DISCUSSION OF THE CIA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP09T00207R001000020055-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 5
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 9, 2011
• Sequence Number: 55
• Publication Date: September 21, 1974
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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RADIO TV REPORTS, INC.
4433 WISCONSIN AVE. N.W.. WASHINGTON. D. C. 20016, 244.3540
STAT
PUBLIC AFFAIRS STAFF
PROGRAM Agronsky & Company
September 21, 1974 7:00 PM
Washington, D.C.
DISCUSSION OF THE CIA
HUGH SIDEY: Carl, if I read the signs right, the
CIA is undergoing some internal stress and change now. It
appears that at least some of the people want to get out
of`the operation of subverting foreign governments, the cloak
and dagger operations. They want to confine themselves to
more pure intelligence gathering. And certainly there are
a lot of people on the outside that want that.
You as a member of that Committee of Forty that
made, at one time, those important decisions -- Peter [Lisagor]
wants me to ask you how many foreign governments you helped
subvert in your time and whether you think it's a good thing.
[Laughter.]
CARL ROWAN: Well, I'll say this. I was in on
some decisions that I'm sure affected the internal affairs
of a lot of other countries. And this is one of the really
grave questions a society like ?-ours faces from time to time:
how much morality can you infuse into your foreign policy?
We find that we talk a lot of morality. We embrace that
U. N. statement that we don't interfere in the internal affairs
of other sovereign states, but everybody goes on interfering,
and we wind up justifying it on the basis that this is a
mean, wicked, wretched world, and because all the other big
countries are doing it, we're going to go ahead and do it.
And I will almost guarantee you that when all the shouting
has died down in this particular case, you'll find the CIA
doing much the same kinds of things that it's been doing
since the beginning.
SIDEY: !dell, should that -- should that go on?
What's your feeling?
ROWAN: Some of the things they should do. There
are some things where I draw the line.
SIDEY: What about Chile?
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ROWAN: I, for example, do not believe that we
have the right to try to upset Chile's economy to the extent
that the natives even would become restless and throw the
Allende regime out. And I'm not so sure that that's where
it stopped.
In fact., you can make a real argument as to whether
what President Ford has admitted we did was all right. What
do you think would have happened in this country if, during
the '72 election, Mr. Nixon had discovered that some other
government was putting money in the coffers of the McGovern
campaign and into the treasury of certain newspapers that
were opposed to Mr. Nixon?
PETER LISAGOR: There was that suspicion....
ROWAN: I know there was.
LISAGOR: ...about the Cubans.
ROWAN: And this is what makes it difficult, you
SIDEY: All right. Jack, you as an old cloak and
dagger man....
JAMES J. KILPATRICK: Oh, look, I'm all in favor
of what went on in Chile. But I want to discuss this. You
talk about upsetting the economy of Chile by the various
measures that were taken. Suppose we give a two billion
dollar foreign aid cheap loan or an outright grant to a country.
Doesn't that affect its economy?
ROWAN: No question about it. Now, for example,
Jack, here is where I was trying to draw the line between
the kinds of things the Forty Committee decides on. You
get an intelligence report saying the Cubans are putting
sixty guerrillas into Boliva. The government there wants
some helicopters. They want some counterinsurgency help
from the CIA. So we vote to give them that kind of help.
Now, I don't have any trouble with that kind of
decision. But I do have difficulty with a decision whereby
Allende wins in a popular election and becomes President,
and then we maneuver to see that the World Bank, the International
Monetary Fund, all the other instruments of international
credit put the scr-ews on Chile, you see, to throw out an
elected government.
LISAGOR: Yes, but hold on. Suppose the government
of Boliva to whom we sent money to help against the imported
Castro guerrillas -- suppose that was a dictatorial, repressive,
autocratic government. Would you not have trouble with that,
Carl?
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ROWAN: Yes. Then you've got another moral, another
different kind of moral dilemma. And this is why I'm saying
there is no way you can sit down and make a categorical statement
about what the CIA can or cannot do.
LISAGOR: What would be wrong, though, if the CIA
were to confine itself to gathering intelligence?
ROWAN: Well, that may be what we come to.
LISAGOR: I mean what would be wrong with that?
I understand that there are people in the CIA now who believe
that as long as they do._a?good, first rate job of gathering
intelligence, that will be enough, that you don't have to
engage in these covert dirty tricks, political operations.
ROWAN: All right. I'll give you one example of
the kind of thing that might come up, Peter. Let's say we
adopt that. And I can accept it on moral grounds. But somebody
then says we happen to know that in Ghana -- just to use
an'example -- the Soviet Union has put three million bucks
in there. They're bribing politicians, et cetera, et cetera....
LISAGOR: Right. Okay.
ROWAN: And then somebody says if we don't put
three million in and bribe some of our politicians, it's
going to become a communist'government. Well, what do you
do then, you see?
SIDEY: Let's hear from George here on this.
GEORGE WILL: Well, let's be clear about a couple
of things. First of all, we shouldn't exaggerate our ability
to subvert governments at will. The idea that the CIA is
uniquely competent to achieve what it does, unique among
all our government institutions, is, I think, unrealistic.
Second, the Allende economic policies -- he was
a true-blue socialist -- were quite capable of alienating
and eventually radicalizing the middle classes and eventually
would have got him thrown out....
LISAGOR: So we wasted our dough.
WILL: More than likely, as usual.
Third, I'm reluctant to talk about this because
one can't talk about this without coming close to criticizing
Dr. Kissinger. And the storm signals are up again that if
this gets out of hand, this criticizing of him, he'll take
his bat and ball and go home. And I don't want to be blamed
for that.
But, fourth, I would like to make the following
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curious observation about Dr. Kissinger. For the last year,
Senator Jackson and comfortable majorities in both houses
of the Congress have rallied behind a piece of legislation
that would have denied American subsidies essentially for
the Soviet economy unless and until the Soviet Union liberalized
its emigration policies. Dr. Kissinger has denounced this
as interfering in the internal affairs of another country.
Having paused in his denunciations, he goes into one of these
Committee of Forty meetings and goes about meddling in the
internal affairs of Chile. And I would like an explanation
of how he draws the line on what internal affairs it's all
right to meddle in.
tion.
SIDEY: Jack -- Jack is going to give you an explana-
KILPATRICK: ...consistency or morality out of
Dr. Kissinger of any government, are you? I've never seen
any signs of consistent morality or consistent consistency.
WILL: Yes, that's what I'm asking for.
KILPATRICK: But that's too much.
LISAGOR: But what about the argument -- and I
ask you this more in the devil's advocate sense, George --
but what about the argument that our national interests are
served in both cases?
KILPATRICK: By intervening and by not intervening.
LISAGOR: Yes, right.
WILL: Well, if they are served in both cases,
then he has to justify each policy in terms of the national
interest, not in terms of a principle....
LISAGOR: Oh, that's right.
WILL: ....of nonintervention....
LISAGOR: Well, that use of the word "principle"
will render us all speechless here.
SIDEY: Yes, but I see another element in this,
don't you, gentlemen, in simply the fact that it's impossible
for the CIA in this world, with communication as it is and
the state of our open government, to carry on this kind of
operation as they have in previous administrations.
LISAGOR: You know, George says that it's not very
effective. Maybe it isn't any more. But we knocked over
quite a few governments, the CIA did, in its time -- Guatemala
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and Iran.
SIDEY: Are we better off for it?
LISAGOR: What?
SIDEY: Are we better off for it?
LISAGOR: Well, I don't know. I suspect they think
we are. Maybe we actually are. In Guatemala, we have --
what do we have there? In Iran we have the Shah back in
power after Mossadegh put the clamps on the oil production
during his time, which is why I think the CIA went in there
in the first place. The problem here with this is that,
in the end, as I think Bill Buckley has suggested, we'll
have to ask the CIA to go into Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and
see that those oil spigots are turned out, unless we want
to send the Marines in there, to meet your primary concern,
George.
SIDEY: Wait a minute. Carl's turn.
ROWAN: ...One point I think we ought to re-emphasize
again. We talk about the CIA. And anytime this comes up,
CIA, the initials, become a big bugaboo. But I just want
to point out as one who sat on that committee that I don't
know of anything the CIA didduring_mars there that--d-id
not have the approval of the secretary of State the resident
o the and, if the congressional oversig
committees had been on the ball, their approval too. Plow,
one of the problems is, I think, that the congressmen sit
on their duffs and don't carry out their proper or assigned
roles of oversight. But the CIA is doing nothing but carrying
out things that our elected leaders say are in the national
interest of this country. And that's how it's going to be.
SIDEY: Well, let's change from that to a domestic
problem....
[The discussion at this point turns to the matter
of former President flixon's health.]
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