SPEECH BY ADMIRAL STANSFIELD TURNER BEFORE THE CONGRESSIONAL INTERNS IN COOLIDGE AUDITORIUM, LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP99-00498R000200090006-8
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 20
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 28, 2007
• Sequence Number: 6
• Publication Date: July 12, 1978
• Content Type: REPORT

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PUBLIC AFFAIRS STAFF
Speech by A d m i r a l Stansf i e l d Turner before the Congressional Interns
July 12, 1978
In Coolidge Auditorium L - 1 1ZR+ ~~~"~~ 2?SS
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ADMIRAL STANSFIELD TURNER: Thank you. Thank you
The reason I'm here today is because you invited me.
But I accepted because I enjoyed it last year. I enjoyed the
questions and the interchange that we had. So I'm going to
try to talk as briefly as I can. My wife tells me that's not
very brief, but -- and leave most of the time for you to ask
questions and be sure we get to the things that you're most
interested in in my field of business, which is the overall
intelligence community; not only the Central Intelligence Agency
but all of the intelligence activities of our country.
I will anticipate one of your questions, perhaps,
which I usually get. And that is, you know, "How does a fellow
like you get into a job like this?" Well, let me tell you ex-
actly how it happened.
After a full career as a military man, I was sitting
in a very fine military post when I got a phone call one day.
He said, "The President of the United States wants to see you
tomorrow. Well, I went with some trepidation. I'd never
been asked to see a President before. And I of course thought,
"Well, what kind of a new military assignment is he going to
give me?"' And suddenly I heard him saying something about
Central Intelligence Agency. And I said, "0h, my goodness."
And I looked at him and I said, "Mr. President, what you're
telling me is that my reward for 31 years of clean living and
good military service is I'm now going to be the nation's
number one spy."
And he said, "Yes,
Stan, that's it."
WelI, I want you to know, of course, I got the job
on merit. The fact that I was the classmate of the President
at the Naval Academy had nothing to do with it whatsoever.
[Laughter]
Sometimes people are a little astounded that we talk
about spies. A lot of people think that's a nasty word or one
that you sort of avoid and find a euphemism for. And we have
a number of euphemisms for it.
But let me talk to you first about what a spy is. A
spy is someone who's willing to stick his neck out in order to
obtain information that the United States feels that it needs.
Now, actually, most spies are foreigners. They're people who
are willing to help this country, even though they're not part
of it, for one reason or another. And I have to admit to you
that some of them do it for avarice, because they get paid.
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But you'd be surprised how many spies do it out of conviction,
a conviction that the United States is on the right track, and
that if they can help us, they're going to help their countries
and their problems in their parts of the world.
Now, I say most spies are foreigners. But every spy
has a CIA counterpart, someone who makes contact, who gets to
that spy what -- the tasking, the idea of what information we
most need, and then manages to get back the information that is
obtained for us.
Now, all this is a rather risky business, and it's
actually a heroic one, in my view. And the people who do it
are professionals and they're very, very good. And we can be
proud of them, and we're very grateful that we have them.
But you may ask, "Why do you get information like
this? Why does the country need this information?" And let
me just say very briefly that every one of us here is blessed
to be part of the American open society, the most open society
the world has ever known. And you know that you can come to
this country as a foreigner and you can walk down the street,
talk to people, read the newspapers, turn on the television,
and you've got a pretty good feel for the United States. At
least you have an understanding of what directions this country
is going.
But you know as well as I that's not the case in much
of the world today. Much of it is closed. The societies are
closed. And if you walk down the street, you don't talk to
people; and the television and the newspapers don't let you
know what's going on.
And why is that a problem? It's a problem because,
more today than perhaps ever before, the world is interdepen-
dent. And what happens in these closed societies affects you
and me. It affects us very directly. And I'm not just talking
now about military matters. I'm talking about economics and
politics.
You remember the great grain robbery of 1972, when
the Soviets entered the grain market suddenly. And what did
it do? It changed the cost of bread in the United States.
And when closed societies don't give you advanced
clues of their political and economic moves, and when you can't
sense those by the normal contacts with that closed society,
then you need to get intelligence, you need to get that infor-
mation in order to protect the interests not only of our own
country, but of the entire Free World. And therefore it is
important that we have an intelligence capability.
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But I'm asked also, "Within that, why do you have to
use these human elements, the spies. We hear so much today
about all these new technical means of collecting information.
Why don't you rely on those?"
Well, the new technical means, which are basically,
on the one hand, photographs or, on the other hand, what we
call signals intelligence, where we intercept waves that are
going through the air, right here in this room right now, for
instance -- there has been a revolution in the last decade and
a half in these technical means of collecting information. And
the quantities of data that we obtain through these technical
systems today is much greater than you can imagine, and it con-
tinues to burgeon. And it's very, very encouraging and it's
very, very helpful to us.
But let me point out that when you have a photograph,
you generally have something that tells you what happened yes-
terday or the day before or last week. You can piece a lot of
them together and you can get a trend and say, "This is hap-
pening over time." And you can extrapolate and say, "That's
what's going to happen tomorrow." But you're never sure. You're
never sure why things happened that you got by technical means
and what's going to happen next.
I present some of this technical information to our
policymakers, and they look at me and they say, "Hey, well,
that's very interesting, Stan. But what are they going to do
tomorrow? Why are they doing that yesterday?"
And here's where the human intelligence agent really
has his forte, because he's the one who probes into people's
intentions, into their thinking, into their plans, and tries
to obtain that for you.
And so what I'm saying is, intelligence collection
today is a composite of the technical systems and the human
systems, and they complement
each
other. And we've got to
have them both, and we've got
to
have them in the right measure,
in the right proportion. And
one
of the great challenges that
I.face today is to make them
mesh
together well.
It's not been the case, always, that that's happened
properly;, in my opinion. Because years ago, the human spy was
all of intelligence collection. That was practically the only
way. And as the new technical systems have come along, we have
to insure that there's a proper meshing. That you look at a
picture and say, "What does that not tell me that I want to
know most, and I can get by signals intelligence or I can get
by human intelligence?" Or you get a clue from a human agent
who tells you something, and you say, "That means I should go
take a picture of that, or I should listen to certain signals
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that are coming out." And you work it together in a team.
It's exciting, it's intellectually demanding, and
it's very rewarding when you make these things pull together.
We have a vast intelligence organization in our over-
all country, between the Department of Defense and the Central
Intelligence Agency; and my job is to pull that all together
and make it work as one team. I think we're getting there and
I think we're doing the job well. But it is a very exciting
cha l l enge.
That all is one-half of our problem, however. You
must collect information. That's the first half. The second
half is to do something with it, to interpret it, to analyze
it. And this is really something very akin to a research acti-
vity, a campus research activity, a major industry's research.
We have at the Central Intelligence Agency probably the largest
research organization in the government. And what do we do?
We take these little bits and pieces of clues that come from
here and there that we collect by these three different means,
signals, photograph and human, that I've described to you, and
we try to piece together a whole picture from what is never a
complete set of puzzle pieces. You never have complete, totally
convincing information, and you always are trying to interpret,
trying to extrapolate from these fragments of data to a conclu-
sion that can be supported and that will help our policymakers
make better pol icy decisions for you and for me. It is a very
intellectually demanding and a very exciting part of the work.
I happen to think today that we in the United States
have the best intelligence capability in the world. First,
we're very good in the human intelligence I've described. The
Soviet Union is much bigger in that field than we. They put
much more effort into it, many, many more people. But we're
very capable at it.
Secondly, in the technical fields that I've described,
we're ahead of the Soviets, we're ahead of everyone else, because
of the greater technical sophistication in our country, which
we're very fortunate to have had applied to this field.
And finally, on the second half of intelligence, on
analysis and interpretation, I have an abiding conviction that
when you are doing that kind of work, you must have a free
atmosphere in which to work. You must be able to come up with
interpretations and conclusions that are contrary to what a
President or a Secretary of State or any other policymaker hap-
pens to be espousing at that moment. And I don't think that in
the Soviet Union their intelligence analysts have quite that
freedom that we do in this country. And therefore I believe we
have a real advantage over the closed societies of the world
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when it comes to interpreting and understanding our intelligence.
So I think we're number one. I assure you that I'm
doing everything I can to keep us number one. I also assure
you that I believe we can stay number one and truly defend the
institutions, the morale, the attitudes, the standards of our
country. And I believe that we can do that in ways that will
strengthen our society and not undercut it.
We have developed in the last several years, since
all the criticism of intelligence in this country, new sets of
controls, new sets of oversight procedures. Some of you may
be involved in the two oversight committees of this Congress,
the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. And they are doing
a very fine job of overseeing us and giving the public an oppor-
tunity to feel confident that we are not operating independently,
we are operating under due supervision. And that's very impor-
tant, because the strength of any public institution, be it
intelligence or State Department or Defense or Energy, or any-
where else, must come from the people of this country.
We're therefore being more open, we're trying to come
out and describe to you, as I'm attempting to do today, more of
the intelligence process. And yet we must, at the base, keep a
certain amount of secrecy, a large amount of secrecy. Because,
clearly, if an agent, a spy thinks his name is going to appear
in The Washington Post tomorrow, he's not going to work for you
today. Clearly, if you spend billions of dollars to develop an
expensive technical collection system, and then it's described
in the magazines and in the press of this country, the counter
to it is developed rather quickly, and you've wasted all that.
Clearly, when you get some of this information and interpret it,
it gives your President, your Secretary of State a unique advan-
tage, in some instance, because other people with whom he is
dealing in other countries do not know that he has that infor-
mation and is better equipped in those circumstances. And so
that information must be kept private.
It's a fine and a difficult line to draw between the
necessary secrecy of intelligence and our complete desire, as
Americans, to be as open in our society as possible. I think
we're drawing that line very well today, under the supervision
of the United States Congress, under new controls and procedures
established by the President throughout the Executive Branch.
And I assure you that we are conducting intelligence only in ways
that will support the institutions and the ideals of our country.
Let's have at your questions.
Q: [Inaudible]
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ADMIRAL TURNER: Should we change -- can you hear
that in the back, or should I repeat the questions? Repeat.
Should we change the secrecy oath to apply only to classified
documents?
This gets to a very fundamental principle. We have
a secrecy agreement with our employees in the Central Intelli-
gence Agency which requires them, if they're going to write
books or articles, to submit them to us for a security review.
We don't have the right to censor their books. There are all
sorts of appeal mechanisms if we ask them to take something out
that they don't feel should be taken out.
The purpose of this is to insure that somebody doesn't
publish something, unwittingly, that is classified. And it is
very difficult for the individual author to determine whether
what he is going to print is truly classified or not. In the
first place, he's usually retired, he's out of the business.
In the second place, even those of us in the business sometimes
i ivity a apiece of information,
.. . ,; , i JJ) 1'31; s)-iiebody sees on I y
a I i rrl ~i f of thy: story.
Wa have only, in our agreement, the right to object
to information that is classified. But who determines that if
we don't review it with this broader perspective? That's the
problem. If we leave it to the individual author, you have
215 million Americans deciding what's classified and what's
not; and I think that doesn't work.
Way in the back, in the doorway.
9: [Inaudible]
ADMIRAL TURNER: I really can't respond to your first
question. I know absolutely nothing about it. Mr. Nixon is
not under a secrecy agreement with the Central Intelligence
Agency. If there was such an exchange with the White House,
it's something totally unrelated to my responsibilities. I
just have never heard that before.
On the second one, Mr. Snepp was a reporting officer
for the Central Intelligence Agency in Vietnam. Mr. Snepp did
not send any memoranda to the Secretary of State, because he
was not that high-level an authority in the Central Intelligence
Agency.
The Central Intelligence Agency's record, I believe
everybody recognizes, was far better in Vietnam than was mili-
tary intelligence or other intelligence with respect to indi-
cating the trends that things were going. We intelligence
officers never can guaranty that policymakers will, in effect,
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take the information we give and use it. We don't develop policy.
They must take our factual evaluations and develop policy from
them. You never know who's got the right policy when it's all
said and done. But I think the agency is very proud of its
record in analyzing the Vietnam situation.
Q: [Inaudible]
ADMIRAL TURNER: What do I see as the outcome of the
Soviet dissident trials? Wow.
Well, clearly, these trials are, in our terms, as
Americans, violating human rights. We have placed a great deal
of emphasis, as a country, on our desire to see human rights
better recognized around the world. So this is bound to place
additional strains between our two countries.
Beyond that, you know, what impact it will have on
other relationships, be it SALT, be it trade, be it cultural
and educational exchanges, I think it's just far too early to
attempt any prediction on right now.
Q: [Inaudible]
ADMIRAL TURNER: What steps have been taken in the
CIA to make sure, among other things, that I'm not kept in the
dark as to what's going on, and that the activities are well
viewed?
Quite a few. Clearly, I have to feel that I'm trying,
by the way I run the operation, to make it clear that I'm not
going to tolerate people withholding information. One day I
was presented with a disciplinary case in which an individual
CIA officer had refused to tell his superior something that he
was doing in an operational sense. The next day, that man did
not work for the Central Intelligence Agency.
In short, I've tried to make it as expressly clear as
I can that there are no secrets inside the organization, with
obvious ?-- you know, we have compartments that people are allowed
into. But you cannot refuse to tell your superior what you're
doing. And I'm one of those superiors. And anybody who tries
to witthold something from me is not going to be employed there
very long.
But beyond that, the President has an Intelligence
Oversight Board, a retired senator, a retired governor, and a
prominent lawyer, three men who report only to him. Any one of
my employees is entitled to write to that board and say, "Tur-
ner's doing something wrong," or, "Joe Blow under him, and Turner
doesn't !know it, is doing something wrong." That board looks
into it, reports only to the President. I'm not involved in this
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chain, because I may be one of the people due to be criticized.
So there are a number of checks like this that have
been established.
Q: [Inaudible]
ADMIRAL TURNER: What criteria do we use to establish
whether we have a file on American citizens?
We don't keep files on American citizens, other than
our employees. The only people we have any right to look into
in the United States are people who apply for employment. We
have to, obviously, find out a few -- you know, your background
if we're going to ask -- if you're going to ask to work for us.
Now, there were some files kept in the past. We have
destroyed as many of those as possible. There are some con-
gressional freezes on destroying files, for other reasons, be-
cause investigations are going on in the Congress. But we don't
keep those kinds of files anymore, and we're destroying the ones
from the past as rapidly as we're allowed to.
Q: [Inaudible]
ADMIRAL TURNER: Do I agree with former Director Colby's
being as open and forthright with the congressional committees as
possible?
I do. And I have been and I adhere to that policy
very, very firmly. You read in the newspaper yesterday or today
that there was a meeting in the White House concerning leaks,
between the President and leaders of the Congress.
There's no simple straightforward way to handle a
problem like Mr. Colby faced and I face. You have to be very
careful that in the oversight process we don't have so much
oversight that we have so many leaks that we can't conduct
intelligence. You, on the other hand, can't have such vague-
ness in your descriptions to the oversight committees that they
really are not overseeing you.
I think that we're working out a good middle ground on
this. But I would say to you that it's going to take another
year or two before that really settles out. And I can give you
the assurance that I think we're in the right balance here.
One of the things that some of you may be involved in
is charter legislation for the intelligence community, and that
will help to establish these boundaries. And that's very impor-
tant legislation which is under consideration in the Senate
Select Committee right now.
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Q: [Inaudible]
ADMIRAL TURNER: What efforts are being made to protect
constructive criticism, as opposed to using control over secrecy
or classified information to suppress embarrassing information?
Well, one that I've referred to already is this Intel-
ligence Oversight Board, and also the two select committees we've
talked about frequently here. Because a man like Snepp, if he
really sincerely feels that he's not going to get a true hearing --
that is, that the agency would not just take out classified infor-
mation, but would try to take out embarrassing unclassified infor-
mation --? is to go to one of these oversight bodies instead. And
I personally think the true sincerity of the so-called whistle-
blowers can be measured in whether they have done something like
that or whether they have gone surreptitiously, as did Mr. Snepp,
to a publisher.
Q: [Inaudible]
ADMIRAL TURNER: Anything that was classified. That's
an oversimplification.
We did not in court accuse Mr. Snepp of publishing
classified information. Now, there are several reasons for that
kind of thing. One is, we have a very difficult -- we're in a
very difficult position if a man publishes some classified infor-
mation and we want to take him to court on that grounds. Why?
Because to prove that it was classified information, we may have
to reveal a whole bushel basket of additional classified infor-
mation.
Secondly, if a book -- now this maybe is peripheral
to your question. But if a book like Snepp's gets out and I
answer your question page-by-page and line-by-line, then I focus
all kinds of attention on what may have been classified -- you
see what I mean? -- and do more damage to ourselves, when maybe
it was not fully noticed before.
But I can assure you that I would not have countenanced
our trying to constrain Mr. Snepp's book in any way other than
classified information.
The young lady here.
Q: [Inaudible]
ADMIRAL TURNER: What's our policy with respect to the
Pinochet government in Chile, and Latin America in general?
The Central Intelligence Agency is not a policymaking
organization. And it's very critical, it's very critical that
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we understand that if I and the rest of the intelligence com-
munity do not stand clear of being in favor of this government
or that government, in favor of this policy or that policy,
we're not going to provide the right service to our country.
Because every time we come up win an evaluation -- and I told
you these are never black-and-white; they're always very, very
subjective. You've got to piece these puzzles together. If
we do that and they suspect that we're trying to push one policy
or the other, people will not regard our intelligence as being
unbiased.
Now, in the past, the Central Intelligence Agency has
been involved in attempting to influence events in foreign coun-
tries. We call that covert action. Chile was a case. That is
really not an intelligence function, but it is a function that's
been assigned by every President to the Central Intelligence
Agency. It is under very strict controls. The Hughes-Ryan
Amendment by the Congress requires that if we undertake a covert
action --- that is, an action to influence events; not to gain
information, intelligence, but to influence actions in other
countries -- we must report that to eight committees of the
Congress,. In addition, I am required by presidential -- I'm
also required that if we're going to undertake a covert action,
that I must get the approval of the National Security Council
and the signature of the President of the United States.
So, our policy with regard to Mr. Pinochet and other
Latin American governments is to conform with the directives of
the President, as signed, and the notifications to the Congress
as to any policy actions that we take in that regard.
Q: [Inaudible]
ADMIRAL TURNER: Are the intelligence bases in Turkey
irreplaceable? And if so, why?
Intelligence bases in Turkey were of high value to us
before they were closed in the summer of 1975. Their value and
their so-called irreplaceability comes from geography. There
are certain things you can do from certain locales. Some of it
frequently can be replicated from other places. But very seldom
in a case like this can you replicate it fully.
We have been able to make up for some of the loss of
the Turkish bases. Clearly, you do that at the expense of some-
thing else, in most instances.
All I can say to you is that we found, from an intel-
I igence point of view -- setting aside pol icy with relations to
Turkey or Greece or anybody else -- that we were getting very
valuable assistance from those bases, some of which has been
replaced, but by no means all.
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Q: [Inaudible]
ADMIRAL TURNER: Will the CIA, or the intelligence com-
munity, really, be able to verify a SALT agreement if one is
signed, a new SALT agreement?-
I can say, number one, that we are confident of being
able to monitor, verify the existing SALT agreement. I can't
answer your question very forthrightly until I know the exact
terms that Mr. Vance negotiates here. But I can assure you of
this: that I am very much a part of the SALT process. I don't
get into whether it's a good policy to have a SALT or a SALT
with 1320 MIRVs or 1400, or whatever it may be. But I do get
in very actively on saying, "If you make that part of the agree-
ment, Mr. Vance, this is my prediction on how well I'II be able
to verify that."
along.
So the decision-makers have that advice as they go
I have been up and testified to closed sessions of
the Congress already a number of times on this subject, because
they're very anxious to know how we're coming. And we give
them all the details. And I'm sure that once an agreement is
signed I"II be living up here on Capitol Hill, testifying about
how well we can verify it.
Q: [Inaudible]
ADMIRAL TURNER: That was my idea. I've won a lot
of them out there, but not all.
No, seriously. I came up with that idea at the begin-
ning. We explored it, we ran some experimental tours. We made
a lot of effort and developed exhibits, a slide and sound show,
and one thing and another. And we tried it out on the employees'
families;, and we found that it was physically just impossible to
make it work on any kind of a large scale. The building is such
that we had to do it in corridors that are heavily trafficked
in the normal working day. And we just -- you know, we were
actually blocking them off with these exhibits. We could do
that on a weekend. So I made a calculation, you know, how many
people can we run through on a weekend, even if we pay a lot
of guards and other people to come in extra? And it was basi-
cally so small that I couldn't see any way to ration it. I was
going to give each member of Congress tickets, like you get to
the FBI and other places. But they'd get two tickets a week,
or something like that. And I said, "Boy, a busload will come
in from Iowa, and I'II have a congressman on my back wanting to
know why he can't have 42 tickets."
Seriously, it just was physically impossible to do in
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the weekdays, and we couldn't handle enough people to satisfy
the demand on the weekends without just causing ourselves all
kinds of administrative problems.
We are opening up more to organized groups that come
out, particularly in the evening; and we have a lecture for
them, we have an auditorium that seats 500 people, and we do
give them some kind of an exposure.
But it was just a logistics impossibility.
Q: [Inaudible]
ADMIRAL TURNER: Why did I come in and fire a whole
lot of -- a high percentage of our people without any benefits
or privileges?
First of all, I deny the allegation. I can tell you
that when the firing process is finally completed in another
year -- that is, when all the people who have actually been
asked to leave will have left -- there will be less than two
dozen people out on the street looking for a job. The majority
of them have full retirement privileges when they leave. They
were people selected because they had already passed the eli-
gibility for retirement.
Almost all of the others will get retirement benefits
at age 60. That's the way the Civil Service procedures go.
They had enough time for that but not enough for full utili-
zation -?- I mean full retirement.
Now, look, when you take over an agency and there's
a consensus of opinion, a universal consensus of opinion -- I've
not found anybody yet who really disputes this -- that we were
overstaffed, what do you do? Do you go on overstaffed, wasting
the taxpayers' money, on the one hand? But more importantly
than that, we are utterly dependent on people like you, people
who like you, who when you have your college degrees are going
to come work for us; not many of you, but we want some of you.
[Laughter]
It's one of the most exciting professions in our
government, one of the most intellectually challenging, as I've
tried to point out to you.
Now, do you want to join an organization where you're
underemployed and oversupervised, and you don't have enough
responsibility because there are too many people sitting around,
particularly at the top, who've accumulated over the years? And
the organization as a whole says to itself, "We've got too many."
And the whole argument I had and the whole dispute with my removing
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them was, how do you do it? And whether you do it over a long
period of time or a short. And my decision was to lance the
boil, not to live with it.
Q: [Inaudible]
ADMIRAL TURNER: The first question is, why do we have
a classified budget that people can't see, when they vote on it,
the details of it?
If we published the breakdown of our budget, other
intelligence services would be able to see how much emphasis
we're putting in each of those three areas of collecting intel-
ligence that I...
Q: [Inaudible]
ADMIRAL TURNER: All right. Why was there not even a
single figure, the total budget?
The President has taken the position that he will not
oppose publishing a single figure. But he has left to the Con-
gress the responsibility of deciding whether to publish a single
figure or not. Why? Because we are strongly opposed to a line-
by-line breakdown. And if we, the Executive Branch, published
a single figure and the Congress then decides they ought to pub-
lish lots of them, we have lost an essential point.
So we've said to the Congress, "We'll go along with a
single figure, but you've got to agree that it's only going to
be a single figure, and be willing to police that. So you've
got to have -- share the responsibility."
The Congress has not accepted that at this point; it's
not decided that they want a single figure. The ballpark -- the
ball is in the congressional park here.
Your second question was?
Q: [Inaudible]
ADMIRAL TURNER: Can I give you my assurance that
there's no abridgement of American rights by actions of the
Central Intelligence Agency today? Yes, I can.
Way at the back.
Is that enough. You know, I mean I could be -- I could
elaborate on that and say to you I'm doing absolutely everything
in my power to insure that I'm confident of the categoric state-
ment I just made. I have no knowledge of any infringement of
American rights. I believe that the checks and balances that I
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have set up within my own organization, the checks and balances
that have been directed to me by presidential order and congres-
sional law are such that I feel very confident in what I've just
said to you.
Clearly, you know that I can't give you a hundred per-
cent guaranty. But I'm sure trying my best to be certain that
we are not infringing.
Way in the back.
Q: [Inaudible]
ADMIRAL TURNER: I think the answer to your question
is basically no. We do national intelligence estimates -- these
are the analytic products of our work, or one of them -- on all
kinds of situations. But the question you've posed is pretty
much a policy issue, and that would be something that would be
done either in the Defense Department or the State Department,
rather than through a national intelligence estimate.
We would be asked to contribute to it: If such-and-
such were done in such-and-such a country, what would be the
reaction of that country, or the neighboring countries, or so
on? But it's not our job to decide: Would a policy of tougher
line towards this or so be a good one for the United States,
or a bad one?
Yes, Ma'am.
Q: [Inaudible]
ADMIRAL TURNER: That's dangerous, if you read The
Washington Post, I'll tell you.
Q: [Inaudible]
ADMIRAL TURNER: Will new sophisticated encoding devices,
if made available to the American public, be a threat to the intel-
l i gence community?
Yes. That article had a lot of fact in it. And the
tougher encoding gets, the tougher -- I mean the more sophisticated
the encoding gets, the more difficult the decoding becomes. But,
you know, intelligence matters, military weapons matters are all
games of move and countermove. One fellow develops this, somebody
develops the counter to it. And then they develop the counter to
the counter, and so on back and forth. It's a constant game.
Q: [Inaudible]
ADMIRAL TURNER: Well, nobody has a right to conduct
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treason. And we have in the last year and a half that I've been
here convicted three Americans for -- two of them for being agents
of the Soviet Union, one for attempting to provide classified
information to the Soviet Union. There were two...
Q: [Inaudible]
ADMIRAL TURNER: Reconcile it? I don't...
Q: [Inaudible]
ADMIRAL TURNER: All right. You're talking now about
a field I have not addressed this morning, and that's counter-
intelligence. How do you counter what the other fellow's intel-
ligence activities against us are?
Counterintelligence is divided between the FBI and the
CIA. The FBI is responsible for checking on Americans in the
United States. We are responsible for checking on counterintel-
ligence activities outside the United States. So, if we have
reason to believe that an American is supporting or spying for
some other country, we will turn that information over to the
FBI and say, "Look, you really need to do whatever are the legal
procedures to find out if this in fact is the case. Here's the
evidence."
We found two young men in California who were working
in a contractor's plant and were passing data on one of our tech-
nical intelligence systems to the Soviet Union. And we turned
all that over. The FBI developed the case, prosecuted, and the
young men are in jail.
Q: [Inaudible]
ADMIRAL TURNER: You're asking whether we should let
a congressional investigation talk to our agents. Is that right?
When you ask a man to take the risks of being an agent,
a spy, you may be risking his life; and he's not very likely to
do that unless he has confidence that you're not going to let it
out of the bag who he is and what he's doing. And I can assure
you that the moment the agents we have all around the world be-
I ieve that the Congress of the United States is going to be privy
to their names and occupations and locations, we're not going to
have any agents at all. Not that I don't trust the Congress.
[Laughter]
But you're talking about men and women with serious
risks at stakes here.
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There is no instance, however, that I can imagine that
-'I will not be willing to obtain for the Congress what information
they need from those agents.
Q: [Inaudible]
ADMIRAL TURNER: I just answered that question when
answering the previous one.
If I disclose exactly how we got that information that
drove us to the conclusion we did, we came to, I'll never get
it again;, or I'll lose the life of the man or woman who gave it
to me, or I'II Iose the usefulness of the technical system that
brought it.
I came to the Congress and in closed session I described
as close as I could to the actual sources of that information.
But you must -- and I'm required by the law of the United States
Congress, I'm required by law, in my capacity as Director of
Central Intelligence, to protect our sources -- those are the
human people -- and our methods -- those are the technical sys-
tems -- of collecting intelligence. That's in statute. And I
cannot stand up in public, or even in a closed session of the
Congress, and get too close to violating that law.
You wanted to follow up on that. Go ahead. It's a
very important question for all of us.
Q: [Inaudible]
ADMIRAL TURNER: Why would you expect a furor? Because
a Communist dictator takes issue with the President of the United
States? I don't know why there's been such a furor, and I don't
know why so many people are willing to believe a proven liar over
a proven man of integrity. But...
[Inaudible comment]
ADMIRAL TURNER: That, Sir, is absolutely false.
[Inaudible comment]
ADMIRAL TURNER: So it's more logical to believe a Com-
munist, Marxist, lying -- proven lying dictator.
[Laughter and applause]
ADMIRAL TURNER: Let me just emphasize one point: that
we made our evaluation based on our intelligence that the Cubans
were in fact involved in training the Katangans to invade Zaire.
That is not a black-and-white conclusion. That is circumstantial
evidence. But we looked at it very carefully. And the weight of
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that evidence was so great that we feel very strong in that conclu-
sion. But I can't walk out here and lay on the floor some very
specific incriminating piece of evidence.
If you analyze it very carefully, go home and think about
it now, just what evidence would really persuade you? You know,
what would be just absolutely black-and-white? You know, a photo-
graph of a Cuban and a Katangan?
[Laughter]
You know, I mean -- an intercepted message that said,
"We Cubans are training hard"?
[Laughter]
No. It's -- you know, if we'd shot a couple of Cubans
in Zaire, that would be fine. But we never even accused -- I mean
that would be fine for proof.
[Laughter and applause]
But we never -- we never made the allegation that the
Cubans actually went into Zaire. We said they were training in
Angola.
So, you know, we made our best judgment. The President
took his policy action on that. And I certainly don't blame him
from not standing up to that policy action and to making that de-
cision because he might have been afraid that a Communist dictator
was going to challenge him.
Q: [Inaudible]
ADMIRAL TURNER: What kind of Soviets come to us to
offer help, and how do we separate that from dissidents and the
problem of mucking up intelligence and genuine dissidents giving
the Soviets more opportunity to accuse people like Scharansky?
I stand by the President's statement that the CIA had
no connection whatsoever with Scharansky, incidentally. That
statement, you may be interested, was a deviation from our normal
policy. We normally do not comment one way or the other on that
kind of accusation, because you get yourself into a difficult
corner where if you keep saying, "No, no. It'w asn't Schar-
ansky. It wasn't Joe. It wasn't Bill." Finally they find Pete
over here, and you have to say, "I won't comment," and you sort
[Laughter]
We felt the human rights aspects of Scharansky were so --
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18
so poignant that we made an exception and came clean and said
we had no connection with Scharansky.
Your question is a very trenchant one. It's a very
difficult one on which we have to be most sensitive as to whether
we're unduly exposing some Soviet to danger.
We also have the other side of the story. We have to
be always concerned that we aren't being subject to what we call
a provocation, a deliberate person coming in pretending he wants
to do something for us, when in fact we're being set up.
And so, I can't give you a concrete answer. We just
try to be sensitive and we try to keep it very much in mind.
I think we've got time for one last question.
Q: [Inaudible]
ADMIRAL TURNER: Well, those are two complex questions.
Number one, I think it's an unsupported assertion that
the civilians are taking over, or taking over in areas where
they're inferior to military. Military intelligence is very
large, it's very capable. It has its weaknesses. Civilian
intelligence in the Central Intelligence Agency has its weak-
nesses.
I think it is absolutely essential that we have inde-
pendent analytic capabilities in the Defense Department, in the
CIA, and in the State Department. And we do. And they must be
competitive and they must be overlapping. State emphasized poli-
tical, with a smaller capability in economic. Defense emphasizes
military, with a smaller capability in political. The CIA empha-
sizes political, military and economic.
Out of that, I am able, when doing a national intelli-
gence estimate, to benefit by perhaps three different viewpoints,
two of them probably very expert, on any given subject. And I
don't find there's any consistency in the military being better
at military analysis or the civilians being better at economic
or political analysis. Sometimes -- I know this very well --
when you're in the military you get awfully close to the problem.
You also have the danger of getting close to the policy side of
the problem: Will your intelligence drive you away from buying
another tank or another airplane, or something like that?
So, there are good reasons to have a balance of civilian
and military, CIA, State and Defense.
I don't agree with General Keegan's assertions that the
Soviets have violated the SALT or the ABM agreement or that they
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19
have a particle-beam weapon well developed.
I thank you for your time. I hope that you all will
recognize the importance of these intelligence activities to
our country, and that one of these days we may see you in this
exciting business.
[Applause]
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