ADDRESS BY LIEUTENANT GENERAL VERNON A. WALTERS BEFORE FORT LAUDERDALE COUNCIL NAVY LEAGUE OF THE UNITED STATES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP79M00467A000200040014-1
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 49
• Document Creation Date: December 12, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 7, 2002
• Sequence Number: 14
• Publication Date: June 16, 1976
• Content Type: SPEECH

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ADDRESS
by
LIEUTENANT GENERAL VERNON A. WALTERS
before
FORT LAUDERDALE COUNCIL
NAVY LEAGUE OF THE UNITED STATES
Fort Lauderdale, Florida
16 June 1976
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Thank you very much. I am very happy to have this
occasion to talk to this Navy League Council, in the pres-
ence of so many distinguished guests, including representa-
tives of the Royal Navy, who are here tonight.
I thought I would talk to you, but before I talk to
you I must say that I speak with a certain sadness as I
learned shortly before I came here that our Ambassador to
Beirut, Lebanon, Francis Meloy, was kidnapped and murdered
along with his economic counselor and his Lebanese driver
this afternoon. It makes you wonder what kind of a world
we live in. From the middle ages, the person of an ambas-
sador has always been sacred. This is the second ambassador
we have lost in just a few years. I think it is eloquent
of the kind of a world in which we live and the anarchy and
the winds of folly that are blowing around the world today
that make all men who are concerned with the survival of
freedom and with some kind of a system of international
peace and justice concerned with what is going on.
I am going to talk to you tonight about what I truly
believe to be the oldest profession in the world. There
are others who believe that another profession, which has
been receiving considerable attention in the press recently,
is the oldest profession. But I would remind you that
before this other profession could operate someone had to
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know where it was. That was intelligence, which is therefore
the oldest profession in the world.
The United States has always had a very ambivalent view
of intelligence. We liked it but we don't like to admit that
we did it. We sort of think it was all right for all those
old British, French, Russians, and Germans to do it, but we
fine, moral, upstanding Americans don't do that sort of thing.
Well we have, fortunately, otherwise we would not be a free
and independent nation today. We have always built up our
intelligence during the conflicts in which we have participated
and then we destroy it. A little while ago in my biography,
you heard that I went to the Army Military Intelligence
Training Center at Camp Ritchie in 1942. Do you know who
was running it? A British colonel. That was the state of
American intelligence in August 1942. We didn't have anybody
qualified to run it.
In the invocation Nathan Hale was mentioned. I must
make a confession. The chaplain that made the invocation has
departed so I can tell this story safely. Out at the CIA we
have a statue of Nathan Hale. It was put up over my bitter
protest. Not that he wasn't a very brave young man, he did
utter a very immortal line that he regretted that he had only
one life to give for his country. The problem with Nathan
Hale was that he was a spy who was caught on his first mis-
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sion and he had all the evidence on him. I am not sure that
this is what we want to hold up to our young career trainees
as an example. He was sent by Washington into Manhattan to
find out when the British were going to land. They met him.
They were already there. But we have always had this view and
we have engaged in a sort of striptease of our intelligence
that has stupefied our foreign friends. They have had prob-
lems with their intelligence services and when they do, they
set up a discreet commission of inquiry which inquires,
reports to the parliamentary body or to the responsible par-
ties, and they sanction people who have done wrong, and they
take corrective measures to prevent certain abuses.
I must tell you that not long ago a Congressman asked
me how you could abolish abuses in intelligence, and I said
that I had only one suggestion. That was to stop using human
beings, because as long as you use human beings certain things
are going to happen that you would prefer not to happen.
Why do we need this intelligence? We need this intel-
ligence because we live in a very unsafe world. Less than
20 percent of mankind lives today in what we would call
freedom. The others live in various forms of repression and
tyranny. We in America face the situation we have not faced
since our Revolution. For the first time we face a poten-
tial adversary who is a global power. Germany at the height
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of its power was basically a continental European power,
with no capability to harm the United States other than
by submarines sinking some ships off our coasts. The Soviet
Union is a global power. The Soviet Union is able and wil-
ling, as Angola shows, to project its powers 10,000 miles
from the Soviet Union. We see the Soviet Union deploying
five, perhaps six, new types of long-range, intercontinental
ballistic missiles, all of them heavier and more accurate
than the generation they replaced. We see the Soviet Union
building very large numbers of submarines, equipping them
with missiles which they can fire at the United States, not
from mid-Atlantic, but right from their home port waters.
We see a Soviet Navy that in a few years has gone from a
coast guard-type Navy to a blue-water navy. We see the
Soviets developing aircraft with capabilities against the
United States, as well as against our European and Asiatic
allies. We see the Soviet Union upgrading all of its con-
ventional forces and spending considerably more money on
defense than we do out of a gross national product less than
half as big as ours. We see burgeonings of the same thing
in China.
I feel that we in the Intelligence Community owe the
American people the answers to four overriding questions:
Who will be in control of the Soviet Union five years from
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today? What will be their attitude toward us and toward our
allies? What is there in Soviet research and development
today that will impact on our lives tomorrow? And the same
questions for China, a little further down the line. So
this is the kind of a world in which we live. And the real
issue before the American people is: do they want to have
effective intelligence or do they want to wait until the day
when we have to choose between abject humiliation and nuclear
blackmail.
It is to many of our foreign friends a stupefying thing
that someone in my position would be out talking to the gen-
eral public. They come into my office with a slightly glassy
stare after they have seen the road sign outside the building
which says CIA. One of them said to me, "I don't believe it,
it isn't possible, you're not pointing an arrow at your secret
intelligence service." In most other countries, no one knows
who's in them or even if they exist." It reminds me of a
story that was told to me not long ago by the head of a
foreign service. He said, "The Soviets recruited a spy in
NaPles, and they took him to Moscow and trained him in secret
writing, shortwave communications, codes and everything else.
Then they sent Agnello back to Naples and said, "Now you wait
there, we'll be in touch with you in a couple of years." So,
in a couple of years somebody came out from Moscow, went to
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the address, looked at the names on the door, and he saw Agnello,
ground floor right. He went in and pushed the button. The man
opened the door and said, "Agnello, I have come from Moscow."
The man looked at him and he said, "Signore, there is a big
mistake. I am Agnello the tailor, Agnello the spy is on the
third floor left." And the head of this foreign service
said,
"Sometimes I suspect that Agnello was really an American."
Be that as it may, we have come through this lengthy
investigation. You have heard all about the allegations that
were made. Let me talk to you about these allegations for a
minute. I cannot tell you that there were not things done
that should not have been done. I cannot tell you that there
were not abuses. I cannot tell you that there were not kooks.
I cannot tell you that there was not bad judgment. But I
would like to put this a little bit into perspective. Every-
body has talked about assassination. What was the ultimate
finding of all of these investigations? Nobody was assassinated.
Yes, a lot of people talked about it. Well, a lot of people
talked about a lot of things. But nobody was assassinated.
You all saw the picture of the dart gun which a Senator held
up very cheerily. The dart gun was never used. That, of'
course, was played in the low key.
Then we get to those various allegations of what was
going on. First, you heard about the massive wire taps which
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gave you the impression that for the last thirty years every-
body in the United States has had his phone conversations
listened to by the CIA. What are the facts? The facts are
that the Director of Central Intelligence is the only person
in the United States who is charged by law with the protection
of his sources and methods. These wire taps were against
people from CIA who were suspected of taking things home or
of communicating with foreign agents. How many were there?
There were 32 wire taps in 27 years. That is one and a quarter
wire taps a year. But the impression conveyed to the American
people was that "big brother" was listening to everything
they were saying.
Then we got the break-ins. All of the break-ins were
against CIA employees who were suspected of taking documents
home with them.
Then you heard about the drug experiments. Well, we
saw a man like Cardinal Mindszenty, who had resisted every
pressure the Nazis could bring to bear on him. Suddenly the
communists brought him before the newsreel cameras, hollow-
eyed, to confess every.crime in the book. Those of us who
were old enough to remember believed it was done with mind-
bending drugs. We believed those drugs might be used against
us, and we had to find out how to defend ourselves against
it. And it was not just the armed forces and the CIA that
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were engaged in such research. The National Institutes of
Health and a great many very respectable, very liberal uni-
versities were doing exactly the same thing.
Then you had these toxins, so-called drugs. Well, the
Russians used those to kill some people in Germany in the 50's.
We were afraid they would be used on us, and, yes, we experi-
mented to find out how they worked so that we could defend
ourselves and, if need be, retaliate. You know the United
States committed itself not to use poison gas before World
War II. That did not prevent the United States from making
many millions of poison gas shells to be used in retaliation
in case they were used against us. Most of you who have
been in the service know that every command and every country
has contingency plans. A contingency plan does not mean
that you intend to do it; it means that you have a plan for
a certain set of circumstances.
These allegations have been used to try and demonstrate
to -the American people that the real threats to the freedom
of the American people come from the CIA and the FBI. The
CIA has never had the power to arrest anybody. How you are
supposed to be a gestapo when you can't arrest anybody, I
don't know. These facts are carefully, of course, not
mentioned.
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If we go back 2,500 years, we find a Chinese author, a
man by the name of Sun Tzu, who wrote a book called The Art of
War. He describes how to undo your enemies. Remember, this
book is 25 centuries old. Let me just quote to you some of
the things he said. The first general consideration was:
"Fighting is the most primitive and crude form of making war
on your enemies." And then he goes on to describe how to
take them apart without fighting. "Cover with ridicule
everything that is valid in your opponent's country. Denounce
their leaders involve them in criminal enterprises and at
the right time turn them over to the scorn of their fellow
countrymen. Aggravate by every means at your command all
existing differences within your opponent's country. Agitate
the young against the old." There are 13 of these and he
concludes by saying, "The greatest excellence is not to win
a hundred victories in a hundred battles; the greatest
excellence is to subdue your enemies without ever having
to fight them."
I think not enough of us are prepared for what I
believe are the new forms of war, which is the combination
of the threat of the use of war with all kinds of activity
to make us wonder about the justice of our own cause. It
has been repeatedly proved that it is difficult to stop
the United States from the outside. If you want to stop
it, you have to stop it from the inside.
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You know someone told me a story the other day
that I thought was very good. It was about three sailors
who were shipwrecked on an island in the Pacific. One
was French, one was British, and one was American. They
were immediately captured by cannibals. And the chief
of the cannibals said to them, "I have some bad news and
good news for you." The bad news is that we're going to
have you
The good
news, is
for lunch
news, and
that I'll
tomorrow,
and I don't mean as guests.
you need some good news after that bad
give you anything you want in the
meantime." So, he turned to the Frenchman and he said,
"What
going
spend
do you want?" The Frenchman said, "Well, if I am
to be killed in the morning I would just as soon
the remaining hours with that beautiful cannibal
girl over there." So they said, "Fine." They untied
the Frenchman and he and the cannibal girl went off into
the woods. Then they turned to the Englishman and they
said, "What do you want?" The Englishman said, "I want
a pen and paper." They said, "What do you want a pen
and paper for?" He said, "I want to write a letter to
the Secretary General of the United Nations to protest
against the unjust, unfriendly, and unsporting attitude
you have adopted toward us." So they said, "Okay," and
they took the Englishman to a hut and they untied him
and gave him a pen and paper, and he sat down and started
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his "Dear Mr. Waldheim" letter. Then they turned to the
American and they said, "What do you want?" The American
said, "I want to be led into the middle of the village,
I want to be made to kneel down, and I want the biggest
cannibal here to kick me in the rear end," and the chief
turned to his vice-chief and he said, "Those Americans
are a weird bunch; you never know what they will ask for.
But since I promised, we've got to do it." So, they
untied the American, they led him into the middle of the
village, they made him kneel down, and the biggest cannibal
took a running leap, kicked the American in the rear end,
and knocked him 15 feet. As the American sprawled out,
he pulled out a tommy gun he had been hiding under his
clothes, and he cut down the nearby cannibals, and the
rest fled. Well, hearing the gunfire, the Frenchman came
out of the woods and the Englishman came out of his hut,
and they looked at the American standing there with a
smoking tommy gun in his hand, and they said, "My God,
do you mean to say that you had that gun the whole time."
The American said, "Sure." And they said, "Why didn't
you use it before now?" And the foreigner who told me
the story said, "The American looked at them with a hurt
expression, and he said, 'But you don't understand, it
wasn't until they kicked me in the rear end that I had
any moral justification for such extreme action'."
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Now, we have been lucky from time to time to get
this kind of conveniently served up kick in the rear end.
At Pearl Harbor we got it. We were able to recover from
Pearl Harbor because the oceans were wide, there were
other powers standing between us and our enemies, and
we had the enormous advantage of the industrial power
of the United States. I would like to know whether we
could recover from a nuclear Pearl Harbor. The very
existence of the Agency to which I belong was caused by
the investigation into Pearl Harbor which proved, after
the war, that a great many people in the United States
Government had little pieces of information, which if
they could have all been brought together into one central
place, maybe wouldn't have avoided Pearl Harbor but would
have made it a great deal less harmful to us than it was.
And thus it was decided to create a central repository for
this information.
Now there exists a widespread belief that the CIA
is sitting on one little private pile of information and
the Defense Intelligence Agency, the ONI and the Army G-2
on others. We are all working from the same data bank.
We are all working from the same facts. No., we don't
always agree. A military man always tends to view what
the enemy's capabilities are. Non-military people sometimes
put more emphasis on what his intentions are. The answer
is that you need both.
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We get a great deal of intelligence openly, through
open publications, through open broadcasts, through our
embassies, through public sources of all kinds, maybe
even half, or more than half, but it is the easiest half.
Then you get a considerable percentage through the great
technical systems that have been developed in the last
few years. But none of those will get you inside a man's
head. None of those will tell you what people are thinking
about. Only people can do that. And, you know, with that
same ambivalence I was talking about the Congress created
the CIA to engage in spying, to use the currently fashionable
opprobrious word, it was called collecting intelligence
previously. But they didn't say that. They said you will
do such other things as the National Security Council may
require.
Not long ago at the height of the discussion about
assassination we had some Congressmen out at CIA and there
was discussion of this question. Somebody said, "Well,
of course, if anybody could have gotten Hitler in '43 or
'44, he would undoubtedly have been the first joint recipient
of the Congressional Medal of Honor and the Victoria Cross."
And one of the young Congressmen said, "Yes, but think if
you could have gotten him in '35 or '36 of how many lives
you would have saved." I said, "Congressman, do I under-
stand you are advocating assassination in peacetime?" He
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said, "Oh no, but that was different." It's different
because we know what happened subsequently.
One of the great German intelligence agents, Otto
Skorzeny, was tried by the Allies after the war and he
was accused of sending people in British and American
uniforms behind the British and American lines during the
war, a dastardly crime. Two British colonels and one
American colonel who had done the same thing with people
in German uniform testified on his behalf and the case
was thrown out of court, even in the immediate post-war
atmosphere of 1947. Moses sent spies into the land of
Canaan. As I said, it is the oldest profession. But
we need it today more than we've ever needed it before.
America in the past has always been unreachable
and therefore unbeatable. That is unfortunately no
longer true. In the years following World War II we
solved problems in one of two ways. We solved them either
by military force or we solved them by overwhelming
them with our great financial and economic resources.
We can't, do that anymore. We need judgment, we need
understanding, we need the ability to establish a foreign
policy on a sound basis.
We do have a very large intelligence community,
but what does it cost the American people? I am not at
liberty to give you the figures, although the budgetary
process for the American intelligence organizations is
the same as for the Department of Agriculture or the
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Department of Commerce, within the Congress, within the
appropriations committees, within the Office of Management
and Budget. It is simply not made public. We have not
gotten that far into the Agnello business. People say,
"Why can't you make it public?" Well, if you made it
public for one year, nothing would happen. But if you
made it public over a series of years, you would have
bulges in it of major programs like the U-2 or the raising
of the Soviet submarine, and you would start an unraveling
process because people would ask why there were differences.
There is no other country in the world that discusses
its intelligence services as openly as we do. In fact,
in most countries they don't comment on it nor do they
discuss it. In our system we have decided to do so.
A foreigner said to me once, "You Americans are the first
people to have gone to the moon. You may well be the
first people to run your intelligence service in Macy's
window." Whether this is possible or not over a long
period of time, I do not know. I personally do not
believe it is.
I believe we can live with any form of oversight
the Congress chooses, but I would devoutly hope that
they would choose something like the Atomic Energy
Committee where you have a Joint Committee of both Houses
and which has been a model of discretion and responsibility.
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Right now we are reporting to seven different committees
which compose more than half the membership of both
houses of Congress. How you can keep anything secret
in that atmosphere I don't know.
John Jay, who ran the spies before the Revolution,
was once called before the Committee of Secret Correspondence
in the Congress and asked to lay before the Congress the
aames of his spies and how much he was paying them. John
Jay's answer was, "Experience has shown that the Congress
is composed of too many people to have this kind of dis-
closure made to the whole body. Such disclosures in the
past have been fatal not merely to the project but to a
great many of the people concerned." And he got away with
it. Now as I say we've had this problem since the dawn
of our history.
Not long ago not far from here I was having lunch
with a former British Prime Minister, Lord Avon, Anthony
Eden, and he was discussing the difficulties an ancestor
of his had during the Revolution. Robert Eden was the
Royal GoVernor of Maryland. .He was in trouble with the
British Government who thought he was overly sympathetic
with the Americans and he was in trouble with the Americans
who thought he wasn't sufficiently sympathetic with them.
So I said to Lord Avon, "Yes, that may be true, but in
the meantime his brother William in Paris had successfully
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penetrated Benjamin Franklin's office." "Oh," he said,
"You know about that, do you?"
When the French told Benjamin Franklin that France
was entering the war against Great Britain in 1779, that
information was in the hands of the British Government
42 hours later. And in those days if you rode a horse
from Paris to the coast, took a boat across the Channel
and rode from the Channel coast to London, it would take
you about 42 hours.
You wouldn't believe some of the things the founding
fathers did in the past. I've looked into it in the year
of this 200th Anniversary of our Revolution, and some of
our do-gooders would have been very upset with some of
these people. Let me tell you about Benjamin Franklin,
for instance. Benjamin Franklin for three years before
the Revolution, when we were all loyal subjects of George III,
was the Assistant Postmaster of British North America. Do
you know what he was doing? He was opening that mail like
crazy. The British caught him, they took him to London,
they tried him before the Privy Council, and they found
him guilty. But before they could sentence him, he skipped
off to Paris. When he got to Paris, he designed and had
the French build him a printing press. Do you know what
he printed on the printing press? He printed some British
passports and some British currencies, but mostly he
(
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printed fabricated atrocity stories for insertion
in the British press.
Now George Washington who understood the value
of secrecy once wrote a letter to his Chief of Intel-
ligence in New Jersey, Colonel Elias Dayton, and this
is what he said: "The necessity of procuring good
Intelligence is apparent and need not be further urged--
all that remains for me to add, is, that you keep the
whole matter as secret as possible. For upon Secrecy,
Success depends in most Enterprizes of the kind, and
for want of it, they are generally defeated, however
well planned and promising a favourable issue. I am,
Sir, your obedient servant, George Washington."
One day in Connecticut, George Washington was
spending the night at the home of some friends, sym-
pathizers of the American Revolution, Mr. and Mrs. Holcomb,
and in the morning he thanked the Holcombs and climbed up
on his horse to ride on. Mrs. Holcomb came out to see
him off and she said, "General, pray where do you ride
tonight?" General Washington leaned down in the saddle
and he said, "Madame., can you keep a secret?" She said,
"Of course." He replied, "So can I, Madame," tipped his
hat and rode on.
The idea that the founding fathers were dying to
tell everybody everything is just historically inaccurate.
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They weren't. Thomas Jefferson once got a group of men
together and promised them five thousand pounds if they
would go behind the British lines and kidnap Benedict
Arnold. He said, "Don't go there and try to fight your
way in. That will get you in trouble." He said, "Win
his confidence and when you have worked your way in and
won his confidence, bring him to me so that this greatest
of traitors may receive the fate he so richly deserves."
You hear all about the opposition to our helping
our friends abroad--so-called covert action, dirty tricks,
or however they want to phrase it. I would just like a
few Americans to reflect on how they think we got Texas
or California or Hawaii. Americans should be the last
people to denounce covert action since the French had
17,000 men in North America before France declared war
on Great Britain during the Revolution. The Navy knows
all about the battle between the Bonhomme Richard and
the Serapis. What was the Bonhomme Richard? The Bonhomme
Richard was a French ship that was slipped under the table
to John Paul Jones, loaded with gunpowder and cannon, in
complete violation of the state of neutrality with which
France found itself with Great Britain at that time.
So they are trying to tell the American people that
something terrible happened that had never happened before.
Yes, there have been abuses. Yes, there have been wrong
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things done. But if you put that up against the fact
that we have provided our leaders with what I believe
is as good information as has been placed before any
government at any time in history. It isn't perfect.
There are a lot of things that go wrong. President
Kennedy once told us, "You are doomed to be pilloried
for your failures and to have your successes passed
over in silence."
What has the impact of all this been on us? I
would like to be able to tell you that all of this has
caused our foreign friends to shy away from us and have
nothing to do with us. That is not true. They are
steadfast and good friends and they have not done that.
They have understood that this is a difficult time with
us. We have assured them that we would not give away
secrets which were not American secrets which had been
entrusted to us by friendly foreign governments.
We have today four times as many young people
applying to work in the Central Intelligence Agency as
at any time in its history. .We have a very small rate
of people leaving. Yes, we have lost some people. Yes,
we have lost some sources. But nothing like you would
imagine from the hullaballo that was created here. Of
course, I must say, the volume was louder here than
anywhere else. Most foreigners were somewhat puzzled
by this and wondered what these tribal penitential cyclic
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American rites are where we beat ourselves in the bosom
at regular intervals every 20 or 25 years.
Not long ago the Prime Minister of an Asiatic
country said to me, "How can I be on your side. Your
country is in complete disarray. Your President and
your Congress are squabbling like cats. You are making
a striptease of your intelligence service. How can I
be on your side?" I said, "Prime Minister, I am astounded
that an intelligent man like you could possibly fall into
the same errors as Adolph Hitler and William II in taking
seriously the cyclic penitential American tribal rites.
You must not be deceived by these." I was a young corporal
in the American Army in the summer of 1941. The Germans
had occupied all of Western Europe. They were moving
towards Moscow at 15 miles a day and the United States
Congress voted universal military service by a majority
of one vote. How do you think the Japanese read that
message? The existence of an effective intelligence
capability on the part of the United States and its allies
is one of the greatest deterrents against anyone attempting
any Pearl Harbor again. In the early '60s in this country,
we had a great debate about a missile gap, whether. there
was a missile gap or not. That would be impossible today.
We know what they have and they know that we know what
they have.
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In the past intelligence has always been thought
of as part of making war on somebody. It is also a force
for peace. No one could sign an arms limitation agree-
ment if he didn't have the means of verifying whether
it was being lived up to or not. And we have that means
of verifying. I think we have come through a very con-
siderable storm. I think we have come through it in
remarkably good shape. As far as I can tell you about
the people in the American intelligence community, in
CIA, in the Defense Intelligence, in Service Intelligence,
they are of good heart. They know what they are doing
is essential if we are to survive and they know that
if there is one thing that you cannot have at this time
in this century, it is to have your nation cruelly and
strategically surprised. If you look around at the
situation in which we and our allies find ourselves,
we cannot fail. If we do, who will pick up the torch
of human freedom. Thank you very much.
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ADDRESS
by
LIEUTENANT GENERAL VERNON A. WALTERS
before
POMPANO BEACH COUNCIL
NAVY LEAGUE OF THE UNITED STATES
Lighthouse Point, Florida
17 June 1976
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Mr. President, Gentlemen, I am very happy to have this
occasion to address this Council of the Navy League. I never cease
to marvel at how much the Navy League has done to keep alive the flame
of love of country and what it means to us during some very difficult
times through which we have just come and from which, I believe, we
are now emerging. In our country everything is run by public opinion
and unless you have public opinion behind you, there is very little you
can do. Therefore, I think you have a tremendous role to play in
making the American people aware of how important it is for us to
have the armed forces that our country needs to maintain our freedom
and to join with our allies in maintaining freedom all over the world.
I am particularly pleased to be here tonight and to see present
officers of the United States Navy and the Royal Navy. As you know,
we and our British cousins had a misunderstanding two centuries ago,
a very serious misunderstanding, but since then in nearly all of the
wars in which both our countries have been involved for the cause of
human freedom, we and they have had disagreements, but in the
important things we have found ourselves together. I would just like
to tell you how happy I am to see them here. They are a very
remarkable people, and don't ever underestimate them. They always
talk in underestimation about themselves, but if you agree with them,
you will be wrong.
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have an 86-year-old British aunt. When I arrived in England I
during the war, I was 22 years old and I asked, "Where is Aunt Ethel? 'I.
The answer was, "Aunt Ethel is in the Royal Air Force." I said, "Dont
be ridiculous; she is an old woman; she must be 50." Aunt Ethel was
the Regimental Sergeant Major of the Women's Royal Air Force Depot
at Harrogate. About four months ago I was in London having lunch with
Aunt Ethel and we were at a rather fashionable restaurant, Quaglino' s,
and the headwaiter came up and with typical British understatement,
he said, "I'm dreadfully sorry, Sir, but there is a bomb scare."
And I said, "Really, where?" He said, "Here, Sir." I said, "Here! I
You mean we should leave? " He said, "Everyone else has." So I
looked around and everyone else had gone. I turned to my 86-year-
old aunt and I said, "Aunt Ethel, there is a bomb scare." She said, I
"Really, are they after you?" I said, "I don't think so. I made the
reservation under somebody else's name." "Well," she said, "that
may be, but I have not finished my fish." I said, "Aunt Ethel, I don't I
think you heard what I said. I said there is a bomb scare." She said, ,
"My clear boy, you must understand that I have been bombed many
times in my life and at my age these things simply do not have the
urgency that they do at yours, and I have not finished my fish." At
this point, the manager of the hotel in which the restaurant is located
came and in a very urgent voice, he said, "Sir, we've had a phone call,.
Will you please leave at once and take this lady with you." So I took my
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aunt firmly by the hand and I said, "Aunt, we are leaving." She said,
"In that case my wine goes with me even if my fish doesn't."
I want to talk to you a little bit about intelligence and how it is
run because there are many misconceptions about this. Someone
made reference a little while ago about the fact that I speak many
languages. This is sometimes rewarding and sometimes dangerous.
When I first came into the Army as a Private, the Master Sergeant
who was interviewing me was very taken by the fact that I spoke a
large number of languages. This was a period in our history when we
were making the President of General Motors a Lieutenant General
in the Transportation Corps and the head of RCA a Brigadier General
in the Signal Corps, so I thought, "They'll probably make me a
Lieutenant Colonel in Intelligence, but if they offer me a Majority, I'll
take it since we'll all soon be in the war and have to make sacrifices."
So we went on down the line and everybody was comparing MOS's, and
I said, "What are MOS' s? " And they said, "That's your Military
Occupational Specialty. That's what you are going to do in the Army."
I looked at my card and I saw where it had MOS 0506. I thought the
time had come to use some of this leadership that I was going to be
called upon for so soon, so I turned to one of the other guys and said,
"Go find out what 0506 is." It worked like magic. He practically
saluted and went off and came back with a slightly dazed look on his
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face. He said, "0506 is a truck driver." I said, "Oh, somebody's
made a mistake." No one had and guess who drove a truck for quite
a while.
But one day, even in an army without computers, they plucked me
out of this and sent me off to the Army's Military Intelligence Training
Center at Camp Ritchie, Maryland. We Americans have always had a
very curious view of Intelligence -- that it wasn't really American or that
there was something dirty about it and so forth -- and we really haven't
done much about it between the wars until recent years. When I got
to that Camp, there was an American Colonel who was nominally the
Commandant, but it was really being run by a British Colonel. That
was the state of American intelligence one year after we were in the
war.
We have always had good intelligence. We have always dismantled,
it between the wars. The wreckers have gotten to us and convinced us
that it was immoral or wrong and so forth and we have undone it. Well,
that is not true. All of our leaders throughout our history have used it
and they have used it very successfully. We need it more today than
at any other time in the past because we face a greater threat than we
have ever faced in the whole of our national history. This is the first
time in our history that someone has had the capability of damaging
the United States seriously or even mortally, of inflicting great
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damage on us internally. Therefore we have more need to know
what is going on in the world than we have ever had before.
In the world as we used to know it, there was time, there was
space, there were other powers between us and potential aggressors,
and various other circumstances that we do not enjoy to the same
degree. The world has shrunk. Today the world in which we live is
actually far smaller, even if you take account of the ships crossing the
ocean and everything else, than it was just a few years ago. So we
must know what is going on about us, what threats there are against
us. The lead time of modern equipment is such that if you just find
out that somebody has got some development, it is going to take you
two, three, four or five years to develop some counter to it. Now,
in the old days you were able to do these things much more quickly,
but not totally. When the Germans produced the magnetic mine,
some answer was found very quickly for that, but many of these
answers come in an indirect way from the need for intelligence.
Radar, one of the greatest developments of our time, which was
so instrumental in the British victory at Matapan, was initially
developed as a means of reconnaissance or intelligence to keep track
of other people's ships and airplanes. In fact, the first airplane ever
tracked by British radar before World War II was Neville Chamberlain's
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airplane returning from Munich. They had only one year between then'
and the outbreak of war. You do not want to be caught by surprise
because to take effective countermeasures takes longer than that today.
As I said last night in another talk which some of you may have
heard, I am convinced that intelligence is the oldest profession.
There are other professions, one specifically, which is alleged to
be older, but I always claim that before that other one could operate,
people had to know where it was. Therefore, intelligence is the
oldest profession in the world. In fact, you will recall spies were
sent into the land of Canaan thousands of years ago. Nobody who wantS
to conduct an organized society can do it without knowing what the poten-
tial threats to that society are. We face today potential threats from
countries that are larger than we are, that have more people, and that
have a kind of government which is willing to turn a far larger
percentage of the gross national product into military expenditures.
We look at the Soviet Union today and we see a country which is
spending more money on defense than we are and is spending it out
of a gross national product less than half as large as ours. One
cannot help wondering, when they are imposing this kind of sacrifice
on their people, why this is being done. As we look around the world '
today, we see the Soviet Union deploying five new systems of
intercontinental ballistic missiles, each more modern, more accurate,
and capable of carrying a heavier warhead than the system it is
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replacing. We see the Soviet Union building other formidable
missiles and putting missiles aboard their submarines which can
reach the United States from their home port waters. We see the
Soviet Union's navy going from a coast-guard-type navy to a blue-
water navy able to present Soviet power all over the world. We have
seen the Soviets developing their air force, developing aircraft with a
capability against the United States,. We see them building larger and
more powerful submarines than any they have built up to now with
more tubes for launching missiles than the ones they have had up
to now. We see them updating their ground forces. We see them
filling them in with the logistical and support units they did not used
to have. We see the tremendous sacrifices they are imposing on their
people to do this. What their intentions are is something else, but the
fact is they have the most formidable collection of power that has been
arrayed against the United States and its allies in the whole of history.
No nation, not even Germany, has maintained armed forces of this
size in being in peacetime. There is the ever-present question before
us of what do they intend to do with it? We see a tremendous scientific
and research effort going on. We see them pushing this almost
exclusively in the military area. Soviet research and development
in other areas is a definitely much lower keyed thing than research
and development in the military area. Many visitors to Russia are
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startled because in the best hotels the window panes are of such
poor quality glass that they distort the picture on the outside. But
let me assure you the Soviets are quite capable of making a plexiglass
nose for a bomber that does not distort because this is the area where'
they are concentrating the productive genius of a very great people.
We see Mr. Breznev who tells us, yes, he is for detente, but at the
same time making this tremendous military effort right across the
board.
There is a great detente story I heard the other day that I think
is very appropriate. First of all, there is a Russian proverb I would I
like to mention. The Russians love proverbs, and some of the greateSt
ammunition you can have when talking to a Russian is to have a Russian
proverb that you can throw at him at the right time. They have some
great proverbs and one of them is: "When you make friends with a bea4,
do not let go of your ax." That is not we saying it. They are saying it.
The detente story was of two young Americans who went to MoscoW
and were being taken around by a young Russian. He took them to the,
Kremlin and the Novodevechye Monastery and the Lenin University an.
the Lumumba University and then finally to the zoo where they saw a
whole number of unusual animals . They went along the cages and
they finally came to this great big cage where there was a huge
Russian bear, eight feet tall weighing five hundred pounds, and in the
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same cage was a small white lamb. The Americans were puzzled
as to why the Russians would put the two of them in the same cage.
They turned to the young Russian and they said, "Why do you put these
two animals in the same cage?" "Oh," he said, "This is to prove that
peaceful ocexistence is possible." One of the young Americans said,
"Well, I must say it is pretty impressive." The other said, "Yes,
it sure is convincing." The young Russian looked around and seeing
no one, bent over and said, "Of course, you understand, every
morning we have to put in a new lamb, but as long as you don't run
out of lambs there is no problem."
Obviously, all of us hope that we can work out some way of
peaceful coexistence with the Russians but this has got to be a two-
way street. No agreement in which one side derives all, the advantages
can last. You've got to have it working to the advantage of both sides.
Both sides have got to have the feeling they are getting something out
of it. We do have one great advantage in negotiating with them today.
That is the fact that we have the kind of intelligence which enables us
to know if they are cheating. In the 1960's we had a great debate as
to whether there was a missile gap between the United States and the
Soviet Union. Such a gap would be impossible today. We know what
they have and, more important, they know that we know. As a matter
of fact, it is quite interesting at some of the SALT Talks when we are
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having discussions with the Russian military and they say to us, "Why
are you telling all our civilians about these things. They are not
supposed to know." That is, the civilians on the Russian Delegation
are not supposed to know what the Russians have got. We have the
means of checking on them and they know it. We have the means
thanks to the technological genius of the American people.
We are a slow people to move, but when we move, we move
quickly. I was a young Corporal in the American Army in 1941 and
at that time, the Germans had overrun all of Western Europe and they
were moving towards Moscow at 15 miles a day on a thousand-mile-
long front. The United States Congress voted for universal military
service by a majority of one vote. What message do you think that
sent to the Japanese? They acted on it because five months later they
attacked us and we had to go to war.
Pearl Harbor, in the investigation that followed, showed that
squirrelled away in various parts of the U.S. Government was enough
information to tell us that something like this was quite likely to ha.ppela.
But eirerybody was sitting jealously on his own little piece of information
and there was no central place where all of that information could be
brought together and that resulted in 1947, after the investigation of
Pearl Harbor, in the creation of the Central Intelligence Agency.
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There is a widespread misunderstanding of how intelligence
operates in the United States. That is one of the things I would like
to talk to you about. Intelligence operates in many ways. We have what
we call the Intelligence Community which is made up of the three
armed services intelligence organizations, of the Defense Intelligence
Agency, of the National Security Agency, of the FBI, the Central
Intelligence Agency, the State Department, the Treasury Department,
the Atomic Energy people and the Justice Department through the FBI.
There is a widespread delusion that everybody is sitting on his own
private little piece of information jealously preventing everybody
else from looking at it. That isn't the way it happens. We are all
working from the same data. When an intelligence telegram comes
into CIA, it doesn't go just to CIA. It goes to Defense Intelligence
and to whichever of the Armed Services is interested in it. We have
disagreements among our analysts and we have disagreements among
our services. We produce estimates or studies. They may be
produced in Defense or they may be produced in CIA. But essentially
all parties who have an interest in them in the Intelligence Community
cooperate in this study. You don't always get everybody to agree and
I'm glad that you don't, but you have different points of view. For
instance, you will get a study that will go forward and you will see in
the study: "CIA and Army agree with this. The Navy and the Air
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Force disagree and think something else." So the policy makers
who must develop our foreign policy and make the decisions which
govern our country's conduct are aware of the fact that there is not
universal agreement within the Intelligence Community on this. They I
are aware of who disagrees and they are aware of the reasons why
they disagree.
The other thing I want to stress particularly is that the people
who work in intelligence, whether it be in the services or in CIA,
are not part of the policy making of the United States. We simply
provide intelligence. The policy makers will then say to us: "What
are the possible options we can follow and what would be the
consequences of each one?" We will then make a study and say:
"If you do option one, this will happen. If you do option two, that
will happen. If you do option three, this will happen. If you do
option four, that will happen." But we do not say, nor are we asked, I
which one of those options the United States ought to adopt. I had this I
brought home to me very clearly one day. I was down at the White
House, while the Director was away, at a meeting presided over by
Dr. Kissinger, and after I had reviewed the various options and the
possible consequences of each one, he then went around the table to
State, Defense, Treasury and everybody asking them which one of
the options they thought we should adopt. State said one, Treasury
said two, Defense said four and I said three. He said, "You don't
have ROV?roVarFoPikilgaSgt2662MWCATRI3INgMOMAV06/660VaaiVie
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CIA or anybody in the Intelligence Community is a sort of state within
a state supporting its own little private friends and having policies
that are different from the policies of the United States Government
is nonsense.
Yes, we have had kooks who have done wrong things or have
used bad judgment. I cannot tell you we haven't. After an, 76,000
people have gone through the CIA since it was founded and if you get
any group that large, you're going to have some nuts, you are going
to have some odd people, and you are going to have some people show
bad judgment.
You have all heard loose talk about criminal action and horrible
things that were done. What are the facts? The facts are that after all
this evidence had been analyzed, not one single person in CIA has been
condemned for any crime or found guilty of any crime by any court in
the United States. Not enough evidence has been marshalled to cause
any grand jury anywhere in the United States to indict anybody in CIA
for doing anything wrong. But if you read the newspapers and you
listen to television, you have the impression that monstrous crimes
have been committed against the American people on a gigantic scale.
I talked a little about this last night and I don't want to repeat it,
but it is important that you have the ammunition and you know what the
facts are. You had an impression conveyed to the American people
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that there was widespread wiretapping of the American public and
everybody's conversations were being listened to, that the mail was
being opened indiscriminately. Let me just give you a few facts
concerning that. The Director of Central Intelligence is the only
person in the United States who by law is charged with the protection
of his sources and methods. That means he must watch over the
security of the intelligence that comes to him and how it is handled.
Actually, you could loosely interpret that to do almost anything as
far as our own people are concerned. And, in fact, the break-ins
you heard of were break-ins only of CIA people who were suspected
of taking documents home with them. Okay, we shouldn't have done
it if you have one interpretation of the law. But if you take strictly
the interpretation of the charge of the Director to make sure that his
sources are protected, you have at least an explanation of why it was
done.
On the telephone taps, the impression was given that "big brother"
was listening to everything. The CIA is alleged to have conducted 32
telephone taps in 27 years. That is a little more than one per year.
I'm not telling you that all of these were justified. What I am telling
you is that the perspective has been distorted beyond recognition --
the ear of "big brother" listening to everything.
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The mail intercept. We are carrying on as though the mail has
never been opened. Anybody here who is old enough to have been in
World War II knows that he used to read his men's mail officially --
they knew it, he knew it and everybody knew it -- presumably to
prevent enemies of the United States from acquiring valuable
information. But all of a sudden it is converted into a monstrous
6rime. The Congress has told us they don't want us to do it and we
won't do it, but Whose mail was being opened? The only mail being
opened by the CIA and the FBI was mail going to or from the Soviet
Union or Communist China. The idea was conveyed that mail going
from Fort Lauderdale to Omaha or San Francisco to Boston was
being opened. It was not being opened. The only letters that were
opened were letters which (a) had already been opened by the place
where they came from or (b) were going to be opened when they got
to where they were going. This was presented as a great threat to
the freedom of the American people.
An enormous effort, a malicious, wicked effort, has been made
to convince the American people that the real threat to our freedom
comes from the CIA and the FBI or the other members of the
Intelligence Community. The CIA has never had the power to arrest
anybody. How can you run a gestapo if you can't arrest anybody?
As I said, I cannot tell you that there have not been things done which
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should not have been done. But of course, the perception of the
American people changes in what they want done according to the
degree of threat they feel. After all, during our Civil War when
President Lincoln found out that the Maryland State Assembly was
about to vote Maryland out of the Union, he sent Federal troops over
and closed down the Maryland State Assembly. To my knowledge
there is nothing in the Constitution of the United States that authorizes
the President of the United States to use Federal troops to close down
the assembly of a state. This was done. Regrettably, he had to use
artillery on the Copperheads in New York and a very large number of
people were killed.
If we attempt to judge the past in the light of the present, we are
always going to get a distorted picture. What would we think of our
Founding Fathers who owned slaves, who didn't give universal suffrage?
If we judge them by our standards, this was monstrous. Most of the
things that you hear reproached in the Intelligence Community are
things that were done in the'50s or at the latest in the early '60s. The
perception of the world was different. The perception of urgency was
different in those days. We face a different time now where, oddly
enough, we seem to feel that there is less of a threat at a time when
the threat is far greater. In the '50s and '60s the Soviet Union simply I
did not have the capability of really doing us harm. They do now and
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for some odd reason our people do not feel as threatened today in
general as they did 15 years ago. Fifteen years ago at the time of
the Cuban missile crisis Florida may have been in danger but the rest
of the United States was not. Today all of the United States is within
the range of Russian weapons, either from the Soviet Union or from
their submarines. Today a large part of the United States can be
reached by Russian aircraft. On one-way missions nearly all of it
could be reached by Soviet aircraft. We have to live with the times
as we go along. We have just been given a list of restrictions handed
down by the President and we fully intend to observe those restrictions.
People have asked me what my position is on assassination. First
of all, remember, after all this loose assassination talk, the ultimate
finding was that nobody was ever assassinated. My own position is
that assassination is wrong. It is against the law of God. It is against
the law of man, and it doesn't work. You simply get another fanatic
even more fanatic than the first one, in the light of what has happened.
It is difficult in a democratic society to run an intelligence agency.
We,are the only democratic people I know who try to run ours in the
full light of day. We may be able to do it. After all, we're the only
people who have gone to the moon. If we are successful in running
it in that way, we should be very much aware of the fact that we will
be the only people in history who ever have. Other democratic
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countries have intelligence services but they do not conduct a public
striptease of them. They do not empty the pockets of their intelligeitce
service before the general public. They have found means of correcting
abuses discreetly, quietly and efficiently. You cannot have large
numbers of people without some forms of abuse.
The other day a Congressman said to me, "How can you stop the
abuses in intelligence?" I said, "I know of only one way. Stop usi4
human beings." If you have large numbers of human beings, and
every one of you who has ever had a unit under him knows, there are
some eightballs and some bad apples. You try to restrict them. YOU
try to keep them under control. You punish them if they do somethizig
wrong. But if anybody tells you, "I have a recipe for stopping all of
this forever," he is simply not telling you the truth. This would be a
very interesting theory if we did not face the kind of a world that we
face today.
We face two of the greatest powers in the world, both of whom
swore in greater or lesser measure to destroy the kind of a world
in Which we believe. It is a fortunate circumstance for the time beirtg
that they are kind of mad at one another. But that comes and that
goes. They were close friends a little while ago. Who knows what
will happen when Mao dies. After all, they do share a common
ideology. There is a deep feeling between them that I think we should
recognize. Each one of them is trying to use us in its ploy with the
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other. The Chinese have an old saying: "Against the near barbarians
you must use the far barbarians." That translates simply. Against
the Soviets you try to line up the Americans. The Russians, of
course, are very concerned about the Chinese because the Russians
have fought all their wars against people they generally outnumber
four to one, and the idea of fighting somebody who will outnumber them
by four to one looks to them to be sixteen times as had as the war
against the Germans and that was about as close a run thing as they .
want to be involved in. So they do have this concern with the Chinese.
The Chinese in the meantime are looking at the two powers that
they feel threaten them, namely, the Soviet Union and us, and are
making very considerable efforts in the same general direction. All
of us in the Intelligence Community owe the American people a number
of answers. We owe them answers as to the best estimate we can give
them of who will be in control of the Soviet Union five years from today
and what will their dispositions be toward us and toward our allies?
What is there in Soviet research and development today that will have
an impact on our lives tomorrow? And the same questions for China.
One of the difficult things about intelligence is that it is very hard
to quantify in the fashionable cost-effectiveness mood which pervades
our country today. Before World War II the Germans put a jeweler
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in Scapa Flow which was the home base of the British Home Fleet.
He posed as a Swiss jeweler. In 1937, '38, and '39 he did nothing.
One night in 1941 he told his German superiors that there were no
nets around the anchorages of the battleships and a German submarine
went in and sank a battleship and an aircraft carrier and amortized
that intelligence project five thousand times over. Had the Germans
had an efficiency cost effectiveness team going around, they would
have said, "In '38, '39, '40, this guy has produced nothing, purl hirn
out!"
We have this all over the world, this difficulty of explaining
intelligence to people because you cannot trumpet your successes.
If you trumpet your successes, they are not successes anymore.
If sornebody knows that someone is looking in through that window,
they will either pull the curtains or turn the lights out. So it's
almost impossible. People keep saying, "Why don't you have a program
like the FBI and point out the successes you have had? "The successes
we've had are by methods we are still using and if we describe these,
theY will either find some method of countering them or they will
change their method of operation so that we will no longer be able
to keep track of them. President Kennedy told us, "You are doomed
to be pilloried for your failures and to have your successes passed ,
over in silence."
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It takes a very special kind of people to work in intelligence.
Anybody who chooses the armed forces as a career has got to be
someone who is not really thinking of material advantage, and anyone
who chooses intelligence as a career must not expect to have any
public satisfaction. The satisfactions you have are in your heart
when you know what you have done and you have achieved something
tremendous and, believe me, I cannot go into the detail hut we have
achieved some fantastic things -- as great as going to the moon --
in the field of intelligence. But if I were to tell you about them,
their effectiveness would stop tomorrow morning. We are condemned
to live in this kind of an atmosphere.
I am not an old CIA man. I came there four years ago. But I
want to tell you these are fantastic people. Under a bombardment
which has no parallel in American history, they have continued to
produce superb intelligence. They are Americans just like everybody
else in this room. They live by the same standards of right and
wrong. They have no means of defending themselves against the
attacks. They have no means of making their voices heard to repel
these false charges, to repel these false accusations. If they do, it
simply is not printed. I went down to the National Press Club in
Washington where I spoke for 45 minutes to the Society of Professional
Journalists. I answered questions for an hour. There was not one
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word about it in either of the Washington newspapers the next morning.
We simply have to go forward and do what we know must be done if
our country and freedom are to survive. We have to go forward
together with our allies who make a tremendous contribution to the
total fund of our knowledge, who have skills and abilities and access
in areas that we do not and whose collaboration is essential.
One of the great jobs I have had in the last years since this
thing started has been to go around and see our friends all over the
world and assure them that we were not going to destroy our intelligence
capability and that we were not going to give away the secrets that
they had entrusted to us and which were fundamentally not American
secrets. They belonged to other powers. And we have kept to that.
We have never betrayed them and they have stood steadfastly by our
side. In many areas where we have been prevented from doing
something, they have stepped in and done it because they know from
past experience -- the continental Europeans who have been occupied,
the British who lived on that island surrounded from Norway to the
Spanish border by enemies. --what is at stake. We are a young people.
We are at the beginning of our career and we have achieved great th&ngs,
but we live in a world that as a people we have not known before. The
world is no longer far away. The world is on top of us. You cannot
run away from history because history follows you.
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In the period immediately preceding World War II we were
saying to the British and French, "Why don't you stop Hitler?"
But they thought it could be weathered through and they were led to
a great war that resulted in 25 million lives lost. It is always the
bystanders that want someone else to do something. We are
criticized by many people all over the world. I think we just have
to learn that it is perhaps in the world more important to be respected
than to be loved. We Americans have a passion to be loved by
everybody. It would be far better for us if we were respected and
perhaps not loved as much. Because we are not going to be loved.
The rich and the powerful are not loved. Our British colleagues who
have lived through a long period of this know this. When a nation is
rich and powerful, its enemies are everywhere. The jealous and the
envious are everywhere seeking to bring it down in some way. The
most important thing is to be respected. If you are respected, people
will not deal lightly with you. I must say, I suppose, I am an old
reactionary, but I have a great deal of good to say for Lord Palmerston
who, when anybody trampled on his people, had a ship off the coast and
they were not trampled on much thereafter. The only real setback
was Bolivia. The Bolivians killed a British Consul and Queen Victoria
demanded that a warship be sent to punish the Bolivians. She was then
informed that Bolivia had no seacoast and was therefore not punishable.
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We face another problem. In addition to those I have mentioned,
we face the problem of international terrorism which is organized
today like a conspiracy all over the world. We see these insane blind
actions like the murder of our Ambassador in Khartoum, the murder
of our Ambassador in Beirut. We see these bombs being set off that
are obviously going to hit only innocent people in an attempt to create
an atmosphere of terror that will pressure the law abiding into giving
En this most technical of developed age we live in an atmosphere
of lawlessness which has no parallel since the dark ages. It is a
blind, mindless sort of thing. It is simply to create a state of fear so
great that the forces of law and order will supinely lie down or give in.
This international terrorism is not tightly connected but it is loosely
in touch with one another. We have Venezuelans killing people in
France and other people killing other people elsewhere. There is
some sort of loose organization between all this and the idea is to
cow the free nations of the world.
"it is an odd thing that most of the New Leftists claim to be as
much against the Soviet Union as they are against the United States.
They have killed American Ambassadors; they have bombed American
installations; they have done all sorts of things to us, but they have
never done them to the Soviet Union. They only talk against them,
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but they take action against the free nations. They highjack the
aircraft of the free nations. Who has ever heard of a Soviet airplane
being highjacked outside the Soviet Union. Yet, how many airplanes
of other nations have been highjacked? There is an old saying that
if it has a mane like a lion, paws like a lion, roars like a lion, there
is a fair chance that it may be a lion. If this action is always taken
against the free world and never against the other side, one cannot
help but wonder. After all, who benefits by it? Who benefits by the
destruction of the ideas of family, country, flag and religion in the
Western nations? Who benefits if we in the West lose our resolution
and resolve? You can't help but wonder.
So we have a very tough proposition and in this you in the Navy
League have a tremendous task to perform to keep alive the flame of
patriotism, the understanding of the American people that we must
have the forces to protect this society which with all its shortcomings
and all its defects has still given a larger number of our people more
of the good things of life than any other society man has been able to
devise. And so we have this task before us, all of us who live in the
20 percent of mankind who enjoy freedom, of keeping that torch
burning brightly. There is no alternative. If we drop it, no one will
pick it up. And who knows how long the night will last. Thank you
very much.
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