AN ADDRESS BY WILLIAM COLBY AT SANTA CLARA UNIVERSITY 5 MAY 1976

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00901R000500030001-2
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 35
• Document Creation Date: December 9, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 28, 2000
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: May 5, 1976
• Content Type: SPEECH

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An Address by
William Colby
at
Santa Clara University
5 May 1976
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I'm delighted to be here and have a chance to talk to you all ter:--
at Santa Clara. I left CIA a few months ago but I have had some exper
ience there (I had some experience with Congress as well) and I thought
that I have a chore still to do which relates to the career that I had
in intelligence. I am trying to write a book about intelligence and
in the interim I thought it might be useful if I could get around and
talk about. intelligence to as many people in this country as I could
because books are one thing but listening to people and getting a sense
of what they are like and what they are saying is equally important. In
that sense, I am really delighted to see such a warm and friendly audi-
ence (at least it's friendly up to now, we'll see later on) to try to
clarify some things about intelligence.
I think most of us have an image of intelligence -- intelligence
to our image is something to do with spying. A spy steals a secret,
gives it to a General and he wins a battle. This is the tradition of
intelligence -- the thing that we are brought up on. Actually it started
very early. Moses sent a man from each tribe to spy out the land of
Canaan. Each of those people came back and they told Moses that the
land was flowing with milk and honey and I suppose that's the first
economic intelligence report we ever had. Joshua -- he sent a couple
of spies into Jericho and they began to add to this aura of mystery and
a little bit of impropriety when they went into Jericho because they
decided they would stay at the house of R,111,-Ib the harlot for the night.
They stayed there and then came bacc over the wall and went back to
Joshua and told Joshua that the people in the town there were faint-
hearted. With that and a little tactical advice from the T,or_d, he
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decided he didn't have to attack the city -- he could march around it w-'th
the trumpets playing and give a great shout and the walls would fall
down and he would take the city that way. We've had a lot of very famous
spies in history which have added to this image. Ladies have contributed
one, of course, Mata Hari.
We Americans have had spies in our national history since our origins
in 1776. One of our most famous Americans, Nathan Hale, was recruited
one day for what turned out to be probably one of the worst intelligence
operations we ever ran. He was asked to go into Manhattan Island to
find where the British were going to land but by the time he got there,
they had already landed. He was given a very poor degree of technical
assistance. He was merely told to hide his reports in his shoe where
they were quickly found when he was identified by a turncoat who was
working for the British. His real contribution was to leave us a ring-
ing statement of patriotism -- his regret that he had but one life to gi-e
for his country. In more recent years we have the fictional spies who
are a little bit of adventure, a little bit risque, and quite exciting --
the James Bonds and people of this nature. And in more recent times we
also have our great TV spy hero -- one of the perhaps least effective
spies I know -- Maxwell Smart. This was the image of intelligence at
work.
When we saw last year the sensational stories in the press about
assassination, dart guns, massive domestic things and trying to get Castro s
beard to fall out and things of that nature, it all fitted the image.
Americans said quite properly -- I guess that's what intelligence is all
about. It worried a let of Americans -- it worried some senators who said
they weren't quite sure but what some rogue elephant was loose in the
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land threatening to trample our liberties and destroy our good name.
Another senator, he couldn't see the elephant but he could hear it
thrashing out there in the underbrush and he thought it was dangerous
to our republic.
Actually, the image of an elephant for this purpose isn't a bad
one, because there is another elephant story I think is applicable to
this question of what intelligence is all about. That's the elephant
standing there when six blind men walked up to it and no one of the six
had ever seen an elephant. They didn't even know what an elephant
looked like as a whole. They went up and they touched a different part
of the elephant. One touched the leg, felt it up and down -- he said
it's like a tree trunk, I guess the elephant is like a tree. Another
grabbed hold of the tusk and he felt it long and hard and sharp and
said well, it feels to me not like a tree but like a spear. Another
felt the side, it was high, flat and wide and he said it seems to me
kind of like a wall -- it's barring us from getting through. Another
grabbed hold of the trunk and it wiggled and squirmed and he said well
it's pretty obvious -- it's kind of like a snake. Well, no one of them
had a concept of what the elephant really looked like.
I think no American today has an accurate concept of what intelli-
gence really looks like. One of the reasons for that is that we kept
intelligence a secret out of the old tradition. It was all secret. We
weren't allowed to say anything about it and we pretended that it
didn't exist. We carried that to the extent that one time when
Mr. Robert Kennedy drove out to the brand new CIA building in Washington
it's a big building -- had a sign pointing to it out on the road and he
said, "This is the most absurd thing I ever saw. Here you have a
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secret intelligence agency at the end of a four-lane highway with a sign
pointing to it. Take the sign down." Well, he had a certain amount of
influence at that time, so we took the sign down, but we didn't hide the
fact that that was the Headquarters of CIA and every airline pilot who
came down the Potomac on his way to a landing for a period of years used
to point out the right side of the plane, that's where the CIA is. In
more recent years he points out the left side of the plane to?where
Watergate is. Now they all look out there. I think that business of
total secrets then kept our American people from knowing what intelligen-e
as a whole is really like.
The other reason they don't know what intelligence is about is
because intelligence has changed so much'and it has changed so much in
the last 20 odd years and it has changed so much largely because we
Americans have changed it so much. Because the changes that America has
made in intelligence have totally changed the whole concept and extent
of intelligence these days.
One of those changes began in WWII when we were suddenly faced with
the need to know about all sorts of lost parts of the world -- the Hump
between China and India, South Pacific Islands, the North African Coast
and we reached around in America to find out everything we could about
them and we found there were little bits and pieces of information every-
where in America. Some of our industries and businesses had shipped
things to certain places so they knew about the transportation lines. S me
of our tourists had been to different places and they took pictures on
the beach and in Aunt Minnie's picture in the background was a car --
indicated that that beach was strong enough to hold up an automobile --
very important if you're planning an invasion. The National Geographic
Society had been going around taking pictures of tribal groups in all
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parts of the world and they knew something about some of those backgroun.3s.
Our academic institutions had studied the languages and cultures of some
of those far parts of the world. We decided_tiat the point of intelli-
gence was to start with knowing what we already know but to centralize
it, to gather it together. There was one time when we hadn't done that
and we suffered a rather bad defeat -- Pearl Harbor and the aftermath.
We looked and we found the Navy knew certain things the State Department
didn't -- State knew certain things the Navy didn't and the Army didn't
know some things they knew. As a result the people were worried about
defending themselves in that area and we decided that we had to centralize
ourselves.
Over these past years that process has gone on and we now reach
out for all information that we can possibly get that moves in the open.
We listen to the radio broadcasts and translate. We listen to the jour-
nalist reports and look at them and read them. We consult our universi-
ties who are studying some of these areas. We benefit from them. We
talk to scientists who go to international scientific meetings. They
tell us the level of expertise of some of the foreigners they are talking
to and from that we can sometimes judge what they may be working on and
we listen to what our diplomats and attaches tell us and-what these
data reporting services provide. This enormous flow of information that
not only moves in writing but moves visually and moves electronically at
186,000 miles per second.
This centralization of -intelligence has been given to some experts
to look at this raw information and to seek assessments, to seek to
understand what it means. We have gathered to do that job in intelligence,
experts, doctors, masters, all sorts of scientists, specialized in subjects
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such as agricultural economics, nuclear physics, military affairs,
political dynamics of closed societies, the linguistics, sociological
trends. We have probably more masters and doctors of these subjects
in CIA today than are needed to staff the faculties of most large
universities in America. Because that is what has become the key element
of intelligence today -- the analysis and assessment of everything that
can be known.
That was one major change but there is an even more dramatic change
which is the change that is com-ing from the application of American
technology to the business of knowing what is going on in the world.
From U2 days on -- we looked to see what the photograph could do to help
us, to help us learn things, to help us be more precise about what we
know in the far parts of the world so that we can look at and study some-
thing rather than merely count on what somebody tells us. We've applied
the science of photography, the science of objects, the science of elec-
tronics, set out things that appear only in the electronics spectrum.
The science of computers to rank up and arrange and help us rationalize
some of this mass of information and, of course, the space age -- not
only the aircraft but in space and even under the sea. We have pushed
the state of the art of technology in many of these areas. The U2 was
impossible when it was first flown. It flew higher and further than airy-
body could imagine and there have been similar impossible technological
feats conducted in order that we could learn something which would other-
wise be hidden from us.
As a result of this, we have increased our knowledge and we have
increased the precision of our knowledge to almost unbelievable degrees
in this past 15 or 20 years. In 1960, our presidential candidates had
a great debate about whether there was a missile gap between us and the
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Soviet Union, whether they might have a lot of missiles that we didn't
know about and we not have very many. They had, after all, just a couple
years before, launched a Sputnik -- the first such effort into space --
and we suspected they might be far ahead in the space age and able to
threaten our country with instant df?struction. After the election we
found out that gap didn't exist and since that time we've developed our
intelligence techniques so that we can't have that debate. It's impossi-
ble to have a debate as to whether there are more missiles or fewer
missiles. Why? Because, thanks to this technology, we look at them, we
count them, we measure them. There's no question about how many they have
and it's not just the government that knows those figures. Those numbers
have been available to our press, to our students, and you can find
them in the library as to how many Russian missiles there are. We tell
the American people how many we have but they don't tell them. We learn
through very sensitive machines and we then make that available to our
citizens so that they know what we are facing. Now we could still debate
about the meaning of the number -- whether having a larger number is
compensated by having a higher technological effectiveness by the greater
accuracy, whether greater precision is more important than having larger
numbers. We can particularly debate whether what is apt to be the case
in 1980 or 1985 unless we do something about it. That's a legitimate
subject of debate but that allows us Americans to look at the problem,
decide what we ought to do about the problem on the basis of solid facts
and information.
I think that that change in the intelligence system which has
occurred by Americans applying this technological genius that our students
and our scientists and our engineers have, has revolutionized the intel-
ligence business in that re ard. }er tint &,
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been made in intelligence over this past few -- and particularly the past
year or so -- although it began slightly before that. That is the proc:-ss
of bringing American intelligence under the law and under the constitution.
To an intelligence professional, that is probably the most startling
change of all because the improvement in our knowledge is one thing but
changes in control of intelligence is quite a novelty because intelligence
in most countries today, and intelligence certainly traditionally,
served prime ministers, the king or president. Parliament didn't have
anything to do with it. The public certainly didn't know anything about
it. It operated without controls, it operated on the guidelines which were
set.
In America, that was what we thought of intelligence until fairly
recently because we had a situation some years ago in which we were
expected to run intelligence operations and activities and not ask very
many questions about them. We had a chairman of one of the Senate
Committees stand up in the Senate and say, "If you're going to run an
intelligence agency, you have got to shut your eyes and take what is
coming" and he had no hope of being able to control it. Now I think
that this was perhaps agreed and understood by us Americans in the early
1950s and even into the 1960s, but it didn't endure after Vietnam and
Watergate because we Americans looked at our government and we said that
we really didn't want our government to do things that we didn't under-
stand, that we wanted our government to do only those things that we
tell them to do and not to have a total right to do anything it wants.
When we looked at intelligence we looked back through its history, we
found things we didn't like. We in intelligence did this a couple years
ago, before it became a matter of public knowledge. We looked back at
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intelligence, we found a few things we didn't like, we issued directives
saying they wouldn't be done anymore. We said we would stop doing
certain activities and we said we thought we had done the job. But we
didn't really appreciate'a very basic political fact about America. Th-it
it is not enough for our Government merely to do the right things, it
must be understood by our people as doing the right thing. The confi-
dence of the people and the understanding of the people is as important
as what the government actually does and therefore we have gone ahead
beyond that correction of intelligence itself to issuing public guide-
lines, public directives as to what it should do and what intelligence
should not do.
President Ford issued an Executive Order a couple months ago which
in great detail says exactly what CIA can do and what it can't do and
that kind of a directive was never issued before because nobody every
expected it and the Congress is now discussing just exactly how it will
carry out its constitutional responsibility of supervising intelligence
to make sure it stays within its proper limits and doesn't go out and
do something it shouldn't. We have discussed whether that can be done
with a single small committee which would be able to follow the activities
of intelligence but still keep those secrets that need to be kept. Now
I think in the process of bringing intelligence under the law also, we
are developing a new middle point between total secrecy and total dis-
closure. Total secrecy has created doubts in our population about intel-
ligence. Total disclosure will mean that we can't conduct intelligence.
Therefore, we've had to seek out some middle ground by which we do
recognize the importance of the secrets of intelligence just as we recog-
nize the importance of our public's knowing in general .that that intelli-
gence elephant, if you will, is really all about and what it looks like.
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Now these then are the changes that America has made in intelli-
gence -- the analytical process, the technological effort and bringing
it under the law. Am I saying that there are no more spies and that
all that activity is over? No, I'm not. Because there are countries
that can keep secrets that could endanger our country. There are countries
which conduct their primaries behind the closed door of a politbureau
meeting in secret. There are countries that have research laboratories.
working on new forms of energy, new forms of power, that could threaten
our country. There are countries which in secret decide they will impose
some boycott on us and surprise us and upset our economy. We have to
know about those things because if we don't know about those things, we
can't do much about them.
Some people say this is not the real world though, that really the
world has changed, that we have a new world, that nuclear weapons are so
destructive, nobody could possibly use them. That really, all the older
people are hung up on those old concepts of the Cold War of the 1950s
and that really there isn't any monolithic communism anymore. Then what
are we so concerned about? There has been a split between the Soviet
Union and China. There are stirrings of independence and autonomy on the
part of Soviet satellites like Rumania, Yugoslavia. Even some of the
communist parties around the world are talking about being more national-
ist than communist. So really do we need this kind of activity? Well,
I think that's a legitimate question. But I think we ought to apply
that old statement of a philosopher named Santayana who said, "He who
refuses to learn from history is doomed to repeat it."
Now we tried, believing that the world was safe for democracy. In
1920, we looked back on a war (World War I) which was perhaps not
necessary. We had blundered and been ro a andized into it.
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It had been bloodily and badly fought. We had decided that it was
heavily influenced by the old dynastic squabbles of Europe and by the
merchants of death, the arms manufacturers, and that really we faced a
new world and that really we didn't want to involve ourselves with those
far away problems. We said we weren't going to join a league of all
those powers to try to run the world in that light. We decided that we
would reduce our army to something smaller than that of Rumania and we
decided that we would take a brand new battleship that we just finished
building. We took it out and we sank it to demonstrate that-we were
really very sincere about naval disarmament. Our Secretary of State
closed up a code breaking unit in the Department of State because he
said that gentlemen don't read each other's mail. When some problems
arose around the world in far away places -- when the Japanese began
to attack the Chinese way off in Asia, in Manchuria, we said it was too
far away for us to worry about. When Mussolini began to attack some
local inhabitants way off in Abyssinia and Ethiopia, we decided it was
much too far away for us to have much to do with it. When those big
powers began to contest in Spain, the Nazis and the Fascists, against
the Soviet communists in Spain, we decided we would show a moral example
and we passed a law called the Neutrality Act that we were going to
demonstrate the proper way of staying out and ignoring that kind of
dispute in hopes that it would go away. Did it work? No, it didn't.
Out of that abdication of interest and concern for the greater world
that we live in, we drew the greatest war in history.
As we look around to the 1960s, do we see that it is safe for
democracy? That really there is no need for these concerns about our
protection? As we look at the Great Powers -- the Chinese, the Soviets
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Union which is now ranging not only in the Mediterranean but is appearing
in the Indian Ocean, the South Atlantic and the Caribbean. We see that
they have a real problem in their succession as the 80-odd year old Ma;,
the 70-odd year old Politburo of the Soviet Union, are facing the problem
of giving power to a new generation and we are trying to figure out whether
that will go to a group of cautious bureaucrats with whom we could live
or to a group of radical ideologues who admit they have a holy mission to
overcome the world, or to some aggressive and authoritarian military
leaders who would reestablish the alliance between China and the Soviet
Union with the idea of dominating the world as a whole. No, that
succession problem is not clear at this point and we have to look forward
to the danger that one of those solutions might bring to us.
As we look at the developed countries of Europe and Japan, we see
there are economic weaknesses and we recall the last time they got into
serious economic problems and the European countries and Japan reached
for extreme solutions to the problems they faced -- authoritarian,
totalitarian solutions to their economic difficulties. The Greater
East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere was Japan's solution to its problem.
This then leads us to consider the less developed world where I
think perhaps the most serious problems today are because the less
developed world sees the gap between it and the affluent, developed world
growing not reducing. They see the pressures of population increasing
and the production of food and the growth and development of their
economy not growing. We see that these increases in frustration have
an ending in bitterness and we see this develop and show itself in terms
of boycotts, in terms of terrorism and it is not too far fetched to look
downstream and think of some reckless authoritarian despot who derides
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own home-made backyard nuclear weapon.
Now, I think the world is not yet safe for democracy and of the
140-odd countries in the United Nations, only about 20 or 30 can be
classed as democracies. And only in the last year or so we have seen
turn toward authoritarian solution, two countries who were the pride of
the tutelage of Britain and America -- India and the Philippines. We
are not in a world safe for democracy. We must know the problems and
the threats that our country faces. We must know them, of course, to
defend ourselves if that's what we have to do. But I think there is
a more hopeful look. That if we do know the problems, and the threats,
and we do know the problems those countries have, then we not only can
defend ourselves in extremis but we can also develop the counter to
these threats so that we can demonstrate that they cannot be successful
and then they would not be used so that we could deter their use. We
can also by accurate information know precisely what a real threat is
and not be led to overreact to a phantom threat and waste our money in
preparing for something that won't happen.
I think the most heartening thing is that if we know the facts
and the problems, we can negotiate, reach over to those countries and
discuss the reality of the problems they face and hopefully together
solve those problems. Now.we've tried that before and we were unable
to do it because our intelligence wasn't good enough. In 1946, the U.S.
wanted to internationalize atomic energy and give it to the United
Nations and let it run it. But it wasn't able to get the necessary
guarantees from the other countries. In the 1950s, President Eisenhower
had a concept of "open skies" whereby Soviet aircraft could fly over
America and American aircraft could fly over the Soviet Union to
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in those countries. But that wasn't acceptable to the Soviet Union.
And in the 1960s we came up with the idea of inspection teams wandering
through the back country of the Soviet Union and of America to see that
there was no secret activity conducted there that could threaten the other
countries.but that ran smack across the Soviet desire to run their
country under authoritarian control and secret way. They couldn't
afford to have inspection teams wander through. It wasn't until our
technology had increased well enough so that we could determine what
was going on in the back country by our own means that we were able to
go to our President and our Congress and our people and say we could rak?
an agreement on the limitation of strategic weapons because we could
make the agreement and our intelligence was good enough that we could
guarantee that we would know whether the Soviets were abiding by it or
whether they were trying to cheat us. On the basis of that assurance,
we went ahead and made the SALT agreements of 1972 and one of the
elements of those agreements, of course, was an agreement to limit, very
sharply, anti-ballistic missile systems which has been conservatively
estimated would otherwise require an investment by the American taxpayer
of something in the nature of $5O to $100 billion.
Now there is a further step in the use of intelligence with this
kind of peaceful solution to problems. We all remember, in our study
of histories, how many wars started between Great Powers based on a
conflict between Small Powers. The Small Power starts to fight and the
Big Powers get drawn into it. We have been in some situations recently
in which our intelligence has been good enough that we have seen the fact
of hostility, suspicion, misunderstanding grow between the Small Powers
and we have been able to go to both of them with solid information as
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remove those suspicions and get them to talk to each other and in that
sense we have positively brought about a peaceful solution to something
that otherwise might have resulted in military conflict.
Now I've talked about this We of intelligence, of knowledge, but
there is another activity and it is the one most of you hear about and
you wonder why I haven't talked ahhout Chile, assassinations, secret wars,
overthrowing governments, political support. Why haven't I talked about
that? Because isn't that'an important aspect of what I have to talk
about? Well it was an important aspect. During the 1950s, we spent
something on the order of 40% of CIA's budget on this kind of activity.
When we faced in Western Europe a military threat, we met it with the NATO
alliance. When we faced economic crisis in Western Europe we met it
with the Marshall Plan. When we faced a very energetic political pene-
tration or subversion by the communist parties, communist trade unions,
communist youth groups, communist cultural groups, we met it by some help
to some socialist and democratic forces in Western Europe to match the
kind of assistance and support that the Soviets were giving the Commu-
nist elements of that country. And in that conflict we won. Western
Europe's military security today depends on NATO. Its economic success
depends on the Marshall Plan. Its free institutions depend upon the
success of that assistance by America to some of these groups struggling
to meet the challenge placed by that political penetration. But in
recent years, that effort has declined because we haven't had the need
for so much. As the Soviet Bloc did separate into pieces, as the immediate
threat did decline, so this kind of activity by CIA also declined and for
the last several years we have been spending something on the order of
5% of our budget on this kind of political or para-military activity. :o
that it is a relatively m t o r o i
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it an important part of our potential activity as we face the world
the Eighties and the world of the Nineties because I believe it may
become an easier, and more effective solution to the rise of somebody
who would be a real threat to the world and a real threat to America, if
we were able to help some friends of America in that country to sustain
themselves against someone who would otherwise turn that country into a
hostile force. It would be easier to solve that in a political argument
inside that country than it would be to face military confrontation
with that country under hostile management.
I think this is the process that we are talking about. It is help
to friends of America in an internal struggle when they are not able to
sustain themselves, by themselves, and need some outside help. CIA
doesn't manipulate and manage these, it has to find somebody who wants
to do so but doesn't have the capability of doing it himself. It is
through the assistance that we are able to give, secret assistance where
it is necessary that it be secret, otherwise it could not be given, that
we can eliminate more serious confrontations in later years. I wish that
we had been able to help the Christian Democratic Party in Germany in
1933 to win the election which Hitler won at that time and we may have
not been faced with his management of Germany in the years that followed.
the truth of intelligence today. If we look
at the specifics of the reports made on intelligence through our Constitu-
tional process, I think. we can bring down the level of sensationalism that
they were originally phrased in, if we look at the fact of what the
Senate found after five months of investigation. We find that CIA never
assassinated anybody. We find it did try to assassinate Mr. Castro and
failed. It started a procedure against Mr. Lumumba but cut it off at a
fairly early state and outside of that it didn't assassinate anybody.
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 17 -
A P P
Qved .For Release 2001/03/06 : CIA-RDP91-00901 R000500030001-2 t is an important part of an accurate perception of what
intelligence is about today. Yes, there were some things that we
Americans don't want and didn't want our country and our Government
to do, but I don't think we are in a situation where it has done a great
deal of that. I think we have found some situations where CIA did go
over the edge and do things that as we look back on it, should not have
been done. We have corrected that. We have outlined clear guidelines.
We can arrange a firm system of supervision so that this will not happen
and so we can benefit by intelligence and not be frightened.
So I don't think there's a rogue elephant loose. I think that we
Americans have changed intelligence to a degree that is really not known
in the world and even in America, but I think this change in intelligence
is going to produce a new intelligence that will enable us Americans
not only to be assured of what our intelligence services do but will
also give us the benefits of the better information and the better
knowledge of the world that good intelligence can provide. In that way
I think, we will not be either defenceless or lawless in the work of our
intelligence services. Indeed, maybe we will develop a new meaning for
the initials CIA, in addition to its meaning Central Intelligence Agency,
that CIA will come to mean Constitutional Intelligence for Americans.
Thank you very much.
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Questions and Answers
1. Q & A I'm afraid I can't give you an idea of the money. The Senate
and the House have both voted that the CIA budget remain seers-t.
The last vote on that was six months ago. The Senate Committ?,e
has recommended that a figure be published. Both I, and
Mr. Bush, have urged that the figure not be published. We are
concerned that if we publish the figure we will have to explain
what it covers and what it doesn't cover, explain why it went
up, why it went down and you will very-rapidly begin to disclc-se
the details of our intelligence activities. In 1947, the AEC
issued a one line figure for the activities of our nuclear
weapons. They said that was all they would say, just that one
line and by 1974, 20 odd years later, that one line had grown
into 15 pages of detailed explanation and I think that if another
country is interested in keeping secrets from us, could learn
a great deal from looking at the figures of our intelligence
budget. When they saw a bulge, some new thing was obviously in
process. They would immediately go around and look for it.
If they saw a decline, they would immediately say they were
free for some activity because something had been cut off.
In that sense we should not give our targets, if you will, our
enemies, the benefit of that kind of advice as to how much we
know about their secrets.
2. Q: The Government of Italy has fallen again and this time there's
fear the Communists will gain control. Are there any plans by
the CIA to prevent the fall?
A: At the moment, I'm not privy to the CIA's secret. I did say
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shortly before I left office, in response to the appearance
of some press statements about CIA plans to give some help
to Italy, that CIA had not given any help to the political
parties of Italy in recent years.
3. Q: How will it affect Italy if the Communists gain control?
A: I think it would be a very serious problem. The Italian
communist party is a very special communist party. From the
time of G------? through Togliatti to Luigi Longo and now to
Balaguer, the Italian communist party has tried to be both
Italian and communist. In bad days, bad cold war days, bad
economic days, they are a little more communist than they are
Italian. In good days of economic progress, detente days,
they are inclined to be more Italian than communist. Right
now they are trying to be more Italian than communist but I'm
somewhat concerned that if you had a deterioration of the
economy or of our relations with the Soviet Union, they would
turn back to being more communist than Italian and we would have
a serious problem as to the degree we could engage in joint
military planning for the defense of Western Europe with a
government which was made up of communists.
4. Q: I read in US News & World I:eport that CIA conducted domestic
spying on the campus radicals especially on campuses such as
Berkeley, kept files on individuals. How do you justify that
activity?
A: I don't. I can explain it but I don't justify it. What
happened was that when the anti-war movement got going, two
things happened. First, the President of the US turned to CIA
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aiding it, stimulating it, supporting it? CIA went to
find out whether any foreigners were doing this. In the
process of finding out, they collected a lot of information
about the anti-war movement so they would know what they were
studying. They collected more paper than they should have.
Most of that paper was from the FBI or from public press
statements. They did build up files much beyond what they
should have.
5. Q: Did this activity take place while you were DCI?
A: No. They also put some people into the anti-war movement
with the idea of going abroad and seeing what the foreign countries
would say and do with them. That's all right, but while they
were here in the US preparing to go abroad, three of them reported
on the activities of Americans which was none of their business
and they should not have done it. The second whole area of
activity was, the Office of Security of CIA was concerned there
would be a threat to intelligence sources and methods of CIA
and they gathered a large amount of information about the anti-
war movement. Both of these were cut off in 1973, cut off in
good part at my direction, but I think the fact was that we
still had the material and I had told them to start getting rid
of this stuff when the exposure of our activity cameahout, we
were asked not to destroy anything until the investigations
were over. But I said at the time and I still maintain that t&it
is an invitation I would dearly like to receive, is to attend a
big bonfire when these investigations are over at which we get
rid of all that stuff that is not CIA business. I would comment
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that in response to the Presidents' curiosity, CIA told both
President Johnson and Nixon that there was essentially no
foreign support for the American anti-war movement.
. Q: How do you justify the attitude of saying we know wl-Lat's best
for other governments, like Angola, or we can establish governments
in other countries that favor US policies (sic), etc.
A: I don't justify. I say that the United States in the way that
the sovereign state system is set up in the world today, that
any country has a right to conduct a reasonable amount of effort
in its self-defense. It must be for self-defense -- it's not
to tell what government is best for them -- it's for the defense
of the United States. That's the only justification. It is
not justifiable to go in and impose our form of government on
another group of people just because we believe in it. It is
justifiable to think of our own defense and our own protection
but we must use reasonable means. Reasonable means in some
situations can include military force but my point is that in
some situations, some private help to some friends of America
can eliminate a more serious confrontation later by solving the
problem at a low level of political debate rather than a high
level of military violence. It is a more reasonable means
than facing military conflict.
'7. Q: Doesn't that enable the CIA to undertake any kind of activity
it wants?
A: If it really isn't in our self-defense, not just the argument,
then you're right, it is not justified. If it is really related
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to our self-defense then it Is justifiable. It is not
justifiable to go out and impose our form of government all
around the world. The question is how do you decide? Who
decides? A war you decide by congressional declaration.
Congress has also voted a war powers act which says the
President can use military forces of the US provided he tells
Congress and they have 60 days in which to call it off. I think
that the arrangements for these kinds of political and para-
military actions do require the President to decide that it is
important to the national security and they require that six
committees of the Congress be informed and six committees of
the Congress were informed about Angola and they didn't have any
great problem with that. I do not justify any activity. I
do not justify assassination and I'm the one who issued the
directives against it. I reject it totally.
8. Q: What sort of assistance did the CIA give in times of the elections
in Chile when subsequently Allende was elected?
A: The Senate Committee report goes into great detail but leaves
out one aspect. It says that CIA did assist the democratic
elements in Chile over a long period to help them to win elec-
tions and to sustain themselves against Allende. CIA at one
period in 1970, for period of six weeks, at direct order of the
President, went out and tried to organize a military action, to
prevent Allende from being inaugurated after he was elected
with a plurality. That effort failed. Thereafter, CIA did
not try to bring about a military revolt. In 1973, there was
no direct connection of the CIA with the military and in fact
r ' I e o ram i i t sustain the democratic forces looking
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forward to the election in 1976. The thing that happened was
the President Allende had so upset the social structure and
economy of Chile that the most constitutional army in Latin
America moved against him and overthrew him and in the proces_,
he apparently was a suicide.
9. Q: Re the nationalization of US companies -
A: The CIA acted under direct orders of the President in all of its
activities. Basic reason for our actions against Allende
and for the other forces in Chile was that Allende when he was
candidate and president, made no secret of his belief that he
wanted to establish a link with Castro and with him spread the
revolution to the rest of Latin America. Now the effect of
that would have been to develop the whole of Latin America
hostile to the US. That was a matter of concern to Americans.
The particular interest of the corporations was a very inci-
dental matter. It was related, I won't say it had nothing to do
with it, but it was not the dominant feature.
A: The US, when it has had an option, has supported socialist and
democratic forces. When it hasn't had that option, it has
supported authoritarian forces, all the way from the far left
to the far right. The US has supported the greatest authori-
tarian force in history -- Stalin's Russia against a greater
threat from Hitler's Germany. They also supported Tito. It
has supported right wing dictatorships when there was no better
alternative. It didn't support Allende because he made no
secret of the fact that he wanted to conduct a policy hostile
to the US.
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26 January 1976
OPENING - Mr. Colby
Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for
coming. I invited you to express my concern over two
things. First, the obvious bursting of the dam protecting
many of our secret operations and activities through the
exposure of the draft of the report of the House Select
Committee on Intelligence. We provided large amounts of
information to this Committee with the understanding that
the secrets therein would be protected and that if a
difference between us arose as to whether they should be
disclosed the President would be consulted and his decision
would be final in the absence of further judicial determina-
tion. The Committee complied with this arrangement as
recently as two weeks ago, but now apparently asserts by
some unknown logic that continued compliance is not required
with respect to the final report. The Committee seems
neither able to keep secrets nor its agreements.
Second, from the draft of the Committee report that
I've seen and the news stories today about it, I believe
it totally biased and a disservice to our nation, giving a
thoroughly wrong impression of American intelligence. By
selected use of the evidence provided, innuendo, and sug-
gestive language, the Committee implies that intelligence
has deceptive budgets, has no accountability, and has not
complied with one direct order of the President.
I deny these flatly. As to performance, I reiterate
that America has the best intelligence in the world and that
the Committee's selective application and quotation of our
own efforts to improve ourselves are an outrageous calumny
against the dedicated collectors, the imaginative engineers
and scientists, and the thoughtful analysts who comprise
American intelligence.
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In short, this report should not be issued and should
not have been leaked, and I agree with the Chairman of the
Committee on two things: one, that the best way to stop
this leakage and the dangers to the United States that it
involves is by a rapid dissolution of the Committee; and,
second, with the Committee's recommendation that stiff
sanctions be imposed against Government employees, including
members of Congress, for leaking secret information. Fur-
ther, I reiterate that the solution to this year of investi-
gations and sensation lies in the better guidelines that we
have adopted in intelligence and recommended elsewhere, in
the better supervision that responsible, Constitutional
oversight could provide, and the better secrecy that is
essential to the protection of intelligence and of our nation
in the world in which we are living in the years ahead.
Thank you very much and I'd be glad to answer your questions.
Q. Mr. Colby, you suggest that it was Congress that leaked
this thing to the New York Times, yet members of the
Committee indicate that they believe it was more likely
the Executive Branch that did.
A.
I don't know who did -- I have no idea, I know that I
didn't.
Q.
Mr. Colby, have you asked for an investigation to
see
A.
how it was leaked -- by some other Agency?
No I have not. It has obviously just come to our
atten-
tion right away, and I'm not going to go outside
confines cf this Agency to investigate the leaks.
the
Q. Could you tell. us what you know about Senator Jackson
and.his help to the Agency on how to handle material
given to Congress.
A. I think that what Senator Jackson did was perfectly
appropriate. He was a member of our oversight
committee -- the Chairman of the oversight committee had
been shot and was in the hospital -- when another com-
mittee of the Congress asked to get into some of our
operational activities. The tradition of the Congress
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had been that those operational activities would only
be discussed with our oversight committees. The Agency
asked Senator Jackson just how he thought this should
be handled and he suggested that in the absence of the
Chairman of the Armed Services Oversight Committee that
we go to the Chairman of the Appropriations Oversight
Committee, and that's the extent of it.
Mr. Colby, the Senate Committee released a report that
you asked them not to release in the form it was re-
leased in. Has there been damage from the release of
that report in your mind or do you only condemn the
House Committee?
A. I believe there has been substantial damage to our
country from the release of that long assassination
report. I think that the details of that will be mined
for years to come by groups hostile to this country.
As you know, I had a discussion with that committee just
before the report was leaked urging that the last names
be excluded from it. They were not. Nothing has
happened to those individuals yet, but I am concerned
at the inclusion of either names or data that can easily
be used to deduce names, and those are present in the
draft of this committee's report that I have seen. The
committee did comply with our request to take out a
number of names, but there are still clear identities
there of people who could be hurt, who dealt with us on
a confidential basis in various countries in the world.
Q. Has the CIA's ability to help the two sides we most
support in Angola been damaged by what was done by
Congress?
A. Well, I think that the fact that Congress has withheld
any further assistance to Angola through the Senate
vote and which is coming up for the House vote tomorrow
obviously is designed to limit the degree of assistance
America can provide to some people who are fighting the
representatives and clients of the Soviet Union.
Q. It was designed to do that, but did it have that effect?
A. It has certainly had the effect of barring any additional
aid if the law is applied.
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Q. Sir, do you feel that the Congress should not have a
voice in that?
A. I think the Congress has every right to a voice, but
any of this activity other than intelligence gathering
is under the law required to be reported to six com-
mittees of Congress. I so did many months ago. And
while individuals indicated some dissent from this, the
Congress as a whole or the committees as a whole, through
no formal way and no formal vote or any other way indi-
cated that they were so opposed to it that it should be
stopped, until it was leaked and became the subject of
a great deal of sensation here a month or so ago.
Q. Mr. Colby, how can members of Congress who are not mem-
bers of one of these six committees express their view
on operations they know nothing about?
A. There are lots of ways that a member of Congress can
express his views. He can express a general policy
about an area of the world or about a particular kind
of operation and can see whether the fellow members of
the Congress join him. Two years ago the Congress
turned down by a three-to-one vote a suggestion that
CIA should conduct no operation other than intelligence
gathering abroad, i.e., no political or para-military
operations. Therefore, the Congress indicated that they
should be continued, and we have continued them. There
are ways in which individual Congressmen can approach
the Chairman of the oversight committees about certain
situations, and that has been done in the past. There
are obviously ways in which the members of the oversight
committee can express their views, either individually
or by securing a committee vote, by appealing to the
leadership, by visiting the President -- there are lots
of ways in which a member of Congress can express himself.
Q. Mr. Pike -- I mean, I'm sorry, Mr. Colby; Mr. Pike has
said in the past -- not today -- that if the Administra-
tion is not leaking these secrets, the Administration is
certainly pouncing on the leaks in an effort to cut off
Congress' access to information in the future by saying
that it can't be trusted. Is it possible that you're
protesting too much so you are trying to take advantage
of this to cut off Congress in the future?
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A. Absolutely not. I have urged and recommended stronger
Congressional oversight. I am prepared to live with
that, and I'm sure my successor will. The problem is
whether that oversight can be responsible and protect
the secrets involved, and I don't think there's any
inconsistency between a strong oversight by a repre-
sentative committee of the Congress and providing the
members of that committee full information about what
we're doing.
Q. Mr. Colby, you said that the Agency's budget has been
forthright or has not been deceptive, and yet in the
case of Angola, the value of 45 caliber automatics that
were perfectly serviceable and would cost the average
person $40 or $50 was listed as $5. Is that not dis-
honest and deceptive?
A. I think --- I'm glad you mentioned that because that's
an example of taking one little fact and trying to create
a general climate of distrust. That particular instance
comes from the fact that CIA applies the dollar value of
any equipment that it passes away as the dollar value
that it receives for the item from the Department of
Defense.- According to the Foreign Assistance Act, if
there are certain things which are surplus they are
valued at 1/3 their value. This we did with a very
small quantity of some of our para-military. effects.
The change on the total sum involved would have amounted
to about one or two million dollars, and the idea that
the whole sum involved would have been doubled is
nonsense.
Q. Mr. Colby, under the sources and methods provision of
the charter., have you or has it been proposed that you
investigate the sources of these leaks or that any other
agency investigate the sources of these leaks?
A. Not yet. We have been trying to deal with the leaks as
they go along. We are clearly in the situation of try-
ing to protect. ourselves to the extent we can through
indoctrination, through our own secrecy agreements, and
through recommendations for improvement in the laws.
But any investigation of a possible violation of law
would be done by the proper law enforcement agencies --
not by CIA. Any investigation by CIA would be of our
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own employees to see whether there is a leak here --
some impropriety in their behaviors.
Q. Mr. Colby, you don't think this would be appropriate
under the sources and methods provision of the charter?
A. No I do not. I've referred to that as a gray area in
the past which was the subject of some misunderstanding,
and I think it is very clear that my authority is limited
to the administrative control of this Agency.
Q. Mr. Colby, what communication have you had with the
President about the latest developments -- the latest
leaks -- or with staff members at the White House?
A. We've discussed at various times various problems on
this whole subject of how we're doing our business.
We're in constant communication with the White House,
naturally.
Q. Has the,White House explained the exact course that it's
going to-take to try to stop House intelligence. . .
A. No, we've discussed this and we are discussing recom-
mendations for an improvement of our secrecy legislation.
Q. Mr. Colby, the House Intelligence Committee recommends
that the Defense Intelligence Agency be disbanded and
the NSA be taken away from the Department of Defense.
Do you agree with those recommendations?
A. I haven't seen those recommendations and without really
knowing more of the detail I think it better that I not
comment too rapidly on them. I think I have worked well
with the Defense Intelligence Agency; I think they do a
useful service in the Department of Defense. I don't
know the specifics of the recommendation. I'd have to
look at them to find out.
Q. How will this "bursting of the dam" as you call it affect
your appearance and your performance in front of this
Committee? You want this Committee dissolved? Are you
going to continue to cooperate with them at all?
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A. Well, I think that this Committee is in the course of
its final days, and I don't think there's much need for
any further provision of secret information to them.
We are discussing the content of their final resolution
on the report. We have taken the position that this
report should not be issued in its present form. We
also worked with them to secure the elimination of the
most dangerous aspects, but we still take the position
that large portions of this report will hurt our foreign
policy and will very substantially injure our ability to
conduct covert operations and intelligence gathering in
the future.
Q. Mr. Colby,'can you be more specific on just what kind
of damage to national security is done by the report?
A. I think the best way is to point to various foreigners
who have indicated that they just plain don't dare to
work with us anymore because we are giving an impression
that our country is totally unable to keep a secret in
the intelligence business.
Have they done that in recent days?
A. They have done it in the past month or so -- a number
of them have indicated this.
Have they done it since the leaks about the Pike ---?
A. Well, they hadn't done it since yesterday afternoon that
I know of, but I would have to find out what papers this
morning said.
How about since last Monday?
A. Well, I can't name any particular one, but I had a
report a couple of days ago which summed up, over the
past month or so, the impression abroad, and it came to
the very clear conclusion that there has been a marked
erosion of confidence in the last month. But up to that
time we had been giving the impression that we were going
through this investigation but that we were going to pro-
tect some of the most critical aspects of our intelligence
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business. The last month has very'substantially eroded
that confidence among our foreign friends.
Mr. Colby, is any purpose served in keeping secrets
from Americans -- information that is well known to
hostile foreign intelligence services?
A. I think what we're talking about here is the degree to
which you spread information which can be used by
terrorists, by paranoids, by others. The fact that the
KGB knows something does not necessarily mean that some
wild man in some strange country knows it, and he is the
one that we are concerned about just as well as the KGB.
Q. [Totally unintelligible.]
A. Well, I have recommended --- Last Friday we discussed
with the Senate Government Operations Committee the
formation of an oversight committee which would have
full authority to oversee and get into the details of
our business, but it would be limited in number, it
would have strict controls over the discipline of its
staff, and that the members would take full responsi-
bility for maintaining the secrets that were given to
them. I also believe that we need legislation to im-
prove our ability to exert discipline over the members
of the Executive Branch who will receive access to
intelligence and over retirees after they leave the
intelligence business -- including me.
Mr. Colby, will your association with the Government,
the Administration, end with Mr. Bush's swearing in or
do you plan to stay and continue to work with the
President on recommendations he prepares for Congress?
A. No, I think when Mr. Bush takes over, then I will become
a private citizen. My link with intelligence will con-
sist of two things -- my secrecy agreement and, I hope,
my pension.
(I thought you're going to write a book too.)
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Q. On the matter of the aid to Turkish rebels in Iraq, that
is something I understand from the stories, the President
decided on against the CIA's wishes and was stopped again
without consulting or getting approval of the CIA. Now,
isn't that something Congress should be talking about,
discussing ways of bringing intelligence business, covert
operations, under greater control of not only the Presi-
dent but of CIA?
A. Well, without confirming any particular covert action,
which is what I'm concerned about in these reports, the
fact is that CIA is a part of the Executive Branch and
the fact that a general doesn't agree with the order
that's given to him doesn't relieve him of the obliga-
tion to carry it out. And the fact that an Ambassador
doesn't agree with a policy that he's asked to inform
a foreign office about doesn't relieve him of the
obligation of going ahead and informing them. There
are limits of course that are set out in the law and
our basic American morality, but when CIA is directed
by the President to do something which is quite proper
within its charter, then I think CIA has the job of
carrying it out, and I might say that I think CIA does
a very good job of just that.
Mr. Colby, you were reported to have met with President
Ford on Sunday -- first, was that the case and, second,
would you tell us some idea of what did you ask him?
Q. That's not the case?
Q. Mr. Colby, if left to you, what would you do about the
Congressmen who leak intelligence secrets?
A. Well, I don't think it ought to be left to me. I think
it ought to be left to his colleagues in the Congress.
The Constitution says that the Houses are the judges of
their members, and I believe the responsible majority
of the House and the responsible majority of the Senate
will structure themselves to exert the necessary
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discipline over their members in order to keep the
secrets and continue a responsible oversight of
intelligence.
Q. Mr. Colby, you said in the past that various American
companies, especially some working overseas, have often
cooperated with the CIA out of patriotic duty the offi-
cers of the corporation felt. Does that include any
news organizations and any individual journalists, and
does it continue today?
A. What I'd like to say about that is what I've said many
times before, that we have structured ourselves so that
we do not have any operational relationship with the
staff members of any general circulation American media.
I think that the odd stringer, the free lancer, that is
another question, that the editor and managers of the
news services deal with them as independent contractors,
they sell their copy and their activity to whomever will
buy it, and I think that we can be one of those people
who also benefit from their activity without in any way
injuring their relationship with the American press. We
do have specific directives that no action will be taken
by CIA'in any way to manage what they report to an
American journal.
Do you believe, Mr. Colby, that a free lancer who is
dealing with CIA on an operational basis should let
his peers(?) in the media know that he has a relation-
ship with CIA?
A. I don't see that it's necessary at all. He's a free
agent, and he deals with various journals, various
other customers. And the fact is that I don't think
he's obligated to report to anybody exactly who he deals
with.
Q. Did the Agency influence the Reuters' News Report?
A. The Agency has no manipulation or exploitation of
Reuters. That was another example of taking a side
reference and making a major statement of it. I think
the Committee referred to some manipulation of Reuters.
This was a purely hypothetical example put up when we
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were discussing the difference between American news
media and foreign news media, and someone else used the
example Reuters, the conversation went around on the
subject of Reuters. We have no manipulation and no
management of Reuters News.
Q. Mr. Colby, a little earlier you spoke of basic American
morality. Tell me where in that morality does it say
for the CIA to act apparently as an intermediary to
procure female companionship to foreign heads of state?
A. I'm talking about today and for the future. I'm not
going to go into the misdeeds or missteps of 28 years.
I think the fact is we have made some mistakes. I've
admitted that many times, but to use those to character-
ize the Agency I think is totally wrong.
Is Hairy Days the only such movie the Agency ever made?
A. We've made various movies -- what movies we made I can't
tell you right now.
Q.. Has the-Agency ever made pornographic movies except
Hairy Days, of course?
A. I don't know of any others.
MR. COLBY: Well, thank you very much.
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