BANS ON FACULTY-CIA LINKS MAY ENDANGER ACADEMIC AND PERSONAL FREEDOM

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90M00551R001901160045-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 27, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 11, 2013
• Sequence Number: 45
• Publication Date: September 7, 1988
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part- Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2013/03/12: CIA-RDP90M0055-1R00111160045-4
EXECUTIVE SECRETARIAT
ROUTING SLIP
TO:
ACTION
INFO
DATE
INITIAL
1
DCI
X
2
DDCI
3
EXDIR
X
D/1CS
5
DDI
X
6
DDA
7
DDO
X
8
DDS&T
X
9
Chm/NIC
X
10
GC
11
IG
12
Comfit
X
13
D/OCA: ?
14
D/PAO
X
15
D/PERS
16
D/Ex Staff
17
Counsel/
DCI
X
18
D/SE0
X
19
EA/IICT
X
20
SA/DCI
X
21
ES
X
22
SUSPENSE
Date
Remarks
ER 88-3565
Executive Secretary
13 SEP RR
' Date
3637 (1?41)
Declassified in Part- Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2013/03/12: CIA-RDP90M00551R001901160045-4
Declassified in Part- Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2013/03/12: CIA-RDP90M00551R001901160045-4
FROM
DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE
TO
OFFICIAL INDICATED BELOW
a
? ? ? ' - ? ; ? ? ? ?
/
Bill Baker
Russ Bruemmer
Danny Childs
Bill Donnelly
Fritz Ermarth
Bob Gates
Ed Heinz
John Helgerson
Evan Hineman
Rae Huffstutler
a t4ati att-A-
C6.42.4.1(/ alma-
6.11.1 LILL
Dick Kerr
Dick Stolz
Jim Taylor
I---"Note and return
For your recommendation
Prepare reply and return for my signature
Respond over your signature
What are the facts?
Please handle
Hold
STAT
STAT
STAT
STAT
STAT
Remarks:
Revised 5/88
Declassified in Part- Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2013/03/12: CIA-RDP90M00551R001901160045-4
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2013/03/12 CIA-RDP90M00551R001901160045-4
p
Point of View p.
Bans. on Facultv-CI4 nks Mar Endanger
Academic and Personal Freedom
THE REI. Al IONSHIP between universities and
the intelligence community. particularly the
Central Intelligence Agency, is still strained,
but somewhat less so than it has often been in
the past two decades. Therefore the time may be right
to attempt a dispassionate appraisal.
While ( myself have never been employed by an
intelligence agency. I would defend academics who see
a benefit in some kind of link to the intelligence com-
munity. The core of my defense is that, like everyone
else, academics have a legitimate right to privacy and
the freedom to engage in outside activities that have no
adverse impact on the performance of their profession-
al roles.
Most of us have lives outside academe as family
members, citizens, and affiliates of business, social,
religious, civic, or advocacy organizations. We partici-
pate in private meetings. We offer advice. Sometimes
we are paid for doing so, but usually we feel compen-
sated by what we learn and by the sense of worthy
service. Insofar as such connections are lawful and not
pernicious, we have the right to make them without
penalty or publicity.
In short, what we do in our spare time should ordi-
narily be our own affair. If we choose to consult with a
company or a labor union or a political candidate or a
government agency or an advocacy group or even a
civil-disobedience movement, that should be our own
business, with our privacy protected even if we are
being paid for the consultation. Of course, if our out-
side roles conflict with one another or with our academ-
ic responsibilities, the concurrent exercise of some of
them would be inappropriate or even pernicious.
What concerns us here is how much incompatibility
exists between the academic profession and a connec-
tion with an intelligence agency. Such connections can
bring rewards to scholars, such as a sense of service
(broadly patriotic or focused on a particular cause), ,
information and contact useful to their academic
work, and financial subsidies for their research.
For example, the C.I.A. directly or indirectly spon-
sors many worthwhile conferences; commissions some
research; helps lobby Congress for aid to area-studies
programs; and invites scholars to serve on ad hoc or
recurrent panels as paid or unpaid reviewers of the
agency's draft papers and research. The C.I.A. also
operates a scholars-in-residence program, which, ac-
cording to Deputy Director Robert M. Gates, offers
academics an opportunity "to spend a year or two
working with us, with full security clearances, on top-
ics of interest to them and to us."
The Washington Post
The New 'fork Times
The 44.ash;ngton
The Wa!i St-po,! ?tc,?:?-?.
The Christian Science Monitor
New York Daily News
USA Today
The Chicago Tribune
Date
Clearly there is much in such relationships that can
benefit scholars, both in their academic roles and in
their private lives. Most likely there is at least partial
truth in Mr. Gates's further insistence that the C.I.A. is
"looking for people to challenge our views, to argue
with us, to criticize our assessments constructively."
"In short," he says, "we don't want scholars to tell
us what they think we want to hear. That would make
our whole effort pointless."
Pointless, skeptics might counter, unless its main
purpose or effect is to co-opt academics. Are they
right?
As to purpose, it is reasonable to suspect that co-
optation is one of the intelligence community's aims,
whether or not it is the main one. We are accustomed to
the fact that in many of our affiliations, people hope to
co-opt us without acknowledging it. And since we
know that intelligence people are specifically trained in
such tactics, it is only prudent for us to be wary.
As to effect. if we are wary, as most academics now-
adays can be presumed to be, the co-optation, if any, is
likely to be limited to humanizing former caricatures
and should have little if any misleading influence on
campus discourse or activities. But there can be excep-
tions, and that's where the problem lies. To adapt an
expression from the intelligence lexicon, is there
"blowback" in some cases that distorts the partici-
pants' performance of their academic roles?
ANEXAMPLE of distorted performance would be
the transmission of bias or?presumably un-
wittingly?of disinformation, through teach-
ing (in and out of the classroom), publica-
tions, or other forms of communication among stu-
dents, teachers, and scholars. The chief safeguard
against such distortion is our usually well-inculcated
creed of academic objectivity.
Obviously, all university-intelligence connections
should be voluntary. Less obviously, I would argue
that any dealings with intelligence agencies should be
at arm's length, avoiding not only intimacy but also
financial dependence.
I suggest that anything up to 5 per cent of gross
income (disregarding reimbursement for expenses)
would not represent dependence, and whatever report-
ing a particular university requires for employees' out-
side income should suffice. Beyond that point. I be-
lieve?despite my emphasis on our right to privacy?it
would be reasonable to expect the individual academic
CONTINUED
Page 39%
nprlaccifiprl in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2013/03/12 CIA-RDP90M00551R001901160045-4
Declassified in Part- Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2013/03/12: CIA-RDP90M00551R001901160045-4
bc. piihlick forthright about ha% inti ,onte intellwence
connection. if not about it; e?act c?Icnt..11,0.
the United States. conference subsidies should he dis-
closed to the participants and publication subsidies to
the readers.
Besides possible distortion of teaching and scholar-
ship. academics with intelligence connections have the
potential to impair the opportunities of students to pur-
sue the careers they wish, particularly foreign students
whom the c.l.A. may try to recruit. They, much more
than American students, may feel vulnerable to what
they perceive as pressure in the C.I.A. recruiter's pitch.
Therefore, any academic asked to "spot talent" for the
agency must be alert to the possibility of some per-
ceived coercion. That said, however, academic advis-
ers should not have to exclude from career counseling
the discussion of possible intelligence careers or, if
requested, the provision of routine information about
how to apply. Open C.I.A. recruitment visits to the
campus should certainly be permissible. And former
intelligence officers who are reasonably open about
their backgrounds should themselves be employable
within academe.
However, such outrages as recruitment of campus
informers to report on teachers or student groups and
secret subsidizing of campus organizations, as has hap-
pened in the past, are totally unacceptable. Also, aca-
demics should resist any intrusions of the kind the
National Security Agency made when it tried to limit
university mathematics that could have applications to
cryptology.
Many people in foreign lands suspect that visiting
American researchers are all tools of U.S. intelligence
and hence should be avoided. This is a grave problem,
which is not fully solvable. The suspicion could not be
eradicated even if it were utterly unfounded, and it is
probably worsened by the fact that it cannot be utterly
unfounded as long as connections between academics
and the intelligence community are maintained to the
extent that I have been justifying. So academics and
intelligence officers who value their connections have
the obligation to screen their collaboration scrupulous-
ly, instance by instance, to avoid poisoning the Waters
badly for other researchers. If the problem cannot, be
solved, at least it catilie alleviated.
FINALLY, it is clear that most objections to uni-
versity-intelligence connections derive from
objections to other government-agency poli-
cies. Critics usually want not just to minimize
contamination of academe, as I have been attempting,
but to delegitimitize and impede the agencies and their
policies?in short, to ostracize them. In the critics'
eyes, academe should be pressed into joining this resis-
tance.
Althoin.th I h.1?.e shared inar\ di ntinc s e in the
past decade. I feel stronul% that both ac,idctiti, fre;':doin
and personal freedom of aNsociat ion can he endant:ered
by such pressure. and that university-intelligence con-
nections should usually be left up to the conscientious
choice of individual academics. informed by profes-
sional ethics.
H. Bradford Westerfield is professor of international
studies at Yale University.
J7lo .
Declassified in Part- Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2013/03/12: CIA-RDP90M00551R001901160045-4