LETTER TO DR. RICHARD M. CYERT FROM STANSFIELD TURNER

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP86B00985R000300170052-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 9, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 14, 2001
• Sequence Number: 52
• Publication Date: September 5, 1978
• Content Type: LETTER

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5 SEP 1978
Dear President Cyert:
Since its inception, the Central Intelligence Agency has sought to
maintain effective relationships with scholars and academic institutions
throughout the United States. These relationships have been of inesti-
mable value to the intelligence community and ultimately, to the foreign
policymakers it serves.
In the wake of considerable public criticism over the last several
years, however, the Agency has had difficulty in maintaining these open
and mutually beneficial relationships. I would like to ask your help and
advice in determining how best to restore a useful but proper connection
between academia and the world of intelligence.
Clearly there are limits beyond which we in the intelligence
profession should not go in dealing with members of the academic
cormunit.y. I do have very express rules with respect to that today,
but how we are operating within these rules is not always clear to
others. Today there are also many new opportunities to use unclassified
information derived through the collection of intelligence for the
benefit of academic research. I do not believe that we have the proper
mechanism today to ensure the adequate provisions of such information
to academic institutions.
Accordingly, I would like to ask you to join with me and several
other university presidents and leaders of the American academic
community for a day here at the Central Intelligence Agency. The
objective would be to have a free-flowing exchange of ideas on how to
reestablish the academic--intelligence relationship on a sound and proper
basis for mutual advantage. This will he a quiet, private meeting of
perhaps six of us, during which we will take the opportunity of asking
you to visit our CIA facilities and to meet with a variety of Agency
officers representing diverse interests and disciplines. My hope would
be that in your spending a day with us, our relationship might improve
to our mutual benefit, taking into full account the problems of the past
and the attitudes of the present.
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 Approved For IWkease 2001/08/22 : CIA-RDP86B00985 50300170052-5
I have asked of my Academic Relations
staff to be in touc wit you uirec y o arrange a date in October
that will be convenient. They will be available to discuss my
invitation 'further with you, and to make arrangements, if as I hope,
you will be able to accept.
Yours sincerely,
h-o/
STANSFIELD TURNER
Dr. Richard M. Cyert, President
Carnegie-Mellon University
5000 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213
Approved For Release 2001/08/22 : CIA-RDP86B00985R000300170052-5