FULL TEXT

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP99-00418R000100110019-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 12
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 23, 2012
• Sequence Number: 19
• Publication Date: June 29, 1975
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT Lr
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/23: CIA-RDP99-00418R000100110019-0
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/23: CIA-RDP99-00418R000100110019-0
 ST Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/23: CIA-RDP99-00418R000100110019-0
K RADIO TV REPORTS, INC.
STAT
4435 WISCONSIN AVE, N.W. WASH., D.C. 20016,244-3540
PROGRAM Meet the Press STA
FULL TEXT -
WRC `l' V
NBC Network
Washington, D. C.
LA"IRENCE E. SPIVAK: This is Lawrence Spivak inviting you
to iieet the Press, with the head of the CIA.
SPIVAI: Our guest today on "'Met the Press-' is the Dire-actor
of Central Intelligence, ciilliam. E. Colby. Mr. Colby began his career
as an intelligence officer with the OSS during world War Ii. He later
joined the CIA where he held a number of major posts before becoming
Director in September, 1973.
June 29, 1975 12:30 PM
Well have the first questions now from Ford Rowan of ABC
FORD ROWAN: Mr. Colby, in May of 1973, the Inspector-General
of the CIA compiled a report which showed illegal and improper acti-
vities on the part of the CIA. You did not at that time inform the
White House or the Department of Justice. Instead, you began the
destruction of records, including several collections of names which
were part of the domestic surveillance program.
i1Iy first question is, on behalf of the agency, were you
attempting to obstruct justice?
WILLIAM E. COLSY: No, Mr. Rowan, I was not. I was at-
teapting to change the procedures of the agency, to make sure that
they complied with the law in the future and to eliminate any holdings
11'i that 1,' s^t;li.. ne; '"1 V
R;vrA. : ;,111y was the ~izite _louse not infor_mned?
COLSY: I think there ;vas just a misunderstanding as to why
that wasn't done. We did inform the then chairman, acting chairiian
of our oversight committees in the Congress. se then issued a series
OFFICES IN: NEW YORK - DETROIT ? LOS ANGELES ? WASHINGTON, D. C. ? CHICAGO ? AND OTHER PRINCIPAL CITIES
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/23: CIA -RDP99-00418R000100110019-0
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/23: CIA-RDP99-00418R000100110019-0
?
of directives very specifically instructing our people how to
conduct their affairs in the future so that there would be no
further violation of law. And in that situation, I thought it
best to let the misdeeds of the past sit quietly. I did not see
that there was anything serious enough in there to warrant pro-
secution against any individual.
ROWAN: You mention informing members of Congress. Did
they take any substantive action or did they let the matter just
lie?
COLBY: At least one of them asked a lot of additional
questions and sought further assurances that no further action
would be taken.
ROWAN: Mr. Colby, you indicated- that on your own, you
decided that there should be no prosecution. Under which authority
did you act?
COLBY: I did not see enough that warranted to me a request
to the Department of Justice to prosecute. The question never came
up in a direct form.
SPIVAK: Thank you, Mr. Colby. Well be back to introduce
our other panel members and continue the questions in just a minute.
But first, this message from our alternate sponsor.
SPIVAK: We. Were ready now to resume our interview on "Meet
the Press." Our guest is William E. Colby, Director of Central
Intelligence. You've just met Ford Rowan of NBC News. The other
questioners on our panel today are James J. Kilpatrick of the
Washington Star syndicate; Leslie H. Gelb of the New York Times;
and Thomas B. Ross of the Chicago Sun Times.
We'll continue the questions now with Mr. Kilpatrick.
JAMES J. KILPATRICK: Mr. Colby, under the 1949 act, the
CIA is exempt from the usual accounting procedures that apply to the
budget and personnel of every other agency of the government. Is
there really any point in maintaining such absolute secrecy over
public funds being spent by your agency?
COLBY: Mr. Kilpatrick. early in the history of CIA, we
tn;=_
aoou;-. ;ial.t cL our budget to G.aC ) audit. Later on,
GAO ueterinined that it pelt that it could not conduct an adeccuate
audit of half of it if they did not know the whole. There are
certain things, of course, in our clandestine activity that must
be kept from public exposure and even the risk of public exposure.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/23: CIA-RDP99-00418R000100110019-0
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/23: CIA-RDP99-00418R000100110019-0
KILPATRICK: Mr. Colby, I can understand why the details
of your budget might well be kept secret. dut why is it necessary
to conceal from the American people whether you're spending one
billion, two billion, five billion, or whatever the sum is?
COLBY: Mr. Kilpatrick, in 1947, the weapons expenditures
of the Atomic Energy Commission consisted of a one line item. Last
year they consisted of fifteen pages of detailed explanation. I
think it is inevitable that if you expose the single figure you
will immediately get a debate as to what it includes, what it does
not include, why did it go up, why did it go down, and you will
very shortly get into a description of the details of our activi-
ties.
KILPATRICK: Its a political reason, is it not, sir, that
your budget would be especially vulnerable to being cut by members
of the Congress who oppose the agency?
COLBY: Oh, I don't think so. I think the responsible
members of the Congress would support a good intelligence service
and a good intelligence program. And I think we have the best in
the world.
LESLIE GELB: Mr. Colby, would the 1947 act that established
the CIA prohibit the CIA from collecting intelligence or providing
support to collect intelligence within the United States on domes-
tic individuals or groups?
COLBY: Yes. The act says clearly that the agency will
have no subpoena, police, law enforcement powers or internal
security functions. Now that does not mean that the agency can
do nothing in the United States. It can do certain things re-
lated to foreign intelligence within the United States.
GELB: Well, when you appeared before various congres-
sional committees....
COLBY: Many.
GELB: ... in the -- in the -- 'many" is right -- in the
wake of the disclosures about CIA collection of ten thousand or
more dossiers, of bugging and surveillance and whatnot, you did
not refer to these activities as illegal. In fact, you said they
were not illegal; they were merely missteps. How do you reconcile
that congressional testi.;?ony with ,7hiat y u ju it i, i:i no:li?
COLBY: I have said that they were wrong. I think "wrong"
is a word that covers those few missteps and misdeeds that CIA has
conducted over twenty-eight years....
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/23: CIA-RDP99-00418R000100110019-0
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/23: CIA-RDP99-00418R000100110019-0
GELS: Does "wrong" mean "illegal? Does "wrong' mean
.illegal?"
COLBY: Sometimes it does. Sometimes it merely means that
we were outside our charter, although there's nothing otherwise il-
legal about the activity.
GELB: Does outside the charter mean that it was illegal?
COLBY: It means that it is wrong for CIA to do it....
GELB: Well, was it illegal....
COLBY: It was not necessarily a crime that it be done, but
it was wrong for CIA to do it.
GELB: Was it illegal for the CIA to develop and collect
these ten thousand and more dossiers?
COLBY: It was not illegal to collect them all. The allega-
tion against CIA was that it conducted a massive, illegal domestic
operation during the Nixon administration. The operation began in
the Johnson administration. It was not massive. As you will note
on page 149 of the Rockefeller Commission Report, it referred to three
agents who were wrongly used. There was a collection of paper also
collected, mainly FBI reports and newspaper clippings.
It was improper to collect some of these things. But I
think that the word "wrong" covers both the actions which techni-
cally may have been illegal and the things that we had no right to
do.
GELB: But the Rockefeller Commission itself labeled most
of these activities as unlawful. That's their word.
COLBY: A number of our activities were unlawful in the
past. There were a few. But not -- this particular program, I
think, was not labeled as unlawful.
THOMAS B. ROSS: Mr. Colby, the Murphy Commission on Foreign
Policy has just come out with a report saying the Forty Committee in
the White House, which is supposed to supervise the CIA activities
has been meeting only infrequently and informally. Douglas Dillon,
who was a member of the Rockefeller Commission, said there had never
oven any real oversight of the CIA.
Flow, then, could a series of Presidents and a series of
Directors of the Central Intelligence Agency tell the American people
that the CIA was under tight control?
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/23: CIA-RDP99-00418R000100110019-0
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/23: CIA-RDP99-00418R000100110019-0
COLBY: r?~ell, I think I'll let the Presidents speak for
themselves.
The reason the Forty Committee has not met very often is
that because during the fifties and sixties the CIA was engaged
in many activities abroad of a political and paramilitary character.
In the last few years, that activity has dwindled to almost nothing.
We do very little of that work today abroad. And therefore, there is
much less occasion for the Forty Committee to meet and discuss those
activities.
ROSS: When you say "little," what do you mean by little?
Low many covert operations is the Agency conducting around the world
right now?
COLBY: Well, I really cannot give you specifics or the
figures. But I say it is a very small percentage of our total
budget at the moment.
ROSS: Reverting to the control issue, John McCone said
that while he was Director of the CIA, he didn't know that planning
was going forward to assassinate Castro. You have said that you
didn't know about many things going on in the CIA, including the
fact that the Justice Department gave you the authority to control
your own lawbreakers.
Doesn't that indicate once again that the CIA was out of
control of even its own Directors?
COLBY: No, I don't think so. In any large organization
-- and CIA is a large organization -- with activities all around
the world, every detail will not necessarily be known. I learned
of the arrangement with the Rockefeller Commission when I was ap-
prized of a problem which might involve that. And it looked that
it was not supportable to me, and so I discussed it with the Acting
Attorney General, who withdrew that arrangement.
SPIVAK: Mr. Colby, as one who knows the CIA from long
association with it and who, I assume, is dedicated to the security
of this nation, will you give us your appraisal of whether the
investigations have, on the whole, been good or bad for the country?
COLBY: Hell, I think there're both goods and bads, Mr.
Spivak. I think that the good is that we are in the process of
updating the old image of intelligence that is carried by many
~Y"i 7 t t.'e 1e:.7 A ? th. '~21ii? tco
today is aoi' than tile' old soy sroi:y or the TV spectacular on
Saturday night. It now consists of an intellectual process of
putting bits and nieces together, analyzing them, of collecting
information from open sources wherever we can get them around the
world, from technical capabilities, of which we, as Americans, have
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/23: CIA-RDP99-00418R000100110019-0 _
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/23: CIA-RDP99-00418R000100110019-0
developed perhaps the most impressive collection in the world; and
also some clandestine activity, of course, against those closed
societies that can pose a threat to our country.
On the bad side I think are the sensational and irrespon-
sible leaks and discussions that go on so that the characterization
of our intelligence apparatus still does suffer that old image. I
am interested really in trying to focus on the seventies and eighties
and forget about the fifties and sixties. But I'm having a hard time
doing it.
SPIVAK: Mr. Colby, earlier this year you were reported as
saying that exaggerated charges of improper conduct of the CIA had
placed -- and these were your words -- "placed American intelligence
in danger.
What do you consider the most exaggerated charges that have
been made against the CIA?
COLBY: The massive, illegal domestic operation, and I think
some other charges have been made which are totally out of context
in the total picture. I think here we have a difficulty that is
perhaps a difference of profession between the journalistic pro-
fession and the intelligence profession. We try to put the jigsaw
pieces together to draw from them the whole picture and present the
whole thing in proportion. I think the journalistic profession, be-
cause of the nature of its media, is inclined to focus on the individual
jigsaw piece and to bring that as typical of the whole. And that has
given me a great deal of difficulty.
SPIVAK: Now the charges that have been made against the
CIA and the investigations themselves have really raised so many
doubts in the minds of the American people, and many people believe
that the organization ought to be abolished altogether and that if
a new one is needed, why, a new one should be started. What's your
reaction to that?
COLBY: Well, I think the CIA today -- as I said, it may
have done some things in the past which were either mistakes or
wrong. But the CIA today is the best intelligence service in the
world. It has the most dedicated and talented group of people work-
ing for it of any intelligence service in the world. It's the envy
of the foreign nations.
I think that any attempt to disband it would leave our
nation vulnera:hl.e. Inc a. world in hich we now si.t thirty minutes
away :from a nuclear missile aimed and cocked at us, in a world in
which our economic resources can' be throttled by hostile foreign
nations, in a world in which nuclear proliferation can pose a
danger to all of us, I think we need good intelligence. I think
we've got it, and I think we should continue.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/23: CIA-RDP99-00418R000100110019-0
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/23: CIA-RDP99-00418R000100110019-0
SPIVAK: 14r. Rowan.
ROWAN: i"ir. Colby, I'd like to ask you something about
not the CIA, which you administer; but in your role as Director
of Central Intelligence, you oversee the entire intelligence
community. And I would like to ask you if the National Security
Agency regularly monitors telephone calls between foreign -- be-
tween American citizens and citizens in foreign countries?
COLBY: I think the National Security Agency's activities
are known to include the following of foreign communications. I
think that's all I would like to say about that.
ROWAN: What I'm trying to get at is to find out if in
the course of their activities involving foreigners massive records
are kept on the number of calls, the places calls are made to from
this country by American citizens.
COLBY: I would defer to the Department of Defense for the
answer to that.
SPIVAK: Mr. Kilpatrick.
KILPATRICK: But pursuing that for just a moment, sir, the
Rockefeller Commission talked about communist intelligence efforts
within the United States and said that the Soviet Union, we gather,
is ;making extraordinary use of electronic technology, is monitoring
and recording thousands of private telephone conversations within the
United States.
Could you amplify that, sir?
COLBY: Well, the Soviet Union does have a very extensive
communications intelligence effort around the world. You've seen
their trawlers off our coasts. They follow our fleets when they
move. They have an extensive effort of that kind....
KILPATRICK: Are they monitoring domestic telephone con-
versations, to your knowledge?
COLBY: There are an awful lot of antennae on top of the
Soviet Embassy. And I think they are there for a purpose.
KILPATRICK: Your estimate was five hundred thousand in-
telligence operatives in the communist bloc nations. That was the
estimate of the Rockefeller Commission. Is that your estimate also
sir?
COLBY: I think that's a close figure.
SPIVAK: Mr . Gelb.
Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/23: CIA-RDP99-00418R000100110019-0 ..
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/23: CIA-RDP99-00418R000100110019-0
GELB: Mr. Colby, the Rockefeller Commission seems to
describe the Chaos operation of the CIA, the collection of the
files and the bugging, surveillance, so forth, as large, illegal
and domestic. Let me quote from their report. They said "The CIA
exceeded its statutory authority in these operations." It said
the operations were "a repository for large quantities of informa-
tion on domestic activities of Americans." It talked about "the
large number of activities and the veritable mountain of material."
Wouldn't this substantiate a charge of massive, illegal
domestic operations?
COLBY: I don't think so. I think that the word "illegal"
obviously does apply to certain of the activities. But as I indicated,
the Rockefeller Commission found three agents whose work was illegal.
I don't think that's massively illegal. Those three agents were im-
proper. There's no question about it.
With respect to the files, as the Commission found after
looking at our files, most of the files consisted of FBI reports
and clippings from the newspaper. Now we -- in my opinion, we should
not have kept all those. But in the period of the time that this was
going on, when you have a quarter of a million people demonstrating
outside of the White House, when you had four thousand bombings occur
in one year in this country, I think there was considerable concern
as whether this was indigenous or was being stimulated and supported
by foreign intelligence or security services.
GELB: But your own study showed that these were not connected
with foreign intelligence activities. And....
COLBY: And by studying it we found out that they were not
connected. If we had not studied it, we could not make that finding.
GELB: But you can make that argument by saying you'd have
to keep studying something forever to insure that it didn't have a
foreign connection.
COLBY: No, I don't think you do. You respond to a present
need, a present problem, a present danger. We terminated this opera-
tion a year and a half ago because the problem has gone away in great
part. And consequently, there is not a reason for continuing that
-- that kind of an effort to identify foreign links to American
dissident organizations.
ROSS : tir. . Coloy, Senator Church says that his intelligence
committee has not been able to find evidence of an order from any
President to the CIA to plan assassinations. Does that mean that
the CIA was acting on its own in this area?
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/23: CIA-RDP99-00418R000100110019-0
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/23: CIA-RDP99-00418R000100110019-0
COLBY: Mr. Ross, I don't believe that I want to talk
about the subject of assassinations. This is a very difficult
and complex subject. Some of the facts are not well known or are
not well recorded, and some of the degree to which various people
within and outside of the Agency were a part of any such activity
is not very clear. We have reported on this fully to the committees,
and we will do so. But I do not think it appropriate for public
discussion.
ROSS: Well, let me turn to another area then. The CIA
placed the Shah of Iran back on his throne in the mid fifties. The
Shah is now one of the principal reasons why we're paying a great
deal more money for our oil.
In this instance as in others, mightn't it have been better
to just allow events to take their normal course?
COLBY: And to allow the Communist Party of Iran to take
over that country? I doubt that. I think you would have been
stopped from the oil long before this.
ROSS: Would not -- would not oil possibly be cheaper
in being bought from the communist countries? After all, we have
engaged in some sort of an attempt to negotiate for natural gas
from the Soviet Union. Mightn't that be a cheaper price than we're
paying out of -- out of the Persian Gulf right now?
COLBY: In the mid fifties, the problem of communist ex-
pansion was a very great danger around the world. And we did a lot
of things to prevent it.
In the seventies, we have begun a process of negotiation
with a communist world which is itself divided in the Sino-Soviet
split. You have a totally different strategic situation that we
are facing today from the one we faced in the fifties.
SPIVAK: Mr. Colby, the public has been deeply concerned
by the stories of CIA involvement in plotting to assassinate foreign
leaders. Don't you think it would be better to release the full
and true story lest rumors and speculation make it seem a lot worse
than it is?
COLBY: No, Mr. Spivak, the instructions in the Agency are
quite clear, that the Agency will not engage in, support or stimulate
or condone assassination at this time. Those instructions have been
issued by the Agency for several years now....
SPIVAK: We're talking about the p:xst, thou n. 4 e're
talking about....
COLBY: We are talking about -- I do not think it useful
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/23: CIA-RDP99-00418R000100110019-0 ,.
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/23: CIA-RDP99-00418R000100110019-0
to our country to go into a great exposure of things that happened
in the fifties and sixties. And I think that the subject had
better -- best be settled by adopting a firm policy at this
point not to do such activity and letting the past stay quiet.
SPIVAK: Well, may I take you to one thing that is
happening now. Rumors are being spread that the CIA is somehow
involved in attempts to get rid of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
Can you categorically state that CIA....
COLBY: I categorically deny that.
SPIVAK: ...is not involved in any way in that?
COLBY: I categorically deny that.
ROWAN: Mr. Colby, the Rockefeller Report said that one
of the CIA's computer systems had information on three hundred
thousand Americans in it. You have testified that the CIA main-
tains forty to fifty such record systems.
I'm wondering -- can you tell us how many Americans are
in the CIA's computer files, or can you estimate that number?
COLBY: No, I can't, Mr. Rowan. We obviously have many,
many Americans in our files -- applicants, people who had clearances,
people who have reported to us, sources of what is going on abroad.
We have large numbers of Americans in our files. There's a great
overlap in them. And I am unable to come out with a total.
ROWAN: One quick follow-up question. Has the CIA com-
puter system been used not just to keep files, but to do modeling
and predicting to try to predict behavior of people?
COLBY: I do not believe so, no. I'm pretty sure that
has not been used as a prediction. We obviously use computers a
great deal in our business of analyzing material, storing it, re-
trieving it, and so forth. As to predictability of personal behavior,
of human behavior, there have been some experiments I think in modeling
to see whether patterns grow and whether similar behavior is followed
in future times. But this is conducted under the strict rules ap-
plicable to this kind of research and development.
SPIVAK: We have less than two minutes. Mr. Kilpatrick.
KILPATRICK: Mr. Colby, the Murphy Commission has recom-
mended that the CIA be re-named the Foreign Intelligence Agency.
Would that help your public relations' problem?
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/23: CIA-RDP99-00418R000100110019-0
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/23: CIA-RDP99-00418R000100110019-0
COLBY: I think if you just changed the name, why, our
friends of the press would quickly penetrate that as being sort of
a cosmetic change and not a real one, although the word ''foreign"
I am all for. In my confirmation hearing, I suggested that you
add the word "foreign" before the word "intelligence" wherever it
appears in the act.
SPIVAK: Now, Mr. Gelb.
GELS: Mr . Colby, if you thought a member of the CIA was,
say, leaking information to Mr. Spivak, would you be empowered under
the law to surveil and wiretap and bug -vir . Spivak?
COLBY: No, absolutely not. And I would not be empowered
under even the legislation I recommend to improve our secrecy. I
would not be allowed to do anything with-respect to an outsider. I
would be allowed to follow within the agency the activities of one
of our employees that I thought was in some way misbehaving. I have
the same authority in that respect as the head of any governmental
organization, like the Fish and Wildlife Service, to be responsible
for his own employees and their behavior.
SPIVAK: Thirty seconds. Mr. Ross .
ROSS: Mr . Colby, the Rockefeller Commission suggested
it might not be such a good idea to have a career man as the head
of the CIA. Do you think that's a hint from the White House that
you maybe ought to resign?
COLBY: Oh, I don't think that's a hint. I serve totally
at the pleasure of the President, and he can turn his pleasure
somewhere else any time he wishes. I will do my duty. As long as
he thinks I'm useful, I will stay.
SPIVAK: I'm sorry to interrupt, but our time is almost
up and we won't be able to get in another question and certainly
not another answer.
Thank you, Mr. Colby, for being with us today on "Meet
the Press.'
COLBY: Thank you.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/23: CIA-RDP99-00418R000100110019-0