COLBY SAYS HIS DISMISSAL AS C.I.A. CHIEF AROSE FROM HIS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP81M00980R002000090046-1
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 4, 2004
• Sequence Number: 46
• Content Type: NSPR

NEW PffKovPMg Release 2004/10/12: CIA-RDP8 M00980R00200'6090046-1 `
DATE UL~' ?c~ = , Page l ~.
,olby Says His Dismissal as C.I.A. Chief Arose From His
By SEYMOUR M. HERSH
William E. Colby says in a memoir to
published in May that he believes
?esident Ford removed him as Director
Central Intelligence in late 1975 be-
iuse he chose not "to stonewall" but
cooperate with the Congressional and
,ecutive inquiries that year into wrong-
mng by the Central Intelligence Agency.
"To say the very least, most of the
bite House staff and, for that matter,
such of the intelligence community, were
nenthusiastic about what I was doing,"
r. Colby writes in "Honorable Men: My
fe in the CIA," to be published by
mon and Schuster.
Among those who directly expressed
ncern to him, Mr. Colby writes, were
enry A. Kissinger, then Secretary of
ate; Brent Scowcroft then the head of
e National Security Council, and Vice
esident Nelson A. Rockefeller, who at
e time was chairman of a Presidentially
"pointed executive commission that was
vestigating alleged C.I.A. abuses.
Mr. Rockefeller denied, in a statement
;ued late yesterday through an aide,
at he had ever asked Mr. Colby to
)struct the commission's inquiry.
Mr. Colby's subsequent dismissal as
rector of Intelligence was publicly de-
United Press International
E. Colby
)n of the national security structure, tion of an article in The New York Times
t according to Mr. Colby, that was not th
...
0 T A d
ti
e
omes
c
cause of the way I went about dealing Mr. Colby was convinced, he writes,
th the C.I.A.'s crisis. My approach, that the initial report in 'the Times con-
agmatically and philosophically, was in I tained "distortions and exaggerations"
nflict with that of the President and that could be countered only by attempt-
; prinetpal advisers." ~ ing "to cooperate with he invesigaions
Portions of Mr. Colby 's book were pro- and ry to educate the Congress, press,
'ded by Simon and Schuster to a New and public, as well as I could, about
,irk Times reporter today after News- American intelligence."
eek magazine, in its current issue, pub- Within a few days, Mr. Colby writes,
hed some details ina column. he was excluded from the day-to-day dis-
Richard E. Snyder, president of the cussions among President Ford, Secretary
'.bushing house, deplored in an inter- Kissinger and key White House advisers
ew what he characterized as a "front- over how to handle the allegauons re-
ge mentality" that was making it dif- ported in 'I'],, i'r,r,.
ult to circulate advance proofs of "Their preferred approach, bluntly
arks such as Mr. Colby's "This is not ,put," he writes, "would have been to
h d "M S "
d
.e ar news, r. nyder sai
. Some-
,,e breaking the embarge can't say it's
e public's right to know."
By printing without permission, the
blisher said, "you are denying a per-
n's right to a fair gain."
Mr. Colby, who submitted the manu-
ript to the C.I.A. for clearance, re-
unts his career as a C.I.A. operative
1 Scandinavia, in Italy and in Vietnam,
;iere? he lat.r became director of the
cification effort. But much of the book
als with what Mr. Colby calls "The
gar of Intelligence," the 12-month
riod after the December 1974 publica-
to the national security about what they
couldn't deny-in short, the exact op-
posite of r,
Mr. Colby describes the White House's
approach this way:
"The White House decided to try to
contain the crisis by forming a blue-
ribbon commission to investigate. Soon
afttr my first testimony before this com-
mission, chaired by Vice President Nelson
Rockefeller, he drew me into his office
in the Executive Office Building and said
in his most charming manner, 'Bill, do
you really have to prtsent all this ma-
terial to us?'
"And at one of our private meetings
to discuss intelligence activities, after I
had become a regular performer before
tht oSenate Select Committee, Kissinger,
in a sarcastically teasing reference to my i
Catholicism, cracked, 'Bill, you know
what you do when you go up to the Hill?
You go to confession.'
"Snowcroft, with his Air Force back-
ground and fierce loyalty to the Presi-
dential command structure, didn't try to
be witty about it; he flatly said I should
refust to reply to the questions the Con-
gress was asking."
The Rockefeller statement yesterday
said, "Because the President had limited
the commission's investigation to ques-
tions relating to the domestic activities
of the C.I.A., as chairman I endeavored
at all times to keep the focus of the in-
vestigation on the designed assignment."
"Accordingly," the statement added,
"I sought to avoid the commission's I,
being drawn into issues that were be-
yond its assignment."
Later in his memoir, however, Mr.
Colby writes that of all the commission
members, only Erwin Griswold, the for-
mer Solicitor General and former dean
of Harvard Law School, "was anything
that could be called aggressive in his
questioning of me."
As for his brief talk with Mr. Rocke-
feller, Mr. Colby writes: "I got the mes-
sage quite unmistakably, and I didn't
like it,
"The Vice President of the United
States was letting me know that he didn't
approve of my approach to the C.I.A.'s
troubles, that he would much prefer me
to take the traditional stance of fending
off investigations by drawing the cloak
of secrecy around the Agency in tho'
name of national securtiy."
In response to Mr. Rockefeller, Mr.
Colby writes, "I mumbled something ap-
propriate."
Despite such comments and the pros-
sures that led to President Ford's decision
late in the year to dismiss him, Mr. Colby
writes: "I do not now, nor did I then,
regret what I did. I remain more con
vinced than ever that not only was it
the right way but it was the only way."
Mr. Colby's thesis, restated throughout
the memoir in various forms, is that
the C.I.A. would gain the public's support
and good will only if it became "an
integral part of our democratic process.
subject to our system of checks and
balances among the Executive and Con-
gress and the Judiciary."
In Mr. Colby's view, his decision to
be responsive to the investigationg
groups proved correct when those groups
concluded in their public reports that,
as the Rockefeller Commission said,
"the great majority of the C.I.A.'s acti-
vites comply with statutory authority."
But the television report by Daniel
Schorr of CBS that the C.I.A. had engaged
is foreign assassination attempts ended
reatment by
Approved For Release 2004/10/12: CIA-RDP81 MO Sb g "A hysteria'
 Approved For Release 2004/10/12 : CIA-RDP81 M00980R002000090046-1
NEW YORK TIMES
Page
seize Washington," he writes; "sensation cover story-a publicly acceptable ex-
came to rule the May." planation of their work while they con-
Elsewhere in his memoirs, however, tinued to seek counterintelligence targets
Mr. Colby candidly writes about events within American domestic dissent," Mr.
that raise profound questions about his Colby writes.
inability, as a high-level C.I.A. official, to But Mr. Colby adds that he did nothing
control agency activities and the inability about it. "By the time I learned of this,"
of the various investigating groups to he says, "I was already in the process
learn all there is to know about any C.I.A. of dismantling Chaos, so I did not try
operation or activity. I to ascertain how this misconstruction of
For example, Mr. Colby writes that, Helms's instructions might have been
upon his return from a Vietnam assign- refelcted in actual operations."
ment to C.I.A. headquarters in 1972, he Mr. Colby also dealt with, the C.I.A.'s
quickly became aware of the illegal C.I.A. decision not to send its own evidence of
domestic spying program, which had the illegal domestic spying to the Justice
code name Chaos. Department for possible prosecution.
A number of C.I.A. officers, he writes, Mr. Colby writes that he was ques-
"were all aware that a most secret project tioned by Lawrence Silberman, then the
was lodged in that most secret of agency ~ Acting Attorney General, shortly after
crannies, the Counterintelligence Staff, The Times's publication of the initial do-
and that it had a great- deal to do with mestic spying articles. He told Mr. Silber-
the antiwar movement." He went on, man, he says, that The Times had
11 And the main concern on the part of apparently obtained some details from an
these young agency employees was internal list of alleged incidents of domes-
whether the C.I.A. was engaged in an tic wrongdoing, which had been compiled,
activity that was clearly outside its prop- dur'ng- the Watergate crisis in 1973 but
er charter-domestic inteligence." had not been turned over to the Justice
After an investigation led by himself, Department.
Mr. Colby writes, Richard Helms, then Mr. Silberman declared, he writes, that
the Director of Central Intelligence, or- Mr. Colby "was obliged to turn such. evi-
dered the Counterintelligence Staff to dence over to the pu')lic authorities."
turn Chaos away from the antiwar "In withholding that evidence for a
movement to the threat of international year and a half, Bill," Mr. Colby quotes
terrorism. Mr. Silberman as saying, "you may have
"It wasn't until more than a year committed a crime yourself."
later that I realized that Helms'a direction Mr. Colby writes that the thought of
as to the new priority was considered by reporting the matter to the Justice De-
a few of those devoted to Chaos to be a partnment "never crossed my mind."
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