APPOINTMENTS CALDENDAR

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP99-00498R000100080054-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: April 17, 2007
• Sequence Number: 54
• Publication Date: March 4, 1977
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Approved For Release 2007/04/17: CIA-RDP99-00498
COMMONWEAL
4 March 1977
wr SIN rT?N RE303T Mart
VOMITS (CA122"MIGM4
?110? 1 ivy's
President Carter made a serious mistake in his original energy and style -brought to bear upon activities gen-
appointment of Thecdere Sorensen to head the CIA in orated from some assumptions. -
an era when that agency simply has to be stopped from ? I first heard of, and from, Stansfield Turner, five years
He was president of the Naval War College at
time ago
t
i
.
me
o
burglarizing, eavesdropping upon and, from t
as occasion may suggest, killing American citizens, an Newport and wanted me to come up to take part in
era, too, when the agency's historic policy of conducting something called a Military-Media Conference. I had
international re'.ations through assassination and the'de- no clear idea of what such a thing might be. Neither did
liberate wrecking of the economy of foreign nations must anyone else. Admiral Turner was inventing it. The form
`be reexamined. - was simple, long familiar to those who attend seminars,
-The mistake was not, as is generally thought around conferences - and conventions: two or three days be-
here, in nominating Sorensen without clearing it with. ginning with plenary sessions and formal addresses, go-
the Senate's hawk: establishment, nor, as is universally ing on to small groups of students talking with the visit-
accepted,. in backing off too quickly, failing to' go all ing "experts," usually one or two of us to twelve to
out fo: Sorensen. No, the mistake was in the appoint- twenty of them, ending formally with a dinner featuring
meat itself. Sorensen's pinnacle of public service was as remarks in a lighter tone, and informally in prolonged
speech writer to John F. Kennedy, a role for which he sessions in the bars of Newport and Jamestown, the
Flab Cabins of the base and the president's house,
W
i - o -
displayed considerable talent, emerging as a kind of
I form nothing especially remarkable. But in con-
n
i
ter
Liam Safire with class. The talents of the speech wr
are not those principally needed to run' the CIA even
,
tent: in 1972, when Turner started what has become
a high growth industry in- all the military services, the
war in Indochina was still raging away in what then
seemed its eternal course, military people at large, but'
especially those' with Vietnam service,' were absolutely
convinced that they-and their country-had been be-
trayed by the American press, reporters and news
analysts, on the other hand, were no less convinced
that the war was insane, criminal even, at best an effort
to destroy Indochina in order to save it, at worst a dark
scheme to extend or protect the holdings of ITT, Chase
Manhattan and the oil cartel by the endless slaughter of
American youths and the general population of the re-
gion. A service. war college is not a service academy;
in times when we were all more innocent about that
gang than we are now. Actually, of the old guard, the
best available man for that spot would have been James
Schlesinger, who, briefly in the job, started the investi-
gation of illegal activities at home and ab.oad that led
to Dan Schorr's forced retirement but not yet, so far
as we know, to any real reform. Sorensen's best known
.effort was, of course, the famed, inaugural address of
Kt:nnedy, which, if you think about it, can be read as an
open season hunting license for the CIA,. as also for the
FBI in its. own assorted assaults on the Constitution and
the citizenry. We will bear any burden: Richard Helms,
Howard Hunt, J. Edgar Hoover as public "servants"
compose a formidable burden; we will travel any dis-
tance: to Vietnam and Cambodia, to the Bay of Pigs,.
o Santiago, Chile, where it's raining and Dr. Allende is
ingeniously committing suicide by dive bomber. Those
are burdens and distances we -don't really need the new
head of the CIA to shoulder and to shuffle yet again;
As things have worked out, and by pure inadvertence
on the part of the Senate's hawk aviary, Carter will end
up with an incalculably more competent man out at
Langley, his Annapolis classmate but -not really old
school chum, Admiral Stansfield Turner. Turner will
bring, a lot more to the job than administrative compe-
tence, more even than the administrative brilliance with
which he is freely credited by almost everyone who has
t rk
,
seen him at work. As it happens, I ve seen him a wo round or both. In short, the first Military-:Media Con-
ground,
myself, found myself working with him, or for him, and
emerged from the experience in frank admiration of the ference had all the elements for a -riot, a slaughter, a
openness of the mind to unusual suggestions, the will- few muggings, a few bodies found floating in Narrangan-
ingness to entertain unorthodox assumptions and the sett Bay.
its students are field-grade officers in mid-cajeer, w o
have been carefully selected by the syster.* as likely can-
didates for the higher reaches of command ' i'. the fu-
ture: they're . an elite, intelligent, dedicated, narrow, as
is the way with most elites. The journalists were no
less selected by Stanfield Turner. There were, to be
sure, a few journalists that journalists like me regard as
unpaid-as far as is known-flacks for the arms indus-
try, military affairs columnists holding reserve commis-
sions, people who wear neckties with the American flag
tastefully incorporated in the design, that sort of thing.
But they were a tiny minority. By and large, the jour-
nalists present were the real thing -and deeply opposed
to the war on the obvious intellectual, moral aril iiis-
or on the ground of having been on the
torical grounds