[SPEECH BY LT. GENERAL VERNON A. WALTERS TO ATLANTA ROTARY]

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80R01731R002000100010-2
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 18
• Document Creation Date: December 15, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 3, 2002
• Sequence Number: 10
• Publication Date: July 7, 1975
• Content Type: SPEECH

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Speech by
Lt. General Vernon A. Walters
to
Atlanta Rotary
Atlanta, Georgia
July 7, 1975
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I am glad to be in Atlanta and to have the opportunity
to speak to you here today on matters close to my heart.
A number of the members of my family live here and when I was
about to graduate from Officers Candidate School at Fort
Benning in 1942 I came up here to buy: my"S.am Browne belt, and
before I graduated it had been removed from the uniforms of
the Army. I was earning $120 a month at that time and it
represented a serious investment. It never did me any good;
I took it out a couple of days ago--it won't fit any more.
But I do want to talk to you a little bit about something
which is receiving a great deal of publicity right now and
that is the question of intelligence.
Intelligence is vital to the United States if we are
to survive as a free and democratic society. It is not immoral.
There is a great effort abroad today to make you think there is
something shady or unpleasant or nasty or immoral in intelligence,
and particularly that the Founding Fathers felt this way. Well,
let me just read you what The Founding Father, George Washington,
had to say about this. "The necessity," and J.' quote him, "the
necessity of procuring good intelligence is apparent and need
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not be further urged. All that remains for me to add is that
you keep the whole matter as secret as possible. For upon
secrecy depends in most matters of the kind, and for want of
it they are generally defeated however well planned and
promising of a favourable outlook." That was the letter from
George Washington to Colonel Elias Drayton who was the
chief of his intelligence in the State of New Jersey.
We can come down more recently to President Harry Truman
who said, "Whether it be treason or not," and I quote him, "it
does the United States just as much harm for military secrets
to be made known to potential enemies through open publication
as it does for military secrets to be given to the enemy through
the clandestine operation of spies. I do not believe that the
best solution can be reached by going on the basis that every
one has the right to know all of our military secrets and
information affecting the national security."
These are two Presidents of the United States separated
by a great deal of time and the idea that you can tell every-
body everything is just not an idea that was held by those who
have been responsible over long periods of time for the
destiny of our country.
What is intelligence? Intelligence is vital information
of a political, military, technical and economic nature that
bears upon the security of our country. It is this information
properly collected,analyzed, evaluated, and disseminated to
those who have to make the decisions concerning the future of
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our country. Now why.-.do we need it? Well, we need it
because we live in a world in which everything is not
perfect-.yet. At the present time the Soviet 'Union is in
the course of deploying four new systems, of ICBMs--third
generation - ICBMs --intercontinental ballistic missiles.
We see evidence of a fifth one appearing. They are building
newer, larger, more effective submarines that can launch
missiles from the harbors in the Soviet Union-.to the vital
centers of the United States. They are building a new bomber
that could be used against the continental United States.
They are tremendously building up their conventional forces
in Europe and elsewhere.
We have China doing some of the same things--not quite
in the same state of advancement as the Soviet Union, and,
in fact, not just these two countries, but one of the things
we may have to keep track of as the result of the fall of
South Vietnam is that a number of
trust the American guarantee may no longer do so and they may
feel their only answer for their own protection is to develop
some sort of nuclear weapon. So we have the constant danger
around the world of the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
We no longer have the oceans that provided us weeks or months
of security while we could get ready to face any threat that
came against us.
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Now, how do we go about collecting this intelligence?
There are several ways, First of all there is overt intelli-
gence which is intelligence that you can get from newspapers,
which you can get from open publications of all sorts, which
you can get from public statements of all sorts, and one of
the things that Mr. Colby often says is the difference between
him and Mr. Andropov, who is the head of the Soviet intelligence
service, is that we have a few crumbs to go on and we have to
try to do what we can, whereas Mr. Andropov is absolutely
submerged under an avalance of information about the United
States and he has to try and pick out what he thinks is real
and what he thinks is false.
So we have a somewhat different problem on that.
We have technical means of collection and I think one of
the great contributions the United States has brought to
intelligence has been the application of technology to the
collection of intelligence. Fifteen years ago in the United
States we had a great debate about whether or not there was
a missile gap between the Soviet Union and the United States.
You couldn't have such a gap today. We have the means of
knowing whether there are or what missiles the Soviets have,
how many they have and so forth.
And one of the extraordinary things we have done in all
areas is the collection of technical intelligence.
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And then you have human intelligence. Now,technology is
great and will do a lot of things for you. For instance, at
the time of the war between Israel and the Arabs, we knew
perfectly well what the forces were that were in presence, but
no technology will give you access to the means of decisions--
to what goes on in somebody's head or what goes on inside a
building. For this you have to have people, devoted and dedicated
people, who will work to obtain this essential intelligence for
you.
Now we have outside the CIA a statue of Nathan Hale. I
was not consulted on this statue or I am afraid I would have
disagreed. He was a very gallant and a very brave man, but he
was a spy who was caught on his first mission and he had all
the evidence on him. am not sure this is what
we want, but anyway, why did the Central Intelligence Agency,
of which I have the honor to be ,the Deputy Director, come
into being? Well, we had a great investigation in 1945 and 1946
that lasted seven months and it was filled with recriminations
about Pearl Harbor. One of the things that came out of that
investigation was that it was perfectly clear that in various
parts of the U.S. Government, we had the information-that could
have told us what was going to happen. But everybody--the Army,
the Navy, the FBI, and everybody else was squirreling away
their. little private piece of information and not sharing it-
with anybody. If we'd had the ability to put all of this
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together and have someone present this to the President,
-it might have: saved-.us a great deal at Pearl Harbor. So
President Truman asked the Congress in 1947 to set up a
Central Intelligence Agency. The word "central" was used
because it was to be a central repository from all sources.
This intelligence agency was created by the National Security
Act of 1947 and in it was provided for Congressional over-
sight of the intelligence agency by the Congress. Specifically,
because it was created under the National Security Act, the
oversight committees were to be the Armed Services Committees
of House and Senate. But, because we need money, the
Appropriations Committees also were part of our oversight
committees.
Now, the Congress has determined--there has been a great
deal of criticism of the oversight and the degree and so forth
in which it was exercised. We did not set the oversight. We
have told the Congress that we could live wit.:h any kind of
oversight that they want to have. We have told our oversight
committees everything--we do not have any secrets from our
oversight committees. And we have never had any leaks from
our oversight committees. So this has not presented a security
problem for us. But, again, I repeat, whatever comes out of
this investigation in the way of oversight, we can live with,.
Any form that Congress chooses to set for the proper oversight,
we can live with; it is up to Congress to determine what kind
of oversight they want to have.
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Now this principle of Congressional oversight of the
intelligence service is a uniquely American principle.
No other country in the world has it, except the West
Germans and they may have got it from us after World War II.
It is a healthy principle providing it is done in a constructive,
responsible way and not used as a football--a political football.
Intelligence is too precious to be used as a political football.
We are now embarked on a series of investigations to determine
whether any great nation can run its secret intelligence service,
so to speak, in a goldfish bowl. Now we may be able to because
we are a very unusual nation; but if we do, it will be just like
going to the moon--we'll have been the only ones who did it.
We hope that these investigations will result in the
Congress giving us guidelines as to what is acceptable. We
hope at the same time they will provide a mechanism for
changing those guidelines as what is acceptable changes.
What we are talkingrabout and what all these charges that
you're hearing about, in great part, refer to events that took
place 15 or 20 years ago. And they are not acceptable by some
people by the standards of today. Just as today you cannot
run segregated schools, in 1935 you could. And in 1925 you
would probably have been in trouble for trying to operate
anything but. So whatever guidelines the Congress gives us--
that they want us to abide by--we hope they will provide for
some mechanism so somebody in an investigation in 1990 doesn't
say, "What were those'horrible things you were doing or not
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doing--which I think is more likely--back in 1975? We can
live with any guidelines-that they want to give us. We
only want to have some mechanism of change so that we will
know what is acceptable and what is not acceptable. Times
change.
At the time when people were talking about Fidel Castro,
he was shooting people in the national stadium, in front of
the television cameras. We've had people tell us that if
only someone could have done something about :Hitler before
1940, how many lives would have been saved. If somebody had
done something to Hitler during World War II, they would
probably have been the first recipient of the Congressional
Medal of Honor and the Victoria Cross. S.o as these perceptions
change, we hope that there will be built in to whatever over-
sight there is something that will indicate to us as the
perception changes of what is acceptable and what is not
acceptable.
Certainly we have done some things that we should not have.
If any other Federal agency was subjected to the kind of
scrutiny over the last 28 years that we have, I am sure you
would find some things that were wrong. Some of you who have
large corprations know that in the corporation things go
wrong or things occur that you would not wish. to occur. Yes,
we've had some people who have shown excessive zeal. But I
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submit that if you take any kind of a proportionate count of
these things, they will be found to be very small in number.
After all, the Director of Central Intelligence, Mr.
Colby, is the only person in the United States Government
who is specifically, by law passed by both houses of Congress
charged with the protection of his sources and methods. Yes,
some of these things occurred, but I submit they were corrected
long before we got to these investigations--back in the early 1970s.
On assassinations, the Director's position has been
that it is not in the interest of the United States to point
the finger at any one--inside or outside the Central Intelligence
Agency. These were different circumstances. The Agency has
been excluded from this. In 1972, Mr. Helms put out a directive
and said assassination is not to be considered; it is not the
policy of this Agency, and will not be resorted to. That was
three years before these charges came up and were brought to us.
Now the:.Rockefeller Committee has been used to list various of
our misdeeds and so forth and so on, but there are some parts.-of
the Rockefeller Committee Report that have not been as frequently
quoted. Like the one on page ten where he says, and I quote,
"The detailed analysis of the facts has convinced this Commission
that the great majority of the CIA's domestic activities comply
with its statutory authority." Or again where they said, and
I quote, "The Agency's own actions undertaken for the most part
in '73 or '74 have gone far to terminate the activities on which
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this investigation has focused." We are spending nearly all of
our time now investigating and answering charges on matters
concerning the 50s and the 60s. I am concerned about the end
of the 70s and the early 1980s,because that's where the destiny
and the future of the United States is going to be decided.
All too often we spend our time flagellating ourselves as
a people, pointing out our own mistakes, pointing out our own
shortcomings, pointing out all the terrible things we've done.
Not long ago in Europe, the head of one of our friendly services
said to me, "You know, I used to think that the penitentees and
flagellantees were two small sects in New Mexico and Arizona,
but I find you have large colonies of them all over the eastern
and western seaboard." You know, we are always looking at our
shortcomings.
Not long ago I was visiting in a Chinese museum and my
guide was a little Chinese student and at the end she said to me,
"What do you think of this?" I said, "Well, it is very interesting
and leaves one thoughtful to contemplate the 6,000 years of your
history alongside of the 200 years of our history." And she smiled,
and said, "Yes, that is only half a dynasty, isn't it?" And I
said,-"Yes, but in that half a dynasty we went from a barren rock
on the New England Coast to the silent face of the moon." We
sometimes tend to forget as a people that with all our short-
comings, with all the wrongs in our society, that we have
given a greater Percentage of our people more of the good things
of life and more opportunity and more vertical flexibility
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than any other society man has evolved up to this time.
But one of the problems we face in the world today is
the different form of war from what we have grown accustomed
to. Two thousand five hundred years ago a Chinese writer
called Sun Tzu wrote a book called The Art of War. Really
it's a difficult book to read because it's in the form of a
Chinese dialogue and it's something like swimming in a pool full
of molasses, but you can distill it out to a number of
commandments he gave. And he starts out with this general
consideration: "Fighting
is the crudest form of making
war." And then he adds a series of commandments of how you
undo your enemies. Now these were written 2,500 years ago
and just listen. First, "Cover with ridicule everything
that is valid in your opponent's country." Two, "Denounce
their leaders and at the right time turn them over to the
scorn of their fellow countrymen." Three, "Aggravate by every
means at your command all existing differences within your
opponent's country." Four, "Agitate the young against the old."
There are thirteen of these and he closes it up with this
general consideration: "The supreme excellence is not to win
a hundred victories and a hundred battles. The supreme excel-
lence is to subdue.-the armies of your enemies without having
to fight them."
America cannot be defeated from the outside. America
can only be defeated from the inside. America can be defeated
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by being made to feel that her cause is unjustified. You
all remember Vietnam,-you all remember how agitated people
were when that quote repressive government "unr4ubte.of. President
Thieu used to suspend one of the five opposition newspapers
in Saigon. That's not a problem any more. There are no more
opposition newspapers in Saigon, nor are there any more Rotary
Clubs in Saigon. So that was the alternative that some people
preferred and convinced the large number of the American people
that it was not worth trying to prevent this sort of thing.
You know, we Americans are a very unusual people. Again
a story I heard recently in Europe and I heard it before the
Mayaguez story--tells how a Frenchman, an Englishman and an American
were captured on an island in the Pacific by cannibals and the
cannibals informed them they would be executed and eaten the
next day. So the cannibal chief said, "I'm going to give you
one wish each before we take care of you." So he turned to
the Frenchman and he said, "What do you want?" And the
Frenchman said, "Well, if I'm going to be executed in the morning,
I-'d jiastas 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 into
the woods. Then theysaid to the Englishman, "What do you want?"
The Englishman said, "I want a pen and paper to write a letter
to the Secretary General of the United Nations, Mr. Kurt Waldheim,
to protest against the unjust, unfair and unsporting attitude
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you have adopted towards us." (Laughter) So they untied the
Englishman and they gave him a table where he could write in
a hut. Then they turned to the American and they said, "What
do you want?" And the American said, "Well, 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 to kick me in the
rear end." The cannibal chief said, "Well, that's peculiar
request, but the Americans are a peculiar people,: and I
promised." So they led the American into the middle of the
village ahd they made him kneel down and the :biggest cannibal
there took a flying leap, kicked the American in the rear end
and knocked him sprawling :about 15 feet. Now the American
had been hiding a sub-machine gun under his clothes and at this
point he whipped out the sub-machine gun and cut down the
cannibals. The Frenchman hearing the gunfire came out of the
woods; the Englishman hearing the gunfire came out of the hut.
They looked at the American and theysaid, "Do you mean to say
you had that sub-machine gun the whole time?" And he said,
"Yes." They -said, "Why the heck didn't you use it before now?"
And the American looked at them very earnestly 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." (Laughter; and
applause)
You know, you've got to live in the real world. We all
hope that detente works and that it works in both directions.
But another story I heard recently was about two young
Americans who went to Moscow and they went to the zoo. And
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the young Russian was taking them around. He showed them the
various animals in the cages: the Siberian sabre-tooth tiger,
and all the other, and then finally brought them to a cage
where they had a huge Russian bear with teeth. that long and
claws that long and in the same case was a rather worried-
looking lamb. And the young American said, "Well, that's an
odd couple to put in the same cage. Why do you put those
two in the same cage?" And the Russian said, "This is to
prove that peaceful coexistence is possible." The young
American said, "Well, that's pretty impressive," and his buddy
said, "It sure:is,, isn't it?" And the young Russian looked around
and seeing no one, he said, "Of course, you understand, every
morning we have to put in a new lamb!" As long as you don't
run out of lambs you're in pretty good shape.
But I just want to say, I am not an old CIA man. I came
there three years ago and people often ask-me, "How do you
feel about the CIA after three years?" And I must say sometimes
I feel like Jonas, because it seems to me that all of this
started about the time I came there. But I would say that I
could sum up everything I feel about working at the Central Intel-
ligence Agency with the word "reassurance." :Reassurance at the
competence that I have found there; reassurance at the continuity
of people staying and working at the same thing over a long
period of time. But mostly I am reassured by the people--by
their integrity; by the fact that they are Americans who
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live by the same standards as other Americans; by the fact that
they have to bear these accusations without any real effective
means of answering. Not long ago I watched a television program
on which a man stood up and said,:"I used to work forthe CIA
and I was an employee of the CIA and I plotted the death of
Fidel Castro. That man, whose name is Sturgis, has never at
any time ever worked for the CIA. We called up the program
manager before the show and told him this. It made no difference.
It went on just the same way. The rebuttal never catches up with
the accusation. There is no way you can ever catch up. An
accusation is made, you can produce all kinds of proof and
everything else, You never get it.
I submit that the people who work in intelligence have
the same rights as other American citizens; the same right to
the presumption of innocence as other American citizens--which
is a fundamental part of our law. Frankly, they don't always
get it.
With Defense Intelligence, with the FBI, we have tried to
help to keep the United States a: free and democratic society.
We hope to continue to do that providing we are not crippled.
We are condemned not by our own choice for fighting on the
silent battlefield of intelligence. Every day when I go to
work I walk into the building and on the right I see the stars
that commemorate those men of the Central Intelligence Agency
who fell on that silent battlefied, unheralded, unknown by most,
and honored by only a few. But those men laid down their
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lives for your freedom and mine, just as much as anyone who
died on the battlefield.
On the other side of the wall, at my office, is the motto
of the Central Intelligence Agency, which is taken from the
Bible, and it says, "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall
make you free." I can't help but think that in the world in
which we live and the kind of intelligence effort which is
being made against the United States, the military threat
which exists to the United States, that we perhaps ought to
change that motto to read: "You must know the truth for only
the truth will keep you free."
Outside Dr. Schlesinger's office, the Secretary of Defense,
there is a painting with a motto on it which says--it's again
a quotation from the Prophet Isaiah "When shall I send; who will
go for us." Well, in the years since the end. of World War II,
unknown and unheralded, the men of your Army, Navy, Air Force,
Central Intelligence and FBI have answered steadfastly, and
whenever called upon, "Here.I am; send me."
We face a situation where the United States and its power
relationships with the rest of the world is in the toughest
situation since Valley Forge. The real issue at stake before
us today is not the validity, or the falsehood, or the fact, of
these accusations, many of which relate back .15 or 20 years.
The real issue before us today is: Will the United States have
eyes and ears? or will it stumble into the future? a blind and
deaf giant until the day it has to choose between abject
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humiliation and nuclear blackmail; whether the United States
will have the ability to see what is being done or what is
not being done. That is the real issue that faces us today.
Winston Churchill told my generation that we would have as our
companion on our journey "blood, seat, tears, and toil." I
can only say that on the journey that all of us have before us
if we are to remain a free and democratic society, I hope we
have three companions: faith to light the dark road that lies
ahead, for dark and lonely is the road of the man who walks
without faith; enthusiasm which is the motor of all human
activity; regardless of age; and finally, courage, which is
the greatest virtue of all because it is the guarantee of all
the other virtues. The courage to change what must be
changed and the courage to maintain what must be maintained.
Thank you very much.
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