NEWSWEEK INTERVIEW WITH DIRECTOR STANSFIELD TURNER

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP99-00498R000300030011-7
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 25
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 28, 2007
• Sequence Number: 11
• Publication Date: January 30, 1979
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Approved For Release 2007/03/01 : CIA-RDP99-004981 qO9 -00030011-7-;
January 30, 1979
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DIRECTOR STANSFIELD TURNER: ...No, no, I can be categoric
on that one.
Q: You'd be categoric on that?
ADMIRAL TURNER: Who was it? William Tecumseh Sherman?
'If nominated, I will not run. If elected, I will not serve."
Q: That's right.
ADMIRAL TURNER: No, seriously now.
Q: Admiral, a year ago we were here. You suggested
we should come back in twelve months' time to see how well you're
doing, to check on your fulfillment of your objectives.
How well have you done? Has it been a good year for you
and for the agency?
ADMIRAL TURNER: Yes. I feel much more comfortable,
much more personally on top of things. I feel that the agency,
as such, has made considerable progress in the past year.
Q: Can you be specific about the progress? What
ADMIRAL TURNER: Do you want me to measure it against
the objectives I gave you last year?
Q: Yes. Right.
ADMIRAL TURNER: A good place to start. The first one
was to modernize our objectives. One of the most important things
that we have done here is to recognize that it's not the Intelli-
gence people who should decide what is the priority of our efforts.
We're here to serve consumers. Yet traditionally, they've never
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paid enough attention to the intelligence process to give us
the right guidance. I'm very pleased that within this past
year we have worked out a program whereby the National Security
Council has set our priorities. It's worked well. It changed
the way people going about their business here. It's going to
take more years to see to it that we institutionalize that and
it continues. But we've got real input from the Security Coun-
cil people themselves.
Q: Excuse me. Was it a failing on the part of the
National Security Council not to task you with the Iranian
crisis in time?
ADMIRAL TURNER: Well, now, do you want to divert on
to that, or do you want me to continue what I've accomplished in
the past year?
Q: Okay, let's come back to that.
ADMIRAL TURNER: Because you've made an assumption in
your question that I would question.
The second thing that I said to you last year was that
I would modernize our methods of doing intelligence. With the
support of the Congress last October, we made a big step in that
direction. Because the most modernizing we need is to find ways
to integrate our traditional and capable human intelligence with
our burgeoning technical intelligence capability. This is a
unique American problem because we, forgetting the KGB, are the
only free intelligence organization in the world that have this
full panoply of capabilities. So it's uniquely our problem. And
with this Congress' help, we established a National Intelligence
Tasking Center to do the integration, to insure that these means
of collecting intelligence are complementary and work as a team.
And that's just started. It's running well. It's going to take
more time to prove that it will be successful over the long haul.
Third, I said we re going to modernize our personnel
maanagement. We've taken a lot of very important steps in that
direction. The reason we've had to modernize is we're not entering
a new generation in the Central Intelligence Agency. We ran the
first thirty years on the initial input of a family of really
capable people. That generation is leaving. We're not institu-
tionalizing the promotion process. We had 27 promotion processes.
We now have got one. Employees can now go to the bulletin board
and find out what their prospects are for promotion. We're doing
more to help manage people's careers so that the individual feels
that we're interested in him and he gets -- we get the opportunity
to bring the best out of him, let him use his talents to the best
advantage.
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We're changing the recruiting process. It used to take
us eight or nine months before we could tell an applicant whether
he was acceptable. You can't compete in today's market under
those conditions. You couldn't in the past. Last week we have
recruiter doused with paint on the Ohio State University campus.
That's because we're back out on the campuses. We pulled our
horns in when we were criticized. We're proud to be in the
CIA. And the nation is proud of us, basically. So we're going
back out in the public recruiting arena. We're not going to hide
our light under a bushel.
We have a task force in here now of eminent personnel
experts working with us for three months to give us some recom-
mendations to further institutionalize our management of personnel
procedures. So I think the employees are feeling a greater sense
of confidence in our interest in them and in our ability and wil-
lingness to help them in their careers.
Fourth, I said we're going to be more open. I won't go
into this because you all know this more than I. Here's a bunch
of clips from the last three weeks. The first five of them are
all different subjects, all based on CIA studies we've released
to you and the public. So you can judge whether we've achieved
anything in the openness field or not.
And last, I said we were going to be under greater
external control. We've had two and a half years now under
the Senate Select Committee, a year and a half under the House
Select Committee. And I just think it's working splendidly. And
over this past year we've made real progress in our relationships
with those committees. They're tough on us. They check on us
when there're allegations in the press against us, when they
uncover things they wonder about. They scrutinize our budget,
dollar by dollar. It's tough. It takes a lot of time. But
accountability is important to the American public. And account-
ability is important to me. It helps me manage this organization
better because we're held accountable; we've got to justify what
we want and what we do, make us think it through better.
I'm pleased with the process. I would suggest if you
go to either of the chairmen of the those committees, you'll find
that while we're not in a buddy-buddy relationship, that you won't
find anybody up there who says we haven't cooperated with them just
fully and that they're not pleased with the way we respond.
So, you know, things have smoothed out. We've made
progress. There's always more to be done.
Q: If you had to give, in terms of the performance of
the agency in this past year -- after all, we are the taxpayers in
terms of the product that we're getting -- what kind of a letter
grade, if you were teaching as a professor, would you have given
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the agency in this past year for its performance? You've dis-
cussed so far the objectives, etcetera. But in terms of actually
what came out and what was desired?
ADMIRAL TURNER: The performance was better than the
previous year, better in the collection of intelligence, the
human intelligence. We had a number of just startling coups
and events, I mean real marvelous acquisitions. Overall; it
was targeted better. The technical side of our house -- I'm
talking agency now, not the community.
Q: Not the community.
ADMIRAL TURNER: That was your question. The technical
side continued its performance just as well as ever before. It
responded to a number of crises in a superlative manner. The
analytic side -- we'II come back any time you want to Iran --
has been more innovative and received more plaudits from the
President, from the Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense
than it did in my first year, because I think we have been more
directly responsive to what they need. We've tried to,do the
same continuing basic research -- big estimates, long-term fore-
casts. But we've also tried to say what does somebody need
tomorrow in the way of an objective look at things.
So I think performance is up.
Q: Would you give it a high grade?
ADMIRAL TURNER: Yes. Yes. Now....
Q: A? B?
ADMIRAL TURNER: I don't want to give it a grade,
because you understand that one way, and I understand it the
other. I'm here to see that it keeps improving. Ask somebody
else what the grade is. You know, I'm a pupil. It's hard to
judge my own grades and objectives....
Q: Your own term papers.
ADMIRAL TURNER: Sure. But go down and ask Vance and
Brown and President Carter and Brzezinski what they think. They're
the school masters.
Q: What would you say the shortcomings were? I mean
obviously there've been some shortcomings. Everything isn't
perfect. But what have you come up short on?
ADMIRAL TURNER: I can't think of anything. I'll leave
you to find the shortcomings. How's that? You don't have any
trouble finding those.
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-5-
Q: Let's talk about Iran.
ADMIRAL TURNER: All right, let's talk about Iran.
Q: The President wrote you a note, along with Brzezinski
and Vance, saying that he wanted to improve the quality of intelli-
gence reporting. And that was....
ADMIRAL TURNER: No, he didn't. Political reporting.
Q: Political reporting. Okay. But it was directed
to you, as well as to the Secretary of State and the head of NSC.
ADMIRAL TURNER: It was directed to -- okay, yes.
Q: What happened? What went wrong in Iran?
ADMIRAL TURNER: Well, I'm sure with your perspective
on life, you appreciate that the so-called failure in Iran is
largely a creation of the U. S. media.
Q: How, sir?
ADMIRAL TURNER: Because the media has created the
impression that we should have predicted that on 5 November there
was going to be an eruption and demonstrations that would eventu-
ally lead to he departure of the Shah. I'd love to have been able
to predict it that day, and we'll try harder. But we won't make it
in that category very often, in that tough political reporting of
upheavals and coups, assassinations, and so on.
Q: Not to disagree, I think -- I mean the press is in
a weak position in the case of Iran, because the press was pro-
bably as much at fault in terms of its reporting on Iran over
the years as we understand the agency to have been. And that's
something that the press has to look at it in its own house.
But it really wasn't a case of picking a date or picking a time.
It was -- the CIA seems to have been doing the same thing that
the press was, which was not focusing on a lot of things that
some people said ought to be focused on, but somehow got lost in
the swell of the Shah and what he was doing. And it was really
the focus over the long term, not any particular day.
ADMIRAL TURNER: There, I agree with you now. I was
coming to that. The press is focusing, though, today that we
didn't predict this eruption. What was wrong was something that
was wrong with our country's approach to Iran for four or five
years. It was wrong in the CIA; it was wrong in the State Depart-
ment; it was wrong in the American media; it was wrong in the
military; it was wrong in the academic areas of the United States.
We were not sensitive enough to the cumulative effect of the rate
of change in this country. And if we had been more sensitive two,
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three, four years ago, American policy might have been different
-- what we sold them, how we dealt with them, how we talked about
them, how we advised them. But all we've been beat on the head
for is stuff that we couldn't have, probably, predicted. And if
we had, the policymakers wouldn't have been doing anything about
it in the last few months of this thing.
Q: Well, what lesson have you learned personally, in
running an agency like this, about how to try to avoid that kind
of sharing of an astigmatism, a national astigmatism? How are
you trying...
ADMIRAL TURNER: All right. Several lessons. One,
I've been saying in my speeches long before came all these accu-
sations -- and one of the most difficult challenges we have today
is that the American intelligence community, and this agency in
particular, were founded with a mission of reporting on Soviet
military developments. And as the years have gone by, we've had
to expand into economic, into politics, into narcotics, into
grain production, into terrorism, into the psychology, the psy-
chiatry of leaders around the world, into just a multitude of
new disciplines and geographical areas of interest. This country
is just more involved in more scenes today, and the military is
no longer the predominant -- I'm sorry. That's the wrong word --
is no longer so predominant as in an intelligence requirement.
And yet, the military problem hasn't diminished one
bit, and we can't easily chop off half of our effort on military
intelligence and slide it into these others.
So you have bureaucratic problems, a restructuring and
getting in new disciplines and new people. You have resource
problems, of allocating within constricting budgets. Our budget
has not gone up in real terms for many years. You have -- okay,
that's lesson number one: that we've got to reallocate assests,
or something.
The lesson is there is always a pressure in any govern-
ment apparatus to take care of today. And what you need for
something like this is people who are really doing fundamental
research about the religious trends, about the cultural impact
of money, and so on, in a country like that. And I'm proud to
say, again, before this Iranian thing became an issue, that Bob
Bowie (?), who has headed our analytic section here, has really
been stressing to his people the need for a combination of funda-
mental research and responsiveness to the day-to-day issue. And
it's not easy, particularly when there's been a culture of empha-
sis on the day-to-day over the years. And I don't blame anybody.
That's just a natural habitat.
In the military, I've watched people set up long-range
planning groups, and you have to recreate one every three or four
years because the last one gets shoved into today's problem.
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Q: The explanations you've been given have been sort
of bureaucratic. That is the way any system functions that way.
But what about have you learned any lessons in the politics of
this weakness, which, admittedly, long precedes you here? Not
only the dictates of having to serve a specific intelligence
need by tomorrow, but the general shaping of a line of thought
that can interfere with the most objective analysis. Because
there was a political element in this, it seems. I mean there
was in the media's coverage, and it would seem that there was
in the government's approach, as you said.
ADMIRAL TURNER: Doris, I'd like to offer these good
friends from Newsweek some coffee, tea, or iced tea, or whatever,
because I'm kind of thirsty, too....
to people.
Q: That's the thing that seems to be most worrisome
ADMIRAL TURNER: There's a problem of how you deal
with your friends. And I put it this way: When you have a
very close ally, the thought of prying into his private poli-
tical affairs is something you don't consider, because he'll
tell you what's going on.
On the opposite extreme, you have the Communist Bloc,
that won't tell you anything honestly, and you'll pry all you
can, and the country'II be proud for that, even if you make
mistakes once in a while.
In between, you have a vast range of relationships
with other people and other countries that you endanger to dif-
ferent degrees. And you have to gauge each society on its own:
Will they understand if you are trucking with the opposition
that you're not doing it to help the opposition undermine them,
but to maybe help them, the ruling people, understand the oppo-
sition that they've got, which their own subordinates are afraid
to tell them about. What are the risks of your being caught
delving around like this.
But it goes back even deeper, David. The country, in
its educational institutions, has become so preoccupied, in my
opinion, with education to get a job, that we're not turning out
the people to do this kind of thing.
Let's stick with Iran. How easy is it to find some-
body who's trained in economics -- and one of the things we
missed on the horizon of Iran was the impact of the economic
change. Right? How do we find people today coming out of
universities trained in economics and Farsi? What induces a
young college student to study Farsi after he's got his M.A.
in economics? And that's the kind of person I need.
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But the National Defense Education Act has gone by
the board. The centers of regional study that were created
under that act around the universities are all withering. We,
as a country, have not sustained this.
Q: I was going to say, well, the Shah has certainly
put a hell of a lot of money into American educational insti-
tutions just to do that, to produce Americans who could speak
Farsi and knew economics and could help Iran. I mean there's...
ADMIRAL TURNER: Okay. That's an unusual example,
although it still is a problem there. But, you know, we've
not -- we're very focused on Iran right now, and it's terribly
important to us. But there are a hundred-plus other countries
out there that are in various degrees of instability. And my
problem is now to find the resources and do this long-term
thinking on the next ten that are going to erupt out of a
hundred candidates, because they can't do it on a hundred,
probably.
Q: Admiral, while were on the subject of relationship
to other countries in between the Communist and the allies. I
was out here at that lovely lunch you gave a while back. I asked
about our relationship to foreign intelligence services, who,
after all, through the course of the years have provided a great
deal of our knowledge in our assets.
Has that situation changed, gotten better or gotten
worse, as our -- as this institution here has come under fire
in its relationships with the Congress? Are you in better posi-
tion today than you were a year ago vis-a-vis the French or the
British or the Israeli services? Will you get as much infor-
mation, or are you being closed off from information?
ADMIRAL TURNER: I think we're a little better off,
but I wouldn't make it a major improvement. But I feel a warmer
trend.
Now, I have to try to divorce my personal relation-
ships with those -- although that's important to that. I mean
I have better relationships just because I've had another year
of working with them. Some of them have changed, but not all
of them. And one of them, one of the key ones with liaison with
was here. We had dinner at my house a couple of nights ago.
You know, it's getting to be a very warm relationship. And in
that particular instance, we have really improved. But I made
an effort. I went to the fellow's country and I proposed speci-
fic things, and he's responded and we are working much better.
But the sense of disquiet...[cassette turned]....
There've been very few leaks out of the Congress, which
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9
was their major worry. The leaks have been Agee's and Snepp's
and -- Stockwell, rather than Snepp.
Q: John Marks.
Q:
...on television tonight.
ADMIRAL TURNER: You know, let me just digress.
Q: Okay .
ADMIRAL TURNER: I couldn't believe it. I picked up
a paper yesterday, and on the second page there's a big head-
line about the CIA had [unintelligible]. So last night I
picked up Marks's book. First of all, it doesn't say that.
But secondly, what it said -- I'm only mentioned in the book
three times, and once is in a footnote. It was on page 212
out of about 250. And what Marks is trying to say is -- if
he has found me wrong, which he hasn't, he's claiming because
I said 1963 and it's 1967.
You know, I'm sorry, fellows, but that doesn't im-
press me. And I'm not wrong anyway. But -- or, he says I
talked about drug experimentation and not behavioral control.
I tried to obfuscate it, that it was behavioral control. I'm
not sure I even know the difference, particularly. But beyond
that, it seems to me drug experimentation can be for behavioral
control. And never did it cross my mind I was trying to dif-
ferentiate between those two when I testified.
In short, people are really stretching to find where
we have tried deliberately to mislead. And it's just sort of
frustrating, because I took the initiative on this one. As
soon as we found these things, I went to Congress, I went to
the public, I said, "Look, we've found this stuff. It's been
mislaid. Here's, the best I know of, everything's here." More
stuff has come out since then. Now I'm chastised because they
think that criticizes...
Q: The question is not -- I mean I think we got that
same reaction when we saw that story yesterday, that it's really
sort of a fine point. The only question is whether you, on the
basis of the stuff that has come out subsequently, have been at
all shaken in whether you know precisely what's in the files
and precisely what's going on.
ADMIRAL TURNER: No, I...
Q: Nothing that has come out so far...
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ADMIRAL TURNER: Nothing that's come out -- you know,
every time there's a new box found, I ask, "Does this contain
something of significance that's different?" And I have not
found anything that qualifies to where I would do as I did when
I found that first set: I would want to go back to the Presi-
dent and then back to the Congress and say to my oversight com-
mittees, "Look, we goofed."
There's no point i my trying to hide it if it's there,
in my opinion. It'll come out.
Q: Do your friends in foreign intelligence services
understand the political controls to which you are subject. In
other words, all these stories coming out now wouldn't come out
in other countries. In other words, you wouldn't have an intel-
ligence service under assault because of mind control. Do they
understand this, or will this make them wary of sharing? I'm
saying that they feel that the agency is subject to too many
controls.
ADMIRAL TURNER: Well, I think they are increasingly
understanding it because it's increasingly becoming a fact of
life for them.
You've read and know more about the stories on the
British Official Secrets Act and how poorly it did in courts
recently in England. The Germans recently send a congressional,
a Bundestag delegation over here to ask how they should set up
their oversight committee, which they have now established.
The Italians have moved intelligence out from under the military
into the Cabinet office. That is, it's still military intelli-
gence, but there's now civilian intelligence under the Prime
Minister, rather than...
Q: Let me interrupt you. Does that worry you now
about sharing with the Italians?
ADMIRAL TURNER: [Laughter]
Q: A government that shares some of its political
responsibilities with the Communist Party.
ADMIRAL TURNER: Well, clearly, it has to be some-
thing, any time that you look ahead and say what is likely to
be the reliability, just as they look at us. As you know, I
think I know the Italian scene fairly well, at least as of two
years ago, and I've tried to keep abreast of it here. I haven't
any immediate concerns [clattering dishes] at this point. They've
been very conscious of that problem.
Q: I'm told that one of the rockiest areas of I iaison
is with the Scandinavian countries, and I'm also told that it's
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a direct result not of leaks from Agee and Stockwell, etcetera,
but as a result of the book that Bill Colby wrote, which was
approved, etcetera, etcetera, by t h i s agency. I s that true?
ADMIRAL TURNER: No, no, no. Please. I'm just not
going to accept some of these statements. We have not censored
anything from anybody and we have no authority to censor...
Q: Cleared. Cleared by this agency.
Q: Reviewd.
ADMIRAL TURNER: Reviewed. Not even cleared. I can't
take anything out of...
MAN: We review it only for classified information.
Now, that doesn't mean...
ADMIRAL TURNER: That doesn't mean we endorse...
MAN: That doesn't mean it's approved.
Q: No. I understand that.
MAN: Okay.
ADMIRAL TURNER: Well, but that's not what you're
saying, David. And we don't want that to appear in your article,
because those are very loose words, and we don't censor anything.
Q: Okay, we'll use your words: Review them for
security.
ADMIRAL TURNER: Okay. Good.
Q: Bill Colby's book was reviewed by the Central
Intelligence Agency for security.
ADMIRAL TURNER: Right.
Q: It appeared and caused a big uproar in Scandinavia.
ADMIRAL TURNER: Not a big one, but it disturbed them.
Q: Disturbed them. Is it true that that has had some
effects on our liaison with those services?
ADMIRAL TURNER: Not to my perception. You know, I've
talked to them about it, and they were not pleased with some of
the discussion in the book. But it was not things that were
classified, from our point of view, that we could justify asking
him to delete.
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Q: Well, which...
ADMIRAL TURNER: The Scandinavians are very fine people,
and I'm sure they're survive this.
Q: Which books caused more of an uproar, Stockwell and
Snepp, or Colby?
ADMIRAL TURNER: Agee.
Q: Agee. Well, let's -- Agee seems to me to be an
entirely different...
ADMIRAL TURNER: Okay.
Q: ...breed. I mean...
ADMIRAL TURNER: Stockwell has caused the most -- most
lack of confidence in us of any single activity since I've been
here. Those people in other countries just don't understand why
we can't keep classified information out of the public domain.
Nobody in the Scandinavians claims that Colby's was
classified. They don't appreciate it. But to have a man named
Stockwell go out and put classified material, and we don't take
action against him, we don't put him jail, that they don't under-
stand. And they don't think we will inhibit the next Stockwell
if we don't do something to that Stockwell.
Q: Well, you're going to do something to Stockwell
as soon as you get an appeals ruling on Agee, aren't you?
ADMIRAL TURNER: I'm not allowed to comment on that...
Q: Snepp.
ADMIRAL TURNER: ...but we're waiting for the ruling
on Snepp to see where the law stands on these things, yes.
Q: How do you cope with the American legal process,
with rights of discovery and all the evidence you have to --
you know, this seems to be the dilemma against which all these
cases seem to found -- I mean...
Snepp .
ADMIRAL TURNER: We coped with it splendidly with
Q: ...service in the world that has to worry about it.
ADMIRAL TURNER: Because we didn't accuse him of re-
leasing classified information, and therefore we did not have to
uncover...
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Q: I know you can't comment, but the Stockwell thing.
You just said that this was -- classified information was re-
leased, and...
Q: All right. Well, what does the United States of
America do in circumstances like that to protect its information?
Q: Classified information.
ADMIRAL TURNER: There's nothing that I know of that
permits us to do anything against that kind of release of infor-
mation on the grounds just that it was classified. Stockwell
does have a secrecy agreement with us, just as Snepp. So there
is another issue there, which if the Snepp case holds means you
don't have to prove classified information in order to uphold
your contract.
But the laws of this country, unless Stockwell deliber-
ately gave that material to a foreign power, don't permit us to
prosecute him for the classified aspect of it.
Q: When I left the Air Force in 1954, I signed a
document -- I had been top secret document control officer --
that I will never knowingly, willingly disclose this thing.
Now, doesn't that apply? How do use that? I mean was that
just a meaningless piece of paper? I assume we all sign that
when we leave.
MAN: Well, that's the contract.
Q: That's the contract.
[Confusion of voices]
Q: As I understand it, Stockwell refused to sign his
on leaving.
ADMIRAL TURNER: But he signed one when he came in, so we asked him to sign another one, which is a way of reminding
people that they have, and this really is the reason for signing
it. It's not any more legal than the earlier one. So we have
an agreement with Stockwell on that.
I think you could prosecute, under your thing, under
a contract. But I'm not sure -- well, I don't know. The legal
nuances here are such -- but, you know, the Espionage Act says
it's got to be espionage. In short, if you really want to help
the Russians get some information, the best thing to do is to
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steal it and publish it in the newspapers, instead of giving it
to them via clandestine means. You can't get in as much trouble
if you -- as long...
MAN: That way, you can movie rights.
Q: And you might make some money.
ADMIRAL TURNER: ...people don't want an exclusive,
why...
Q: Continuing on this subject of liaison. We've been
told that another problem is changes in American policy, particu-
larly in the Middle East -- or perceived changes in American
policy, particularly in the Middle East and Southern Africa,
have hurt our liaison.
Now, specifically, the Israelis perceive a tilt toward
the Arabs, therefore are less inclined to pass us some of their
information. And the perceived shift away from the whites in
Southern Africa toward the blacks has made some of the security
services more reluctant to cooperate.
Is that -- is there any truth to that?
ADMIRAL TURNER: I don't see it in those particular
instances that you're citing. But, obviously, the state of
relationship between our country and any other has to govern
intelligence, political, economic exchanges. So it's almost a
truism to say that it could happen.
Q: And you're saying that it is happening, but not
in the instances that I've cited.
Q: Is it a problem? I mean is it something that is
deviling you more now than at any other time that you're aware
of?
ADMIRAL TURNER: Well, you know, I've got a short per-
spective here, David. I've only been here two years. So...
Q: Do you sense a swing in the pendulum of the public
perception of the CIA? I mean we rarely have stories about abuses
now. And when we do have them, they're usually buried. I mean I
think that Marks story was probably the biggest play that that
kind of abuse story has gotten in a long time. The big stories
now are things like Paisley and Kampiles, the quality of intelli-
gence on Iran. I mean people are now seem to be more concerned
about (A) the security of the agency and (B), the question of
whether it's really doing its job. Is that something you...
 Approved For Release 2007/03/01 : CIA-RDP99-00498R000300030011-7
ADMIRAL TURNER: A marked change in the last year,
since you were last here, I think. And I must say, I'm willing
to take some credit for that, with our openness policy. I
think we've tried to generate a sense of confidence in the
American public, generate a confidence I think we deserve.
But we try not to just say, "No comment." Herb answers things
now.
You're out here, I notice, regularly for briefings.
I think they're more available to you now than they were two
years ago. Am I right?
ADMIRAL TURNER: I hope that's helping. I mean that
when the American public can understand it, when they see...
Q: Just as a digression. Last week, we were tasked
by New York for the Chinese economy. And lo and behold, I
tear open [unintelligible] Herb had two specials, and there
was this whole thing on the Chinese economy. It was just,
you know...
[Confusion of voices]
Q: ...been reading a Telex.
Q: So thank you, Herb.
[Laughter]
ADMIRAL TURNER: All right. Well, give us -- give us
a plug, will you?
Have you got our Chinese Atlas?
Q: Yeah.
ADMIRAL TURNER: That's an old...
Q: The Chinese Atlas, I cut it out to see -- I took
it with me to China in '72.
Q: You talk about successes, and mention something.
You talk about starting coups, a phrase you used before. Have
these been of simply coups, or have they been of specific value
in the pursuit of the United States goals in the world?
ADMIRAL TURNER: Oh, very much specific value. I
shouldn't have used the word coup, because I don't want people
to confuse it with overturning of governments. They had nothing
To no wuTn overturnina of aovernments. But they were orovidina
 Approved For Release 2007/03/01 : CIA-RDP99-00498R000300030011-7
valuable information to our policymakers. And, you know, it's
the cross we bear, Mel. Our so-called failures are widely dis-
cussed. Our successes go unheralded.
Q: Well, let us ask you about something specific
that seemed to us, when David and I were talking last night,
to be sort of an opposite case from Iran, a case where the
United States has moved swiftly, seems to have had a sound
basis of intelligence to make its policy, and that's Nicaragua.
From the very beginning, when on one half of the front page
there was a sort of a holding on to the status quo in Iran,
the country seemed to be moving very quickly to know who --
where it could move, how safe things were.
What was the -- was there any difference in the CIA's
input in Nicaragua? Was there, would you say, a better base
of intelligence? And why was that so?
ADMIRAL TURNER: We happen to have a very capable,
perceptible team of analysts on Central America, small, stretched
thin. But everybody in the community recognized that, when
Nicaragua bubbled up, they had done their homework. So they had
the foundation and they just provided superb support.
Q: We understand from some of the reporting we've
gotten that the feeling that the agency is more deeply, not --
entrenched isn't the word -- but has its fingers into various
aspects of the situation there to a far greater degree than it
did in Iran. That is, not only intelligence analysts at Langley,
but operatives out in the field, in all aspects of the political
situation.
Q: More people speak Spanish than Farsi.
ADMIRAL TURNER: Well, I don't -- [unintelligible]
very hard to weigh. But maybe it's background, that there's
been this, ever since the Marines, continuing interest in Central
America, or something, that's built up a better reservoir of
expertise there.
I just -- it's a good question, David. I'm not sure
I know how to answer it.
Q: I guess what I'm saying is, would you -- can you
tell us that the agency's capabilities on the ground there were
also better, as was the analysis back here at home?
ADMIRAL TURNER: No, I don't think the capabilities
on the ground were any better, no.
Q: We've read in a couple of places the statement, I
think attributed to you, that there have been a small number of
 Approved For Release 2007/03/01 : CIA-RDP99-00498R000300030011-7
covert operations run during your tenure. Is that correct?
How many would you say? How many?
ADMIRAL TURNER: No comment.
Q: Is it a small number?
ADMIRAL TURNER: Yes.
Q: Well, I think the number that has been used is a
dozen. Some -- one of the pieces talked with some of the over-
sight people, and the number that seemed to come up was about
a dozen. Is that in the ballpark?
Q: You were quoted as saying there was only one
covert operation that had not been run that you had rather
wished had been run, but you permitted yourself to be out-
voted, I assum, around this table, or one similar to it. I
think you told that to the person from The Star.
ADMIRAL TURNER: I mentioned that to somebody, yes.
Q: Yeah .
ADMIRAL TURNER: That is, I was stressing that there
are not more covert operations not because we're not allowed
to do them, but because we can't find the applicability of
covert action to our countries needs at this time, perhaps as
much as in the '50s or early '60s. And I illustrated that by
simply saying I was only disappointed once that something didn't
go forward.
And the reason they don't go forward, usually, is
the concern as to whether you can keep them secret.
Q: Do you still believe -- and I asked you this
before -- in the Ryan Act, that you can live with it?
ADMIRAL TURNER: I'd like to see the number of com-
mittees narrowed down, and hope that the charter legislation
would do that. I'm very strong on the charter legislation.
I think it's important that we try to do our best to get that
enacted in this Congress.
I have never, since I arrived here, had any sense
that this place was out of control or trying not to respond
to what the Director and his superiors wanted. On the other
hand, we are all very conscious of the past limited number of
abuses here, in the Executive Branch, in the Congress.
 Approved For Release 2007/03/01 : CIA-RDP99-00498R000300030011-7
My concept of having charters is to insure that the
agency is protected five and ten years from now from being pushed
by anybody, as it has been in the past, into doing things it
shouldn't, because the sense of awareness of the past has faded.
If you see what I mean.
Q: Admiral, you've stressed for us the progress you've
made in the past year. We've talked about some successes that
the agency has had that you cannot talk about. Why is it, then,
that there are so many reports, both in the press and out of the
press, of kind of a personal antipathy toward you expressed by
certain people in the White House and certain people on the Hill,
stories of other people who are suggested for your job, etcetera?
What -- have you made a number of enemies that you wish you
hadn't?
ADMIRAL TURNER: I think you're the one who can judge
that better than I. I don't suppose you know who in Newsweek
doesn't like you or...
Q: I'll kill 'em. I'll get rid of 'em.
ADMIRAL TURNER: ...as well as the two Davids do. So
I don't know how to comment on that one, Mel.
Q: Do you feel you have enemies?
ADMIRAL TURNER: No. I don't have a personal ethos or
a personal ethic of feeling animosity towards others or feeling
that I should be an enemy to anyone else.
Q: Do you feel...
ADMIRAL TURNER: I don't think that's my concept of
a Christian attitude towards life.
I am a controversial person. I don't think that means
you have enemies. One has differences of opinion, differences
of approach. And I've said before that when you are taking an
organization like this through a major change, both the gener-
ational change I referred to earlier and the change of accounta-
bility that I referred to earlier -- and what people don't appre-
ciate, inside this agency as well as out, is the extent of change
when you become accountable, from being virtually unaccountable.
It really makes a major difference in the way you do your busi-
ness.
And, David, in all bureaucracies -- and I suspect even
in one as small as Newsweek, comparatively speaking, there's
resistance to change, there's resistance to doing things differ-
ently.
 Approved For Release 2007/03/01 : CIA-RDP99-00498R000300030011-7
I don't have any choice about doing things differently
out here. It isn't just S. Turner. I'm making some of my own
imprint. But I'm top of that, I've got to respond to the Con-
gress, to the President, to the country. And they want intelli-
gence run differently than it was run in the '50s. That doesn't
sit easily.
So, yes, there's some controversy. But I don't feel
I have cause to be enemies with anybody.
Q: Do you feel undercut by the publication of the
memo about Iran from the President? I mean has that given you...
ADMIRAL TURNER: It's part of the whole problem, which
is, I've said repeatedly in public, the greatest problem we have
today, and that's keeping our secrets. That was a secret memor-
andum. And the fact that, obviously, somebody in the press was
either read it or saw it, because they quote part of it, anyway,
is disturbing. It's disturbing to the country, not to me per-
sonally, not to the agency. It's just symptomatic of a problem
we have of retaining other people's confidence, being able to
have a good debate within the Executive Branch.
And we're closing now, so that, you know, a half a
dozen people know some of the things that are going on, because
you can't share it with your staff. And that hurts.
Q: Do you speak freely at meetings all over, or do
you watch yourself because of the problems of leakage? When
you're outside of the agency, when you're in other branches of
the government, do you feel that you have to watch what you say
because of the problem of it might wind up...
ADMIRAL TURNER: I'm charged by the law to protect our
sources, our human sources, and our methods, our technical methods,
of collecting intelligence. There's nothing I say in this office
or anywhere else that I don't have to take that into account.
Q: I'm not talking about security, I'm just talking
about points of view, that you may say something in the course
of a normal discussion that somehow will be used against you:
"Well, this is what S. Turner thought about X country. Isn't
that silly?" I mean people -- that's an old bureaucratic tech-
nique in Washington.
Q: Do you watch yourself...
ADMIRAL TURNER: No. My history in the government is
not one of being a wallflower. In this job in particular, my
whole responsibility is to try to bring objectivity into the
 Approved For Release 2007/03/01 : CIA-RDP99-00498R000300030011-7
analysis of the foreign policy problems that are facing the
country. And I find that frequently means I'm the bearer of
bad news. And if I don't bear the bad news, I just won't be
doing my job.
And so, no, it's just beyond my concept that I will
withhold that kind of information.
Now, when it comes to commenting on what direction
the policymakers are going, I have strong differences some-
times and strong support at other times. I mean that's just
normal. But that I'd restrain on. I'm not involved in that.
So I sit there and grit my teeth sometimes.
Q: Let me look at your teeth and see how much grit-
ting you have to do.
Q: Let me ask you for an objective view on exactly
the charter legislation. You've told us your reasons for sup-
porting it. But there is a feeling around the Hill that perhaps
its time has passed. It ran into a fair bit of difficulty in
its first version. There's supposed to be a new version coming
out, I think at the end of February or March. And maybe you
can tell us whether it's on track and whether that nex draft
will be on time.
But do you think, objectively, that it will pass, or
that in the end Congress is moving back and the people are
moving back to sort of, "0h, well, they're in better shape now.
Let them take care of it. It's really too complicated to try
to ..."?
ADMIRAL TURNER: It is very complicated.
Q: Do you think it will ever pass? Will there be a
ADMIRAL TURNER: Yes. Yes, I do. It's very compli-
cated. It is on track.
The fact -- what you're reflecting, Dave, is that the
pendulum, as David mentioned,...
Q: Yes.
ADMIRAL TURNER: ...has swung. So there are different
views now on how far we should go. But I think that's healthy,
because had the pendulum tried to go too far towards restrictions
on us, we wouldn't have got any charter legislation, either.
Q: So that despite whatever swing there is, you per-
sonally are going to be trying to make sure that there is a
 Approved For Release 2007/03/01 : CIA-RDP99-00498R000300030011-7
charter passed. You're not going to...
ADMIRAL TURNER: That's correct. It's going to be
finding the middle ground here. But I believe we can find
that ground that will satisfy people if they will understand
one principle, and that is that what we have created in a
unique fashion -- never before in the history of intelligence
is this external oversight process.
You won't be able, in the charter legislation, to
legislatively control every activity of the intelligence
community. So, what you will do is you will control it to the
extent it's reasonable to do so, provide guidelines to what
is expected of us and what is not expected of us, and then pro-
vide oversight to check on it.
My famous example that comes right down to you is
my own regulation right now, which may or may not be part of
the law, that I don't have paid contractual relationships with
members of the American media. But there's a clause at the
bottom that says I, Stan Turner, may make an exception to that.
And some of your contemporaries have objected to that, said,
"It's no rule at all. Turner can do anything he wants." I
can't do anything I want. I have two committees up there that
can call me up this afternoon and say, "How many exceptions
have you made to that rule?" You know. And if I'm just making
a farce of the thing, then they will pass a law.
But I don't want to be so constricted that if David
Martin's the only guy who can be an intermediary between me
and an imminent terrorist operation that's going to blow up
an American airliner in some foreign country, that I can't work
with David.
Q: Have you made any exceptions?
ADMIRAL TURNER: No.
Have I? I don't remember any.
Q: In the time remaining, one of the areas we haven't
covered, and I think [unintelligible] development in this past
year since our last interview, has been the question of your
internal security within the agency. The Kampiles case raised
a number of questions.
How have you gone about assuring yourself that the
Kampiles thing has not gone deeper?
ADMIRAL TURNER: We've done a very thorough counter-
intelligence investigation. We've got a polygraph from Kam-
piles before and after his conviction. So we have pretty good
 Approved For Release 2007/03/01 : CIA-RDP99-00498R000300030011-7
evidence of what he did. You know, and people can fool the
polygraph. We have not uncovered anything whatsoever that is
an aberration in this picture. When we finally pieced it all
together, as to where he started, where he went, how he trans-
ferred it to the Soviets, why he came back and told us about
it, and so on, it all pieces together. I guess you could say
not every piece is in the puzzle, but there's no piece that
is jagged and doesn't fit in.
That doesn't mean we're utterly confident. We sit
here and constantly be vigilant. Because if we're not, we're
complacent.
But around Kampiles, I find no evidence whatsoever
of a mole. But I'm still always going to say that -- I won't
say there's no mole in the agency. Because if I did, I would
show a complacency that would be...
Q: How shaken were you when you first got the news
of the Kampiles case?
ADMIRAL TURNER: Well, I was very disturbed that we
had a disloyal employee like this, that important information
had got out. And it, unfortunately, reinforced views that I
had that we were -- we needed to tighten our security. We had
been doing so over a period of time. [Cassette changed] I
was disappointed that I had to move more dramatically and more
rapidly.
But with the amount of classified material in this
building, you know, today, still, I've got to say to you a
Kampiles could stick something in his pocket that was as small
as this was and walk out of here.
The way you have to stop that is a security conscious-
ness that just got to be built through the whole organization,
and we're obviously working on that, you know, to...
Q: Have you made any changes in the counterintelli-
gence [unintelligible]?
ADMIRAL TURNER: No. Before this, I have put a new
chief of counterintelligence in who was absolutely the best man
I could find. I hurt myself taking him off of another equally
important job, almost. And we have strengthened counterintelli-
gence by more contacts, more formal relationships with the Federal
Bureau of Investigation, and my close personal relationship with
the Director.
We have moved in a lot of ways in counterintelligence.
I wouldn't say they all -- or, that any of them particularly
stem from this. This was all in train even before that.
 Approved For Release 2007/03/01 : CIA-RDP99-00498R000300030011-7
Q: You mentioned talking to the Director of the FBI.
When is there going to be an Amherst coup in this country? I
mean if you and Webster are now plotting a takeover, who is the
third member of this Amherst group that's going to come in?
ADMIRAL TURNER: Well, he's the one who's pulling
both of our switches, and I can't reveal...
Q: I see. But he tells us it's you.
[Laughter]
Q: Admiral, can we ask you one more question...
ADMIRAL TURNER: ...Amherst men in the agency here,
[Confusion of voices]
Q: I don't think there are any Amherst men playing
football right now.
ADMIRAL TURNER: Oh, yes, there is. Jean Fugett.
Q: Oh, that's right. That's right.
ADMIRAL TURNER: And there's another one somewhere
else, on another team. But Jean's right here in Washington.
Nice to see you, Mel. It was a very enjoyable...
Q: Can we ask you one last question before we depart?
ADMIRAL TURNER: I doubt it. I've really got -- I've
got a very important man out here.
Q: Can I just try it for 30 seconds?
ADMIRAL TURNER: Yes.
Q: We brought you about a year ago this allegation
about James Angleton. W you about it.
ADMIRAL TURNER: I don't really remember that. What
is it, that he's the mole?
Q: Have you done anything about that?
ADMIRAL TURNER: I have no comment.
 Approved For Release 2007/03/01 : CIA-RDP99-00498R000300030011-7
Q: That's a good answer.
Q:
You don't want to say anything else?
ADMIRAL TURNER: Not a thing. Thank you very much.
Q: [Unintelligible]
ADMIRAL TURNER: Not a word. That's a subject I'm
not going to to I k about.