REMARKS OF WILLIAM J. CASEY AT THE JOHN M. OLIN DISTINGUISHED LECTURE SERIES BROWN UNIVERSITY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP84B00148R000100240005-5
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 13
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 5, 2007
• Sequence Number: 5
• Publication Date: October 15, 1981
• Content Type: REPORT

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REMARKS OF WILLIAM J. CASEY
DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE
JOHN M. OLIN DISTINGUISHED LECTURE SERIES
BROWN UNIVERSITY
PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND
THURSDAY, 15 OCTOBER 1981
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AMERICAN INTELLIGENCE YESTERDAY, TODAY AND TOMORROW
lawyer, was a one man CIA for Franklin Roosevelt. His World War I
Congressional Medal of Honor and his nickname of "Wild Bill" implanted on
him.the image of a swashbuckling adventurer. In reality he was a mild,
softspoken intellectual, whose deepest interest was intelligence.
As the outstanding investigative lawyer of his time. Donovan had learned
how to gather a huge array of facts, sift and analyze them, assess their
meaning, arrive at a conclusion and present it vividly. He persuaded President
Roosevelt that it would be critical in fighting a war and preserving the peace
to develop and apply this ability on a worldwide scale.
By the time Pearl Harbor came, Donovan had gathered hundreds of the finest
scholars in America and had them processing geographic, scientific, political
and'military information in the Library of Congress. Two years later, Donovan
had scoured our campuses and mobilized thousands of the finest scholars in
America. He had assembled what had to be the most diverse aggregation ever
assembled of tycoons and scientists, bankers and foreign correspondents,
psychologists and football stars, circus managers and circus freaks, safe
crackers, lock pickers and pickpockets, playwrights and journalists, novelists
and professors' of literature, advertising and broadcasting talent. He drew
on the great American melting pot to create small teams of Italian Americans,
Franco-Americans, Norwegian Americans, Slavic Americans, Greek Americans.
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What did he do with this array of talent? He used it to create
intelligence networks behind enemy lines, to support the resistance forces
which oppression always creates, to bring disaffected enemy officers over
to our side, to dream up scenarios to manipulate the mind of the enemy in
deception and psychological warfare programs.
Then, whether it's true or false as you find out what other intelligence
supports or contradicts it.
Then, you fit it into a broad mosaic.
Then, you figure out what it all means_
Then, you have to get the attention of someone who can make a decision,
Then,, you have to get him to act.
That's the way it was at the inception of modern American intelligence
when Lyman Kirkpatrick and I were in the OSS together and that, at bottom,
is the way it is today. But, over the years, my predecessors have changed
intelligence and made it far more than a simple spy service- They developed
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a great center of scholarship and research, with as many Doctors and Masters
in every kind of art and science as any university campus. They have
produced a triumph of technology, stretching from the depths of the oceans
to the limits of outer space. Using photography, electronics, acoustics
and other technological marvels, we learn things totally hidden on the other
side of the world. In the SALT debate, for example, Americans openly discussed
the details of the Soviet missiles. These are held most secret in the
Soviet Union, but are revealed by our intelligence systems.
All this has produced a staggering array of information, a veritable
Niagara of facts. But facts can confuse. The strong picture is not worth
a thousand words. No photo, no electronic impulse can substitute for direct,:
on-the-scene knowledge of the key actors in a given country or region.
Technical collection is of little help in the most important and difficult
problem of all -- political intentions. This is where clandestine human
intelligence can make a difference.
The highest duty of a Director of Central intelligence is to produce
solid and perceptive national intelligence estimates relevant to the issues
With which the President and the National Security Council need to concern
themselves. When Bedell Smith took office as Director of Central Intelligence,
he was told that President Truman was leaving in 20 hours to consult with
General MacArthur at Wake Island and that he would want seven intelligence
estimates to study on the plane. Smith assembled the chiefs of the
intelligence community in the Pentagon at 4 p.m., divided them and their
staffs into 7 groups, told them they`wculd work all night and have,their
assigned estimate ready for delivery at 8 a.m. President Truman had his
estimates as he took off for his discussions with General MacArthur.
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Over the years and particularly during the last decade a lot of
criticism has been levied at our national intelligence estimates-
Much of the criticism is based on unrealistic expectations of what an
intelligence service can do. The CIA does not have powers of prophecy_
It has no crystal ball that can peer into the future with 20-20 sight. We
are dealing with "probable" developments.
If we can't expect infallible prophecy from the nation's investment in
intelligence, what can we expect? We can expect foresight. We can expect
a careful definition of possibilities. We can expect professional analysis
which probes and weighs probabilities and assesses their implications. We
can expect analyses that assist the policymakers in devising ways to prepare
.for and cope with the full range of probabilities. The President does not
need a single best view, a guru, or a prophet. The nation needs the best
analysis and the full range of views it can get.
The process of analysis and arriving at estimates needs to be made as
open and competitive as possible. We need to resist the bureaucratic urge
for consensus.
We don't need analysts spending their time finding a middle ground or.
weasel words to conceal disagreement. Their time needs to go into evaluating
information -- searching for the meaning and the implications of events and
trends -- and expressing both their conclusions and their disagreements
clearly. The search to unify the intelligence community around a single
homogenized estimate serves policymakers badly. It buries valid differences,
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forcing the intelligence product to the lowest or blandest common denominator.
The search for consensus also cultivates the myth of infallibility. It
implicitly promises a reliability that cannot be delivered. Too frequently,
it deprives the intelligence product of relevance and the policymaker of the
range of possibilities for which prudence requires that he prepare.
Above all, the policymaker needs to be protected from the conventional
wisdom. Let me give you some horrible examples.
Before there was a CIA, Senator Brian ?lcMahon and Lewis Strauss, then a
member of the Atomic Energy Commission, performed one of the most important
intelligence missions in the history of our nation. Together, they insisted
that we had to develop a program to monitor and detect all large explosions
that occurred, at any place on the earth. We had to have that intelligence.
The first chance to perfect such a system was offered by tests which we-
were planning to conduct in the vicinity of Eniwetok in the spring of 1948.
A detection system was devised by the end of 1948 but the Air Force found
itself short of funds to procure instrumentation for the monitoring program
and that about a million dollars would be required to complete it. Contracts
had to be let at once if the instruments were to be ready in time. Lewis Strauss,
a great patriot and Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, volunteered to
obligate himself for the million so that the contracts could be made firm
immediately. This effort was launched in the nick of time and in September
it established that an atomic explosion had occurred somewhere on the Asiatic
mainland and at some date between August 26 and 29, 1949.
Had there been no monitoring system in operation in 1949. Russian success
in that summer would have been unknown to us. In consequence, we would-have
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made no attempt to develop a thermonuclear weapon. It was our positive
intelligence that the Russians had exploded an atomic bomb which generated
the recommendation to develop the qualitatively superior hydrogen weapon --
thus to maintain our military superiority.
On January 30, 1950, President Truman made the decision to build the
bomb. We were able to test our first hydrogen bomb in November, 1952- The
Russians tested their first weapon involving a thermonuclear reaction the
following August._
Had we relied on the conventional wisdom about Soviet nuclear capability,
the Russian success in developing thermonuclear weapon capability in 1953
would have found the United States hopelessly outdistanced and the Soviet
military would have been in possession of weapons vastly more powerful and
devastating than any we had.
Early in 1962, John McCone, newly arrived as- -Director of Central
Intelligence, saw reports coming in about the arrival of anti-aircraft
weapons in Cuba. What are they there to protect, he wondered. There are
no targets there now, he concluded, so they must intend to.bring something
there which will need to be attacked and hence will need to be defended.
Thus, he was many months ahead of anyone in Washington in predicting the -
possibility that Moscow might base offensive missiles in Cuba. When Cuban
refugees brought reports that large missiles were being brought in and
installed, McCone considered this confirmation of his tentative forecast,
while everyone else in Washington dismissed them on the basis that the Soviets-
would never do anything so foolish, until the U-2 pictures could not'be denied.
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To protect against the conventional wisdom, CIA, military intelligence,
and every other element of the intelligence community should not only be
allowed to compete and surface differences, but be encouraged to do so.
The time has come to recognize that policymakers can easily sort through a
wide range of opinions. But, they cannot consider views and opinions they
do not receive.
The time has also come to recognize that the intelligence community has
no monopoly on truth, on insight, and on initiative in foreseeing what will
be relevant to policy. For that reason, we are in the process of reconstituting
a President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. It will be made up of
strong and experienced individuals with a wide range of relevant backgrounds..
To get all the intelligence we need, we've got to go beyond the formal
intelligence organizations. We've got to tap all the scholarly resources of -
-the nationa and the perspectives and insights you- develop from your activities
around the world. We're geared to do that in open and direct contact with
the campuses, the think tanks and the business organizations around the
We will need to do even more of this in the future to cope with the
intelligence requirements of our increasingly complex and dangerous world as
it generates new threats. In the OSS, we were doing pretty well if we knew
where the enemy was and how he was redeploying his forces. For the first
twenty years of a peacetime intelligence, most of the effort went to
understanding the production and capabilities of weapons. It is only in the
last decade that it has dawned upon us that we have been threatened and
damaged more by coups and subversion and economic aggression than by military
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force. We will still devote a large slice of our effort to military estimates
and rely very heavily on them in formulating our defense budget, our weapons
development and force structures. But they will have to be supplemented by
increased efforts to assess economic vulnerabilities and search for
technological breakthroughs. Increasingly priority attention will go to
the need to identify social and political instabilities -- and how they can
or are being exploited by propaganda, by subversion, and by terrorism.
Now, let me say a few words about what we face. Our first priority is
still the Soviet Union. It has been the number one adversary for 35 years.
It is the only country in the world with major weapons systems directly
targeted at the United States which could destroy the U.S. in half an hour.
For that reason alone, it remains the number one target.
Less lethal but perhaps more dangerous is the threat of worldwide
subversion and insurrection and tiny wars of so-called national liberation.
Over the last five years we've seen the combination of Cuban manpowers,
Libyan money and Soviet arms and transport substantially seize and thoroughly
threaten the African continent from Angola to Ethiopia and across through the
Sudan and Chad to the Western Sahara.
We've seen the same forces take over Nicaragua and threaten to Castroize
all of Central America. We see the crossroads and the oil resources of the
Middle East, threatened from Iran and Afghanistan from the east, Syria from
the north, Yemen from the south and Libya from the west -- all literally
stuffed with Soviet weapons.
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There are many levels at which the Soviet Union challenges us today.
First, there is the strategic arena in which the increasing accuracy
and the power of Soviet missiles thoroughly threatens the survivability of
our own land based missiles. This-has led to a Presidential decision to
accelerate the strengthening of our air and sea retaliatory capability and to
basically defer the decision on the basing of the more powerful land based
missiles until we can better evaluate the role that anti-missile defense and
versatile cruise missiles can play in maintaining our deterrent capability.
Secondly, on the Central European Front, Soviet and Warsaw Pact forces
vastly outnumber NATO forces and tanks, planes and troops.
Thirdly, in the ability to project military power over long distances,
the Soviets, together with their Cuban proxies, have demonstrated their
capability in Angola and in Ethiopia while the rapid deployment force we have
recently created remains untested.
In numbers, and experience, and freedom to act, the ability of the Soviets
to subvert other governments and propagandize in other countries is unrivalled.
A-fe:?w years ago the United States was providing twice as much military
equipment to Third World countries. Today the Soviet Union is providing
50% more equipment to a larger number of Third World countries, and military
advice and influence go along with these relationships. The Soviets, along
with their Eastern European satellites, Libya, Cuba and the PLO, engage in
the widespread training of guerrilla fighters and terrorists, and sometimes
use them to destabilize governments and thus lay the ground for their support.
of revolutionary violence.
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Large and specialized segments of the KGB and the Soviet military
intelligence, known as the GPU, together with trade and scientific delegations
roaming the advanced world, are acquiring western technology and using it to
build the military threat which we have to defend against and to reduce the
drain which that process imposes on the Soviet economy at a rate which we
have only recently begun to realize.
This is the range of the threat, so much of it new and beyond the
traditional range-in capabilities of western intelligence which we are now
called upon to deal with.-
A strong defense and ability to exercise influence in the world requires
a strong industrial basis.
headed. For example, what will the increasing globalization of the automobile
industry do to the industrial base on which we must depend for national defense?
As the auto industry becomes globalized our need to keep the sea lanes open
will become more critical.
How will the attrition of our computer and semi-conductor industry,
under the impact of the drive the Japanese have mounted to capture this
market, undermine our defense capability? Now will it impact our ability to
make our way in the world through the manufacture of machinery and equipment
which will be increasingly controlled and guided by micro-processors?
If the French, Germans and Japanese,* and less developed countries like
Korea and Brazil, convert more rapidly than the United States from fossil
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fuels to nuclear energy, how rapidly will lower power costs in those
countries be converted into important competitive advantages in manufacturing
costs? How will the instabilities in southern Africa on the one hand and
seabed mining on the other affect the structure of our world mineral markets
and impact our manufacturing industries?
Looking at the world more broadly, what do we see as we look around the
world? We see a Soviet Union rapidly building it's military strength as
-- The U.S. falling behind in economic competitiveness as the Japanese
and Germans give, invest and innovate more, and Koreans, Singapore, Taiwanese,
Brazilians, Mexicans increasing their share of the world market as ours
diminishes.
-- Political and economic instability in the Middle East, Africa and
Latin America where we get the fuel and minerals to keep our economy going-
-- The Soviet Union with it's Cuban, East German, Libyan, Syrian
proxies demonstrating remarkable ability to exploit these instabilities by
we11 orchestrated subversion and paramilitary operations conducted with.
guerrilla fighters they train, equip and direct.
-- Large numbers of tanks and guns stockpiled in Syria, Libya and
Yemen on the fringe of the Arab peninsula and transported to Nicaragua and
Cuba, Angola and Ethiopia, and used in Chad and Lebanon, El Salvador and
Guatemala.
 I'm not here to frighten you but to say that the world is full of
economic, political and military dangers which need to be taken seriously
and watched closely.
And that the outlook is not all black.
Russia has fallen into a hornet's nest in Afghanistan where after
eighteen months freedom fighters confine Soviet troops to half dozen cities
and to their barracks at night.
In Poland, it is caught in a dilemma between concern that developments
there could unravel Communist system while suppression would entail heavy
economic and political costs and bring bloodshed and prolonged resistance
from militant Poles.
It's economy gasps under it's inherent inefficiences and the burden of
enormous military expenditures and many billions each year to Cuba and
Vietlam, cut-rate oil to East European satellites, huge worldwide propaganda
and troublemaking machines, sprinkling guns in Africa, Middle East and
Central America.
What will count here and around the world is a renewal of confidence in
our people and among other'nations in the strength of purpose and the
reliability of the United States to do what needs to be done to make our own
society stronger and more efficient and to work with our friends and allies
in support of freedom and justice.
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