INTERVIEW WITH FBI DIRECTOR WEBSTER

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01070R000301520004-5
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 6
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 14, 2010
• Sequence Number: 4
• Publication Date: January 2, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

? Approved For Release 2010/01/14 :CIA-RDP88-010708000301520004-5
r
RADIO N REPORTS, ~N~.
4701 WILLARD AVENUE, CHEVY CHASE, MARYLAND 20815 [phone]
rOR PUBLIC AFFAIRS STAFF
PROGRAM C B S N i g h t w a t c h
DATE January 2, 1985 2:00 A.M.
STATION WDVM-TV
CBS Network
SuB,IECT Interview with FBI Director Webster
Washington, D.C.
ATTORNEY GENERAL WILLIAM FRENCH SMITH: When you
consider that the FBI has thousands of employees, that every now
and then a rotten apple is bound to show up.
DIRECTOR WILLIAM WEBSTER: It's a very sad day for us.
It's really only news because it has happened, to our knowledge,
only this time.
FRED GRAHAM: We're back talking with FBI Director
William Webster, now about spies.
And that little clip that we just saw was the occasion
of the indictment of an FBI agent, Richard Miller, on charges.
And I'm not going to get into that right now. And, of course, we
won't specifically because he hasn't been brought to trial. And,
of course, you wouldn't want to comment specifically about that.
But generally speaking, I can't remember a time when
there have been so many spies caught recently and so many pending
cases. Now, are there just a lot more spies, or are you catching
mor of them, or is it both?
WEBSTER: Well, I think it's both. And like you, we
can't remember a time. We've researched it. We're covinced that
there have been more espionage cases brought this year than at
any time in our history. And that includes the war years.
GRAHAM: Now, do you have any estimates about how many
spies, how many Soviet agents you think there are?
WEBSTER: Well, some of those figures are classified,
Fred, and I don't want to go too much...
Materialsupplie Approved For Release 2010/01/14 :CIA-RDP88-010708000301520004-5 ~OfeXn~bired.
 Approved For Release 2010/01/14 :CIA-RDP88-010708000301520004-5
GRAHAM: But you...
WEBSTER: You can do it this way: About one-third of
all the Soviet diplomatic establishment has had intelligence
training. And approximately the same percentage applies to the
Soviet Bloc countries who are present. There is a higher Soviet
and Soviet Bloc presence in this country than at any previous
time.
GRAHAM: And that's how many people?
WEBSTER: Well, I think we'd be safe if we lumped it in.
We're talking between two and three thousand who've had intel-
ligence training. Now, that doesn't mean that they're a hundred
percent engaged in espionage. It means that they are trained,
interested in, and occasionally and specifically tasked to try to
acquire different types of information, some of it legally, and a
good deal of it illegally, that we're trying trying to protect.
GRAHAM: Now, recently one of these cases that you were
just talking about involved Northrop Corporation employee who is
accused of trying to sell to the Russians Stealth technology, the
Stealth airplane.
WEBSTER: That's right.
GRAHAM: And we are told that the way this person was
apprehended was that he went to the Soviets, some Soviet esta-
blishment; and your sort of routine surveillance picked this
fellow up and nailed him when he was trying to contact the
Soviets. Now, it must take an enormous number of people to keep
that kind of surveillance.
WEBSTER: It requires more people than we have, and
we're likely to have, to keep track of every known Soviet, Soviet
Bloc intelligence officer 24 hours a day. We can't do it. I
don't want to get into the numbers that it requires to keep track
of just one intelligence officer 24 hours a day.
So, we have to do it selectively, we have to do it
intelligently, and we have to do it utilizing what we know about
particular activities. Those are things that, unfortunately, we
can't really discuss in detail.
GRAHAM: Well, let me ask you something that you can
discuss, I think. When I was a younger person, the Americans who
became traitors, if you will, did it for ideological reasons.
They were Communists, Marxists.
WEBSTER: Right.
Approved For Release 2010/01/14 :CIA-RDP88-010708000301520004-5
 Approved For Release 2010/01/14 :CIA-RDP88-010708000301520004-5
GRAHAM: But the people you're nailing now just want
money. They're selling.
WEBSTER: Money.
GRAHAM: What's happening?
WEBSTER: Well, I'm not a psychologist. I can't answer
that. I wish I knew the answer to that question. And in a way,
I suppose, from the standpoint of the security of the country,
the well-being of the country, I'd rather have it this way than
the other way, to have people who -- enough people who really
felt we had the wrong system.
Here, we have a problem of greed, a problem of not
thinking about the damage they're doing the country. This can be
addressed in other ways: an alertness by the companies them-
selves.
GRAHAM: But it seems to me that in your background
checks, where you used to find out if they were in left-wing
organizations when they were in college -- what do you look for
now?
WEBSTER: Well, we look for the same things. But we're
not checking these people. They're being checked by other
agencies who give clearances for access to classified informa-
tion.
You're right, money is the main reason. Occasionally
they'll say revenge, they'll find other reasons, dissatisfaction
with their employer.
GRAHAM: It's kind of a sad commentary on our society,
isn't it, though, that people are betraying it for money rather
than some ideological persuasion?
WEBSTER: Well, Fred, we have a lot of people in prison.
We have more people in prison now than at any time in our
history. It's a form of crime, and I think it's an absence of
perspective. The enormous amount of damage, it just doesn't seem
to be realized by the people who are selling it. Or if they
realize, they don't care.
GRAHAM: Sometimes the prices they ask are so paltry
compared to...
WEBSTER: That's right. That's right.
GRAHAM: Re Richard Miller. Now, there has been an
allegation there that he was doing things he shouldn't have been
Approved For Release 2010/01/14 :CIA-RDP88-010708000301520004-5
 Approved For Release 2010/01/14 :CIA-RDP88-010708000301520004-5
doing. There were allegations about him selling Amway products
out of the back of his car. And the question is, was the FBI
vigilant enough? And particularly because he was a Mormon, I
have to ask that, because it's been said -- there was the Mormon
Mafia, they say. His boss and some of the other higher-ups in
that Los Angeles office were Mormons. Did you -- were you a
little lax on this one?
WEBSTER: I don't think so. No, I don't think -- as far
as loyalty, absolutely not. And that case is still coming to
trial, so we can't really talk about it. But I've had inspectors
in place going through all of this. I've reviewed all the
reports.
The Amway story seems to be out of whole cloth. There
is no evidence of any kind
attention of our inspectors
that's come to my
that he did any of t
attention or
hose things.
the
He
was an agent who had an overweight
problem. He was
disciplined
for it. I think that that sense
of lack of pro-
fessionalism
that was spreading about him was
a cause of great
concern to
me and to others, because we like
to think of our-
selves as tough, disciplined and professional.
But when you talk about loyalty, you're having to ask
yourself what's in a man's mind. And it's very difficult to
sense that a particular person is about to betray his country.
GRAHAM: Thank you very much .
GRAHAM: We're talking with FBI Director WilliamWebster
about spies.
One of your recent spy cases involved the arrest of a
man and h.is wife who are alleged to be Czech spies, from Czecho-
slovakia. But the man was indicted. His wife was not indicted.
She was named as an unindicted co-conspirator. And yet the
allegation seems to be that she was in it up to her neck. And
it's been suggested that the FBI counterintelligence agents
fumbled that one, that they are essentially trained to catch
spies, and not make cases. Is that what happened there, that
they didn't -- when she asked for a lawyer, they didn't give it
to her right away, and therefore you don't have a clean case
against her?
WEBSTER: More and more of these cases are coming to
prosecution. And in the past, I think there have been instances
where the primary objective was to gather intelligence. But
these agents are trained. They're given the same legal training,
Approved For Release 2010/01/14 :CIA-RDP88-010708000301520004-5
 Approved For Release 2010/01/14 :CIA-RDP88-010708000301520004-5
the same awareness of constitutional requirements as any other
special agent.
GRAHAM: But they didn't they -- they fouled this one
up, didn't they?
WEBSTER: Oh, I think it's premature to say that. The
Department of Justice has not made a final conclusion on the
other. And keep in mind, Fred, that when...
GRAHAM: You mean they still might indict here? You're
saying that her case is not necessarily tainted.
And keep in mind that what we confront in a criminal
trial is something far different than finding out answers to
things. We have to prove things beyond a reasonable doubt. We
have to carry a very heavy burden, including issues that abide
throughout the trial, as to the manner in which the questions
were given.
But I am satisfied, from my knowledge of this case, that
nobody's constitutional rights were -- nobody was impermissibly
held up by their heels, or any of that sort of thing.
GRAHAM: Well, there's no allegation of that. But not
giving her a lawyer is a different thing.
Terrorism. It's remarkable that the year you became
Director of the FBI there were a hundred acts of terrorism. This
year there's something like 13. How'd you do that?
WEBSTER: Well, I don't think I did it.
GRAHAM: Well, how did the FBI do it? I mean.
WEBSTER': I think the FBI did it with the help of a lot
of people in state, federal and local law enforcement concerned
about the issues. Going back over the period, I think one of the
things we did was we, without making a major rush to resume
senseless domestic security investigations into organizations
based entirely upon what they were saying or advocating, we
focused on those who were engaging in acts of violence or
planning acts of violence, and developed a substantial intelli-
gence analytical base, computerized; trained our agents to
recognize and correlate other acts of violence, such as bank
robberies, which were associated with raising money for terrorist
activities; began to understand the purposes and goals. We have
enhanced electronic techniques for court-authorized wiretaps,
closed-circuit video tapes. And within a relatively small budget
Approved For Release 2010/01/14 :CIA-RDP88-010708000301520004-5
 - ~ Approved For Release 2010/01/14 :CIA-RDP88-010708000301520004-5
-- there has not been a very substantial increase in the amount
of funds expended -- we've been able to make criminal cases.
Now, this year alone, I think there's some nine terror-
ist incidents that were averted, prevented because we got there
first. That, of course, is the ultimate goal, to get there
before the bomb goes off. Almost impossible to do, and yet we've
done it in major cases.
GRAHAM: It sounds like you have a lot of these organi-
zations subverted.
WEBSTER: Well, I don't...
WEBSTER: I don't want to describe exactly all that
we've done, because that makes it impossible for us to keep up
the work. But we have used lawful techniques to get on a handle
on where they're going and what their plans are, and we've used
that to stop it and to make criminal cases. We've also put many
of them in jail who were responsible for multiple cases.
GRAHAM: We just have about a minute here. But there
has been some political pressure, particularly from Senator
Jeremiah Denton, that the FBI should change its guidelines so
that it could surveil groups that were not really involved in
terrorist activities because they might become involved. And
you've resisted that.
Now, would you say now that the proof of the pudding is
in the eating, and that, as a matter of fact, you've shown that
without doing that sort of thing, you can take care of terrorist
groups?
WEBSTER: Well, I think the...
GRAHAM: I'm sorry I asked you that tough question.
We're going to have to go back and get the answer later.
Approved For Release 2010/01/14 :CIA-RDP88-010708000301520004-5