'1LL 9 §issified in Part- Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012 05 23 CIA-RDP99-00418R000100110013-6 RADIO - ·v REPORTS INC 4435 WISCONSIN AVENUE N W FOR WASHINGTON D C 20016 244-3540 PUBLIC AFFAIRS STAFF PROGRAM DATE The Today Show January 8 SUBJECT 199 7 00 AM STATION WRC TV NBC Network CITY Washington D C An Interview with William Colby JIM HARTZ All of our interview time in this hour this morning will be devoted to the CIA and its activities and its reactions to the extraordinary number of public disclosures made about it since the Watergate scandal And for this CIA Director William Colby is in our Washington News Center with Today Washington correspondent Douglas Kiker and NBC News correspondent Ford Rowan who covers the CIA Doug DOUGLAS KIKER Th an k you J i m Good morning every- body Mr Colby the CIA has been under heavy fire from one quarter or another for over a year now Your defenders say the attacks the disclosures have served to undermine the CIA's effectiveness Has the agency's effectiveness been diminished DIRECTOR WILLIAM COLBY Of course it's been hurt You can't possibly go through a year such as this of denunciations all around the world accusations of all sorts of things exposures of our operations exposures of the names of our people without causing foreigners who work with us and foreign intelligence services to draw back and evidence fear of being involved with us and being subject to the kind of exposure and attack that has been going on the best OFFICES IN On the other hand I must say that we still produce intelligence in the world NEW YORK • LOS ANGELES • CHICAGO • DETROIT • ANO OTHER PRINCIPAL CITIES Material supplied by Radio TV Reports Inc may be used for file and reference purposes only ft may not be reprOduced sold or publicly demonstrated or exhibited Declassified in Part- Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012 05 23 CIA-RDP99-00418R000100110013-6 I 'I Hl I I Declassified in Part- Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012 05 23 CIA-RDP99-00418R000100110013-6 -2KIKER Thank you As Jim told you Mr Colby will be with us for the rest of this hour But first the news and for that here's Lou Wood in New York HARTZ The Central Intelligence Agency has been ·the subject of almost continuous investigation this past year by both houses of Congress investigations that have led to charges that the CIA has at times violated both its own charter and the law Defenders of the CIA says the invetigations along with the various news stories and exposes have weakened the agency and endangered its agents To talk about this throughout this hour CIA Director William Colby is in our Washington News Center with Today Washington correspondent Douglas Kiker and NBC News correspondent Ford Rowan who covers the CIA And I should mention that Mr Colby is the outgoing Director of the CIA and is expected to be replaced soon possibly within this month by George Bush But he is still the active Director with long experience in the agency Doug KIKER Thank you Jim Mr Colby a few moments ago you said that the effectiveness of the agency had been diminished because of the exposures and the investigations Just before Christmas Richard Welch who was Station Chief of the CIA in Athens was gunned down by three masked men Subsequently people have said that because Mr Welch was identified in magazines like Counter-Spy he was identified in the Athens News as a CIA agent that this endangered his life and it's endangering the lives of other agents Do you agree with this DIRECTOR COLBY Well I think any of us in the intelligence business obviously run risks I've run risks and my associates have run risks over many years And that's part of the game But at the same time there• a question of how much risk we are asked to run And I particularly find it reprehensible to find a deliberate effort to identify our people b y f e 11 o w Ame r i c an s Tho s e wh o a r e op po s e d to the a c t iv i t i e s of CIA I think have every right to appeal to the Congress to terminate it to change its rules whatever But I find it particularly startling that an American would deliberate finger a fellow American serving his country in a dangerous post abroad KIKER Would you like to see legislation of some sort which would make it against the law for former CIA agents to write exposes let's say or for magazines like Counter-Spy Declassified in Part - San_itized _opy Approved for Release 2012 05 23 CIA-RDP99-00418R000100110013-6 Declassified in Part- Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012 05 23 CIA-RDP99-00418R000100110013-6 -3to publish agents' names DIRECTOR COLBY Well I'm a great believer in the First Amendment Mr Kiker But the fact is that we do need some better protection of our secrets We have secrets in American society They're important to our democracy the secret ballot box the secrecy of a grand jury proceeding the secrecy of our income tax returns All these things are secrets and are protected by law I think good intelligence is important to the protection of our democracy and our country And good intelligence does need some secrets -- not all secrets And that's perhaps part of our trouble -- is that the old tradition of intelligence was that everything was secret We've brought that out now and we've made public a great deal of what we can But there are limits if we are to maintain a good intelligence service FORD ROWAN Mr Colby in asking for strengthened laws to prohibit agents and former agents and employees from divulging secrets or the identities of other employees of the intelligence community will you seek to expand -- will the CIA seek to expand the government's power to obtain injunctions and restrain the publication or broadcast of this information DIRECTOR COLBY Well I have long advocated a law which would allow me to require an ex-employee to keep the secrecy agreement he made when he came to work with us We did go to court in one case against one of our ex-employees We happened to hear that he was going to publish before he actually published And we got an injunction and this was reviewed in the courts and this was approved At the same time if he had already published I must say I would have been on very weak grounds to do anything about it And I think that we do need a law that imposes the discipline of secrecy on us who go into the intelligence profession I do not believe it ought to apply to those outside the intelligence profession KIKER Have you urged President ord such legislation to introduce DIRECTOR COLBY I have urged And just recently the Department of Justice has joined with me and agreed that this would be a good thing to do KIKER Let's turn for a minute to Angola First of all quickly what's going on there There're reports of big victories by the Popular Front that's the other side of course -- this past week And we hear now that three Soviet Declassified in Part- Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012 05 23 CIA-RDP99-00418R000100110013-6 Declassified in Part- Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012 05 23 CIA-RDP99-00418R000100110013-6 I- -4- ships are heading in Of course the Soviets have been anchoring in Conakry Harbor for sometime Are they coming there as a show of force Is the Popular Front moving ahead Can you just -- and how will we respond to all this DIRECTOR COLBY Well I think what has happened in Angola over the past year or so has been that the Portuguese determined that they would give the country its independence And there were three contending groups for that succession to the government The various African nations on a numb er of occasions got the three groups together and got them to agree to collaborate But the communist supported group has insisted on a total domination of the situation They began receiving military aid from the Soviet Union in October 1974 They began to build up their strength Starting last July they drove the other gtoups out of the capital by armed force and were driving them into the countryside and hopefully to their side over the edge of the border Then the other groups got some help and they came back to some extent At that point the Soviet Union substantially escalated its aid in air supply in tanks artillery all this sort of thing And in the last week or two the Popular Movement the Soviet supported group has made somewhat of an attack particularly in the north not so much in the south ROWAN Mr Colby the covert action of the United States in Angola has come under criticism from Congress obviously There're efforts to cut off American aid I'd like to ask you about the extent of American aid I have heard figures that our aid to Zaire will jump from three million to nineteen million dollars next year Is that money being funneled into Angola DIRECTOR COLBY Well I think there're several categories of aid to the neighboring countries The military aid program is one that is reported to Congress and done publicly There's no question about that And there are certain proposals for military aid to Zaire • Any other aid I really am not at liberty to discuss in detail or even to confirm officially But the fact is that any effort by the United States by CIA other than intelligence gathering is the subject of a finding by ·the President that it's important to the national security and it's been reported to six committees of the Congress KIKER Let me ask you this Angola would seem to be a perfect example of the dilemma I think we find ourselves in Congress wants more say-so in CIA covert operations The American people I believe want to know what's going on -- no more invisible governments Yet you say and let's say with accuracy Declassified in Part- Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012 05 23 CIA-RDP99-00418R000100110013-6 Declassified in Part- Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012 05 23 CIA-RDP99-00418R000100110013-6 -5that the CIA's effectiveness is being destroyed by all these demands and disclosures Let's take Angola What's of the answer DIRECTOR COLBY Well I think the answer is that if you take in this Bicentennial year a quotation from the Committee of Secret Correspondence of the Continental Congress in 1776 their comment was that''we find by fatal experience • I that the Congress consists of too many members to keep secrets I think that's a little advice to us Now we have a new law passed last December which requires us to report to six committees Almost everything that's been reported to those six committees has been exposed in the press I see in a quotation in the press yesterday that two members of the Congress confirmed by telephone that I had given them a briefing on some secret activity Now this is not a way to protect secrets particularly when some of the activities that we conduct we conduct with the knowing approval and even in one situation the urging of one of the committees of the Congress to conduct a particular activity KIKER Mr Colby we're going to have to pause for a few moments We'll be back with William Colby Director of the CIA The Today Show will continue after we pause for this station break KIKER Good morning again We are here with Ford Rowan NBC News correspondent who covers the CIA and William Colby who is the Director of the CIA And Mr Colby we were talking about the dilemma of an intelligence agency that feels it must operate in private a Congress that wants to know more about covert activities and yet as you were saying just now seems not to be able to keep the secrets that you confide in them with That's good English Could you go on with that thought DIRECTOR COLBY Well I think the problem is that we have to determine we Americans how to conduct a responsible intelligence operation I think we insist that we in the intelligence profession be responsible and that we operate under the law and under the Constitution But I think we also have to insist that our members of Congress act in the constitutional frame that they're set up to be -- the representatives of the people That doesn't mean that they're a conduit for every bit of information they get in secret to immediately display it to the public They are asked to be responsible to stand Declassified in Part- Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012 05 23 CIA-RDP99-00418R000100110013-6 • Declassified in Part- Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012 05 23 CIA-RDP99-00418R000100110013-6 -6up to make judgments and to assume responsibilities for knowing things that they cannot pass on Otherwise we·cannot run an intelligence service I think we've had a very hard time this past year And it reminds me a little bit of the child's fable about Chicken Little You remember the acorn fell on Chickle Little's head and Chicken Little ran down the street saying that the sky was falling Well I think that in a way this past year we have had an example of that kind of performance We did drop on our heads the fact that CIA did some wrong things over the past twenty-eight years I think those were few and far between We have corrected them But I think we have a situation in which we have dominated our disctissions with denunciations of the evil deeds of CIA on a very limited base and have totally lost our proportion sense of proportion about the importance of intelligence the excellence of intelligence the few misdeeds that we did conduct and the fact that we've corrected them ROWAN Mr Colby I'd like to ask you a question about one of the covert operations that the Congress has now exposed and that's the operation in Chile which they said consisted of propaganda bribery economic retaliation fomenting a coup and support for right wing terror groups Now you're a lawyer and I'm going to ask you in this context My reading of the U N Charter Article II Section IV the 1965 U N General Assembly Declaration o·n the Impermissibility of Intervention in Domestic Affairs of States the 1970 U N General Assembly Declaration on Friendly Relations Among States the Charter of the Organization of American States and one two three four five six seven international treaties that the United States is a party to indicates that that was a violation of international law Now I don't blame CIAt because you were doing what President Ford sic and Henry Kissinger said But in all of those meetings about Chile was there ever once a word one wh i s p er fr om the b a ck o f the room - - Maybe i t ' s i 11 e g a 1 • DIRECTOR COLBY Well I think in the President Ford had nothing to do with Chile ROWAN I'm sorry DIRECTOR COLBY KIKER first place President Nixon We had o You've got a minute incidentally to answer that DIRECTOR COLBY We had a series of Presidents who told Declassified in Part- Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012 05 23 CIA-RDP99-00418R000100110013-6 Declassified in Part- Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012 05 23 CIA-RDP99-00418R000100110013-6 -7us to do things in Chile President Kennedy Presiden Johnson President Nixon There's no question about it Any activity we did in Chile was also reported to the Congress at the time in the manner in which it had set itself up at that time Now the question of international law -- of course it's not a law in the same sense that the law that we have in our country applies -- in sovereignty And I think you have to look for international custom as well as international law to see what nations do and are expected to do KIKER I'm sorry to interrupt you but our time is up for now Mr Colby will be spending the rest of this hour with us William Colby Director of the CIA But it's time now for a station break HARTZ We are devoting this entire hour to an interview with the outgoing Director of the Central Intelligence Agency Mr William Colby He is in our Washington News Center with Douglas Kiker and Ford Rowan And I'd like to ask a question if I might here Mr Colby the defenders of the CIA say that much of the criticism that has been directed against it recently has been unfair because most of the activities that are carried out by the CIA those that have been criticized most heavily have been directives from the President and from the National Security Council Could you enlighten us on how decisions are made and how orders are given to the CIA DIRECTOR COLBY Well I think that it is clear that CIA's activites are essentially directed by the President the National Security Council and follow congressional briefings and operate on congressionally appropriated funds There's no question about There are a few occasions over the past years in which CIA did things that it should not h ve done We have corrected that and stopped that But I believe that the strong emphasis of the attackers of CIA in this past year have been on a very small percentage of its total activities The covert operations that we hear criticized contain only ahout something like five percent of so of our budget at the moment And the vast amount of our effort is devoted to pure intelligence gathering and assessment KIKER Let me continue along that line Mr Colby According to State Department o fficials who testified before Declassified in Part- Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012 05 23 CIA-RDP99-00418R000100110013-6 Declassified in Part- Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012 05 23 CIA-RDP99-00418R000100110013-6 -8Congress recently nearly forty secret CIA operations were -- between 1972 and 1974 were approved without a single meeting of the White House group known as the Forty Committee that's supposed to approve such things The implication is that Secretary of State Kissinger and Mr Ford and Mr Nixon said yes or no First of all is this correct And secondly when you are ordered to conduct such a covert operation is there any way for you to know short of going into the White House and knocking on the door and asking directly whether or not the President was actually informed of the decision to go ahead DIRECTOR COLBY Well I know that the President is informed of these because we discuss them from time to time We know very well that he knows about different activities And under the present if CIA does anything other than pure intelligence gathering abroad it must be the subject of a specific finding by the President with his signature on it KIKER Well these forty decisions for example -the Joint Chiefs of Staff we are told were conferred with by telephone sometimes sometimes not sometimes this person sometimes that person It would seem that Mr Kissinger and the President were saying Well let's go ahead with it Two men Is that correct DIRECTOR COLBY Well essentially what that report refers to is the fact that we had a procedure by which all of our activities had to be reported each year There weren't necessarily forty new activities that were approved But we gave annual round-ups periodic reports of things that were happening things that really didn't involve much policy discussion and no particular problems During that period quite frankly there was very little going on in this field that required that kind of review ROWAN Mr Colby let me ask you about another decision of the President Secretary of State and ypurself -- the one in Angola Was the decision or is there now -- let me ask you that way -- is there now any American personnel either from the CIA or from the Defense Department operating in Angola Are you using any CIA aircraft or Defense-Department aircraft to supply friendly forces in Angola DIRECTOR COLBY Well the basic answer is that there are no Americans fighting in Angola period The early references to Angola as being a new Vietnam really are totally absurd because the point about CIA's covert operations is that we are able Declassified in Part- Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012 05 23 CIA-RDP99-00418R000100110013-6 Declassified in Part- Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012 05 23 CIA-RDP99-00418R000100110013-6 -9able to do things without large commitments of American forces and instead of the commitment as I've said before of the United States Marines in a situation which requires some intervention some activity by us We have a situation now where we have a Soviet destroyer a Soviet cruiser Soviet 1ST Soviet oilers in the neighborhood off West Africa There's no question about it the Soviets are expressing their interest in that area Now to say that CIA should not give some help to some friends who are trying to struggle against a desire by the Soviets and the Cubans and their group that they're manipulating and supporting I think is the height of absurdity Sure Angola is far away But in the thirties Abyssinia was far away And in 1931 Manchuria was far away And we got into an awful lot of trouble because we ignored those things that were far away KIKER Let me ask you to change the subject again ask you about Italy The word is out that the CIA funneled nearly six million dollars to noncommunist politicians in Italy Two questions First of all does it do any good Just yesterday the centrist quote coalition broke down Secondly should we be doing it What would be the reaction in the United States if we learned here that Italy had funneled six million dollars to American politicians DIRECTOR COLBY We have not spent a nickel in Italy in the past few months to be specific about it We have not done so I cannot discuss what our plans what our thoughts might be for the future Should the United States help its friends in a friendly country to keep that country from coming under communist control and having the Communist Party be the majority party in that country I think the United States can help its friends We did help our friends in Western Europe after World War II We helped them through military force through NATO We helped them through economic aid through the Marshall Plan And we helped several of the democratic parties and forces throughout Western Europe to sustain thems lves against a subversive effort by the communists and their Soviet masters ROWAN you do plan to You say you haven't don't you spent any money yet But DIRECTOR COLBY I am not at liberty to discuss the details of our activities But I think I can say that we have not spent any money period home KIKER Let 1·s talk about the CIA's involvement here at Your charter prohibits you from operating in any way in Declassified in Part- Sanitized Copy Approved f r Release 2012 05 23 _ Cif _ _RDP99-00418R000100110013-6 Declassified in Part- Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012 05 23 CIA-RDP99-00418R000100110013-6 -10the United States And yet there was disclosure after disclosure from these hearings Let's not really rehash old things How can we prevent what happened from happening again Is it possible for the CIA to police itself Are we going to have a situation five years from now where we hear about other Americans' mail being investigated and opened and so forth and so forth DIRECTOR COLBY Well you're certainly aren't going to hear about any that took place while I've been Director because in 1973 shortly after I became Director I issued a set of directives to insure that CIA stayed within its proper legal charter and its proper legal authorities It is easy to keep CIA within its rules just by issuing the proper directives and making it clear that we're expected to I think yes in the past twenty-eight years CIA strayed toward the edge But the exhaustive investigation conducted by the Rockefeller Commission I think gives a fair statement of what actually happened that there were some few cases in which we did step over the line either at the direct request of a President because the line was somewhat fuzzy or in a very few cases because there was an excess of enthusiasm or zeal to do the job of following the counterintelligence problem in the United States KIKER Did you get drawn into it gradually or did you think you'd never get caught Were you just following orders I say you Not you personally but the agency DIRECTOR COLBY Yes I think that the times that various of these things were done like intercepting mail between the United States and the Soviet Union -- this began in the early fifties Now in the early fifties there was a great deal of concern in this country about Soviet spies in America And we caught a number of them and they existed and there was a great deal of concern that there were a lot of other ones here And in the effort to insure that we would not be subject to this kind of activity by the Soviet Union we opened mail which we should not have done• and which we will not do again But I think the framework in whiGh that occurred reflected a consensus of the American people and government that something had to be done KIKER Well what's to stop you Excuse me But what's to stop you You did it before What if the next President of the United States tells the next Director of the CIA open mail What's to stop him from doing it Declassified in f a_ _ $ n Jt - _g9 py P P ved for Release 2012 05 23 CIA-RDP99-00418R000100110013-6 Declassified in Part- Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012 05 23 CIA-RDP99-00418R000100110013-6 -11- DIRECTOR COLBY Well I think this year's in estigation is the best answer to that I think the thing that will really stop it is clear guidelines which I say we have issued And if anybody wants to issue it upon us that's fine Secondly better supervision because in the past there's no question about it intelligence was told to go and do the job and not to bother people with the details We have to have good supervision We have to have as I said earlier responsible supervision which doesn't expose everything in the guise of supervising it But nonetheless steady regular constant supervision by the Congress by the executive I think will insure that CIA stays within its proper charter in the future KIKER I interrupted you Ford ROWAN No that's all right I wanted to follow up on another area of domestic activity that's frightened a lot of people and that's the drug testing specifically about MK ULTRA the program of testing substances on people An Inspector-General's report from 1963 said the effectiveness of these drugs on individuals of all social levels high and low native American and foreign is of great signficance and testing's been performed on a variety of individuals including some that didn't know they were being tested Now apparently according to the Inspector-General's report the scope of NK sic ULTRA was not just drugs It included radiation electroshock various techniques of psychology psychiatry graphology harassment substances and paramilitary devices and materials Did you do those sort of things on people here or abroad DIRECTOR COLBY Again let's refer to the time we're talking about In the early fifties the mid fifties when we saw Cardinal Mindszenty standing there with those haunting eyes when our troops were captured in North Korea and brainwashed there was a great deal of concern about the possible effects of drugs and other kinds of devicis to affect human behavior And there was some experimentation that went on at that time And that Inspector-General's report in 1963 is what terminated that kind of experimentation outside of the normal rules of volunteer knowing subjects ROWAN Let me follow up by asking not about MK ULTRA but about MK DELTA which was the operational side of the coin And I don't believe that very much attention's been given to that But it was reported in this report that the operational aspects were in the hundreds that these techniques these substances had been used overseas in the hundreds Can you confirm that Declassified in Part- Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012 05 23 CIA-RDP99-00418R000100110013-6 I I - - ___ __________ -· Declassified in Part- Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012 05 23 CIA-RDP99-00418R000100110013-6 -12DIRECTOR COLBY Well when I was in Norway in World War II and was skiing over the back mountains there I got up several hills thanks to some good benzedrine that somebody in our chemical business had provided me before I went on that operation Yes there are uses for drugs in intelligence operations and they did use them on some occasions But I think the only death that we know of was the unfortunate death of Mr Olsen which certainly we have done our best to make amends for KIKER I think Jim Hartz has a question Jim HARTZ Yes one final question Mr Colby sort of pointing in the direction of where the CIA is going We've seen some changes here It seems as if you're trying to go on the offensive You're here on this broadcast It's almost unheard of in the past for the Director of the agency to appear publicly The other day I noticed that President Ford had gone to a funeral for the agent who was killed in Athens That's almost unheard of Usually presidential appearances at funerals are reserved for heads of state high elected officials and so on May I ask you about that Why was he at Why are you here now What are you trying to do that funeral DIRECTOR COLBY Well I think President Ford -- the best answer to that is what he told me when I thanked him for coming to that funeral He said he felt very strongly about it and so do we Mr Welch was a brave and effective intelligence officer who died in the service of his country I think that he spent his life for our country and also he died for it KIKER Well you won't have a chance to tell us why you came here But we do want to thank you for coming Mr Colby and it's been very educational Thenk you again DIRECTOR COLBY Thank you KIKER William Colby Director 6£ the CIA Today show will continue right after this message The Declassified in Part S m_itj - _ggpy f' pp oved for Release 2012 05 23 CIA-RDP99-00418R000100110013-6