LETTER TO ROBERT D. STUART, JR. FROM STANSFIELD TURNER

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP05S00620R000601500016-3
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 16, 2009
• Sequence Number: 16
• Publication Date: May 17, 1978
• Content Type: LETTER

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The D or of Central Intelligence
Washington, D. C. 20505
17 May 1978
Dear Bob,
I appreciate your perceptive question on why we
don't do more to publicize the-fact that we need-to
have some level of secrets in our government if we are
going to continue to have an intelligence capability
for our country. I just wanted to share with you the
article I mentioned that I had written for The Washington
Post some months ago which lays out my views on the
situation. I'll keep hammering at this whenever I can.
In the meantime, I do appreciate your interest and
support.
It was certainly good to see you and Barbara again
at The Homestead, even if Fred and I had to come from
behind to tie you and Walt! All the best.
STANSFIELD TURNER
Mr. Robert D. Stuart, Jr.
Chairman
The Quaker Oats Company
345 Merchandise Mart Plaza
Chicago, Illinois 60654
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Stanfield Tur*
I '"he CIA's Tne~qmiv'ocai Rig h t'' t
There have been stories in the media in recent
weeks concerning a new book-"Decent Interval."
by Frank Snepp- that is critical of the CIA's role in
the closing days of Vietnam. News stories question
whether the CIA had the right- to review this book
or, by extension, any work before publication and,
if so, whether it had the right to excise portions it
reasonably considered damaging to national secu-
rity.
The answer to the first question is unequivocally
yes. The CIA had the right to review because the
author had signed a specific agreement to that ef-
fect as part of the terms of his employment- with
the agency. At no time prior to publication did he
challenge the validity of that agreement. Rather, he
claims there is some higher right that gives him the
privilege of breaking that oath.
Yet, all of the evidence upon which Snepp bases
that rationale was available to him when he met
with me on May 17 of this year. In that meeting he
explicitly promised me that he would fulfill his
written obligation to provide us his manuscript for
review. More than that, he reaffirmed this obliga-
ftion a few days later in writing.
I.. The Central Intelligence Agency, and I as its Di-
rector, accepted this man at his word. We made no
effort to monitor the progress of his activities. He
simply violated both his own oath and our trust.
Moreover, his publisher, Random House, and his ini-
tial TV interviewer, "60 Minutes," have also ac-
knowledged that they were party to this deliberate
evasion of written and spoken promises.
Why do people and organizations feel that duplic-
ity is justified in circumstances like these? Because,
I 'suspect, of **an erroneous premise, clearly ex-
pressed in some of the newspaper articles on this
case, that government employees inevitably place
covering their and their agencies' reputations
above their duties and even above the law. This is a
common anti-establishment reaction that has be-
come so familiar in recent years. Its fallacy lies in
the absence of any evidence that the CIA, over the
past year and a half when Snepp was writing his
book, deliberately used secrecy to protect its repu-
tation. To the contrary, the public record attests un-
equivocally to the agency's willingness to face the
past squarely, whatever the effect on its public rep-
utation. The self-revelations last July of the MiCUL-
TRA drug-abuse activities of the 1950s and the 1960s
are only the most recent examples of this forthright
policy. What is at stake, however, is a fundamental
issue for our society. If the society cannot trust the
judgment of its public servants regarding what
should or should not be withheld from the public,
then the society can in fact have no secrets at all.
The logical extension of the EllsburgSnepp syn-
drome is that any of our 210 million citizens is enti-
tled to decide what. should or should not be classi-
fied information. r - . , .
Secrecy is, of course, dangerous. It can be abused.
Yet, some things must be secret. Clearly there must
be checks and balances on those who decide. But
because these judgments are difficult does not !
mean that the chaos of no regulation at all is to be
preferred. I believe that the public recognizes the
necessity for some secrecy in our modern society.
there is no question that we each recognize it in
our individual lives. Nor is there a question that we
recognize it,in the extension to government- None
of us is so naive as to believe that we live in a totally t
open and benign world. Many of our efforts, like
those directed toward strategic-arms limitations,
which could move us closer to the open and peace-
ful world that we all desire, would be impossible if
we tried to negotiate from a position of total open-
ness. Nonetheless, how much secrecy is'necessary^
and who should decide what will remain secret are
vexing issues. -~
How much must always be a matter of the subjec-
tive judgment of human beings. The best we can do
is build into our system, as we have in the past few
years, a series of bureaucratic checks and balances
that will control secrets and secret activities, yet at
the same time protect the public from any abuses
that excessive secrecy can encourage. Beyond that,
another check is the ballot box, where the public {
exercises ultimate control over the quality of indi-
viduals in public office. And, also, the free media in
our-society can assist the public in ensuring against
The writer is Director of the CIA.
excesses of secrecy.- However, such vigilance does
not best proceed from the unsubstantiated assump.
tion of evil motives on the part of all public serv-
ants. Investigative reporting does imply some meas-
ure ?~
of investigation. No one from Random House or
CBS, for instance, contacted me or anyone else in
the CIA to investigate the other side of this story. It
would appear that they feared that we might have
obtained an injunction. against publication. Yet, an
injunction is a legal mechanism of our judicial pro-
cess. It, too, is a means of protecting the public.
Should corporations be encouraged to skirt the
legal mechanisms of our country by subterfuge?
This case in itself is not worthy of this much dis-
cussion. It is only of interest as an example of our
dwindling capacity to maintain the minimal level of
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gans of our Approved For Release 2009/07/16: CIA-RDP05S00620R000601500016-3 luu
I say this with no seat-pri
lligence Agency can
operate as effectively as tirnoes despite these cir-
cumstances. President Carter has said, "One of the
greatest surprises to me in coming to office is how
effective the CIA is." The concomitant of this fine
performance is the fundamentally healthy and pa-
triotic attitude within the agency despite its being a
frequent whipping boy. There is no question in my
mind that the people of the United States recognize
the need for good intelligence and can appreciate
the destructive effect the carping, of a Snepp can
have. It is time, instead, to concentrate on the, con-
structive. role of- oversight of the CIA and other
agencies of the government. -
role for the futu
from national se
een ne
b
et?
-
Ualallce
and oversight on the other- Perhaps that venerable
statesman Averell Harriman is overly generos
when he often says, "The CIA is our first line of de-
'
fense." But he is not far enough off that we can af-
ford less than a constructive approach to what the
CIA should be providing for, the defense of our
country and its institutions.
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ellation over the past and ;'
we can achieve a workable