CIA ON CIA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80-01601R001200640001-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 9, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 9, 2001
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: May 1, 1971
• Content Type: NSPR

Approved For Release=2OU,1/a3O4~-tIA-RDP
1 U AY 1971 STATINTL
A, ~'i1 Ci practices. Such small ad hoc bodies cannot possibly
cope with the melti-agancies, their billions of dollars,
"I am the head of the si!cnt senoice and crnno: and their hundreds of thousands of o Ie; in suer
advertise my wares."- Allen Dulles, =957- p- p
the Intelligence community... The core question, as
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flattered that theirs was the forum chosen by Mr.
Richard Helms, director of Central Intelligence and
concurrently director of the Central Intelligence
Agency, for his first public speech in 1o years. "The
quality of foreign intelligence available to the United
States in 1971," he told the editors in a self-serving
assessment, "is better than it has ever been before."
It would have been interesting had Mr. Helms at-
tempted a correlation between value and volume.
Benjamin Welles in The New York Times Sunday
Magazine (April iS, 197-1) breaks down the daily
mountain of intelligence information as "50 percent
from overt sources such as periodicals, 35 percent from
electronics [satellites and radio], and the remaining 15
percent from agents. How important is the 15 percent?
Mr. Helms noted the "growing criticism" of CIA,
but he avoided any discussion of its cause. The "intel-
ligence" function of the agency is not what has pro-
voked all the controversy. Criticism has centered not STATINTL
on "spying," but on CIA's political action abroad-
the suborning of political leaders, labor union o`icials,
scholars, students, journalists and anyone else who-
can be bought. CIA has been criticized for straying
from information gathering onto the path of manipula-
tion of foundations and such organizations as the
National Student Association or Radio Free Europe
or the AFL-CIO. Through liaison with foreign police
and security services, the CIA tries to keep track of
foreign "subversives," frequently defined as those who
want to depose the government in power. Each report
it manages to secure from its clandestine sources has
a price in terms of closer alliance with one reactionary
regime after another - as in Greece and numerous
countries in Asia and Latin America. The complicity
is no secret to the host government, or to the Com-
munists, only to the American taxpayer.
Mr. Helms' point that "CIA is not and cannot be
its own master" is the most difficult to accept, even
from the honorable man that Mr. Helms unquestion
ably is. To be sure, there is a review system, but it is
more shadow than substance. The President's foreign
intelligence- advisory board, which is supposed to
analyze a $4 billion Intelligence program, is char-
acterized by inattention, fatigue and a charming lack
of expertise. There is only the most cursory inspection
and oversight of CIA by "elements of the Appropria-
tions and Armed Services Committees," which from
time to time raise their hands in benediction over any
Intelligence presentation. The average congressional
"watchdog" is Ion,:, in the tooth, and prefers not to
receive CIA-RDP80-01601 R001200640001-1
fessing in advance lack of training in sound security
 Approved For Release 2001/03/04: CIA-R
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17 12-RIL 1911
he DiseaS._!sthe, Psychology Of tt-le Colet WC111, - STATINTL
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In the historic steel ccizurc case of -1952 Justice Jack-
son said that, "what is at stake is the equilibrium of
our constitutional systenn." Now, after 20 years marked
by Iepeated, and almost routine, Invasions by the
executive of the war-making posers assigned by the
Constitution to Congress, we can see that more is at
stake even Ciotti the constitutioil"l princtple of the
separation of powers. At stake is the age-long effort
of men to fix effective limits to government, the recon-
ciliation of the claims of freedom and of security, the
fateful issue of. peace or ivar, an issue fateful not for
the American people alone, nor alone for the stricken
HE,,:aY STECLE Co}r\IAGER is professor of !'?listory et
Anihersf Co!!ege. His m;;Cn;my boo'_s incur : -The Arneri-
can Mind; Freedom, Loyalty, D:s~ertt; The Ellie and the
'Grayartd The J. "Id Proems of I-Iistoiy.
peoples of. southeast Asia but for the entire world.
It is not suf1icienliy realized that the kind of military
intervention we have witnessed in the past quarter
century is, if not wholly unprecedented, clearly a
departure from a long and deeply rooted tradition.
Since the Neutrality Proclamation of :1793 that tradition
has been one of nonintervention. `',lmashington, and his
cabinet, refused to 'intervene in the wars between
France and her enemies even though the United States
was far tilore deeply "committed"to come to the aid
of France by the term's of the Treaty of Alliance of
2773, than she was to intervene in Vietnam by the
terms of the SEATO Treaty. Notwithstanding almost
universal sympathy for the peoples of Latin America.
who sought to throw off Spanish ru'.e, we did not
intervene militarily in that conflict. The ideas of
"Manifest Destiny and "Young America" dictated ?
support to peoples everywhere strugglin-y to throw
off ancient tyrannies, but no President intervened'
militarily in the Greek struggle for indepcnc'ence from
Turkey, the Italian uprisings against Austria, the
Hungarian revolution of 184S or other internal revo-
lutions of that fateful year, Gari'balcli's fight for Italian
independence, the many Irish uprisings against Britain,
in Ireland and even. in Canada.- close to home, that-
or even mnirrbilc diets, the ten-year war of the Cubans
against their Spanish overlords from 1E6S-73. Nor, in
more modern tulles, did Presidents see fit to intervene
L
'bell, 1f of Jcl~rish victim of pogro ls, Tlirkis,l gang- go
on rlilcs aa?ay_ eac :tr fulfill "colnrnitnlents" ih1t are
Clde against Armenians, Franco 's overthror: of the never made clear a'in! that Other 113:bolls (pled"ed to
Loyalist regime PW&V6 l`Ftbf 3/041-CIA-t 1 SWIR00r140064: 0011 tfr~'
always wise is a question we need not raise here. I
point here is that in none of these situations did the
Executive think it pr per, or legal, to use his powers
as Commander-in-Chic or as chief organ of foreign
relations to commit t:eUnited States to military inter-
ventlon in distant la:- . With the sole exception Of
McKinley's unnecess-y participation in the Boxer
Expedition, that eonccLt of executive powers belongs
to the past quarter cc Iin?y. And if it should be asked
why the United S!ate;rhould refrain from intervention
in the intern; l stria-1s of other nations, even ?iv11en
her synlpatli is ar& &Cply involved and her interests
enlister, it is pcrnat 21ff icicnt to say that few of us
'
would be prepared to endorse a principle that would
have justified the intreacntlon of Britain and France in
the Arleric