NEWSMAKER SATURDAY AIRS: MAY 11, 1991 GUEST: RETIRING CIA DIRECTOR WILLIAM WEBSTER

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP99-01448R000401660073-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 7
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 22, 2012
• Sequence Number: 73
• Publication Date: May 10, 1991
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

ST A T
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The Washington Post
The New York Times
The Washington Times
The Wall Street Journal
The Christian Science Monitor
NEWSMAKER SATURDAY New York Daily News
Airs : May 11, 1991 USA Today
Guest : Retiring CIA Director William Webster The Chico Tribune
Date
MR. CHARLES BIERBAUER: Welcane to NEWSMAKER SATURDAY
from CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. I'm Charles
Bierbauer. We'll ask those questions today of the soon-to-
retire director of Central Intelligence, Judge William Webster,
today on NEWSMAKER SATURDAY.
Judge Webster, thank you for allowing us to cane into
your office here at CTA headquarters. with me is CiN's Wolf
Blitzer.
Let me ask first about the war in the Persian Gulf. Is
it a shortcoming in any way, shape or form of intelligence, that
you've been unable to anticipate the tenacity of a Saddan
Hussein, and the allegiance of the Iraqis?
WILLIAM WEBSTER (director, Central Intelligence
Agency): I don't think there's any shortfall in our ability to
estimate the tenacity of a Saddan Ifussein. If you're talking
about what has transpired since the war ended, I think that
intelligence has been reasonably accurate in forecasting and
reporting the kind of insurgencies that have taken place.
I don't think that we estimated that 800,000 refugees
would find their way to the Turkish border. C1n the other hand,
in the last war, after Saddam Hussein has used gas on the Kurds,
only 60,000 went.
In retrospect, one might say, they left this time
because they remembered.
In terms of the civil strife in the south, I think we
accurately estimated the Shiia insurrection. We accurately
forecast that Saddan Bussein would be able to control both
insurrections, one at a time, by moving troops fran the south to
the north, and that has taken place.
What we have seen, that is discouraging in sane
respects, is that the Baathist and Sunni groups, who had the
closest access to him, and were in the best position to effect
his removal, rallied behind him rather than see the insurgencies
succeed. So that stretches--
MR. BIERBAUER: And these were the groups that really
the Bush administration anticipated would overthrow Saddan
Hussein?
DIRDCTCR WEBSTER: Would be best able to overthrow
him. That's not an automatic nor an easy assignment. And you
have to remember, that at least for the time that we're talking
about, Saddan Hussein--removal of Saddam Hussein was not a
stated foreign policy objective.
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Cur objectives were the ones stated in the United
Nations resolution, which was to cause his removal from Kuwait,
and the liberation of Kuwait.
WOLF BLITZER: But you were caught by surprise by this
tenacity, this ability to hold on, and perhaps not only hold on,
but to consolidate and to emerge a few months after the war
perhaps even stronger internally than he was before.
DIREMR WEBSTER: I don't think "caught by
surprise'' is an accurate way to describe it, Wolf. I think we
were--we were impressed by it, but not surprised by it.
MR. BLITZER: There's sane criticism that you always
hear, I'm sure you've heard it, that the CIA in recent years has
relied too much on national technical means--high flying
reconnaissance photography and camunications intercepts--but
not enough on the human element.
Did that criticism--was that criticism justified in
this war, would you say?
DIRECICR WEBSTER: well, unquestionably our resources
for human intelligence went down over a period of time. And
we've been building than back.
The Senate Select Committee, especially, and now the
House, has been very supportive about giving us the resources to
produce that kind of intelligence in a wide range of countries
throughout the world.
We were living in an era where the Soviet Union was
the prime target. In fact, that was the reason for the founding
of the Central Intelligence Agency.
These things do not happen overnight. They are not
shelf items that can be quickly put in place, nor are they
likely to have the kind of access that would tell you of a
general's intentions, or a president's intentions, unless
they've been in place long enough to have developed that kind of
relationship of trust.
So that's a building process. But I must say,
although I cannot comment publicly about what we have, we did
receive important human intelligence that was useful throughout
the war to the military as well as to our policy makers.
MR. BIERBAUE.R : You're suggesting that you can
indeed--that the U.S. can indeed find people on the ground in
these countries, presumably nationals of those countries, who
are willing to work with you?
DIRDCICR WEBSTER: It is possible. I can't--I don't
want to describe the trade craft involved, because it's a
worldwide effort to make it happen in a particular place, and it
requires a lot of knowledge developed not only inside but
outside the country.
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But it is possible. But it is a slow and delicate
process. And leadership changes. And often with the leadership
may go your most precious asset. You have to have other assets
coming in from the other side.
And I think we learned that a little bit in Iran. We
were working very hard on this, have been during most of the
years I've been in office, have expanded our language-training
capability and other things that make it possible to function on
the ground.
The one--the two things that you learn best fran the
ground are intentions and capabilities. We can measure and
observe and spot and do a number of aggregations with technical
capability, and they work together; you need them both.
Often, human intelligence will tell you about
sanething they've heard that's out in a particular place, as the
Rabta chemical plant in Libya. But it takes the technical
capability to look in on saneone else's country and find sane
illicit activity.
MR. BIERBAUER: Judge Webster, we need to take a
break. We'll be right back. Stay with us please.
(Announcements)
MR. BIERBAUER: Judge Webster, let me turn to the
Soviet Union. As you say, the CIA really was almost set up with
this intention of keeping an eye on the Kremlin. When you watch
the Kremlin these days, and you see Mr. Gorbachev employing
troops in Armenia, and you hear the Baltic leaders expressing
fears that the troops may come back there, what does that tell
you about how the Kremlin is being run?
DIRECTOR WEBSTER: well, that tells me that President
Gorbachev has had to rely increasingly on his military and the
KGB and the Caimllnist Party to maintain order inside the 15
republics.
It also says that there is a great deal of instability
currently in the Soviet Union, a great deal of struggle from
below for autonomy among the republics; a collapsed economy; and
a number of other problems that threaten to break out in various
ways and in various parts of the country.
It's an entirely different threat than the one that we
watched for 40 years. The threat of an imninent standup ground
offensive in Western Europe has diminished substantially, and
our warning time is different, and what we need to watch is
different.
But this type of instability is of national security
concern to our country.
MR. BIERBAUER: If that use of force, oppressive use
of force, is anathema to the U.S., as it would appear to be, is
there a mistaken affection for Mr. Gorbachev here? He is, after
all, is he not, still the man calling the shots?
DIRECTOR WEBSTER: I believe that you're asking for a
policy judgment, and I've tried to stay very close--very
carefully away from making policy judgments about a mistake.
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MR. BIERBAUER: Well, I'm asking for an intelligence
judqnent. Is Gorbachev not necessarily the man he seems to be
when he is out conducting good public relations?
DIRECTOR WEBSTER: Well, as the president has said,
the achievements of Gorbachev on the road to reform since 1985
have been enormously impressive. On the other hand, he has run
into a series of problems that his general approach, with his
preference for solving it through ccmnunist or centrist-type
solutions and avoiding the hard choices for a market economy and
privatization, have simply not worked for him.
And now he is confronted with survivor-type problems
from within his own country.
MR. BLITZER: well, judge, you think Gorbachev will
survive this crisis that he currently is facing? If you had to
look down the road a year from now, is he still going to be in
power?
DIRECTOR WEBSTER: I try not to make flat-out
predictions of this kind. It's the kind of intelligence that we
provide for the president and to the Congress.
I can say that his prospects are considerably dimmer
than we viewed them a year ago.
MR. BLITZER: Well, does this mean that there could be
a return to the Cold War? Or-is that Cold war history?
DIRECTOR WEBSTER : I don't think it's possible to
return to the kind of Cold War that we had in the early 1980s,
and prior to that. Soviet hegemony over Eastern Europe has been
destroyed. The Warsaw Pact, as a military unit, is gone.
There could develop sane level of animosity that would
result in a different kind of rivalry, but I don't see that
happening in the near term.
Their internal problems are monumental, and they're in
no position to engage in adventurism against the West.
MR. BIE tBAUER: What is your assessment of Eastern
Europe? Can it gain stability? A lot of those countries are
really going through turmoil?
DIRE= WEBSTER: Well, all of us hope so. Each one
has to be gauged in terms of its own progress. Each is trying
to get there by a slightly different route. There is the cold
shower, and there is the put-your-toe-in-the-tub approach. The
cold shower seems to offer the best prospect of an early
attainment of reasonable stability in a democratic environment.
To hold back and to do it in pieces invites popular
discontent, it provides no change in the downward trend of the
economies, and simply won't work.
But I'm very hopeful that these countries which want
democracy so badly will work to make it happen, and that we, by
providing our advice and our know-how, and others involved in
providing additional aid, will ease that pain that they're
necessarily going through.
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MR. BIERBAUER: Let me ask you a quick question about
the KGB, which seems to be seeking to redefine its image and to
put out a better one.
Cn the other hand, when you had a fire in the U.S.
embassy, they were as opportunistic as ever.
Did you lose any intelligence in that fire in the
first place?
DIRECICR WEBSTER: I'm,not informed of any significant
loss of intelligence. I know the agency did not lose any
intelligence. There were other classified documents in the
building in various other vaults, and I'm not prepared to speak
to that.
But I'm confident that our space was secure.
MR. BIERBAUER: And the new image of the KGB?
DIRDCICR WEBSTER: Well, one has to remember that the
KGB and the CIA are not comparable agencies. The KCB has a
large responsibility for controlling internal domestic unrest.
It also has been given a number of political responsibilities,
such as the distribution of food.
It acts to collect intelligence widely throughout the
world, so that I have not detected any serious change in its
responsibilities, and indeed, when they lost most of their
surrogate intelligence collecting capabilities, when the Eastern
bloc turned toward democracy, they had to replace that with
efforts of their own to continue to collect intelligence,
particularly what we call technology transfer, the acquisition
or stealing of important technology secrets.
MR. BIERBAUER: We need to take another break. Stay
with us please.
(Announcements)
MR. BIERBAUER: Cki NEWSMAKER SATURDAY, from CIA
headquarters in Langley, Virginia, our guest is the director of
Central Intelligence, William Webster. With me, CNN's Wolf
Blitzer. Wolf.
MR. BLITZER: Judge Webster, looking down the road,
where are the major trouble spots? As you leave the CIA, if you
have to predict, the next time the U.S. may be forced to use
military power, where would that be?
DIRECICR WEBSTER: All right. Now, keep in mind, it's
more than military power. we're the last definable superpower,
and we'll be called upon to intervene in regional disputes,
either diplomatically or military or economically.
So we have to have an economic-have an encyclopedic
capability, knowledge of the places where these things cane up.
It's too late if it happens and we're trying to learn about a
situation.
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I can give you examples of areas that have the
capacity to create a situation that are obvious. North and
South Korea being one of those; India and Pakistan being
another. General uncertainties in the Pacific Rim. Countries
in Africa that are all failing at this point to try to preserve
a semblance of democracy and move toward pluralism, some with
more success than others.
The Middle East is going to continue to be a problem.
Gaddafi is still alive and very active throughout Africa and
other countries.
Those are just a few. we have sane instability in
South America and Latin America that may crop up to cause us
trouble.
MR. BLITZER: How serious is terrorism as a threat?
DIRECTOR WEBSTER: Well, know you're talking about a
class of activity. And we have several classes of activity that
we didn't pay any attention to, or really not much attention to,
15, 10 years ago.
Terrorism, international terrorise, has been a major
concern. The numbers are not all that large, but the impact
politically, and on valued rights to travel of American
citizens, on property of American citizens, is substantial.
That's a trans-national issue, and we've been very
good at getting at not only understanding, but moving out in
front with our intelligence to get there, as we say, before the
barb goes off.
Hopefully we'll be able to tell the story of how we
kept terrorise under control during the Persian Gulf conflict at
sane future point. But we did it by identifying then in many
parts of the world, having then arrested and interrogated,
deported, and ultimately in some cases confessions.
MR. BIERBAUER: You 're welcome to tell the story right
now. But presumably you did this by putting a little muscle on
sane of the people who had sustained terrorise, perhaps the
Syrians among than.
DIRECICR WEBSTER: And we had cooperation from most of
the host countries who were involved in the coalition
government, really unusual cooperation. A result of a lot of
liaison work that had been in place. We had a running start on
this.
Terrorism is one example of these kinds of trans-
national issues. Narcotics is another one. we are definitely
in the war against drugs, providing important strategic
intelligence, not only in countries like Mexico and South
America, but in other parts of Eastern Asia, that will be
important in identifying money laundering, organized groups, and
actual crop locations that have escaped notice in the past.
MR. BIERBAUER: Can I just stop you there?
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MR. BIERBAUER: Are you concerned now that the war and
the strength of this coalition may have had that terrorism pops
up again as a bigger problem?
DIRECT WEBSTER: The possibility is clearly there,
not necessarily as a bigger problem. For now, if you're talking
about Saddam Hussein, Saddan Husseitl's conventional wisdom is
not to force that issue in his present condition with allied
troops still around to take some action if it happens.
But later on we could see an emergence of this. And
it's in a number of domestic terrorist groups that operate
against the United States and others.
MR. BIERBAUER: Time for one very quick question.
MR. BLITZER: Quick, tying up one loose end.
DIRECIQR WEBSTER: I wanted to finish up. A bigger
issue is weapons of mass destruction, missile proliferation,
biological weapons, chemical weapons, spreading throughout the
world.
MR. BIERBAUER: We'll have to tie up that loose end on
another occasion. we're out of time. Judge Webster, I thank
you very much for joining us.- For Wolf Blitzer, I'm Charles
Bierbauer. Thank you for being with us on NEWSMAKER SATURDAY.
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