DCI SPEECH TO US SENATE YOUTH PROGRAM

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80B01554R002900200001-2
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 6
• Document Creation Date: December 9, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 25, 2001
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: February 8, 1979
• Content Type: SPEECH

Approved For Release 2001/08/07 : CIA-RDP80B01554R002900200($(t1 banscri pt
8 Feb '79
DCI Speech to
US Senate Youth Program
1510, 6 February 1979
CIA Auditorium
Welcome to our campus. You know this really is a campus in many ways
it is very much like an academic institution. Unfortunately we have
to lock off a lot of it, you can't go wandering around it. That is
because we have a lot of people who work here who don't work here.
That is they don't own up to working here so we can't let visitors
go wandering around because you might meet somebody who isn't here,
and that would be embarrassing if you met them somewhere else and
found that they were there.
Now seriously, we are like a campus because we do two things
in the Central Intelligence Agency. We collect information and we
analyze it and do something with it. Do research on it. I would
like to just, very briefly, and I am afraid my time is limited with
you today because when you are a Washington bureaucrat you can't control
your own life, and somebody set up a meeting today at three o'clock
that I am supposed to be at downtown. I hadn't counted on that I
wanted to spend the full time with you here, but I have got two
good-for-nothing spies up here who will talk to you instead.
We collect information that the Country believes it needs
in order to live and help preserve our way of life and the free life
around the world because there are so many countries in the world
today that are not open societies like ours. You can know almost
Approved For Release 2001/08/07 : CIA-RDP80BO1554R002900200001-2
 Approved For Release 2001/08/07 : CIA-RDP80BO1554R002900200001-2
everything you need to know about the United States by coming here
and living, working, reading the newspapers, watching television
and picking up the scientific magazines and reading all our innermost
military secrets and everything else. At least you can understand
where the United States is going. Are we really bent on a big military
program because we want to go conquer people? Are we going to go out
and exploit the advantages around the world that we might be able to
find, and so on. You can get that tenor by being in America. You know
and I know you cannot get that by being in the Soviet Union. You can't
get it from Pravada, you can't pick it up from Soviet television,
your not allowed to talk with the people on the streets, you're followed
if you go down the streets very much at all. So, it is important to
our country that we go and get information that will help us understand
what is happening, what's going on around the world so that we are not
caught by surprise. We as a nation, whether we like it or not, have a
great responsibility to the world as well as to ourselves and we are
so blessed by having freedom in this country that we have got to take
reasonable precautions to defend it for ourselves and for others.
Approved For Release 2001/08/07 : CIA-RDP80BO1554R002900200001-2
 Approved For Release 2001/08/07 : CIA-RDP80BO1554R002900200001-2
So we get information. How? We get it by three different techniques.
One - the traditional spy. We go find people in other countries who are
willing to tell us things we want to know. It is dangerous, costly, can
be embarrassing but it is sometimes important because the human contact
can tell you a lot more about what is going on in another country than
can the other two ways to collect information. The first of the other
two ways is what we call signals intelligence. While we are sitting
here, right in this auditorium there are all kinds of waves going through
the air here. You know as well as I if you had your pocket radio and
you stuck it out here you would get a radio station. That is because
there is a radio wave going through here. If you have a television
antenna put it up here the same thing. Well, military youth radars
they would come through here to some extent. We all use communications,
telegraph, microwave, various means of communicating through the air.
So, anyplace you can stick an antenna you can find something and if
you stick an antenna in the right place you will find the right thing
and that is a very sophisticated art and we are very good at it.
We pick up a lot of information that is passing through the airwaves
all around the world. I have over-simplified it but that is really
the essence of it. Thirdly, we take photographs. We take photographs
from airplanes; we take photographs from automobiles; we take photographs
from ships; we take photographs from satellites and we gain a great
deal of information there. Remember, when you are listening to signals
when you are looking at a photograph you are usually finding out
something that happened in the past. When you are talking to a human being
Approved For Release 2001/08/07 : CIA-RDP80BO1554R002900200001-2
 Approved For Release 2001/08/07 : CIA-RDP80BO1554R002900200001-2
you can ask him what is your country going to do tomorrow. So these
complement each other, they play together and one of my major responsibilities
is to be sure that all of the assets of the United States for doing
these three things are brought together. Some of them are done by the
Department of Defense, some of them are done by the Central Intelligence
Agency, some by the State Department and so on through the Government.
We have got to bring it all together.
Now what happens when we get all this information? That is when it
really is like a university campus research department. We have large
numbers of people in this building who sit there and take this information
that was obtained by one of these difficult means and brings it together
and tries to say to the decisiomakers of our country, not us in the
intelligence game, but the Secretary of State, the Secretary of the Treasury,
the Secretary of Defense, and of course the President. What does this mean
that they sent this signal yesterday? What does this mean that this picture
shows that they are doing this or building that, what does it mean that this
agent tells us that their plan is this, and he asks is he really for real?
We have to evaluate that. We have to say yes, we think he is for real because
this photograph corroborates it, or this signal we picked up tells us that is
the kind of thing they are doing.
Approved For Release 2001/08/07 : CIA-RDP80BO1554R002900200001-2
 Approved For Release 2001/08/07 : CIA-RDP80BO1554R002900200001-2
That is of course very risky when you start interpreting because no
intelligence is so explicit that you can just take the raw intelligence
and say that's it boss that's what you need to know. You have always
got to evaluate the source, you have got to put it in context of all
the other things that went on. I can tell you that makes this a very
exciting place. We have to have people with all sorts of academic
disciplines here. Economists, political scientists, psychologists,
chemists, just almost any one of the things you would study in a high school
and a university we have specialists on here so that we can look at what
this information is and correctly interpret it and give our policy makers
in government some idea of what they are going to be facing. It is very
important to our country that we maintain this capability. I can assure
you that the Central Intelligence Agency is strong, healthy and doing a
superb job for our country. We need your support and understanding, as
you go on and assume higher and higher and more important positions in
our country because the future is going to be with you and I am pleased
that you are here today to get some initial understanding of what we do
and the importance of it to our country and I hope that you will ask
Mr. Hitz and Mr. Hetu lots of questions so they can answer specifically
the things that are on your mind today. Thank you for being here.
Congratulations for being part of this wonderful experience that the
Hearsts have made possible for you and good luck to you. Thank you.
Approved For Release 2001/08/07 : CIA-RDP80BO1554R002900200001-2
 Approved For Release 2001/08/07 : CIA-RDP80BO1554R002900200001-2
Approved For Release 2001/08/07 : CIA-RDP80BO1554R002900200001-2