TURNER, STANSFIELD

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP05T00644R000200780021-5
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 17, 2009
• Sequence Number: 21
• Publication Date: May 1, 1978
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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Turner, Stansfield
Dec. 1, 1923- Director of Central Intelligence.
Address: b. Central Intelligence Agency,
Washington, D.C. 20505
Nine directors have preceded Admiral Stans-
field Turner in the Central Intelligence Agency
since its establishment in 1947. But Turner
is the first Director of Central Intelligence
to have budget control over the several
agencies that form the United States intel-
ligence community and the explicit authority
to assign and coordinate intelligence collec-
tion tasks. Increased power was accorded
him in an executive order signed by Presi-
dent Jimmy Carter in January 1978 as part
of a reorganization plan that had as one of
its purposes the rehabilitation of the CIA,
'which in recent years has been beleagured
by revelations of abuses of its mandate and
:by security leaks. Turner. who became the
CIA director In February 1977, Is an urbane
Navy man of strong intellectual bent, a former
Rhodes scholar, destroyer commander, sys-
tems analyst, writer on naval strategy, presi-
dent of the Naval War College, and fleet
and area commander of the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization.
Stansfield Turner was born on December
1, 1923 in Chicago. Illinois, one of two chil-
dren of Oliver Stansfield Turner and Wil-
helmina Josephine (Wagner) Turner. The other
child was named Twain. His. father was born
at Ramsbottom. Lancashire, England, came
to the United States' in 1909 at the age of
ten, entered the real estate business six years
later, and by 1929 had risen. to the vice-
presidency of a Chicago real estate firm.
The family's home was in the well-to-do
suburb of Highland Park, where Stansfield
attended high school.
At Amherst College, in which he enrolled
in 1941, Turner took part in student politics,
served as president of his class, played foot-
ball, and became a member-of the. Naval Re-
serve. One of his friends and classmates,
William H. Webster, is now director of the
FBI. ' After two years at Amherst, Turner
transferred to the United States Naval Acad-
emy, where he made his mark as an out-
standing student, brigade commander, and
left guard on the football squad. He and
Jimmy Carter were in the same class at An-
napolis, but, according to the President. they
did not know each other. "He was so far
ahead of us," Carter told his Cabinet in
a comment on his nomination of Turner,
"that we never considered him competition,
or even a peer." Although they were mem-
bers, of the class of 1947, they graduated
in 1948 under an accelerated program adopted
during World War II, with Turner finishing
25th in the class of 820, while Carter ranked
59th.
After a year aboard a cruiser, Turner went
to Oxford University as a Rhodes scholar,
studying philosophy, politics, and economics. and obtained his M.A. degree in 1950. Re-
turning to sea, he served on destroyess in I
both the Atlantic and Pacific and earned
a Bronze Star and other service decora-
tions in the Korean war. His assignments
at sea, including his commands of the USS
Conquest from 1956 to 1958 and the USS t
Rowan in 1962, alternated with tours of duty
in the politico-military division of the Office
of the Chief of Naval Operations and in the
Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense
for Systems Analysis. The Navy also assigned
him to a period of study in the advanced
management program at Harvard Business
School.
As Turner gradually advanced through the
naval grades, acquiring a reputation as an
effective and open-minded officer and ad-
ministrator, his assignments grew more sen-
sitive and important. In 1967, with the rank
of commander, he directed the USS Horne,
a guided missile frigate, off the coast of Viet-
nam. Moving up to captain, he served for
the next two years as executive assistant
and military aide to Secretary of the Navy
Paul Ignatius, advising on budget, manpower,
and other matters. He was awarded his two
stars as rear admiral, assisted Admiral Elmo
R. Zumwalt Jr., Chief of Naval Operations,
on a Navy modernization project, and as-
sumed command of a carrier task group of
the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean in 1970. 1
During the early 1970's Turner's assign-
,
ments continued to increase in responsibility
and he was mentioned from time to time
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as a possible future chief of naval opera-
tions. In 1971 he was named to head the
systems analysis division in the office of
the chief of naval operations and the fol-
lowing year, shortly after receiving the third
star of a vice-admiral, was appointed presi-
dent of the Naval War College in Newport,
Rhode Island. With typical independent-
mindedness, Turner dispensed with uniforms
at the college, ordered extensive revisions
in the curriculum to increase, for example,
the reading requirements, beginning with
Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian
War, and called for examinations in strategy
and tactics, analysis and management. The
students' year at the college was decidedly
not to be a year on the beach. He cautioned
in a college address that if the military
did not shape up, "the think tanks will be
doing our thinking for us." He invited a
variety of provocative speakers to seminars
and lectures that he organized. One guest
was his friend, Herman Wouk, author of
The Caine Mutiny; another was Jimmy Carter,
then Governor of Georgia. who spoke on
government reorganization and with whom
he thereafter remained in correspondence.
Soon after Turner began his two-year tenure
at the War College, his paper "The United
States at a Strategic Crossroads" appeared
in the Naval Institute Proceedings (October
1972). In that paper he noted three significant
changes in America's strategic environment
-a movement away from a bipolar world,
waning domestic support for traditional poli-
cies, and changing Soviet capabilities and
strategy. He urged a greater emphasis on
the "maritime option." naval strategy, argu-
ing that "under the new strategic considera-
tions which we must take into account . . .
sea-based, forces have increased applicability
across the spectrum of our requirements."
In December 1974 he contributed "Missions
of the U.S. Navy" to Naval Institute Proceed-
ings, a paper in which he pointed out' that
a quartet of missions had evolved-strategic
deterrence, sea control. projection of power
ashore, and naval presence --and concluded
that naval officers "must understand the
Navy's missions, continually question their
rationale, and provide the intellectual basis
for keeping them relevant and pertinent to
the nation's needs."
By that time Turner was serving as com-
mander of the United States Second Fleet
and NATO Striking Fleet Atlantic, a post
to which het had been appointed in August
1974. As Second Fleet commander, on May
12, 1975 In Boston harbor he participated
in ceremonies welcoming the first Soviet
warships-two guided missile destroyers, the
Boiki and the Zhguchi-to visit an Amer-
ican port since the end of World War II.
Four months later he became commander
in chief. Allied Forces Southern Europe
(AFSOUTH). with headquarters in Naples,
Italy, and was promoted to four-star, or full,
admiral.
Turner's new responsibilities were reflected
in a larger concern with strategic questions.
When interviewed by John K. Cooley of the
Christian Science Monitor (June 24, 1976),
he asserted that NATO was more important
to the West now than in. the past because
of the growth of Warsaw Pact power, par-.
ticularly Soviet strength. For Foreign Affairs-
(January 1977) he wrote an article, "The Naval
Balance: Not Just a Numbers Game," which
appeared as Congress was taking up the
fiscal 1977 Pentagon budget and the nation
was debating the lineup of United States-
Soviet forces. Turner maintained that op-
posing navies could not be usefully com-
pared in quantitative or absolute terms and
that an analysis of trends was a more sen-
sible approach to the issue of naval capa-
bilities. The question to ask was not, "Who's
ahead?" but, "Can we still undertake the
old missions or perhaps take on new mis-
sions that were impossible yesterday?- He
warned that the drawing of "doomsday" pic-
tures might have a negative affect on other
countries' perceptions of United. States naval
effectiveness: "A few extra ships in the-
budget or at sea may not be enough to over-
come an inaccurate perception of weakness.
The article was referred to repeatedly the.
following month when Turner was nominated
as director of Central Intelligence.
Departing from Italy on an hour's notice
on February 2, 1977, Turner flew to Wash-
ington to meet with President Jimmy Carter,
who named him on February 7 to the dual post
of primary adviser on foreign intelligence
and head of the CIA. Carter's first choice
as intelligence chief, Theodore Sorensen, had
been opposed by foreign policy hardliners
and by conservative Senators, with the re-
sult that he withdrew his name from can,
sideration in January. Before announcing the
Turner nomination, Carter had consulted with
Senator Daniel K. Inouye, chairman of the
Senate Select Committee on .Intelligence, and
other members of that panel.
The nomination of Turner came near the
close of a period during which the CIA had
been rather extensively criticized in the press
and Investigated by Congress for illegal ac-
tivities. Since 1973 the agency had under-
gone two major reorganizations and had had
three directors James R. Schlesinger. Wil-
liam E. Colby, and George Bush who, in
the words of David Binder in the New York
Times (November 25, 1976), had become as
"interchangeable as Cabinet officers." The
general reaction to Turner's nomination was
favorable, when, on February 22, he testified
before the Senate intelligence committee. He
assured the committee that he would con-
duct intelligence operations "strictly in ac-
cordance with the law and American values"
and that he would keep the membee9 in-
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formed about covert operations. His aims
as intelligence chief, he said, would be to
provide unbiased intelligence estimates and
to restore the reputation of the United States
intelligence community. The committee recom-
mended his confirmation 17-0 on February
23, and a day later the Senate unanimously
confirmed his appointment. Turner was per-
mitted to retain his Navy commission and
remain, on the active duty list. As Senator
Inouye disclosed, he had agreed not to seek
the position of chief of naval operations
or chairman of the joint Chiefs of Staff dur-..
ing his tenure at the CIA, but that agree-
ment would not prevent the President from
naming him to either post.
Some reservations about how Turner might
handle the intelligence assignment and
whether he could control the CIA appeared
in the press after his confirmation. Accord-
ing to an editorial in the Notion (March 12,
1977) on the Senate hearing, "The signs that
Turner will be frank with the responsible
committees of Congress about future CIA
huggermugger were faint, if they appeared.
at all; he merely promised to 'study' the
matter of protecting the civil liberties of
American citizens as the CIA goes about
its normal business of spying." On the sub-
ject of control, "Suetonius" of the New Re-
public (March 12, 1977), after discussing Tur-
ner's career, commented, "The troubling ques-
tion-wholly unanswered in his flabby, sham-
bling confirmation hearings-is whether even
this impressive making of an admiral will
enable him to run 'the Company' rather than
vice-versa.... Bright, sophisticated, polished,
apparently at ease with himself and his
country's limited place on the planet, he
is no Curtis LeMay railing against the sun.
But he is not Billy Mitchell either. . . . For
his many strengths, he remains very much
a man of the system."
Representative of more positive considera-
tions of prospects for change or reform at
the CIA under Turner was Frank Getlein's
observation in Commonweal (March 4, 1977):
"I've seen him at work . . . and emerged
from the experience in frank admiration of
the openness of the mind to unusual sug-
gestions, the willingness to entertain un-
orthodox assumptions. . . . If Turner brings
the same openness to reevaluation to the
CIA, It could be the most important thing
to happen to the Agency since its inception
and an event of great value to the country."
Among the problems pressing Turner almost
as soon as he took office was that of trim-
ming the staff over a period of six to eight
years by several hundred operatives who
were deemed no longer needed because of
advances in the United States's technological
capability for gathering intelligence. To save
money and to reduce speculation among the
CIA employees as to who would be dis-
missed, he decided to cut the time span to
two years. In the fall of 1977 he began the
paring by having termination notices sent
to 212 agents in the directorate of operations,
the agency's clandestine branch. Criticized
by the expendable agents and many observers
as unnecessarily brusque, that action was
reported. in the press to have further damaged
the morale at an agency that only recently,
in August, had added to its string of scandals
new disclosures about its program, now de
funct, of funding secret experiments on human
beings in a search for methods of manipulating
behavior.
With a view toward a reorganization of the
overall United States intelligence operation
and toward a restoration of the prestige
that the CIA had once enjoyed, among other
objectives, on January 24, 1978 President Car-
ter signed an executive order to give Stans-
field Turner, as Director of Central Intel-
ligence, "full and exclusive authority" over
the budgets (estimated at $7 billion) of all
of the country's intelligence agencies, direct
control over the CIA, and the responsibility
of working through the new National Intel-
ligence Tasking Center in assigning projects
to the agencies and coordinating their ac-
tivities. The various agencies besides the
CIA are the FBI, the National Security Agency,
State Department Intelligence, Defense Intel-
ligence Agency, Military Intelligence, Treasury
Department Intelligence. Energy Department
Intelligence, and Drug Enforcement Adminis-
tration. -
The President's order also curbed certain
kinds of covert operations that had discredited
the CIA, occasionally because of misrepresen-
tation. Assassinations and medical experimen-
tation on unwitting human subjects were pro-
hibited. A special coordinating committee
under the. chairmanship of the National
Security Council director, Zbigniew Brzezin-
ski, was given the responsibility, shared with
the President, of supervising all sensitive
clandestine - intelligence activities. Moreover.
Secretary of Defense Harold Brown retained
operational control over the electronic signal
interception and. the satellite surveillance
programs. Therefore, although Turner's power
increased substantially, he could not be re-
garded as an intelligence czar. Shortly after
the Presidential directive became known, Tur-
ner denied in an interview for Newsweek
(February 6, 1978) that there was any prob-
lem in morale at the CIA at the present
time. "This place is producing," he asserted.
"The President of the United States is pleased
with it. And the product is high." He went
on to point out, "When you're in a period
of transition to new objectives, new meth-
ods, new management systems, new styles
of openness, of course there are people who
are complaining, because It wasn't done the
way It was yesterday."
Admiral Stansfield Turner works an average
of twelve hours a day; has offices at the
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CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, as
well as in the old Executive Office Build-
ing next to the White House; confers with
Carter for half an hour or longer once or
twice a week; and sometimes sits in on
Cabinet meetings. He holds honorary degrees
from Amherst, Roger Williams, Bryant, and
Salve Regina colleges. His decorations in-
clude the Legion of Merit. His religion is
Christian Science.
On December 23. 1953 Turner married
Patricia Busby Whitney of Chicago, and they
have two married children. Their daughter,
Laurel. is Mrs. Frank G. Echevarria of San
Diego. California, where she and her hus-
band work in the community college sys-
tem. Their son, Lieutenant Geoffrey W. Tur-
ner. is in Naval Intelligence. Of distinct
military bearing, the admiral stands five feet
nine and a half inches tall and weighs 185
pounds; he has blue eyes and gray hair.
He is a nonsmoker and a teetotaler. To
keep trim he swims, plays tennis and squash.
and jogs with his dog, l-fornblower, a golden
retriever.
References: Cong Q p259+ F 12 '77 por;
N Y Yost p27 F 8 '77 por; N Y Times p20
F 8 '77; New Repub 176:10+ hIr 12 '77
por; Newsweek 91:19+ F 6 78 pors; Interna-
tional Who's Who 1977-78; Who's Who in
America, 1976-77
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