TURNER SPIES BY ROBERT PARRY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00901R000600410024-4
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 19, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 14, 2005
• Sequence Number: 24
• Publication Date: June 5, 1985
• Content Type: PREL

Approved For Release 2005/12/14: CIA-RDP91-00901R000600410024-4
ASSOCIATED PRESS
5 June 1985
TURNER-SPIES
By Robert Parry
WASHINGTON
Former CIA Director Stansfield Turner on Wednesday criticized the Navy for
allowing an alleged spy ring to operate for 20 years, but he said the arrests
show that the government has rebuilt its counter-intelligence capability.
"Clearly there was a laxness in Navy in checking on these people's behavior,"
Turner said in an interview. "There is some dismay that we've lost some
important secrets (but) there is some consolation that our counter-intelligence
efforts are beginning to be more effective."
John A. Walker Jr., 47, a former Navy communications specialist, is charged
with running a spy ring that the FBI says sold secrets to the Soviet Union for
at least 20 years. Also arrested ere his son, brother and a California man - all
of them active or retired Navy men.
Turner, a retired Navy admiral and President Carter's director of the
Central Intelligence Agency, said the CIA's ability to ferret out spies
had been damaged by its longtime counterintelligence chief, James J. Angleton,
who was removed in 1974.
Turner said Angleton "was ineffective because he was chasing ghosts and
maligning innocent people ... We've been rebuilding counterintelligence in the
CIA since then."
Reached at his home in Arlington, Va., Angleton declined direct comment on
the assertions but said "time will tell" who was right. In the past, Angleton's
supporters have described him as having been sacrificed as a scapegoat.
Turner said a greater number of Soviets entering the United States since the
period of superpower detente in the early 1970s also contributed to increased
spying, although he added he does not favor cutting such visits.
He also said the number of Americans with clearance to read secret material
should be cut by about 30 percent from its current total of more than 4 million.
He scored the Reagan administration for classifying so much information that
some government officials have lost respect for the need to keep important
secrets.
Turner complained that in preparation of his new book, "Secrecy and
Democracy," CIA censors ordered more than 100 deletions despite his arguments
that much of that information was readily available on the public record.
On another issue, Turner urged Congress to reject President Reagan's request
for more funds for CIA -sponsored Nicaraguan rebels, saying such a move would
increase pressure on both the administration and Nicaragua's leftist government
to negotiate their differences.
Approved For Release 2005/12/14: CIA-RDP91-00901R000600410024-4
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Turner said paramilitary covert actions, like the one begun against Nicaragua
in 1981, should be limited to extraordinary situations. He said Nicaragua, with
a shattered economy and 2.5 million people, is "certainly not the threat that
has been overmagnified by the president."
Turner also warned that American involvement with the Contra rebels and such
actions as the mining of Nicaragua's harbors allowed the United States to be
depicted as supporting "terrorism."
"If we are that associated with being terrorists, how can we lead a crusade
against terrorism, how can we inveigh as the president does against
state-supported terrorism by the Iranians and the Syrians?" he said. "We've lost
the moral edge against terrorism."
Approved For Release 2005/12/14: CIA-RDP91-00901R000600410024-4