EMPLOYEE PERCEPTIONS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP85-00759R000100160010-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 43
• Document Creation Date: December 12, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 11, 2002
• Sequence Number: 10
• Publication Date: October 20, 1975
• Content Type: MF

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2 0 OCT 19/5 .k
MEMORANDUM FOR: Deputy Director for Intelligence
Deputy Director for Operations
Deputy Director for Science and Technology
Deputy to the DCI for the Intelligence
Community
Deputy to the DCI for National Intelligence
Officers
Inspector General
General Counsel
Legislative Counsel
Assistant to the Director
SUBJECT Employee Perceptions
1. There is attached a memorandum of 16 October 1975
addressed to the Director entitled "Employee Perceptions" a
The background of the memorandum is recorded in its first
paragraph.
2. The Director returned the paper to me on 18 October
with the following comment :
"Most interesting - Suggest circulate
to 9 a.m. meeting."
A copy is forwarded to you as suggested by the Director. As
I am sure you will recognize, the penciled check marks are
his.
Distribution:
/John F. BlckC:b
John F. Blake
Deputy Director
for
Administration
STATINTL
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Original -
DDI
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D/DCI/IC
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- General Counsel
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DDO
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D/DCI/NIO
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- Legislative Couns&
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DDS zT
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IC
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16 OCT 1975
MEMORANDUM FOR: Director of Central Intelligence
SUBJECT Employee Perceptions
l.. Recently I asked the DDA Office Directors to
elicit as best they could, in a low key manner, employee
perceptions of how they see the Agency, the Office, and the
individual. My request was prompted by the spate of
publicity, including open Senate hearings, during recent
weeks. I thought you might be interested in a composite
based on the Office submissions.
2. As you might expect, individual responses ranged
over the entire spectrum, from morale being eroded to morale
being high, from the Director giving too much information
to the Director doing exactly what is needed, from the
Agency having engaged in reprehensible activities to the
Agency having made minor mistakes trumpeted far beyond their
importance. Attempting to draw a thread of consistency,
therefore, is a bit difficult, but the following does pro-
vide some insight as to what the DDA employees perceive.
A. Morale: The definition of morale presents a
problem. Inn any number of instances an individual
reflects that his morale is good, but then goes on
to express concerns about the investigations, the
future of the Agency'and his job security, which are
part of the fabric of morale. In other words, it
appears that he is reluctant to admit that his morale
is being affected, but indirectly there is evidence.
that it is. Interestingly, morale appears to be
higher among the rank and file and younger personnel
than it does among those who have been with the
Organization a longer period of time and are in more
senior positions. This latter point relates to the
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fact there seems to be concern with the amount of
"unproductive" time spent responding to congressional
committees at the expense of carrying out one's duties
and responsibilities, and the fact that a career of
dedicated service is now open to criticism and question.
B. Reaction to Media: By and large those
who have commented reacte negatively to the media
indicating that in whatever form, the media is biased
and politically oriented. One only hears or reads
the sensational. Favorable comments or commentaries
are seldom heard.
C. Reaction to Investigations: Depending on
the extent to which an Office is involved with the
investigations, there is a. high degree of sensitivity
or relative indifference to what is going on. Gen-
erally, there is a reflection that a fair and respon-
sible investigation into Agency activities is desirable.
There seems to be general acceptance that further
controls and specific delineations of responsibility
by which the Agency might be guided would be wise.
On the other hand, the reactions seem to indicate
the Agency is not getting a fair shake and that
Senators are using the hearings for their personal
political futures and to expose the sensational in
their own best interests. There is an indication
that employees feel a certain amount of disillusionment,
concern, and even revulsion at the revelations of the
Senate hearings. There is an indication that long-term,
devoted Agency employees have been somewhat betrayed.
There seems to be a consistent thread that shows the
younger employees are less concerned about the hearings
than the long-term veterans-who, over the years, were
convinced of the Agency's effectiveness and goodness,
and now have it thrown open to ridicule..
D. Future: There is obvious concern for the
uncertainty fthe future of the Agency and whether
or not it will continue to be able to fulfill its
mission. The Agency's credibility has been damaged
and to what extent it is reparable leaves some question.
Recognizing that changes will be forthcoming in terms
of. greater control and accountability, there is concern
that these might stifle creativity, imagination,
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innovation and growth. With more red tape, the
Agency will become a more typical government agency.
There are those who recognize that on the short-
term there might well be a serious impact on the
Agency, but on the long haul the Agency will survive
and'might be better for having gone through these
investigations.
E. Mr. Col's Image. By and large there is
high praise and respect Tr Mr. Colby's personal.
honesty, forthrightness, character, and leadership.
To quote one person, Mr. Colby has "been a perfect
gentleman and has shown the patience of a saint
and the endurance of an Apache Indian . . ." He
is the best representative the Agency could have-at
this time. There is recognition that he is taking
the rap for activities that happened prior to his
watch. On the other hand, despite the respect for
him and his patient handling of the committees, there
is concern that he is providing too much information
and revealing too many activities. Perhaps it is
time for him to take a stronger defensive position
on behalf of the Agency and its mission.
F. Effects and Reaction: While a number of
individuals comment t at their morale is good, they
now feel a sense of embarrassment and shame in admitting
that they work for the Agency. There is a loss of
pride related to earlier feelings that the Agency was
indeed "the best" in government. There is recogni-
tion that the Agency has lost prestige and credi-
bility and faces an atmosphere of uncertainty.
Another quote--"I sense a degree of bewilderment
that our proud house should-prove so apparently
vulnerable.". Although not reported in a pointed
sense, there is an indication of concern for job
security in the future. By and large the hearings,
their revelations, while questioned in terms of
their complete authenticity, appear to have a
gradually eroding effect on the conscience and morale
of the employees. There was an emphatic reaction
from one Office that the Sam Adams testimony was
by far the most damaging and demoralizing challenge
to the Agency. It was emphasized that his testimony
must not go unchallenged. One final quote might be
worth noting: "Since I don't really believe the
Agency has ever been effectively managed, I don't find
our present circumstances too unusual."
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3. In summary, employee perceptions seem to reflect
a "hang in there" attitude. Rather than reflecting poor
morale per se, they reflect a sense of.frustration and un-
certainty. It would be less than honest, however, to say
that morale has not been affected. There were precious
few constructive suggestions toward offsetting these diffi-
cult times except to find ways of publicizing Agency suc-
cesses, but even here one recognizes the difficulty of
doing so without jeopardizing sources and methods.
4. The above composite as well as all information
received from the Offices has been reviewed by the Adminis-
tration Management Advisory Group (ADMAG). No other di-,q-
tribution has been made. I leave it to your discretion
whether this would be an appropriate time to circulate to
the other Directorates.
0 01111 V. IUKU
i
1 Deputy Director
AT"11:;IC _^_~.TI tTE - {JS t,- O'ILY
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Statement
by
W. E. Colby
Director of Central Intelligence
before
New York Council,
Navy League of the United States
October 20, 1975
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Admiral Bergen, Mr. Mulcahy, Admiral. Anderson,
Admiral Moorer, Mr. Shepley, Secretary Mittendorf,
ladies and gentlemen.
Not a person in this room doubts the need for a strong
United States Navy.
Not a person in this room doubts the need for a strong
United States Intelligence Service.
I am here to tell you we have one--the best in the
world. Its technical geniuses, its dedicated clandestine
operators, its objective analysts have brought whole new
dimensions in precision, in scope, and in forward pro-
jections to American intelligence.
Years ago we looked to intelligence to tell us where
an enemy fleet was. Today, we know not only where it is,
but what it can do. And we know more--we know what kind
of fleet to expect in the future. We have followed the
progress of the new Russian carrier presently on sea
trials since its keel was laid five years ago. We will
not be startled by its appearance as part of the
operational fleet as we might have been in years past.
But will we destroy this great intelligence
capability? Will we have an investigation in 1980 as to
why in 1975 we deprived our nation of its technical and
foreign sources that provide information about the
threats we will face in the years ahead?
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Those threats are there:
-- in the ballistic missiles cocked and aimed at us;
in the nuclear weapons which can fall into the
hands of reckless despots or paranoic terrorists;
--.in the desperate and authoritarian reactions of
poor and overpopulated nations to the increasing
gap they see between themselves and the affluence
of the developed world;
and in the temptation of some nations to look to
racist or radical rather than democratic and
.moderate formulas.
Good intelligence can warn us of these problems. it
is not a crystal ball or an advance edition of the World
Almanac of 1977. But it can identify coming problems and
permit our national leaders to face them, informed and
warned of the forces and factors involved.
Most importantly, with good intelligence we can not
only defend against or deter such threats, we can hope to
negotiate them away or resolve them before they become
critical.
But is our intelligence to become mere theater? Will
it be exposed in successive sensational re-runs for the
amusement, or even amazement, of our people rather than
being preserved and protected for the benefit of us all?
Will we have publicity or protection? Will we have
sensation or safety?
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Our intelligence missteps and misdeeds are indeed
small in number and in substance. Against the service our
intelligence has rendered the nation over the past 28 years,
they are truly few and far between.
But when an operation that involved three agents is
proclaimed as "massive;" when the normal detail of CIA
employees to other government agencies is called
"infiltration;" when an Army vulnerability study of the
New York subway is ascribed to CIA "plotting" because
one of-our officers read the report; or when conspiracy
theorists mouth CIA "complicity" in the assassination of
President Kennedy despite flat denials, then the American
people are understandably troubled. They can wonder
whether their intelligence service is more a peril than
a protector.
We are about to have our fifth rerun of the great
mail-reading story. It first appeared in my testimony
before CIA's oversight committees last January and
February. I said we had reviewed and terminated this
activity in 1973. Its second playing was in the
Rockefeller Commission report. This was followed by a
TV spectacular featuring Representative Abzug's indig-
nation. The Post office and Civil Service Committee crf
the House of Representatives then reviewed it. And this
week, the Senate Select Committee will repeat the per-
formance in greater detail on live TV.
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I hope our citizens will derive the real message of
this mail-reading affair:
that intelligence looked at-mail to and from
Communist countries during the threatening days
of the Cold War;
- that intelligence reviewed the activity and
determined that it was improper in 1973;
that intelligence in 1973 set out clear directives
that any activities not in full compliance with
the laws of the United States would stop;
--- and that intelligence itself reported this-matter
to the bodies now investigating it.
I hope our citizens will not be misled into perceiving
intelligence as a menace to our nation. I hope rather that
they will see its important role as an essential--and
effective--protector of our safety and democracy against the
threats in the real world outside our borders.
Intelligence is not theater. It is a serious--a
deadly serious business. The dedicated men and women of CIA,
.who serve their country in an anonymous and demanding craft,
must not be made national scapegoats for the revision of
our national values and consensus of the past 20 years.
We do not oppose investigation. We welcome it. But
investigation must be responsible, as intelligence must be
responsible.
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No one in this room thinks that there should be public
revelation of the Navy's war plans. The American people
don't think so either. Neither do they think there should
be a public revelation of the names of people who serve
American intelligence in confidential, and often risky,
dealings. We Americans, and we intelligence professionals,
are not going to let this happen.
But damage has already been done by irresponsible
exposure of true intelligence secrets. Intelligence high
in the sky and deep in the ocean can be lost. Such
exposures have concerned our foreign friends and caused
some who wish to help us to think that the risk is too great.
Thus we Americans must call. for full responsibility
in our investigations of intelligence, as we do for intel-
ligence itself. We must insist that intelligence not
become theater, so that today's comedy does not become
tomorrow's tragedy. We cannot stand blind and deaf in the
world of the 1980s because we were hypnotized by our review
of the' 1950s and "60s.
Everyone in this room knows America has the best Navy
in the world. We all want to keep it that way.
I want you to know that America also has the best
intelligence service in the world. We must keep it that way.
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SPEECH
by
LT. GENERAL VERNON A. WALTERS
before
DALLAS COUNCIL ON WORLD AFFAIRS
THE CIA AND WORLD AFFAIRS
DALLAS, TEXAS
16 September 1975
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Mr. Cooper, General West, General Torrey.
...and so many friends that I have seen here today. You
know, the usual thing is to say is that "it's an honor and
a privilege to be able to talk to you today," well really
it is an extraordinary pleasure -- I have seen here people
I haven't seen for a long time, that I have known for many
years -- Assistant Secretary Rubottom, General Harkins,
General` Powell, Colonels McGinnis and Lucas, with whom I have
worked and a great many other people. General Torrey and
I were with the Brazilians in Italy and he knew that President
of Brazil also. So I feel myself very fortunate to be here
today and to have this opportunity to talk to you a little
bit about intelligence and world affairs.
Particularly because we live, as you know, in a much
smaller world than that in which any of our predecessors ever
lived. We no longer live in the world where James Madison
said that he hadn't heard from his Minister in Spain for two
years and if he didn't hear from him within the next year he
was going to send someone to find out what was going on in
Spain. We live in a world of instant communications, as you know,
where whatever happens requires decisions and actions by our leaders
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almost immediately. You no longer have the kind of fall-back
in time that we've had right up to and including World War II
when we had two oceans to protect us and give us time;
when we had powerful allies; the world was not a bi-polarized
or a tri polarized world; there were a number of great powers
in the world.
But today we live in quite a different world--in a .world
where instantaneous decisions are required of our leaders.
And so, intelligence is more vital--it has always been vital,
it's been overwhelmingly vital--but it is more vital today
than'at,any time that I know of in the past of human history.
So, what is intelligence? Well, intelligence is information
concerning foreign countries, their policies, their armed
forces, their economies, their financial policies, their
research and development, and all the other activities they-
have,that can in some way impact upon us or upon our future.
I would say if one asked me what are the great questions
that lie before American intelligence today, they can be summed
up in about four major items: who will be in control of
the Soviet Union five years from today; what will be their
feelings towardsus ; what will be their general policies towards us and
towards the rest of the world; what is there in Soviet
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research and development today that will be of importance
to us in the years ahead? And the same questions are true
for China. But in addition to the old kinds of intelligence
which were basically military intelligence, we have all
kinds of economic intelligence problems today that impact
upon us to a degree that has not occurred in the past.
There are billions of petrodollars, there are Eurodollars
wandering around the world. What foreign powers do with
those is of enormous impact upon us in the way we live,
in the way we do business and everything else. This has
not been the case before. We must get this information
to those who make decisions in the United States, and we
must get it quickly, because if you don't get intelligence
in timely fashion to those who have to make the decisions,
it isn't intelligence, it's history. And it's not of--any
particular use.
Now intelligence is knowledge and knowledge is power.
People have always thought in the past of intelligence as
being merely a power to make war or a power to threaten
or a power to overawe someone. The world has changed;
intelligence is power in another sense. It is a power
for peace. You ask me how is it a power for peace? Well
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in 1953 I went with General Eisenhower to the conference
in Geneva where he proposed the "open skies" to the Soviet
Union, namely that we could overfly them and they could overfly
us and check whether we were living up to whatever commit-
ments we took to one another. The Soviets rejected this
as a violation of their sovereignty. As a matter of fact,
a rather amusing; incident occurred and this was in Geneva
in the League of Nations Building. General Eisenhower said
he wished that Cod would give him some means of convincing
them of our sincerity. And as he said that,ther?e was a loud
clap of thunder and every light in the building went out.
Well., I think the Soviets are still trying to figure out how
we did it.
But the reason why we need intelligence is quite frankly
related to power. Foreign nations have not hA the capability
against the United States that the Soviet Union has today since
Valley-Forge--?since we became an independent nation. In the
past the United States has always been unreachabl,_e and unbeat-
able. We have another country in the world with a larger
population' than we have, with larger number of arm,; in any field
that you want to examine with the possible exceprrion of
missiles on which there has been an agreement. They have an
'-rbility to reach its which no nation has had in the past.
Today the Soviet [Dion has that power. Tomorrow China will
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have it. And again we have the fact that we need to know
what is going to happen, not just militarily but economically.
Now good intelligence has made it possible for us to make
? certain agreements limiting strategic weapons with the Soviet
Union. But we have been able to make them only because,
through good intelligence., we have the means of verifying
whether they are living up to those agreements or not.
And the'fact that they know we can verify it nudges them
in the direction of not trying to cheat too blatantly, because
they know that we will know if they are cheating in any
considerable degree.
One of the problems with intelligence is: when you have
a failure it is trumpeted all over the world; when you have
a success it is very difficult to talk about because if you
talk about it people will know what you know and how you
know it and if somebody knows that somebody is looking through
the window they are going to pull down the blinds and turn off
the light.
But intelligence is a power for peace. In my experience
on a number of occasions we have brought countries together
that were on.the edge of war. One of them thought the other
was going to attack them. We have been able through good
intelligence to convince Country A that it was not going to be
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attacked by Country B. Through intelligence and liaison
contacts we have been able to bring, sometimes, the heads of
the intelligence services of these countries together. Now
I can't tell you what countries they are or we couldn't do
it again. But we have done this on a number of occasions.
And so intelligence is a power for peace also. We have been
able to reassure people that so and so is not going to jump
you.
Now this is not spectacular and it makes no headlines.
President Kennedy once told us that the fate of intelligence
was to be pilloried for your mistakes, which become well known,
and condemned to have your successes passed over in silence.
And so some of these ideas of bringing out estimates
where we made a wrong guess and we don't have a crystal ball--.
we do our best--gives you a totally one-sided picture of
where-we failed. As a matter of fact, the particular instance
f
they'l-e talking about now in the Middle East, we made the
post-mortem, we were the ones who analyzed the causes of our
failure long before there was any investigation of it. And we
turned that in to the President and the Government--of where
we felt we had failed to interpret some of these things
correctly. So this is held up today as a proof we failed. Well,
when we succeed we don't hold post-mortems so we haven't got
any piece of paper- that can be held up in the same way. And,
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in fact, one of the problems is: if you point up your successes
you know how these successes were achieved and it is easy for
those who look into these matters to see how it was we found
out and we won't be able to do it any more.
Now these nations have these capabilities that can affect
our daily lives in every way. We need scientific and technological
intelligence, not just to defend ourselves but to make sure we
don't fall back of other countries. I don't have to tell you
that every country in the world is keeping a close watch on
American technology. American technology has been'the marvel
of the world--they are all trying to find out how it is that
we do some of the things that we do. And if we fail to do it
in the other direction we will be failing the American people.
We-have the duty not to let our nation fall behind in this
area also.
One of the great questions that is before us is that we
see the Soviet Union, which has developed power in every
field. We see them modernizing their missiles, putting
multiple independent re-entry vehicles on the various missiles
that they have had up to now. We see them deploying four new
types of missiles, third generation missiles. We see them
building larger submarines with more capabilities for launching
missiles. We see them building new modern aircraft with
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capabilities against the United States. We see them adding
tanks to every Soviet motorized rifle division around the
world. We see them improving the training of their forces,
the logistics of. their forces, and the over-all capabilities
of their forces. And this has gone far beyond what they
require for defense or deterrence, which leaves us with the
great question of what do they plan to do with this, how
do they plan to use these forces which they have that are far
beyond what is required for defense. And these will vitally
affect the lives of the American people; these will vitally
affect the decisions that our nation will have to make. Now
we all hope that detente works out and it does result in a
lessening of tensions, but we have to be realists, We have
to live in the real world. They speak.of detente, but we see
this tremendous uninterrupted continuing effort in. every field
of their armed forces and scientific research. We hope for
detente.
But not long ago I was in Europe and a friend of mine in
one of the European intelligence services told me a story about
two young Americans who went to Moscow and they were being taken
.around by a young Soviet. They were taken to various sight-
seeing places and finally he took them to the zoo where he showed
them all these animals and they came to this cage--a very large
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cage--in which there was a very large Russian bear and he
had teeth this long and. claws that long. In the same cage
was a rather worried-looking lamb but he appeared to be in
good shape. One of the young Americans said to the young
Russian, "Why do you put those two in the same cage? It's
1 i
an odd couple to put in the same cage." And the youfi.g
Russian said, "Oh, this is to prove that peaceful coexistence
is possible." The young American said, "Well, I must admit
it's pretty impressive." And his buddy said, "It's quite
convincing." The young Russian looked around and seeing
no one said, "Of course, you understand, every morning we
have to put in a new lamb."
So, we have to make sure that we aren't the lambs or
that we don't run out of lambs.
So we have the problem before us in which we have a
continuing responsibility to our Government of what use will
they make of this. We try to answer. I can't tell you we
have a crystal ball that can tell exactly what they are going
to do. We can't. Sometimes we're wrong; sometimes we're
right. We do our best.
How do we collect this intelligence? Well, we collect
it in a number of ways. First of all we collect it overtly
through the U.S. embassies, through the publications in the
press, through the radio broadcasts put out by the various
broadcasting systems of the various nations, through the
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astonishing if you read these regularly how much you can find
out. If you read the Minsk-Pravda long enough you can find
out who's going to the top of the Byelorussian Republic
long before it happens. So we collect these; we collect them
technologically. I am not going to go into the details of
the technological. system. I am sure most of them are known
to you in a general way. They are immensely sophisticated
systems, immensely expensive systems; but they have put us
in a position where we no longer can have,as we had in the
early Sixties,a debate about a missile gap. That is no
longer possible. Technical intelligence is good enough today
that we can tell within a few missiles what the relationship of power
in this particular area is.
We collect, as I say, technically, and then we collect
with human sources through espionage. Now there is a great
effort to make u:ss believe that this is un-American, that the
Founding Fathers wouldn't have liked it, and everything else.
In 1947, when the Congress created the Central Intelligence
Agency, they kne~tar it. was going to conduct espionage. This
does not come as any great surprise to them. In tact, the charter
tinder which we of;erated says, "...and will do such other
things as the National Security Council may prescribe."
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They didn't want to get into the details of what they wanted
us to do. And frankly when all these investigations are
over I don't think we'll have guidelines that will be much more
precise than that because it is very difficult to establish
guidelines in that sort of thing.
America has traditionally dismantled its intelligence
apparatus after all its wars. This time it was a little
longer because we had the Korean War and the Vietnam War, but
the dismantlers are there now trying to dismantle our
intelligence apparatus. If we go back in time we'find Mr.
Stimson when he was Secretary of State in the early 1.930's.
They brought him an intercepted de-coded message of another
nation and he. was shocked. He said, "Oh, gentlemen don't
read other gentlemen's mail.." Well eight years later as
Secretary of the Army he couldn't get enough "other gentlemen's
mail" to read. And this kind of psychology--not particularly
Mr. Stimson--but this kind of psychology led us to what
happened at Pearl Harbor. After Pearl Harbor when we had
the last great intelligence investigation we found that we had
all the pieces that would have told us what was going to
happen but everybody was squirreling away his own little piece
and not telling anybody else about it. And this is one of the
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reasons that led to the creation of the Central Intelligence
Agency so that there would be a central place where all this
would come together. I'll get back a minute to that
human source collection.
You know, various technologies will get you all sorts
of wonderful things, but they won't tell you what's inside
a man's head. In the particular Middle Eastern war we saw
and knew what the forces were in presence. We did not have
human access into the decision processof "go" or "no-go" and
this is why you need human sources. Sometimes if you get a
human source you can save hundreds of millions of dollars that
would be required to collect the technical intelligence that
you would have to collect by other means if you dcd not have
the human source. The human source is vital in pushing things
in a direction favorable to the interests of the United States.
You don't have to have a spy, you just have to have i e:lat i_on-
s,hip with someone to whom you have explained the United States'
purposes, who is favorably disposed to the United States. And
very often he can move things in a direction favorable to our
interests, favorable to peace, and favorable to tie preservation
of freedom. Now one of the great things that brtleds hostility
is ignorance. People tend to always fear what th~y don't know.
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Not long ago--two years ago, Mr. Brezhnev was here and he was
at the White House and President Nixon introduced Mr. Colby,
our Director, to Mr. Brezhnev. He said, "This is Mr. Colby
who is the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency." And
Brezhnev said, "Is he a dangerous man?" The President said,
"No, he believes in peace." Mr. Colby said to Mr. Brezhnev
a great truth that Mr. Brezhnev did not acknowledge. He said,
" Mr. General Secretary, the more we know about one__ano:her, the safer
we both are." If we know about them and they know about us
and they have a far more developed intelligence service than
we do--I don't know whether they have any better intelligence,
I doubt it--but they have a lot more people working at it.
In fact, they have more people working at neutralizing us than
there are in our whole service.
But we face also another problem which are the new forms
of war. We always think of war in the old sense of divisions
coming across borders and everything else. Two thousand five
hundred years ago a Chinese author by the name of Sun Tzu wrote
a book called The Art of War. This may be 25 centuries old,
but it is as up-to-date as this morning's newspaper. He
describes how you go about undoing your enemies and I would
simply like to read a direct quotation from what he said, and
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if it sounds familiar to you, it sounds familiar to me.
said, "The most consummate art is to subdue your enemies
without having to fight them. The direct method of war is
necessary only on the battlefield; but only the indirect
method will obtain true victory and consolidate i..?' And
now he goes ahead to tell you how you undue your enemies without
having to fight them. "Denigrate everything that is good in
your opponent's country. Involve the leaders in criminal
enterprises and deliver them up to the scorn of their fellow
countrymen. Undermine them in every way you can. Use the
the most vile and. execrable of individuals. Cause trouble
by every means within their government. Spread discord and
quarrels in the opposing nation. Agitate the young against
the old. Destroy all their means,,all of their weapons and
above all the discipline of their armed forces. Cover with
-ridicule their traditions and values. Be generous in your
offers of rewards to obtain information and accotplices.
Put secret'agents everywhere. Never stint on money or promises;
you will reap rich rewards. The supreme excelle.~ice is not
to win. a hundred victories in a hundred battles; the supreme
excellence is to subdue your enemies without hay Lng to fight
them." Now this is the new form of war; this is combined
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with terrorism. We have international terrorism acting
all over the world today on a scale that is similar to
the organization of a nation; and if we are to preserve
ourselves from that terrorism we've got to have intelligence
against that kind of a terrorist movement. Now a.terrorist
.movement does not have a physical area that it operates like
a country. You have to get human sources into it if you
are going to find out what happens.
Now we have people in our country today who would have
us believe that intelligence is shady, un-American, unworthy,
that the Founding Fathers wouldn't have liked it--it's all
very well for those dirty old European countries to do it,
but we fine,.pure Americans can't stoop to this sort of thing.
Well, that is a highly unrealistic and a highly false attitude
in regard to American history. We have people in our,
country today who believe that if we've done some things that
were questionable or done some things that perhaps we should
not have done, that we can be purified through publicity of
them.
I had a head of a European service say to me, "You know, I
don't understand-why allAmericans aren't Catholics." I said,
"What do you mean?" "Well," he said, "it's the only
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religion that affords confession for everybody." And then
he paused and he said, "But I suppose it's the fact that:
it's private that's the drawback." So we have this
psychology that we must confess all of our sins to everybody,
beating our breasts as though we had done these horrible
things,
Well, the United States, I think, can stand on its record.
We've fought two great wars in this century. We defeated our
enemies and I don't think in all human history any victorious
nation ever did for the defeated nations what we did for those
we defeated. We picked them out of the ashes of disaster and
I believe we are the only nation in history ever to finance
its competitors back into competition. So we may have had
some shortcomings here and there, but I think as a nation we
can be proud of our record. And what I say as a nation I say
for the'Central Intelligence Agency.
I can't tell you that in the 50,000 or 60,000 people that
have passed through this agency in the last 25 years that we
haven't had some had apples, that we haven't had some people
who have done things they probably shouldn't have done. What
great corporation with 50,-60,000 people doesn't hav:,a some things go
ran in the corporation that they wouldn't approve of. But
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I would submit that if you take our record and take a town
of 60,- or 70,000 people--or a corresponding number of
people,--we wouldn't look that bad. I think if you submitted
any other agency of the U.S. Government to the kind bf
scrutiny we've been submitted to the last two or three years
that we wouldn't look very bad. I am not saying we haven't
done things that are wrong; we probably have at one time or
another. But they are few and far between and most of them
came to light as a result of our own investigation not as a
result of someone finding them out as against us.
You hear a lot about assassinations. I'm not going to get
into the assassinations business today since the Congressional
report is going to come out shortly. But you have to go back
to the state of mind in which people were. Not long ago we
had some people out to the CIA--perhaps some of the most vocal
against us now--and one of our people said to one of them,
"You know, if anybody could have killed Hitler in '43 or '44,
they would probably have been the first joint recipient of the
Congressional Medal of Honor and the Victoria Cross." And one
of our lawmakers said, "Oh, but if you could have killed him
in '37 or '38 think how many lives you would have saved." We
were at peace with Germany in '37 and 138. And, yet, here
is one of the sanctimonious voices inveighing against us
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telling us what a great thing it would have been if we could
have done it then.
You hear about the drugs--the drug test--I think the
President spoke for all of us when he said what a terrible
thing it was that this man committed suicide after the drugs
had been experimented on him. But I think you have to go
back to the environment of that time. This was the end of
the Korean War. For the first time in American history we
saw American soldiers not only refusing to come home, but
denouncing their own country. More frightening still, we
saw people like Cardinal Mindzenty who had resisted every torture,
every imprisonment and every pressure of the Nazis, who had
resisted the worse the Nazis could do,.coming before us haggard,
hollow-eyed to confess everything his Communist captors wanted
him to confess. The American people by and large believed that
this as being done with mind-bending drugs that could be used
against our diplc:aats, or against our armed forces, that we.
should look into ;:his, that we should find out how they were
used or what could be done about them. And this research was
not confined to the CIA or the armed forces. Many of the
important institutions of learning in the United States--
h e National Institutes of Health and others were engaged in
this research. I am not telling you that it was right that
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the drugs were experimented on the man, but I am just putting
the thing a little bit in the context of the time. Now, today
we have all this story about toxins that have been discovered.
Well, first of all, the toxins have been there for 25 years
and nobody knew about it--we found them ourselves without
anybody pushing us to find them, by the simple process of
going over our own place and we found these things and we
reported them to the Congress. They didn't discover them;
we found them. They had been stored there for years. Well,
perhaps these were not approved, but the other side had been
using these things to kill people in Germany and elsewhere.
Again there was the question of knowing what the capabilities
were, how you could counter them and what you could have to
retaliate if they were used on you. And this was the source
and stimulation of that particular research. So, at that time
the idea was to have a capability.
The thing happened so long ago that a whole generation
of people grew up who did not know that these things were there.
We did not know until very carefully we went over our own place;
we found them, and when we found them we duly reported them.
Of course, one of the facts that you don't get is that
they haven't been used.
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The United States had committed itself, prior to World
War II, not to use poison gas. But the United States during
World War II had large stores of poison gas in case the use of
it was forced upon us.
We feel that these investigations can be healthy providing
they are conducted in a responsible and positive fashion;
providing they are not used as TV theatricals, or to advance
anybody's personal ambitions. We are perfectly willing to be
responsive to whatever guidance the Congress gives us in this
area. We just hope that whatever guidelines they give us
contain some mechanism for change, because the perception of
the American people, what they are willing to accept, changes
with the passage of time.
In 1935 you could have run a segregated school; in 1975
you can't. In 1925, if you tried to run anything but a
segregated school. you would have been in serious, trouble.
So, we are pefect.ly willing--we understand that we must operate
within the standards approved by the American people and we
are perfectly willing to do so. But we just hope that as the
perception of thy. American people changes, that these guidelines
will provide for some means of changing.
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Now, right now, we are being attacked and pilloried
for our alleged sins of commission. What concerns me is
that in 1990 one of Mr. Colby's successors may be before
an investigator who will be saying to him, "You meaA,you
didn't do this? You mean you weren't watching that?. You
mean you failed to keep track of this?" So one has to take
a somewhat longer view of many of these things.
But we have today a deliberate attempt to blind our own
country, to convince us that we are wrong. If they want to
correct us this is easy to do. Most nations have investigations
into their intelligence services, but they don't do it, so to
speak, in a goldfish bowl.. They appoint a committee that goes
about the job quietly and without making a television theatrical
or a grand national spectacle out of it.
You know, a foreigner once said to me, "I used to think
the Flagellantes and Penitentes were two small sects in Ari