SECURITY REVIEW OF DIRECTOR S ADDRESS AND REMARKS MADE AT IN-HOUSE SPEAKERS PROGRAM

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP99-00498R000300090002-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: C
• Document Page Count: 21
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 28, 2007
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: November 14, 1979
• Content Type: MEMO

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MEMORANDUM FOR; Deputy. Director of Public Affairs
Chief, Information Services Staff, DDA
SUBJECT: Security Review of Director's Address and
Remarks Made at In-House Speakers Program
A written copy of the Director's address and remarks made at the
In-House Speakers Program on 24 October 1979 has been reviewed to see
what, if any, classified information it might contain. Several points
were noted which, particularly in this context, could be expected to
cause identifiable damage to national security if they were released and
therefore should be classified. A classification level of "Confidential"
would be sufficient to properly protect the information involved. The
following listing identifies the specific classified points, gives the
reasons why they rec{uire protection, and cites the legal basis for the
classification:.
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Address by Admiral Stansfield Turner
Director of Central Intelligence
The DCI Management Advisory Group
In-House Speakers Program
CIA Auditorium.
Wednesday, 24 October 1979
I would like to start by thanking the DCI MAG for inaugurating
this program. This is the third in a series. If there is one
thing that will help us all in the Agency it is improved internal
communications. As large as we are, as spread out as we are around the
world let alone in Washington, and as necessary as it is to have some
kind of compartmentation, internal communications are really difficult.
Anything like this that will help I think is just great.
I really don't want to talk very long. I want to take your
questions, your comments, your suggestions. But I thought perhaps
you would like me to say a few words on two topics: how I view the
internal situation of the Agency today, and what the status of our
external relationships are; specifically, how do our customers perceive
us and are they using our product? Let me start here at home.
Inside the Agency, I have never been more optimistic, never
felt better about the internal state of affairs. I think in the
last year we have clearly turned the corner on those years of concern
about the investigations and the ensuing adverse publicity we received.
I think, as an Agency, and as individuals, we now have put the past
into perspective.. Some of the criticism was justifiable. Much of it
was media exaggeration. I think we all recognize now that while mistakes
may have been made, they. must be kept in proportion. Today we have
the right controls, the-right attitudes to ensure that we go forward in
the proper manner. I sense throughout the organization today that the
spirit, the attitude, the hope, our expectations for the future are
where they should be.
One thing that has particularly pleased me over the last year .and
a half has been .the increasing sense of teamwork and cooperation
between the four directorates and between the independent offices and
the directorates. This teamwork is critical to our success. -Most of
all, because of the quality of our people, I feel very confident
of what we are doing now and of our capability to do our job for the
future. We have been blessed for 32 years with top quality people.
Today that continues to be one of our great strengths. If there is one
responsibility that each of us shares, not just the DDCI, the Director
of Personnel, and myself, but also each of you is to ensure that we
continue to recruit and keep the same quality of people so that we have
as good a CIA in 1989 and 1999 as we do in 1979. .That is absolutely
fundamental. Consequently, I have felt that personnel matters and
personnel management .have been my greatest personal responsibility.
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Last winter as rb assistance from
the
a group with
an roun in personne a ministration from all elements
of industry and the government. We are all pleased that the end result
of their 3 month study was to reaffirm that we have a basically sound
personnel management organization. At the same time they suggested
many ways in which we can better use our management system to the
individual employee's advantage more. Since that report came in last
winter, we have been working on their suggestions. We have instituted
a more uniform promotion system, based more on the panels. In fact, we
are going to panels in all promotion areas. Clerical panels, for
example, have been instituted for the first time. There is still more
to be done, but we feel that the uniform, panel-based promotion system
will ensure more equitable, utterly fair opportunity for the individual
employee to be recognized and rewarded for the contribution which he
or she is making. The new performance evaluation report is intended,
to be sure that employees put their best foot forward to the panels.
Inter- and intra-directorate rotation opportunity is being increased.
This will broaden employees experience and increase their perspective.
It will also improve their chances of finding exactly the right career
niche.
More stress is being placed on recruiting the right quality and
quantity of people. Recruiting is up in~both numbers and quality. We
are now working hard to reduce the time it takes from the receipt of an
application from a potential recruit to the time we say yes or no. We
have sometimes lost good candidates because of the delays that we have
particularly with our security procedures.
We are putting more stress on helping low performers. We are
counseling them, moving them to areas which are better suited to their
talents, helping them to grow so that they can increase their productivity
and enjoy a rewarding career.
As we go through the rest of the ~ recommendations, rejecting
some and accepting others, two basic personnel objectives are always in
mind: first, to be sure we have the right mix and quality of people to
do the Agency's job in the future, and secondly, to afford a reasonable
career opportunity to each individual employee; an opportunity to
contribute, to utilize his or her talents, an opportunity for reasonable
promotion potential as well as other rewards.
Each of those goals requires a good personnel management system,
which we have. But, we always need to keep sharpening the ability of
that system to look at each employee as an individual and ask, what is
the next career step? What training? What rotation? What assignments
will best help this employee utilize his or her talents to the Agency's
and the employees advantage? Are we helping that employee to contribute
as much as he possibly can?
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Secondly, the personnel management system must prevent employees
from being blocked in their promotion opportunity by humps and valleys.
As people come into the Agency, if we don't look far enough ahead and
make well-founded decisions on whether we need them at the bottom or
somewhere in the middle, we can easily end up as we have in some areas
of the Agency today with too many people in some grades and qualifications
and too few in others. An employee who comes right behind a grade or
qualification hump has very little opportunity to advance. One who
comes right behind a valley, may be advanced so rapidly that they don't
have the experience necessary to do the job they are asked to do. We
must be able to level out those humps and valleys; to give all employees
the same opportunity to advance. One of the ways is through good-
planning, as I have just described. Another is to take advantage of the
fact that we are one agency, with a uniform promotion and personnel
management system. If we have the interdirectorate mobility which one
agency implies, we can shift people from a hump to a valley and thereby
equalize opportunity.
Let me digress here for a moment to say that my comments at the
beginning about greater cooperation and teamwork are part of my enthusiasm
for the fact that we are becoming more and more of one agency. That is
very important. The profession of intelligence has changed over the
last fifteen or twenty years. Being one agency in which each directorate--
works intimately with the others is a fact of life, and is more critical
to us today than it has ever been. The DDO provides HUMINT. Why?
Because the NFAC needs it. Then NFAC and the DDO turn to the DDS&T and
ask what SIGINT and PHOTINT are bringing in which will help us.
How do we bring all three of -these disciplines together? Only teamwork
enables us to best use an agent; to build on what is known from SIGINT
and PHOTINT. It is wasteful and an unnecessary risk to use a spy, an
agent, when you can get a picture with a satellite. In turn, you
frequently target an agent to find out how best to target SIGINT and
PHOTINT. We-have had some superlative examples in recent years of this
kind of teamwork. This teamwork, this thinking of ourselves as actually
being one agency where there is good communication between all of the
directorates, is utterly vital. I am very encouraged by the evolution
I see in that direction..
Let me shift to the external side. None of us would want to be
here if we didn't feel we were making a contribution to the decision
making and policy formulation of our government. That is why we are
here and without that our work would give us little satisfaction. So -
let's look at our customers.
Clearly the President, the National Security Council Staff, and
the Cabinet members who deal with foreign policy, are our principal
customers. People ask me, how are we doing with the President? We are
doing very well with the President and his chief foreign policy advisors.
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Then someone always says, well what about the intelligence failure
in Iran? It was just a year ago now that we had the so-called intelli-
gence failure in Iran and the President wrote a note. to the Secretary
of State, Dr. Brzezinski and myself suggesting that we could improve
political intelligence reporting. The President didn't say, nor is it
true, that that situation represented an intelligence failure. That
was coined by the American media and was an exaggeration. We would
have liked to have done better, but there was no failure. The President's
suggestions have helped us improve for the future. Among other things, a
fine political intelligence working group has evolved around the DDCI,
David Aaron of the NSC and David Newsom from State which today ensures
the same kind of communication and teamwork I've been talki
n about in
the Agency. As a result, we are getting a lot more support
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Put the shoe on the other foot. If we had not done quite as well
as we would have liked in Iran, and the President had said nothing to
me, and incidentally this wasn't the first time he made a suggestion to
me, think of the implications of that.- To me that would have implied
that he wasn't concerned, that he wasn't reading and depending on his-
intelligence input. The fact that he was concerned and interested is
indicative of how important he regards what we do for him. Six mornings
a week we give him a Presidential Daily Brief--the PDB--and I guarantee
you it is the highest quality intelligence product in this or any town.
Regularly I brief him orally both on substantive matters and on what we
are doing and how we are doing it. He is intensely interested, and
wants to be kept abreast of intelligence activities.
In National Security Council meetings and meetings of subordinate
committees of the Council, very frequently it is the Intelligence
Community which leads off and sets the background of the situation
which is up for debate. Ithink--though I haven't been here long--from
what I have seen and heard, that our product is better utilized today,
more visible, more relied upon by the top Executive Branch policy-makers
than perhaps ever-before in the Agency's history.
Now let me point out that there is a downside, a problem side to that..
The more you are responsive to the Administration's needs for intelligence,
the more likely it is that somebody will say you are so responsive
you are not .being objective, detached from the policy process. You are
being politicized. There is nothing that is further from the truth
today than that. Let me give you an example.
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If you want the best example of all, it is SALT II. If there was
ever a case where the intelligence agencies could have been put under
intense pressure to make the intelligence fit the policy, it certainly
is SALT II, the prime foreign policy objective of this Administration.
From the beginning, we have held resolutely to one position: we talk
about monitoring SALT, we do not talk about verifying SALT. We
don't make judgments on whether SALT monitoring is adequate for
verification, adequate-for the safety, adequate for the security of our
country. Those are political judgments. That permits us to give
Congress and the Administration the information that they need to make
those judgments, but it does not put us in the position of supporting
or not supporting the treaty because it is verifiable or not verifiable.
I don't think that you can find anyone in the Administration, on
Capitol Hill, or, in this case, even in the media who would seriously
contend that the Central Intelligence Agency was politicized thus far
over SALT II. I intend for us to stay that way.
If we are ever accused of being politicized, pull some of these
examples out of your hip pocket. Would a politicized Agency have
disclosed- in the middle of the SALT II debates that the Soviets had a
brigade in Cuba? Would a politicized Agency have undercut an Administration
policy on Korea b revealing a build-up of North Korean military
forces? 5X1
5X1
Would a politicized Agency have published some
of the unclassified studies that we have published in the last couple
of years, some of which have not been very popular with the policy
makers? Of course not. I don't believe we have been politicized, and
I think the record proves it. I believe we are supporting the
President well and he in turn is supporting us well. Look at his
October 1st speech on the Cuban brigade. He specifically mentioned the
need to enhance intelligence community capabilities. He specifically
mentioned the great importance of measures to protect our sources and
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Another of our important customers is the Congress. This year
we've given more briefings, provided more reports in response to more
requests from individual members, committees and staff of the Congress
than ever before. That's great. For them to be able to benefit from
our work is extremely important. Our stock in trade is that we are the
one intelligence agency of the government that has no policy axe to
grind.. Consequently, we are very well received by the Congress.. The
increasing flow of letters and telephone calls and requests of one sort
and another is indicative that the quality and .importance of our work
is both recognized and appreciated on the Hill.
In the last several years, I believe our relations with the two
oversight committees has just been superb. Last week, by unanimous
endorsement, the House Permanent Select Committee forwarded to the
House a bill that would deliberately and directly attack Philip Agee
and the traitorous individuals here in Washingtion who publish the
Covert Action Bulletin. Almost every day, the Senate Select Committee
pushes in one way or another for more resources, more support for all
of our intelligence activities. I don't want to intimate that these
committees are in our pocket--they're in my hair half the time--but the
relationship is good. They should be and are conducting oversight.
They are doing it objectively, but also they are coming to understand
us, our needs, and our capabilities. We frequently get the kind of
support from them that we had no one to turn to on the Hill before.
And we have needed that support, particularly in staving off legislation
that, maybe by inadvertence, would have damaged us; and proposing
legislation such as I have mentioned, that will help us.
Finally there's the American public. Here again I sense a turning
of the corner; a recognition that intelligence is fundamental and very
important to our country. A recognition that while we've been criticized,
have made mistakes, that on balance the record of the CIA over the
years has .been superb, and that we cannot and should not be shackled.
I think it is terribly encouraging. It's a reaffirmation of my personal
basic faith in the wisdom of the American people. It may take awhile,
with the distortions they have had to put up with to get their facts,
but in the long run they see through this miasma. In part, ironically,
this has been because of the adverse media attention. Media investigations
have been unrelenting as you all know. There is no way that we can turn
that off. But because they have often been so one-sided, the public
has sought the other side of the story. From that search, they have
recognized tfiat there is something of real value here which could be in
jeopardy.
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We've turned the corner with the public in part also because we
have been more open with them and have tried to help them understand
what intelligence contributes to our national security. I know that
this is controversial, but let me say with deep conviction that there
is no way we can avoid being more open with the American public. The
secrecy of the past is gone. The persevering, inquiring reporters are
there on the doorstep every day. If they don't get it straight from us,
they are going to get it crooked from somebody else. More importantly,
there is a basic premise in a democracy that the more the public knows
about the functioning of government, the better that government will
be. I believe that. I believe that we in the government think we know
what is best for the country; that we know best how to handle complex
foreign .policy and domestic policy situations. But that is not so.
The American public knows best. It takes them time, but when they
understand what is going on, and when they set their course, they will
do a better job than any of us in the government in determining which
way the country should be going on major issues. If there is any truth
to that premise, then I don't believe we should pretend that everything
we own is classified or must be classified and therefore kept from
the public. That would be false anyway. It would be dangerous for us to
try to withdraw into a total cloak of anonymity because, where there
have been mistakes in the past, it has not been because of deliberate,
maliciousness. More often than not, it resulted from an understandable
over enthusiasm which, because of the nature of our business, could be
shrouded in a secret environment where adequate checks and balances
could not function.
Our willingness today to share more of what we are about with
the American public has brought significant and positive results.
We are helping the public to carry on sensible, useful debates on
critical topics like the energy issue. We are helping the public to
understand the intelligence function and the contribution it makes to
good government. In so doing we are banking good will and understanding
that we could well have used in 1975-76. But let me reemphasize that
what_we are talking about is controlled openness; carefully controlled
openness. No openness for classified material. No openness for
sources and methods. No openness for how we go about our busi-Hess. But
openness by recognizing that if it can be unclassified, there is no
reason not to make it available to the public. In so doing we help
ourselves to protect what is classified.
Better security goes hand in hand with greater openness. Everyone
of us in this room would acknowledge, I believe, that there is too much
classified material in all of our safes. As we winnow that down by
weeding out what really doesn't have to be classified, we will reduce
what we must protect and hopefully we will at the same time grow to
respect better what is left.
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Improving security is, as you know, one of our major policy
initiatives. We are working hard on Capitol Hill and in the Executive
Branch for Freedom of Information relief legislation, for identities
legislation of the kind I mentioned with respect to people like
Agee, for graymail legislation so we can be more confident in court
that we won't have to spill everything we are trying to protect to get
a conviction. We are working very hard .here inside-the Agency and
throughout the intelligence community to simplify, but at the same
time strengthen, the basic security procedures so that we can and
will carry them out. Congress and the Administration are supporting
us in all of these areas. We must staunch the leaks which have been
s ewed over the a ers just unmercifully and criminally, be they about
r we won't be as capable and 25X1
successful an intelligence service as we must be.
We are the best intelligence service in the world. You, I,
all of us are dedicated to doing everything we can to keep it that way.
None of us has a monopoly on good ideas on how to preserve further as
well as enhancing our intelligence capabilities. I look for your
suggestions, for your advice. From the first day I came here I have
invited employees to contact me with a simple note in an envelope. I
have never guaranteed a response, but I have always guaranteed that I
would read each one. We need your help, we need your advice.
I appreciate the chance to be with you and say these few remarks
today. Now let us turn to your questions.
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QUESTIONS & ANSWERS
Q. How has the shift toward technical collection affected HUMINT?
A. I don't think we ever shifted away from HUMINT. What has happened
may give the perception. that we have, but that has not been the
case. Communications and photographic capabilities have been
burgeoning. The technical systems have been bringing in greater
quantities of information faster. But that has not denigrated
the importance of the human side one bit. You don't get the
same quality answers out of pictures or intercepts as you do out
of human intelligence. What I was trying to say earlier is that
the advent of greater photographic and signal capabilities means
you really must have a teamwork operation. I think what
has happened is that human intelligence has become more difficult.
Counterintelligence is becoming more sophisticated, not only in the
Communist countries but elsewhere around the world. Therefore, the
case officer needs the support of what you can find out for him by
the other two systems more than ever. So, teamwork is critical.
The bottom line in almost all of these issues is what is going
on and what is going to happen next. Where do you get that? Once
in a while from signals, seldom from photos, most likely from
HUMINT.
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Q. Doesn't the release of our unclassified publications lead to the
accusation of being politicized at times?
A. I certainly don't question that. But we are not politicized. Take
the first energy study. It came out shortly after the President
enunciated his war on energy. Part of his war on energy was
derived from our work. The study, of course, was well underway
before Mr. Carter was elected. It was neither done nor tailored to
his needs or to the war on energy that he developed. Should we be
reluctant to publish something because policy was built on it? I
don't think so. Policy was built from it, not the other way around-.
On the other hand, we published a report on the Polish economy
that just drove some Administration officials up the wall. So, I
have no concern that over the long run these will balance themselves
out and people will understand the net benefit to the country.
There just isn't a shred of evidence that any of these reports was
generated for the express purpose of supporting policy makers.
I had been pushing the last energy study that came out in August
for over a year to get OER to put it out. I felt we needed to
supplement the .previous one. I was frankly distraught that it
happened to come out about a month and a half after a second push
by the President for energy legislation. I would have preferred
that it come out last January for example, and been totally
divorced from a policy push. But, we just couldn't reach that
degree of readiness on the report. Reports are timed to satisfy
the needs of policy. makers for substantive classified intelligence.
Our product is intended for the Executive Branch of the government,
be it the President or the Secretary of State or a military commander
or an ambassador in the field. If then, when you take out what has
to be taken out to protect particular information or to protect
sources and methods, there is enough substance left, then we publish
an unclassified version. That publication is done as soon as
possible so that the contents are still current. It is not timed
to coincide with policy initiatives.
Q. Admiral Turner, although we are working for the Executive Branch, it
seems as if we are trying to service a lot of legislative departments.
Could you give us some idea of the impact on our workload of resource
allocations to satisfy legislative requirements on the one hand,
and on the other what you see as the implications of Congressional
possession of intelligence.
A. Well, I can tell you that one out of every 12-1/2 of my days this
year has been spent on Capitol Hill. The workload I imagine is
somewhat heavier in certain sections like OPA in the NFAC. We-are
doing a study to see what the balance is. I personally think we
have reached the point with NFAC where there are requirements,
some from the Congress, some from NSC, some from other branches
of the Executive departments, that we are going to have to
turn down. We'll turn them down on our judgment of whether-
. the net impact, if we do them, is going to be important enough. We
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