ETHICAL LEVEL OF CIA FALLS SHORT OF PUBLIC EXPECTATIONS, HE SAYS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000807580033-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 15, 2012
• Sequence Number: 33
• Publication Date: July 17, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/11/15: CIA-RDP90-00965R000807580033-1
ARTICLE AP Ea CliRIS1IA~ti SCIENCE MONITOR
17 July 1985
Ettucal level oCIA falls snort
rornler cueA crIat w ith spydom's
wso ftwn
WE are sitting in a clandestine back
booth of the Palm Restaurant, where
Stansfield Turner, former director of
central intelligence, is talking about the eti-
quette of bugging
'I have a nervous habit when I wear cuff
links. Sometimes I fiddle with the snap on the
back of the cuff links," he begins. He remem-
bers as head of the Central Intelligence Agency
sitting in the Paris office of a French contact
fiddling with the back of one of the blue cuff
links he was wearing. "Suddenly I saw his eyes
riveted on this cuff link. And I'm
sure he felt this oval blue cuff link
was a microphone and that I was
turning it on and off."
In the world of spydom, mutual
trust could be shattered by just
such a breach of confidence. So Admiral Turner
carefully dropped his hands, the Frenchman
then dropped his guard, and the talk continued
sans intrigue.
Turner doesn't tell that story in his new
book, "Secrecy and Democracy: The CIA in
Transition," but he does tell several others that
offer an illuminating glimpse into the inner
workings of the CIA at a crucial time in its his-
tory. The book is also a riveting but subjective
account of his stewardship, which critics
claimed weakenend the agency.
Over a plate of chicken salad, Turner talks
shop. He talks about a 36-hour war that started
June 18, 1954, in Guatemala and that served as
a controversial model for further forays by the
CIA. The war was won by a broadcast ploy: A
CIA radio station, camouflaged as a rebels' sta-
tion, broadcast word that anticommunist Col.
Carlos Armas had invaded Guatemala from
Honduras with 5,000 men and was sweeping
like General Grant toward the capital in a "peo-
ple's rebellion." In reality, Armas had an
"army" of 200 bedraggled men plus a few old
aircraft and mercenaries. The mock-rebel radio
station continued broadcasting frequent bulle-
tins about the army's mythic march and a sin-
gle bomb dropped on a parade field in the cap-
ital. Communist-leaning President Jacobo
Arbenz Guzman resigned a day and a half later,
while Colonel Armas was still outside the city.
Admiral Turner ticks off several covert oper-
ations like this, some successful, some unsuc-
cessful. In his book he defends covert action
against criticism that it is not moral, arguing,
"These seem to me to be flawed attempts to
transform an idealized view of morality be-
tween individuals to a standard of morality be-
of public expectations, he says tween nations." He notes, too, that the CIA
By Louise Sweeney tried covert action in Indonesia and the Philip-
Staff enter of The Chrftw Science MM*X pines, maybe other places, that
'
BOOKS.
INTERVIEW
didn
t work. "And now they've
tried Nicaragua," he says. "And it
didn't work. As I try to say in the
book, there are limited circum-
stances in which all the factors will
come into play, so that it's possible to finesse
someone out of his government." Speaking of
the CIA today he says, "They get off the track
when they think it's a lot easier than it is, like
Nicaragua."
Turner had commanded a destroyer, a mine-
sweeper, and the whole US Second Fleet, but he
balked when he was first asked to head up the
CIA. A US Naval Academy graduate and
Rhodes scholar, he was a military careerist who
would have preferred to be chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff.
But when his President and former Annap-
olis classmate Jimmy Carter asked him to re-
sign as commander of the southern flank of
NATO to head the CIA, Turner saluted and did
it. He took over at a dark time for the agency,
after the 1975 Church Committee (appointed by
Congress in the wake of Watergate revelations
and press reports of CIA abuses) uncovered
evidence that the agency had indeed spied on
Americans. As a result, the public was deeply
critical of the agency. Objectivity, legality, and
restored reputation were the core of Turner's
goals for the agency, he notes in his book.
Turner in his book stresses the importance
of integrity and morality within the framework
of the CIA. How does he assess current CIA di-
rector William J. Casey's handling of the
agency in this area? "Well, I don't know
whether it's Casey, whether it's Reagan,
whether it's the White House, but I think that
the mining of Nicaragua, the condoning of an
assassination manual on Nicaragua, the shoot-
ing up of farmers' trucks going to market in
Nicaragua, the [alleged] association with a unit
- a Lebanese group that ended up truck-bomb-
uig au people - are all actions that are
below the the ethical level that the A can u laic
wants to condone in the name of intelligence."
(The CIA as enl any involvement in the
bombing.)
At point the waiter materializes, and- Admiral
Turner asks him to take away what's left of the chicken
salad so he won't eat the rest of it. Self-control. He is a
trim-looking man with a crest of silver hair, sea-blue eyes
with a faint sailor's squint, and thick, iron-gray eyebrows
that rival those of his mentor, Adm. Elmo Zumwalt.
There is no gold braid on his shoulder, but he looks
like an officer and a gentleman in a tan summer suit,
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/11/15: CIA-RDP90-00965R000807580033-1