THE CIA DIRECTOR LOOKS BACK BY DANIAL F. GILMORE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00901R000600410029-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 19, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 14, 2005
• Sequence Number: 29
• Publication Date: May 13, 1986
• Content Type: PREL

Retired Adm. Stansfield Turner, writing on his tenure as CIA director
during the Carter administration, ironically complains about the ''more than 100
deletions'' made by the agency he ran for four years.
''These ranged from borderline issues to the ridiculous,'' Turner said in the
introduction to his new book, ''Secrecy and Democracy; the CIA in
Transition,'' which will be published by Houghton Mifflin next month.
"I appealed many of these questionable deletions to the higher levels of the
CIA and obtained only three minor concessions,'' he said.
Yet, Turner concedes that it was he who urged Attorney General Griffin Bell
in 1978 to prosecute Frank Snepp, an ex- CIA employee, for writing a book about
the CIA without agency clearance. As a result, all the some $60,000 profits
from Snepp's book about CIA operations was confiscated by the government.
''They resorted to this tactic,'' he said of the deletions in his book,
''because they were upset with the book's highly critical view of the Reagan
administration's mishandling of our intelligence activities, especially its
indifference to any oversight of the CIA.
Turner, appointed CIA director by Carter in 1979, says he found the CIA
and the intelligence community ''a colossus'' that he tried to bring under
manageable control but found himself confronted by an ''octopus.''
He did not have much regard for the agency's espionage branch, judged it
overstaffed and loaded with World War II veterans of the Office.of Strategic
Services, the CIA's predecessor.
It what became known as the ''Halloween Massacre '' of October 31, 1977;
Turner reduced staff in the espionage section by 822 positions, some by early
retirement, some by attrition, some by firing.
There were reports from veterans at the time that more than 1,000 agents were
affected and for the first time in the CIA's history, agents met with
reporters in discrete taverns and bars to express their bitterness at the
13 May 1985
Approved For Release 2005/'( pJE:DCP*$MP919 1R0q
A CIA DIRECTOR LOOKS BACK
By DANIEL F. GILMORE
WASHINGTON
Turner defends the action and says there were enough espionage agents left to
do the job and that more sophisticated electronic methods were providing major
intelligence results.
''In my experience, human intelligence occassionally got a superbly useful
piece of information,'' he said. ''More often, it provided helpful background
information about a country and its politics but nothing to aid with an
immediate decision ... Besides, no outsider, be he a reporter or a student of
national security, has an accurate idea of how many people the secret CIA
needs ... The press simply was parroting the views it received at second hand
from people who purported to know.''
I I purge. "
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Approved For Release 2005/12/14: CIA-RDP91-00901R000600410029-9