ADMIRAL STANSFIELD TURNER, DCI, ADDRESS TO AMHERST, SMITH, VASSAR AND WILLIAMS, WASH., D.C., ALUMNI CLUBS 19 MARCH 1980

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP99-00498R000200130011-7
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 32
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 6, 2007
• Sequence Number: 11
• Publication Date: March 20, 1980
• Content Type: REPORT

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Lu rm, LI, 1980
Admiral Stansfi el d Turner
Director of Central Intelligence
Address to Amherst, Smith, Vassar
and Williams, Wash.,D.C., Alumni Clubs
19 March 1980
VAS
Welcome to all of you from Amherst, Vassar, Smith and Williams.
I look back on my two years of life at Amherst as one of the
most important and developing parts of my experience. Equally, I
look on a portion of those periods at Vassar and Smith as important
too. I can't say the same for Williams. I only went there once and
I had the misfortune of being the quarterback on the undefeated
Amherst freshman football team that decided to throw a flat pass
from his only 20-yard line in the fourth quarter and lost the game
on an interception.
You might be interested to know that two Amherst men, Judge
William Webster and myself, had lunch today in my office in the
Central Intelligence Agency here. A working lunch to coordinate
the efforts of the FBI and the CIA. You might wonder how two
liberally educated, clean-living Amherst men ended up as the number
one G-man and the number one spy of our Country. Certainly neither
one of us anticipated this and I doubt that Amherst really thought
they were educating people to come to these two professions. But,
I am-grateful that Amherst in my day, and I hope today, and I
assume the same for Vassar, Williams and Smith does not focus on
trying to educate people for a specific profession but rather for
making people rounded, adaptable, and liberally educated. I know
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that I am grateful for that, that I received in these directions
from Amherst not for what they taught me for what Amherst taught me
that I did not know in many, many fields of interests and engendering
in me a desire to know those other fields. I think this has helped
Bill Webster and myself to shift gears and shift careers in our
50's. We both enjoyed our first careers immensely. We both are
excited and find most challenging the careers we are now engaged
in.
Intelligence is indeed a very exciting profession today. It
is exciting because of the rate of change of what is going on in
the intelligence world. First, there is a tremendous rate of
change of technology and we are very dependent for collecting
intelligence information on technology, on satellites, on listening
posts, on computers, on data processing. And, even in the traditional
historic field of human intelligence, the spy, we today use more
and more technical gadgets to keep people's cover, keep people's
identity fuzzy, make them able to communicate and exchange information
in difficult circumstances.
We also are facing a rate of change in the other half of the
intelligence profession. What you collect over here you must
analyze and draw conclusions and estimates from over here. Even in
this much more social science oriented field there is a tremendous
rate of change. The techniques of analysis. We can manipulate
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data today in ways that let us extract unbelievable amounts of
information from it. We do things like quantitative analysis
in fields of social science and politics that you would not think
were possible. And the subject areas today as contrasted with
maybe 30 years ago when it was military and some politics, look
today; we are deeply involved in international terrorism, international
narcotics flows, the worlds food problem. Every year we predict
the Soviet grain harvest; industrial capacity of other nations; the
health of world leaders; economic forecasting of all types; you
have heard of our forecast of the world energy outlook and the
Soviet oil capacity, and so on.
Today we don't concern ourselves as exclusively as heretofore
with the Soviet Union, its satellites and China. Look at the
pallet of problems on the President's desk tonight. Zimbabvwe,
Kampuchea, Afghanistan, Iran, Yemen, El Salvador. The intelligence
professional today is challenged in many more areas where he
must keep abreast and many more academic disciplines where he must
be familiar. It is exciting.
On top of this we are surrounded today with a vast change
in the environment in which we must work and I refer primarily to
the domestic environment. In the past the intelligence activities
of our country were largely isolated and secretive. Since 1975,
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and the Church Committee, the Pike Committee, the Rockefeller
Commission, new means of oversight by the Congress, the White
House, the Intelligence Oversight Board, and so on, we are on the
front pages all the time. The result of this coming out from
isolation, this may not be quite analogous to the caterpillar who
came out of a cocoon into a butterfly, but it is a very different
profession, a very different intelligence community in this more
open atmosphere and environment than we have had in the past.
It has had an impact on our internal operations and organization;
it has had an impact on how we in the intelligence community mix
with the rest of the Executive Branch of our Government and with
the Legislative Branch and also with our relationships with the
media and through them with you, the public.
I would like to discuss with you for a bit and before we
we have questions and discussion of your ideas, what this new
environment is and what it means to us because I think it is
a very significant change for our country and I think it is an
issue of public concern today. Should the CIA be unshackled? If
it should what should the Congress do to check on us? And, if it
should what are the risks to your Constitutional rights?
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Let me start with the impact of this new environment on us,
here in the CIA, on our internal organization and operations. In
the past, this big building next door had within a number of
sub-divisions of effort, directorates that did the work of the
Agency. They were almost meticulously compartmented from each
other and this was a great plus, because it helped with our secrecy.
Let me pause to say that secrecy is absolutely essential for an
intelligence organization. What we are called really is a secret
intelligence service and secret is fundamental to it. The question
of course is, how much secret is necessary? How much secrecy is
good? Obviously, with too tight a compartmentation you run risks.
You run risks that people will be making decisions without all of
the facts available to them. You run risks that you will have too
narrow a focus of judgment on a given decision. And I would
suggest that if there were mistakes made here, and they have been
greatly exaggerated in my opinion, in the past it was not because
of malisciousness or callousness it was because of over-zealousness,
over-responsiveness, combined with too narrow a perspective because
of this separation of effort. After all when you have all the facts
and the fellow sitting next to you making the decision doesn't
quite have them all, it is easy it is human to believe you really
have a better grasp, a better handle on the problem than he.
Today, we are moving toward a more corporate type of structure
in this organization and I hope corporate in the best sense of
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becoming more consultative, more collegial, better organized for
long run decision making. We are trying not to become just bureaucratic
and inflexible and it takes a careful balancing between the two.
Our major decisions today, in the CIA, are vetted before our key
officers. Interestingly, and I will talk more of this later, one
of those always has to be our lawyer, our General Counsel because
you can't do much of anything without running into the law today.
And one of those has to be our Legislative Counsel, because most
of what we do has some interface on Capital Hill, and another of
those has to be our Public Affairs Officer because some of the
things, at least, that we do have a public relations aspect.
Now all of this, this more corporate approach has some risk
to our secrecy. To minimize that risk, while we expand the number
of people, the number of offices represented in our decisionmaking
bodies; we try to minimize the number of individuals and we try
to limit the degree of detail that an individual has to that
which he really needs in order to play his role. For instance, I
can make a decision on whether to take a risky spy operation
without having to know the precise identity of the individual agent
we are going employ. So,.we are trying today to find a happy
;nedium between the dangers of isolated decisionmaking and the
proliferation of information about sensitive activities to a point
that they will no longer be secretive. It is an important new
dimension in our life.
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So too, is the greater interaction with the Executive Branch.
We are in fact, in the CIA, less independent today. We are less
like an old family business than we as one part of a giant corporate
conglomerate. Our board of directors in the National Security
Council, chaired by the President and this today provides a degree
of direction to our collection, to our analysis and to any covert
actions or efforts to influence events in other countries that we
undertake, far greater than has ever been the case before. There
are pluses and minuses to this greater direction from the NSC. A
big plus is that it ties us in more intimately to the policy makers
and their deliberations. We can be more effective in providing data
to them if we know what really is there concern, what they are
working on now. Yet, we must always be very scrupulous, to be
objective in our intelligence and not be influenced by the policy
makers, i.e., to avoid the accusation that sometimes comes in the
press that we are politicized, that we turn out intelligence to
support policy decisions that have already been made. A cross we
have to bear is the more effectiv we are frequently, that is, the
more useful our data is to the policy maker the more likely there
is to be a coincidence between his decision and that data. And,
somebody will look at it and say you skewed the data to fit the
policy rather than the policy was built upon the data. It is
something we have to endure, we are as careful as we can be not
to be influenced to give decisionmakers what they want, but to
give them sometimes the word about the emperor and his clothes.
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There are also hazards of this greater interface with the
rest of the Executive Branch to our secrecy. It means there
are more people involved in our sensitive activities. In my
world the probability of a leak of secret information is geomet-
rically proportional to the number of people who know it and it
doesn't make any difference who the people are generally speaking,
assuming they are reasonably conscientious. Unfortunately, as you
deal with the policy making agencies of the Executive Branch of
the government, you find there is the danger of some people,
unloyal people unfortunately, will try to influence policy by
leaking secret information. If they feel that is the only way they
can do it, and they feel very strongly about it they may take their
case to the public. The inhibitions of self-restraint and patriotism
that were more prevalent in this country before Vietnam are not so
prevalent in the post-Watergate period in what I see is a no-holds-barred
environment. I can assure you it makes our job much more difficult.
A third change as a result of this new environment that I men-
tioned is our greater interplay with the Congress of the United
States. In the years past there was very little known on Capital
Hill about the CIA's activities. A few Senators, a few senior
Representatives were informed but their general attitude was, don't
tell me too much I want to stay out of that. Today, that is long
gone, I spent. three hours on the Hill yesterday arguing as to
whether the Congress needed to know absolutely everything in every
file in the building. It is not all bad, however. Dealing with
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the Congress helps us to keep in closer touch with the American
public and to help us understand what you want and expect out
of us and what you do not want. Dealing with the Congress more
means in effect they share our responsibility to some degree.
They can hardly be informed today that we are going to undertake
such and such a type of activity and then if it goes sour criticize
us for having done it. More interplay with the Congress gives
us the benefit of different insights into our activities, different
views of it from people who are somewhat detached and we find
their advice and counsel is frequently most helpful to us. But, of
course, the primary short-coming, the primary disadvantage of
greater dealing with the Congress is, again, the danger of leaks.
Congress is no better, Congress is no worse than the Executive
Branch, in my opinion, in terms of leaks. The motives are different,
it is more likely to be political than policy oriented, but it does
us the same damage.
Nonetheless, the process of sharing with the Congress
and gaining their advice has worked well in the three years I have
been privileged to participate in it and we want to continue that
relationship.. There is, however, controversy over it. Why?
Because we are attempting to codify into law what the current
practices actually are and when those legal beagles, and I am sure
there are lots of you here, try to take something that is actually
going and turn it into a law it doesn't appear to recognize itself.
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t,Th at's happening, I'm afraid, is that in trying to define into
law what current practice is we are establishing a degree of precision
which eliminates our flexibility, which replaces all trust with law.
This is concentrated on two particular issues. How soon do we
notify the Congress of what we are going to do, or have done and in what
level of detail do we inform them? Now how soon is a very interesting
constitutional issue. What did the founding fathers mean when they
created a separation of powers? A leading newspaper editorial recently
complained, it said that if the Congress were not informed of actions
by the intelligence community in advance of their implementation, the
President would be deprived of Congressional consultation. Well now
consultation has a nice voluntary ring to it, but when consultation
is prescribed by la'', it is not really consultation it is partnership.
And it means in effect, giving the Congress a veto over a President's
initiatives whenever they want to. In our business, if it is secret
and you know it and you don't want it to happen, all you do is leak it.
Too many vetoes like that, and there always seems to be somebody who
doesn't want to do anything you propose can drive us to no actions at all.
It seems to me the founding fathers intended that the Congress
exercise its will over the President by the power of the purse strings and
by passing actual statutes that tell him what he may and may not do in
certain circumstances. But if the Congress judges every Presidential action
in advance in the field of intelligence, how will they ever know if the
President was, in fact, a good executive in this area. It would rob him
of any opportunity to take initiatives, to show leadership and instead
he would be a partner or perhaps a puppet of the Congress.
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With respect to the amount of detail we must tell the
Congress, this is a matter of perceptions, a matter of perceptions
of other individuals outside our own country, individuals who do
not understand the importance and the purpose of bringing a
Congress into an intelligence process. Professionals in other
countries, be they agents of ours or intelligence services with
whom we do liaison, they see that the life blood of an intelligence
professional is secrecy, but the life blood of a Congressman is
public relations. It is not easy for us to persuade t'ne-i that
if they deal with us and we share that information in its ultimate
detail with our Congress that it will in fact be kept private.
Their equities may be their lives protected.
Now in practice, the committees of our Congress, in my three
years of association with them have exercised extraordinary good
judgment here and have not pressed us for a level of detail that
was unnecessary. To my knowledge, the committees have not complained
for lack of adequate information to do their oversight. There may
be differences between us on specific instances, but in every
case we have resolved those amicably and to their satisfaction.
Again, we just cannot be strapped in by a lawyer dotting an i or
crossing a t too precisely here.
Finally, this new environment of greater openness, greater
exposure has really changed our relationships with the Fourth Estate
and with the American public. We used to get very little publicity,
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as I said, but now we get a lot and it makes a real difference in our
lives. Publicity and public relations is one thing, and we need
and seek some of that. After all, as the result of the investigations
of '75 and '76, the American public has come in some degree to question
us to ask, whether they need us and how much and why. No important
public institution in this country can thrive over a period of time
unless it has the support of the American public. We have tried in
recent years to be more open with you. But, we have been more
open in terms of adducing our product when it can be unclassified,
our analyses, our studies because we have hoped to show the public
some of the return they receive for their investment in us. We
are scrupulous in not talking about our sources and our methods
of obtaining information or those pieces of information that are so
important to our decisionmakers when they have an exclusive on them,
when other leaders in the world do not know them. But publicity that
amounts to leaks is another thing entirely, especially when it is
leaks of our sources of information. Preventing leaks is our-most
serious challenge today in the intelligence profession.
We are asking the Congress to give us some support in three
areas. There is something enacted in 1974 known as the Hughes-Ryan
Amendment. It in effect requires that anytime we are to undertake
what is known as a covert action, we must notify eight committees
of the Congress. Now that could be several hundred people when
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you count the staffs. A covert action notified to that many people
may not deserve the title covert. We are asking to reduce that to
the two committees that exercise oversight over us and on which are
represented members of the other committees that we would ask to
eliminate, so that there would be knowledge in those other committees
if it is necessary for them.
We are also asking for partial relief from an act called the
Freedom of Information Act, in which you or the Russian Embassy
or anybody could write to us and ask for information out of our
files and we must respond within ten days. It is a very onerous
problem for us, but particularly back to the previous reference
of perceptions of foreign liaison services and foreign agents.
It is difficult to persuade someone to risk his life for you
if he has heard there is an act, a law in this country that may
require me to adduce his name in public. We want enough relief
for us to look that individual in the eye and say, it will not
happen.
Lastly, we are asking for legislation to let us prosecute people
who traitoriously, deliberately disclose the names of our officers
and agents around the world. There are people like Philip Agee,
and this really is a problem for us. What people like Mr. Agee and
people of his ilk are doing with deliberateness, acknowledgement,
is to try to undercut, undermine this organization and you pay for
it and the Congress is authorized it. It is an established activity
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of the United States of America and we must have some legislative
way of curtailing people who are deliberately trying to thwart the
will of the people and of the Congress.
Let me note to you that none of these three measures of relief
I have just described constitute any great relaxation or setting
a loose of the Central Intelligence Agency, they are simply moves
toward a modicum of secrecy so that we can go about doing our business.
Yes, there always will be a conflict between secrecy and the
openness of American society. Yes, there always will be a conflict
between our covert action department and the traditional fair play
of Americans. But, the Country must today decide if it wants an
intelligence activity and I believe it clearly does. If so, we must
not carp at reasonable levels of secrecy and reasonable freedom to
play in the covert action field against hostile countries. We in the
intelligence profession are well aware of the nation's conscience
and concern in these areas and we do not want to violate the trust
that has been given to us to carry out these delicate undertakings.
We do not want to undermine the values of the society that we are
here to defend, and we do not want to be trusted alone. We endorse
continuing the oversight process both in the Executive and Legislative
Branches. Today we are poised at a balance point with three years
of successful experience behind us-and we do not believe that we can
tip that balance any further in the direction of loosening our controls
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of secrecy and still call ourselves a secret intelligence service.
We are not really asking to be unshackled, we are asking to be
able to continue in the way we have performed in the past three years.
I know of no accusation of illegality, impropriety, or abuse.
I know of no inference that our oversight process has not been
thorough and effective in that period of time.
And so today we are, I believe, on the verge of an exciting
and important new phase in American intelligence. We are constructing
what I tern a uniquely American model of intelligence tailored to
our society and our concepts of the rights and privileges of the
individual but tailored also to permitting us to do what needs to
be done in the field of intelligence to perserve our national security.
The support of the public, as we go forward in this, as we carry
this legislation through the Congress we need the understanding of
the public and its support. This is why I am so grateful so many
of you have chosen to come and be with us tonight. Thank you very much.
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Admiral Stansfield Turner
Director of Central Intelligence
Address to Amherst, Smith, Vassar
and Williams, Washington, D.C.
Alumni Clubs
19 March 1980
QUESTIONS AND'ANSWERS
I'd really enjoy your questions, your comments, your suggestions.
Q: I wonder if you could conceive of any circumstances where you believe
it would be appropriate for the CIA to take steps to affirmatively
influence a course of conduct in another nation.
A: Yes, that's what we call covert action--when the CIA attempts to
influence the course of events in another nation, without the source
of influencing being known--otherwise, it's diplomacy, or war.
Q: My question being, do you think there are any broad guidelines that
the Agency should be looking to to determine when it is appropriate
to take such action?
A: The first guideline as to when it's appropriate to take such actions
is that it is not our job to decide that. It is the job of the
policymakers who formulate foreign policy for this country to come to
us and say, "We've got a problem in country x, we wonder if you can-
help?" Now, we're.also not totally bashful; if we see they've got a
problem and we think we can help, we volunteer, but it is not our job
to be the initiators of this. It's to fit in with the American foreign
policy. Now, as to specific guidelines as to what kind of circumstances,
it's really very difficult to generalize on this. In the proposed
charter legislation that I was talking about, there is only one specific
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provision here and that says you will not plot an assassination of
anybody. And I think that's a good provision. So that's one level
of limit. It's not all that much of an answer to your question, but
you just have to judge each case, you have to see where between
diplomacy and war there is room for something else and I think,
particularly today, there is, without getting into a dirty, dirty
tricks department, and we're very conscious of that. There are times
today, because we are not as popular as we used to be around the
world, where, if you want to support a politician in another country
who is being attacked or in an election with somebody who is being
financed or supported out of Moscow, you can't go with a great big
American sign and help him, because it would probably hurt him more.
So, that's where we can come in in a covert manner.
Q: (beginning inaudible) how much do you think there should be to conduct
covert operations, insofar as the national foreign policy is a product
of the Administrations which change often times every four years, or
do you feel that there should be parameters which address more funda-
mental, national goals that do not shift with the political party in
the White House?
A: Should we have some parameters for covert action that don't shift
with Administrations? You would have to enshrine them in the Consti-
tution or something to be sure they weren't changeable, but we have,
I think, a good answer to your concern. Before we under take a covert
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action today, it must be approved by the National Security Council
and signed off by the President, so it isn't us. We may help
generate it or think it up, but we cannot just go out and do it
on my authority. I realize that doesn't answer your question about
changing administrations, but after that, we must notify the Congress.
The eight committees I mentioned--there is this dispute over whether
we have to tell them in advance, or afterwards, but the point I'm
trying to make is that you have a check-and-balance here; the Administra-
tion may change, but the Congress doesn't all change every four years,
and, therefore, you have some continuity of supervision over the covert
action process through these two checks that are given to it.
Q: On what stage are the two things involved here, on the one hand you
have covert actions, on the other, intelligence gathering. Is intelli-
gence gathering the larger of the two, by far?
A: By far. 80/20. 90/10. Oh, 95/5, something like that. How do you
measure it? Sometimes people ask me why don't we separate covert
action--get it out of the CIA and put it on some other department over
there. And this comes to your question, because that would be inad-
visable. First of all, you would have created a covert action agency
and it would only thrive if it did a lot of covert action, and you
wouldn't want to generate that. My people who go work in covert action
today may be transferred back to intelligence collection tomorrow and
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so, if there are too many of them over there, we shift them around
and they have a job still. You don't have to go out and drum up
business. There is an interplay; that is, if you're working an
agent in a foreign country for intelligence purposes, and then it
turns out you are authorized to do a covert action, you may work
with the same individual, if you see what I mean. So, numbers are
fuzzy because there is fungibility of assets here.
Q: At what stage is the legislation in starting the charter for CIA
and for getting it down to just the two committees?
A: What state is the legislation in charters for CIA and getting it
down to two committees? In January, the Senate introduced a bill;
a couple of weeks ago the House Committee on Intelligence introduced
the same bill for charters. We are in the midst of hearings on
these bills before both Committees. It's going to be very tight
whether they can consider that comprehensive a bill in what will
be a short legislative year. The House Foreign Affairs Committee
last week voted an amendment to the Foreign Aid Bill, which would
take care of the two committees versus eight committees problem.
That is also in the charter. They are going along parallel; we don't
know which one is going to get to the finish post first. Senator
Moynihan has introduced a bill that would take care of the eight
versus two, an FOIA problem, the Ph.ilip Agee problem and it's running
along on another track. So, there are several activities going on
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all of these on the Hill and we're hoping that one or more of them
will come into law before the Congress adjourns for the elections.
Q: Does the CIA have a working relationship with intelligence agencies
of other countries? Including non-aligned countries? And is there
anything comparable to a "hot-line" between the CIA and KGB?
A: The answer to the first question is yes, we do have lots of liaison
relationships with other countries, but we don't speak or give any
inferences to what kinds or who they are. The answer to the second
question is no, we do not have a "hot-line" with the KGB.
Q: What has caused the breakdown in intelligence that now Americans are
being held hostage in countries like Iran and El Salvador and things
like that?
A: What is the break down in intelligence that Americans are now being
held hostage in Iran and El Salvador, Colombia and other places?
We would like to be able to predict such events. It is, of course,
extremely difficult to predict terrorism of that sort and we some-
times are successful--I mentioned to you that international terrorism
is part of our b.ag of responsibility. Sometimes we make it, sometimes
we don't. Whenever we do, we never get any credit because we secretly
thwart a terrorist operation. Whenever we miss and don't predict that
they are going to drop in on the Dominican Embassy when they're having
a cocktail party, it looks bad. We try. It is very difficult to
predict these kinds of events.
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Q: (inaudible)
A: Was the fine hand of Moscow involved with the militants in Iran?
I wouldn't say that's a major factor there at this time. Clearly,
with as chaotic a situation as there is in Iran today, it would be
very surprising if the Soviet Union were not most actively involved
in trying to insinuate itself in and bring in intelligence opera-
tives, and so on. The hostage-takers in the compound are a very
amorphous, disparate lot; they are difficult to define; there are
several power groups within them. I do believe that the basic force,
the largest element, most influential element of it are genuine
Islamic revolutionaries. They are misguided in lots of ways and
there are leftists in the overall organization, but I don't think
it is the dominant force.
Q: Was the invasion of Afghanistan a surprise and, if so, do you need
additional tools to prevent that?
A: The invasion of Afghanistan was not a surprise. Sometimes we're
surprised; we think we did very well on that one.
Q: Questions based on the hypothesis that we need a very good intelli-
gence service, also feeling that the Congress is mainly nervous about
covert actions. I'd like to ask whether you feel that the country
might not be better served by putting aside covert actions and concen-
trating on secret intelligence, might we not have a better, more secret
intelligence service:if we forswore attempts at influencing ?
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A: I think your premise is absolutely right. It would be of a lot
of help to us in the intelligence collection business if we
weren't saddled with the covert action responsibilities, because
it is where we get the most criticism, it is where we get the
most resistance and opposition--people like Agee and so on. But
I would also say to you that I do not believe the country should
deny itself the opportunity to use this mechanism between diplomacy
and war and I believe we are using it in a very judicious and con-
trolled manner, and that those benefits outweigh the risks or dangers
that it brings to us in the other area.
Q: What is the position of the Agency with regard to domestic surveillance
and the question of the charter amendments, including or not including
something regarding domestic activities of the Agency?
A: Domestic activities and how are they controlled by the charter and
so on. Our charter in the United States is extremely limited and
we do open intelligence collection; that is, we have offices in
a lot of cities around the country who talk with Americans who travel
and businessmen who have contacts. overseas, and so on. As far as
secretive intelligence work in this country, it is very limited, very
tightly controlled. The FBI does the counterintelligence work inside
the United States. We do the counterintelligence, that is uncovering
the other side's spies within our environment. We do that outside the
country. It's why Bill Webster and I have lunch every so often together,
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because, obviously, if the spy is overseas and he comes to the United
States, we have to have a hand-off and a cooperative venture. So,
there are a lot of very specific rules in the charter governing this,
both what the FBI and anybody else in the intelligence world can do
in the United States. For instance, to tap a telephone, you have to
get a court warrant under a legal procedure that was set up in the
last year and a half, and all these are, I think, very tightly con-
trolled and it is an important element of the charter--the protection
of the American citizens' privacy.
Q: What are the concerns of those opposing reduction of oversight?
Apparently, there is a fear that the CIA can conduct ill-fated
operations, based on some past experiences that would absolve those
participating under fear of something like a ten-year sentence. How
do you guard against cover-ups basically?
A: How do we guard against a cover-up? I just think that the oversight
process that exists today defies my imagination to cover-up anything,
to be honest with you, because it is a very thorough oversight process.
It starts as I mentioned, in the Executive Branch and, particularly
in the covert action field, but also in the very risky intelligence
collection areas, we have to get permission from the National Security
Council, sometimes from the President (all covert actions), and then
we have to report back as that process goes along; we then have to go
to the Congress. There are very few things you can do that are
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significant without spending some money, and the power of the
pursestrings is very powerful and we give detailed information
to the Congress on that. Each agency of the Intelligence Community
has an Inspector General and he probes and checks on these things,
and the President has established what is known as an Intelligence
Oversight Board. Former Governor Scranton, former Senator Gore and
Mr. Tom Farmer of Washington--three people whose only task in life
is to report to the President on the legality, the propriety of what
all of us are doing. If you, as a citizen, or if one of the people
here who is a member of this Agency, wants to or feels that there is
some possible problem, some malperformance of duties, some attempt
:to:cover up, he or she is entitled to go directly to the Intelligence
Oversight Board, not through me, even though they may be our employee,
and report that, the Board investigates it, reports to the President
not to me, I either get fired or called in and told what this is all
about, or the President and the Board decide that it wasn't a problem
after all.
Q: How effective do you think the proposed graymail legislation will be
and on the other hand, making it so-that the Defense Council would not
be able to disclose the classified information (inaudible)
and forcing the court, or the prosecution in a position of dismissing
their case.
A: The question concerns graymail legislation. I didn't mention that in
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three pieces of legislation I enumerated. This is one the Attorney
General has proposed that we're very supportive of and also, would
be helpful to us. Graymail is when a lawyer prosecuting a case that
has national security overtones asks for such a wealth of information
that he hopes he is going to get something we won't be willing to
adduce because producing it will be a worse loss to the government
than not being able to prosecute, and therefore, he hopes to get the
case, of course, dropped. And the graymail legislation that the Attorney
General has proposed, would allow an in camera proceeding, whereby, if
there were some highly classified information that was demanded by the
defense, or was in any way germane, or close to being germane to the
case, we would be able to present it to the judge-in camera. Now this
happens today in many cases. We recently convicted a man of espionage
from the CIA, a man.named Kampiles, and the judge was cooperative here
and let us have an in camera disclosure to him of certain information.
And then he needed to keep that for his scrutiny, so he locked it in
his safe, but allowed us to lock his.safe in our safe. So neither one
of us could get to it without the other. I mean, we couldn't maliciously
destroy it, nor could he turn it over to some unauthorized person. He
was a very helpful, cooperative and patriotic judge and yet, was
adhering to the principles of law. We think the graymail legislation
would protect both sides of this interest. That is, it would allow
the judge to review all of our classified material and say whether or
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this was germane enough to the case that it had to be adduced,
that the defense would be prejudiced if they weren't allowed to
have access to this information. Frequently, that is not really
necessary, sometimes it is, but we are very enthusiastic about it
and don't think there would be a problem.
Q: .....classified information on need-to-know on that classified
information--who makes that decision? .... how many leaks do you
have a week?
A: How many leaks do we have a week, I'd measure it by the day and
who makes the decision on who needs to know, I don't quite know
how to answer that question because it's different in almost every
case; but, for instance, two days ago, one of the committees of the
Congress jumped all over me because we had not let them have a
Un
couple of paragraphs in a particular document. /fortunately, it was
decided at a rather low level here and it wasn't right, and I had
to go eat crow on it and we gave them the information, but that's the
way you work that process out and it's fine with me. But, in that'
case, with information to the Congress, we do have a regular mechanism
here and there are certain offices where, if you send something to
Congress, it has to go through there, they check it for need-to-know,
take some out, don't take it out and send it up. When it comes to
sending something to another agency of the government, you send it
to their senior intelligence officer who has a mechanism over there
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for deciding how far it has to be disseminated within his organiza-
tion. The numbers are so large here, it is hard to give you a more
specific answer.
Q: How serious would you say the impending death of Tito in Yugoslavia
is on stability in Eastern Europe and what, if any, reaction would
you perceive coming from the Soviets?
A: How serious is the impending death of Tito and what effect will
this have on the Soviets? We think Yugoslavia has been very fortunate
in recent months in two respects. First, in January, Tito almost died
and they had a dress rehersa1 for the shift of power and it seemed to
us to work quite well; and we think that it sort of got them geared
up for what looks like what is unfortunately inevitable now, though he's
lasted all these years. Secondly, the Afghan invasion has made them
aware of what they've known all along--that they are under real dangers
from the Soviets, who are more willing today, perhaps, than anytime
since post-World War II, to venture out with their military forces.
It is my personal view that Tito and his maverick communist economic
policies has done so much for that country economically that so many
people have a stake in keeping it cohesive because they are so much
better off today; the people in Kosovo are much poorer than the people
in Croatia, but they are a lot better off than they were ten years ago
and they want to keep it that way and keep it moving. So we think there
are a lot of forces for continued cohesiveness there. If the economies
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of the world go to pot, and with it, the Yugoslav economy, that
could be a dangerous problem; but I think they should be able,
for at least the short term--a year or two--to keep these ethnic
differences somewhat subdued and we're hopeful. I think the fact
that the Soviets have received such a bad international reception
to their invasion of Afghanistan is hopefully going to be another
inhibiting factor on their aggressiveness in this situation, but
if a split starts to develop somewhere in Yugoslavia, they'll be
there in a minute trying to take advantage of it. I don't mean
militarily, but trying to open that kind of a divisiveness within
the country.
Q: (inaudible)
A: We understand that there was an outbreak of communicable disease
in the Soviet Union that they did not report and the cause of it
is very difficult to discern, but we are, through the diplomatic
channels, inquiring with them about it and its relationship to
the Biological Warfare Treaty.
Q: What kind of a covert action plays a role between diplomacy and
outright war? The fact that we currently see that a revitalization
of our conventional forces will be many years coming, do you see
that we will be more willing to take covert action in the coming
five years?
A: Will we be more willing to take covert action in the coming five
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years while we are rebuilding our conventional military force
capabilities? I believe that is very dependent on the state of
relationships between ourselves and the Soviet Union that set the
overall tone of tension-in the world. If those relationships
stay very strained, covert action is more likely to become a
possibility; that is, they are more likely to be on the aggressive
against us in various other countries,not necessarily militarily.
Therefore, a covert action response is more likely to be appropriate;
in a period of high detente, good relations, it's much less likely.
Q: Why does the CIA need further relief from the Freedom of Information
Act. when there already are several exemptions, including one for
national security information which itself involves in camera
inspection by the judge when there is a problem with a particular
request?
A: Why do we need further relief when we already have a national security
exemption under the Freedom of Information Act? It's a matter of
perception, not of fact. Other than a couple of administration errors,
we've not lost any secrets under the Freedom of Information Act, but I
can assure you that we have more and more resistance from people
overseas to continue to cooperate with us because they believe the
existence of this act endangers them. And it theoretically does.
We've not been overruled by a judge as yet, but if we are, then we
will really be in trouble with this perception, because today there
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is no theoretical reason that the identity of some foreign person
who works with us may not come out through the Freedom of Information
Act. If we cannot sustain in the courts, over which I have no
control, that that is truly classified information; if a judge should
decide that is not classified, it's got to come out; and it's tough
for me to persuade a fellow to risk his life for us if there is that
chance. We need to have a protection in the law for our sources of
collecting intelligence.
Q: (inaudible)
A: Talking about the overall Soviet position in the Middle East and
whether there is cause for concern that their overall activities
in this area, like positioning large numbers of tanks in Libya
where the Libyans have no way of using them. I think, again, to
use the word, perception, that perception of the people in the Middle
East has been severely shaken in the last several years with the Soviet
move into Ethiopia in 1978, the Soviet strengthening of their position
in Yemen and introduction of Soviet equipment there; then their
position in April of 1978 in Afghanistan, of course, dramatically
reinforced in December of last year, and their continued relationship
with Qadhafi in Libya--though they sell that equipment to him, it's
Libyan tanks now, although provided by the Soviet Union. And I think
this is having a very important and deleterious effect for us that it
appears to the people in-the region that gradually and piece by piece
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they are being hemmed in by Soviet power and the troubled situation
in Iran leaves that very vulnerable in the longer run, to Soviet
influence. We're very concerned about the fact that southern Afghan-
istan, and it is in southern Afghanistan that the Soviets can most
likely establish their control, it's flat desert terrority where
their tank forces can operate better than in the very high and rugged
mountainous center of the country. From southern Afghanistan you
have access to what is known as Baluchistan, which runs into Iran
and Pakistan and is an area that seeks autonomy from each of those
countries and it's just a perfect opportunity for the Soviets to
foment trouble and try to help the Baluchis become independent of
Pakistan and Iran and leave an opening for the Soviets; and should
they be able to move down onto the Arabian Sea and the Straits of
Hormuz, it would be very disquieting. The people of the region see
this kind of evolving threat and I think it is a real problem for
them.
Q: (inaudible)
A: Do we have a role in the prevention of the proliferation of nuclear
weapons? The answer is definitely yes. You need good intelligence
for that. The complaints we've registered with various countries
are most frequently based on intelligence information. We always
have some problem here--sometimes the way we get the information
makes it difficult for us to disclose it to that country even, to
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complain, but whenever we can, we work that out and we're not
the only element of this but we're in a very important one in
trying to detect the efforts of other people to build a bomb. I
would say to you that, while I didn't mention it with terrorism
and narcotics and others, I think it is one of the growth industries
in our business. I think we've got to be more aware of it because
I think it's a terrible danger and threat to the world over the
years to come and we are putting a great deal of effort on this.
I really appreciate your enthusiastic and helpful questions and
the fact that you've taken this time to be-with us tonight.
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