NOTE TO BILL FROM JOHN F. BLAKE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP84-00780R006100150019-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: C
• Document Page Count: 18
• Document Creation Date: December 14, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 28, 2003
• Sequence Number: 19
• Publication Date: December 5, 1974
• Content Type: NOTES

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rk'
File
Director of Central
Intelligence
Bill:
I am forwarding to you a transcript of
the speech which you delivered on the
occasion of the supergrade promotion cere-
mony. I would suggest that we forward .a
copy each to all the Deputies with a com-
ment that we leave the determination for
further dissemination up to their judgment.
Js/ J: T.
John F Blake
Attachment
STAT
DD/A
Distribution:
Orig - DCI w/orig speech
I - DDA Subject w/cy of speech
I - DDA Chrono w/o att
I - JFB Chrono WO att
DD/A/JFBlake:jmh (4 Dec 74)
STAT
12/5/74
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CIINFIDENTIAL
We wanted to take this occasion to talk to you all as
the people who actually run the Agency. I know very well I
don't run the Agency. I don't know what I do. I do a lot
of running, but I don't run the Agency. General Walters
runs around a great deal; some of that's in the Agency and
some of it's in various exotic places abroad. So, it's
quite clear that we are well aware that the Agency is run by
you ladies and gentlemen--I'm glad I can say ladies--in this
room. You supergrades are the management element of the
Agency.
I'd like to exchange a few thoughts with you today
about the Agency and how we stand and, particularly, I hope,
give you a little ammunition that you can use in your com-
munications with our employees. If there's any message I
really want to leave with you very strongly, it's the message
of communication with our employees.
First, I want to to reassure both you and them that in ,
my view the Agency is alive and well and living in Washington,
and that our relationships with our bosses are very good.
I know they are very good with the President. In the history
of this Agency, he's probably the President who has most
effectively and seriously used the Agency product on a
frequent, regular, daily basis. We have an officer who
began to brief him on a daily basis while he was Vice Presi-
dent. When he moved to Office of President, he insisted
that that arrangement continue. So, we have one of our
officers go down and meet with the President every morning
at eight o'clock. He brings him the President's Brief which
is now made in four copies: one for the President, one for
the not-yet Vice President--but we don't deliver that now--
one for Dr. Kissinger as Assistant to the President; and one
for me. And, that's all we make. We don't make anymore
copies of that particular one. That was deliberate, so that
we could put into that Brief the most sensitive matters that
we have; so that there's absolutely no question of holding
out on something going to the President because of the risk
of it being exposed somewhere in Washington. This is supple-
mented by the Daily--the newspaper-style publication which
now goes to about 60 or 70 people around Washington. The
President frequently reaches for it and looks through it.
He is very interested in some of the things that are there.
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In various meetings with him, he has particularly asked
for our views of things. He's listened to us; he's sought
to understand the details of some of the rather esoteric
matters that we discuss. Host of all I think, this is not
just a private assurance to us; it is that he has reassured
me directly about the whole covert action business. More
important, he stood up in a public press conference at a
time that he didn't have to, because it wasn't on his watch.
He stood up and defended our actions and the functions that
we served, even in the covert action area. So, with respect
to OUT first customer, I think we're doing our job, and I
think that job is appreciated. I might add that in the rest
of the Executive Branch, I think it's also appreciated. The
quality of our intelligence is such that we really have
raised everybody's anticipation of the norm to such a high
level that they don't even notice how good it is anymore.
They see it every morning; they see it in these articles;
they see it in your contribution to the various National
Study Memoranda. This high quality of our contribution, I
think, is generally accepted throughout the Executive Branch.
I might add that I think the Congress is also a sup-
porter. Sometimes they support us because they can get an
independent view from us. And we've heard that a number of
times--that they want our view; they want our appreciation
of what's going on because they know it isn't going to be
slanted by a desire for a particular product or by a desire
to follow a particular policy line. They know that they
will get an independent view. I think the best example of
this Congressional support came in the last month--again
related to covert action which we had all realized was only
a small part of our total effort. I'd made the point publicly
that the Capitol would not collapse if we were forbidden to
engage in covert action. I think it's a useful thing for
our country to be able to do, but I couldn't say that it was
critical to national security this particular week. Despite
that approach toward this matter--in the face of a Bill that
came up in the House and a Bill that came up in the Senate--
both of which would have barred us from any further covert
action, both Houses turned down that restriction by votes of
three to one. Now, those are very substantial votes. Even
the critics emphasized how important the intelligence function
is and their high opinion of the fact that we do it and that
they want us to continue to do it. Even on a matter like
this that you might say we were vulnerable on--and which was
the subject of a great deal of talk in the Press--we got
three to one support.
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Now, those. are technically our two bosses: the Execu-
tive :ranch and the President particularly and the Congress.
In the Executive Branch, I might add that we have two
particular customers. They are Secretary Kissinger and
Secretary Schlesinger--both of whom are very intense users
of intelligence and both of whom look to this Agency very
seriously for an accurate appreciation appraisal of what's
going on. Secretary Schlesinger will argue with us on the
cetails, and he knows enough about areas like strategic
weapons or the cost of Soviet defense programs that his
views are entitled to a great deal of respect. But, he's
not trying to tell us what we ought to decide, he's trying
to get us to be more helpful by bouncing the ball back and
forth with us. Secretary Kissinger on a number of occasions
has expressed his appreciation for our intelligence and our
contribution. He has commented on particular documents we
have given him, and he has pleaded with us to continue to
give him material which--as he said--makes him think. Now
that's a very high praise from a gentleman of his reputation
for somewhat sharp remarks of various people. The fact is
that he's very sincere about it. So, I think that we really
are in good shape in this regard.
Well, if we're in such good shape, why do we get
licked around by the Press so thoroughly, you ask. And, I
think that's a very fair question. It brings up the second
question that I know preoccupies a lot of you and a lot of
our employees--it's what the devil are we doing in the
newspapers these days anyway? I thought our job was to stay
out of the newspapers. And, is the Director on an ego trip
or something going to these things? Frankly, on the role of
the Press in America, I've thought that in this particular
day and time, we cannot go back to those dear days in which
gentlemen didn't mention intelligence. We have been attacked
too often. There have been too many extreme statements. So
much so that I've felt it necessary to put into the record a
positive statement of our contribution, our mission and our
role in the intelligence business, that otherwise we would
abdicate it to our critics and to those who would really
like to see us disbanded and disappear. So that consequently
we have gone into the Press, and I've gone into the Press,
as you know. It's kind of ridiculous when you see a sign at
the entrance here saying, watch it fellows, the NBC's going
to be here from noon to two o'clock, but the fact is that
I've thought that was a necessary step toward getting some
public understanding of the real nature of this Agency and
of intelligence, and some public support for our mission.
Now, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, but I
think that this attempt has been necessary and I think that
in total, we probably have come out a bit ahead of what we
would be if we had tried to stay out of it entirely.
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I think there is greater public understanding of the
fact that intelligence is a bigger word than James Bond and
Meta Hari; that it comprises a lot of other other activities.
I think this explanation of what our real function is has
helped us to get through some of these rather critical
times. We do not have a positive public relations program;
we're not going to run "The CIA in Peace and War" on Sunday
night. We are going to take the position, however, that we
will respond to legitimate questions about the Agency, and
we will try to explain our real nature in response to reasonable
questions. We won't seek occasions to go into the Press,
but we will respond where we think we can. We will respond
in two ways: We will respond for the record about our
background--explaining the nature of our activities. Also,
to the extent we can, we will try to give the people of the
United States the result of the intelligence investment that
they have made in terms of the substantive intelligence that
has been collected and analyzed and produced here. Now,
that doesn't mean we are going to give them the intelligence
sources and methods. It doesn't mean we are going to get in
a big political fight about some of the questions that are
at large in the world; and it doesn't mean that we are going
to take a partisan position on any of these matters. But,
it does mean we will try to the extent we can, and still
protect both our Agency sources and methods and our awn
independence and integrity from political and partisan
activities. And, I might add, a third thing--the time of
our people--within those three limits, we're going to try to
respond to the legitimate Press or the academic community or
other curiosity about what we think is going on in the
world, thanks to the enormous sources of information we have
and thanks to the accumulated wisdom in this Agency and in
the Intelligence Community.
Well, I think that's about enough about the Agency as
it appears from the outside. I think that what you might be
particularly interested in, since you are running the Agency,
is the Agency on the inside. How are we doing now inside?
What's happening and where are we going? We talked about
one agency a year or so ago. We made quite a stress of it.
I think this has come out about where I would have expected
it. I think some of the old baronial walls have broken down
to some extent, and I don't say that they were limited to
any one Directorate. I think there has been a little more
open attitude between offices and between analysts and
collectors and engineers and administrators--that we have a
sense that we are all working on the same problem in general
and we are all working together. On the other hand, we
aren't one great homogeneous mass. We do have different
specialties. We do have security limitations. We're never
going to be completely fungible from one office to another.
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We're never going to be able to read each other's traffic
freely because all those silly compartmentation rules are
important. The compartmentation is a necessary fact of our
life. Part of the compartmentation is not just what happens
today, but the depths of experience and knowledge that you
build up over time. So, we are going to have different
offices; we're going to have different Directorates; we're
going to have compartmentation rules; and we're going to
have some degree of rotation. But you're not going to be
thrust from analyzing economics to riding on the space
shuttle just because it sounds like fun. We're going to
have to adjust people, focus people on what they can do,
and, to some extent, not let them know too much about some
of the other things that happen in the Agency. But, within
those necessary limits, I think we have reduced what used to
be a much more competitive attitude, a much more closed
attitude toward other units in the Agency, and I think we
have increased a sense of our working together on comparable
problems, each with our specialty but leading up to one
overall result and one overall contribution.
I think that's also occurred with respect to the rest
of the Community--to a lesser extent, but nonetheless, there
have been very substantial improvements. Our relationships
with the various other agencies in the Community are really
quite good. The FBI relationship, I think, is quite different
than it was some years ago. Part of that is just the change
of people involved, of course, but also, I think it's a new
attitude that we have here and a new attitude they have
there. Our relationship with the various elements of the
Department of Defense has improved, too. It's rather convenient,
you know, when a former DCI is the Secretary of Defense and
particularly a former DCI who invented the idea of the DCI
having a certain influence on the Department of Defense
intelligence elements, from time to time. However, I think
it's more than that. I think the relationship at the analyst
level of being able to argue about real things rather than
Departmental positions. I think there is more willingness
to sit down and look at the total picture and see what the
fellows in uniform can do better than the fellows in civilian
clothes and vice versa. I think there are a number of
improvements in this area; improvements in our relationships
with attaches abroad, for example, and a variety of others.
With respect to State, I'm afraid I can't say quite as much
just here in the family. I wish I could. We certainly have
tried. I think some people in State have tried, but State
has some very large and difficult problems. Our past
history is such that we've got a lot of old hobgoblins to
get over. We're going to keep on working on this. We're
going to try to improve this relationship. But I think to
be honest with you, this is the area that perhaps needs the
most effort by me and by some of the rest of us in the
future to overcome some of the old attitudes and restric-
tions. You might as well just say it, bickering between us.
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STAT
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T.ow one of the reasons I think that the Agency gets
along better in the Community is"the great job that's done
by the Agency. The products, the quality of the products,
is really quite amazing. I mention the high quality; the -
way the Agency adjusted to bright ideas about changing the
way our products were produced, reorganizing elements that
produced them, and how we related to each other in producing
them. I think there have been very substantial improvements
in this regard, and I think there are a lot of people around
town who are quite aware of these improvements in our product.
Prom time to time we have to knock our hands off some
nice old project that we've been doing, that we've gotten to
a nice comfortable way of handling. Once it becomes something
that is manageable, we then take it away from CIA and give .
it to somebody else to manage. That's been our history in a
lot of different projects, and I hope it remains it, because
it will keep this Agency's talents addressed on to the far-
out future; the part that needs inventiveness. I think that
there is much satisfaction with what has been done in this
regard in the past year or so. I might add, also, a comment
about the imagination of our Administration Directorate.
It's gone through more name changes in the last couple years
than any of the rest of us, but we'll see if we can catch pp
some of the other outfits. The kind of support we've gotten,
.the Rind of cuts they've taken and still provided, is a
marve1 to anyone who knows anything about government and how
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it werks. There's no question about the fact that we are
blessed with a spirit of trying to do things, of trying to
do them quickly and flexibly, and trying to reduce the
bureaucratic aspects to the minimum; to make the bureaucratic
machinery serve us rather than vice versa. I think this has
characterized all the different elements of our DDA.
One of our major problems in the Agency, as you and I
know, is the problem of inflation--the same problem we have
at home. We talked about the three horrors last year--about
the fact that the price of people goes up and the price of
operations goes up. The only thing that doesn't go up is
the willingness of the Congressmen to pay more. This is
still a fact. It's one we've tried to adjust to. I think
we've adjusted to it really quite well in a lot of respects.
We actually did go up slightly in what we got the Congress
to give us, but we also have gone down in our people, and we
have gone down in our projects and activities. We've gone
down by focusing properly. In part, we've been lucky
because we've been able to compensate for some of these
increased charges by not doing so much in some fields that
cost us a lot of money in the past. We really aren't running
the war in Laos now. As you remember, that was a very
substantial part of our total expenditure and of our total
manpower commitment. We have some other things that similarly
have dropped down, and we've been able to compensate in that
fashion.
I think we are also compensating through MBO, or Management
By Objectives. We are compensating by the imagination and
the inventiveness of some of our people in figuring out new
ways to improve our productivity, to use machines, perhaps,
to streamline procedures, to make new thoughts, new contributions,
to make our work more effective at the same or oven, at a
smaller cost. Management By Objectives, I think, is gradually
becoming understood. I still have a problem of distinguish-
ing even myself some days between the number of acronyms we
develop here on KIQs and KEPs and MBOs and the Boy Scouts ?
and everything else.' The quickest and easiest explanation
of how all these things relate, I can give you in about one
minute. It is that the key intelligence questions are
KIQs--those are my communications as DCI with the heads of
all the agencies in which I try to outline what I think is
important. And that's where they stop--at the head of the
agency, because each agency then determines how it's going
to respond and arrange for reporting on those key intelligence
questions. Some do it with MBO; some do it with exhortation
and some do it with near-term defense objectives. There are
a variety of different names, but each agency runs its own
railroad. In our Agency it's run by the MBO system. The
KIQs are for your general information, but as the command
line goes down, you get your actual directives through the
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.4enage-ent By Objectives technique. Then, when you report
on how yoe've done on your Objectives, those then feed into
how the Agency has done on the various key intelligence
questions. In that fashion I think we can untangle who's
responsible for what.
Another way we've adjusted to inflation has been the
contirued reduction of our people, and I'd like to say that
as we lool, ahead, I really don't see any solution to this,
but to continue on this particular line. I think we have it
down row to e system so that we do not have to go through a
big turbulent surplus exercise the way we did last year. I
think we can go down at a very reasonable and small level
adjusting our activities to fit the reduction in people
available. I think we can reduce the actual people through
a combination of their ordinary retirement, by the ordinary
departures that take place anyway, and by the process of
identifying the people who really should be urged to move to
a new field.
Last April we put out a memorandum called "New Ap-
proaches in Personnel Management." This had a lot of very
general stateeents, very fine resolutions. Maybe it should
have been dated the 1st of January instead of the
1st of April--but, the fact is that it was an outline of how
we hope to manage our personnel. I commend it to your
attention because we are going to have a little recap on how
well we've done on it here in another month or two, and
we're going to look to see how each of the Directorates and
each of the offices has responded to that now approach. I
think we owe it to our employees that we actually follow-up
on what we said we were going to do. At that point, I hope
to male a report to the employees, of whit has actually
happened in these new approaches, so that they don't just
feel that this kind of document can be dropped on them and
then forgotten until another one comes along in another six
months or a year.
The annual personnel plan is about to be dropped on my
desk for PY 1974 and the goals of 1975. We will be briefing
various levels concerning how well we performed against the
goals we set for ourselves last year, and how our goals look
for this coming year. We will be able to identify not only
what happens to the Agency as a whole and how the different
Directorates compare, but will be able to make comparison
between offices. You can even take it in your own component
and make comparisons between Branches and between !eivisions,
etc.
I hope you will use this plan as a means of communicating
to your subordinates--what you expect of them in the way of
their management of the people that work for them. The plan
requires that we have a personnel development program for
our brighter and sharper comers; that we look carefully at
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'what potential they have. The plan will also indicate the
degree to which we give awards for good performance for our
people. On this, I think we have to say a word of thanks to
you all for the fact that our awards have very substantially
increased in number in the past year. I think we've gotten
out of this situation of being unwilling to write a recom-
mendation for an award until the day before the fellow
actually retires. We have given a lot of awards for specific
things and I, commend to you a vigorous look for occasions to
recommend people for an award. Don't write it out in eight
pages. If possible, try to cut it down to a page and a
half. But, try to give the awards as close to the time of
any appropriate service as possible. There's a very simple
reason for that--if you give it to them then, you are not
blocked because he messes up in some later job and then you
can't give it to him.
I also want to mention our Equal Employment Opportunity
Program, which we put a little stress on. I think that here
our results are a little mixed. We have recruited more
blacks. This is a credit particularly to the recruiting
elements of the Office of Personnel. It is also a credit to
the willingness of a number of you to accept these people,
to reaCh. out for them;- sometimes to get in touch with them
directly and independently of the recruiting service. We
have recruited some in more senior grades as well as at
entering grades. Our percentages are, however, still very
low. In that respect, we have more to do. We have More to
do on the blacks; we have particularly more to do, I might
say, on the women. There were no women's supergrades promoted
in this group that we had today. There were no women supergrades
projected for promotion in next year the way the annual
personnel plan looks. Well, now, I don't think that's
right. I think we've got to solve that. We have to solve
it, however, within our normal standards. I think that is
as important as making progress on the EEO. We are going to
stick to our standards--we're just going to work harder to
find, recruit, and develop people who can meet those standards.
We're not going to drop the standards. We have no quotas.
We're not going to promote people or hire people so that we
can have a token presence in our Agency, because that's the
first step to disaster.
That's the first step to make the program really not
work in the long term. The only way to work it, however, is
not to sit and wait for the candidate to come to you, but
you, and I mean literally you, to go out and look for the
candidate and help to develop that candidate and bring that
candidate into our Agency. SD, it doesn't mean that we
don't do anything by keeping our standards--it means we do
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pore, because it would be very easy to pick up the token
numbers. That's hot what we're after, and it's not what
we're going to do. In summary, I do point your attention
especially to the problem of FO--we have more to do. I'd
like to particularly point to the subject of improving the
grade level of the ladies who work for us.
New, speaking of grade levels, this is a rather good
group to talk to, because except for four or five of us,
everybody gets the same amount of money. I know that's not
a very popular subject these days in this kind of a gathering
and I have every sympathy with that. In fact, I feel a
little bit embarrassed at being one of the few here who is
not limited to that limit. It is a very serious problem.
You saw what the Administration tried to do last year about
it, and failed. Obviously, CIA is not going to be able to
do anything on its own. We are not going to be able to set
up our own suporgrade system. I will, however, participate
in anything that the government does on this subject, and
I will urge and bring to the attention of our government
leaders that it is a serious problem for our supergrades.
Sure, intelligence work is fun, but the fun begins to cost
quite a lot when you get to the kinds of limitations that I
know some of you are under in your current salary limits.
1 would say, also, that we have been approached as to
whether we need as many supergrades as we now have. The
obvious numbers way to approach this is to say that the
Agency was about 20 percent larger than it is today and yet
we have, I think it is, only seven more supergrades than we
had at that time. I have reported this to the Office of
Management and Budget, and I will struggle for the retention
of OUT current levels--not based on that kind of numbers
game, but rather on the quality of the job that you all are
expected to do. Not on the numbers of people that you
supervise, because obviously on that kind of basis, we all
right be majors, because majors can run battalions, and they
have quite a few hundreds of people in them. The fact is
that the quality of the work, the delicacy of the work, the
intensity and the importance of the work, in my opinion
does justify this number of supergrades in this Agency.
And, we do stand rather well compared to a lot of other
agencies, to the normal government agencies and to the other
intelligence agencies. We do stand rather badly in comparison
to the Department of State. Whether one can say that the
Department of State is the one out of joint or not, I cannot
say. I propose to stick as hard as I can on what we have
and certainly not give away any for free.
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You saw a little note in the paper yesterday about a
league of suporgrades, how a league is a nice way of referring
to a kind of lobbying organization. The question was: Are
we allowed to join them? The answer is, I eon't have any
legal authority to either say yes or no to that. I can't
encourage you to join it; I can't prohibit you from joining
it. We do have a few regulations about the degree to which
we--with the CIA sign on our back--don't participate in
picket lines around the Congress or such. There's a regula-
tion that we all read in the last month on that subject.
But the fact is that belonging is a personal decision. It's
not something that I could either encourage or discourage.
If we got into security problems in that regard, sure, I'd
have a responsibility to say something about it. Or, if you
got into a situation where the reputation of the Agency was
being affected by someone's participation in something of
this nature, then I would have something to say about it.
But, just the straight answer to the question: Are we
allowed or forbidden to join? The answer is neither.
This brings me to the subject of labor unions, which
the league is not. I'm reminded one time of George Meany's
remark when he heard that the airline's pilots were on
strike, and he said, "Hell, that's no strike; that's a
dispute between capitalists." I think that the question of
the league, however, brings up the question of the unionization
of our employees and the degree to which they can be.
Again, I go back to the word communication, because communication
among us, through us, to the employees as a whole, is the
best way to avoid any substantial difficulty on that scale.
The employees of this Agency, I think, are more loyal than
any other in the government. There's no question about it
in my mind. We may have a little trouble with two ex-
employees, but I have total confidence in the loyalty, the
discretion, the good sense of the employees in this Agency.
They wouldn't have signed up for this difficult job; they
wouldn't have sustained it all these years, if they hadn't
had an uncommon gift of loyalty and of public service. I
have no problems about that, but I think they do sometimes
wonder what's going on. We are a secretive Agency, even
though you'd hardly believe it some days. I think sometimes
that the employees are the ones who read about us in the
newspaper--it's the first they ever heard of Chile, and they
didn't know what was going on there. Their friends all ask
them; they don't know; what can they say? We have tried to
some extent to distribute employee bulletins to communicate
with them directly. I know a lot of you have had meetings
of your groups to discuss situations with them.
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One of our annual personnel plan requirements is an
annual meeting within each office--a big meeting between the
head of the office and his employees, to go over the situation
in that office, in that Division, whatever it is. That form
of communication is important. Your employees should feel
that they are getting the word down through the channels to
the extent necessary. They're going to look to you for
whatever is going to come. Sometimes they're not going to
ask it, but they're also going to be a little disappointed
if it doesn't come, because they would expect it, and they
would hope for it. I think it is up to you as it is up to
me to try to think of occasions on which we can give this
information to them, occasion on which we can stimulate
their questions and find what's worrying them and what's
concerning them so that we can either resolve that question
or concern, or so that we can go out and fix the thing
that's causing it.
Now there's one other feature and then I'd like to ask
for some questions. That is the question of secrecy and how
it works. As you know, we are having troubles--Mr. Agee,
Mr. Marchetti, etc.--we've been fighting this as hard as we
can in the courts. There's not very much we can do about
Mr. Agee in a legal sense, but we are going to take some
steps. I have made contacts with various people hoping to
reduce the size of the exposure by Mr. Agee. I know there's
been a lot of other action taken throughout, particularly in
the Latin America Division, to try to protect ourselves
against anything too bad from Mr. Agee's book. But, I think
that we are in a situation where we do need better protection
for our secrets. The Office of Security is looking at some
techniques by which we might improve the compartmentation of
some of our material and divide things up into smaller com-
partm nts, so that sensitive information is given to the
fewest possible people. But we also, I think, need some
real tools, some legal tools. As you know, I have recommended
to the Congress that legislation for the protection of
intelligence sources and methods be improved.
It's not an official Secrets Act in the broadest sense.
I think it's compatible with American principles. I have
made the point, and it happens to be true, that if I worked
for the Internal Revenue Service, and I leak an income tax
return, I'm guilty of a crime. Or, if I worked for the
Census Bureau and I leak a census return, I'm guilty of a
crime. Or, if I worked for the Department of Agriculture
and I leak some cotton statistics, I'm guilty of a crime.
But, if I work for the CIA and I leak an intelligence agent's
name, I'm only guilty of a crime if I give it to a foreigner
or I have an intent to injure the United States. I think
that's ridiculous. So we are recommending some criminal
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penalties for the unauthorized disclosure of intelligence
sources and methods. be are surrounding that with certain
protections that we've worked out for the Department of
Justice which I think are compatible with our Constitutional
system and with the way we Anericans like to handle each
other.
One of these is that those rules, that vulnerability to
criminal action, would only work against us. It would not
work against the third party who gets the secret and then
publishes it, be that a newsman or be that somebody repeating
it. Why? Because we under-take the obligation. We are
brought into the secret, and therefore if somebody does
wrong, it's us. Secondly, before we could prosecute, we
would have to be prepared to demonstrate that the actual
secret which was being disclosed was a serious matter, and
that we weren't being unreasonable and arbitrary when we
classified it. You and I know there are enough pieces of
paper lying around the building that you wouldn't send a dog
to jail for releasing, and it's exactly that kind of thing
that might be an apparent vulnerability that we want to
eliminate by this requirement that we have to prove that our
classification was a reasonable act. I think we can do that
behind the judge's doors without leaking all the secrets
involved.
That is one of the problems we had in the Marchetti
case. bhen we began to try to explain why a thing was
classified, it began to go into more and more and other
problems as well. And we've had problems in where we held
the line. That is also the area in which, of course as you
know, we finally came to issue with Senator Baker on just
how far we would go to looking into the Agency hoping to
find something wrong. We finally blew the whistle and said
we wouldn't go any further, and it seemingly has ended
there. But, we are going to have to have some improveLent
of this. I'd appreciate your explaining to people that
we're being reasonable in the kinds of restrictions we are
putting on; that it's the only reasonable thing to do. The
employees I've talked to, their basic reaction is: Why'd it
take us so long to get to it?
Well, those are the main points I wanted to make. I
get back to the communication. I get back to the fact that
you are running the Agency. We all know the kinds of chores
that the rest of us do, and we know the importance of the
detailed, day-to-day management of our people, the direction
of our operations and our production. It's in the hands of
you ladies and gentlemen. I think it's in good hands.
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We're delighted to welcome some new representatives to
this group. We know that they will do at least as well as
some of the rest of us have done in the past, and we hope
they'll do a lot better in the future. With that, I'd
really like to answer any questions anybody might ask.
Yes Ken.
Question; The stewardship of the Agency has asked us
to adapt to the changing world around us. To some extent ?
that's been done in the field of covert collection of
economic intelligence. Would you care to elaborate on how
you see that
Mr. Colby: That's a very good question. Did you all
get it? Now we're going to adjust to economic problems?
The way I sort of look at it these days, I rather suspect
that during the next five to ten years we're apt to be more
concerned at the policy levels of our government with economic
security than we will be with military or political security.
I think over the past years, certainly in the political
field, we've met a lot of challenges and essentially batted
them down. I think in the military field we are up to a
deterrent posture. We've got some problems of where we're
going, but our knowledge is quite extensive. We have a lot
more to learn about the people in closed societies that are
unfriendly to us, but we also have some controls on the
degree to which they can actually threaten us. In the
economic field, it is quite clear that we are very, very
vulnerable. We're vulnerable in energy; we're vulnerable in
finance-. We're vulnerable even in our strengths in some
regard. The fact that this is one of the world's greatest
food-producing nations can create a vulnerability. It can
create jealousies and hatreds based in countries that are
subject to our food supply and who consequently can threaten
us and desire to take some action against us based upon a
disinclination to be under the control of our food. When
you think about the impact of the potential for proliferation
of nuclear weapons?and it's not quite that everybody can do
it in his backyard?but we're not very far from it; and if ?
you combine that with several million people dying in one
country because we Americans eat beef instead of eating
grain--this can give us some Major problems for our security
in the next years. Now, how are we going to react to that?
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We are trying to get the economic community together in the
way that the political and the military communities have
been gotten together over the past years. We have structured
arrangements for political estimates and exchanges of poli-
tical intelligence and production of political intelligence.
We have very structured and careful systems for how we
produce military intelligence and who does what. We do not
hove comparable arrangements in the economic field. We are
apt to flutter on the one hand, feeling that the DDO can
collect all the information that is necessary. On the other
hand, people are saying: Well, why doesn't the Treasury go
out and do that and what does CIA have to do with this
anyway? We have a serious problem of knowing what to do ...
with our intelligence sometimes after We get it, because how
can we help and inform an American company in competition
with a foreign company for a certain contract without being
in the situation of favoring one American company against
another? How can we handle classified information in the
economic field where people are not really accustomed to it?
I think all of these have got to be worked out. We are in
the course of working it out. We have a National Intelli-
gence Officer for economics; we have a USIB Intelligence
Committee and the Director of our Economic Research is the
head of it. We have a Human Source Committee in USIB to try
to look at haw the different sources of information, not
only economics bt also others, can be parceled out between
1
Low can these all be patched together
in the same way that we've patched them together in such
things as military coverage of the Warsaw pact forces in
their day-to-day operations. We have this job ahead and
we're going to have the same kind of bureaucratic bickering
and the same kind of lack of understanding between some of
the organizations involved as we get into this. But, I ?
think having been through it in the other fields and having
gotten to where we are now, I think we're going to be able
to overcome some of these organizational and, conceptual
problems about who ought to do what a lot faster than we
have the other ones. Is that roughly responsive?
Yes, Seymour.
Question: Could you give us your forecast on what you
expect in the field of records oversight, particularly in
the light of yesterday?
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r. Colby: It's obvious that there is a considerable
pressore in the Congress for a look at our Oversight systea.
13a:re's no question that this has brought changes in our
oversight ie the past year. ,he committees are a lot ....ore
intense on their oversight of us now. They are a 3.ot !Aore
regular ana this has worked really very well, with one
rather laree exception. And this rather large exception was
STAT - 'reading of our transcript to our Comittee
an then writing a letter about it, which leaked. I can
ass7lre you that the senior management of the Congress is
very coecerned about that incident and resolves that some-
thing nust be done to avoid that kind of a thing happening
again. With respect to oversight as a whole, however, it's
also clear that the foreign affairs world in the Congress is
elenanding a niece of the action. And it's becoming increas-
ingly difficult to keep them out of It. The various chair-
men of the zonvittees are now negotiating between themselves
some uoy of fieuring out how to be responsive to that demand
for some piece of the action and yet not open the door and
Let anybody who wants to tramp through our secrets. ae way
this has been worked in the Senate at the moment is that the
chairman of our Committee is inviting Senator ransfiel0 and
Senator Scott, Loth of whom are on the Foreign Affairs
aommittce, but who are the Congressional leadership, to
attend the next reetiag of our Oversight Committee. In the
house, there's an arrangement still being worked out between
the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee and chairman
of our committee as to just how and who in the Foreign
Affairs t;ommittee will have some piece of the action of
oversight of us. But, I think in a way l nay
almost have crystallized the problem of how we respond in a
fashion Congress wants us to about our operations and yet we
don't lose our secrets into the newspapers right away. I
think there are lots of different suggestions and ideas
about joint committees and all the rest, and I wouldn't be
surprised to see one of them picked up and actually go on.
1;ut, the position I take, and it's the only position I think
I can take, is that it is up to the congress to decide how
It's going to exercise its oversight and appropriate its
money for us. I think the first step toward disaster would
be for ee to tell then how to do it because they would be
sure to react negatively to that. So, I think we have to
sort of rock along and speak when you're spoken to. I have
made one very clear point, please keep the number down as
much as possible, and that I've rade to the various chairnen.
Whatever your solution, keep it down; keep it only to iembers,
and not to staff, except for about one or two men in a
Committee staff, but not the staff of individual Congressmen
and Senators. That way it would go out the window inmediately.
Now whether you get that wholly or not, I don't know, but
thatie what we are going to stick for.
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J:r. Colby: Yes?
Question: The 1:ational Ietelligence Officer systen in
operation a year now, is it working to your
satisfaction?
:Ir. Cony: It's working to my satisfaction--it's a
!T-e4t help for no. I hope it's working for the other
peopl?s satisfaction. / Oren't know how anybody did this
job without having the. It's the only way I've been able
to get SON; focus on a total intelligence picture in certain
parts of the world that otherwise all the world becomes one.
We basically approach it as bureaucratic questions between
the different intelligence agencies. This was designek:, to
cut across it and think about the world in a different
Lanaer than the way we have to think about it bureaucratically,
and it has worked very well. I think it has improved coEruni-
cation between the different agencies and even the different
elements of this Agency on the substance of what's goieg on,
and on generally what we're going about. I'm sure they've
stepped on a few toes here and there. I 1-now that on a few
occasions, they've been rather smartly slapped on the wrist
for having done so, but it has been accompanied by much less
of a bureaucratic problen than, quite frankly, I anticipated.
I thought I was going to be untangling people every week,
but it hasn't worked that way at all. I think we have
surfaced our real differences in view on a lot of things and
put the discussion about those differences on a better
level. Instead of arguing that TIA thinks this, it's a
question of what's the evidence for this. And if you can
get the argument to that basis, why then in most cases the
fight goes away because either the evidence is good and
worthy of consideration or it just disappears. It has
worked in my view very well. I'd be interested to hear any
counterviews by anyone who wants to make them.
Well, thank you very much. It's a pleasure to see you.
ea.ybe we'll welcome another group--even including some
iDO's--to the next one of these sessions. Thank you.
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