QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS WILLIAM E. COLBY 7 APRIL 1975 ASSOCIATED PRESS ANNUAL MEETING IN NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00901R000500030012-0
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 8
• Document Creation Date: December 9, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 28, 2000
• Sequence Number: 12
• Publication Date: April 7, 1975
• Content Type: SPEECH

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Asaociated press Annual Meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana
Since I felt it was appropriate for me to withdraw from
the discussion of the events down below and the election so
that I- wouldn't be accused of influencing an internal election
here in the Associated Press, I did not have the chance to
salt the right number of questions around the audience,
consequently, I would start if I may by warming up a little
bit here with several which were presented to me by my
colleagues here on the dias, and that's to get it started at
which point I would be very happy to either answer the
question or try to explain why I can't.
Question: The first question: Now that Agee's book about
his 3'A experience has been published Tr-Great Britain and
Canada, do you see any reason for the CIA acting to stop him
from publishing it in the United States? And associated
with that, what concerns you most about the facts in the
book?
Answer: Well, the second is easier than the first. The
thin that concerned me most was that he reached back into
his memory and he picked up every name of anybody he had
ever worked with and published it in the appendix (carefully
arranged in alphabetical order for convenience)--names of
people, both foreigners and Americans, who had worked with
us to some degree. I am pleased to say that not every one
was accurate, although there was a high degree of accuracy
which naturally puts a number of people in considerable
jeopardy in South America. The question of whether we could
stop this publication: we obviously are engaged in a legal
controversy with another ex-employee to get him to abide by
the agreement he made that he would leave the secrets he
learned during his employment with CIA in CIA and not expose
them after he left. We could not enforce that against
Mr.*Agee because'he carefully stayed out of the United
States. As to whether there is any reason for the CIA
acting to stop the publishing, I think there's plenty of
reason. I think it's quite unconscionable and reprehensible
for a man who has served in our intelligence service, in
delicate matters which we've discussed, to break his agree-
ments to keep those secret; to profit therefrom, and to
discourage the numbers of Americans who still work in that
intelligence service from the discipline which is an essen-
tial element of it. As to what I can do, that I just have
to: leave to the lawyers. There are some things you can do,
some things you cannot do, within our judicial system, and I
for one do not propose to go out beyond our judicial system.
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Question: The second question: Allen Dulles once told the
Warren Committee he would lie to anyone but the President in
order to keep an intelligence secret. What is your philosophy
on the position of an intelligence director at to misleading
the public or Congress in security matters?
Answer: I answered that, I think, in considerable detail in
my confirmation hearing. I do not believe I can tell a lie.
I think there are some things I cannot'tell, in which case I
think I have to stop talking about such things that need to
be secret. This is a fact of my profession that some things
do need to be kept secret, but in that case, I must allow
Mr. Dulles to speak for himself. We have arrangements by
which we do report our most sensitive matters to selected--
and selected by the Congress--Committees of Congress, and to
various other oversight procedures that we have in the
American government. These are given full access, and I
have undertaken enough of these not only to answer the
questions of the Chairmen of the Committees that supervise
us, but to call to their attention things that they should
be aware of. This in the business world is called the '.'No
Surprises Rule"--that the President of a corporation cannot
afford to let the Board be surprised. That system works
pretty well with our relationship with the committees as
well..
Question: The net question: CIA officials complain' that
tie press is being manipulated by Agency critics and bitter
former employees but your off-the-record briefings seems to
contribute more to widespread reporting of the Agency's ver-
sion of a recent story than to convincing editors that the
story can be withheld for national security reasons.
Answer: That is a difficult question to answer for one
particular reason. It is important that no official of our
government give'any official confirmation of a particular
activity and, consequently, I am not free to talk about that
particular event. I think I can talk about the relationship
with the press, however. I believe that in talking to a
newsman, and trying to get him to see the logic of not
publicizing a-pertain matter, it is essential to tell him
enough about it so that he is actually convinced that it is
in the. interest of the country not to disclose it. This
unfortunately does expose some things to him, but I think
that, as I have a number of times said, the important thing
is not that another American who accepts the discipline of
the secret learns it, the important thing is whether the
foreigner learns it, and in that process it is sometimes
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essential to explain a story in order to try to get it
modified or even withheld. I must confess that this is a
very rare event that we even try, and I think that I should
reassure you that this is not a common, everyday aspect of
our daily work. Approaching various publishers and. editors
to try to get them to sit on something is a very rare event,
indeed.
Question: And one last question, at which point I would be
very happy to answer any from the floor. Has recent criti-
cism of CIA affected recruiting for the CIA?
Answer: Here, I think, we did benefit a little bit from the
recent publicity, perhaps on that "I don't care what you
say, so long as you spell my name right.". We normally get
about 600 inquiries for possible jobs every couple of weeks.
In the first two weeks of January of this year, we got 1.700
inquiries. The fact is that we got some free political
advertising I suppose you would call it--and I wouldn't say
the economic situation had nothing to do with it, but we did
get a large number of inquiries for possible employment.
Questions, please.
Question: (Inaudible)
Answer: Good question. Aren't the American taxpayers
entitled to know how much the CIA receives annually? This,
I think, is a matter for the Congress to determine. I urge
that it not be publicized. Not because it would be any
great disaster if one total figure one year were revealed,
but I think over a course of several years you would very
soon, seeing thee trend line, generate the natural questions,
"Why did it go up? Why did it go down? What is it made up
of?" I think you would very quickly be into a detailed
discussion of the different programs, and how much is done
on one or the other? But as I say, this is a matter for the
Congress. Last May, I believe it was, the-Senate voted 2-1
against the proposal that a single figure be publicly revealed.
If the Congress voted to the contrary, of course, we would
abide:'by it.
Question: (Inaudible)
Answer: Various proposals have been mentioned. Did everyone
eiat question? No. The question was: "With the bad
name, with the 'sensational lead' quality of CIA, would it
be a good idea to break it up, divide up its functions in
the other Departments, and get rid of the name?" The answer
to that question, I think, is that you probably wouldn't
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actually lose the quality of attractiveness of the secret
activities, that they would be followed to the agency to
which. they went. We have experimented over the years with
various ways to organize intelligence. We at one time had
the political operations separated from the collection
operations. We've tried in various ways to separate the
collection from the analysis operations. I think the funda-
mental principle which lies behind the formation of CIA was
that you take an agency, and you put it independent of the
departments and other agencies who have an interest in.some
particular program, policy, budget, weapons system, or
whatever. And that, thereby, you are able to get an inde-
pendent assessment of some of these problems that we face.
I think this to me is something that is very precious that
we need. I think there are a number of people who think the
Pentagon Papers reflect a little of this, in CIA's taking a
position which may be uncomfortable from time to time in the L
face of the. other departments, but it is part of the think-
ing process that we ask our leaders to go through where they.
do listen, not only to the proposal but also to the opposi-
ion assessment of that particular thing. I think that when
you tinker with bureaucratic structures, you really always
have to look at how much are you improving and how much are
you hurting, and frequently the balance is not all that
simple.
Question: (Inaudible)
Answer: Well, the Russian's, I am very happy to say, is
quite a different affair than ours. Obviously they do get,
for free, a great deal of information, so that they do not
have to spend the money or take the risk to learn about our
political state, within our structure, or our development of
various weapons systems, and so forth. We do have to spend
that money and take those risks. -A great deal of the KGB
efforts, particularly, is devoted to internal security--
which I hope that we will be barred from because I certainly
want to be barred from it. In their foreign intelligence
activity they, of course, have a separate structure that
they can conduct political operations through, which is the
Communist Party structure of various countries so that that
is a case in which their approach has distinguished the
intelligence approach from the political action approach..
In t:he work against our country, they are still recruiting,
trying to recruit Americans. In the past four years, some-
thing like 400 separate approaches have been made to Americans
abroad for possible recruitment by Soviet intelligence services.
Now these are approaches which are based on various kinds of
appeals or the exertion of pressure to try to get somebody
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to help them out. There is some degree of paranoia, frankly,
in the belief that a junior officer can give you something
that the subscription can't sometimes. They do have those
rose-colored glasses and they assume that our free society
is all. a great conspiracy and that your newspapers are all a
part of the Wall Street, military, industrial complex.
Consequently, what you say is really a put-up, that the real.
truth is hidden underneath there. They are consequently
trying to penetrate into this great conspiracy and get the
truth out of it. They are, I'm glad to say, however, begin-
ning to learn the rules, the lesson that we learned a number
of years ago, which is the importance of research and care-
ful analysis of the openly available facts. The Institute
for the Study of the U.S.A., for instance, is a carbon copy
of some of the Russian institutes that we have set up around
this country, and academic centers, and other foundations,
and so forth. This can only be good, really, in the sense
that the more they began to really understand this society,
the safer we all will be because difficulties normally stem
from misunderstandings and misperceptions among nations..
uestion: Mr. Colby, you mentioned something, I think you
calle it a "good" secret, which should be kept and not
told. Could you tell us an example of a "good" secret, not
one that has not been told, but one that has been told?
Answer: Well, a "good" secret that has been told, is a
number of the names in Mr. Agee's book. A number of the
"good" secrets that I think should be kept are some of our
relationships with foreigners around the world whose reputa-
tions could suffer a great deal in.their own country. One
particular area that I think is a "good" secret is the
cooperation that a number of American businesses have given
us over the past. If it comes out that the X.Y.Z. Export
Corporation, which has $100,000,000 a year business, allowed
us t.o have one individual work abroad under the cover of
X.Y.Z. Export Corporation, I think you could very easily
count on that $100,000,000 business going down to a very
small figure in a number of senses, because the smear would
be applied not only to that one individual but to every
employee of that company. I think the name of that X.Y.Z.
Corporation is a very important secret which should be kept.
Question: Mr. Colby, you've discussed the information
gat ering function of intelligence this morning. Could you
te11 us when you feel that the intelligence function should
also extend to covert political and economic involvements
with other countries, sabotage, and subversion?
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Answer: Yes. This is a question which I think is a legiti-
mate one. The fact is that during World War II, we did
quite'a lot about it. During the Cold War we were heavily
engaged in this kind of activity. We were helping various
friends of America and opponents of Communist expansion in
various parts of the world, supporting them and assisting
them in various ways. A very substantial portion of CIA's
budget was used on that kind of operation during the 50s and
60s. I think, in great part, with some rather flagrant
exceptions, this was successful. The flagrant exceptions,
of course, include the Bay of Pigs--and it is very hard to
justify that as a good secret anymore! The fact was that
there was a major effort to take over Western Europe by
subversion as well as direct military confrontation. That
was met by NATO, the Marshall Plan and, as I say, some CIA
operations. There was an effort to expand Communist insur-
gency throughout Latin America in 1960, and I think that was
met by a variety of political and economic programs and, some
CIA activity. There was an effort to capture the image of
world peace on behalf of the Soviet Union during the 50s and
60s, a variety of peace conferences and youth conferences
and all the rest. This was competed with largely by CIA, or
with CIA support, not by CIA. This effort on their part
essentially failed, which I think did us in very goad stead.
When the anti-war and peace movement became important in-
this country, even those things that people questioned
whether we should have done revealed our overall conclusion
that there was essentially no foreign manipulation or support
of the American peace movement during the late 60s and early,
70s. I think if the Russians had actually captured the
peace movement, in. a very positive sense, you might have had
a very dangerous situation. And we did have a dangerous
situation when the Russians captured the image of anti-
facism in the late 30s and profitted from that by the recruit-
ment of some very long-term assets such as Mr. Philby in the
British service, Burgess and MacLean, some of the other
major figures that they recruited on an ideological basis
during that pQriod. That kind of operation does justify
meeting the sophisticated kind of attack, sophisticated kind
of exertion of influence by another country within a third
country, in order to protect our country. I might say that
today we do very little of this, and that the very small
porportion of our budget, for example, is devoted to this.
We-also have considerably greater controls on it than perhaps
we did once. The Congress in`December passed a new law that
says that if we are to do any of this, the President must
find it important to the national security and I have to go
brief' six committees of the Congress about it. This is
certainly going to reduce any very foolish use of this, and
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I think appropriately, because I think it should be used
only where it is clearly necessary, clearly supported by the
elected representatives of the American people in the interests
of the United States.
Question (Inaudible)
Answer: His question is, "Do you approve of CIA agents
posing as correspondents?" To this audience I think that is
a very good question which I should have mentioned myself.
A couple of thoughts. About a year or two ago, it came. to
the public attention that we were using certain correspondents
abroad. CIA was using certain o them. I committed myself
at that time to eliminate the use of any staff members of
any of your organizations; of any major, any substantial
American journalistic enterprise. I said at the same time
that I think I still could use the oddstringer, the freelancer,
or the representatives - a -some so-called publication which
really isn't a publication--some kind of "Hod Carriers
Gazette," or something--and that these I would propose,to
continue to use. :I received a little criticism about the
general subject, but I still think that that's probably a
reasonable differentiation. It does allow your staff corre-
spondent to be sure, you to be sure, and that your staff
correspondent is not a CIA agent without your knowledge; nor
is the other staff correspondent a CIA agent with whom you
associate when working. It does, however, say that -there
are some Americans abroad or representatives of America
abroad, that do work for CIA.
Question: Is it possible to give us CIA's hindsight judgment
about t e overthrow of Salvador Allende?
Answer: Well, I have only said a few things about that.
Again it is a problem of what we officially said, but I
have said, and it is true, and I said it under oath, that we
had nothing to do with the military coup which overthrew
President Allende. We had no contacts with those people,
and we in no way stimulated or supported or assisted them in
a military coup. We did have a program of assisting some of
the democratid forces in Chile looking toward the 1976
election. We hoped that those democratic forces would win
the 1976 election. The military coup stemmed from the fact
that-President Allende was such that he created such destruc-
tion in that country that eventually the military did move.
I.reported on our activities rather fully to one of my
oversight committees. That testimony was unfortunately late
to some extent, and. in the process--again, one of the kind
of problems we get into in CIA--in the process, the word
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"de--stabilization" was added as a description of our activity
down there. I have said that was not a clear statement of
what we were doing. We were trying to support the democratic
forces looking toward the election of 1976, but we were
deliberately not trying to "de-stabilize." We did not
support the trucker's strike; we did not support some other
rather violent demonstrations that took place, but unfortunately,
the word got loose. It's a handy word, and, it's been applied
to CIA's operations all over the world ever since that time.
Thank you very much.
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