HOW EX-CHIEF VIEWS THE CIA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00587R000100040046-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 8, 2011
• Sequence Number: 46
• Publication Date: June 26, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/03/08: CIA-RDP91-00
587R000100040046-9
CHICAGO SUN TIMES (IL)
26 June 1985
Books in the news
Now ex-chief
views the C/A
Secrecy and
Democracy
TM in Transition. By Stans-
fle. Houghton Mifflin.
$16.98.
By Robert S. Smith
n 1977 President Carter
I tapped Adm. Stansfield
Turner, one of the Navy's
it and brightest, to head the
Central Intelligence Agency in
the troubled period after a Sen-
ate committee exposed CIA mis-
deeds. Four years later, after
reorganizing its massive bu-
reaucracy and integrating high
technology into an espionage
world dominated by human
spies, Turner was replaced by
the Reagan administration's
William Casey. This book is a
record of his watch at the CIA.
Tumor's tenure was no easy
task, but in a turbul nt time his
was a fairly steady !Ind on the
helm. He lost as many battles as
he won, but he brought a level
of courage and honesty to the
post few other CIA chiefs have.
His main problems were rein-
ing in his covert operators and
melding the efforts of the CIA
with other intelligence agen-
cies-National Security Agency,
Defense Intelligence Agency and
the State Department's Bureau
of Research.
But Turner was never able to
control the covert side and errs
in writing that the 1947 CIA
charter says nothing about co-
vert action. The smogball phrase
authorizing such actions as the
overthrow of Salvador Allende
in Chile and the restoration of
the shah of Iran to his throne
reads that the CIA shall perform
"such other functions and duties
related to intelligence affecting
the national security as the Na-
tional Security Council may
from time to time direct."
Boiled into plain English, this
means that the CIA can do
whatever the president wants,
whatever it thinks he wants, or
whatever it believes he would
want if he thought about it.
Covert activities were what
caused Harry Truman to say
that creating the CIA was his
biggest mistake.
Although Turner admits los-
ing some skirmishes, he avoids
blame the way Dracula did gar-
lic. To reduce a swollen espio.
nage staff, he fired 820 people in
the so-called "Halloween Massa-
cre" in 1977. The act was long
overdue but he handled it poor-
ly, sending a brusque note to
those afflicted. He now claims
that his chiefs advised him
against a more gracious note.
On his two biggest flaps-the
downfall of the shah of Iran and
the "discovery" of a so-called
"combat brigade" of Russians in
Cuba in 1979-he gives flaccid
rationalizations. No one could
have foreseen the fragility of the
shah, Turner says in effect, and
it was NSA that goofed on the
Cuban affair. The brigade was a
training unit that had been in
Cuba for years. The CIA knew
about it, but Turner was unable
or unwilling to keep conserva-
tives from using it to stymie
ratification of the SALT II arms
control treaty.
Self-criticism is alien to a man
who sprinkles his prose with
statements like, "I weathered
the NSC meeting because I had
done more extensive aomework
than anyone else in the room."
As a military man, however,
Turner easily sees through the
tendency of the military to pre-
sent worst-case assessments of
Soviet power, writing, "The
budgetary process virtually
forces the military to use intelli-
gence to overstate the threats
they must be ready to counter."
Turner has harsh words for
the way President Reagan
has "unleashed" the CIA
under William Casey. An
apolitical CIA has disappeared,
as has effective congressional
oversight. Casey is now im-
mersed in policy formation and
is running the illegal contras
and mining harbors in Nicara-
gua in violation of both interna-
tional law and the 1982 Boland
Amendment forbidding funds
for the purpose of destabilizing
Nicaragua.
"The Reagan transition team
that descended on CIA in 1980
was as unbalanced and unin-
formed a group on this subject
as I can imagine," Turner com-
ments, a conclusion possibly
triggered by the fact that CIA
censors took 18 months to read
his manuscript, but made only
three concessions on more than
100 deletions.
Turner ends his book urging
more congressional oversight of
the CIA, expansion of intelli.
gence analysis beyond current
events and Soviet military
strength; increased attention to
terrorism, narcotics and nuclear
proliferation; new and nonpoliti-
cal chiefs for the intelligence
agencies, and less covert action.
The way things are going a
major CIA overhaul will be nec-
essary. It does not appear likely
that it can happen until the
president and Congress forgo
their macho views and restore
the CIA to its proper place in
national and world affairs.
Robert S. Smith was a mem-
ber of the U.S. inteili enee com-
munity for nearly Z5 years.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/03/08: CIA-RDP91-00587R000100040046-9