SPEECH BY LT. GENERAL VERNON A. WALTERS BEFORE SOUTHERN COUNCIL ON INTERNATIONAL AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP79M00467A000200040082-6
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 72
• Document Creation Date: December 12, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 7, 2002
• Sequence Number: 82
• Publication Date: February 20, 1976
• Content Type: SPEECH

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SPEECH
by
LT. GENERAL VERNON A. WALTERS
before
SOUTHERN COUNCIL
INTERNATIONAL AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS
Atlanta, Georgia
20 February 1976
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I am delighted to be here and to have an opportunity
to talk to you a little bit about something which most
of my 35 years in Government have been specifically
addressed to and that is, namely, the question of intelligence.
I think that one of the great questions that people
ask all the time is: What is this intelligence about which
people talk so much; what is- it 'and - what does it inean
to the United States. Well, intelligence is information on
actions, capabilities, intentions--political, military,
economic, financial--of foreign countries that may have some
impact upon our life. It may affect our living in some way.
In the old days the outside world was very far to the United
States. The United States had an enormous cushion of time at
both sides: any foreign event that occurred could be very long
delayed in any impact on the United States. As a matter of
fact, President Madison once commented that he hadn't heard
from his Ambassador in Spain in two years and if he didn't
hear from him pretty soon, he was going to send someone over
to find out what was going on in Spain.
Well, we live in a very different world. We live in a
world where almost immediate decisions are required. The
means of communication we have today have put our leaders
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in a position where they've got to make decisions about
things almost immediately. They haven't got the same
kind of time for delay and thought and reflection that they
used to have.
We also have a somewhat different world in which we
live. Throughout the early years of our history the United
States was unreachable and therefore unbeatable. That is
no longer true. The two or three months' time lapse that
we had--we had a multi-polar world where there were many
other powers interposed between us and other people who
might mean us some harm. This no longer exists. We live inl
a. world where power is much more polarized and in the hands &f
a much smaller number of nations now than at any time in thel
past. We face a world in which we see the Soviet Union as al
global power, not a continental power like Germany. And
Angola has shown us that they are willing and able to projecf
their power to far parts of the world. Thus we have a
Situation which is quite different from any of those that
;:nave gone on before.
When we stop and think that in this year of 1976, perha
20 percent of the people of the world live in freedom. Eighjy
percent of them live with some sort of restrictions upon their
Freedom. And so, we must guard and protect those freedoms I
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and those things that enable us to live in ways of our own
choosing.
Soviet power today is deployed all over the world.
The Soviet Union has immense capabilities China
will have them tomorrow. We have throughout the world a
series of situations--tinderbox-type situations--of which
we must keep track lest they get out of hand. We have
billions of petro-dollars, or Euro-dollars, moving around the
world and this is a great change from the situation in the
past where this type of thing affected us very little as
a nation. It is vital to us to know what use is being made
of this kind of economic power. It may affect the life, the
livelihood of Americans in Atlanta or Omaha or Spokane. It
is said that knowledge is power and in a very competitive
world in which we live it is essential that our Government
have the knowledge of what is going to happen or what may
probably happen. We have today in the world detente. We all
hope that it will lead to a real relaxation of tensions in
which there will be benefits for both sides. However, when
I think about detente I am always reminded of an old Russian
proverb which says, "C MEDVEDOM DRUZHIS A ZA TOPOR DERZHIS"
"--If you make friends with a bear, hold onto your axe."
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So we have to watch; if we do make agreements with
the Soviets or with anyone else, that whatever agreements
we make that there are no violations.
I think one of the things that people often forget is tat
they normally tend to think of intelligence as merely some form,
of a weapon to make war. Intelligence can also be a weapon!
far making peace. What President of the United States could
sign an agreement on any kind of arms limitation unless he
had some, means of verifying that agreement was being
respected.
In the early Sixties we had a great debate in the United States
about whether or not there was a missile gap. That is no longer possible.
We know what they are doing in this area, and, more importaxht,
they know that we know. We have to watch around the world
:or the possibility of nuclear proliferation. In the kind
of world we live in there are nations that are in situations
of numerical or geographical inferiority where they may feel
this is the only chance they have for survival. You have
international terrorism which is a new factor that hasn't
reappeared since the Middle Ages, which is abroad in the
world today. All of this leads us to a much less stable
world than the world perhaps some of us have known in the
p a s t .
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In the old days you could have a surprise blow but
it was generally a local one and you were quite easily
able to recover from it, if it wasn't a mortal one from the
outset. But our lives, our freedoms, our hopes for tomorrow
depend on not being surprised. We cannot blind ourselves.
If we do, history will not forgive us. Because of the way
the world stands right now, if we fall there isn't anybody
ready to pick up the torch; there may be in a couple of
years, but there isn't anyone right now.
So it is vital that our Government have the information
that enables it to make the best decisions possible in the
interests of the nation and of world peace. Our job is to
collect that intelligence and make it available to those
who make the decisions in our country.
We have, as I said, a tremendous threat with which we
must cope- -military power that never existed in peacetime before.
We have oncoming another giant in the form of China. Yet
in the last four years the manpower in the United States
Government devoted to intelligence has gone down by 40 percent.
It has gone down in terms of real dollars. Less than one
penny out of every dollar spent by the United States Govern-
ment goes to the collection of intelligence.
Intelligence provides us with clear, up-to-date information
on what is going on in the world today. And in the speed in
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which things move, it is essential that the information
be up-to-date. If it isn't up-to-date, if you don't get
it in in time, it's history not intelligence. It provides a,
firm basis for what the United States must do to develop its'
own strength. If we did not know what it was that any potential
opponent had, how could we decide what we needed to face the!''
unknown? What means would we have of gauging how threatening
or how large or how strong was the unknown? It is good
intelligence that keeps the United States defense budget
from soaring out of sight because we do know about the Sovie'E
strategic forces, we do know about the Chinese Mainland
strategic forces. And this enables us to measure what we
need to create a situation in which they will not be tempted to
use them. That is, after all, the ultimate purpose: to deter-
A modern war is a catastrophe so great that the victor'
is scarcely better off than the vanquished. The essential
thing is to discourage people from attempting to use that
force.
Most of all, the existence of a credible United States
:intelligence capability inhibits any idea any country might
have of trying to cheat or circumvent or surprise us. As I
have said, surprise today in a nuclear age is a very different
thing from any kind of surprise that we may have known in
-_he past. If you did not have any idea of what the other
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side had you would probably have an arms race that would
just go on and on and on till everybody involved was broke.
But it is the fact that we do have clear and precise knowledge
concerning the strategic forces that threaten us that
enables us to tailor our forces so that we have the wherewithal
to face that situation, but more important, the wherewithal
to discourage them from being tempted to the use of those
forces and to make.deterrence really viable.
People say "why do you need these so-called covert
actions" of which they hear. Well there is in the United
States a great tendency to say "well all that low, under-
handed stuff is all right for the British, the Germans, the
Russians, or the French, but not for us pure, noble Americans.
The Founding Fathers wouldn't have likedit." Well this does
not take into account the realities of American history.
Probably the greatest consumer of intelligence in
American history was George Washington. George Washington
wrote a letter to his chief of intelligence in New Jersey,
Colonel Elias Dayton, in which he said this: "The need
for procuring good intelligence is so obvious that I have
nothing further to say on this subject. All that remains
for me to tell you is that these matters must be kept as
secret as possible. For lack of secrecy such operations,
no matter how well-conceived, or how promising the outlook,
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generally fail. I am, Sir, your Obedient Servant, George
Washington."
Then we have those today who tell us: "Oh, but in
a democratic society you have to tell everybody everything
and let everything hang out." Well, one night George
Washington was staying in Connecticut at the home of a
patriot called Holcomb. And in the morning, he got out,
got up on his horse and was going to ride off when Mrs.
Holcomb came out to see him off. And she said, "General,
pray where do you ride tonight?" And he leaned down in
the saddle and he said, "Madame, can you keep a secret?"
She said, "Of course." He said, "So can I, Madame," tipped';,
his hat and rode off.
But even in those days we still had this feeling that
espionage or the collection of intelligence was an immoral
thing and so forth. We have a statue of Nathan Hale outsida
the CIA building. It was put there over my protests, not
Because he was not a very brave young man and did not utter
.3 very immortal phrase that he regretted that he had but
one life to give for his country. My objection to the fact
was that he was an agent who was caught on his first mission'
and he had all the evidence in his shoe. And I am just not
sure that's what we should be holding up to our young
trainees as the ideal. Furthermore, before that he
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committed a grave breach of security. He told a friend of
his that he was going behind the British lines to act as a
spy. And his friend looked at him and he said, "But,Nathan,
how can you stoop so low?" So we had these kind of people
then, and his answer was a very good one, which is not as
immortal. He said "The need of the nation justifies it."
But again he went to Manhattan Island to find out when the
British were going to land and where. Unfortunately for him
they were already there.
We get on to this question of political action--covert
action--about which there has been so much discussion.
This again is regarded as some frightful thing: the helping
of your friends. Well I think anybody who has studied the
record of the last 6,000 years of human history of which we
have record has known that throughout all time nations
have sought to help their friends and to influence opinion
in other countries in a sense favorable to themselves.
Americans should be particularly cautious in this respect,
I feel, for if there hadn't been extraordinarily large
French covert action in North America, we just might not be
celebrating a Bicentennial. As a matter of fact, there
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were 17,000 Frenchmen ashore in North America before France)
declared war on Great Britain. We sometimes tend to forget!
this. We sometimes tend to forget that the British said,
"0h, the French are helping the rebels." And the French
went to the U.S. Congress and said you will kindly pass a
resolution saying you have received no aid from us. Because'l
if you don't do it we won't give you any more aid. And
Congress promptly passed a resolution and said no, they'd
never heard of any French aid. But if we had not had that
aid, ours would have been a very, very tough and much longer'
struggle. The idea that helping your friends in another
country to resist going under from Communist subversion,
to help democratic forces who want to prevent their country
from going totalitarian is morally wrong... everybody else
is doing it. You've got to live in the real world. No,
you don't resort to the kinds of crimes and abuses that
the more extreme societies do, but at least this kind of
action gives you something between a diplomatic protest and
landing the United States armed forces. It helps you contaii
a crisis or limit a crisis.
As I have said, it is being used against us and anybody ''l
who wishes to fight with Marquis of Queensbury rules against
somebody who is using brass knuckles, is going to find that
his future is not bright. We live in the real world, and
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Now you've all read about the investigations and so
forth and so on.
people who
we haven't
we haven't
we haven't
judgment.
had
76,000 people,
I cannot tell you that among the 76,000
nogoodnicks, we haven't had some kooks,
nuts, we haven't had some overzealots,
some people who have exercised very poor
I submit that if you take any community of
subjected to the kind of scutiny to which we
have been subjected over the last 27 years, that our record
will be quite respectable. As of today, to my knowledge,
not one person in the Central Intelligence Agency has been
indicted. Well I ask you to take any community of similar
size over a quarter of a century and tell me how that
record looks.
Again, I am not trying to justify some of these
illegalities or things that.were done in the past, but one
has to look at the situation at that time and the way
people regarded things at that time. For the younger people
around here it is difficult to understand the strength of
the commitment of the United States in the years following
World War II to the principle that it would
never be surprised again. It is difficult to understand
have passed through the CIA in the last 27 years
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the degree of commitment of the American people to the idea'
of stopping the spread of Communist totalitarianism. To just
give a simple example: to us today universal suffrage is
absolutely indispensable for democracy. But we didn't have
universal suffrage in the first years of the history of our
country. You had to have a certain amount of money that you!
paid in taxes before you were allowed to vote. You cannot 11
run a segregated school in the United States today. Fifteen!
years ago you could and 30 years ago or 40 years ago you wot!ld
have gotten in trouble for trying to run anything but that.
And if one persists in looking at the past through the eyes
of the present one is going to get a distorted picture of
the past. So while I am not attempting to justify these
things, I am simply attempting to describe the atmosphere
in which these people exercised poor judgment or were over-
zealous.
The last CIA investigation we had was the Doolittle
Report which told us the United States faced a ruthless
enemy determined to destroy us by any means at their command;,
and that the only way we would survive was by matching their;;
dedication with ours and their ruthlessness with ours. So
we understand that secrecy is not to be used to cover abuses,'
or wrong-doings, nor do we feel it should be destroyed in l
order to help a potential enemy.
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Those who oppose us know very well how valuable human
rights are to us, how much importance we attach to fair
play and to.our freedom, and to the rights of our citizens
and to the open nature of our society. Those who oppose
us can and do make full knowledge of their advantage in
this respect of the fact that they have no similar or
comparable moral restraints in their attempts to alter or
control our society.
Again, to go back to this question of the time and what
was happening. George Washington organized three separate
kidnap attempts on Benedict Arnold and I think most of us
know what he was going to do with him when he got hold of
him. He also attempted to kidnap George III's son--his
fourth son was a midshipman in the Royal Navy in New York
in 1782 and he later became King William IV, and, in fact,
somebody got killed outside the Prince's door. Years later
when this man was then King William IV of Britain, the
American Minister told him about this plot, but added that
General Washington had sent word the Prince jwas to be
treated very kindly. And the Prince said, "Well, I am
damned glad he didn't get the chance to show me how kind
he was."
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Now you take Benjamin Franklin. Benjamin Franklin,
for three years before the Revolution, while we were at
peace we were part of Great Britain, from 1772-1775 was
the Assistant Postmaster of British North America. Do
you know what he was doing? He was opening that British
mail like crazy. They caught him and they fired him and
he went off to Paris as the Head of the Mission there.
He asked the French to build him a printing press. And
do you know what he printed on that press? British pass-
ports, British currency and fabricated atrocity stories
for insertion in the British press.
So you have these people who tell us that there was
none of this in American history before, this is all new,
3irty stuff, we've never done this sort of thing.
When I came into the Army, I went, in 1942, to the
United States Army's military intelligence training center.
What I am trying to illustrate by this is that this
puritanical urge in us has gotten the better of us after
all our wars. We generally enter our wars completely
defenseless in the intelligence field, we then build up a
27reat apparatus and as soon as the war is over we begin to
have moral qualms about it and begin dismantling it. We
took a little longer this time because of the Korean and
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Vietnamese wars. But generally we've dismantled it. When
I got to that U.S. Army military intelligence training. center at
Camp Ritchie in Maryland in August of 1942, the Commandant
of the American Army's intelligence school was a British
colonel and the first ten training movies I saw the Cockney
dialect was so thick that most of the GI's didn't understand
what was going on. So we have to wait a little longer this
time for the wreckers to get to work on our intelligence
apparatus. And they have been doing their best to do so.
And this, in the middle, as I say, of a very tough and a very
difficult world.
We have these two great giants in the world today beside
ourselves: the Soviet Union and Mainland China--about which
I heard an amusing story the other day. It said that
President Nixon was in Moscow and he was talking to Mr.
Brezhnev and Mr. Brezhnev said, "I had a very strange dream
the other day." The President said, "What was that?" and
he said, "I dreamt I was in Washington and I looked up at
the Capitol and there was a great flag flying there." And
the President said, "Yes, it is the American flag, it always
flies there when Congress is in session." Mr. Brezhnev
said, "No, it wasn:'t .the American flag, it had something written
on it." And the President said, "What was written on it?"
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And he said, "On it was written: 'Kapitalism Perevon--
Capitalism is doomed.'" Mr. Nixon said, "That's strange,
I had almost the same dream myself." Brezhnev said, "What
did you dream?" He said, " Well, I dreamt that I was in
Moscow, I looked at the Kremlin and on the highest tower
of the Kremlin there was a great flag flying." Brezhnev
said, "Soviet flag, always there." But the President said,
"Not, it had something written on it." Brezhnev said, "Written?
What did it have written on it?" Mr. Nixon said, "I wish I
could tell you, but I can't read Chinese."
We have this kind df a world in which we live with these
two giants facing one another. We just cannot be blind and
deaf at a time like this.
We've had reorganization, as you know, in the last couple
of days, of the intelligence community. This is really a
reorganization of the very top part of the structure and we
are going to have to organize the lower part of the structure.'
It establishes at the very top a Committee on Foreign Intelli
Bence, which is chaired by the Director of Central Intelligence,
and has as members the Deputy Secretary of Defense for
Intelligence, and the Deputy to the President's Assistant
for National Security Affairs. Centered in this Committee
are authorities held by many committees before. These
include authorities to conduct certain types of operations
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which must be reported to the Congress. The Committee on I
Foreign Intelligence also has the authority to apportion
the money--the resources--throughout the community so we can
get the best possible return for our intelligence dollars.
One thing I would like to make plain is that many
people have a vision of the intelligence
body squirreling away his own
Well that is simply not true.
our people, the State people:
data base, we are all working
same information. Yes, we do
community as every-
private little information.
The Defense Intelligence people
all are working from the same
from the same telegrams from the
have disagreements because the
focus of each of us is somewhat different. But at least I
don't want you to get the idea that everybody in the
intelligence community has got a little secret dispatch
that he's hiding from everybody else. That is simply not
the way it works. We discuss, we talk, we try to' arrive in
our national estimates, and we do, in the national estimates
we submit to the President, at a general consensus but in which
if there are dissents, they are included.
And one thing I must say for Secretary Kissinger is
that he not only wants to know what the majority view is,
he wants to know what the minority view is and why they feel
that way. So many of the documents go forward with notes on
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the bottom of the page saying this or that or the other
Government department does not agree with this. I think
this is very important in assessing what happens and how it
happens.
Now how do we collect this intelligence I have been
talking to.you. about? We collect it in three ways:
first of all we collect it publicly, openly, through the
ordinary newspapers, through the radio and television
broadcasts, through open publications of all sorts and
through open discussions with the people. I would say
that 50 percent of the intelligence published in the publica-
tions of the U.S. Government comes from open reporting from
U. S. embassies abroad. From the ordinary, normal, State
Department reporting. But, of course, as you get further
along, the smaller percentages are the more punchy things
and are harder to get. For instance, we collect by various
technological systems... technological systems of overhead
reconnaissance, of all sorts of highly sophisticated
technical things, which has been one of the great contri-
butions the United States has brought to the world of
intelligence. I think we brought two great contributions:
one is the technical and the other is the analytical
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capability. I think we have carried the analysis of
intelligence, of people working on the same subjects,
on the same things, for a very long period of time to
a degree that has not been seen elsewhere previously.
You know, unfortunately, I say we tend to carry
around our neck the millstone:of James Bond, because this
is everybody's idea of what somebody does in intelligence.
Well, there is a small number of people who do this, but
a very small number of people in relation to the total
effort. You've heard all about these covert operations.
These constitute maybe five or six percent of the funds
we expend.
Then you have, finally, the part:.we've just been
talking about: human intelligence. In 1973 we knew
perfectly well what the forces were in presence on
both sides of the Suez Canal. What we had not gotten into
was the decision process to go at two o'clock in the after-
noon of the sixth of October. And that sort of intelligence?
short of a lucky break--you could only get from people.
In our society everything is open. Foreigners can
acquire information from American magazines that would cost
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us a billion dollars to get on their country. As a matter
of fact, our problem and the Soviet problem is Quite the
opposite. We have to piece together the scraps and see what!
we can make of them; the Soviets are completely submerged
icy a vast flood of information from the United States and
they have to try and figure out what part of it is
real and what part of it is phony. We have often found
ahem, for instance, when some American magazine has published
some rather important secret, we found them telling spies
around the world, "Go find out the truth about this."
Because to them, if it isn't stamped "Secret" it can't be
true, because it wouldn't be--the United States wouldn't
put out this sort of stuff. But we tend to. Some of you
may have heard my cannibal story.
Well, a foreigner said to me the other day that he
didn't understand why all Americans weren't Catholics and
_[ said, "Why?" "Well," he said, "remember it's the
only religion that offers confession for everybody," and
then he paused and he said, "but I suppose it's the fact
that it's private that's the real drawback." Because we
have this irresistible urge.
Sy Hersh, who wrote the original article denouncing us
for our various abuses once said, "The United States is a
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great country. It's the only country in the world where
if you ask a Government official a question, he feels he
owes you an answer." Many of the things we discuss in
the United States openly and in detail in the press, in
other free, democratic countries are never mentioned.
They are simply never mentioned. I don't know how many
foreigners I've had tell me after driving around the
Washington Beltway and seeing that huge sign eight to ten
feet tall saying "CIA." "It can't be true. You don't put out
a roadsign to your secret intelligence service." But we do.
For instance, the identity of the Director and my identity
is known; there is no other country in the world where
publicity is given to this sort of thing.
But, still, we do very well. People ask me often
"What has been the impact of all this upon you?" Well, the
impact has been one of many. I think we will have fewer
zealots, I think we will have fewer kooks, I think we will
have fewer people exercising bad judgment. I think we will
probably in the end have better intelligence for it. I
think that we will develop within the Congress--Congress
will develop itself an oversight system which will be
more effective and more capable of keeping secrets than
has been the case in the past. I think it will exercise
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a more effective control. One of the features of the
President's program was the setting up of the three-man
oversight board, whose sole task would he to look for
abuses within the intelligence community--or wrongdoing
within the intelligence community. And they have been
put up there and every single person who works in intelli-
gence in the United States, if he knows of anything that
is being done that is against the law or that is dubious,
he can go to that board and report it.
I think we will have a tougher brand of people. Now
one of the surprising things to me throughout this has been''
that we have today a larger number of young people coming
out of the universities wanting to work with us than at
any time in the 27-near history of the Agency. Now, I am
not completly blind to the fact that the state of the
economy may be part of this, but not in the measure--this
is a three- or four-fold increase. We thought a lot of the
older people who lived in a lot of the somewhat excessive
secrecy of the past couldn't adapt themselves to the new
and changing times. But they have not been leaving in drovlles
We have less resignations than we have had in any year in the
past for the last five or six years.
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Yes, as a result of this we have lost some foreign
sources who have come to us and said "I just can't stand
being associated with you." We had one rather tragic
one in which a man said, "If I am executed, please..."--this
is behind the other side--"...do not reveal that I had any
connection with you." But by and large it would probably
be self-serving of me to tell you we've been crippled, we
haven't be able to do our job, the American people are help-
less and unprotected. I cannot in truthfulness tell you that.
I think today we are collecting more and better intelligence
than at any time in our history. Why? How? Well, I think
a lot of people have come to the conclusion that their
best hope for a better life lies in the continuing existence
of the United States as a powerful and freedom-loving nation.
We have means of getting this information to the
President every day. We give the President a report of the
most secret information we have. We report also regularly
to the Congress. I think last year we reported some 80
times to different committees of the Congress, apart from
the investigation. I am talking about normal reports to our
regular oversight committees who are the Armed Services
Committees, the Appropriations Committees and the Government
Operations Committees and, in some areas, the Foreign
Relations Committees.
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One of the laws that the President is going to proposed
is a single joint committee of the House and Senate like
the Atomic Energy Commission has for its affairs and
which has proved remarkably good at keeping secrets. So
out of all this we hope there will come a better understanding
of the need for good intelligence, a better guidance for what
is permissible and what is not permissible, and we hope some
mechanism for change as the perceptions of the American
people change as to what they want done in their defense.
And, finally, I would like to say that I am not an
old CIA man. I came to the CIA in 1972 for the first time
after a lifetime spent in the armed services. People say to
me, "How do you feel after four years there"" Well, I sayy,
first I feel a little bit like Jonah because it all started)
just about the time I came on board. Mostly I feel
reassured: reassured at the people I found there; reassured
at the fact that they are Americans just like other Americans;
.and they live by the same standards of right and wrong.
Reassured at the continuity with which they apply themselves!,
to the solution of problems. Reassured at their competence)
and dedication, but, most of all, reassured by the people
themselves. I
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History does not often give a second chance. In the
nuclear age the best thing we can do is to prevent a first
confrontation. And the very fact that we have good intelli-
gence the people know today that the chances of a surprise
attack are minimal, that even lesser movements than major
mobilization will be noted. We have often told other
people when we've seen this. And one of the things that
you never get any newspaper headlines for is that very often
we have used intelligence to reassure two friendly countries
who were sure the other one was going to jump them. 'Ve've
been in a position to go to both of them and say, "Look,
we know what's going on on both sides. He is not going to
jump you," and thereby avoid some very unpleasant confron-
tations.
Winston Churchill told my generation that we would. have
as our companions on our journey, blood, sweat, tears, and
toil. As we move into the last quarter of this century,
the most exciting century the world has ever known, I hope
that the young generation, who will decide what the world
of tomorrow will be like, will .have as its companion, three
companions: faith to light the road ahead, because the road
ahead is dark and if you don't have faith it's even darker;
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enthusiasm, which is the mainspring of Youth and keeps the
older producing; and, courae, which is the greatest of
human virtues because it is the guarantee of all the others)
That they will have these, these young people who tomorrow
will run our country and run the world-they who will deci&e
the tomorrows that my generation will not see. And if they J
are blind and deaf and do not know the real fact of the world
around them it will be much more difficult for them to do that.
All I can tell you is that we in the Central Intelligence
Agency, together with our colleagues in Defense Intelligenc6,
and the intelligence part of the three armed services, withl
the Treasury and State, and the others whose business this is
also, we will do our best to not let down the American people
who are, after all, the last best hope of most of mankind for
a decent peace-loving world.
Thank you very much.
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SPEECH
by
LT. GENERAL VERNON A. WALTERS
before
THE ROTARY AND KIWANIS CLUBS
Burlington, Vermont
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I must admit that it is with very special feelings I
come back to Burlington. Not quite 35 years ago, as a private--
a recruit in the Army--I disembarked from the train at Essex
Junction where we were met by the Regimental Band of the
187th Field Artillery and marched back to Fort Ethan Allen.
This is where, as far as I am concerned, it all began, and
I must say that it is a very special feeling I have in coming
back here after so many years. I had been back once or twice
in the meantime, but this is the first time I have been here
to stay for any length of time and I am very happy that this
gives me the opportunity of talking with you for a minute
about something I think is vital to our country, about which
you have heard a great deal and about which, quite frankly,
we don't feel you've heard our side of the story sufficiently.
I would like to talk about intelligence, what it is, why
it is important to the United States and why we need it now
more than at any time in our history.
First of all we get down to the fundamental of what
is intelligence. Intelligence is information concerning
the actions, the capabilities, the intentions--political
and military, financial and economic--of foreign countries
that may have some impact upon our lives.
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Why do we need intelligence? We need it for the same
reason George Washington needed it and that every American
President has needed it and Government has needed it since
then. Except, George Washington, when he left, said
"'eternal vigilance is the price of freedom" but he was
talking about a United States that had a two- or three-month
cushion on. either side. In all our past, the United States)
was considered by most of the rest of the world to be
unreachable and therefore unbeatable. That is no longer
true. The Soviets today are a global power. Germany at
the height of its power was a European continental power,
it was not a global power. The Soviets have proved in
Angola that they are capable and willing of projecting theist
power 10,000 miles away from the Soviet Union. And we
simply have to be better informed than at any time in our
history. Knowledge is power. And if our leaders are to
deal from a position of strength they must have knowledge of
what is going on in the world, especially the world in which
we live and in which perhaps only 20 percent of mankind
lives under conditions that we would recognize as freedom.
North America is no longer outside of all this.
We face today--one of the reasons why we need intelligence--
a situation where for the first time since Valley Forge, other
countries have the capabilities to inflict crippling or mortal
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damage on us. This has not happened since the early days of
our history. The Soviet Union has that kind of power today
and has it deployed. China is growing rapidly and will soon
move into that area. People are always fascinated by what
we do in intelligence and they attach great attention to the
espionage part of it which is really a very small part of
the collection of intelligence. But the great questions
for which the American people and Government are looking
to us for answers and I think the great prime questions of
tomorrow are: who will be in control of the Soviet Union five
years from today; what will be their feelings and their disposi-
tions towards us and towards our allies; what is there in
Soviet science, research and development, today that will
impact upon our lives five or ten years from today. And
this is also true of China. China is not quite at the
same level, but it will be quite soon.
We have another totally new factor in the world today.
That is the factor of economic intelligence. In the past
economic intelligence was always considered some sort of a
by-product of a military capabilities study. But today
we have billions of petro-dollars, we have billions of
Euro-dollars, wandering around the world being invested and
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used in ways which can affect the livelihood of the American
worker. We live in a world where we are trying, through
detente, to relax tensions with the Soviet Union. Relax
them in a way which will ease the burden on the two
countries without unfair advantage for one or for the other.
The Russians, you know, are a people of many proverbs.
They always have a proverb for every situation. I was
looking through a list of Russian proverbs the other day
and I saw a very interesting one. It said, "When you make
friends with a bear, do not let go of your axe," and I
think this is one we would be well advised to bear in mind.
We have a number of other new problems in the world
today which are different in intelligence from former years.
hirst of all you have international terrorism which is
almost organized like a government. You have possible
nuclear proliferation from people--small countries--who
used to rely or trust the guarantees of other countries
and who no longer do and feel that only through developing
their own nuclear weapons can they possibly ensure their owns
survival. And there is another factor which I think is not
often understood and that is, intelligence is not just a
force for war or for strength, it is also a force for peace.
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No American President could sign any agreement concerning
the limitation of strategic weapons unless'he had
the means of verifying whether they were or were not
living up to that agreement.
We recovered from a naval Pearl Harbor. Could we
recover from a nuclear Pearl Harbor?
So the importance of not being surprised is more
essential to us today and more vital to the survival of
our nation than at any other time. Our lives, our freedoms
our hopes for -tomorrow rest upon our not being surprised.
We cannot afford to be surprised and history will not
forgive us if we are. It is very rare that a nation gets
a second chance on something like this.
Yet to acquire this intelligence which is so vital to
our nation, what do we do and how do we do it. Well, first
of all, less than one penny out of every dollar spent by
the United States Government goes to the collection of
intelligence and I am talking not just about the CIA, I am
talking about the total intelligence effort of the United
States: the Defense Department, of the State Department, of
the Treasury, of Atomic Energy, ? of some people at whom you would
be surprised at being engaged in the collection of intelligence;
and the Central Intelligence Agency. The relative cost has
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been diminishing right along, both .is a part of the National
budget, as a part of the Defense budget, and intelligence
Personnel--personnel devoted to the collection of intelligence
in the United States Government--are down by 40 percent since]
1969 in spite of these enormous new tasks that are being
levied on us, with the sophisticated systems that are coming
in, with the requirements for economic intelligence, with
the requirements to keep an eye on terrorism and so forth.
Now this intelligence provides clear, up-to-date information
to our Government on what is going on in the world. And in
order to clarify, to establish our own foreign policy, it is
very important for our leaders to be well informed. Good
Intelligence produces a firm support for United States foreign
policy. It furnishes a sound basis for the development of o r
own military strength. I will just ask you for a minute: whaft
would the situation be if we did not have accurate knowledgei
of the Soviet strategic forces and the U.S. Government had tq
?repare for any possible eventuality? Can you image what
the cost would be to the American people? It is because
we know in a very precise manner and to a very precise
degree what the forces that could be used against us are,
that we are able to tailor our own forces so that the
burden upon the American people is not unbearable. It
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enables us to plan for contingencies in the future for
how we would use our forces if we were required to. Very
important, and often overlooked I think, is the fact that
the very fact that the United States has an effective and
credible intelligence capability inhibits any nation which
might be tempted to move against us. No agreements would
be possible without effective intelligence. Defense costs
would soar out of sight. You would have an arms race that
could lead us to a tinderbox.
Now how do we go about collecting this intelligence?
Well, we go about it basically in three different ways.
We go about it overtly, that is, to say, through the open
press, through the open radio broadcasts, and all of the
open televisions broadcasts and so forth from all over the
world. This is obviously the easiest. kind of intelligence
to collect, but surprisingly, overt intelligence provides
perhaps 50 percent of the total content of our intelligence
publications which go to our leaders and to our Congress.
But, as I say, this is generally the easiest type of
intelligence. But it is remarkable how much even in closed
societies like some of the ones we face you can get by
reading the press day after day, week after week, and year
after year.
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Then you have technical intelligence: the vast complex''
technical systems that we have been compelled to develop
have a look inside these closed dictatorial societies.
They can buy American magazines that will give them informa-
tion that we would have to spend a half billion dollars to
get. I think that their problem is a little different from'
:urs. Our problem is how to piece together the scraps we
ave and make valid intelligence out of them. Theirs is
the torrent of information which is available to them and
with their suspicious nature they're trying to figure out
how much of it is real and how much we're telling them in
order to fool them. I am sure one of the great debates
-going on in the Kremlin now is: what is the U.S. really
doing about its intelligence. Obviously they've got some
effective intelligence system hidden away, and all this
CIA stuff is to draw our attention so that they can
operate freely in the other areas.
Bill Colby used to say that one of his problems was
scarcity and his counterpart, Mr.: Andropov's, is over-
abundance of information, and what to do with it.
But this technical intelligence I think is one of the
great contributions the United States has brought to
intelligence.
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I am inclined to believe that intelligence is really
the oldest profession of all.. There are others who claim
that another profession the oldest. However, you had to
know where it was first; therefore, I think, that intelligence
can truly be called the oldest profession. Modern intelli-
gence in the sense in which we understand it really started
in Britain during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I when Thomas
Wallsingham went out and hired himself "five knaves." Ever
since then the five knaves and their successors have contri-
buted to make Britain a world power and to shield her through
some tremendous conflicts.
But America, I think, has brought two great things to
intelligence: one, the technical systems; and two, analysis.
Analysis to a degree not seen before in intelligence; the
hiring of people with specific knowledge and their devoting
years of patient and continuous analysis to the various
phenomena which we have to interpret for the United States
Government. Finally there is the third--and this is the
most difficult form of intelligence--which is the covert
or clandestine collection--espionage if you will. Now
there are those who raise their eyebrows at this, but I
will remind you that the Bible tells us that Moses sent spies
into the Land of Canaan, and quite frankly this has been going
on as long as mankind has existed in organized societies.
We have always had people in our American society who look
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down on this. Outside the CIA we have a statue of Nathan
Hale which I protested being put there. Not
because he wasn't a very brave young man and he didn't utteil
the immortal lines about regretting that he had only one life
to give to his country. But Nathan Hale was a spy who was
caught on his first mission and he had all the evidence on
him. I am not sure that's what we want to hold up to our !~
young trainees as a model. Furthermore, he was sent to
Manhattan to find out when and where the British were going'I
to land.. When he got there they were already there with
the consequences that you know. And in addition to that,
before he went he committed a breach of security. He told !1
one of his friends, a captain in the Revolutionary Army
that he was going to spy behind the British lines. And
he looked at him and he said, "But, Nathan, how can you
stoop so low?" So we've always had those people who regard!
the collection of necessary intelligence as something
un-American or immoral or anything else. Well, I'll get
to that in a minute--about what some of the Founding Fathers'I
thought about intelligence and how they used it.
And then you get to the famous, much-discussed covert
action, political action in other countries. We are the
only people who have ever attempted to codify and put in
writing what all nations have done: that is, attempt to
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support their friends in other countries, attempt to move
the opinion of the other countries in a sense favorable
to your own. It has constantly been the feeling of the
Presidents of the United States--at least since World War II--
that the United States, and Congress has generally gone along
with this, that we've got to have something between a diplo-
matic protest and landing the United States armed forces.
We have got to have some means of quietly helping our friends
who may be threatened by some kind of Communist subversion, by some
kind of expansion, and I think a great many of the younger
people do not remember the strength of our commitment in the
United States under President Truman and thereafter to prevent
the expansion of world communism that could weaken our posi-
tion in the world.
This part of our activity has gotten out of.all pro-
portion in people's minds. It is a very small part of our
activity, perhaps five or six percent of our budget is spent
on this sort of activity. It is not something that we do
lightly. We are not obsessed with espionage for the sake
of espionage. If we can get intelligence in an overt way
we prefer to do it that way. The ability to be able to do
this, to give quiet help to your friends enables you to fore-
stall a crisis and prevents something from growing into a
much larger situation.
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One of our American feelings has always been that there'
is something faintly wrong about intelligence. Let me
quote some of the Founding Fathers on this. George
Washington, in 1779, wrote a letter to his chief of
:?.ntelligence in New Jersey, Colonel Elias Dayton, and this
_s what he said, "The need for procuring good intelligence
is so obvious that I have nothing further to add on this
score. All that remains is for me to tell you that these
matters must be kept as secret as possible. For lack of
ecrecy,these enterprises generally fail. I am, Sir, your
Obedient Servant, George Washington."
Another day, another evening, George Washington spent
the night at the home of a sympathizer, a Mr. Holcomb, and
in the morning he thanked Mr. Holcomb, mounted his horse and
was getting ready to ride away when Mrs. Holcomb came out
and said, "General, where do you ride to tonight?" And he
leaned low in the saddle and he said, "Madame, can you keep
a secret?" She said, "Yes." He said, "So can I, Madame,"
tipped his hat and rode on.
So the idea the Founding Fathers wanted every single
detail to be held out is just not true.
The Committee of Secret Correspondence of the Conti-
nental Congress was asked to present to Congress a list of
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the people it employed and how much it paid them. And the
Committee of Secret Correspondence said that experience had
shown that this was fatal to the people in the projects and
did not do so. I will get to the question of what we tell
the Congress in the oversight in just a second.
We are the only country in the world that has legislative
oversight of our intelligence services.
In fact, every day
when I go to work and I see that huge road sign with an arrow
that says CIA, I know it's the only road sign in the world
pointing to the headquarters of the secret intelligence agency
of any government in the world, democractic, dictatorial or
any where in between. But that is our American way and that
is the way we do it.
Now in the past we've had the National Security Act which set up CIA.
It was basically set up because Pearl Harbor showed that
various parts of the U.S. Government had little pieces of
information squirreled away which, if they could have been
brought together in some central place, might have
enabled us to lessen the cost and the surprise of Pearl Harbor.
We, by the Act that set us up, had as our oversight committees
the Armed Services Committees of the House and Senate. We
also had the Appropriations Committees of the House and Senate,
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because to the contrary of what you may hear, we have
to account and justify our budget in the greatest detail
in the Executive Branch to the Office of Management and
:3udget and there are no secrets. And we have to justify
it to the Appropriations Committees and the Government
Operations Committees of the House and Senate. So, while
our budget is not made public it is subjected to exactly
the same kind of scrutiny within the Congress.
Now at various times in the past this oversight was
not very tightly exercised, because Congress didn't want it::!'
that way. We ourselves can live with any kind of oversight'I
the Congress determines. Our Director has expressed a
~3reference and the President has expressed a preference
for a single joint committee of House and Senate like the
Atomic Energy Committee which has worked very well and has!
proved very able to keep secrets.
Nc~ to get to these investigations, I would simply like to say
that I cannot tell you that in the last 27 years, among the 76,000
people who have passed through the Central Intelligence
Agency, that we have not had some kooks, that we've not had
some people who have shown some very poor judgment, that
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we've not had some people do things that we would rather
they had not done. But, I would suggest that if you take
any community in the United States of 76,000 people and
subject it to the kind of scrutiny to which we've been
subjected over the last year and a half, and I think you
would find that our record would compare quite favorably
with any of those communities or any of those other
government organizations. To the best of my knowledge,
as of today, no member of the Central Intelligence Agency
has been indicted for any intelligence abuse, transgression,
or other.
I can't tell you that there haven't been people who have
done some things we would rather they had not, but I submit
that the number is very small. You've heard some of the
various things, for instance, the illegal phone taps. How
many did we have? We had 32 illegal phone taps in 27 years.
Okay, we should have had none. But how many of you who have
a large number of people working for you can guarantee that
everything that is going on in your organization is going on
in exactly the way you want? And I would call to your atten-
tion that the Director of Central Intelligence is the only
person in the United States Government who is charged by law
with protecting his sources and methods.
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I think the last year has made clear to us what the
American people are willing for us to do and what they are
not willing for us to do. I think everyone of us realizes
that we cannot operate an intelligence service that does
not have the support of the American people and we certainl
intend to abide by whatever is determined. We do feel,
however, that attempting to judge the past through the eyes
of today does not give you a very accurate description of
the circumstances in time.
We all take universal suffrage for granted. But in
the early days of our national history, we did not have
universal suffrage. We had the signers of the Declaration
of Independence who said that all men were created equal,whille
they.themselves owned slaves. You can't run a segregated school
today. Twenty-five years ago you could and fifty years ago
you would have gotten in trouble for trying to run any other!
kind.
Most of these transgressions and various things with
which we have been charged date back to the Fifties and
Sixties.
Now I think we've got this out in the open, we've got
this clarified, and I think we can go forward on the basis
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of the new rules, on the basis of the Restrictions Order
that the President has put out making it quite clear what
can and cannot be done. We do not believe that secrecy
should be used to cover abuses, but we do not believe
that we should tell the whole world everything about what
we're doing. Those who oppose us know very well as people
what importance we attach to the rights and freedoms of
our citizens and of fair play. And they, on their hand,
do not have this kind of constraint or moral restraint on
their attempts to control or alter our society.
We Americans have a very strong feeling about these
things. The head of a friendly foreign service told me
a story that I think is a little bit unkind to us but it is
a little illustrative too. He said that on an island in
the Pacific the cannibals captured three guys: one was
a Frenchman, one was an Englishman and one was an American.
The Chief said to them, "I have bad news and good news for
you. The bad news is that we're going to eat you for lunch
tomorrow and we'll have to kill you fairly early in the
morning to get the cooking completed in time. Now after
that bad news you need some good news and the good news is
that I'll give you anything you want in the meantime short
of setting you free." So he turned to the Frenchman and
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he said, "What do you want?" The Frenchman said, "Well,
if I am going to be executed in the morning I think I would'
Just as soon spend the remaining time with that beautiful
cannibal girl over there." So they said okay and they
untied the Frenchman and he and the cannibal girl went off
n the woods. Then they turned to the Englishman and said,)
"What do you want?" The Englishman said, "I want a pen andl
T1aper." They said, "What do you want a pen and paper for?"
He said, "I want a pen and paper to write the Secretary-
General of the United Nations to protest against the unjust
L_aifair, and unsporting attitude you are showing towards us.'~
So they said okay and they gave the Englishman a hut and pei
and paper and he went off to write. Then they turned to the
American and said, "What do you want?" The American said,
"I want to be led into the middle of the village, I want to
be made to kneel down, and I want the biggest cannibal here
kick me in the rear end." And the Chief said to his
Vice-Chief, "That's a wierd request but the Americans are
a wierd bunch anyway, and since we promised, we'll do it."
So they led the American into the middle of the village and
made him kneel down and the biggest cannibal took a running
l
d
ki
k
A
h
eap,
c
e
t
e
merican in the rear end and knocked him
about 15 feet. Now the American had been hiding a submachin
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gun under his clothes and at this point he took it out,
cut down the neighboring cannibals. The rest fled. The
Frenchman, hearing the gunfire came out of the woods;
the Englishman hearing the gunfire came out of his hut, and
they looked at the American standing there with his smoking
gun in his hand and they said, "Do you mean to say you had
that gun the whole time?" The American said, "Sure," and
they said, "Why didn't you use it before now?" The American--
and this is the foreigner telling me the story--looked at
them with an expression of hurt sincerity and he said, "But
you don't understand. It wasn't until he kicked me in the
rear end that I had any moral justification for this
extreme and violent action."
We live in a tough, tri-polar world today. The buffer
states that existed between us and potential aggressors are
no longer'there. The Soviets and Chinese face one another
in a confrontation of serious proportions.
If I may, just one more story: I heard this story that
when Mr. Nixon went to Moscow, Mr. Brezhnev said to him that
he had had a strange dream. Mr. Nixon said, "What was that?"
and Mr. Brezhnev said, "I dreamt I was in Washington and I
was looking at the Capitol and there was a huge flag flying
over the Capitol." Mr. Nixon said, "Yes, that's the
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American flag. It flies there whenever Congress is in
session." Brezhnev said, "No, it wasn't the American
flag; it had something written on it." Mr. Nixon said,
"Written? What did it have written on it?" Brezhnez
said, "It had written on it 'Capitalism is Doomed'." Mr.
Nixon said, "That's strange, I had almost the same dream."
Brezhnev said, "What did you dream?" "Well," he said,
I: dreamt I was in Red Square in Moscow and I was looking
at the Kremlin and on the highest tower of the Kremlin
there was a huge flag flying." Brezhnev said, "That's
the Soviet flag; it flies there day and night." Mr.
Nixon said, "No, it wasn't the Soviet flag, it had something;
written on it." Brezhnev said, "Written? What did it haveI
written on it?" Mr. Nixon said, "I wish I could tell you
but I can't read Chinese."
We have the Middle East; we have Angola; we have
Ethiopia and Somalia; we have possible further North
Vietnamese agression in Southeast Asia; we have a number of
problems facing us in the world. And I believe that the
real issue before the American people is not the transgres-
sions of 20 or 25 years ago; it is whether the United States'
will have eyes to see and ears to hear as it moves into theI
last quarter of this century.
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I just want to tell you one more thing. People often
say: how are the people at the Agency, how is it doing? and
so forth. I am not an old CIA man. I came there for the
first time four years ago. The first thing I would like
to say is that if Iwere to sum up all my feelings about the
CIA in one word, I would sum them up in the word reassurance.
Reassurance because these are Americans like all the others;
who live by the same standards of right and wrong as other
Americans. Reassurance at the steadfastness of these
people under a bombardment I think without parallel in
American history, who are continuing to produce what I believe
is the finest intelligence any government in the world is
having set before it.
If I may quote another old Russian proverb that ante.-dated
perhaps Mr. Truman's story about "if you can't stand the heat
stay out of the kitchen," the Russian proverb is "... if you
fear wolves, don't go into the forest," and we have a lot
of people who do not fear wolves, who are in a most dedicated
and steadfast manner giving to the President, to.the Secre-
taries of State and Defense and Treasury and others, to the
Congress, the kind of information I think is essential if we
are to survive.
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The President has recommended a program, he's put
out an Order of Restrictions stating specifically what
is not acceptable; he is recommending legislation which is
necessary to the Congress. We, on our part, will continue
to do our best. We can live with whatever program they
bring out, provided that there is some protection given
to the men and women who, in dangerous places around the
world every day--on a silent battlefield about which little'
is said--are risking their lives and their families'lives
to make sure that the American people are not surprised
again. And frankly, this is a tough task. It is an
unending task and we have no alternative, for if we fall
there is no one else to pick up the torch. I do not think
we will fall.
Thank you very much.
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SPEECH
by
LT. GENERAL VERNON A. WALTERS
before
SENATOR'S YOUTH CONFERENCE
OKLAHOMA CHRISTIAN COLLEGE
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
13 February 1976
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...Thank you very much.
In all fairness, in the light of what the Senator said
to you, probably two or three years ago I wouldn't have been
here either. But times have changed and if we have to do
our job we need the understanding of the American people,
for what we do and why we do it.
I would like to talk to you today a little bit about
what is intelligence, how do we get it,and why it is important.
to us.
What is intelligence? Intelligence is information concern-
ing the actions, capabilities, intentions, activities of foreign
countries that may have an impact on our lives and the way we
live. How do we get it? We get it by various means. A
great deal of it we get through public means--it is quite
astonishing, even.in the relatively closed countries, how
much intelligence is to be obtained from reading the newspapers
or listening to the radio broadcasts.
One of the curious things during the war was how much
information we could get from the German newspapers. The
Germans have a great tradition, for instance, when anybody
is killed or dies, of putting an advertisement in the news-
paper and we could get the German newspapers and see a death
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notice for somebody who died while fighting in such-and-such
a division near Orel or Tula or somewhere else, which
would tell us, at least as of that date, where that particular
unit was.
We have people who have been reading the Minsk Pravda
for 25 years. And if you read the Minsk Pravda for 25 year
you not only know what's going on in Byelorussia, but you
know a good deal of the relative move up the ladder of varidus
people and what they are doing and where they are going.
One of the more interesting things is the listening to {
:Foreign broadcasts: what they're telling other people in
different languages, and what they're telling their own people
in their own language. You can sense, often
long in advance of any public decision, the shift in the wily
they are presenting these things to their own people or abroad.
Then we collect with technical means. Technical means I
of all sorts which I think has been one of the great contribu-
tions the United States has made to the collection of intelli-
gence.
I always say that intelligence is really the oldest
profession; other people claim that other professions are the
oldest professions. I claim that you had to know where it
was before the other one could operate and, therefore,
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intelligence was the first profession. And you all
remember about Moses sending those spies into the land of
Canaan, so this is nothing new in human history.
But in this technical thing, really the intelligence
services as we know them now began during the reign of
Queen Elizabeth I in England, when Thomas Walsingham went
out and hired himself "five knaves." And that was really
the beginning of British intelligence. It has operated
ever since .
I was discussing at lunchtime how Benjamin Franklin
set up his office in Paris and the British intelligence
was endeavoring and they endeavored successfully to penetrate
that office. In fact, when the French told Benjamin Franklin
that they were going to enter the war against Great Britain,
42 hours later that information was in the hands of the
British Government--and 42 hours was just about what was
required to ride a horse to the Channel, take a boat across,
and ride a horse to London.
As a matter of fact, an interesting anecdote: the other
day I was in Florda and I had lunch with Anthony Eden, who
is now 79 years old, and he was the British Foreign Minister
during the Ethiopian problem with Mussolini and during the war and later
he was the British Prime Minister. He was telling me about
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one of his ancestors who was in America during the
Revolutionary War and he was persecuted because he was very)
sympathetic with the American cause. I said, "Yes, but
another one of your ancestors was busily penetrating Benjamin
Franklin's office in Paris." And he looked at me and he saild,
"Oh, you know about that, do you?" Because one of his
ancestors, William Eden, was the chief of British intelligence
in Paris during the Revolution.
We have brought all of the genius of America in techno-!
logy and science to help us get information from above, from
below, from the sides, and through all of the means one can 'I
conceive.
In 1960 we had a great debate in this country as to
whether there was a missile gap with the Soviet Union or notI.
Nobody knew the answer. Such a debate would be impossible
today. We do know the answer; we do have the means of
verifying what is going on.
People always think of intelligence as a force for war,1
but it is also a force for peace. It would be impossible
for any President of the United States to sign an agreement
on any kind of arms limitation with the Soviet Union or withI
China unless he had the means of verifying that that was
being complied with. I think it is an aspect of intelligenc
that is not often understood.
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Another aspect for which we get no credit is that some-
times you've had nations that believe that other of their
neighbors were about to jump them or about to attack them.
Several times we have been able to tell and reassure both
sides that the other one was simply not deployed in a position
to attack them, and thereby, perhaps, avoided a miscalculation
by one against the other.
And, finally, because we face these closed societies in
which, for instance, we have to expend millions of dollars to
get information which they can obtain in our country by
subscribing to magazines. They can get crosscuts of U.S.
missile silos with concrete thicknesses and everything else,
the sort of information that we have to expend enormous effort
to get.
Now why do we need this intelligence? We need this
intelligence because we have deployed today a capability
against the United States--I am not talking about the
intention to use it, I am just talking about the capability--
greater than any that has been deployed against us since
Valley Forge. In the past all of our wars have been fought
with local powers, in a sense. Germany, even at the height
of her power, was a European power. Basically, outside of
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submarine attacks and maybe one or two freakish bomber raids,
Germany had no capability against the United States. But
as we look, we see the Soviet Union, whose armed forces have
increased in the last five years by one million men whereas!
the armed forces of the United States have decreased in that
same period by one million men; net difference: two million.)
We see the Soviet Union deploying five new third-generation'
ballistic missiles capable of striking the United States--
more accurate and with greater range than any of their pre-
decessors. We see the Soviet Union building large numbers
of submarines that can launch missiles; we see the Soviet
Union developing aircraft with capabilities against the
United States as well as against their peripheral neighbors,)
China, or NATO Europe. We see the Soviets improving
enormously the equipment of their conventional forces against
NATO Europe and in the Far East. We see them improving the
training of these forces: the quality of the Soviet forces
is higher than at any time since World War II. We see them
quite prepared through proxies and otherwise to move their
power elsewhere. We see a Soviet Navy conducting a tremendous
building program, able to project Soviet presence all over
the world. They used to have a coastal navy, now they have
a blue water navy. And we see all of these capabilities in
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the Soviet Union. Tomorrow China will have these capabilities.
And for the first time in our history people will have a
capability to strike crippling or mortal blows at the United
States, something that has not existed before.
When George Washington said "Eternal vigilance is the
price of liberty," he was talking about a country which had
a two-month cushion on either side. We don't have that any-
more: we have a 1S-to 30-minute cushion now.
So we must know what is going on. If anybody were to
ask me what are the four great questions before the CIA and
the American intelligence community--that is, our colleagues
in Defense, in Treasury, and elsewhere--I would say that the
great questions we have to answer are: Who will be in control
of the Soviet Union five years from today; what will their
dispositions be towards us and towards our allies; what is
there in Soviet research and development today that will
impact on our lives in the years ahead--in your time-,-and
the same questions for China. These are the really enormous
questions for which the policy-makers look to us.
And here I would like to emphasize that the CIA is not
a policy-making organization. We simply provide the informa-
tion. Sometimes they will 'tell us they are considering four
or five options and we will say that if you take option one,
this is what's likely to happen; if you take option two, this
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is what's likely to happen. When I go to a meeting where
policy is being discussed, I give an intelligence briefing.)
When State, Defense, and Treasury and the others discuss
what is to be done, I don't speak. I am not in on the policy
discussion. All we do is provide the intelligence on which
they base their decision as to what is to be done. So this
myth of an "invisible government" pulling strings and deciding
policy, simply does not correspond to the facts.
Now, we have a feeling that perhaps all of this is
something new and is wrong and is un-American. There is
definitely a sort of campaign that intelligence is un-American,
dishonest and so forth. Well, if you go back in our history
there is no basis for this.
George Washington was probably the greatest consumer
of intelligence we ever had. In this Bicentennial Year I have
done some research on the subject of intelligence in the
Revolution and it's very interesting. The first thing that I
think sums up George Washington's position better than any-'1
thing else is a letter he wrote to his chief of intelligence
in New Jersey, Colonel Elias Dayton, in which he said this,',
"The need for procuring good intelligence is so obvious that
I have nothing further to add on this score. All that remains
for me to tell you is that these matters must be kept as
secret as possible.. For lack of secrecy these enterprises,
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no matter how promising the outlook, or well-conceived,
generally fail. I am Sir, your obedient servant." George
Washington.
Then you get this business that you've got to tell
everybody everything, you've got to discuss everything,
you've got to let it all hang out. Well, again we have
a quote from George Washington on that. One night in
Connecticut he spent the night at the home of a Mr. Holcomb
who was a sympathizer with the Revolution. In the morning
he got up on his horse to ride on and Mrs. Holcomb came out
and said, "General, where do you ride tonight?" He leaned
down in the saddle and he said, "Madame, can you keep a secret?"
She said, "Of course." He said, "So can I, Madame," tipped
his hat and rode off.
Our responsibility is to tell our leaders what the
situation is as we see it.. That is why we were created as
an independent organization, that is independent of any
particular cabinet office. We are responsible by the
National Security Act to the National Security Council,
to the President, to the Congress through our appropriate
oversight committees who were set forth in the Act which
created us. And principally those are the Armed Services
Committees, of which your Senator from Oklahoma is one of the
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members to whom we report and from whom we have no secrets.
Only through their support can we obtain what we need: the
Eunds and the authority to do what we have to do.
Now in America we have had a tradition during our wars
,3f developing a great intelligence network and destroying it''
immediately after the war. We've done this in every one of
our wars. The one thing I will not--well I suppose I will
tell you is that during the war Washington had a fort in
southwest Virginia at which he trained his intelligence
,personnel. The only thing that bothers me is the name of
the fort, the fort was Fort Looney, so we don't talk much
about that. But we've had this tradition of doing this.
Now in the first World War we built up a very good intelli-
gence capability, but in 1932, Mr. Stimson who was then
Secretary of State was handed a decoded message of another
icountry.--diplomatic traffic.- He pushed it away saying,
"Gentlemen don't read other gentlemen's mail." Test years
later as Secretary of War he couldn't get his hands on
enough "other gentlemen's mail." I don't want to blame
Mr. Stimson, but it was that kind of a mentality that led
is to Pearl Harbor. And we were able to recover from a
naval Pearl Harbor. Could our nation recover from a nuclear'
Pearl Harbor?
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The responsibility on us in intelligence is greater
than at any time in any country in history because the
United States is the last best hope of freedom. There is
no one waiting to pick up the torch if we drop it. It is
not just a resonsibility for our own country, it is the
responsibility for the survival of human freedom in the
world that weighs on our shoulders and it is a very heavy
responsibility.
You've heard a lot about the so-called transgressions of
the intelligence agencies and, yes, I can't tell you there
haven't been abuses; I can't tell you, for instance, that in
the 76,000 people who have passed through the CIA that we
didn't have some kooks, some overzealots, some people who
showed very bad judgment. We did. But I submit that the
number of these things, when you consider the 76,000 people
and the 27-year period, was very small. They were aber-
rations; for instance, you've heard about the famous telephone
taps. There were 32 telephone taps in 27 years. And the
Director of Central Intelligence is the only person in the
United States who is charged by law, by statute, with the
protection of his sources and methods.
I want to just talk about what intelligence is to the
United States and how it is represented. Intelligence
costs less than one penny out of every dollar that is spent
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by the U.S. Government, that is to know what everyone else
is doing. There is one area that has grown in importance
enormously and that is economic intelligence. In the old
days economic intelligence was a sort of by-product of
military intelligence studies. Today, with billions of
dollars in petro-dollars, in Euro-dollars, washing around
the world in ways that can affect your livelihood and your
job, it is fundamentally important for the United States
to know what is happening; to know, for instance, what the
harvest in the Soviet Union is going to be like, what effect
that will have on Soviet foreign policy, how it will push them.
The Chinese the same way. These are vitally important to
the life and business of our nation.
Now the effort the United States is expending on
intelligence, in spite of this growing area in which we are
being asked to provide information, has been downward. The
manpower devoted to intelligence in the United States has
gone down by 40 percent in the last six years. Intelligence
is today a smaller portion of the budget of the United States
than at any time in the last 20 years. And yet, the missions
and the complexities of the missions that are being tasked
upon us are greater than at any other time. To fight
inflation we must know what is going on in the rest of the
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world because of the impact it will have on us. Intelli-
gence provides us with clear, up-to-date knowledge of what
is going on in the world around us.
I would just ask you what would happen do you think to
the defense costs of the United States if we had no idea
what we were preparing to face, if we didn't know what the
Soviets or the Chinese or anybody else had. We would have to
prepare for an enormous unknown. It is because we have an
accurate knowledge of what they have that we are able to
tailor our own requirements to face up to that in a manner
which does not destroy our way of life and how we plan the
expenditures of our funds. That intelligence provides us
with a sound basis for developing our own military require-
ments, our own military strengths, and above all, the
existence of an effective U.S. intelligence capability inhibits
anybody who would be thinking of trying to surprise or do
something to the United States. They know that we know and
that in itself is a very calming effect. The very fact that
the U.S. has this kind of capability is terribly important.
As I mentioned previously, none of these agreements
would be possible without this. Our defense costs would
soar out of sight if we did not know what it was we had
to prepare against. If we did not know, you could have
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an arms race that could lead to a tinderbox. It is this
knowledge of what they have and what we need that makes it
possible for us to keep some control and some handle on
what we're doing ourselves.
Now the third means by which we collect intelligence
is clandestine or secret intelligence. I often say that
we carry the millstone of James Bond around our shoulders
because this is the exciting part of intelligence and it
really represents a very small part of what we do, but a
very important part of what we do. In the closed societies
which we face, like the Soviet Union, and who are conducting
espionage against us on a vastly greater scale than we are
conducting against them, it is important for us to know--
to get into the decision-process as to whether any of this
force they have will be used and if so, where, how, and in
what measure.
Many times we are in a position technically to tell
what forces are in presence, but no technical means will get
you inside a man's head. Only people can tell you about
other people. And, so, we must use this particular
method even though to some of us it may seem unpalatable.
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Outside the CIA office in Langley, we have a statue
of Nathan Hale. I will be honest with you, I was not one
of the ones in favor of putting it there. Nathan Hale
was a very brave young man who uttered some immortal lines
about having only one life-to give to his country. But I
couldn't help but feel that any intelligence agent who was
caught on his first mission and had all the evidence on him
is not necessarily what we should be holding up to our young
trainees. Furthermore, he committed an additional breach of
security. Before he went behind the British lines he told
one of his buddies that he was going to do this--and we had
those people even then because his buddy looked at him and
said, "But Nathan, how can you stoop so low as to be a spy?"
But Nathan Hale said, "Whatever the nation needs, I will do."
He also went to Manhattan to find out when the British were
going to land. Unfortunately for him, they had already
landed. So this is, again, one of the reasons why I was not
wildly enthusiastic when holding this up as the great example to
our young trainees.
But all this clandestine business is a very small
part of the total budget of the CIA. But the idea that
we have analysts who for 25 years have been watching certain
aspects of what's going on on the other side is not very
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exciting and doesn't make good television programs and so
it doesn't draw much attention.
Why do we need these clandestine activities and this
covert help? Well the other side has the Brezhnev doctrine'
which says the Soviet Union has the right to use its armed 1
forces to safeguard the achievements of any socialist state.
What we've got to decide is whether we want to have any quiet
means of providing help to our friends, of whether we want
to have anything between a diplomatic protest and landing
the U. S. armed forces. Every nation throughout history
has attempted to advance the cause of its friends and to undo
the causes of its enemies. This is not something that we've
done, but we Americans sometimes have this rather puritanical
view of things. Like it said in the Bible, "I thank thee,
Lord, that I am not as other men, a sinner like that publican."
And you remember which one came down from the Temple?
The fact is, our nation must survive. We have a responsi-
bility even greater than the responsibility to our own people.
We have the responsibility to human freedom to make sure that
we do not go under.
Every other nation uses these methods against us. It'sl
all very well to say that if he is attacking me with brass
knuckles, I am going to fight him with boxing gloves. But
you are not going to be in good shape if you do that.
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Yes, as I told you, there have been some abuses and
some things we would have preferred not to happen. But again
I submit that these were in very small measure and they have
been distorted out of all context.
You've heard all about the assassination report. What
was the end conclusion of the assassination report? Nobody
was assassinated. Then you heard all about the toxins. What
was the conclusion? The toxins were never used. Then you
heard about the drugs. Yes, somebody used very bad judgment
in giving a drug to someone without his knowledge, but this
was at a time when we saw various people behind the Iron
Curtain who had resisted all the pressures and tortures of
the Nazis suddenly falter. And we all thought it was done
with mind-bending drugs that could be used against us. We
had to know something about them so that we could counter
them. For instance, the United States between the two
World Wars undertook not to use poison gas. That did not
prevent the United States from manufacturing many millions of
poison gas shells which we never used but which we held in
reserve in case they were used against us.
Yes, a lot of things were discussed in a very different
environment when the commitment of the United States never to be
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 Approved For Rase 2002/03/28 1CIA-RDP79M00467A0200040082-6
surprised again and the commitment of the United States to
contain Communism was extremely strong.
The last CIA investigation by General Doolittle told
us that the United States was facing a ruthless enemy
determined to destroy us by every means at its command and
we must match their ruthlessness with ours and their
dedication with ours.
We understand that secrecy must not be used to cover
abuses. Someone asked me the other day, "How do you end
abuses in intelligence?" and I said that as long as
intelligence agencies, like any other organizations, are
made up of human beings, you can try to minimize them. It
is a foolish delusion to think that you can end them. Whatl
you must do is to establish a system where if anybody does
something that is against the law or against what is accepteEd,
you must have the means of having sanctions against them.
But, again, I caution judging people today in the standards)
of other times is a very difficult thing to do.
We had a group of young Congressmen out to the Agency
and they were discussing assassinations and one of them
said, "Yes, but if anybody could have gotten Hitler during
1944-45 he would probably have been the first joint
recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor and the
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Victoria Cross." And another one said, "But if you could
have gotten him in 1935 or '36, think how many lives you
would have saved?" And I said, "Congressman, are you
advocating assassination in peacetime?! We were at peace
with Germany." He said, "0h, but that's different." Well,
it was different because we knew what followed afterward.
Assassination is against the Law of God, it's against the
Law of Man, and its impractical for other reasons because
it generally produces an even greater fanatic. So it is
not (good).
Long before these investigations, within the CIA a
directive was put out saying assassination would not be
even considered. You didn't hear much about that; you
heard about things that had happened about 25 or 30 years
ago in a very different time.
Those who are against us know what we are like as a
people. They know what importance we attach to fair play,
to..the rights of our citizens, and the open nature of our
society. They can and do make full use of their advantage
in not having comparable standards, or comparable moral
principles, in their attempts to control or alter our
society.
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 Approved For Rel se 2002/03/28 2aIA-RDP79M00467A0200040082-6
This is a tough, tri-polar world. In the old days
the United States had allies who interposed themselves
between us and our enemi?es.. We have two giant world
powers facing us today and I can't help but think that the
real issue before the American people is not some of these
abuses that were committed in small numbers 20 or 25 years
ago, but the real issue before us is will the United States,J
as we enter the last quarter of this century, have eyes to
see and ears to hear or will we stumble blindly forward
until we have to face the alternatives of abject humuliatior
or nuclear blackmail. I think the good sense of the
American people will win out. I do not think we will go
to either of those. We will do our part in intelligence
to make sure that our nation is not surprised.
All I want to tell you is that I am very happy to have
this opportunity to come here and be able to talk to you
because you are our only hope for the tomorrows that my
generation will not see.
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 Approved For Release 2002/011 P.PP79M00467A000200040082-6
Routing Slip
ACTION
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ACTION
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Additional Distribution:
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Historical Intelligence Collection Staff (2)
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8 March 76
OM/DDCI