BABY OUT WITH BATH?

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-01208R000100070102-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 22, 2011
• Sequence Number: 102
• Publication Date: February 21, 1975
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/02/22 : CIA-RDP90-01208R000100070102-3
WASHINGTON STAR NIBS
21 FEB 1975
. There is apprehension and misappre- what its responsible creator, Allen
hension about the forthcoming investi- Dulles, once called "the craft of
gations of the CIA and the FBI that intelligence."
need a little cleaning up. What is really at issue here and in
The, apprehension is that the baby numerous other examples is the basic
will be thrown out with the bath water, democratic doctrine of Lord Acton:
the good we get from both agencies be. "Power tends to corrupt; absolute
limited, even ended, by efforts to inves- power corrupts absblutely." The cor-
tigate the bad. .. ruption wrought by power on the wield-
The misapprehension is that somehow ers of power is not the kind that guides
the two things - the good and the bad a cheap grafter like Spiro Agnew to ac-
- are intimately tied up together, the cept bribes from Maryland contractors.
services of intelligence, for instance, That's just taking. The true corruption
impossible to obtain without the surveil- of power affects the vision and the
lance of American citizens or the carry- reason.
ing on of covert operations. against for- The power of the CIA has consisted
eign governments with whom we are chiefly in its essential lack of account-
officially on friendly terms. ability. The. agency has had and-main-
LN FACT the two things are quite dif- tains the power to bamboozle one pr esi-
ferent. It may be reasonably assumed dent after another, one iron--cally-
that the bad - the surveillance and the named "oversight committee" after
covert hostilities - are often in conflict another. In exercising that power, the
with the good - intelligence - and fur- CIA has become profoundly corrupt, not
g in the Agnew sense, but in the loss of
ther, because that's the way the world' ability to see -what is before it and to
runs, in suct conflict the bad usually think straight about what it sees.
prevails. - , - . - _. - IN THIS, to be sure, the agency is but
The CIA s most famous fiasco, the a model of the entire United States gov-
Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, is also the ernment throughout the long, devastat-
most graphic example of the conflict. ing period of anti-Communism as
Clearly, before any such operation was foreign policy, a period still in progress.
mounted, there had to be some assur- We could not see what was before us in
ante, only obtainable through intelli- Vietnam because we believed ourselves
gence, that the Cuban people were so powerful enough not to have to see it.
fed up with Castro that they were ready Our power created a series of false, hal--
to rise up and join Howard Hunt's inva- lucinatory visions, a series still in
sion force when it landed.
Equally obvious, no such assurance p In this complex and often deceitful 1
was possible, inasmuch as most of the world, the United States does indeed
anti-Castro Cubans had left the island. need all the intelligence it can get and it
Nevertheless; the assurance was. passed needs some permanent organization for
along and the rest is history, a ismal, gathering that intelligence. .
shabby chapter. - - When we allow that organization to
IT DOES not take inside knowledge to operate as a law unto itself, we ordain
realize that the assurance was passed its blindness; when we allow it to mix
along because the CIA was already operations with the gathering of Mi telli-
committed to the invasion as part of its gence, we command it to blind itself.
overall scheme of managing hemi- - The investigations will not imperil "the
sphere affairs through violence. Clear- craft of intelligence." They offer our
ly the covert operation had ill-served best hope for getting it back
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/02/22 : CIA-RDP90-01208R000100070102-3