ADMIRAL STANSFIELD TURNER'S REMARKS AT PRINCIPIA COLLEGE ELSAH, ILLINOIS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80B01554R003100040001-7
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 20
• Document Creation Date: December 19, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 24, 2005
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: February 5, 1980
• Content Type: SPEECH

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Admiral Stansfieldurner
Director of Central Intelligence
Remarks at Principia College
Elsah, Illinois
5 February 1980
Thank you, President Andrews, thank all of you. Having been
in Christian Scientist since I was five years old, I have known a
lot of Principians, and have learned a lot about Principia. I am
really excited at this first opportunity for me to be here on the
Elsah Campus.
By coincidence, it was just 3 years ago this week that I
received what proved to be a rather fateful telephone call. I was
sitting in my office in Naples, Italy when I received a call
telling me that the President of the United States wanted to see me
in Washington the next morning. I was a classmate and friend of
the President, but I'm not sure he knew where I was when he asked
to see me.
All the way across the Atlantic I wondered what he would ask
me to undertake. Would it permit me to continue to work toward the
goals that I wanted to see accomplished in the United States
military establishment? I admit that it did cross my mind that two
weeks before, the President's first nominee for the Director of
Central Intelligence Agency had not passed muster with the Senate.
But, I rejected that out of hand and continued to think about
the things I wanted to try to accomplish in the United States
military.
The next day, in the Oval Office, the President told me
he wanted me to take over the Central Intelligence Agency. I
remonstrated and tried to say that I would prefer to stay in my
military profession, but you run out of argumentation with the
President quickly. As if across a screen, I saw 32 years of naval
experience flash by, going, going, and then before me was a
stark new challenge.
I mention this to you only because many of you will be undertaking
a new challenge this summer when you graduate. Others of you are
already thinking ahead to what you will seek as your first
challenge in the working community. I would suggest that, as
happened to me, you will make that very important decision when
you leave this college and embark on one field, one profession, one
endeavor. But don't think you will be making that decision just
once. You will make it over and over again during your life. No
one set of preparations, no one set of skills will be adequate to
prepare you for the kinds of opportunities that will come your
way.
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I believe there are three particular preparations that will be
very helpful to you in adapting to new opportunities. One is to
have defined your objectives. Another is to have established your
work habits. -And still a third is to have thought through and
understood the ethical standards which will guide your conduct in
your working life.
I was fortunate in this shift from a military career to a
career as an intelligence officer. My objectives did not have
to change. They have always been to serve this country. I don't say
that in any altruistic or absolute way. I joined the Navy during
World War II when it was popular to serve one's country. Immediately
thereafter, it was not my objective to continue to serve. It wasn't
until I had been in the Navy 8 or 9 years that I truly felt the
enthusiasm, the stimulus, the sense of reward of being part of our
national security apparatus. When that realization came to me, I
became dedicated to serving my country as long as it had use for me
in the government service. You will need to define and redefine
your objectives as you go along, and watch them so that when new
opportunities do offer themselves you will know whether or not they
lead you in the direction that you ultimately want to go.
As far as work habits were concerned, as I rose progressively
in the Navy I found my capacity for work continued to increase. The
time and effort I was willing to devote to my work reached a point that
when I became the Director of Central Intelligence I couldn't
imagine that there was more that could be asked of me. But, there
was. And, somehow, I found the time and the energy to do more.
You must also decide whether you can or want to expand your
capacity for work as you rise in seniority and importance.
This is not just a question of capability. This is a question
relating to the quality of your life. Most top businessmen and
government officials in our country work too hard. So, as you
go along, you must balance your sense of ambition and objectives
and your sense of the quality of life that you want to lead.
That should be a conscious decision, one that you have thought
about most seriously.
As for ethical standards, I was also very grateful that my
military career had prepared me very well for the kinds of ethical
dilemmas I have had to face in intelligence. A military man must
ask himself, does the Golden Rule always apply? Does it apply
equally to my country's enemies, as well as its friends? Or do I
treat enemies differently? If so, how differently, and what are
those ethical limits? You must ask yourself if American ideals are
worth fighting for. Are they worth killing for? Similarly, as
Director of Central Intelligence, I must ask myself what risks we
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should take for our country. How important is it that we gain
certain information? You too need to lay the foundation early in
your working careers as to what ethical standards are going to be
the basis for your approach to the problems of your career. It is
too late to wait until the dilemma arises to establish ethical
standards.
Let me move on to share with you a little of what it was like
after I left the Oval Office that day three years ago, and what it
has been like since, being the Director of Central Intelligence and
the head of the Central Intelligence Agency at this very special
time in the intelligence history of our country.
One thing, perhaps unfortunately, that being the Director
of Central Intelligence has not been like is James Bond. I
said unfortunately. My wife, who is sitting there in the fifth row,
thinks it is very fortunate that I don't have the exotic experiences
of James Bond. If there is any similarity between the the Director
of Central Intelligence, the DCI, and 007, it is in the kind of
gadgetry we use. Mine isn't a rear firing gun or blades that
stick out from the hubcaps of an Aston-Martin. Mine is exotic
satellites, listening devices that hear signals that are going
through this room right now from radars, radios, and all
kinds of other electronic devices. The United States is
blessed in having the scientific expertise to give us the very
best of intelligence collecting devices, the gadgets.
Technical intelligence collection, collection through electronic
wizardy., has one interesting characteristic. It is phenomenally
capable, yet it cannot do the job of acquiring information about
other countries alone. Generally, a photograph shows you something
that happened in the past. The interception of a radar signal
tells you that yesterday, at that place, on that frequency, with
that power, a certain radar was operating. When I present that to a
policymaker, he will say, but Stan, why did that happen? What does
it mean is going to happen next? To learn people's motives, why
they are doing something, and what they are planning, we turn
to a human being, a spy. Only a human being can talk to
the people making the decisions in another country, probe their
minds and bring back their intentions and plans. So, today,
despite technology, we continue to need spies. We have them and
they are very good. Nonetheless, it is here, with the spies,
where many of the most difficult decisions must be made.
Unlike James Bond, my decisions are not whether or not to jump
out of the airplane without a parachute. They are not that straight-
forward. They are not as clearly right or wrong. The essence of
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spying is risk taking. Each time I must judge whether the benefits
of spying will be worth the risk we must take. The risk might be
of embarrassing the country if we are caught. There is the risk of
actually complicating our diplomatic efforts. There is the risk to
human life. When I make a decision to conduct a spying activity, I
must ask myself, is the information really valuable? Will it
actually help the President, or the Secretary of State, or the
Secretary of Defense? Could we obtain that information in a less
risky way? If the answer is yes it is that valuable, then of
course, we do our best to get it. But if my staff says, yes it is
valuable, but with much less risk you will have a 30 percent
probability of getting what you want. Do I take that 30 percent
chance, particularly if in taking it I foreclose the higher probablity
option - and the higher risk - because there won't be time to do
both? Or do I decide to take a greater risk and be surer of
obtaining the information we need?
Then, there is the question of to what ethical limits will we
go to obtain the information? Is there some threshold below
which I will not go? Perhaps more.important, do the ethical
standards that apply vary with the quality and the importance of
the information that you are likely to obtain? Are there things I
would do to obtain information that would prevent World War III
that I would not do to find out about Soviet intentions to enter
the grain market and cheat us as they did in 1972? There is no
formula. There are no set rules for these kinds of tough decisions.
It is personal judgment, and it is that ethical foundation, that
sense of what you will or will not do, that counts. Managing a
spying organization is an intellectual, thoughtful vocation not one
of adventure and daring-do.
Collecting information, either by technical systems like
satellites and photos, or by the human spy, is only half of intelligence
work. Once you have collected the information you need to do
something with it. You need to interpret: it, analyze it, study it,
and come up with some kind of an assessment that will help the
policymaker make a good decision. This is very much like your
writing a term paper, or the research department of a major corporation
looking at future business prospects, or like the research done on
a college campus. At this time in our country's history it is
especially interesting to be involved in the intelligence analytic
process.
For the first 30 years after World War II, American intelligence
focused largely on the Soviet military threat. But, today, this
afternoon for example, we are closer to being at economic war with
the Soviets than we are military war. Political and economic
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considerations are very important to our country. Therefore,
intelligence must put more emphasis on them than we have in the
past. Although the Soviet Union remains our number one priority
intelligence target, look this evening at where we are concerned
about impending crises in the world.
In Southeast Asia the Vietnamese havE! invaded Kampuchea. They
are pushing next door to where they may spill into Thailand. Look
at the pending elections in Zimbabwe, Rhodesia. Look at the
possibility of a revolution in El Salvador. Look at the quirks of
a 79 year old Shiite cleric in Iran, and next door, look at the
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the threat that represents to
India and Pakistan. These are all non-Soviet areas of the world.
They are largely in the Third World, an area of growing importance
to us. So, there are difficult but interesting choices to make
today in trying to decide where to put our effort.
To further complicate the picture, we must also try to look
ahead and ask ourselves if the crises of 1985 and 1990 will be the
same kinds of crises that we are facing today or will they be
generically quite different. Will we be more concerned with food
to feed the growing population of the world,proliferation of
nuclear weapons to small countries, or terrorism, or international
narcotics trafficking? We must then ask ourselves if we are
developing the right satellites and the right listening posts, if
we are training our spies adequately to collect information on
tomorrow's problems. Are we developing the right analytic skills
and talents, the languages and academic skills that will be necessary
to analyze this kind of information? It is an exciting and demanding
challenge to try to look ahead in that way.
There are two other facets of being the Director of Central
Intelligence and the head of the CIA which I would like to describe
briefly because they relate to my responsibility to the American
public as a whole and to the Congress in particular. You, as part
of the American public, have a right to know as much as possible
about what your government is doing. It is not easy for a necessarily
secret agency to keep you informed but we do the best we can. I am
here tonight, I give speeches around the country, we join in
academic and business symposia, all to share as much of what we are
doing, in a general sense, as we can with the American public.
Only if you are aware of government activities can you make
good decisions about your government, and lend support where
it deserves and needs it.
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One of the most frequent means of such communication with the
public is through the media. This is an exacting and time consuming
element of my work. In interviews on television or with the press,
I must be very careful, very well-prepared. An erroneous
impression can be given to foreign countries or individuals
if language is imprecise. It is time consuming also because the
relationship between anyone in government and anyone in the media
is fundamentally an adversarial relationship. It is adversarial
because, generally, the media wants to get out of you more information
than you are normally willing to share. t is a healthy relationship
and it should be adversarial. But, I would suggest that, since Watergate,
that relationship may have become more adversarial than is good for our
country.
The relationship that I have with Congress is quite new.
It is part adversarial and it is part cooperative. The amount of
interchange between the Congress and the Intelligence Community
is vastly greater today than ever before. Two foreign affairs
committees and two armed services committees need and deserve to be
up-dated on what's going on around the world as they make their
decisions. The two budget committees and the two appropriations
committees need to know why we need the money that we ask for.
And, just in the last two years, there have been established two
oversight committees dedicated exclusively to supervising the
intelligence function of the country. These committees in particular
give us guidance, sometimes in law, sometimes in advice. In the
process they share the responsibility for intelligence activities.
They are your surrogates. Because we cannot reveal enough to you
for you to be able to be assured we are doing our job, we reveal
our activities to these Congressional committees and they act for
you in seeing that we are properly and fully utilizing the authority
that we have, and that we are not ignoring the restrictions that
have been placed on us by the Congress and the President.
All of this raises a tremendously complex question. Are
secrecy in intelligence and openness in a democratic society
compatible? Today, this country is involved in a bold experiment
in finding a balance between secrecy and openness. We are being
more open to the public than any intelligence organization in the
history of the world has ever been. While protecting national
secrets, we are, at the same time, being more open to the public than
any intelligence organization in the history of the world has ever
been. We are being totally cooperative with the Congress. In
addition, we have had spelled out for us by the Congress and the
Executive over the last two years more strict regulations on what
we can and cannot do than have ever been legislated for intelligence
bodies.
We are not sure yet that this mix of secrecy, regulations and
openness is exactly what it should be, but we are moving in the right
direction. We are trying to achieve an appropriate balance.
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On the one hand if, because so many people are looking over your
shoulder, you are afraid to take risks, then we will have no
intelligence at all. If, because our most sensitive secrets are
revealed to too many people, those secrets leak and our allies
and agents around the world do not have confidence in us, we
will have no intelligence at all. If, because we have to clear
our actions through so many bureaucratic processes that we have
no flexibility and cannot act quickly in a crisis, we will not be
up to the task.
Interestingly, just a few days ago, the President in his State
of the Union address to the Congress, asked for two things. The
first, was for charters to codify the rules under which the intelligence
community operates. They would consist of three parts: what we
are the authorized to do; what we are restricted from doing; and
how the oversight process would work to balance the first two. At
the same time, the President asked for a relaxation of some of
these restrictions that have been placed on us. I think the fact
that he could ask for these changes, and that he received a strong
round of applause from the Congress, indicates how far we have come
in rebuilding both Presidential and Congressional confidence in the
Intelligence Community since the investigations of the intelligence
process from 1974-1976. Those investigations did uncover some
abuses. There were not as many as the media would have you think,
but enough that the country reacted by imposing many of these
restrictions which the President is now seeking to have eased.
In the debate which will go on in the Congress for the next
few months, an effort will be made to balance explicit restrictions
which, once legislated, are inflexible in moments of emergency with
more generalized restrictions which, although offering less control,
will be overseen by the Congress and thus adequately controlled.
I think too, that the applause from the Congress indicated a
greater recognition, in the Congress as well as throughout the
country, of the very great importance of good intelligence for our
country and for its policymakers today. Our responsibility is not
only to our own people but to all the people in the free world.
We will, in the next two or three years, move surely and
progressively toward a good balance of controls and flexibility.
When we have found that balance we will have constructed a new,
uniquely American model of intelligence. That will be an historic
accomplishment.
Personally, I have found it very challenging 'and rewarding to
have been wrenched from 32 years of experience and preparation and
hopes and aspirations, and forced to expand my horizons and to take
on this new opportunity. I encourage you, as you look forward to
leaving Principia to think ahead and to recognize what preparation
you will need for the changing opportunities which will present
themselves to you all through your working life. Thank you
very much.
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Admiral Mansfield Turner
Address to Principia College
Elsah, Illinois
5 February 1980
Thank you, President Andrews, thank all of you. Having been in
Christian Scientist since I was five years old, I have known a lot of
Principians, I have known a lot about Principia and I am really excited
at this point for the first opportunity to be here on the Elsah Campus.
By coincidence, it was just 3 years ago this week that I received
what proved to be a rather fateful telephone call. I was sitting in
my office in Naples, Italy where I was in a NATO position when I received
a call that said the President of the United States wants to see you
in Washington tomorrow morning. I was a classmate and friend of the President,
but I'm not sure he knew where I was. All the way across the Atlantic I
was thinking to myself, what will he be asking me to undertake? Will it
let me continue some of the goals, some of the ends that I could see
accomplished in the United States military establishment. I did think
just passively the two weeks before that the President's first nominee for
the Director of Central Intelligence Agency had not passed muster with the
Senate, but I rejected that out of hand and continued to think about
the things I wanted to try to accomplish in the United States military.
Then when I sat in the Oval Office and heard the President say to me that
.he wanted me to take over the Central Intelligence Agency and I remonstrated
and tried to say that I would prefer to stay in my military profession,
I heard him continually say, no the Central Intelligence Agency. You run out
of argumentation with the President quickly. Across the screen, I saw flashing
32 years of naval experience, going, going, and then before me was a stark
new challenge.
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I mention this to you because many of you will be undertaking
a new challenge this summer when you graduate. Others of you are already
thinking ahead, as you what you are going to do for your first challenge
in the working community. I would suggest that, as happened in my experience,
it will happen in yours that you will make a very important decision when
you leave this college and you embark on one field, one profession, one endeavor.
But don't think you will be making that decision just once, you will make it
over and over again. No one set of preparations, no one set of skills will be
adequate to prepare you for the kinds of opportunities that will come your way.
I would suggest there are three particular, preparations that will be very
helpful to you in adapting to new opportunities that may come your way. One is
to define your objectives in your working lives. Another is to establish your
work habits, and still a third is to have understood the ethical standards in
which you will conduct your working life. I was fortunate, when I made this
shift from a military career to a career as an intelligence officer my objectives
did not have to change because my objectives had been to serve this country.
Now I don't say that to try to sound altruistic or absolute. I joined the
Navy when it was popular to serve your country during World War II.
But my objective was not, immediately thereafter to continue to serve.
It wasn't until I had been in 8 or 9 years and I felt the enthusiasm,
the stimulus, the sense of reward of being part of our national security
appratus that I became dedicated to serving my country as long as they
had use for me in the government service. But I would suggest to you
that you need to define your objectives as you go along, and watch them
so that when new opportunities do offer themselves you know whether they
lead you in the direction that you ultimately want to go or in some other
way. As far as work habits were concerned, as I rose progressively in the
2
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Navy, I found my work habits continued to increase. My capacity and tine
I was willing to devote to my work reached a point that when I became the
Director of Central Intelligence I couldn't imagine that there was more
that could be asked or demanded of me, but there was. Somehow, I found
time and the effort to do more.
I would suggest again to you, that you must decide as you go along
can you, and do you want to be able to expand your work habits as you rise
in seniority and importance. Now this is not just a question of capability,
this is a question of the quality of life. Because I would further suggest
that most top businessmen, most top government officials in our country
work too much. You have to make the judgment as you go along, balancing
your sense of ambition and objectives and your sense of quality of life
that you want to lead. You should make a consciously you should think
about it.
As for ethical standards, I was also very grateful that my military
career had prepared me quite precisely for the kinds of things I have faced
on the ethical scene in intelligence. A military man must look and ask
himself, does the Golden Rule always apply? Does it apply equally to your
country's enemies, be they countries or individuals representing those
countries. Or do you treat them differently? And if so, how differently
and with what limits? You have to ask yourself are American ideals worth
fighting for? Killing for? Similarly, as Director of Central Intelligence
I have to ask myself, what risks do we take for our country? How important
is it that we gain certain information. Similarly, I would suggest to you
that you need to lay foundations early in your working careers as to what
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ethical standards are going to be the foundations on which you will approach
the problems of your career, your profession as you proceed through it,
because you need to be prepared when the time comes.
I am sorry to have digressed on ethics and work habits and objectives.
What I really want to share with you tonight is a little of the feeling
of what it was like after I left the Oval Office and what it has been like
the three years since being the Director of Central Intelligence, the head
of the Central Intelligence Agency of our country and in this particular time.
I think it has been a very special time to the intelligence history of our
country.
One thing, perhaps unfortunately, that being the Director of
Central Intelligence is not like is James Bond and 007. I said
unfortunately, my wife is sitting here in the fifth row thinks it is
very fortunate. I don't have the exotic experiences of James Bond.
If there is a similarity between the DCI, I'm sorry we in Washington
always have to talk in achronyms, and I am the Director of Central
Intelligence, the DCI. If there is a similarity between 007 and the
DCI it is in the kind of gadgetry we use. Now mine, isn't rear firing
guns and blades that stick out from the hubcaps on the Maserati.
Mine is exotic satellites, listening devices, that hear signals that
are going through this room right now, pick up radars, radios, all kinds
of electronic emissions. The United States is very blessed because we
have a scientific expertise in this country that gives us the very best
of intelligence collecting devices, gadgets? Technical intelligence
collection is what we call collection through electronic wizardy, and such.
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a h
It has one interesting characteristic. General y spec ing a
tells you something that happened in the past. The intercept of a radar
tells you that yesterday at that place on that frequency with that
power that, radar was operating. But when an intelligence officers presents
that to his political policymaking masters, they say, but Stan why did that
happen and what does it mean is going to happen next? And when I want to
find out what people's motives our, why they are doing things and what they
are planning, what do we turn to, we turn to the human spy, the agent who
can talk to people and probe their minds and come back to these thoughts
that our intentions and plans. So, yes, today we have to have spies, we
do and we are very good at it. But, hereto, perhaps, fortunately my role
is not like James Bond from the spy world, my decisions are not whether
to jump out of the airplane without a parachute, they are not that straightforward,
they are not as clearly right or wrong when all is said and done. He either
gets to the ground or he doesn't. I sometimes never know whether my spy
decisions are right or wrong, because the essence of spying is risk taking.
Each time we have to judge whether the benefits are going to be worth the
risks. There are risks, there are risks for, instance of embarrassing the country
if you get caught spying where you should not he caught. There are risks
of actually complicating our diplomacy and by far not the least there are risks
to human lives when you make decisions to conduct spying activity. So, I must
ask myself the questions - how valuable is ':he information, will it really
do something to help the President, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of
Defense, and so on. Could we obtain it in a less risky way? The answer to
that is usually yes, we might. They will come to me and they will say, yes,
with much less risk you might have a 30 percent probability of getting what
you want. Now do I take that 30 percent chance, particularly if in taking
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it I foreclose the higher risk at high probab'lity option because maybe there
won't be time to do both. And then there is a question of what ethical
limits will we go to to obtain the information. Is there some floor
below which we will not go? And very importantly, do the ethical standards
that apply vary with the quality and the importance of the information
that you are likely to obtain. Are there things I would do to obtain information
that would prevent World War III that I would not do that would tell us about
Soviet intentions to enter the grain market and cheat us almost as they did
in 1972. There is no formula there are no set rules for these
kinds of tough decisions. It is judgment and it is that ethical
foundation, that sense of what you will do and why, that counts.
It is a very intellectual, a very thoughtful process to manage a
spying organization, not an adventuresome, daring-do one.
Now collecting information, either by these technical systems,
like satellites and photos or by the human spy, is only one-half of
the intelligence business. Once you have the information you've got
to do something with it. You have got to interpret it, you've got
to analyze it, you have got to study it and come up with some kind
of an estimate that will help the policymakers make a good decision
based on that information. Now this is a very intellectual kind of
prize. It is very much like your sitting down to write a term paper,
or like a research department of a major corporation, or research
on a university or a college campus. At this particular time in our
country's history it is particularly interesting to be involved in
this analytic process in the world of intelligence.
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For the first 30 years or so after World War II, our intelligence
focused very largely on the Soviet military threat as well it might.
Today, this afternoon, for example we are closer to being at economic
warfare with the Soviets than we are military warfare. Today, around
the world, political and economic considerations are very important to
our country, we must put more emphasis on them than we have in the past.
And although the Soviet Union remains our number one priority intelligence
target and always will, I believe, look this evening at where we are
concerned about impending crises in the world. In Southeast Asia the
Vietnamese have invaded Kampuchea, they are pushing next door to where
they may spill into our friendly country Thailand. Look at the elections
that our pending in Zimbabwe, Rhodesia. Look at the possibility of a
near revolution in the next door El Salvador.. Look how we study the
quirks of a 79 year old Shiite cleric in Iran and next door the Soviet
invasion of Afghanistan and its threats to India and Pakistan. These
are all non-Soviet Union areas of the world, largely of what we call
the Third World and this is growing in importance to us also. So,
we have difficult but interesting choices to make today in trying
to decide where to put our efforts. Particularly in trying to look
ahead and say to ourselves will the crises of 1985 and 1990
be the same kind of crises that we are facing today or will they be
generically quite different. Will we be more concerned in that period
of this decade with food to feed the growing population of the world?
With the proliferation of nuclear weapons to small countries, or even
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to terrorists, or just to terrorism itself, or to international narcotics
trafficking. And therefore, we in the world of intelligence must be
asking ourselves everyday, are we developing today the right satellites,
the right listening posts, the right kinds of spies to collect information
on these problems that we will face tomorrow, which may not be the same
as today. Are we developing the right analytic skills and talents, the
languages and academic skills that will be necessary to analyze this
kind of information. It is an exciting and demanding challenge to try
to look ahead in that way.
There are two other facets of being the Director of Central
Intelligence, the head of the CIA. I would like to describe them
very briefly because they are my public responsibility. My responsibility
to the American public as a whole, and to the Congress in particular.
You, of course, are part of the American pub'lic and I am here tonight
because we do give speeches, we do join in symposia, we do try, even
though our business if very largely secretive, to share as much as we
can with the American public. We do that because the foundation stone
of our way of government is that the people know as much about that
government as is possible, so they can make good decisions about it, and
so they can lend support to it where it deserves it. We need that support
and therefore we need to illuminate to the American public where we can.
A key means of such communication with'the public of course is through
the media. This is a very exacting, demanding, and time consuming element
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of my work. When you go before the television cameras, when you go for
an interview before the press; you have to be very careful, very cautious,
very well-prepared; you have to choose your words precisely because you may
over-commit the Administration to something it is not committed to. You
may give an impression to foreign countries and individuals that is not
warranted if you are not exacting and precise in your language. It is
time consuming also because the relationship between anyone in government and
anyone in the media is fundamentally an adversarial relationship and you
have to be cautious and on your guard. The media wants to get out of you
more information than you are normally willing to share, particularly those
of us who have large secrets at our disposal. That is a good relationship
and it should be adversarial. I am not complaining but I would suggest
that since Watergate, I believe that relationship has become more
adversarial than is healthy for our country.
The relationship that I have with Congress is a responsibility.
It is part adversarial, it is part cooperative, but mainly it is new.
The amount of interchange with the Congress and the Intelligence Community and
the appropriate Congressional committees is today just vastly greater than
it has ever been in the history of our country. It is also a very time
consuming requirement for me. There are for instance two foreign affairs
committees and two arm services committees, all four of whom want to, need
to, deserve to be up-to-date on what's going on around the world as they
make their decisions for our country. There are two budget committees,
there are two appropriations committees and all four of them want to
know why we need the money that we ask for. And in addition, and just
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in the last two years, and most significantly there are now two oversight
committees dedicated only to supervising the intelligence function of our
country. These committees in particular give us guidance sometimes in law,
sometimes in advice. In the process they are sharing the responsibility
for what we are doing in intelligence. They are also your surrogates.
Because we cannot reveal that needs to be seen in order to conduct oversight
in the intelligence process of our country to the public, we reveal what
what we cannot give to the public to these Congressional committees and
they act for the public as a surrogate in seeing on the one hand that
we are properly and fully utilizing the authority that we have and on
the other hand that we are not abusing the restrictions that are placed
on us by the Congress or by the President.
All of this opens a tremendously difficult question of the compatability
of secrecy in intelligence and openness in an democratic society.
Today, this country is involved in bold experiment in finding a balance
between secrecy and openness. We are being more open to the public than
any intelligence organization in the history of the world has ever been.
We are being totally cooperative with the Congress than ever before and
we have had spelled out for us by the Congress and the Executive over the
last two years more strict regulations on what we can and cannot do than
have ever been legislated for intelligence bodies than before.
Today, I say to you we are trying to achieve a balance. We are not
sure that this mix of regulations and openness is exactly what it should
be. I believe we are moving in the right direction. On the one hand
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we run the risk of intelligence by temerity. If because so many people
are looking over your shoulder, you are afraid to take risks, then we
will have no intelligence at all. If because so many people are exposed
to our inner secrets, if those secrets leak and our allies and our agents
around the world do not have confidence in us, we will have no intelligence
at all. If because you have to clear your actions through so many
bureaucratic processes that you have no flexibility and cannot act quickly
in a crisis, we will not be up to the task. Interestingly, just a few days
ago, the President of the United States in his State of the Union address
to the Congress asked them for two things. First, was for charters, as he
calls them for the intelligence community. These are legal qualifications
of the rules under which we would operate. They would consist of three
parts, the authorization of what we can and should do; the restrictions on
what we cannot do, and then the oversight process by which you balance the
two. At the same time, the President asked for a relaxation of some of
these restrictions that had been placed upon us. I think the fact that he
could and did ask for this and received a strong round of applause from the
Congress indicates how far we have come since the period of 1974-1976, when
there were the investigations of the intelligence process of our country.
Those investigations did uncover some abuses, not as many as the media would
have you think, but enough that the country reacted by enacting these restrictions
which the President is now, in some cases asking to have eased, not removed
just eased somewhat. The fact that the Congress did applaud that suggestion
indicates that they, because of the way the President has gone about the
relationship between intelligence and the Congress has developed confidence
in us. Because of the way the President has set up the oversight procedures
within the White House, he has confidence in us.
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What we are asking and suggesting today in the debate which will
go on in the Congress for the next few months., is that we need to balance
explicit restrictions because when they are put in law by the Congress
are very rigid and you just can't anticipate all the kinds of circumstances
in which they may hamper you with generalized restrictions which are overseen
by the committees of the Congress to tell whether you are taking undue
advantage of the generalization rather than following a very specific law
or rule that is set forth. I think too, that, the applause from the Congress
at the State of the Union address indicates a greater recognition in the
Congress and throughout the country of a very deep importance of having
good intelligence for our country and for its, policymakers today. Our
responsibility ..... inaudible ..... not only to our own people but to
all the people in the free world. It is increasingly important that we
have the information base ..........inaudible.
When we have that right balance and I think we will in the next
two or three years, we are moving there surely and progressively, when
we have found that balance we will have constructed a new, a uniquely
American model of intelligence and that will be a historic accomplishment.
May I conclude by saying, that personally I have found it very
challenging and very rewarding to have been wrenched out of 32 years
of experience and preparation and hopes and aspirations and forced to
expand my horizons.and to take up this new opportunity and I encourage
you, as you look forward to leaving Principia one day to think ahead
to recognize that you want to be prepared for, a new and challenging
opportunities all through your working life. Thank you very much.
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