ADDRESS TO THE LIFE SCIENCE SYMPOSIUM BY ADMIRAL STANSFIELD TURNER, DCI

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP99-00498R000200130010-8
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 5
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 15, 2007
• Sequence Number: 10
• Publication Date: April 11, 1980
• Content Type: REPORT

Approved For Release 2007/03/15: CIA-RDP99-00498R000200130010-8
Tape Transcript
Address to the Life Sciences Symposium
by Admiral Stansfield Turner
Director of Central Intelligence
11 April 1980
I apologize to you for missing my appointment with your for
one o'clock. I have been in an almost non-stop meeting since this
morning downtown, and I am due back at three o'clock. You would
think we could run the government without so many meetings, but
this does seem to be a time of considerable stress. And, it is very
important that we get together and makes sure all our views are
brought forward. I believe it is very important for us in the
intelligence community to be present and participate in the decision-
making meetings that are going on from time to time with all the
problems that are going on around the world. Hopefully, we can
bring to it a non-biased, non-policy oriented outlook that will
help ensure that the top people get a full spectrum of advice.
Considerations which may not fit with someone's policy, and which
although they may not deliberately hide them may not necessarily
come out in his policy-oriented organization, come to the fore.
I think we are doing a good job on that, we are certainly trying.
Being able to have meetings like this with people like yourselves
are helping us to expand our horizons. It is very important in that
process to ensure that we are not bound in by being part of a
policymaking process of the government. We are bounded by being
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human beings in an organization that begins to get its own character
and its own outlook. I am grateful to you for being here. The
area you are working in is one that many of us know far too little
about and we need to expand our horizons.
Yesterday I gave a speech to the American Society of Newspaper
Editors and I dwelled on change as the only constant in the intelligence
world. Technical change is very much with us in how we collect
information. It continues to progress with a rapid pace, particulary
the quantity of data that we now gather from our electronic
intercept and photographic systems and so on. It puts a real challenge
on us to know how to utilize it.
The second form of change which I happened to emphasize with
the Newspaper editors is the great change in the environment in
which American intelligence works today. Five or six years ago, I
said to them, we weren't on your front pages, we are now. The
Church Committee, Rockefeller Commission, the establishment of an
extensive oversight process in the Executive and Legislative
Branches, today and it really does change very much the way we
operate.
It changes us internally, here in the Central Intelligence
Agency. We have got to be less compartmented and have our decisionmaking
process a more corporate process so that we don't make any mistakes
with our righthand and lefthand. Here we have to do that while we
keep secrets, some of it very secret. It is a challenge to us
to find that right balance.
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Change as to how we work in the Executive Branch. I can't
tell you how much more interface, I believe, there is today.
Every time we make a major move in intelligence with the State
Department, the NSC Staff, Department of Defense and others than
there was before. It serves a good purpose. Yet, it has that same
shortcoming, can we now keep this secret. We have much more
interface with the Congress because they are very much a part of
the oversight process. We get a lot of benefit out of dealing with
the Congress. We find out what they want, what the country wants
out of us. They actually share some of our responsibilities. We
tell them about something we are going to do, they can't tell you
it was a bad idea when it bombs out, they have a little more
trouble complaining. It is helpful to get advice from them because
they are serni-detached from our activities.
The last thing I mentioned to the newspeople was the fact
that we really have a lot of interface with the public through the
news media today. Again, the secrecy problem is very much with us.
That is why you read in the papers that we are going to the Congress
to ask for release from the Hughes-Ryan Amendment, makes us notify
8 committees of Congress when we take a covert action; partial
release from the Freedom of Information Act and, legislation to be able
to prosecute people like Philip Agee who just go out and undermine
our activities. I made a point to them and I'd like to be sure you
understand it and that is, look at those three things we are asking
for. None of them are what are build in the newspapers as an
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unshackling of the CIA. It is a step toward a modicum of secrecy,
legitimate secrecy but it isn't like something they say, back to
the good old days whatever they were. It isn't turning us loose to
do a lot of things we haven't been able to do. It is enabling us
to do the constituted activities without so much risk. This is a
major change. Trying to have an oversight process which to some
extent involves the public, to a larger extent the Congress and to
an even larger extent the other agencies of the Executive Branch,
when, in the past and in most intelligence services there isn't
nearly that much checking. I think it can be done, but we are at a
delicate balance right now and to go much further with the risk of
compromise and exposure we won't be able to carry on much of the
activities that we must.
The third form of change that I mentioned yesterday was the so
much broader scope that we are required to report on. Perhaps 20
or 30 years ago we were largely Soviets, largely militarily oriented,
today we are all over the globe. Today, military intelligence is
extremely important, but so too, the economic, political, anti-terrorism
and life sciences. In the point of fact I have spent a lot of time
in the last. 3 years asking the question where should we be expanding,
developing the techniques of intelligence to meet the needs of the
country in the 1980's and 1990's. I have harped a great deal on
food supply, and population. We don't know as much about some of
the more esoteric areas of life science, like parapschology. I have
talked to Mr. McDonald about it and have done some work. There are
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many other areas and this kind of a forum to explore that and to
generate through our system so that we can decide where to try to
develop resources, where to invest the day in some young graduates
who will come in and provide for us over the long run the foundation
of expertise which is extremely important. The very fact that I
am so late being with you and only going to be able to stay for
a half-hour instead of an hour is indicative of how we get so
wrapped up in the day-to-day. In a forum like this to makes us
focus, I hope, on the importance of the areas you have been discussing
so we can put them into balance with ICBM's, lasers and other
things that are our stock-in-trade, then find what is the proper
niche for these areas of expertise so that we don't find ourselves
wanting when the time comes that they are really high on the national
agenda.
I would like to stop here and just engage in some dialogue
with you for the next 17 minutes. Not only to respond to your
questions, but mainly to hear your comments and suggestions in
particular where in the areas you have been discussing, you think I
should pay more attention concerning the intelligence community in
building for the future.