LETTERS TO THE EDITOR WILLIAM COLBY REPLIES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00901R000500080008-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 36
• Document Creation Date: December 9, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 14, 2000
• Sequence Number: 8
• Publication Date: May 19, 1981
• Content Type: NSPR

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ARTICLE. APP ARED
- O PAGE
THE WASHINGTON POST
19 May 1981
.` : William Colby Replies
Ralph W. McGehee's version of ketplaces, their .mortar' barrages of
what happened in.Vietnam ["Colby's refugee centers and their tanks that-
Vietnam: History. Misrepresented," forced their way into-Saigon's Presi
op-ed, May 5} is, quite- simply, false. dential Palace hardly''. evidenced any
There is neither space nor need to re- "great reluctance:"
fute each of Mn McGehee's gross mis- The immediate disappearance after
;representations: since :I have already the war of the South Vietnamese
done so in sworn. testimony and.in communist organizational facade, the
writing. Suffice it-to say that my direct continuing presence of massive North
responsibilities:with-respect to Viet- Vietnamese regular forces and com-
nam, both there- and. in Washington, munist administrators in the "uni
over a 'period-=of=mem than-15 years tied" south; and the. desperate, ,dan-
_(1959 to 1975) havagiven-nie a more gerous exodus in leaky boats of hun-
reliable basis-for_analysie than Mr.. dreds of thousands of brave Vietnam-
NicGehee'asbrief tour-there. For exam- ese seeking escape from their tormen-
ple-, during-mAtravels to every part of tors, all point unmistakably to the.
that country, h evermet those "objet- true originators; perpetrators: and, re-.
tive Vietnamese experts", to attest t6 l grettably, winners of the Second In-
North Vietnamese "great reluctance" dochinese War, 1960-1975.
W E COLBY
to fight South Vietnam. Certainly
their grenades tossed into village mar- New York'
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ARTICLE APPEARED
ON PAGE
THE WASHINGTON STAR (GREEN LINE)
15 May 1981
CORD MEYER
.,."Picks Amateur fo-
ost.-Sensffi.ve...CTA,Jo
In some of its chaies- for senior
positions in its foretgnlicy estab-
lishment, the way tineR.eagan ad
ministration are oindrons to be
hold: Just as State Department
officers were beginning-to-recover
from the appointment- of- a- Reagan
confidant without- any~.foreign ex-
perience as deputy seci,?tary of state,
the CIA was stunned'-this~-week by
the selection of a rank amateur-to .-
head its most sensitive-directorate.
Reaching outside the professional.
cadre of trained and-experienced in-
telligence officers, CIA Director Wit
..liant Casey has. rejected the..unan
imous advice, of old i:aleiligence
..hands by appointing a New, Hamp
shire businessman,and. Reagan pa-,
litical operative, Max HHugel; as-dep-
uty director for operations (DDO).
This government job was once
described by columnist Stewart Al-
sop with-only slight xag ;erasion-as
"the most difficultanddangerous of
ter the president's;".The man in this.
position has the responsibility for di-
recting, all the agency s secret over-. seas operations from.;.recruiting
spies inside Russia, to secretly pen
etrating the internatioaal;-tettarist
networks, to conducting.-covert
litical activities. Alien Dukes, inch-:'
and Helms and, William Colby all-
.held this job before-st:lt?ently be-
coming' CIA--- director-s~'. btzt` - they earned their vrornotip'ct?by- man3 : j
years in intelligence-assignments
:The DDO's mos~:'?taxmidable,oppo
- nent and main competitor-Dorf:; the.
world stage is-the head. rf the-KGI3s,-
First Chief Directorate, who con
trols in Russiatreiiiba ies a corps of
KGB prollessional officers fourtimes
the size of the CIA's-:overseas. pres
.Incredible to KGB 'ry
The KGB chiefs in Moscow will
find it incredible that the Americans
should entrust the DDO responsibil-
ity to someone with virtually no pre-
vious experience, and they are un-
doubtedly searching their files for
evidence of Mr. Hugel's role as'a
longtime, undercover agent. They
will find nothing of the sort. ;' - -
It is no reflection on Hugel's busi=
ness acumen in amassing a small for- -
tune from the construction-of a sew=
;.ing machine company to point out
that his only prior experience with intelligence was a brief stint at, the:
end of World War II with military in-
telligence. As one Pentagon general
commented, "The DDO office is no
place for on-the-job training."
There ,is perhaps no position in
the U.S. government where the accu-
mulated memory of past successes
and failures and deep familiarity
with the individual strengths and
weaknesses of hundreds of staff of-
ficers are so essential. The DDO has
to be both leader and manager, and
his ability to inspire confidence
among his troops depends on his re-
cord of achievement in intelligence.
A Dicey Business
If President Reagan follows .
throughon his intention to build up
the covert political action and:para-
military resources of the CIA, this
appointment is all the more surpris-
ing. As other presidents have
learned, covert intervention in for-
eign'countries can be a dicey busi-
ness. The decision to intervene de-
pends in the first instance on the
DDO's judgment on whether the
In the'only'othercasewherea CIA
director reached so far outside the
ranks of the operations directorate,
Allen Dulles selected a bright econ-
omist, Richard Bissell, to be DDO: In-
tellectually brilliant but lacking in
operational experience, Bissell be-
came the unfortunate architect of
the Bay of Pigs::
In the staffs of-the Senate and
House intelligence committees and-
among friendly European intelli-
gence services, there is concern that
this appointment may further politi-
cize the CIA. Hugel first came to
Casey's attention during the presi-
dential campaign as the result of his
success in organizing ethnic groups
behind Reagan's candidacy- Casey is
convincing in his denial that the ap- {
poiutment. is a political payoff, but
the Democrats would find it hard to
resist the temptation to replace
Hugel-with a political choice of their,
own the -next time- around. Step by
step, the apolitical objectivity on
which the agency used to pride itself
is being undermined. - I
When confronted with' these
fears, Casey explains that after re-
viewing the qualifications of all se- ,
nior operational officers he conclud-
ed that only Hugel had the required-:
drive and ability., Casey may have
been influenced by his experience
in World War II when Wild Bill
Donovan collected a group of talent-
ed amateurs to run U.S.intelligence.
But that was 40 years ago and the
Soviets now present a more formida-
ble challenge. Casey-may yet prove .~
to be right in choosing an able ama-
teur for the agency's toughest job.
But -it's a breathtaking gamble for
which the country will have to pay
heavily if Casey has gtiessed wrong.;;
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STATINTL
FOR PUBLIC AFFAIRS STAFF
:DATE May 13, 1981 1 1:30 PM CITY Washington, DC
.SUBJECT Intelligence and National Security
GORDON PETERSON: Our guests this evening, William Colby,
formerly of the CIA, and Richard J. Barnet, who has written in the
issue before the current one of The New Yorker about national
security. We'll be talking about that.
PETERSON: Please welcome now to After Hours in the
Channel 9 newsroom Mr. William Colby. Mr. Colby was Director of
Central Intelligence from 1973 to '76, has considerable background
in the Far East, including Vietnam. He's a lawyer. And during
World War II he was with the OSS, along with former British Army
Captain Tom Braden. Mr. Colby twice parachuted behind German
lines, I'm told.
I can't get this...
TOM BRADEN: Can I ask him a couple of questions, just
to set his background?
PETERSON: Sure.
BRADEN: Bill Colby was Director of the CIA, was a World
War II hero.
And it has bothered me, Bill, as an old friend and com-
rade in arms, that during the last two years you've been viciously
attacked by the left and viciously attacked by the right. Now, I
just want to ask you these two questions.
Mr. de Borchgrave, In his roman a clef, suggests to any-
one who knows Washington and who knows the principal characters In
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our town and in our country that you are a mole within the CIA.
Did that charge -- that's the charge from the right. Now, did
that charge bother you?
Now, the other charge, that comes from the left...
PETERSON: Wet I, could we get an answer to charge one
before we go on to charge two?
PAT BUCHANAN: Can he tell us if he's a mole for the
Soviet Union?
PETERSON: Are you a mole?
WILLIAM COLBY: I am not a mole.
BUCHANAN: Okay.
BRADY: What'd you think of de Borchgrave's...
COLBY: I think it's nonsense. De Borchgrave doesn't
understand American politics, which is that from time to time it
goes to the right or it goes to the left. And the key to American
politics is to establish a relationship and an understanding on
the part of the public with what you're doing.
Now, problem of Intelligence was that it was much too
secret for many years, so that the focus came on the exciting
parts of intelligence.
BUCHANAN: Well, you're talking about, then, the fact
that when you were CIA Director, you were the ones that had to
deliver the so-called family jewels to the Congress of the United
States?
COLBY: I had to try to show that we were responsive
to American constitutional government. This is a very novel idea
in the world of intelligence, that you be subject to your consti-
tution.
BUCHANAN: Did not the committee conclude that you had
COLBY: The committee concluded that I had been respon-
sive to what they asked.
BUCHANAN: When I say you I mean the CIA.
BRADEN: The CIA had not been.
COLBY: What the committee basically concluded was that
Congress hadn't done its job, over about 20 years, of supervising
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intelligence.
BUCHANAN: They used the term rogue elephant to describe
the agency. Do you think that's fair?
COLBY: No, no. That was...
COLBY: Church suggested that that might be the case,
and he's the guy who signed the report that said that CIA was not
out of control.
PETERSON: By definition, isn't intelligence supposed
to be secret? I mean it isn't intelligence anymore.
COLBY: There are supposed to be secrets. But the old
tradition of intelligence was that it was totally secret, totally
at the command of the President, the Prime Minister, the King,
and totally out of control of the legislature and so forth.
We Americans have developed something very novel: that
we can have an intelligence service that has its secrets, and yet
is subject to our constitutional separation of powers.
BRADEN: And Mr. de Borc;,grave doesn't understand that.
COLBY: And he doesn't understand it.
BUCHANAN: And yet I've heard this, though, that...
COLBY: And some of my old friends don't understand it,
BUCHANAN: Subsequent to the revelations, etcetera,
that a lot of our sources overseas, a lot of our contacts and
communication with foreign intelligence agencies, they simply cut
off the CIA because they don't know whether their secrets can be
kept any longer. Is this true? Has the agency been damaged?
COLBY: That's right. It has. It has been wounded.
I don't think the wound has been fatal. I think we can heal it.
COLBY: We Americans, and largely by the excitement
and the exaggerations and sensationalism with which we surrounded
our revisionism of 25 years of American history.
BUCHANAN: Is that the press? You blame the press, then.
COLBY: The press, the American people generally, and
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intelligence itself for pretending that it could be totally secret
in America.
PETERSON: If I were running an intelligence agency, I
would want the enemy to think that my intelligence was totally
unreliable. And if the press could pick up that notion, that
would be fine.
COLBY: 0h, now. The function of intelligence today in
America is to help our people understand the issues that they face
around the world.
We had a great national debate a year ago about SALT.
I happened to have been for it, and some of my old friends are
against it. And we went around the country debating. But we
didn't debate the number of warheads on a missile, the megaton-
nage, the throw weight, all that sort of thing, because it'd been
established. And what the Soviets thought were secret weapons,
we Americans discussed in an informed debate about what we ought
to do about SALT.
Now, I was disappointed in the result. But nonetheless...
BUCHANAN: Let's talk about open information. What do
you think of the activities of Philip Agee and people...
COLBY: I think he's a traitor, very simply.
BUCHANAN: He's the individual that exposes American
agents abroad.
COLBY: I think he's a traitor. He's a man who went
into CIA, undertook an obligation to keep secret the names of the
people that he dealt with, and went out and decided that he was,
self-appointed, eliminate CIA. I think we need a law that would
send him to jail.
PETERSON: What about Louis Wolf, who was not a member
of the CIA?
BUCHANAN: Do you know Louis Wolf with Covert Bulletin,
or whatever is?
COLBY: I've testified next to Mr. Wolf and I disagree
with him entirely.
BUCHANAN: Do you think he's a traitor?
COLBY: I don't think he's a traitor. I think he's very
misguided.' And I think that we ought to have a law that would
punish someone who deliberately sets out to destroy and Intelli-
gence agency, that the Congress and the people of the United
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BRADEN: Let me ask you, Bill...
COLBY: We have laws that say that you cannot create
mutiny in the armed forces. Why? Because we need an armed force
and we need to protect it against mutiny. And we have a law that
says you can go to jai I.
BUCHANAN: The First Amendment does not protect insti-
gation to mutiny.
COLBY: It doesn't protect it if there is a specific
intent -- this is a very complicated legal...
BRADEN: Let me give...
COLBY: A specific intent to destroy the agency that
the Congress set up.
BRADEN: Let me ask you the question that is thrown at
you from the left. Here's my old friend Bill Colby, Director of
CIA, World War II hero. And the left wing says...
BRADEN: Yeah, I'd say that. I'd say that.
All right. The left wing charges that you were placed
in charge of certain covert activities during the Vietnam War and
that you deliberately engaged in a campaign of assassination.
BUCHANAN: The Phoenix program.
COLBY: Absolutely false. If you'll look...
BUCHANAN: Can you tell us about the Phoenix program?
COLBY: Well, I'd need about 15 or 20 minutes to give
you.a good explanation, and I don't think you have the time.
PETERSON: Take it.
COLBY: I'm the guy who wrote the directive for the
Phoenix program when it started. And one of the things I put in
it is, "This is not a program of assassination." Because it's
important when you're facing terrorists that you develop a concept
of law, a concept of confidence with the people that you're deal-
ling with, that you are not arbitrary, that you are seriously
working to 'gather good intelligence -- not bad intelligence, but
good intelligence -- about the secret enemy that you're dealing
with.
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BUCHANAN: But we were at war -- okay. We were at war...
COLBY: And that you're not a McCarthyite, that you're
not denouncing people for being Communists, but you're asking
what their specific job was.
BUCHANAN: Right. You were in the business, though,
in Vietnam not just of denouncing people, of finding out...
COLBY: Of arresting them and trying to get them to
rally to the government's side.
BUCHANAN: And it's alleged that under the Phoneix pro-
gram thousands of VC, Vietnamese...
COLBY: Now, we've gone over that year after year.
BUCHANAN: You're saying that all those allegations are
COLBY: They are false. Because what the allegations
use are the numbers that I gave in testimony before the Congress
of the United States in sworn testimony. One thing I said was
that 17,000 people that we had identified as leaders of the Com-
munist apparatus had rallied to the government's side, 28,000
had been captured and 20,000 had been k i l l e d in the course of
military operations. That when a battle took place outside the
village at night, we went around in the morning to see who was
killed on both sides. And sure enough, that fellow that you had
on your I1st as a member of the Communist apparatus was dead.
BUCHANAN: Did you see "Apocalypse Now," the film?
COLBY: I haven't seen it. I really don't agree with
that kind of super...
BUCHANAN: Well, in other words, they say that these
agents were sent out, basically, to kill people and to assassin-
ate the enemy, and in one case to assassinate our own. That's
just nonsense?
COLBY: When we had units in Vietnam fighting an
enemy, yes, they went out to kill peopiei because that's what
military units do. They go out to kill the enemy. That's part
of a military operation. And that's how...
BUCHANAN: How do you feel about Vietnam now?
COLBY: I think that It's a great disappointment that
we Americans left what was essentially a victory and dumped It
over and turned it over to the enemy.
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BUCHANAN: Why did we do that, and who's responsible
COLBY: In part because we exaggerated our images of
it, because we interpreted the Tet offensive as a defeat when it
was really a victory against the Communists, when we ignored the
fact that we had brought peace to large portions of Vietnam.
BUCHANAN: Well, you're talking about the press.
safely...
COLBY: I traveled in the countryside at midnight
[Confusion of voices]
COLBY: ...talking about the press. I'm talking about
the fact that the American people were so disappointed by the
fact that we had sent 500,000 soldiers off to Vietnam and that
they hadn't been able to bring about a result. And so we were
disgusted with it. And we missed the whole point, that the 500
soldiers had -- 500,000 soldiers had nothing to do with the nature
of the war. It was a village war, not military.
PETERSON: But there was a lot more to the opposition
of the American people than the fact that they weren't winning
with those 500,000 men.
COLBY: But I think -- I think the basic thing is that
if they were winning, the American people would have been...
PETERSON: ...moral argument?
COLBY: I know it. And I've heard the moral arguments
of a lot of places. But if the Americans went...
PETERSON: You just dismiss them?
COLBY: If we had won the Bay of Pigs, the American
people would have been delighted.
BUCHANAN: All right. But you-said we won the battle
of...
BUCHANAN: Who is responsible for the perception that
we lost it?'
COLBY: Because of the way in which we conduct our
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affairs, the way in which we exaggerate the dramatic image of...
BUCHANAN: Who?
PETERSON: He's trying to get you to say that we in
the news media...
BUCHANAN: ...tell the bad story in Vietnam? Did the
Administration not do it properly? Was Johnson -- had he lost
his credibility?
COLBY: There were a whole variety of reasons. I mean
one thing we did wrong was to overthrow a friendly government of
President Ngo Dinh Diem...
BUCHANAN: We overthrew?
COLBY: Yes. Our President...
BUCHANAN: You mean the United States overthrew him?
PETERSON: John F. Kennedy.
COLBY: Yes. John F. Kennedy gave the signal to the
generals that if they overthrew him, we would continue to support...
BUCHANAN: Wait a minute. I think that -- to be fair
to President Kennedy, my reading of it was that there was an in-
dication that the United States would not interfere.
COLBY: No, no. It was more than that. I beg your
pardon. We had cut off the aid to President Diem and we gave
the clear signal to the general that the aid would be resumed if
there was a new government.
BUCHANAN: Well, we bear a certain
responsibility for
COLBY: We certainly does -- do. Perhaps not for his
death, but nonetheless for his overthrow.
BUCHANAN: Which resulted in the death of him and his
brother.
COLBY: The death of President Diem and his brother,
friends of mine, came about because one general decided that if
you draw a sword against the tyrant, you'd better use it.
PETERSON: Have we not forgotten all the allegations
of 'corruption in the Diem regime?
COLBY: There was corruption in the Diem regime. There
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was corruption in Boston. There was corruption in Chicago. There
was corruption all over the world.
PETERSON: But we didn't send 500,000 people to Dick
Daley's Chicago.
COLBY: We sent quite a few down in the South.
BUCHANAN: There were only 16,000 in Vietnam when Diem
was assassinated.
BRADEN: WelI, let's not fight the war. I'd like to
know what Bill Colby thinks we ought to do about what happened
in Rome today.
COLBY: There are three things to do about terrorism.
PETERSON: All right. Can I interrupt you right now
and come back to that?
PETERSON: You said you had three things that can be
done about the kind of thing that happened in Rome.
COLBY: Three things about terrorism. Terrorism is a
problem that we live with in America. We've lived with it for
hundreds of years. We've got the Ku Klux Klan. We've got the
Weathermen. We've got all sorts.
What do you need to handle terrorism? One, good intel-
ligence. You need to be able to penetrate into these terrorist
groups and learn their identities and their plans.
Secondly, you need some good security procedures, or-
dinary defense procedures. The best example, of course, is the
screening thing that we all go through at the airport, a minimal
problem, minimal intrusion on your rights, but nonetheless a very
effective tool.
And thirdly, you need public support. You have to have
the concept that the public is supporting you in this effort.
Now, that requires that you operate through legal and constitu-
tional means, and not through unconstitutional means. Because
if you go over the edge and start to be arbitrary, you will lose
public support.
PETERSON: You mentioned the Weathermen. If you had
been in'the Department of Justice, would you have brought charges
against Mark Felt?
COLBY: No, I don't think I would have. I think that
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the situation at the time was serious. We had people being blown
up in the country. We had 5000 bombings in one year in this
country. You had a tradition that the FBI was supposed to go out
and learn about these things, and supposed to go over the edge
from time to time.
Now, if you want to change the rules, it's all right.
But then apply the rules to the future. Don't apply them to the
past.
BUCHANAN: Retroactively.
Let me ask you this. In what they've done with the FBI
now, I think an organization has to actively engage in violent
activities before the FBI can wiretap, etcetera.
COLBY: Probable cause of a crime.
BUCHANAN: Okay. Had the FBI been engaged in the Han-
afi Muslim or the KKK or the Communist Workers Party, they might
have prevented those killings. Is your feeling that the law has
gone too far restricting the CIA and the FBI?
COLBY: I think that the rule that applies to the FBI
today about subversion and espionage, that you must have probable
cause to believe that there is a crime in the course of commission
before you can investigate, is too much. I think that there are
now protections which did not exist a few years ago against arbi-
trary use of the FBI or the CIA.
BUCHANAN: Do you think that ...
COLBY: Because
now
that
review what they do.
Ten
gress
didn't want to know
what
them
go. And, of course,
they
went
along, and sometimes
they
you have congressional committees
years ago, 20 years ago, the Con-
they were doing. They just let
had to make up the rules as they
made a mistake in the rules.
BUCHANAN: Do you think the attempted assassination of
the Pope by an individual who is clearly an international terror-
ist will swing the pendulum back toward the center in this coun-
try at all?
COLBY: Well, I hope that we are all going to become
more aware of the danger that these terrorists pose to our so-
ciety and to our safety.
PETERSON: There are those who believe the pendulum
is already past the center and swinging right.
BUCHANAN: There are those who hope this.
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COLBY: There are those who believe that McCarthyism
is automatically coming back because we're conscious of the fact
that there's a threat. I don't agree with that.
BUCHANAN: Let me ask you...
COLBY: I think we can reach a middle sensibl.e ground
among us Americans.
BUCHANAN: All right. Was it a middle sensible ground
when your friend, I guess, Dick Helms went before a committee,
it was a public committee, and they asked him: Was the CIA in-
volved in Chile? And he had one oath told him that he could not
reveal the secrets and the other told him he had to say -- tell
the truth, and he gave a flat no, we weren't involved. And then
our government indicted Mr. Helms, prosecuted him and convicted
him?
COLBY: When he did that, he was under the impression
that the congressmen and senators that were asking the questions
were well aware of the true answer and welI aware of the nature
of the questions they were asking him.
BUCHANAN: Why, then, did his own government prosecute
COLBY: I think it was a great mistake, that they should
not have prosecuted him.
BUCHANAN: An injustice?
COLBY: Yes, an absolutely injustice, as in the course
of Mr. Felt and Mr. Miller.
pardoned.
BUCHANAN: And you were delighted to see Felt and Miller
COLBY: I was delighted to see them. I contributed to
their defense, and I'm delighted at the fact that they were par-
doned.
BRADEN: Bill, you wrote a piece called "Intelligence
in the 1980s," which I read with care, and I find it interesting.
And I'd just like you to go through one part of it. You said
that -- you listed some of the intelligence failures of the last
few years. You mentioned, I think, a failure of intelligence in
Iran, a failure of intelligence in Vietnam about where the sup-
plies were coming from, and one other -- oh, the Cuban...
COLBY: The Cuban brigade -- the Soviet brigade in Cuba.
BRADEN: The Soviet brigade in Cuba.
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Now, have there been any other intelligence failures?
COLBY: There's been lots of intelligence failures.
The purpose of intelligence is not to give you a crystal ball
with an absolute view of the future. Because if you had it, you
wouldn't want it, because it would mean that you'd have to be
condemned to go through that experience. The function of Intel-
Iigence is to warn you about something that may happen, and may
likely happen, so thta you can act, so that a better, rather
than a worse, result ensues, and thereby proves the prediction
wrong, but wrong for the right reason.
BRADEN: But the interesting thing to me about your
whole discussion of intelligence in the '80s was that you placed
very little emphasis on what you and I used to work with --
namely, spies.
COLBY: That's right.
BRADEN: Why?
COLBY: Well, they're a part of the problem. I'm not
dismissing them. They are a necessary element. But today we
have technology. Today we have enormous scholarship. And this
is the real key to intelligence. We live in an information age
today in which most major decisions, even in secret countries,
are public.
Now, we discussed, as I said, the details of Soviet
secret weaponry. How? Because we learned about them and we
shared them with our people so that we could discuss them. Now,
this wouldn't have been conceivable a mere 20 years ago.
BUCHANAN: ...a historical question. I remember the
phrase. They said -?- it was a Sunday morning under the presi-
dency of Gerald Ford, and they said Jim Schlesinger headed into
the Oval Office and he met Mr. Colby coming out with his head
under his arm, that it had been cut off.
COLBY: Not quite, but...
BUCHANAN: But why did -- why were you discharged by
President Ford?
COLBY: Oh, because he had to show that he was in charge
of intelligence. We'd had a very exciting year of denunciation
and chaos and so forth, and he had to assert his authority.
BUCHANAN: Do you think you were made to swallow the
football, as it were?
COLBY: That's fair enough. You serve at the pleasure
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of the President.
BRADEN: Do you remember what John Kennedy...
COLBY: There's nothing wrong with that.
BRADEN: Remember what John Kennedy said to Richard...
[Confusion of voices]
BRADEN: Remember that, you guys, what John Kennedy said
to Richard Bissell? He said, "Under the British system of govern-
ment, I would have to go. But this is the United States."
PETERSON: "You go."
What is your view -- in Iight of all the technology
and the scholarship, what is your view of the American Intelli-
gence establishment at this moment?
COLBY: I think it's the best in the world. I think it
needs to heal the wounds that it's suffered over the past five
years by the excitement and the exaggeration that has been im-
posed upon it. I think we're in the process of doing that, of
putting it back into some stable system and letting it get back
to work, which is what it really ought to be doing. It ought to
be focusing on the real problems that we face, the problems from
the Soviets, the problems from the Third World, the problems from
the terrorists.
BUCHANAN: About four years ago, just when Admiral Stans-
field Turner came in, he delivered a terse, I think 75-word, mes-
sage to several hundred agents, the beginning of some 800 who were
to be RIFed or terminated. What did that do to the morale of the
agency?
COLBY: Well, it was a great mistake. And Turner him-
self has admitted that it was wrong. You don't send pink slips
to people who have spent their career in something. And he real-
izes that, that he should have...
BUCHANAN: Did he gut the counterintelligence area?
COLBY: I don't think so. I'm the one who's accused
of gutting the counterintelligence area.
BRADEN: Colby made the great...
COLBY: Because I changed the basic leadership of coun-
terintelligence.
BUCHANAN: You fired James Jesus Angleton.
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COLBY: Yeah, Mr. Angleton. Because we had some dif-
ferences at how we went...
BUCHANAN: What is your assessment of Mr. Angleton's
COLBY: I think he did great service for his country
for many years. I think that at the end of his career it became
a little unappiicable to the current problems. I listened to the
descriptions of his work. I looked for the results. I didn't
find the results. I was looking for the agents that had been
identified...
BUCHANAN: But he did keep the agency free of a mole.
And no other Western Intelligence agency has been free.
COLBY: Well, I'm not sure that he did that all by him-
BUCHANAN: But it was under -- here's the thing. If
there had been a mole there, it would have been his responsibility.
COLBY: No, not really. The responsibility would have
been the Director's and it would have been the Security Office,
which was responsible for screening the people coming into the
agency. His job was to identify the foreign intelligence acti-
vities in their home ground. That's a different subject than
protecting your own staff and your own personnel.
PETERSON: What about this mole business? Is this a
novelist's pipedream?
COLBY: It's great drama. It's great fiction. And the
PETERSON: Well, it's more than fiction in England.
COLBY: Well, the fact is, you have to...
BUCHANAN: In Germany, i.n France...
COLBY: You have to assume that you've got them. I
mean all the other countries have had them. We always operated
as though there might be one there.
If you worked on China, you were not privy to the se-
crets about the Soviet Union. Because if you were wrong, it at
least Limited the area to which you could be a traitor. And
therefore you assume It. You operate on that basis.
I frankly don't believe we had one, although it wouldn't
change my way of operating, because I think it would have come up
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BRADEN: What about that kid we had, though? Didn't
he work under you? I mean you probably didn't even know him.
But the guy that actually took some papers and...
BUCHANAN: The 23-year-old guy that took the Big Bird...
COLBY: Kampiles?
BUCHANAN: Kampiles, yeah.
COLBY: Well, he was -- that happened after I was there,
but I'm not disowning responsibility. I mean the fact is he got
a little crazy. He thought he was going to be a great counterin-
telligence operator and make his way to the Soviets and give them
something to tease them and interest them. And they were smart
enough to be able to exploit it.
BUCHANAN: We had some real trouble at TRW, too. Let
me ask you...
COLBY: And we had two young, drunk pucks -- punks who
went into the drug business and made six or eight thousand dol-
lars.
BUCHANAN: Well, that raises the question...
COLBY: The difference, really, is that if you go back
to the time of the great Soviet recruitments in the late '30s and
'40s, you find an ideological base. Those people thought they
were for the revolution, for anti-fascism, ail the rest of it.
In fact, they were then used by the Soviets to open up our atomic
secrets. Alger Hiss was convicted of perjury for denying that
he was a Soviet agent. Those are pretty good recruitments. Kim
Philby became an agent.
But lately all we've had are these young punks that
sell out for a few thousand dollars. Now, that's a different
order of magnitude.
BUCHANAN: The Soviet Union's the god that failed now.
It ,wasn't in the 19.30s.
COLBY: The Soviets are ideologically dead. Let's face
it. There's nothing there. And nobody's interested in the Soviet
model of society anymore. The American society, the freedom, the
free society that we represent, has been successful all over the
world. The programmed, socialist, totalitarian societies are on
their ears. They can't pay for themselves....
BUCHANAN: Ideologically, but not militarily.
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spiritual.
COLBY: Their refugees run away.
Sure, they have the guns. But they don't have any
BRADEN: They don't have the ideas.
BUCHANAN: No, but they seem to be succeeding in Central
America, not with ideas.
COLBY: I think we can whup 'em.
PETERSON: If I don't sell something right now, there
isn't going to be anything left here.
PETERSON: Please welcome now to After Hours in the
Channel 9 newsroom Mr. Richard J. Barnet, who is a senior fellow
at the Institute for Policy Studies, usually referred to in the
news magazines as the liberal Institute for Policy Studies.
BRADEN: Left-wing think tank.
RICHARD BARNET: Both.
PETERSON: Yeah. That's good too.
BARNET: Usually it says liberal.
PETERSON: Mr. Barnet is a prolific writer. He is cur-
rently in the -- well, not the current New Yorker, the one before
the current New Yorker, on the question of national security.
I gather -- I would guess that you and Mr. Colby are
not ideological soul brothers.
BARNET: Well, you know, it's a funny thing. On a num-
ber of questions, we really are. We were meeting together not
long ago, talking about the Soviet Union and about SALT. We cer-
tainly agree on that. I think we agree that the answer to Amer-
ica's security problems is not just pouring a lot more money into
a lot more nuclear weapons.
BUCHANAN: Do you agree that Philip Agee's a traitor?
BARNET: I don't think I would use that word. I dis-
agree with a number of things that he's done. But that's not a
term I, would use loosely because the Constitution has some very
specific definitions on that.
BRADEN: I was just -- I read that piece that you re-
ferred to. And you know, you make a very strong case that the
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more nations pour into defense, the weaker their economies become.
And you cite every nation in the world, and I think you prove
your point. But what got me about it is that you also apparently
agreed that we had to protect a free society against a totali-
tarian threat.
Now, my question is this: How do you protect our so-
ciety against a Russian threat if at the same time, by protecting
it, you weaken it?
BARNET: Well, it depends on finding the right strategy
to protect it. And the right strategy to protect it is, first,
to have a very clear idea of what you're protecting. And the
first thing we're protecting is our free institutions. We're
protecting our economy. We're protecting -- the whole purpose
of a national security strategy is to enable the people of this
country to work out their destiny without being coerced or at-
tacked from outside.
Now, that means, first, that you've got to build the
real sources of your own strenth which is in your society. it
doesn't mean you don't have to have a military. But it does mean
that you've got to do something we have not done in this country
since 1945, and that is really figure out what are the roles and
missions of the military.
Today we say, "Well, we've got problems in the world
because we're losing power. We have lots of threats in the world."
And the easy answer, and the one that this President successfully
campaigned on last year, was, "Well, it means we have...."
BRADEN: Increase the defense
budget.
BARNET: Increase the defense budget willy-nilly. The
fact is, a lot of what we're spending on the military isn't going
to protect us all. It isn't going to deal with a future Iranian
problem. It wouldn't have dealt with the last Iranian problem.
It will not deal with the problem of threat to resources, to
cutting off access to oil.
I think, in a world in which we've really got limited
resources, and we certainly don't have all the money in the world,
we've got to be very sure what it is that we're buying.
BRADEN: Well, then you think Reagan is being silly by
saying, "Look, we need X percent increase in the defense budget"?
You think that...
BARNET: That's absurd. I mean if you did that in any
other -- and you can't just blame Reagan on that. I think you
have to blame Carter. He started that, only the percentage has
gone up. He said three percent, and now Reagan says seven per-
cent.
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If you did that in any other field, if you said, "Well,
we've got a health problem in this country. Therefore we're
going to spend five percent more on health, and we'll figure out
later what it's going to be," people would think you needed to
have your head examined.
PETERSON: Can we start at the beginning? In the begin-
ning of your article you talk about the gap between Soviet spen-
ding and American spending on defense. And some of the figures
you come up with are very interesting. You allege that the fig-
ures we have been reading over the years, through various Admin-
istrations, are fictional, or at least contrived.
BARNET: Well, they're totally contrived, because we
don't know the real figure that the Soviets spend. Nobody does.
The intelligence agencies do not. Therefore, what we have done
is develop a certain formula, a certain convention for figuring
out what they spend. And what we do, we say, "Well, supposing
they bought their tanks from Chrysler or General Motors, and sup-
posing they paid American wages to their conscripts. Now we can
figure what the budget costs them."
But in fact, that's enormously inflated. So that every
time our pay gets raised in this country or every time General
Motors jacks up the price of a tank, then the Soviet threat gees
up.
BUCHANAN: Well, let me give you some basic numbers.
The Soviets have more than twice as many under arms. They have
about 10,000 females in their armed forces, where we've got about
100,000. They've got 50,000, where we have about 10,000 tanks.
They've...
PETERSON: Where are these people?
BUCHANAN: I mean these are all official DOD numbers.
They're not dollars we're talking about, they're weapons.
BARNET: The DOD numbers are very well specified in
the article, based on the -- based on the Secretary of Defense's
posture statements, the last statement of Harold Brown...
BUCHANAN: How many surface-to-air missiles do they
have and how many do we have? Because the numbers that I've seen
are 12,000 for the Soviets and zero for the U.S.
BARNET: But you see, that's a meaningless figure,
because you're not talking...
BUCHANAN: It's not meaningless if you're a pilot.
BARNET: No. I f you're talking -- in the first place,
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it depends on the categories. If you're talking about submarine-
based missiles, if you're talking about...
BUCHANAN: I'm talking about SAMs.
BARNET: The fact is that you cannot simply take one
part of a military establishment and compare it with the other.
Their military establishment...
BUCHANAN: How many heavy missiles do they have and how
many do we have?
BARNET: Let me just finish.
They have a whole series of different tasks for their
military than we do, and ours is organized differently. Ours is
largely a sea-based system for the heavy-base missiles. Theirs
is largely a land-based system.
BUCHANAN: Well, theirs is a first-strike system and
ours is a second-strike system.
BARNET: No. Ours is increasingly moving towards first-
strike, and so is theirs.
BUCHANAN: Which first-strike...
BARNET: And so is theirs. That -- you put your finger
right on it, Mr. Buchanan. That's the problem. The problem is
both of these powers are moving towards technology, with increa-
singly accurate warheads, increasingly swift reaction. The United
States has been ahead in this whole technological development,
about five years ahead, every step of the way, from the time we
invented the bomb to the time we invented the missile to the time
we invented the MIRV. And we're still ahead. That's certainly
what the head of engineering in the Pentagon said in .. .
BUCHANAN: Well, Harold Brown has, himself, conceced,
after long delay, that the Soviet Union has the capacity to take
out America.'s land-based force with a first strike.
BARNET: No. I'm sorry.
BUCHANAN: Is reaching that. As reaching that.
BARNET: I'm sorry. What he said was...
BUCHANAN: And the United States can't have that until
you.get an MX.
BARNET: I'm sorry. What he said -- what he said, Mr.
Buchanan, was that the Soviets will, if present trends go on, have
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the possibility of taking out a substantial amount, possibly as
much as...
BUCHANAN: Ninety percent.
BARNET: ...of 90 percent of...
BUCHANAN: Our land-based...
BARNET: ...the land-based missiles.
BUCHANAN: Right.
BARNET: The point being, of course, that land-based
missiles are, by definition, very vulnerable.
The Soviet Union is, of course, more vulnerable because
more of their system, 70 percent of their system, is land-based.
Our system is very largely based on the sea-based systems, the
Polaris, the Poseidon.
BUCHANAN: Which is a second-strike weapon.
BARNET: Which is a second-strike weapon, and therefore
a very good weapon.
BUCHANAN: If you want to attack somebody's cities, it's
a good weapon. But I don't think you want to do something like
that.
BARNET: It's a very good weapon if your Interest is
deterrence of an attack and you not wish to be provocative. Be-
cause the one situation in which the Soviet Union, I fear, might
launch an attack -- and it's the only one that I can conceive
of -- is when they believe that an attack by the United States
was imminent.
BUCHANAN: Is it true -- a historical question -- that
in 1969, as a conservative think tank alleges, that you went to
Hanoi and during a rally accused the United States [unintelli-
gible] war of aggression?
BARNET: That's false.
BUCHANAN: Did you go to Hanoi?
BARNET: I did go to Hanoi and I wrote articles for the
New York Times.
BUCHANAN: 1969?
BARNET: I went for the New'York Times. And I then
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reported to Henry Kissinger on what I had talked about. And Henry
Kissinger at that time suggested that I go back.
BUCHANAN: What is your feeling about the outcome of
the war in Vietnam?
BARNET: The war in Vietnam was a tragedy.
BUCHANAN: What is your feeling about -- is the situ-
ation for the Vietnamese people better now than it was when the
Americans were there?
BARNET: It's certainly better than it was when there
was a war and when bombs were raining down every day, obviously.
BUCHANAN: Well, there's not a million dead in the South
BARNET: There's not -- there's not -- there's not as
large numbers of people being killed.
BUCHANAN: There's not three million dead in Cambodia,
BARNET: I'm not talking about Cambodia. You asked me
about Vietnam.
BUCHANAN: Well, let's put them all together as one
BARNET: Well, you can't quite put them all together.
Let's f i r s t talk about Vietnam. And then I ' l l be glad to answer
your questions on Cambodia.
But on Vietnam, of course, the fact that the war is
over is a tremendous -- is certainly a great improvement for
people who were living day and night under the terror...
BUCHANAN: Is it improvement for the people of South
BARNET: But, you see, the question that I think we, as
Americans, have to ask is one that really relates to ourselves.
BUCHANAN: Well, let me ask you about them. We're
going to talk about them and then we're going to talk about the
Cambodians and then we'll talk about the Americans.
BARNET: Let's talk about ourselves first, because the
implication' of your question -- and you've said this in other
places -- is that those of us who very strongly opposed the Amer-
ican involvement in the war in Vietnam were doing so for some
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reason that either we favored the Vietnamese or that we wished
to see...
BUCHANAN: Which Vietnamese?
BARNET: Or that we wished to see a...
BRADEN: The North Vietnamese.
BARNET: The North Vietnamese, the people who won the
That is really a slander of a lot of patriotic Amer-
icans who saw the war for what it was, which is a terrible tra-
gedy for the United States in which we reached out to prove our
power, and in the process showed, real ly, that power had changed,
and we severely weakened ourselves, both internationally and in-
ternally.
BUCHANAN: And you blame Kennedy and Johnson for that.
BARNET: I blame a lot of people. I blame, in some
sense, all of us. Because those of us who did not do everything
they could to point out what the problem was...
BRADEN: He's only telling you what I've been trying to
tell you, Pat. It was a war that this country didn't, couldn't
possibly win, because the people didn't care.
BUCHANAN: If we can't beat North Vietnam, then...
BRADEN: The people didn't care.
BUCHANAN: They did care'up until 1968.
BRADEN: It didn't make that much difference to us.
BUCHANAN: Why didn't you raise that question with Mr.
CcIby?
BRADEN: Right now, Pat, what difference does it make
to us, this country, to its interests and our way of living, who
controls Hanoi?
BUCHANAN: Well, I'll tell you, it is of interest to
us who controls Cam Ranh Bay. It Is of interest to us that the
Soviet fleet is -- and Soviet planes are flying out of those
bases. It is of interest to us that people that put their con-
fidence in us are dying by the tens of thousands and have died
by the millions. It is of interest to us that, for example, that
Nazi Germany not succeed in the conquest of Eastern Europe.
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BRADEN: I hope you're not comparing Nazi Germany with
North Vietnam.
BUCHANAN: Vietnam is the worst aggressor, in my judg-
ment. And what it's done to the people of Southeast Asia is
comparable to what Hitler did to the Jews.
Would you disagree with that?
BARNET: I would totally disagree with that?
BUCHANAN: What about Cambodia, then? Let's go to
BARNET: I would totally disagree. Cambodia -- Cam-
bodia, when I was there in 1969, was a neutral country at peace,
with a prince struggling to deal with the North Vietnamese, who
had come In and used his territory, and was making progress.
The United States openly assisted a coup which...
BUCHANAN: We only had 12 guys in there when the coup
occurred. Twelve guys...
BARNET: Did him in and brought a hideous repressive
government there, under Lon Nol.
BUCHANAN: What do you mean? They took...
BARNET: Which then produced the kind of polarization...
BUCHANAN: You mean a hideous -- Lon Nol was hideous?
BARNET: Yes, he sure was -- and that you see all
around, where, in fact, you had a polarization in which the Khmer
Rouge took over.
BUCHANAN: In 1975, three years after the Americans...
PETERSON: This splendid state of affairs led to what
has been called awful genocide.
BARNET: Yes. I mean it was a hideous regime and it
was one In which...
BUCHANAN: Lon Nol's regime was a hideous regime?
[Confusion of voices
BARNET: I was referring to Pol Pot.
BUCHANAN: Now it's Pol Pot.
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BARNET: I was talking about Pol Pot, which was much
BUCHANAN: How about the regime in Hanoi? Would you
call that hideous, too?
BARNET: No, I would not. I think -- I think -- I
think -- I think...
BUCHANAN: How would you describe it?
BARNET: I would describe it as a regime that was try-
ing, under the most incredibly difficult circumstances, to bring
about a reconstruction of the country. I don't think they've
done a very good job of it. I don't approve of many of the things
that they've done.
But I think that this is a complicated world in which
you have to make distinctions. I think that the distinction
between Hanoi, that there's a distinction between them and Pol
Pot, and there's a distinction between Hanoi and...
BUCHANAN: But I guess when you're in the South China
Sea, it doesn't make a great deal of difference whether you're
running away from Pol Pot or you're running away from the victors
in Hanoi.
BARNET: Or from the South, you know. I mean...
BUCHANAN: But they didn't go into the South China Sea
during the war.
BARNET: There are victims of political oppression all
over the world.
BUCHANAN: Can I ask you one question about the South?
BRADEN: Let him answer the first one.
BARNET: All over the world, Mr. Buchanan. And I think...
BUCHANAN: Where are they all running from?
BARNET: I think that what -- they're running from a lot
of different places. They're running from El Salvador by the thou-
sands right into this city. And I can tell you some stories about
some of them if you'd like to listen.
BUCHANAN: They're running out of Ethiopia. They're
running out of Cambodia. They're running out of Vietnam.
BARNET: Yes. And they're running out of Argentina and
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a hundred thousand have run out of Chile. I mean the fact is
that...
BUCHANAN: The difference between Argentina and Chile --
I'm not defending that -- is that you can get on a plane and fly
out.
BARNET: We can't have a conversation if I can't finish.
BARNET: There's no monopoly in the world, as it is
today, on brutalizing and terror by governments, whether they are
of the left or whether they're of the right. And it is, in my
view, very self-defeating for us here in the United States to be
arguing with one another about whether one government is better
or worse than another.
BUCHANAN: Let's talk about American security.
BARNET: Let's talk about American security.
[Confusion of voices]
PETERSON: We will discuss American security in just
a moment. And maybe we can back to whether your nasty is nas-
tier than my nasty.
PETERSON: With Richard Barnet, After Hours in the
Channel 9 newsroom.
"The rubles that the Russians spend on weaponry hurt
them more than they hurt the United States." That sound fami-
liar?"
BARNET: Yes.
PETERSON: You wrote it.
BARNET: I did.
PETERSON: Can you document that?
BARNET: Well, the point is that the Russians are under
very great pressure from their military. They have an economy
that is half as large as ours, which is the reason why I think
there i.s a genuine interest that they have in arms control and
arms reduction. And that's the basis of common interest, one of
the important elements of common interest on which I think agree-
ments can be made.
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You asked what kind of a military we ought to have. I
think if you start with the nucleari. I don't think we need any-
thing more. I think we have -- we have 9500 warheads or more.
The Soviets have about 7000, hundreds more than enough to des-
troy almost two-thirds of the industrial capacity of either coun-
try. We ought to stop.
And not only does the addition to the nuclear force
really cost money -?- it's not as expensive as conventional for-
ces -- but the most important thing is this momentum creates
the very dangerous military environment in which military plan-
ners on both sides get increasingly nervous. And that's when
the danger of preemptive strikes, of miscalculations gets very
serious.
That's the only kind of war, I think, that we can have.
The notion that the Russians are going to sit by the computer
and calculate that they can have a first strike and only lose
10 million, 20 million, 30 million, I think, is a very dangerous
fantasy.
BUCHANAN: But here's the thing. Is it not true that
from 1945 to, say, 1962 the United States enjoyed absolute super-
iority over the Soviet Union?
BARNET: More than that. The Russians weren't even
in the race.
BUCHANAN: They weren't even in the race. But there
was a period of peace and stability, as compared with our period
of relative parity, where the Soviets are on the move all over
the world.
BARNET: All kinds of things have changed now, Mr.
Buchanan. The fact is, you've got 170 countries today. You
have the United States no longer exercising the kind of unique
power it did at the end of the war. We were the world's banker.
We had a monopoly on nuclear weapons.
And that's the point. That's why the world now looks
so different and looks so much more dangerous than it did then.
The Soviet Union today is stronger militarily. But I agree with
what Mr. Colby said. It is weaker ideologically. It has enor-
mous problems. It is the only country in the world surrounded
entirely by hostile Communist powers.
PETERSON: But what about the Harriman view of what
tough talk does to so-called moderates, if there are any, in the
Kremlin?
BARNET: There's no question. You see, the real issue
Is, is it better to have a -- try to have a nego -- there are
three positions: Don't negotiate ever, negotiate now, or nego-
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tiate later. I think the first position Is an absolute recipe
for disaster. If we continue an arms race and we simply exclude
negotiation, we're going to have what you already have in Europe.
You have 66 percent of the people in Germany, according to the
government polls, U.S. government polls, now totally against the
rearmament and modernization, against the idea of strong ties,
strong defense ties with the United States. Neutralism is in-
creasing.
We're having -- with the prospect of only confrontation,
no negotiation, you're going to have splits in the industrial
world that are very serious.
The second possibily is, do se negotiate now or do we
wait until, supposedly, we get a better balance with the Soviet
Union?
BRADEN: That's the Reagan position.
BARNET: That's the Reagan position. I think that...
BUCHANAN: They have 250 SS-20s, and they're going up
at the rate of two a week, in Eastern Europe.
BARNET: Yes. And President -- and Brezhnev has of-
fered to have a moratorium today.
BUCHANAN: Sure. He's got 250 sitting there with three
warheads on each of them.
BARNET: Yeah. But we can't put any in for three years.
And so he's going to put in two every week, while we wait...
[Confusion of voices]
BUCHANAN: That modernization is a reaction to what he's
BARNET: Yes, but it doesn't make sense. I mean what
makes sense...
BUCHANAN: You talked about American security. Let's
go down the countries. Where does the threat come from?
BUCHANAN: Negotiate with the Russians, have a freeze
.BARNET: Is to stop the forward momentum of the race.
Now, if you want to talk about conventional forces...
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BUCHANAN: I want to talk about this country. Now,
you mentioned right wing and left wing, they're equally bad,
etcetera. All right. Now, here's three left-wing countries,
the Soviet Union, Hanoi, Cuba. And here's five right-wing coun-
tries, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, South Africa, South Korea.
Agreed. Which of these two groups presents the greatest threat
to the interests of the United States in the future?
BARNET: I don't think you can...
BRADEN: You're changing the subject.
BUCHANAN: Well, that's the one that you wanted to
talk about.
BARNET: No, that's not the one I want to talk about.
BUCHANAN: We can go back to the SS-20s If you want.
BARNET: Let me say that the notion that the Adminis-
tration is following, that somehow Cuba is responsible for the
revolutionary violence in places like El Salvador, where two
percent of the people own most of the land and people are des-
perate, Is another recipe for disaster. The fact is that we can
threaten Cuba, which high officials of this Administration have
done. And then we've got to face the real problem: is it a
threat In which we don't back it up, in which once again we look
weak? Or do we back it up and then run the very real risk that
the Soviet Union, who are involved In Cuba -- they're not in-
volved in El Salvador. They are involved in Cuba -- then begins
to retaliate in places where we are vulnerable, such as Berlin.
BUCHANAN: In El Salvador, are they manufacturing...
BARNET: I can assure you the people of Berlin are
concerned about that.
[Confusion of voices]
BARNET: ...go back to the old days of John Foster
Dulles and say, you know, "If we just talk tough and if we just
follow the policies that worked then, we'll be able to do it now."
But that's not recognizing that the world has completely changed.
BUCHANAN: I don't think you're recognizing reality.
Everybody agrees that there's revolutionary conditions in the
countries of Central America. But peasants in El Salvador can't
produce mortars and rocket launchers and grenade launchers and
rifles and. machine guns.
BARNET: They can take them from the army, which Is
exactly what revolutionary groups have done all through history.
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BUCHANAN: And you're suggesting that the Cubans are
not running stuff in there through Nicaragua?
BARNET: I'm not suggesting that they haven't sent some
stuff up there. But I am certainly suggesting that that is not
the critical component. And that if you took all of the Cuban
weapons away and you had a complete airtight isolation of El
Salvador...
BRADEN: There would still be revolution.
BARNET: There would still be revolution.
BUCHANAN: ...have no weapons to fight it.
BARNET: That's not true. There are weapons in there
that we are sending. They're using our weapons. And that's what
they did in Vietnam. That's what they did in Cambodia.
BRADEN: The Catholic Church is begging us not to send
BUCHANAN: Tom, when did you ever quote the Catholic
Church on anything?
BRADEN: Well, I just...
PETERSON: Tonight.
BUCHANAN: Uh-huh. Tonight was your first time.
BRADEN: No, I don't think so. I respect those arch-
bishops, Pat, just as much as you do.
BUCHANAN: The Catholic Church does not speak infal-
libly on matters about El Salvador.
BARNET: And they've been fighting for their people and
their parishioners for a long time, and I think they deserve a
little respect when they come up, bishop after bishop, priest
after priest, and say, "Please don't send those weapons."
BUCHANAN: And we've had priests come up and say, "Look...
BARNET: Are they Communists? Are they Communists?
BUCHANAN: Well, the individuals have come out of Nicar-
agua and said, "We made a terrible mistake," priests and others,
and. said, "Look, you've got a Communist regime down there just
like Cuba. Don't you know It?"
BARNET: It's not what the El Salvador bishop -- It's
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not what the acting bishop has said.
BUCHANAN: What do they say in Nicaragua? What do they
say in Nicaragua, which is now, I guess -- is that your idea of a
revolution that you'd like to see succeed, the one in El Salvador?
BARNET: I would like to see any revolution in which
people have struggled to try to make a decent life for their peo-
ple succeed. And by succeed, I mean both try to make it econo-
mically and respect the rights of people, even the rights of the
people who didn't go with the revolution.
BUCHANAN: Would you like to see the guerrillas in Af-
ghanistan and the guerrillas in Angola succeed?
BARNET: I would like to see the Russians out of Afghan-
istan. I sure would.
BUCHANAN: How about Angola? UNITA obviously represents
that tribe down there, with Savimbi.
BARNET: That's not obvious. They...
BUCHANAN: Well, how could he survive? I mean, as you
say yourself ...
BARNET: Because he's getting outside help and...
BUCHANAN: Well, you said yourself, you know, he can get
rifles from the army.
BARNET: He's gotten -- he's gotten help over the years
from the Chinese, from the South Africans, from ourselves, through
others.
It's -- all of those countries that are divided by tri-
bal loyalties, it's very, very hard to make a nation, whether it's
a revolutionary nation or not. But I do not think the United
States should be supporting one faction or the other. I don't
think it's In our interest, frankly, which one wins. The Gulf
Oil Company has done very nicely for many years being guarded by
Cuban troops at its refinery In Cabinda.
BUCHANAN: When was the last time that you were concerned
about the Interests of the Gulf Oil Company?
BARNET: I've always been concerned about the interests
of the Gulf Oil Company because I...
.BUCHANAN: You would like to nationalize them.
BARNET: Because I'm a driver of cars. And It concerns
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31
me haow well the Gulf Oil Company looks after the national in-
terest.
PETERSON: On that capitalistic note...
BUCHANAN: Even this fellow doesn't believe that one.
PETERSON: Thank you, Richard Barnet for being with
us on After Hours tonight.
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ARTICLE APPEARED THE NATION
9 May 1981
SECURITY AND TERRORISM
O~'~l~TG 3) SY
tS'~ T43F
IiIRTT
ROBERT SHERRILL
Max Ascoli was inl many ways a progressive,
humane publisher.' But when it came to foreign
policy; he was unrelentingly, sometimes gro-
tesquely, a cold warrier. He finally became con-
vinced that liberals were hopelessly soft on Com-
munism and beyond redemption. So, in the late
1960s, overcome by bitterness, he stopped pub-'
The Reporter. He refused to sell it for
fear that it.would fall into the hands of some
publisher not sufficiently anti-Communist. He
just killed it.
?;; But that wasn't. the end of it. The Reporter's
anti-Communist ghost is still around and active
.in some - influential . places. Two , of the
magazine's notable alumni-Meg Greenfield,
'editor of The Washington Post's editorial page,.
and Claire Sterling, a foreign correspondent who
,frequently contributes to The Post's editorial
page-helped launch the, new Senate Subcom=.
mittee on.Security and Terrorism (S.S.T.).
On April 24, the day of the S.S.T.'s premier
hearing, The Post editorialized that although
-legislative probes have "rarely .... been effec-..
tive in uncovering spies and traitors," the fact
remains that...` the threat posed.today to Ameri-
can sbciety.lioth by foreign agents ...and by
`internationally, connected terrorist groups, re-
-mains genuine and serious." What foreign agents
in American society? What internationally con-
nected terrorists in American society? The
S.S.T. hearing produced no evidence that such
creatures exist.
;:.The.only witness to claifh that they -do exist
was Arnaud de Borchgrave, former Newsweek
.correspondent and now best known. as a fiction
writer (The Spike). De Borchgrave told the subcommittee
(only two of whose members bothered to show up) that the
Russian- - K.G.B.- is aggressively recruiting "agents -and -
sources inside the Reagan Administration, and to steal in-
dustrial and high-technology secrets." With remarkable
precision de Borchgrave reported that "on an average day,
three American citizens. 'are approached somewhere in the
world for recruitment purposes by the K.G.B: and its allied
services. That is over 1,000 a year-ana an estimated 10 per-
cent payoff for the.K.G.B. one way or another."
Some of his--wilder remarks drew snickers from the press.
table, but perhaps the reporters reacted that way because-
they were, as de Borchgrave has suggested, "anesthetized"
by Soviet "disinformation specialists." De Borchgrave may
not be a kook but he certainly did sometimes sound a bit far-
out. It must have been embarrassing to The Post that he was
the only witness who seemed as worried as it is about spies.
Every other witness at the hearing including former
Director of Central-Intelligence William Colby (who said he
had "some trouble" with-deBorchgrave's position)-had to
admit that the United States is. remarkably free. of agents
provocateurs and of anything resembling political terrorism.
The subcommittee's - ,.hairman, Jeremiah Denton of
Alabama, asked Claire Sterling why terrorists weren't active
in this country. For one thing, she said, the atmosphere isn't
favorable-"when the Vietnam War began-to phase out, the
atmosphere in which terrorist activities could thrive began to
'die out." Second (one of the day's choice .drolleries),
"There's so much other violence here, it's hard for terrorists
to get attention."
Nonetheless, Sterling does feel that we'd better look over
our shoulders, because, while the terrorists aren't here yet, -
Soviet-subsidized terrorism abroad is "a direct threat to our
own security." She ticked off the'terrorist successes: Turkey
"brought to her knees"; Spain "not allowed to draw-ii free
breath in her young democracy"; Italy "at one point near
collapse." -
.But what has that to do with terrorism in this country? .
she was asked. Sterling was hard put to make the connec-
tion.: "All-are our closest allies," she said, "and terrorists
have said that the ultimate objective is us." That was as
close to home as she could stretch her evidence. I
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The results were picayune, but any-
one old enough to remember Joe Mc-
Carthy and the House Un-American
Activities Committee still could get a
queasy feeling from the first hearings
of the new Senate Subcommittee on Se-
curity and Terrorism.
These straight-faced proceedings,
like their dubious antecedents, were
admittedly without any real legisla-
tive purpose; they were designed only
"to raise public consciousness" about
the threat of terrorism, said Chairman
Jeremiah Denton of Alabama. If so,
they're off to a poor start.
Here again, however, was the famil-
iar stuff of yesteryear.- the sweeping
but unsubstantiated charge,'the dark
5 MAY 1981.
IN THE NATION
The great
Terrorist
unt
By Tom Wicker -
hints of conspiracy, the attempted ism within the United States .... We
linkage of dissidents to Soviet control, seem at this point to be free of direct,
even the usual touch of unintended deliberate Soviet domination or con-
comedy. This came when Mr. Denton trol or Instigation of terrorist activi-
unbuttoned his shirt to-show that he. ty." .
was not wearing a bullet-proof vest What's more, Mr. Webster declared,
against the threat of terrorists. guidelines restraining political sur=
Other than the chairman's 'torso, veillance and Intrusive investigative
however, the hearings revealed noth- techniques were not hampering the
in g. Witnesses produced little of inter- F.B.I. There would be, he said, "a
est that they hadn't said or written be- storm of protest within the bureau" if
fore, and no headlines at all. They ad- the guidelines were removed. Thus, he
duced nothing like R reason for a deflated beforehand any, effort to use
crackdown on political dissidents in domestic terrorism as an excuse for
the United States. The former C.I.A.' relaxing existing restraints on investi-
Director, WilliamColby, even demol- gative agencies.
!shed the-notion of a Soviet "master- . The Denton hearings nevertheless
mind" directing international violence produced some causes for worry -not
- the "feeling that there is a dentral least the chairman's stated-conviction
war room with flashing-lights" some- that a Soviet "disinformation" pro-
where In the Kremlin. gram had had "a measure of success"
"There is no central war room,"Mr. -in deceiving "a story-hungry and
Colby said, even thougghheargued that sometimes gullible press." Mr. Le
the Soviet Union "did provide the in-. deen lent support to this novel thesis,
struments" for many terrorist organi- and given both his and Mr. Webster's
nations and incidents, testimony that terrorism does not now
As for' terrorism in the United 'threaten this country, "disinforma-
States, Michael Ledeen of the Wash- tion" is likely to become the focus of
ington. Quarterly said there was "at . Mr. Denton's consciousness-raising.
the moment, domestically, no prob- . That's bad news for the American
lem." Appearing two-days lateron the . press, which Is not widely liked or
NBC News program "Meet the trusted anyway and which recently
Press," the F.B.I. Director, William suffered a blow to its credibility from.
H. Webster, said that "there Is no real the Janet Cooke hoax in The Washing-
evidence of. Soviet-sponsored terror.- . ton Post. A new Gallup poll for News-'
week reports that 61 percent of re-.
spondents believe "very little" or
"only some" of what they are told by
the press.
Mr. Denton's "disinformation"
charges, no matter how refuted, are
likely to make the credibility problem
worse. An Inquiry into alleged Soviet
"disinformation" could also. turn into
a general rampage through the Ameri-
can press's editorial processes and
decisions. How can Mr. Denton's gum-
shoes find out whether a story. was
planted in a newspaper by devious
Soviet techniques without inquiring
into how and why the newspaper gath-
ered and printed the story?
Obviously, too, editors and reporters -
charged with handling such a story
...will appear, to be something worse
-than "story-hungry and gullible" to
many readers and viewers. Such pres-
sures are likely to dim the enthusiasm
of some press organs for tough and in-
dependent reporting that might, say,
raise doubts about Administration
.policy in Salvador.
Despite Mr. Webster's testimony,
moreover,'the Reagan Administration
and the subcommittee might yet man-
age to find some kind of a terrorist
threat to American security, and a
need to counter it with tough legisla-
tion. Secretary of State Haig has ac-
cused the Soviet Union of controlling
International terrorism, and the.Ad-
ministration is reported to be working
hard to document his charges and de-
velop an antiterrorism policy. Chair-
man Denton said that the C.I.A. had
recently broadened its. definition of
terrorism to include "threats." -
The magic result, a State Depart-
ment official told reporters,?would be
to double - from 3,336 to 7,000 - the
previously reported "incidents" of
world terrorism from 1968 through
1979. The number killed or wounded, of
course, would remain the same
about 8,000 -- since this bookkeeping
slight-of-hand merely makes the same -
situation look twice as bad as it did be-
fore:
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THL WASHINGTaN POST
C - -~ 5 May 1981
Ralph W. McGehee
Colby 's Vietnam:
Former CIA director William Colby's articles
"El Salvador: Which `Vietnam'?" [op-ed, April
201 describes the various stages of U.S. involve
ment in Vietnam and offers the period 1968 to,
1972-the era of the CIA "Phoenix" assassination;
teams--as a model for use in El Salvador. - In
addition to this heinous recommendation, his ar-
ticle ignores the massive evidence of the Penta=
gon Papers and grossly distorts the facts.
According to Colby, a prime architect of U.S.
policy in Vietnam, America's role in that country
began in 1960: This "first" stage lasted until 1963.,1
This 'era "marked the start of Hanoi's effort to
overthrow the South." Colby's statement con
tains two major misrepresentations. U.S. involve-
meat started in 1949, not 1960, when we spon
cored French attempts to reimpose their colonials
rule over Indochina. The second major misstate,
ment relates to Hanoi's role in 1960. All objective'
Vietnamese experts attest to the great reluctance)
of the North-Vietnamese to challenge U.S. power;
in South Vietnam. However, both. the CIA's intel
ligence and a State Department white paper
claimed the opposite was true. From that point
forward until April 1975, the war, in T i S. intelli-
'gene reports, was portrayed as a North Vietnam-1 - 11
ese attack on South Vietnam..
Colby forgets to mention, that the CIA created
the Diem regime~.After the French defeat-at Dien
Bien Phu in early 1954- and the Geneva Confer-
ence of that year; the CIA plucked Ngo Din
Diem out of obscurity in the United States and
established- him as the ruler of South Vietnam
He arrived its -Saigon in mid-1954, controlling(
.-nothing except the complete dedication 'of the!
CIA's covert-action warriors. Even President
Eisenhower questioned Diem's' viability and ad-.
mitted that Ho Chi Minh and his government
commanded the-loyalty of 80 percent of all Viet-i
is
namese.
Using the 1954-55 Geneva-Conference-imposedsI
cease-fire, the CIA ran propaganda and covert,
operations in North Vietnam-including the imp
plied threat of nuclear destruction-to scare and;
lure the minority Catholic population to migrate
south Once in South Vietnam, the CIA and the,
U.S. military formed, them into an army, police;
force and government for Diem. Catholic Viet-~
namese never represented more than 10 percent.
The writer,, who retired after 25 years with)
the CIA, served as an officer in Vietnam from;
1968 to 1970 and worked with the special branch:
of the Vietnamese national police.
STATINTL
islonr. IM, ismaresente
of South Vietnam's total population but under:!
Diem, a co-religionist, that small group enjoyed;
all status and privileges, s
Through a series of operations the CIA mark
aged to capture control of Saigon for Diem, and
then the agency issued a Special National Intelli-
gence Estimate (SNIE) that omitted any refer
ence to its role in Diem's success. The SNIE pro-
claimed that Diem alone was responsible for his
victory. Concurrent with the release of that false
information, the CIA conducted a"worldwide dis-
information campaign portraying Diem. as the
miracle worker whcrsaved South Vietnam.
From 1955 to 1960 Diem, pushed by his U.S.
advisers, attempted to assert his authority over
rural South Vietnam. His minions killed, tortured
and imprisoned tens of thousands who resisted
his unfair rule. It was this vicious repression that
eventually forced the North Vietnamese to join
with their compatriots in the South in the fight
against Diem and his U.S. backers.
Colby's second "Vietnam" from 1964 to 1968 is
the common perception of Vietnam. "Instruct~l
Taking Exception,.
to find, fix and fight that enemy [American serv-
icemen] reacted with frustration and frequently
fury before an enemy that only occasionally could
be found." One cannot disagree with this allitera-
tive statement. ' .
- The third "Vietnam" appears between 1968
and 1972. Colby, giving himself all credit, reserves
-his praise for this era-a time when he served as
director of the multi-agency Civil Operations and
Rural Development Support (CORDS) mission.
He states, "The rural countryside was rebuilt and
pacified by a revival of reliance upon village par-:
4icipation in defense and development"-the-old,'
frequently recycled, unworkable Strategic Ham-
,let .concept. "The combat was turned on the se-
-cret political enemy,...." Here he is referring to
the CIA's Phoenix program that sought out and
killed or captured political opponents of Thieu's
U.S.-backed dictatorship. Colby forgets to men-
tion other realities of that era, the free-fire zones,.
the napalming, the bombing, the search-and-de-
stroy missions and all the other attendant horrors
of the United States fighting politicized civilians.
The fourth "Vietnam" appears from 1973 until
1975, when "South Vietnamese tactical errors
led this time to the total collapse before the
oncoming North'Vietnamese armor, artillery and
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