STATEMENT BY WILLIAM H. COLBY BEFORE THE SENATE GOVERNMENT OPERATIONS COMMITTEE ON 23 JANUARY 1976

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00735R000200140002-8
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 12
• Document Creation Date: December 9, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 10, 2001
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: January 23, 1976
• Content Type: TRANS

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Statement by William E. Colby before the Senate Government Operations
committee on 23 January 1976
Mr. Chairman:
Thank you for this opportunity to discuss congressional oversight
of our intelligence activities. Despite all the excitement in recent months
over CIA and other intelligence activities, this is one of the most critical
issues which must be faced in any serious investigation into our Government's
intelligence activities.
Traditionally, intelligence is assumed to operate in total secrecy and
outside the law. This is impossible under our Constitution and in our society.
As a result, when CIA was established in 1947,. a compromise was made under
which broad, general statutes were drawn, and carefully limited arrangements
for congressional review were developed. It was then believed necessary
to sacrifice oversight in the interest of secrecy.
Our society has changed, however, and a greater degree of ovcrsight
is now considered necessary. U.S. intelligence has already moved out of
the atmosphere of total secrecy which previously characterized _it. We who
are in intelligence are well aware of the need to retain public confidence
and congressional support if we are to continue to make our contribution
to the safety of our country.
Thus, from the earliest days of the current investigations, I have
stressed my hope that they will develop better guidelines for our operations
and stronger oversight, to ensure that our activities do remain within the
Constitution and the laws of our country.
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But I have not swung all the way to the other extreme of the pendulum--
to the position that there can be no secrecy. General Washington once said,
"Upon secrecy, success depends in most enterprises of [intelligence] ." We
have many secrets in America which are necessary to the functioning of our
democracy--the ballot box, the grand jury, and our attorney-client relation-
ships. The secrecy of our sources of intelligence is equally important to the
preservation of our democracy, and even of our nation in the turbulent world
in which we live.
In 1947 we took a small step away from total secrecy by enacting general
statutes and constructing careful oversight arrangements in the Congress.
Proposals now under consideration would alter these arrangements to assure
more detailed oversight. But it is essential that the pendulum not swing so
far as to destroy the necessary secrecy of intelligence, or destroy intelligence
itself in the process._
In former comments on this subject, I many times said that it was up
to Congress to organize itself to exercise the necessary oversight of our
intelligence activities. This is still true, but I believe that recent experience
permits me to draw some conclusions on this topic which this Committee has
graciously invited.
The matter has been extensively studied within the Administration
during the past year, as President Ford shares many of the concerns of the
Congress on this subject. The Rockefeller Commission, the murphy Commission,
our discussions with the Select Committees and other committees reflect this
interest. A number of detailed studies were also made within the Executive
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Branch, reaching the level of two extended meetings President Ford had with
National Security Council members.
The views of the Administration are not yet formally fixed, so the
comments I will make will be personal and based on my experience. My
participation in the studies above, however, assures me that my views are in
general compatible with the thrust of what President Ford will probably
decide, although there may be some variation in the details.
Too great a stress on secrecy has led to situations in which members
of Congress who were fully briefed on intelligence activities pleaded later
that they had never heard of them when they came to public attention. One
of the chairmen of our committees once indicated on the floor of the Senate
that he had no inkling of one of our operations, although he had approved the
specific appropriations necessary to continue it. His statement certainly kept
the secrecy of his participation in our operation, but at the sacrifice of
implying that our intelligence activities were operating without oversight
and control. Indeed he added to public concern that we constituted some
independent "invisible government. "
On a number of occasions, especially since 1956, proposals have been
made to establish a joint committee on intelligence, but the Congress has
never seen fit to adopt them. During this past year jurisdictional problems
have been highlighted in the Congress as a result of two things:
First, foreign intelligence today is not primarily limited to military
intelligence, as it may have been in earlier years. It also is now of interest
to those committees concerned with our economy, our foreign relations, our
agriculture, space and a wide variety of other activities. As a result, we have
had a proliferation of demands for congressional review of sensitive foreign
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intelligence matters in these fields by other committees to the degree that
59 Senators and 149 Representatives have been briefed on some aspect of our
activities this past year alone.
Second, during 1974, there was much congressional interest in our
covert action activities, sparked by exposure of testimony I gave to one of our
oversight committees on the subject. Both the House and the Senate, by
3 to 1 majorities, turned down proposals that CIA be barred from such activities.
But in December 1974, a provision was added to the Foreign Assistance Act
which required that any CIA activity abroad other than intelligence gathering
could only be conducted if it were found by the President to be important
to the national security and reported "in a timely fashion" to the appropriate
committees of the Congress. Together with the two Select Committees, these
"appropriate committees" now number eight.
I might quote, Mr. Chairman, from the conference report which led
to the adoption of that new act, and it says that "The Committee of Conference
agrees that strict measures should be taken to ensure maximum security of
the information submitted to the Congress pursuant to this provision. "
The Executive Branch is fully complying with that provision of the law.
The President made the appropriate findings, and briefings were given to
the committees according to whatever arrangements the committees made.
It was stressed and understood on all sides that these matters were sensitive,
secret operations whose exposure would cause political damage to our foreign
policy as well as frustration to the operations concerned. The result of the
year's experience, in my mind, is clear. The system won't work. Every
one of the new projects that were subjected to this process has leaked into
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- the public domain. I am prepared to argue the value of each of these projects,
but that is not my current point. The fact is that a secret operation conducted
precisely according to the procedure set up by the Congress cannot be kept
secret. I believe it essential to repeal that procedure and replace it by
another which will include provisions for adequate secrecy.
In this Bicentennial year, it is appropriate to note an earlier American
experience with this problem. On November 9, 1775, the Continental Congress
adopted a "resolution of secrecy" under which any member who disclosed a
matter which the majority had determined should be kept secret was to be
expelled "and deemed an enemy to the liberties of America." On November 29,
1775, the Congress established the Committee on Secret Correspondence and
gave it foreign intelligence responsibilities, managing a network of secret
agents in Europe. This Committee took steps to protect the secrecy of its
intelligence activities by sharply restricting access to operational matters.
On one occasion, the Committee justified the secrecy of its information as follows:
"Considering the nature and importance of it, we
agree ... that it is our indispensable duty to keep it secret,
even from Congress ... We find, by fatal experience, that
Congress consists of too many members to keep secrets. "
Mr. Chairman, at that time there were 56 representatives in the Congress,
compared to the 208 that I reported briefing during 1975.
If the Congress should decide to adopt new oversight arrangements, I
believe it should establish a representative group to oversee intelligence
activities on Congress' behalf. This representative group could be a joint
committee or other arrangement. In any event a representative group should
consist of a restricted number of members so that we do not involve the large
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The representative character of such an oversight body must be respected
by us in the Intelligence Community, so that we can make available the informa-
tion it needs to do its job.
At the same time, arrangements can and should be developed between
such a representative body and the Intelligence Community by which reasonable
limits are established as to the matters made available even to it. In my
present post as Director of Central Intelligence, I do not insist, for example,
upon knowing the name of a foreign agent in some dangerous situation. It
is not necessary to my duties that I know his specific identity. It is essential
that we be able to assure our foreign agents abroad, a number of whom have
already expressed their alarm and limited what they tell us, that their names
will be totally protected, since their lives or livelihoods are at peril. I would
expect that a responsible representative committee of Congress would similarly
not request such specific identification, as our current oversight and Select
Committees have not requested such sensitive information. Understandings
of this nature between a responsible oversight body and the Intelligence
Community would be more productive than adversary debates over either
branch's "right" to have or to withhold such information.
A responsible oversight body must not discourage the Intelligence
Community from conducting its own investigations and correcting its activities.
A great portion of this past year's investigations has consisted only of public
repetition of the private reviews by the Intelligence Community of its own
activities. Since the full story of American intelligence remains secret,
the impression is left with our public that what was revealed is characteristic
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of the whole. -The experience has done little to encourage objective and hard-
hitting self-examination in the future. CIA's collation of a list of some question-
able activities in the domestic field was used as the basis for sensational charges
of a massive illegal domestic intelligence operation. In truth, our misdeeds
were few and far between, as the final Rockefeller Commission report reveals.
CIA's investigations into possible assassination activity, which led to specific
directives in 1972 and 1973 against such activity, have been the basis for
sweeping allegations that assassinations are part of our function. We never
assassinated anyone, as the Senate report on intelligence reveals. And our
own post-mortems of our performance in various intelligence situations have
been selectively exposed to give a totally erroneous impression of continued
failures of American intelligence. In fact, we have the best intelligence
in the world. But we cannot keep it that way if every one of its corrective
efforts is trumpeted to its enemies.
In the consideration of any or altered oversight arrangements, the
Congress should, I believe, deal with the problem of proliferation of congres-
sional review of intelligence activities. I strongly urge that oversight be
concentrated exclusively=in the minimum number of committees necessary to
effectively conduct it, which to me means one. Otherwise we are in danger of
reverting to the situation of reporting to a myriad of committees and exposing
parts of our activities in all directions. It should be possible to concentrate
congressional oversight, perhaps arranging that the oversight committee
have representation from the other standing committees with interest in this
subject.
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The issue of giving prior notice to Congress of sensitive intelligence
operations has been raised, Mr. Chairman. I believe this is a thoroughly
false issue. The present statute calls for the appropriate committees to be
informed "in a timely fashion" with respect to activities abroad other than
intelligence gathering. Our regular oversight committees are kept currently
O
informed of major developments, and each year they review our appropriation
requests in great detail.
A requirement of prior notice before any intelligence activity could be
undertaken would, in my view, conflict with the President's constitutional
rights, would be totally impractical during times of congressional recess
when crises can arise, and would add nothing to the ability of the Congress
to express its views about any of our activities. We currently inform the
Congress on any decision immediately, although the actual hearing may be
delayed by the committee in question for several weeks. Almost none of
our activities are single-step operations which take place on only one occasion.
An intelligence or covert action operation is generally a continuing effort
running over some time. Informed of such an activity, a committee has
every ability to express the concern of its individual members, to vote in
committee its opinion with respect to the activity, to appeal to the congressional
leadership, and even to seek an appointment with the President himself. The
committee also retains the ultimate legislative or appropriation sanction, if its
views are not given due weight.
The unilateral exposure of an operation to public notice is not the
solution. In essence, the theory adopted by some is that the right to expose
such operations constitutes a super-constitutional individual veto of any
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secret activity. We cannot run such secret operations, Mr. Chairman, if
Congressmen confirm to inquiring newsmen operating on a *lead that indeed
they were given a secret briefing on a covert operation in a certain country,
instead of refusing to comment. Neither can we run secret operations if
individual Congressmen announce that there are three other operations which
have not yet been disclosed, thereby stimulating every investigative reporter
in Washington to determine the specifics thereof by some hypothetical questions.
And we cannot conduct covert operations if a committee puts out a report
which refers to an activity which leaves out the name of the country or individual
concerned, but gives enough evidence for any amateur sleuth to identify it
beyond a shadow of a doubt in time for its identification to be carried with
the news story of the report.
An essential element of new congressional oversight arrangements is
better procedures for protecting sensitive information. Senate Rule 36 (3)
and (5) states that confidential communications from the President or head of any
department are to be kept secret unless the Senate votes. But the Senate, on
November 20th last year, failed to vote on the release by the Select Committee of
information which the President specifically requested be kept secret and in the
face of my request that certain names of CIA personnel therein be deleted. In the
House of Representatives, Rule XI. 2. (e) (2) provides that the records of any
committee are open to any member, which on at least one occasion has led to
the exposure of certain CIA operations despite the written promise of a Member
to keep them secret.
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The arrangements for Congress to receive and protect sensitive information
are most imperfect. A prior security clearance of staff members and termination
of employment for disclosure are hardly adequate sanctions to ensure the
protection of sensitive intelligence sources which can produce substantial
royalties for its disclosure. The extensive briefings and indoctrination and
the secrecy agreements employed in the Executive Branch have even proved
inadequate in the state of our present legislation. With respect to staff
members, therefore, I believe it essential that a regular procedure of security
protection be established. This must be enforceable not only by indoctrination
and discipline but also by sanctions.' These are contained in legislation which I
have proposed and which is about to be recommended in the Executive Branch
to cover those who voluntarily undertake the obligation of secrecy as an aspect
of their employment. This proposal would apply equally to Executive branch
employees and congressional staff members who obtain privileged access to our
intelligence secrets. With respect to Members of Congress themselves, we
must, of course, look to the self-discipline of the two Houses with respect
to their membership.
Mr. Chairman, we also need a procedure to determine the declassification
and public release of those secrets that no longer need to be protected. This
cannot be left to the individual staff member in the Executive or the Legislative
Branch. Under the Constitution, it cannot be assumed by the Legislative
Branch alone and any such contention would inevitably restrict the flow of
sensitive information from the Executive. This could consist of an agreement
that if the committee decides on release, the President has reasonable opportunity
to certify that the release would be detrimental to the national security, and
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his determination then would govern in the absence of further resolution of
the constitutional questions involved. And this must apply to any release of
the information, so as not to lead to an absurd situation in which a committee
agrees not to release individual reports of secret activities but then proposes
to publish them in its final report.
In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, I believe that congressional oversight
of our intelligence activities can be strengthened. The degree of oversight
can be increased relative to that in the years in which there was a general
consensus that these matters were better not known by outsiders. The structure
can be improved by focusing responsibility so that a depth of knowledge and
expertise about our intelligence operations can be developed. The structure
can also be improved by clear assignment of responsibility for exclusive
supervision of our intelligence activities to a limited number of members of
the Congress, representing the Congress as a whole, who would have full
access to all information appropriate to exercise their responsibilities. And
congressional oversight can be improved by making arrangements with Congress
to protect the sensitive intelligence activities of our Government in the same way
as we protect other secrets essential to the survival of American democracy.
Executive Branch supervision can also be improved by ensuring the discipline
of those in the intelligence profession and of their supervisors as to their
respect for these important national secrets, and by giving us the ability to
enforce such protection against those who would wantonly destroy them. These
improvements, Mr. Chairman, in supervision of our intelligence activities
would have truly more long-lasting value as a result of this year of investigation
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than any other single action taken by the Congress. They would be a fitting
conclusion to this year of investigation of intelligence--so that our intelligence
service will be responsible to our Constitution, its legislative oversight will
be equally responsible, and we will continue to have the best intelligence
in the world.
It will give, Mr. Chairman, a new meaning to the initials CIA, Constitutional
Intelligence for America, with equal stress on the needs of all three: the
Constitution, intelligence, and especially America:..
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