COLBY DEFENDS CIA AMID JEERING

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP81M00980R002000090117-2
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 4, 2004
• Sequence Number: 117
• Publication Date: February 22, 1978
• Content Type: NSPR

Approved For Release 2004/10/12 : CIA-RDP81 M00980R002000090117-2
HACKENSACK, N. J. RECORD
22 February 1978
Colb
y
defends
CIA amid
~eermg
By Fred Miller
Staff w4er
JERSEY CITY. Former Central Intelligence
Agency Director William Colby defended his record
and American spying yesterday at Jersey City State
College in a speech disrupted by Iranian and other
student militants.
"I think the fact that, I don't come before you.
with a cloak, a stiletto, or a blbnde says something
about modern American intelligence," Colby said
above the jeers from about two dozen protesters
among -he,crowd of about 300 students and, faculty.
The visit by the former CIA chief prompted un-
usual controversy on the normally quiet campus, but
apart from heckling there were no incidents yester-,
day.
In recent weeks, several Iranians were forcibly`
removed from the campus for picketing without per-
mission, students said. On Monday a student was..
charged after he reportedly smashed a window dis-
playing an anti-Colby poster: 1
There are about 400 Iranian students-among the_
8,800 undergraduates at Jersey , City State. A number'.
of Iranian students have protested the CIA's role in
establishing and aiding the government of- Shah Mo-
hammed-Pahlevi, whom,the protesters call a fascist.
But Colby, who received $2,500 from the college
for his appearance, said he believed American, inter-'
were better servedby the present Iranian gov-
ernment than by,that ,country's Communist - party,
which Colby said threatened Iran before the Shah
seized power in. a 1953 coup
Conceding that the 'CIA 'had committed some
abuses during -the last 30` years, 'Colby. insisted that
he had personallyhalted'and testified fully about all
of them during his term as director from 1973.76. He
said President Carter's.. recent executive order; on
U.S. intelligence needed congressional backing to de-
fine precisely what the. CIA could do and how its se-
crets could be protected - "like a journalist's se-:
crets,' he said.. ~.. , ` ..f . ,'. . .~
Cloak-and-dagger spying represented half of all
CIA work in the 1950s, but only two per cent today,
Colby said, because of great advances in technology
and scholarship.
Vietnam and Watergate, Colby said, "made us all
.realize that there is no part of American government,
that can operate outside of American law."
However, because of foreign spying and the pos-
sibility of nuclear blackmail by small nations or ter-
rorists, Colby said, American spying was just as nec-
essary today as when Benjamin Franklin opened a
dummy office in Paris in the 1770s to funnel arms to
American revolutionaries. .
To the students who compared Iranian rebels
with American patriots and who criticized CIA activi-
ty in Chile, Africa, Vietnam, and the Dominican Re-
public, Colby repeated that his testimony before a
Senate investigating committee disclosed all relevant
facts and showed no great wrongdoing by the CIA.
The CIA only supported center parties in Chile, -
except for six weeks, at President Nixon's order, fun-
neling money to right-wing groups in an effort to un-
seat the elected communist president, Salvadore Al-
lende, Colby said.
He told a Ghanaian student that the CIA never
'put into operation a plot to assassinate Congo Presi-
dent Patrice Lumumba, who was murdered in 1961,
and that the CIA did not participate in the 1966 coup.
that deposed Ghana President Kwame Nkrumah. -
Conceding that the CIA had trained some of
Nkrumah's opponents, Colby maintained, "That does
not mean the r TA
artici
atcwiin an
thing thoca non-
p
p
y
ple may later have done." .
A black freshman, William Martin, congratulated
Colby for his record, saying, "This man made it safe.
for me to walk the streets at night." But he was fol-
lowed by David Blalock, an Army veteran. who said,
he served in the Operation Phoenix program Colby
headed in Vietnam, a "pacification" program that,
Blalock and others allude to was in fact methodical
torture of suspected Viet Cong. .
the claim by H.R. Haldeman in his recent book that
with a plan to attack Chinese nuclear bases. "I think
I might well have heard," he said, "and I don't think
the Russians would do that. . .though some people:
were concerned about the possibility of a Russian
strike."
Colby said he had completed his own book on life-
within the CIA, which he said he had submitted to the
CIA for clearance
Of another book by a former CIA agent in Viet-?
'American evacuation in - 1975 betrayed many Viet-,
namese CIA operatives, Colby said, "It's very easy
to Monday morning quarterback a chaotic, confused
'
evacuation in a major defeat. . .even though some of
those left behind were my friends:
"I was mainly sorry our country decided it would
no longer send logistics and support, [to Vietnam],"_,
Colby. added. "But we did manage to get all* Ameri
cans and 130,000 Vietnamese out."
Approved For Release 2004/10/12 : CIA-RDP81 M00980R002000090117-2