FORGING CONVENTION
Document Type:
Collection:
Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST):
CIA-RDP80B01554R003000110001-0
Release Decision:
RIFPUB
Original Classification:
K
Document Page Count:
20
Document Creation Date:
December 9, 2016
Document Release Date:
July 25, 2001
Sequence Number:
1
Case Number:
Publication Date:
April 30, 1979
Content Type:
SPEECH
File:
Attachment | Size |
---|---|
CIA-RDP80B01554R003000110001-0.pdf | 807.64 KB |
Body:
Final Transcript of
Approved For *ease 2001/08/07 : CIA-RDP80B0155 0300011Op61.0 10 May 1979
Forging Convention
Phoenix, Arizona
30 April 1979
Good morning, fellow forgers. It may not have occured to you but I
have a forging department too. You deal in metal forging, I deal in paper
forgery. We have lots in common. I have had the privilege of being
associated with our nation's intelligence activities now for just a little
over two years. I have learned a lot, it has been exciting, new things
like forging and other activities, but what has really impressed me perhaps
most in these two years has been the degree, the rate of change that is
taking place in the intelligence activities of our country. The change is
fundamental, far reaching and I believe, already, beneficial. It isn't
change that we just thought up and instituted, it is change that has really
been forced upon us by trends in our country. Three of them in particular
I would like to mention to you.
First, is an evolving sense or perception of our country's role
on the international scene. The second is the changing techniques and
sophistication by which we collect intelligence and the third is the
increasing interest and concern of the American public in its intelligence
activities. Let me, before I respond to your questions, which I am
most looking forward to this morning, discuss very briefly with you
these three trends and what they mean for us in the world of intelligence.
Let me start with our changing perception of our role in the world.
I believe the United States is in a state of transition in its public
attitude toward the responsibilities of our country in the rest of the
world. We are moving from an activist interventionist mode to one in which
Approved For Release 2001/08/07 : CIA-RDP80B01554R003000110001-0
Approved For ease 2001/08/07: CIA-RDP80B0155*03000110001-0
the limits, the realities of our ability to influence events in other
countries is more widely recognized and appreciated. This is not to
say that we are retrenching into an isolationism. In fact I happen to
believe that we are now emerging from our post-Vietnam aversion to any kind
of intervention on the international scene into a much more realistic
appraisal of our position in the world. We cannot forsake the United
States' major responsibilities to the free world. Yet, the circumstances
today are such that we must guage much more carefully, than ever before, I
believe what that role that we play in the world should be and can be.
Look for instance at the difficulty we have today in deciding whom we are
for and whom we are against. Traditionally, we generally have been against
those people the Soviets were for, and yet if you look just at 1978 there
are some examples of very difficult choices we had in deciding whom to
be for and whom to be against. There were at least two instances in which
communist countries were fighting with communist countries. Once it was
Somalia and Ethiopia. The Soviets were backing Ethiopia. Should we have
have supported Somalia, the aggressor in that war and a country governed by
a communist dictator? Later in the year it was Vietnam and Cambodia.
The Soviets were backing Vietnam. Should we have supported the Cambodian
regime of Pol Pot, perhaps the most repressive regime on the face of the
globe since Hitler? And beyond that, today I think we appreciate that it
may not always be necessary for the United States to take sides in
international issues even if the Soviets are pressing for advantage in
some circumstances. The consequences of a nation's succumbing to
communist influence are not considered today to be as irreversible as
they once were. We have seen cases, Indonesia, Egypt, Somalia and
others where the countries were once under communist influence but have
returned to independence.
Approved For Release 2001/08/07 : CIA-RDP80B01554R003000110001-0
Approved For *ease 2001/08/07 : CIA-RDP80BO155V03000110001-0
So today there is a legitimate question in our body politic as to
whether it is always necessary to come to the rescue of a country being
subjected to communist pressures. Even when we do decide that some
struggling nation does deserve our support, there are problems today in
providing that support that did not exist even a few years ago. One of
these stems from the revolution in international communications. Today
any international action upon our part is almost instantly transmitted
around the globe. Instantly judged, instantly criticized, or given
approbation. And today, that kind of international judgment on our
actions does influence and inhibit even major countries like the United
States and the Soviet Union even though those countries doing the
criticism or the approbation are very frequently second or third level
powers.
There are other difficulties today which we did not face twenty or
twenty-five years ago, if we do attempt to sway other countries through
diplomacy or international organizations. In the past, most nations of
the free world took their cue from us in international political
events. Today in such fora as the United Nations even the smallest
country exercises its one vote independently of what the major powers
may desire and in fact the major powers very frequently find themselves
together on the minority side of the votes. If then we become frustrated
with diplomacy and decide to intervene militarily, the memory of
Vietnam reminds us that when the pendulum of offense and defense in
military weaponry tends toward the defense as I believe it does today,
even a minor military power can give a major one a difficult time. Now
Approved For Release 2001/08/07 : CIA-RDP80B01554R003000110001-0
Approved For *ease 2001/08/07 : CIA-RDP80B0155003000110001-0
what all this adds up to is not that we are impotent upon the world
scene but the leverage of our influence while it is considerable, must
be exercised more subtly if it is to be effective. We must be more
concerned with long term influences rather than just putting fingers in
the dike. We must be able to anticipate rather than just react to
events. We must be able to understand the underlying influences and
forces which can be influenced and driven over time. For us in the
intelligence world this means a vast expansion of our scope of interest
and activities.
Thirty years ago our primary concern in American intelligence
was to keep track of Soviet military activities. Today the threat to
our well-being comes not only from the Soviet Union and not only in
military form. The subject matter with which we do deal in intelligence
certainly must have a large military content. But today it has broadened.
It includes politics, economics, terrorism, narcotics, energy, food,
population, the health and psychiatry of world leaders, to mention just
a few. There is hardly an academic discipline, there is hardly an area
of the world in which we can afford not to be informed if we are going
to keep track of the things. that this country must keep track of to
execute its foreign policy properly. Hence, this is a very demanding
time for intelligence, a time of fundamental change and expansion in
our outlook and our undertakings.
The second trend which I mentioned to you is that of the technolog-
ical revolution in collecting intelligence information. Basically
there are three ways in which we collect intelligence. The first is
Approved For Release 2001/08/07 : CIA-RDP80B01554R003000110001-0
Approved For ,ease 2001/08/07 : CIA-RDP80B0155003000110001-0
photographic: pictures from satellites, pictures from airplanes. The
second, is signals intelligence: intercepting signals that are passing
through the air like right in this room today. Sometimes signals from
military equipment, sometimes signals from communications equipment.
Finally, there is the traditional human agent, the spy. The first two
of these, photographic and signals, we call technical intelligence as
opposed to the human. Our capabilities in this area, thanks to the
great sophisitcation of American industry are truly burgeoning today.
We have more information coming in than we can imagine and the problem
we have is just handling it, processing it, and being able to utilize
it properly. Interestingly though, rather than denigrating the role of
the human intelligence agent this increase of effort in the sophisticated
technical area, in fact, makes the human agent even more important.
Why? Because generally speaking what the sophisticated technical
systems tell you is what happened sometime in the past. Often that
raises more questions than it answers. People want to know why did it
happen? What is going to happen next? Here, of course, is the forte
of the human intelligence agent. Trying to find out what other countries
are thinking and planning; what their intentions are for the future.
So we need even more emphasis in this area than we have had in the past
particularly if we are going to, as I suggested earlier, find it
necessary to do more in anticipating future trends in the world. The
challenge that we face is how to pull all of this together. How to
orchestrate the photographic, the signals and the human intelligence
activities so that they complement each other, so that we can obtain
the information which our policy makers need, at least risk and least
expense.
Approved For Release 2001/08/cfr : CIA-RDP80B01554R003000110001-0
Approved For *ease 2001/08/07 : CIA-RDP80B0155003000110001-0
What questions the photograph cannot answer, you try to solve
with the signal or a human intelligence activity. For instance, if you
have a photograph here of a new industrial facility in some country,
if you don't know what it makes you then target a spy to try to find
out precisely whether that is a nuclear weapons manufacturing establishment.
Or if a spy overhears a conversation but only gets a glimmer of what is
going on, you take that clue and then you search your signals or your
photographic files and you try to see if you can piece together the
other missing parts of that puzzle. Now this may sound very logical
and very simple to you, but it isn't in a large bureaucracy such as
constitutes our intelligence community. Our intelligence is spread
over many departments and agencies, each with their independent concerns and
priorities. The Director of Central Intelligence, since the establishment
of the National Security Act of 1947, has been empowered to coordinate
all these intelligence activities wherever they are located. Unfortunately
he has not had adequate authority to do so, at least until about a
year and a quarter ago when President Carter signed a new Executive
Order. This order gave me enhanced authorities over the budgets and
over the collection activities of all of our national intelligence
undertakings. This is a change of fundamental importance in the way we
go about our business in intelligence today. The change is still
evolving but it is coming along well and it is making a substantial
difference in the effectiveness of our intelligence organizations.
The third trend which I mentioned to you was the increased interest
and concern of the American public in what we are doing. This of-
Approved For Release 2001/08/07 : CIA-RDP80B01554R003000110001-0
Approved For Oease 2001/08/07: CIA-RDP80B01554003000110001-0
course derives from the numerous investigations of past intelligence
activities; investigations that were conducted in the period 1974
to 1976. These investigations brought to American intelligence more
public scrutiny than had perhaps ever before been given to any major
intelligence activity in the world. The impact of all this added
visibility has been very substantial. It has, in fact, had a traumatic
effect within the intelligence community.
Now the right kind of visibility can be beneficial both to us and
to the American public. By the right kind I mean disclosure of
information which gives the public a better understanding, at least
in general terms, of what we are doing and why we are doing it and
a sense of assurance that the controls over our intelligence
activities are being properly exercised. To achieve this, we are
today trying to be more open. We are for instance passing on more
of what we produce through regular publication of our analytic work.
We are, for instance, answering questions of the press more; we
are speaking in public more as I am privileged to do with you
today. We are attending symposia and academic conferences more.
I know that our intelligence community is doing an honorable and a
vital job for our country and it is doing it well and I personally
want you, the American public to be as well-informed about that as
is possible.
But as you would suspect some of the visibility we have and are
receiving is unwanted because it benefits neither Americans nor our
friends and allies. Here I am talking, primarily, about the unauthorized
Approved For Release 2001/08/07 : CIA-RDP80B01554R003000110001-0
Approved For tease 2001/08/07: CIA-RDP80B0155*03000110001-0
disclosure of properly classified information. At the least, these
disclosures have demoralized an intelligence service which has traditionally
and necessarily operated largely in secrecy. But even more important
has been the destructive effect that such disclosures can and do have
on our ability to do what we are mandated to do by the President and
the Congress.
First, no one in a foreign country either an individual or an
intelligence service will entrust lives or sensitive intelligence
information to us unless they believe that we can, in fact, keep
the identity of individuals and sensitive information private.
Second, it is almost impossible to carry out a quest for information in
a society like that of the Soviet Union if what we do and how we do it
is bound to become public information. These revelations, then, do
damage our long term ability for this country to know what is going on
around it in the world particularly in the closed societies of the
world. Because we are such an open society we often do not appreciate
how much other nations can take advantage of us if we do not take the
precaution of being well informed. Perhaps you recall the great
wheat steal of 1972 when the Soviet Union dramatically and without
notice entered the world's wheat market in a very major way. That
affected you and me and our pocketbook. Other surreptitious moves
from closed societies can impact upon us in many other ways'. On balance
let me say that I believe this new and added visibility to intelligence
in our country is a net plus. It is a plus because we need support
from the American public. It is a plus because we need to ensure
against abuse in the future, and yet there are minuses which we must
recognize. There are inhibitions on actions that we can take and risks
that we will take.
Approved For Release 2001/08/07 : CIA-RDP80B01554R003000110001-0
Approved For#ease 2001/08/07 : CIA-RDP80BO155003000110001-0
The issue today before us for decision as a country is-how much
assurance does our nation need against invasions of privacy on the one
hand or against the taking of foreign policy actions which might be
considered unethical on the other hand. How do we balance these
desires for privacy and propriety with the resulting reduction in our
intelligence and covert action capabilities. Our Congress is expected
to give expression to this question of balance very soon. It will do
so in legislation establishing charters for our intelligence community.
This legislation will on the one hand set out the authorities for
what we can do, and on the other hand the limits within which we can do
it. you may have noticed in the Phoenix paper this morning, on the
front page there was a story about how this process of evolving these
charters is going. It is typical of the kind of debate in which we are
very intensely involved today in trying to find this right balance
between controls on the one hand and necessary freedom to take risks
and to gain necessary information on the other. I sincerely hope that
this legislation establishing charters for our intelligence community,
giving us our marching orders, setting the standards that the nation
expects from us will be enacted by this Congress. If the charters are
written with care and sensitivity to problems like those I have
been discussing with you, they can help to resolve some of these
difficulties. Over reaction either by tying the hands of the intelligence
community or by putting on no restrictions whatsoever would be a grave
mistake. On the one hand inviting repetition of abuses of the past, on
the other hand emasculating our necessary intelligence activities.
Approved For Release 2001/08/07 : CIA-RDP80B01554R003000110001-0
Approved Foroease 2001/08/07 : CIA-RDP80BO1554P03000110001-0
With all these pluses and minuses I have been discussing with you,
let me assure you in closing that in my view the..intelligence community
of our country today is strong and capable. It is undergoing substantial
change and that is never an easy or a placid process in a large bureaucracy.
But out of the present metamorphosis is emerging an intelligence
community in which the legal rights of our citizens and the constraints
and the controls on what we do will be balanced with the necessity for
gaining information essential to the conduct of foreign policy.
This is not an easy transition. We are not there yet, but we are
moving rapidly in the right direction. When we reach our goal we will
have constructed a new model of American intelligence, a uniquely
American model tailored to the laws and the mores and the standards of
our society. As we proceed through the next what I think will be two
or three years of establishing this balance of really bringing into
effect this new model of American intelligence, we are going to need
your support as well informed and thinking members of the American
public. That is why I appreciate this opportunity to be with you this
morning.
10
Approved For Release 2001/08/07 : CIA-RDP80B01554R003000110001-0
Approved Foriease 2001/08/07 : CIA-RDP80B0155*03000110001-0
Q&As Phoenix Forging
30 April 1979
Q. What do we as citizens do to allow you that latitude and at the same
time keep you under control.
A. It is a very thoughtful question and it is with a constructive
approach. What can you, as citizens do to help in establishing this
necessary balance between controls, between assurance to you that we
are both trying to be effective and on the other hand not invading
the privacy of the American citizen or doing other things that the
American public would not want us to do. And it is the real conundrum
of intelligence in a free society, in a democratic society. I did not
mention it, but it is my opinion, that the traditional intelligence
organizations in the rest of the free world are also being pushed in
this same direction that we are. We are setting the pace for them,
we are setting up a new model for them and I think you'll find that others
will be following rapidly in our footsteps. What can the public do?
I can only ask you to have understanding, patience and yet be interested
and probing at the same time. And please remember with all respect
to the speaker who follows me and may be here and is from the American
media, that you can't believe everything in the media.
Q. Admiral Turner how do you explain the apparent block of the Iranian
intelligence versus what happened? A. I wondered if that question
would ever arise. That is where we do need understanding and let me
suggest to you here, we didn't do as well in Iran as I would like to
have done, but we didn't have a massive intelligence failure as the
press would like to play it up. Why? Because throughout the build-up
Approved For Release 2001/08/0711 CIA-RDP80BOl554R003000110001-0
Approved Forlease 2001/08/07 : CIA-RDP80B01551003000110001-0
in Iran in 1978, and it started early in that year. We clearly
observed disturbances, unhappiness, discontent. There were those who
were discontented because they weren't participating in the political
process. It was a one-man show. There were those who were discontent
because the vast economic build-up was not touching them or touching them
enough. There were those who were discontent because the religious
tenants in their view were being violated, and so on, throughout
the country. There were other centers of unhappiness. And as
these built up we did keep our policy makers informed, clearly,
that the Shah was in trouble. I take personal responsibility as
late as October of that year. I held a conviction that when the
time came, the Shah with a strong police force and a large army was
going to step in and keep the situation under control. What happened
instead was that these individual centers of discontent all coalesced
together. We did not predict that they would coalesce under the
aegis of a 78 year old expatriat cleric who had been out of the
country for 14 years, and they did. By the time the Shah apparently
decided he might step in with force it was too late and he opted
not to do so. Now, let me say we would have liked to have been
able to predict that better but predicting short term political
explosions, assassinations, coups, this kind of thing, while is
very nice to do is the most difficult part of our task. It is not
one that I can guarantee we will do every time. I don't know any
other intelligence services, I don't know any newspaper critics who
predicted this one either. We will try harder, but don't judge the
value of your intelligence community on the basis of short term
12
Approved For Release 2001/08/07 : CIA-RDP80B01554R003000110001-0
Approved Foreease 2001/08/07 : CIA-RDP80B0155003000110001-0
predictions like this because there really isn't much you can
do as a country if you just get short term notice. The question is
really more fundamental here and it goes back five or ten years:
were we properly digging into the underlying forces and predicting
the overall trends in this and many other countries. This is
where, as I indicated in my remarks, we are being challenged to
expand ourselves and take more in-depth views of world events.
Q. Is SALT II a good deal for the United States?
A I have been so distorted on this picture already by the media that I
have to be very cautious. My job in SALT is to tell the Executive
Branch--the President, and the Senate of the United States how well
we can keep track of what the Soviets are doing if the agreement is
signed and they are obliged to curtail certain activities. I would
like to philosophize with you on that for a moment, because it puts
me and the intelligence activities of our country in a very difficult
position here. Because how we can check on the Soviet compliance is a
very sensitive matter. It involves the real heart of our ability to
collect information. Once you disgorge that you don't get it again.
There is a counter to almost every way of collecting intelligence
information, and the more you disclose about your method the easier
it is to develop that counter and so the more we talk in public
about how we are going to monitor SALT the more certain it is that
we won't be able to monitor as well. You in the public understandably
want to know the answer to the question, can we check on them properly.
Is it a satisfactory treaty. Yet there is no way I can really answer
Approved For Release 2001/08/07 : CIA-RDP80B01554R003000110001-0
Approved For?ease 2001/08/07 : CIA-RDP80B01551003000110001-0
that question in any specificity in public. And here is the case
where we have to rely in this country on our democratic process.
There is nothing I will not disclose about how we can monitor the
Soviet compliance with SALT to the Senate of the United States
and they must be your surrogates in judging as to whether it is
adequate to the needs of our country.
Q. In line with that Admiral, what is Senate Bill 2525 and the allied
Executive Order and is there anything we can do to help you in
regard to that?
A. Well, Senate Bill 2525 is the charter that I have been mentioning.
It was a charter proposal tabled by the Senate a year and a half ago and
which has been under discussion ever since. And again the story in the
morning newspaper was an allegation that the Administration in commenting
on this bill 2525, has taken certain positions with regard to the controls
that should be exercised over what is known as covert action, and so,
yes we appreciate your thought of support here. Again, it is a matter
of understanding what balance we need to establish, how much the country
as a whole wants to have controls and solid checks, and how much they
want to be sure we are able to go out and do what has to be done to
collect the kind of information that is very important to our national
interests. It is the nub of the problem we have largely been discussing
this morning.
Q. Could you comment on Russian forging capabilities as it relates
to their military hardware and compare that to our own.
A. I have to be very honest with you, I don't have that at my fingertips
in that detail. Clearly, some examples that we have seen where we have
obtained our actual Soviet hardware, their forgings, their degree of
machining to fineness has not been up to our standards even on sophisticated
Approved For Release 2001/08/0714IA-RDP80B01554R003000110001-0
Approved For.ease 2001/08/07 : CIA-RDP80B0155*03000110001-0
military equipment like aircraft. On the other hand, we have found that
the Soviets by redundancy, by overpowering in some cases manage to get
the performance without the sophistication and the fineness of measurement
that we do and they are improving. But the time and I don't have a specific
handle on how well their forging industry is coming along.
A. In the event of a SALT agreement, would you say we have adequate
means of verification or not?
Q. I really find it very difficult to answer that in a specific way
because there are 40 some provisions of the SALT agreement. Each one
has a different degree of verifiability. Each one has some degree
of risk. There is nothing you can check on for 100% assurance.
So, it is a very complex integration of your ability at X percent
for this and Y percent for that to give you that sense of confidence.
In the long run it actually transcends my full responsibilities and takes
that of the Secretary of Defense who can tell you then if there is
some possibility they can cheat on provision 72, what can we do about it
how well prepared can we be to respond. It takes the Secretary of State
who has to say what are the benefits of this treaty in a much broader
sense. Are they commensurate with whatever risks there are in it.
So, I am going to have to demure on your question I am afraid.
Q. Admiral, with your knowledge is it safe to say that Idi Amin is
completely finished or is there some possibility that he might return?
A. Does Idi Amin have 7 lives. He certainly seems to be on the skids right
now but I don't think you can ever count somebody like that out completely.
There has been a wide recognition it appears to me inside Uganda that he
Approved For Release 2001/08/07 : CIA-RDP80B01554R003000110001-0
Approved Foreease 2001/08/07: CIA-RDP80B0155*03000110001-0
was a very nefarious individual, however, it is going to take some time
now to see whether a new government can really take hold in Uganda or whether
it will degenerate back to tribal strife and in that kind of a circumstance
you just can't tell what would happen. The country is partly christian;
90% Christian; 10 percent Moslem, a fair amount Arab and fair amount Black,_
they have very strong tribal ethnic leanings, it is not a cohesive nation
and it is going to be very difficult for President Lule who has just
taken over to pull all that together and make sure that the country
just doesn't fragment.
Admiral, going back to SALT II, given the track record of the Russians
what with their surrogate Cubans in Africa, Southeast Asia it doesn't
seem that the Russians and we have the same meaning of detente and
what makes us think wethat we need this agreement and can trust them.
They don't have a good track record now.
A. You are raising a very deep and philosophic problem of what is called
linkage. You link the agreement of to release arms on the one hand with
Soviet activities in Africa, Southeast Asia, or whatever you may see.
It is our observation as far as their track record on arms control
is concerned, that they have lived up to the SALT I agreement and whenever
we had differences with them as to whether they were or not we were able
to resolve those satisfactorily. Whether we should link performance
in non-arms control areas to this arms control agreement is a very
fundamental foreign policy question. While I'm sorry this appears to be
dodging some of your questions this morning, I want to make clear
that it is the role of the intelligence community to be sure we are giving
objective, unbiased advice to our policy makers and to do that we must
carefully disassociate ourselves from policy: from whether we should sign
SALT, from whether we should support this country or that country, on whether
Approved For Release 2001/08/07 : CIA-RDP80B01554R003000110001-0
16
Approved For`ease 2001/08/07 : CIA-RDP80BOl55*03000110001-0
we should take this foreign policy or that. Because once I become
known as an advocate of this policy or that policy, then people will
suspect we are tailoring the intelligence to support that policy.
That, of course, is what we cannot afford and the whole reason in
1947 for creating a Central Intelligence Agency as one of the parts
of our intelligence community to have one organization that was
totally outside the policy framework. Intelligence in State, intelligence
in Defense, intelligence in Treasury or other places obviously are in
organizations that have policy functions. But we in the Central
Intelligence Agency are sort of neuter and we try to stay that way so
I can't really address the broader question here, only the smaller
one that their track record in arms control has been satisfactory.
Whether you want to link that with your decision on SALT with their
performance elsewhere is a much broader policy issue.
Q. Would you comment on our position in Rhodesia and South Africa.
A. Our position in Rhodesia and South Africa. Well, we are very concerned
with the trend of events of the last 6 months or so in the whole
southern part of Africa. What we had hoped was going to be some form
of a peaceful electoral solution to two major problems: the problem
of what used to be known as Southwest Africa, now known as Namibia, a
province down there that has been governed by the Union of South
Africa since World War II and the problem of Rhodesia and how to
transition from what has been white domination or political control
to a black or representative of the population distribution control.
The Namibian process has really broken down at this point. We are
waiting for continuing negotiations there but they don't look too
Approved For Release 2001/1Q /07 : CIA-RDP80B01554R003000110001-0
Approved For`ease 2001/08/07 : CIA-RDP80B0155*03000110001-0
good. We have had an election in Rhodesia in recent weeks. There
are those who are very concerned that because elements known as the
patriotic front who have been urging from outside Rhodesia this
integration of the government did not participate in this election.
We are very concerned that-they will continue the guerilla warfare
that has taken place over the last few years in Rhodesia, even
against what will now be a black dominated internal government. So
our task of the country for the next few weeks or months here is to
try to find someway we can avoid this Rhodesian situation degenerating
into a extensive civil war which would be to nobody's benefit.
Q. Admiral, the CIA having been under a certain amount of criticism
lately, it could be that in President Carter's campaign that you
might be a liability and therefore need to go. Would you comment on
that?
A. No. I am not a politician, I don't know what their calculations on that
will be. I am here to serve the country as long as the country wants me.
I didn't seek this job and I am happy to serve in it as long as they need me.
Q. How do you get your instructions as to your involvement in the affairs of a
foreign government?
A. We are talking here now, not about intelligence. We are talking
about what is known in our trade as covert action. Covert action is
the attempt to influence events in foreign countries without the
source of that influence being identified. Somebody mentioned Chile.
That was a covert action, I might say parenthetically that was not
something the CIA did on its own, it was fully authorized by the
appropriate elements in government at that time. Since then the
government has, through law, established a very clear procedure for
giving me directions on whether the Central Intelligence Agency will
carry ouApOrOMIFtor tl 'e 2001/08/07: CIA-RDP80BO1554R003000110001-0
Approved Forleease 2001/08/07 : CIA-RDP80BO155003000110001-0
First, it has to be approved in writing by the President. Secondly, I
must then notify up to seven committees of the Cngress about what we
are doing. And if you don't think that is inhibiting and controlling--
so let me say that we in the CIA do not
Approved For Release 2001/08/07 : CIA-RDP80B01554R003000110001-0
Approved For Release 2001/08/07 : CIA-RDP80B01554R003000110001-0
Approved For Release 2001/08/07 : CIA-RDP80B01554R003000110001-0