCHOOLS, WHERE HE HAS TALKED WITH
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TEACHERS AND PRINCIPALS, TAUGHT CLASS, AND LEARNED ABOUT OUR
EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM BY PARTICIPATING IN IT. HIS DEPARTMENT'S "FIRST
LESSONS" STUDY WAS THE FIRST NATIONAL REPORT IN THREE DECADES ON
ELEMENTARY EDUCATION. SECRETARY BENNETT HAS ALSO LAUNCHED A SERIES
OF PUBLICATIONS TITLED "WHAT WORKS" -- PUBLICATIONS THAT DEAL WITH
DRUGS IN THE SCHOOLS, EDUCATING DISADVANTAGED CHILDREN, AND
PRACTICAL EXPLANATIONS OF HOW WE LEARN.
THE 1988-89 SCHOOL YEAR BEGINS NEXT WEEK. AS WILLIAM J.
BENNETT'S TENURE AS U.S. SECRETARY OF EDUCATION DRAWS TO A CLOSE.
SECRETARY BENNETT, WE ARE FORTUNATE THAT YOU COULD BE WITH US
TODAY. A RECENT PROFILE IN THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR DECLARED
THAT YOU WERE "COLORFUL, QUOTABLE, AND GOOD FOR MORE JUICY STORIES
THAN SCHEHEREZADE."1 WE ARE CERTAINLY LOOKING FORWARD TO WHAT YOU
HAVE TO SAY TO US.
1 SCHEHEREZADE ((SHA HAIR AH ZOD')), STORYTELLER IN THE ARABIAN
NIGHTS.
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UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
THE SECRETARY
WILLIAM J. BENNETT
William J. Bennett has served.as United States Secretary of Education since February 6.
1985. following unanimous confirmation by the Senate.
A native of Brooklyn New York. Secretary Bennett, holds a bachelor of arts degree in
philosophy from Williams College, a'doctorate in political philosophy from the University
of Texas. and a law degree from Harvard Law School. He taught at the University of Southern
Mississippi. the University of lbxas, Harvard University, Boston University, and the University
of Wisconsin before becoming Director and later President of the National Humanities Center
in North Carolina. In 1981. he was selected by President Reagan to be Chairman of the
National Endowment for the Humanities, where he served until assuming his current
position.
The Secretary has been an advocate for excellence at all levels of education. His report
while at the Endowment. 7b Reclaim a Legacy, focused on the liberal arts and higher
education. His proposals for improving elementary and secondary education are set forth
in several Department of Education publications, including First Lessons, the first national
report in three decades, on elementary education.
Secretary Bennett has launched the Department's "What Works" series of booklets, a set
of publications that provide tested, practical advice for parents, educators,. policy makers
and students. The series began with a 65-page handbook, What Works: Research About
Teaching and Learning. The second vo~u:ie, Schools Without Drugs, is the cornerstone
of the Department's extensive efforts to. prevent drug use by school children. to less than
ten months, over 1.5 million copies of Schools Without Drugs have been distributed to the
American public free of charge. Schools That Work: Educating Disadvantaged Children.
the most recent addition to the series. presents important new information about the
practices of schools that are successfully educating disadvantaged children.
Secretary Bennett's educational philosophy and policies are based in part on what he has
called the "3 Cs": Content, Character, and Choice. These principles inform his call for a
return to basics -- to teach a strong core curriculum emphasizing fundamentals such as
reading. writing, mathematics and mastery of the classics; to develop strong moral character
in young Americans; and to promote parental choice and involvement in education. In
recommending school reforms, Secretary Bennett consistently urges measures that require
assessment, institute accountability, and demand progress.
Among the Secretary's other initiatives are reforms of higher education financing and
bilingual education. He has also spoken out on issues such as the importance of the family.
the need to protect. our children from the threat of AIDS, and the academic and moral
responsibilities of college administrators, faculty and students.
July 1987
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ruffle
WILLIAM BENNETT is leaving as
Secretary of Education, but his tart
tongue and ample ego will keep him
highly visible-and audible-and could
well propel him higher in the G.O.P.
t has been a dazzling bit of footwork, even for a world
class dancing man like William Bennett. Since he took
office in February 1955, the brash Secretary of Educa-
tion has turned himself into the most visible and surely
the most audible member of the Reagan team. During the
primaries, he flirted with various presidential aspirers who
eyed him as a running mate: "I dance with all the girls," he
chuckled. So was he hungry for higher office? "I'm not run-
ning for anything," he said. Amid a riptide of Administra-
tion defectees, Bennett held fast.
Then on May 9, Bennett told Reagan he was quitting in
September to lecture and write. But no kiss-and-tell stuff.
"That's.not my style," he growled. Bennett, however, has
more than one agenda. He is consulting with the Republi-
can Platform Committee as it prepares for next month's
convention, where he will be a prime-time speaker. Top
Republicans have approached him about running for the
Senate. He adds, "After watching some of the people in the
stakes for the presidency, I could do better than that." As a
vice-presidential candidate? "I'm not sure I'd make a very
good No. 2 man," he retorts. "I like to run things."
No one who knows Bill Bennett, 44, doubts that. Nor
has there been much doubt where he has been headed in
the cross-country whirl that has taken him to 102 elemen-
tary and secondary schools in three years-plus scores of
service clubs and state legislatures. Watch him as he visits
No. 88, the Amherst Middle School near Nashua, N.H.: ? --
The Amherst faculty beams as Bennett rumbles in,
trailed by aides. He smiles, waves, pats shoulders, walking
canted forward from the waist as though leaning into a
wind. Bennett is a big man-6 ft. 2 in., 216 lbs. A friend
once pointed him out as "the one who looks like a buffalo."
Bennett is in Nashua to praise Amherst as a "School of Ex-.
cellence," one that does well without begging for federal
money. "Insofar as people look to Washington for solu-
tions, they're wrong," says Bennett. At these whistle stops,
Bennett usually teaches a class, something his wife Elayne,
an ex-teacher, challenged him to do. "Get out and see if
you can do it," she said.
He can. Scrunching into a child's chair in an eighth-
grade English class, Bennett speaks softly. "You don't want
to scare'em, " he explains later. When the pupils' questions
become too rote, Bennett teases. "Some kids asked me if the
Secret Service was here. 'See that big guy back there?'" he
says, pointing to a hulking bodyguard. "If you guys make a
move for me, you're in trouble."
The kids love him. So does the rest of the school, which
roars happily at the award ceremony. Then, running late,
he makes a wild, 85-m.p.h. run to Concord to address the
New Hampshire legislature. In Governor John Sununu's
office, Bennett asks Senate President Bill Bartlett, "How
long shall I do?" "Three minutes," says Bartlett, "plenty of
time for some guy from Washington."
Bennett guffaws. He revels in this back-room camara-
derie, the rough-and-tumble of what he is doing. It seems a
grownup version of the heavy-contact touch football that
Bennett loves to play on fall weekends-and may symbol-
ize the life he would choose had he been born faster afoot
and eternally young. Bennett plays the theme of frugal in-
dependence to these flinty lawmakers. "The key-to excel-
lence is local control; you cannot spend your way to excel-
lence," he says to approving nods.
Then he is off again for a sprint to Boston's Logan Air-
port en route to a final flourish in Atlanta. Bennett seems to
revel, too, in these dashes, riding the fast lane in cars, in
conversation, in politics. "He's got a big ego, and he knows
it," says an associate. At Logan, Press Secretary Loyc
Miller tells him of an invitation from a TV talk show.
"Crossfire wants you Saturday," he says. "Not Saturday,"
replies Bennett, a homebody who scorns the Potomac syn-
drome of "working the restaurants at night." He snorts, "A
big status thing in Washington is 20 pink slips on your desk
covered with stuff at 7:30 in the evening. My desk is clear.
You work hard and then go to your family."
He is adamant about skipping the capital's heavy-pol
bashes: "Nobody ever says anything at those things," he
grumbles. By reports, he has turned down invitations from
George Bush. Bennett confesses he'd rather be home
"watching Dragonslayer on the Disney Channel" with
Elayne and their son John, 4.
This close family life is precious to Bennett, a Catholic
whose parents divorced 40 years ago, when pious folk did
not. His mother, who disliked the rich and called the family
"us common folk," moved Bill, an older brother Bob and
their Hungarian grandmother from Brooklyn to Washing-
ton. There, Bennett flourished at Gonzaga High, a Jesuit
school. "The only guy in the honors class to be starting on
the football team," he brags. But he chafed under the disci-
pline of the fathers. "They regarded me as a smarty-pants,
and they were absolutely right," he says.
At the same time, he began to develop a ravenous am-
bition. At 17 he got into elite Williams College in Massa-
chusetts. Grandma scraped together $200 for clothes. "She
knew there were a lot of guys from St. Paul's and Andover,
and that I ought to dress up to speed," he recalls.
At Williams he got daily letters from her; she read all
his major texts so she could trade notes on them. To help
pay tuition, Bennett waited on tables and worked summers
hauling furniture while earning honors, playing football
and strumming a rock guitar-the very model of the 1960s
liberal student. Civil rights concerns nudged him toward
the liberal Students for a Democratic Society, which later
turned violently radical. But Brother Bob talked him out of
it, advising that some day S.D.S. might not look good on his
resume.
A resentment at privilege began to boil, and still sim-
mers today. "I really dislike snobs," he growls, "pretentious
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Profile
people who mistreat people who have to work for them.
I hate them." This anger congealed into a hard-edged
populism as Bennett took a Ph.D. in philosophy at the
University of Texas, then served as a dean of liberal arts
at Boston University, all under brilliant, acerbic John
Silber, who was then undergoing a conversion from lib-
eral to born-again conservative.
Bennett refined his own convert's faith as director
of the National Humanities Center in North Carolina,
and then, at age 38, as head of thy. National Endow-
ment for the Humanities in Washington. At NEH, Ben-
nett accused college faculties of a "collective loss of
nerve and faith" for serving up trendy courses at the ex-
pense of classic Western studies. He spurned affirma-
tive-action quotas in NEH hiring, arguing that quotas
were discriminatory.
Mary Futrell, president of the powerful National
Education Association, has called Bennett's record on
civil rights "less than exemplary." Bennett retorts, "If
you don't think people should be given things or have
things taken away on the basis of race or sex, if you be-
lieved that in 1965, you were a liberal. If you believe it
'
now, you
re a conservative."
Bennett's style caught the ap-
proving attention of Attorney Gener-
al Edwin Meese, who recommended
him as Secretary of Education, the
bottom-ranked Cabinet slot. Bennett
recalls, "The President said, 'I can't
get rid of this department. But since
we have it, td like you to represent
the views of the American people
and not the education interest
groups.' I said, 'Fine, that's what I'd
like to do.'" He has done so with gus-
to, greatly aggrandizing the position
while so-called education interest
groups-including university people
and members ofCongress-chafed at
the notion that their own agendas
were not of the people. (Silber, who
wanted the job himself, dismisses his
"Sorcerer's Apprentice.")
Bennett began by roasting college students as easy
riders who beach-bummed on tax-supported loans. He
then accused the Supreme Court of a "fastidious disdain
for religion" for banning use of public funds for remedi-
al programs in parochial schools. He trampled on con-
gressional toes with public calls for sub-basement edu-
cation budgets (which Congress rejected), rather than
tactfully negotiating compromises in committee.
Reaction was quick and furious. Augustus Hawkins,
Democratic chairman of the House Committee on Edu-
cation and Labor, awarded the new Secretary a "failing
grade." Connecticut's Republican Senator Lowell
Weicker fumed that Bennett and his views should not be
"allowed out of the Education building, much less out-
side Washington."
So pervasive were the counterattacks that even the
cocky Bennett felt abashed. "I underestimated the size
of the microphone I had," he says. Bob, a Washington
lawyer, offered some new big-brotherly advice. Says
Bennett: "He's got this big fish mounted in his office,
and he said, 'You know why that fish is up there? Be-
cause he opened his mouth, that's why.' "
Bennett has since attacked the likes of Harvard for
jacking costs above S 12,000 with the help of federal stu-
dent-loan support and for "ripping off' undergraduates
with suffused curriculums that Bennett derides as "core
lite." He has detonated heavy controversy by advocat-
ing federal vouchers to finance parental choice among
public schools-typically, say opponents, white schools
for white kids living in mixed neighborhoods. He has
called for AIDS testing ofall marriage-license applicants,
hospital patients and convicts and has unloaded on Re-
publicans and Democrats alike who opposed the Presi-
dent's Iranian and contra policies. All that after Brother
Bob told him about the fish. "He sees a complex federal
agency as a bully pulpit," comments Joseph Duffey,
chancellor of the University of Massachusetts at Am-
herst and Bennett's predecessor at NEIl. "It is the tem-
perament of a preacher." Hawkins has another, perhaps
more canny, perspective: "Bennett gives the answers of
a professional politician rather than a professional edu-
cator"-a judgment some observers see as the sum of his
many parts.
The contentious Bennett has made no bones about
using the office to preach. "This is the appropriate job
for the Secretary of Education," says he, "where your
powers to say and be heard are
much greater than your powers to
make things be." At the same time,
he emerged as a formidable doer
within the party. When the news
came out that Supreme Court Nomi-
nee Douglas Ginsburg had smoked
pot as a law professor at Harvard,
Bennett made a critical call to Gins-
burg, urging him to end his candida-
cy. Nor, in recent months, has he
shown signs of easing back on either
the frequency or muzzle velocity of
his comments on education. Some
sample shots:
- "Star teachers ought to get salary
increases. At the other end, throw out
the incompetent people; they're kill-
ing the profession."
- "Allan Bloom [author of The Closing of the American
Mind/is a brilliant man, very good for higher education.
But much too despairing. He doesn't see the happiness
and spontaneity of American life. I hate that prissy crap
where he's anti-rock 'n' roll."
- "What makes me happy is seeing a good school ...
and knowing more than all my critics."
He has saved his real shockers for Cabinet col-
leagues. When an old friend, Justice Department
Spokesman Terry Eastland, was fired by Meese, Ben-
nett declared bluntly, "Terry Eastland's an excellent
man. He can join meat the department any time."
With that stroke, Bennett distanced himself from
the wreckage of the expiring regime. He also began to
establish himself, for the future, as very much his own
man. "Look," he told a reporter, "I put country above
party. Always have." Then he added, "I know that I'm
popular with audiences out there in the country, and it
doesn't seem to make much difference whether they're
Democrats or Republicans."
Bill Bennett may be leaving this Administration,
but when he says things like that, he does not sound like
a man who has given up public service for good. So what
might lie ahead for him? "Right now," he says, "if I
were going to run for anything in the future, I'd want to
run for President." -ey?zraeowen
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Staff writer of T
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Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
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