WORLD AFFAIRS COUNCIL BOSTON

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80B01554R002900130001-0
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 14
• Document Creation Date: December 9, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 25, 2001
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: November 30, 1978
• Content Type: SPEECH

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WORLD AFFAIRS COUNCIL
Boston
30 November 1978
Thank you very much, Mr. Ambassador, ladies and gentlemen of the
World Affairs Council. It's always a treat for me to come back to
Boston, having gone to college at Amherst for a couple of years, to come
down here to see the big city lights with the young college boys fre-
quently and, of course, there was Wellesley and a few other things.
My last visit to Boston was 3-1/2 years ago when I came up here
in the Flagship of the Second Fleet to be host for the visit of the two
Soviet destroyers that came in here as you may all recall, and I had an
exciting five days with the Soviet admiral in charge of that group. The
night before he arrived, however, I gave a dinner party right there at
that pier, for Ambassador Dobrynin who had come up, of course, for the
occasion. And after the dinner I presented him with a plaque of the
Commander of the Second Fleet and said this was my memento to him and I
would be pleased if he would accept it. A few weeks ago I met him for
the next time at a cocktail party in Washington and, as alert and sharp
as he is, he said, "Admiral, I want you to know I have that plaque in my
office in Moscow." I guess he didn't want me to check by coming to his
office in Washington. And somebody standing next to us said, "Mr.
Ambassador, did you have that plaque checked to see that there was a
microphone bug in it?" Ambassador Dobrynin, just sharp as a tack, said,
"No, I know the Admiral was really in the Navy then." And I said, "Wait
til I see you next and offer you my CIA plaque, Mr. Ambassador."
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I'm really pleased that you're interested in the intelligence func-
tion of our country and what I'd like to talk with you about this after-
noon is an introspection that we've been going through in intelligence;
looking at ourselves to review what our roles for our country really
are and what we, intelligence operators of the country, require in order
to perform those roles successfully. Now clearly, a part of the impulse
for this introspection comes from the many accusations of abuses of
intelligence over the past few years--some of them correct, many of them
not or exaggerated. But the impulse also comes from the very marked
change in environment and in techniques and capabilities of intelligence
that confront us today.
For instance, look at the change in environment.- Back when
Ambassador Lodge voted on the foundation of the intelligence community
structure, we were by far the strongest military power on earth. We
were totally independent economically and most of the free world nations
took their political cues from us. Look how different the world is
today. We are much nearer a situation of military parity. We are in
a condition of economic interdependence and if you look at the voting_
record in the United Nations, you can see that even the smallest nations
are independent on the political scene.
And what does that mean to you and me? It means that there are
much more likely to be actions that could be inimical to our country
that are taken independently by these other countries in their best
interest, but perhaps not in ours. And, in turn, that means, I believe,
that we must have good information if we are going to be able to make
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good decisions in these circumstances. We must know what's going on
around the world. Whether you call it the Central Intelligence Agency
or something else, we simply must have a capability to collect informa-
tion and to provide it to our policy and decision makers. In short, in
my view, today such information can well provide better leverage in many
circumstances than can the mere existence of economic and military
power.
Now the successful negotiation of agreements, such as SALT today,
are very dependent upon having good intelligence. No policy maker could
enter into such negotiations without a feeling of some assurance that he
knew what the military strength, intentions and plans of the Soviet
Union Were. And certainly, in our view, would not want us to conclude
such an agreement unless the Intelligence Community could assure the
country that we have a reasonable prospect for verifying that the other
side is adhering to it.
Now if this were the best of all possible worlds, we wouldn't have
to go out and spy to get that information. As you and I well know, it
is not the best of all possible worlds. We are a very open society, it
doesn't take much to learn what the general trend of thinking and
intentions of the American republic are. But most, or many if not most,
of the nations of the world are closed societies in our terms; societies
where you cannot, by visiting, by talking, by watching their television
or reading their newspapers, really know what they are up to. Look back
to the great wheat steal of 1972, with respect to us and the Soviet
Union, and just what the lack of some simple economic statistics did to
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us at that time. So, today,' the collection of foreign intelligence,
that is information about what is going on in other countries abroad, is
the first and the primary role of your Intelligence Community.
Now the second role is the obverse of that coin; it's what we call
counterintelligence. This is the act of preventing other people from
obtaining information which we believe we must keep private or secret.
Because we are such an open society, because there isn't much that we
can keep secret, it is very important that when we do decree that
something needs to be secret, that we be able to keep it that way. And
hence, we must be prepared to counter the actions of other nations in
trying to delve into our secrets. We cannot afford, for instance, to
develop expensive new weapons systems or complicated technical devices
for collecting intelligence and then give their details and character-
istics to other people. In most instances there are counters that can
be developed. We cannot afford to go into a SALT negotiation if the
terms of our negotiating team are going to be disclosed in advance. And
yet, today, there are foreign agents in our country trying to obtain
this kind of information. Recently Judge Webster, the Director of the
FBI, estimated that 100 Soviet KGB agents have entered this country in
recent months. Consequently, we must have the capability today to
uncover threats to our secrecy and to be able to thwart and frustrate
them. And this is the second role of American intelligence.
The third role is what we call covert political action. This
really is not an intelligence function. Intelligence is the gathering
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and analysis of information. Political action is the attempt to influ-
ence events, influence the course of events in foreign countries without
the source of that influencing being known. Over the history of the
Central Intelligence Agency, Presidents of the United States, whenever
they wanted to carry out covert political action, would assign that
responsibility to the CIA. It has, unfortunately, been the area that
has brought us the greatest number of brickbats. Why do we persist?
Why do we think it still is a role for our Intelligence Community?
Well, one of the first principals of our republic from its very beginning
has been to eschew the use of military force whenever our objectives,
our ideals could be protected or preserved by other means. We prefer
diplomacy, we prefer economic pressure, we prefer political leverage,
but there are times when none of these pressures will suffice and yet,
we don't want to resort to military force. When we look around at other
ways to influence events abroad, we often find that we may be able to
influence them but not if it is clearly recognized that it is the United
States that is doing the influencing. Let me give you a simple example.
What if, through intelligence, we discover that in a foreign country
that's democratic and where an election is going on, the Communist
opposition is being sponsored, financed, and supported by the Soviet
embassy. Should we stand by or should we get in and help with financing
and advice to the democratic element? I'm not talking about rigging an
election, I'm talking about trying to place the democratic element on a
somewhat equal footing. Well it's not a clear answer in any instance.
Each case must be judged very carefully on its own, but I assure you
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that there are friends and allies today--I think John Volpe will know
this well--who have preserved their freedom in part because of the kind
of covert political support that we have been able to give them. Over
the recent years, in my personal view, the need and applicability of
this type of covert political action is less than it has been in the
past. But I still believe we must retain that capability, it must be an
arrow in our quiver for when the right circumstance comes along.
In summary, these are three roles for the American intelligence--
the collection of information about what is going on in foreign countries,
the conduct of counterintelligence to prevent the escape of our necessary
privacy and secrecy, and thirdly, the occasional conduct of covert
political action.
Now what do we, the intelligence professionals, require in order
to carry out these three roles? Well first of all, we need the support
and the understanding of the people of this country. In a democracy, no
public institution survives and thrives if it does not have that support.
Over the years the American public has supported an intelligence function
albeit largely on faith, on the faith that there was a need for some
secret element to be conducting affairs in the interest of our country.
Unfortunately, the exposures and the accusations of recent years have,
to some degree, shaken that faith.
I personally believe that the American public is still very
strongly behind a good intelligence capability. But I also believe that
the public today want and deserve to have a better foundation than just
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faith in providing that support and understanding to us. And hence, we
are today attempting to be more open, attempting to give, within our
limits of necessary secrecy, the American public a better understanding
of what our Intelligence Community is all about. My presence here
with you today, which perhaps would not have been likely five or ten
years ago, is an earnest of that effort to keep the public as well
informed as we can.
Having said that, however, the second and necessary ingredient of
conducting good intelligence for our country is to be able to keep
some secrets. Now that sounds like a contradiction--let me explain that
one. The greatest problem that we have today-in keeping secrets is
that there are too many secrets in our government. Winston Churchill
once said if everything is secret, nothing is secret. And so today,
with a policy of greater openness, a policy of taking information
that can be downgraded and made available to the American public, what
we are really hoping to do is to reduce this corpus of classified
information that resides within the government. In the process we hope
that it is helping the American public by giving it better information,
a foundation for better public debate on issues of national importance,
but at the same time we hope it is reducing the amount of classi-
fied information and thereby helping to generate greater respect for
that which remains. Recently, in this connection, I noted an interest-
ing juxtaposition on the front page of one of our national newspapers.
In column two there was a story about an impending trial of two former
officials of the ITT Corporation for reported perjury before the Congress
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about events in Chile some years ago. The article was, in effect,
complaining the prosecution might not proceed because the Central
Intelligence Agency would refuse to release some documents necessary to
that prosecution. In the next column, there was another story about a
pending trial in New Jersey for the charge of murder, and the accused
was claiming that he needed the notes of a New York Times reporter in
order to defend himself. Those notes had been refused. You know the
case was concluded, the reporter went to jail for a period, but he never
did produce his notes.
Now while these may seem to be different cases, they are really
quite analogous. They are analogous in that in both instances there was
an effort to protect sources of information. If newsmen or intelligence
officers cannot make an understanding with an individual that this is to
be kept private, they are going to lose those sources and with it, the
information of value to each of them. You all know how strongly newspaper-
men feel about being able to protect their sources, but very often they
are quite quick to criticize us in the intelligence world for trying to
protect ours. I think this brings out a fact that we must, in this
country, regenerate an understanding that there is a necessary role for
some element of secrecy in our society. There is a need for secrecy in
every business, there is a need for secrecy in every academic institution,
in every one of our private lives, we must each have some degree of
privacy. And so,too, in government and particularly in the intelligence
function. But we must clearly recognize, that with secrets that are
kept in the government and particularly in intelligence, there are
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greater risks than in any of these other sectors I have mentioned.
There is a greater risk that the wrong things will be kept secret for
the wrong purposes, and the American public deserves to understand that
that is not the case and that what is being required to be kept secret
is in fact appropriate.
What are we doing to give that assurance today? I think we're
doing more than has ever been done before in the history of our country
or any country. To begin with, the policy of openness which I have
described to you is part of that sense of assurance. But there also are
a whole series of mechanisms that have been established to achieve this
purpose also. To begin with, we have set two basic guidelines by which
our intelligence activities are conducted. The first of these is a
principle that we will not undertake clandestine collection of intelli-
gence information if that information is available by other means.
There is no reason to accept the risks and the costs if we can obtain
the necessary information by open means. Today, for instance, one way
that we're trying to do this is to stress greater interaction between
the American intelligence community and the American business and
academic communities, which often have a great deal of very valuable
intelligence information.
The second guideline is that if we contemplate doing something in
secret, we feel that we must be able to defend that kind of an action,
at least in principle, in public. In short, we cannot disclose a
proposed secret action or it wouldn't be a secret action anymore. But
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we can, from time to time, justify to members of the Executive Branch
and the Legislative Branch, the generic types of things that we are
doing or planning to do, and ensure that they are in conformance with
American standards and with the policies of the American State Department
in conducting our foreign policy.
But beyond these two general guidelines, we have also established
some specific prohibitions on what intelligence officers will not
do. For instance, some activities are so repugnant to our national
standards -- take assassination, for instance -- that we have simply
levied a total prohibition in this area. Beyond that, there are other
activities which, while it would be too rigid to have a total prohibition,
we have established what we call injunctions. By this I mean that there
is a general rule that this kind of activity will not be carried out,
except under unusual circumstances and when properly authorized. This
principle of an injunction in general but exceptions by specific
procedures is, of course, very common in law enforcement in our country.
None of us expects a law enforcement officer to enter our homes unless
he has the proper search warrant, for instance. And so, too, in the
intelligence community we are trying to establish these various injunc-
tions and the threshhold at which there are rules and due process by
which they may be crossed in unusual circumstances.
The most revolutionary change, however, in American intelligence
today is the establishment of an oversight process external to the
Intelligence Community itself; a process.which is in both the Legisla-
tive and the Executive Branches of our government. This oversight
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process is to determine whether these guidelines, prohibitions, injunc-
tions are in fact being carried out the way they should.
The first oversight activity is known as an Intelligence Oversight
Board -- a Board of three gentlemen, former Senator Gore, former
Governor Scranton, and Mr. Tom Farmer of Washington; a Board appointed
by the President, reporting only to the President, and charged only to
check on the legality and the propriety of the activities of our Intelli-
gence Community. If anyone in my employ or any public citizen wants to
file a complaint against the way the intelligence activities are being
conducted, they may go directly to the Intelligence Oversight Board who
will investigate, then report only to the President, as to what, if
anything, should be done under the circumstance.
Beyond this, over the last two and a half years, we have established
a committee in each chamber of the Congress of the United States,
specifically and exclusively dedicated to this oversight process. These
Committees are vigorous in pursuing an understanding of what we're doing
and why; they are helpful and cooperative with us, but the relationship
between us is definitely one of supervision and oversight. We are
fully accountable to them and keep them fully informed of what is
going on. And even in the short span of time these Committees have been
in operation, I would like to say that we in the Intelligence Community
have come to recognize their positive value for us because they have a
value of requiring that we be accountable for what we do. And account-
ability is, in my view, an essential element of responsibility. You are
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Nee NW
much more judicious in making decisions when you know you're going to be
And today I think we are being more judicious in weighing not only
the benefits, but the risks of intelligence activities for our country.
But clearly, we can overdo this oversight. We can be so pro-judicious
that we have in fact have intelligence by timidity and that would, of
course, be no intelligence at all. I do not think we are tending in
that direction, but we must be alert that we are not. We must be alert
that we are treading the fine line between the benefits of accountability
and the dangers of losing out to timidity.
The Congressional committees today are developing legislation which
is called charters for our intelligence activities; charters which
will lay down what the guidelines should be, what the limits of intelli-
gence activities can be and how this oversight process will operate.
And when those charters have been laid down and enacted, we will then
know if we have found this right balance between the degree of oversight
and the degree of assurance to the American public. I'm very strongly
in support of the enactment of these Charters by the next session of the
Congress. They will give us in the intelligence world a firm foundation,
a legal foundation upon which to operate. And they will give to the
intelligence officer in the field in a foreign country or to us in the
Headquarters, a much clearer understanding of the limits to which we can
go and the style in which the country wants us to operate.
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What does all this add up to? Well, I would suggest that it means
that we are in the midst of an exciting and almost revolutionary
change in the American intelligence model. Today we are developing
what is a new model, a uniquely American model of intelligence; one
that is tailored to the standards and the values of our country,
and yet, it is tailored also to ensure that we can continue to have
the effective intelligence function which is so essential to our
country's well-being.
We are not there yet. In my view, it will take several more years
before we know whether we have achieved this right balance; several years
until 'these Charters are enacted, until these procedures are established
and we find out if we are, in fact, having too much oversight, which is
leading to leaks and timidity, or too little oversight, which is leading
to not enough assurance to the American public. I think we're tending
in very much the right direction. I'm confident the outcome is going to
be good, but we, as I said, are not there yet. In the process of
getting there, we are going to need the support, the understanding of
the American public, the continued appreciation for the efforts we are
trying to make and the importance of the intelligence function to our
country in the kind of a world we live in today. The fact that you've
asked me to be here and have listened so patiently is clearly indicative
of your interest, your understanding, I'm most appreciative for it.
Thank you.
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