REFLECTIONS ON ANNIVERSARIES, DETENTE AND DISINFORMATION

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00806R000200810001-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 25, 2010
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: June 1, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/25: CIA-RDP90-00806R000200810001-9
ARTICLE AP ER A ABA LAW AND NATIONAL SECURITY INTELLIGE CE REPORT
ON PA June 1985
Reflections on nniversaries, Detente,
And Disinformation
By Frank R. Barnett
Editor's Note.- There is a strong historical bond be-
tween the National Strategy Information Center, of
which Mr. Barnett is president, and the ABA Standing
Committee on Law and National Security. Frank
Barnett, whose speech on April 30 to the committee's
final breakfast session of the 1985 spring series is repro-
duced below, has been educational consultant to the
committee since its inception. The two groups have con-
ducted educational efforts in close cooperation, and as
John Norton Moore, chairman of the committee, has
indicated, they will continue to do so.
Mr. Barnett was introduced by William J. Casey,
director of central intelligence, whose remarks are also
reproduced below.
Mr. Casey. Frank Barnett is an educator, a founda-
tion executive, a specialist in Soviet strategy, in European
theater politics, and in defense innovation, an author
and lecturer, and consultant on national security affairs.
Frank and I go back a long way. He was discovered
on the banks of the Wabash, teaching literature at
Wabash College. He had worked with the army in Ber-
lin, and had come to know the Russians as have few
Americans, either now or then. He wanted more action,
and turned up in New York. At that time, some of us
were trying to set up an organization called the Ameri-
can Friends of Russian Freedom. We wanted to help
those Russians whom the Soviet regime sought to re-
patriate. There was good reason to believe that their
fate, if repatriated, would be execution or the concen-
tration camps of the gulag archipelago. We persuaded
Frank to become the executive director of that organiza-
tion, and he carried on that work nobly for several years.
Since that time, he has done a great many things. I
think the most notable is the creation and the develop-
ment of the National Strategy Information Center. I
credit him with being an extremely effective director of
that organization. I have always taken particular pride
in watching the organization take shape under his direc-
tion, and in watching the many things that Frank Barnett
has done to contribute to our national security. Let me
cite just one example. It was Frank Barnett and his team
who were responsible for the fact that there are now na-
tional security courses offered on 500 college campuses
in the United States. I recall that when this program
started, the ROTC was being driven off the campuses.
Frank and his colleagues had the concept of enriching
the curricula of the ROTC, and they developed this into
formal programs of national security studies. At that
time, there were probably not half a dozen professors of
national security in the United States. I recall asking at a
NATO meeting in 1970 how many such programs there
were in Europe. Not surprisingly, the answer was that
there were only a handful. Since that time, thanks in
large measure to Frank's considerable influence in
Europe, a number of similar programs have been estab-
lished.
Frank and I have had a few escapades together. There
was a time when we were supporting Robert A. Taft for
the Republican nomination in Chicago, and our oppon-
ents campaigned on the slogan that Taft couldn't win.
This was, I think, the first covert action of a foundation
called the Liberty Fund. We had Pierre Goodrich and a
few others-I think Frank was the key person among
them-who produced a full-page news memorandum
which said, "Ike can't win." It was very persuasively
done and we almost convinced him!
The work that Frank has done for some 20 years has
made an important contribution to the development of
our military defenses and to the ongoing modernization
of our defense establishment. But, the enemy has learned
how to get inside our defenses, how to manipulate our
public opinion, how to manipulate our political process,
and how to conduct a propaganda campaign using the
techniques of semantics and various kinds of psycho-
logical skills. This is something we have to learn to cope
with. Out at Langley we are holding a two-day seminar
on this question: the manipulation of public opinion by
our adversaries. This is a subject that I think Frank
could well add to his repertoire.
And with that, I'll introduce Frank. It's a real pleasure
to be here today.
Mr. Barnett. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm very grateful
to Bill Casey, not only for that generous introduction,
but for serving as a founding director of NSIC, and
even more for being a friend and tutor for over three
decades.
While I have the chance, I want to add something:
Bill, I have the absolute conviction that if General
"Wild Bill" Donovan were with us today, he would be
just as happy as the rest of your friends that his shoes
fit you so comfortably. And I also would take this
opportunity to refute the rumor that General Donovan
used to call you "The Mumbling Pimpernel."
I owe other debts of gratitude to a number of men in
this room. The ABA Committee on Law and National
Security has been my regiment for nearly 25 years. In
fact, NSIC owes its genesis to the prompting and sup-
port of former and present members of this committee
-like Lewis Powell, Morry Leibman, Bill Mott, Jack
Marsh, and John Norton Moore-to all of whom I pay
deep tribute and thanks.
If NSIC has had some small success in implanting
courses on national security policy in universities both
here and in Europe, it's partly because we've tried to
emulate the modus operandi of this committee. That
"m.o.," as I see it, is to build consensus on unimpeach-
able research;_avoid "hardening of the categories" in
.CC v_77 7TJrj
STAT
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/25: CIA-RDP90-00806R000200810001-9