LETTER TO DR. CLIFTON R. WHARTON CHANCELLOR STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK FROM STANSFIELD TURNER

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP86B00985R000400010053-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 9, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 12, 2000
• Sequence Number: 53
• Publication Date: December 20, 1978
• Content Type: LETTER

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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
community. 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
university presidents and leaders of the American academic community on
15 February 1979 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 be a quiet, private meeting of ten
or perhaps twelve 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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STATINTL
I would be most grateful if you could take the time to do this. I
have asked of my Academic Relations Staff to 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,
STANSFIELD TURNER
Dr. Clifton R. Wharton, Jr.
Chancellor
State University of New York
1400 Washington Avenue
Albany, New York 12222
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