INTERVIEW WITH ADMIRAL STANSFIELD TURNER

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01070R000100010008-6
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 25
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 17, 2008
• Sequence Number: 8
• Publication Date: January 7, 1982
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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RADIO TV REPORTS, INC.
January 7, 1982 11:30 PM
Washington, DC
GORDON PETERSON: Please welcome to After Hours now, in
the Channel 9 newsroom, Admiral Stansf i e l d Turner, former Rhodes
Scholar, former Director of the CIA under President Jimmy Carter.
Bad luck for you today.
ADMIRAL STANSFIELD TURNER: Why is that?
PETERSON: A few minutes before we started this p rog ram,
I was in a bookstore looking for something else, and I came across
a book by Dr. Ray Cline, former Deputy Di rector of the Central
Intelligence Agency. He does not treat you well i n this book,
"The CIA Under Reagan, Bush and Casey." He doesn't even mention
your name in the title.
PETERSON: He says -- you're a nice fellow, is what he
says. You had an excellent record, but in practice you showed
little of the skill in interpersonal relations necessary for an
effective leader of the CIA's clandestine services or its ana-
lyti ca l staff.
Do you feel hurt by this?
ADMIRAL TURNER: No, I don't feel hurt, considering
the sou rce. Mr. Cline is a nice man. He was a good i me l l igence
off i cer. He's just way out of date, out of touch, and only in
touch with a lot of old-timers who are also out of date.
PETERSON: Well, he alleges in that book that the morale
was going this way under George Bush. He says that maybe President
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Carter shou Id have asked Bush to stay on. Then when you came
along, again, nice feI low, but you didn't understand, and it
started go down.
PAT BUCHANAN: One of the specifics is that -- and I --
it was reported, I guess, i n 1977 -- was the so-ca I led purging
of the clandestine services. Not simply that some 200 were given
immediate release and 800, I think, eventually; but that they
given...
ADMIRAL TURNER: Those are both wrong figures. But I
w i l l admit to that.
BUCHANAN: Okay. But they were given 75-word tele-
grams that, in effect, said, "Go or be fired," a lot of people
who had served a long time. (A) They said is was brutal, and
(B) they said that the Admiral has destroyfd the institutional
memory of the agency.
ADMIRAL TURNER: Well, you can't destroy the institu-
tional memory of an agency as large as the CIA, Pat, by asking
some 200 people to leave over a two-year period. Not 800, only
200 people were affected, and it took two years to phase them
out.
BUCHANAN: Were these a l l senior people, though?
ADMIRAL TURNER: No, they weren't. This was secre-
taries, clerks, and senior people.
BRADEN: Yeah. But isn't it true -- I hear from --
speaking of institutional memory, I'm an old boy, as you know.
And I have heard from old friends of mine over there -- I guess
they' re near retirement -- saying that you rea I ly weren't i me r-
ested in human intelligence. You weren't interested in spies.
You were a I I out for machinery, and you got a I of of nava I staff
around you, and you kind of ran it like a battleship.
ADMIRAL TURNER: First of all, I didn't have any naval
staff. Secondly, a couple of guys came with me. That's not a
big staff.
Secondly, Tom, when did you start beat -- stop beating
your wife? You see, you want me to say, one, I stopped paying
attention to technical intelligence.
BRADEN: No. I was going to ask you, do you think the
human intelligence is important?
ADMIRAL TURNER: Of course it is. It's terribly im-
portant.
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BRADEN: Well, that's the charge Cline makes against
ADMIRAL TURNER: But what Cline doesn't understand and
what most people don't understand is that human i me l I igence,
while even more important today than in the past, is different.
You can't b r i n g i n t o the i n t e l l i g e n c e environment two whole new
ways of getting i n t e l l i g e n c e through technical means -- satellite
photographs and signals intercepts -- and not affect how you do
the human intelligence. See what I mean? Why would you...
BUCHANAN: Well, we've had satellite intelligence and
the intercepts for years and years and years, I ong before you came
over to the agency.
ADMIRAL TURNER: WeI I, I'm not saying these were changes
just in my four years. I'm saying that over the last decade
there's been a major change i n how you conduct human intelligence,
as affected by these others.
Pat, you would not go out and use a spy to collect
information you could get with a satellite. Right?
BUCHANAN: Right. But let me to l l you a true story.
Right there in the Polish crisis, in one of the first nights of
it, I talked to a very high official in the U. S. Government, who
said, "There's cloud cover. We don't know what the Russians are
doing. And we don't have many assets on the ground."
Now, this -- what Tom mentions is the criticism, is
that after the Church-Mondale sort of attacks on the agency and
after the Admiral came in and cleaned out the clandestine services,
morale went down and a lot of the assets on the ground were de-
emphasized, and the technical aspects were, to a degree, overem-
phasized.
ADMIRAL TURNER: Now, that's not true. In the first
place, in the reductions I made, which were as a result of a
study done before I got there and recommended by the agency, not
by me -- in fact, I cut the size of the reduction by a th i rd. I
only took two-thirds of what they recommended to me. I did not
let them take people from overseas. We didn't take the people
from Poland, or wherever. We cut the headquarters fat, which
the agency itself acknowledged that it had.
Secondly, when I arrived in the agency, 30 percent of
the espionage department people were over 50 years of age. Now,
you can't go out on the street and hire those people at middle
levels. You have to start at the bottom and work up. There's
no other training ground. Right?
BRADEN: Fair enough.
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ADMIRAL TURNER: So we have to get some of them moving
out i n order to make room at the bottom.
BUCHANAN: But the phrase I've heard used is that it
takes a long time to sandpaper someone in this area; and that
when you've got a guy 50 years old, you've got an asset you can
not replace with a young...
ADMIRAL TURNER: But the average age of retirement in
that group i s 53 1/2. That meant that in 3 1/2 years I was look-
ing forward to a decimation by normal reti rement of 30 percent
of those people. And the first year I was there, we too i n one-
eighth of the number of people it takes to renew the corpus of
that group. The last year I was there, we took in eight times
as many.
In short, I was bui Iding for the Iong run. You can't
just live on the old assets of the OSS forever, because they're
going to die and quit.
[Confusion of voices]
BRADEN: They're never going to die. Old soldiers
PETERSON: In the days when Tom Braden and his pals
were snooping and pooping around Europe and elsewhere and
gathering information...
PETERSON: How does the human element today, in In-
tel l igence gathering, differ from...
ADMIRAL TURNER: Good point. All right.
Today, for instance, you'll get a photograph and it
will show a new bui lding on the outskirts of the capital of
Country X. And you I ook at that and you then say to the signa Is
people, "Let me know what that bui Iding i s communicating with."
And you find it's communicating with the Department of Nuclear
Affairs in the capital. You then take a spy and you say, "I
want you to get i n there and find out if that's the nuclear
weapon department or the nuclear power plant department." In
the old days, the spy had to go out and find the bui Iding, find
out where it was connected to, and then get in the bui Iding. You
see what I mean? You take two-thirds of that job and you do it
by technical means. And it lets the spy focus on what he's good
at, what is really important.
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BRADEN: Okay. We I I now, I ook, that brings up a ques-
ti on. I guess it was under your -- your Judy, I guess. Why was
our Intel intelligence so terribly bad in Iran?
BRADEN: We l l , on the evidence, Admiral, it's got to
be bad. I mean we didn't know what this crowd was. Apparently,
we didn't know anything about Khomeini. We didn't know anything
about anything. We were taken by surprise.
BUCHANAN: In terms of what was known and gotte out
about Khomeini, as a single example, there was very, very little.
People were saying, "This is a gentle old priest," and the Ramsey
Clark school of thought that he was going to bring democracy to
Iran.
BRADEN: Well, even Mike Wa l lace. Remember Mike Wallace
went over, interviewed him, came back and told us -- he told you
and me...
BUCHANAN: . . . it was a fai lure of journalists too, but...
BRADEN: "Why," he said, "he's a holy man."
PETERSON: He's a holy terror.
ADMIRAL TURNER: I never heard him given that kind of
treatment in the intelligence community.
Now, what happened, in my opinion, in Iran is that we
did observe for a long time there was a lot of discontent, a lot
of problems; centers of discontent for political reasons, for
religious reasons, for economic reasons.
Now, what we did not anticipate -- and I'm not just
trying to whitewash things, 'cause we didn't do as well as we
should have -- was that these centers of discontent would coalesce
around a 79-year-old cleric, that he could bring this together
into a cri ti ca l mass. Why he did that was not because he was so
good, because they all had this anti-Shah element. And they've
fallen apart since then, since they don't have a Shah.
But the second thing we, frankly, overlooked was an
assumption that the Shah, when it came to the crunch, would use
his police and military force, that he would not let this dis-
content get out of control. And I think that was a reasonable
assumption.
BUCHANAN: Wait a minute now. In defense of the late
Shah, I think he indicated that James Earl Carter, Jr. and the
Administration never gave him any indication as to whether he
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should turn loose his troops or not.
bi I ity.
BRADEN: Yeah, but that w o u l d n ' t be Turner's responsi-
BUCHANAN: No. But I mean -- I mean he says he cou l d-
n't -- this was an Administration...
ADMIRAL TURNER: Pat,...
ADMIRAL TURNER: ...the Shaw was a big boy. I didn't
think he would sit there and let his throne go because President
Carter didn't tell him to move, or anybody. I thought he'd use
his troops when the crunch came.
BUCHANAN: The United States general that went right
into to Iran, in effect, to tell the Shah not to use his troops.
ADMIRAL TURNER: Now, just a second. You've got the
facts mixed. General Huyser didn't go in until well after the
die was cast. He went in after the Shah left the country phy-
sically. So that has nothing to do with it. You're talking
now -- I 'm talking about the period October 1978. They had big
riots about the middle -- early November, 4th of November. Once
those riots took place, the die was pretty we l l cast.
troops?
BUCHANAN: Do you t h i n k the Shah should have used h i s
ADMIRAL TURNER: I don't l i ke to say he should have,
because it would have been very bloody.
BUCHANAN: Well, it was very bloody afterwards.
ADMIRAL TURNER: Well, after Khomeini got in, it was.
BUCHANAN: Far bloodier than it would have been if
they'd put down the disorders.
ADMIRAL TURNER: It probably would have been.
PETERSON: Wasn't it just a question of time, though,
for the Shah?
ADMIRAL TURNER: I think so. But I think he could have
bought real time, years.
BRADEN: Let me ask you another question about that.
ADMIRAL TURNER: I f he'd stepped in in September or
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BUCHANAN: So you think he should have stepped in.
ADMIRAL TURNER: I f I were in his shoes, I certainly
think he should have. Yes.
BUCHANAN: You'd have sent the army in after the...
ADMIRAL TURNER: And I had every reason to believe that
he wou Id. I was wrong.
BUCHANAN: D i d you a l l -- a l l right, let me ask you.
Did you all communicate to the Shah, knowing yourselves, by then,
the situation was getting serious, ''Look, Your Majesty, get off
the dime. If you want to stay in power, and we want you in power,
get off the dime and move"?
ADMIRAL TURNER: Well, that's the White House, not the
intelligence end, what they communicated with him and...
BUCHANAN: W e l l , you were fairly close to the President.
ADMIRAL TURNER: Well, but those are still, in my opin-
ion, secretive things. And I...
BRADEN: I want to ask you this about Iran, Admiral.
It has been charged -- and I would think that the surface evidence
proves there might be something to it, because I remember even
back in my day it was true, even in my day.
ADMIRAL TURNER: Way back then?
BRADEN: Way back then, that the Shah didn't want the
Central Intelligence Agency to be in touch with any of the dissi-
dent groups, that he wanted to -- he wanted us to stay out of i t
and let Savak handle it. And isn't -- doesn't that contribute
to a weakness on the part of the agency, if they can't -- if they
can't talk to Khomeini, they can't talk to any of these religious
leaders?
ADMIRAL TURNER: Well, the Shah didn't want us talking
to his dissidents. And no other leader of a dictatorial country
wants you talking to their dissidents.
BRADEN: What I'm asking you is this: Did you do it
anyhow?
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BRADEN: But not as much as maybe we should have.
BUCHANAN: Adm i ra l , you used the phrase, the dictatorial
regime. And yet, you think the Shah should have used guns to stay
in power.
ADMIRAL TURNER: Now, you're putting a lot of words in
my mouth there, Pat.
used guns.
BUCHANAN: A l l right. You don't think he should have
ADMIRAL TURNER: I'm just saying had he used...
BRADEN: He didn't say that.
ADMIRAL TURNER: I'm saying that I made the assumption
he wou Id use the guns. I'm not going to make that judgment that
you're asking to me.
BUCHANAN: Wel I, you said if you were in his shoes, you
would have used them.
ADMIRAL TURNER: If I were in his shoes, I would have
put keeping my throne pretty high. But I'm sti I I not saying to
you that I'm passing moral judgment on whether the Shah was right
or wrong. I think there's a lot to be said for the Shah, when he
f i na l ly faced up to it, not using force, because he realized what
a bloody thing he would be.
[Confusion of v of ces]
BRADEN: You didn't mean anything wrong by dictator.
You should have said monarchical. You'd have been right then.
ADMIRAL TURNER: Right. Yes.
BRADEN: I want to ask h i m about one more t h i n g on h i s
PETERSON: Let's take a break
BRADEN: Terp i I and Wilson.
PETERSON: Terpi I and Wilson. And I want to ask about
Libyaan hit squads.
BUCHANAN: And also Reagan's...
PETERSON: We oou Id be here a I I night.
BUCHANAN: ...wise executive order.
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Tom, you had a question. You can't remember what it
was. I remember mine.
What about these so-cal led Libyan hit squads.
BUCHANAN: Terpil and...
BRADEN: Oh, yeah. I wanted to ask him about -- go
ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead.
PETERSON: Is this disinformation, this story about
a hit squad coming over here to hit our...
ADMIRAL TURNER: Well, Gordon, I don't have any facts
about this sort of intelligence. It's all since my time. I
have no question in my mind that they must have received some
kind of a report. We receive those fairly regularly.
PETERSON: Why make it public?
ADMIRAL TURNER: Oh, it's terrible to make it public.
It was a big mistake.
BUCHANAN: That was the press's fault, wasn't it? I
mean they ferreted they thing out and then headlines...
BRADEN: Oh, come on. Somebody leaked it.
ADMIRAL TURNER: Somebody leaked it.
PETERSON: Somebody had to tell the press.
ADMIRAL TURNER: That's a shame. That hurts. It hurts
your ability to control the situation. And it got the thing all
hyped up. I think the Administration went too far in hyping it
up. But that's a value judgment.
PETERSON: Think there was anything to it?
ADMIRAL TURNER: I can't believe there wasn't some kind
of a report. And a report l i ke that, in my opinion, norma l l y has
a 10- 15 percent cred i bi l ity. But you've got to act on that. I
mean it's against the President of the United States. I don't
blame them for going to general quarters, even on a low-credi-
bi lity report.
BRADEN: Adm i ra l , let me ask you about something that
I think you must know something about, and that's Terpi I and
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Wi Ison. And there's a recent charge, which is kind of pretty
we l l documented, that they were in touch, or have been in touch,
and under the command of two people that worked for you.
ADMIRAL TURNER: All I can say is I just read that
today. If there was any such contact after Apri I 1977, it was
direct insubordination to my orders. Because in April 1977, I
called in 500 of the top people in the espionage department and
I sent a message to all the overseas posts, and I said, "This
agency is having nothing to do with Edwin P. Wilson. We have
no connection with him, and nobody will have any connection with
him."
Now, if they maintained it after that time, it was
against that rule.
BRADEN: What was it that made you to make...
BUCHANAN: Were those two officials ca I led in? Were
they part of the group that got the word about E d w i n P . W i l s o n ?
ADMIRAL TURNER: Absolutely.
BRADEN: What led you to make that decision about Wi I-
ADMIRAL TURNER: Because I had discovered that we had
two people in the Central I n t e l l i g e n c e Agency in Apri I of 1977,
six weeks after I came into office, who were working for Edwin
P. Wi Ison at the same time they were on the Central Intel Igience
Agency's payrol I. And that had been the case for some months,
and it had been known in the Central Intelligence Agency. And
after three days of knowing that, I fi red them. I kicked them
out the door, because we just couldn't have any association with
a fellow like that.
BRADEN: WeI I, what do you suppose that your DDP was
doing? And I guess he was the Assistant DDP?
BRADEN: Well, Deputy Director for Plans. The covert
agency guy. What was his name, Shockley?
ADMIRAL TURNER: Shack ley.
BRADEN: Shack ley. What was he doing -- what was he
doing after that order came out sti I I, apparently, giving orders
to Wi Ison and Terpi I?
ADMIRAL TURNER: Now, in the morning paper, if you read
it carefully, Tom, Shackley says that he had no such connection
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with Edwin P. Wi Ison after September 1976. That's six months
before I'm talking about.
BRADEN: Before your order. Yeah.
ADMIRAL TURNER: Because he says that at that time he
rea l i zed what Wi Ison was doing, and he cut those ties. And I
believe Shackley.
BRADEN: That's interesting, because what ties would
he have had beforehand?
ADMIRAL TURNER: We l l , he was a personal friend of
Shack leg's. They knew each other. And you know the Central
Intelligence Agency is always anxious to find out from Americans
who are working in overseas countries what they know about those
countries.
BRADEN: What goes on. Yeah.
ADMIRAL TURNER: That's a perfectly legitimate thing.
I t ' s o n l y when you f i n d the American is d o i n g something i l l e g a l
that you want to wash your hands of him, of course. But i f he's
doing something perfectly proper and is wi I ling to tell us what
he knows, that's fine.
BUCHANAN: We l 1, speaking of something illegal -- let
me just change the subject quickly. One of your predecessors,
Richard Helms, testified and was, I guess, indicted for perjury
or making a misstatement, or something like that, and pled --
or whatever happened. Anyhow, when he was convicted, as it were,
and stood before the judge, he was sort of read the riot act by
Barrington Parker. And an awful lot of people contributed right
away to pay the fine.
What did you think about the prosecution of Richard
Helms by his own government when he had testified in Congress?
He had an oath to keep quiet about what he was talking about and
he had an oath to -- in effect, to tell the truth before Congress.
What do you think of that episode?
ADMIRAL TURNER: We I I, Helms was put in a position that
was much more di ff i cu It than I was ever put in, because there
wasn't the oversight process in the Congress in those days. He
didn't have these two Intelligence Committees. And he was put
in this difficult bind as to whether he would tell a Foreign
Relations Committee something that was terribly sensitive and
secret about intelligence. And he chose not to.
BUCHANAN: Break one oath or break the other, in effect.
ADMIRAL TURNER: We l I , I don't think it was quite that
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cut and dried. My point is that since we have the oversight
process ...
ADMIRAL TURNER: About that case? He was i n a very
difficult bind.
BUCHANAN: How do you think he conducted himself? He
was the Director then?
ADMIRAL TURNER: I think he did the best he could under
the ci rcumstances.
BUCHANAN: Do you t h i n k he s h o u l d have been prosecuted?
ADMIRAL TURNER: I'm afraid that that's the case, because
of the laws of this country.
ADMIRAL TURNER: But what he should have -- what he
cou Id have done, had he been -- had it been my case, was go to an
Intel l igence Committee -- he didn't have one...
ADMIRAL TURNER: ...and say, "Look, I've got a problem
BUCHANAN: I'm trying to get your judgment on how he
conducted...
ADMIRAL TURNER: I 'm not going to pass a moral judgment
on Mr. Helms, because neither you nor I can reconstruct in our
minds the real situation that...
BUCHANAN: No moral judgment...
BRADEN: Look, he did, Pat. He said -- he said, "Could
I go into executive session?"
BUCHANAN: We l l , that would have immediately said, "Look,
there's something here."
BRADEN: Well, I know. But he did ask that, and they
didn't give it to him. And so he did what he -- I think he had
to do. He lied to them.
BUCHANAN: A I I right. Then you don't think he should
have been prosecuted.
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BRADEN: Well, you know, if you look at the whole thing --
I agree with the Admiral that this is the law. You' re not supposed
to lie under oath. Okay?
BUCHANAN: And you' re not supposed to revea I secrets.
BRADEN: And you' re not supposed to revea I secrets. So
I think the bind he descri bes i s a good one. And it seems to me,
in the long run, it came off pretty wel I.
BUCHANAN: We I I, when a guy i s prosecuted and read the
riot act by a federal judge?
BRADEN: Pat, he was fined $ 1500, which his friends made
up in half an hour.
BUCHANAN: In effect, publicly disgraces for doing what
he thought was his duty.
BRADEN: Oh, he wasn't publicly disgraced. He's an
important person in this town and his opinions are listened to by
very good people.
PETERSON: Adm i ra l , let me ask you -- I heard you say
once that you w o u l d not r u l e out a b s o l u t e l y u s i n g American j o u r -
n a l i s t s i n the i me I I igence-gathering process. I heard you say
that once.
ADMIRAL TURNER: That's correct. Oh, that's true.
PETERSON: And Mr. Rosenthal of the New York Times was
ADMIRAL TURNER: Abe and I have argued that one for
PETERSON: Why did you say that?
ADMIRAL TURNER: He should not be horrified. I have
also made it very clear, Gordon, that it was not my policy to use
journalists. But there i s no way, i f a terrorist operation were
about to hurt a lot of people and we rea l ly thought an American
journalist were the one who could -- one person who could help
us scotch it, that I wouldn't turn to such a journalist. And I
think it's silly to think that any one of you wouldn't help us
if you were just the person who could do something in a situation
like that. You're patriotic Americans too.
BUCHANAN: Well, anybody would agree with, let's say,
a terrorist operation. What about i f , you know, a journalist --
say we' re in 1956, something I i ke that, and the journalists are
the only ones who can get around in the Soviet Union wel I. And
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we have our diplomats there and our agents who are diplomats.
How would you think about, look -- call in a journalist and say,
''Look. You're getting out to Sverdlovsk. It's a closed city.
They're giving you a big break here. We want you to look for
this and this and this anthrax place, and we'd like you to look
for this"? What do you think of that?
ADMIRAL TURNER: I wouldn't deny you your constitutional
right to he Ip your government, i f you wanted to. But I wouldn't
pressure you to do it.
BUCHANAN: But you wou Id ask.
ADMIRAL TURNER: Sure I would ask. And i f you didn't
want to do it...
BUCHANAN: I don't see anything wrong with that. I
think Rosenthal's all wet.
BRADEN: I don't know when this a I I happened. Back i n
Allen Du I les's day, journalists would see something -- A l len wou Id
say, "You're going to Egypt. You' re going to see Nasser. Now,
let me know what kind of a guy he is." That sort of thing.
"What's he up to?" There was a j ourna l ist -- I knew j ourna l ists
who'd come in and talk to Allen, have a cup of coffee, talk to
him. What's wrong with that?
BUCHANAN: The argument they use, Rosenthal uses is
this. If one fellow goes into Sverdlovsk and he's bringing out
information and it's for Turner and they found out, all jour-
nalists are suspect. All journalistic sources then tend to dry
up to a degree, and thereby democracy suffers. And therefore the
secular priests, us journalists, should not be tampered with.
ADMIRAL TURNER: Why, that's the most naive statement
anybody ever made. Not yours, but Rosentha I's .
BUCHANAN: That's Rosenthal's. Right.
ADMIRAL TURNER: Because the Soviets certainly believe
that every American journalist works for the CIA.
ADMIRAL TURNER: And no matter what we say, they' I I
believe that.
PETERSON: Whether they believe it or not, the American
public does not believe that.
BUCHANAN: How about using Peace Corps volunteers help-
ing out the CIA?
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ADMIRAL TURNER: No, we don't do that, and that's been
BUCHANAN: I know it's been ruled out, but should it
be ru I ed out?
ADMIRAL TURNER: I think that's probably worthwhile.
BUCHANAN: Why?
ADMIRAL TURNER: It doesn't excite me tremendously one
way or the other. Because they' re out in the field there with
working- level people in these countries. They're rea l ly out in
the bush.
ADMIRAL TURNER: If somebody feels, "Gosh, they're
spying," you know, they might have retribution taken against
them.
BUCHANAN: How about missionaries, Protestant mission-
aries, Catholic missionaries in Africa, Third World countries?
ADMIRAL TURNER: I look on them just as I do the j our-
nalists. Certainly not a policy of using them...
PETERSON: But if he can do you a little good, if Father
Gilhooley can...
In a very important situation.
BUCHANAN: Why exempt the Peace Corps, then? You've
got missionaries and journalists.
BRADEN: W e l l , because in the Peace Corps, i f you ever
get the idea that the Peace Corps is CIA, it destroys the Peace
Corps. It doesn't destroy the journalist.
BUCHANAN: We I I , i f you ever get the idea that some
missionary...
PETERSON: I t doesn't destroy the j o u r n a l i s t ?
BRADEN: No.
PETERSON: Ask Sam Jaffe about that.
BRADEN: Oh, well. Sam Jaffe was up to -- well, never
BUCHANAN: All right. But I ook, i f you do these m is-
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s i onaries, who are, like the Peace Corps, out in the bush in
Latin America, why not the Peace Corps? Are they superior?
BRADEN: No. Because the Peace Corps, Pat, is based
upon the ideal of service.
BUCHANAN: What i s a missionary based on?
BRADEN: The i dea l of disinterested service. I wou I d
say the missionary is the same. And moreover, the Peace Corps
goes into areas where they won't take any other Americans.
BUCHANAN: That makes them good agents.
BRADEN: We I I , a I I the more reason not to use them, I
PETERSON: While you gentlemen debate this, we'll take
a little break, and we'll be back with Admiral Turner in just a
m oment.
PETERSON: Pravda says, Admiral Turner, today a number
of CIA agents posing as diplomats have been caught recently en-
gaging in espionage, sabotage, and terror -- that's a quote --
agal nst the Soviet Union, and one of their recruits has been
executed by a Soviet firing squad.
Every time I go by that embassy down there, I feel like
I'm going to get sterilized, at best, or electrocuted, at worst.
Are they beating us?
ADMIRAL TURNER: No, they're not beating us. Our i n-
tel l igence is better than the Soviets', I believe, in every res-
pect.
I don't know anything about this, of course. It's a I I
something new. It's probably a disinformation story.
BUCHANAN: Disinformation. What do you mean by that?
ADMIRAL TURNER: The Soviets putting out stories that
are not true and are intended to influence opinion in the Free
World. They do that a I I the time.
BUCHANAN: You read the book "The Spike," haven't you?
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BRADEN: We l 1, they're putting out stories that some
of those fellows inside Poland are CIA agents.
BUCHANAN: Is there some validity, the nonsense of the
novel aside, to "The Spike;" about the Soviets trying to cozen
journalists and others and bring them on to the point where the
Americans are putting out disinformation?
ADMIRAL TURNER: Oh, c e r t a i n l y . C e r t a i n l y there i s .
I think it was a little overstated in "The Spike."
BUCHANAN: As it is always.
ADMIRAL TURNER: And I think "The Spike" was a little
naive in the degree to which it said high-level officials in the
government would succumb to this kind of thing. But it's cer-
tainly something we've got to be on our guard against at all
times.
BUCHANAN: When you were in the agency, did you have
any idea or suspicion or did you get some information that someone
at a level that was mentioned in "The Spike," let's say a deputy
assistant for national security, anyone at that level or above
had been compromised?
ADMIRAL TURNER: No.
BUCHANAN: None.
Any reports of people up on Capitol Hi I I being compro-
mised or working for someone else?
ADMIRAL TURNER: No.
BUCHANAN: None.
ADMIRAL TURNER: No.
BRADEN: ...about your problem with getting out of the
agency, because we al I face it. You're a rookie at this. But I
hear, on, I think, pretty good authority, that the Saudi Arabians
made an official and specific complaint about you quite recently
on something you'd written about the AWACS, and they said you
shouldn't be writing this because you were a former Director of
Central Intelligence.
PETERSON: The Saudis said that?
BRADEN: The Saudis said that.
PETERSON: Since when do they tell us what we...
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18
BRADEN: I think the Admiral
knows
I'm
right.
I
don't
know whether he wants to say
it.
ADMIRAL TURNER: I don't know whether you're right or
not.
But
neither the Saudis nor any foreign country are going
to curb my
freedom of speech. Now, I have to be discreet and I
c a n ' t
t e l l
secrets. And there was n o t h i n g i n my article on the
AWACS
that
wasn't in the public media in every regard. I was
not in favor of giving the AWACS to Saudi Arabia. Ironically.. .
BUCHANAN: Selling, you mean. Selling.
ADMIRAL TURNER: Selling it.
Ironically, the whole article said, because I want to
maintain as close ties with the Saudis as possible. But the
Saudis still took offense at it.
PETERSON: Let me ask you about President Reagan's
executive order expanding CIA activity on the domestic scene.
I know you don't like that.
ADMIRAL TURNER: Well, it's got a couple of good points
and a couple of bad ones.
The good points are that it's a much more positive
executive order than either President Ford's or President Car-
ter's. It really shows the President wants good intelligence,
and that's encouraging and helpful.
BUCHANAN: Did not Carter want good intelligence, too?
ADMIRAL TURNER: Yes, but it didn't come through in
the tone of the executive order, Pat. That's what I'm saying.
It was a more curb-things executive order, because it was written
in the atmosphere of the Church Committee st i l l , you see.
BUCHANAN: I t was 1977 when Carter came i n . The Church
Committee was dead in 174-75. Why did Carter.. .
ADMIRAL TURNER: No. It started '75-76, so it wasn't
all that far behind. But even -- and the Carter order was very
similar to the Ford order, which was written in '76.
Now, the other good part about it is it somewhat curbs
the authority of the Attorney General to interfere in intelligence
operations, and I think it's put a better balance there between
the Director of Central Intelligence and the Attorney General.
The bad points are that it permits the Central I n t e l l i -
g e n c e Agency to intrude into the I ives of American citizens.
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ADMIRAL TURNER: And it also de-emphasizes both White
House control over intelligence and congressional oversight over
intelligence. Now, it does these things in the name of streng-
thening and giving more freedom to our intelligence activities.
In spite of that, it's going to weaken activities.
BUCHANAN: Okay. What can they do speci f i ca l ly, and
you mentioned, in terms of the private lives of American citizens
in this country?
ADMIRAL TURNER: I f they believe that there is signifi-
cant foreign intelligence available in the domestic scene, they
can go investigate into it, look into your life and mine.
they?
BUCHANAN: Well, the FBI can do that right now, can't
ADMIRAL TURNER: That's the reason you don't want the
BRADEN: I don't understand. We made an agreement way,
way back. It was always abided by. The FBI takes care of the --
i n here. And if you have somebody coming over, you pass him over.
I don't see what...
BUCHANAN: Well, what is -- what really is the problem?
C I A agents are honorable Americans. They're we l 1-trained guys.
ADMIRAL TURNER: Ah, no. They're not trained in spying
on Americans and complying with American law. They're trained
in exactly the opposite. They're trained in working overseas and
not worrying about the law. And when you try to put them i n
this, it's unfair.
BUCHANAN: But isn't this like somebody from the Depart-
ment of the Interior taking over a job that originally belongs to
the De pa rtment of Ag ri cu Iture? What's the difference.
ADMIRAL TURNER: It is not. It is not. The whole
ski I I levels are different.
BUCHANAN: What w i l l they do? What will they do?
ADMIRAL TURNER: What did they do in the '50s and '60s
in intruding in...
BUCHANAN: What did they do?
ADMIRAL TURNER: They opened mail. They drugged Amer-
i cans.
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BUCHANAN: A I I right. The d rug thing, obviously, was
ADMIRAL TURNER: They followed the Weathermen. They
kept files on Ameri cans by the hundreds of thousands.
BUCHANAN: What is wrong with following the Weathermen?
If they'd found a couple of the Weathermen, we might not have had
those fe I I ows ki I led up i n Nyack, New York.
BRADEN: Well, I don't think Jim Angleton should have
opened all the businessmen's mail that he did.
BUCHANAN: It was ma i I going to the Soviet Union.
BRADEN: Let the FBI take care of that.
BUCHANAN: The ma i I-opening was overseas ma i 1 , wasn't
ADMIRAL TURNER: It was going overseas and coming into
the United States.
PETERSON: Do you want people opening your ma i l?
BUCHANAN: I'm sure when I sent White House letters
back to the Soviet Union to thank people for taking care of us
on trips, they looked at it. Who cares?
PETERSON: We l l , I care.
BUCHANAN: It's a case where people's rights -- they
didn't know their rights were violated unti I they got the Freedom
of Information Act to look up and say, "Hey, my rights were vio-
lated." I mean if it adds to the national security...
PETERSON: It doesn't, does it? That's the question.
ADMIRAL TURNER: I looked into this very carefully.
And a year ago last month, before I left the agency, I polled
the top people and I said, "Turn in to our chief counsel all
those things you might do if we didn't have any restrictions."
And when the I i st came back to me, there was only one thing on
it that I thought might have ever produced good intelligence.
BUCHANAN: Well, they might have thought this was sort
of let a hundred flowers bloom, and then Turner's going to cut
their heads off when he finds out.
ADMIRAL TURNER: No, no.
BRADEN: ...he hadn't made himself clear at that point.
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ADMIRAL TURNER: But on top of that, my own experience
in four years would indicate there's very little to be gained.
BUCHANAN: Why wou I d they want it? M r . I n m a n , A d m i r a l
Inman is a bright man, he's an intelligent man. Bill Casey's
a solid citizen. Why would they ask for these kinds of authori-
ties unless they thought it could do some good in terms of the
nati ona I security? They' re not the type of fe I I ows who want to
go a round reading people"s ma i 1 or chasing Weathermen or some-
thing like that. Why would they ask for it?
ADMIRAL TURNER: You know why? You know why I think?
BUCHANAN: Why?
ADMIRAL TURNER: Because they received very bad advice
during the campaign and the transition period from people, like
him, who were out of date.
BUCHANAN: Wait a minute. Bobby -- Mr. Inman...
PETERSON: Ray Cline.
ADMIRAL TURNER: Cline.
BUCHANAN: I know this is Cline. But...
ADMIRAL TURNER: And then they got...
BUCHANAN: Inman worked over this order himself .
ADMIRAL TURNER: Now wait a minute, Pat. They got out
on a limb. They went out in March with a radical change to the
executive order, one that Inman rejected tota l l y, one that the
public rejected, one that Goldwater rejected. And they have pro-
gressively watered it down for 10 months. And unfortunately,
they couldn't put their campaign rhetoric completely to bed.
And as they watered i t down, they s t i l l left these several ob-
jectionable pieces i n i t , because they just couldn't eat thei r
words enough. That's too bad.
BUCHANAN: A l l right. You mean that Admiral Inman is
being influenced in asking for these things, not that he thinks
t h e y ' l l do some good, but simply because they correspond with
some campaign rhetoric?
BRADEN: There'd be a tendency over there, Pat, not to
get i n -- interfere with any of Reagan's campaign promises.
BUCHANAN: Tom, if you got a backlash on this executive
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order, I don't think intelligent men, knowing a backlash was
coming, would ask for it unless they thought it would do some
good.
BRADEN: I frankly don't see the importance...
ADMIRAL TURNER: You just don't remember your days in
the government we l l enough.
BRADEN: I don't see the importance in it that the
Admiral maintains. But I ...
BUCHANAN: People d o n ' t look for p o l i t i ca l fights.
BRADEN: I must say the old, old, old rule which the
CIA began with was that the FBI would take the domestic and the
CIA...
BUCHANAN: Tom, you' re too wedded to tradition. You' re
too wedded to tradition.
PETERSON: An FBI trained in American law and the human
rights contained therein, or the rights of individuals contained
therein.
BUCHANAN: Would you agree with this, though, this
proposition: that Mondale and Church and the rest of them over-
played any abuses committed by the CIA, and the damage they did
far outweighed any harm the CIA did to the civil rights and the
human rights of American citizens?
ADMIRAL TURNER: I think the media has a large role to
play here in overhyp i ng. I think the excesses of the CIA were
grossly exaggerated in the press.
BUCHANAN: Who played to the media? Who played to the
ADMIRAL TURNER: But the problem that you are encour-
aging with this new executive order is that the CIA, if they
make a mistake in intruding into American lives, will then be
subject to another wave of that same kind of criticism. And
that has been the most injurious thing to our intelligence capa-
bi lities in this country since World War I I. And we can't afford
it again.
BUCHANAN: Is something wrong, then, with the American
press that it takes mistakes, or even b l u n d e r s , l i k e this and
feeds on them?
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23
BUCHANAN: Okay. Then the fault might be with the
media.
BRADEN: Let me ask you this, Adm i ra l . Are there any...
ADMIRAL TURNER: Of course you should write about it.
But you should be a little more balanced.
BRADEN: Are there any family jewels that you know
about that are still left over there? Wasn't it Bill Colby who
took the family jewels up to the Congress?
BUCHANAN: The dart pistol.
ADMIRAL TURNER: I'm pleased to tell you there are some
secrets they rea I ly do keep over there.
BRADEN: Are they family jewels?
ADMIRAL TURNER: It's hard to keep. I don't want to
use the word family jewels, because everybody on this TV tube
will interpret it differently. You have one definition and I
have another. There are some rea l ly good secrets in that organ-
ization, and I'm proud that they are able to keep them. But it's
not easy, with the leaks we have in our government today. And
that's one of the most serious problems our country faces.
BUCHANAN: You know the best way to keep the press from
writing about these things is stop leaking?
ADMIRAL TURNER: That's right. I agree with you en-
tirely. And unti I some President fires some Cabinet- or sub-
Cabinet-level official because he gave a background briefing and
got off the turf, you know, you're not going to do it.
BRADEN: Why would the G l omar Explorer suddenly hit the
front page? I know a f e l l o w over there who said, "That was the
last secret we had."
BUCHANAN: We l 1, that was known for months. I mean the
press people knew that and they sort of set up the breaking of
the G l oma r Explorer.
PETERSON: That's i me resting . During the war, as you
well know, the press did sit on secrets a lot.
BUCHANAN: Sure. They sat on the code thing, I think.
ADMIRAL TURNER: But now the press uses the excuse, " I f
I don't break it, you' I I break it.,, Or, "If you don't break it,
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he' I I break it."
BRADEN: The sort of thing we were talking about before.
PETERSON: ...if ABC's not there...
ADMIRAL TURNER: That's right.
BRADEN: You've got to be a [unintel I igi ble] because
there's competition.
BUCHANAN: James Reston. The New York Times had the
story in advance of the Bay of Pigs. They didn't run with it
because the Administration -- I think Kennedy called them up
and said, "Don't go with it.,, Should the press have gone with
the Bay of Pigs story before the invasion?
ADMIRAL TURNER: Each one of those has got to be an
individual conscious decision by the press.
BUCHANAN: Right.
ADMIRAL TURNER: And I don't think you can have a rule
for that. I don't want to have a law for that.
BUCHANAN: No, not a law, not a rule. Should they have
gone with it?
ADMIRAL TURNER: We l l , you're asking people on this
program, Pat, to second-guess the mora I decisions of people in
the past. And I'm not going to do it.
BUCHANAN: It's a 20-year-old decision.
PETERSON: Subsequently, they said that they felt they
shou Id have gone with it.
BUCHANAN: They felt they should. I don't think they
BRADEN: John Kennedy made a crack about that long
afterwards. He told Orvi l le Dreyfus (?) -- and he was the
fellow...
BUCHANAN: Maybe he'd have stopped it. Yeah.
BRADEN: John Kennedy said, "Look, maybe it would have
been better if you'd have gone with it big and I wouldn't have --
I wouldn't have been able to do it."
ADMIRAL TURNER: But that's not the way to make policy
for our country.
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BRADEN: No. No, I think...
ADMIRAL TURNER: You've got to make deliberate deci-
BRADEN: No, I would agree. I think the press should
not have printed that. I would agree with you.
PETERSON: Do you have a favorite or a most fascinating
spy or fascinating character that you've met in your days at the
CIA?
ADMIRAL TURNER: Oh, not one that I could talk about.
PETERSON: Yeah. That's what I was afraid of.
Okay. Thank you very m u c h , A d m i r a l Stansf ie ld Turner.
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