Approved For Release 2003 01 30 CIA-RDP80R01731R002000120010-0 SPEECH by LT GENERAL VERNON A WALTERS before EXECUTIVE BREAKFAST CLUB THE CIA AND WORLD AFFAIRS HOUSTON TEXAS 6 January 1976 Approved For Release 2003 01 30 CIA-RDP80R01731R002000120010-0 Approved For Release 2003 01 30 CIA-RDP80R01731R002000120010-0 I am happy to have this opportunity to talk here because frankly we cannot run an effective intelligence agency in the United States without the support of the American people and one of the great problems of the support of the American people is trying to tell them why we need an intelligence service and what it means to the United States and the future of the American people You have all heard a lot about intelligence and incidentally I might explain the reason why Mr Colby couldn't come is that he is generally at Congress and I must say our new Director Mr Bush called up four times for Mr Colby and asked to speak to him Where is he He's down at the House he called up he said Where is he Senate House He said The next time He's down at the The next time Where is he Back at the He said My God you mean I have to spend that much time down there past year Yes And the answer is over the We are perhaps the only nation in the world that is trying to run it's national intelligence service in so to speak a goldfish bowl Now we may Approved For Release 2003 01 30 CIA-RDP80R01731R002000120010-0 Approved For Release 2003 01 30 CIA-RDP80R01731R002000120010-0 - 2- succeed because we're a very unusual people and we_have done some pretty extraordinary things But if we do we are going to be the only ones that ever did Neverthe- less we cannot run an intelligence service that the American people are not prepared to accept and support Unlike other intelligence services our appropriations our money is voted on by the Congress We report to six Committees of the Congress our budget is fully discussed with the Appropriations Committees of both Houses our budget is gone over by the Office of Management and Budget in the Government exactly like the Department of Agriculture or anybody else's money And at the end we get our But you cannot get it if the American people will not through their representatives vote it we are answerable to them Therefore We are perhaps the only p ople in the world who have chosen to have Congressional oversight of the intelligence service People ask me if we can live with this and the answer is Yes we can live with it• II We have had leaks from some of the investigating committees we have never had a leak from our own oversight committees Those are the Armed Services Committees of Approved For Release 2003 01 30 CIA-RDP80R01731R002000120010-0 Approved For Release 2003 01 30- J IA-RDP80R01731R002000120010-0 both Houses the Appropriations Committees of both Houses and the Government Operations Committees and to some degree the Foreign Relations Committees of both Houses So we really have about eight committees to whom we are answerable And if you make them up at about 15 people--that gives you an awful lot of people that we report to in Congress And so sometimes when we read someone said Oh we never knew about this we' re a little bit surprised since we had reported it to about a hundred members of Congress in one form or another So this sometimes comes as a surprise to us to learn that it has come as a surprise to them But to get back to the question of intelligence is intelligence What Intelligence is information concerning the activities the intentions or the capabilities of foreign nations which may have an impact not only on the security of the United States but on the way the American people live the way the American people carry on their daily lives and business To give you an example in the old days economic intelligence used to be a by-product of a military intelligence capability study Today with the billions of Approved For Release 2003 01 30 CIA-RDP80R01731R002000120010-0 Approved For Release 2003 01 30- i C IA-RDP80R01731R002000120010-0 Petrodollars of Eurodollars of oil money moving around the world the way it is invested what is done with it how foreign natim1 s hand le' it has a very direct impact on the American people and the way they live and work--and how many of them work Therefore it is important for us to havethis information Now how is the United States organized to do this Well there's been a long feeling in the United States that intelligence is immoral or un-American or something else As a matter of fact to go back to the dawn of our history Nathan Hale of whom we have a statue outside our building which was put there over my opposition-- felt that he was a very brave young man but any intelligence agent who was captured on his first mission and had all the information on him is not exactly what I would hold up to our young career trainees as an example--but anyway before he went off on that mission he told a friend of his--a captain in the Army--that he was going as a spy behind th Briti h 1lines And this fellow looked at him and he said How can you stoop so low So we've had those people with us always Today you have a massive assault on intelligence in the United States a real effort to create a new caste people who work in intelligence who are unfit for Approved For Release 2003 01 30 CIA-RDP80R01731R002000120010-0 Approved For Release 2003 01 305 -CIA-RDP80R01731R002000120010-0 association with other Americans and are not to be trusted in any other employment after they leave that We have a real effort--and it is an extraordinary one-from within t6 blind the United States I always say that the real issue before the American people for the years ahead is not the aberrations the poor ju gment the actions of a small number of kooks in the past or of people using really bad judgment The real issue as the United States enters the last quarter of this century is is it going to have eyes to see and ears to hear or is it going to stumble into the future blind and deaf tm til the day we have to choose between abject humiliation and nuclear blackmail You know this mentality about intelligence being immoral is a standard--a factor--that is present in American history throughout without intelligence We start each of our wars We build up a superb intelligence apparatus and as soon as the war is over we start to dismantle it This time we waited a little longer because we had the Korean War and the Vietnamese War and everything else But the wreckers are in there at work now trying to dismantle the intelligence apparatus Approved For Release 2003 01 30 CIA-RDP80R01731R002000120010-0 Approved For Release 2003 01 30 -- IP -RDP80R01731R002000120010-0 Just to give you an example of my own expeti ence • in 1942 I lived in Europe as a child spoke a bunch of languages so when I got in the Army they put me in intelligence When I was assigned in August 1942 to the United States Army Military Intelligence Training Center at Camp Ritchie Maryland the Commanding Officer was a British colonel That was the state of American intelligence in 1942 We've always done this And yet intelligence is a great tradition in the United States I would say that probably the American general who used intelligence more than anybody else was George Washington About George Washington and about my ability to answer all questions I must tell you one story George Washington one night spent the night at the home of a sympathizer of the Revolution In the morning as he was leaving he got up on his horse and was getting ready to ride off when the host's wife said to him General where do you ride tonight So he leaned down in the saddle and he said Madame can you keep a secret She said Of course He said So can I Madame tipped his hat and rode on You know the facts of life are what they are George Washington staged three separate kidnap attempts on Benedict Approved For Release 2003 01 30 CIA-RDP80R01731R002000120010-0 Approved For Release 2003 01 30- GIA-RDP80R01731R002000120010-0 Arnold and I think we all know what he was going to do with Benedict Arnold when he got him He also attempted to kidnap Prince William of Britain George Ill's fourth son who was a midshipman in the Royal Navy in New York in 1782 Now in the case of Prince William he did issue special instructions that the Prince was not to be harmed Those instructions were not issued for Benedict Arnold One of the best answers I know to this thing that you've got to tell everybody everything--this irresistible urge to confess which is one of our national characteristics-he wrote a letter in 1779 to Colonel Elias Dayton who was his chief of intelligence in New Jersey and this is what he said The need for procuring good intelligence is so obvious that I have nothing further to say on this subject All that remains for e is to tell you that these matters must be kept as secret as possible For lack of secrecy these enterprises no matter how well conceived or how promising the outlook generally fail • servant I am sir your obedient1 George Washington Then we have Franklin Now Franklin for three years before the Revolution from 1772-1775 was the Assistant Postmaster of British North America You know what he was Approved For Release 2003 01 30 CIA-RDP80R01731R002000120010-0 Approved For Release 2003 01 30- fCIA-RDP80R01731R002000120010-0 doing as Assistant Postmaster for British North America He was opening British mail like crazy and they caught him and fired him So he went off and joined the Revolution and he went to France where he represented the Revolution press And while in France he designed a printing What did he print on the printing press Well he printed British currency British passports and fabricated atrocity stories As I say we tend to have this feeling that-all 'this spying and dirty work is fine for those dirty old disreputable British French Germans Russians but not we pure Americans we don't do that sort of thing that's just not true Well We do Mr Stimson in 1932 as Secretary of State was brought a decoded telegram of a foreign country and he pushed it away and said Gentlemen don't read other gentlemen's mail Ten years later · as Secretary of War Mr Stimson couldn't get enough of other gentlemen's mail to read But that mentality led us to Pearl Harbor Now we survived a naval Pearl Harbor we were lucky the carriers were at sea they didn't get them so we had time and distance to rebuild and go on to win the war we survive a nuclear Pearl Harbor Could Because the fact is Approved For Release 2003 01 30 CIA-RDP80R01731R002000120010-0 Approved For Release 2003 01 3Q_ g' IA-RDP80R01731R002000120010-0 today we see a capability against the United States that has not existed since Valley Forge Not since Valley Forge has any nation had the power to deliver crippling or even mortal blows to the United States As we look around the world today we see the Soviet Union deploying four perhaps five new systems of third generation missiles we see them launching larger submarines with more launching tubes for intercontinental ballistic missiles we see the Soviet Union developing aircraft with capabilities against the United States we see the Soviet avy all over the world we see the Soviet a med forces in the conventional armed forces in the army and the air force being constantly improved in quality in quantity in equipment United States In the last couple of years the armed forces have gone down one million men and in that same period the armed forces of the Soviet Union have gone up one million men--net difference two million men We see these sophisticated capabilities developing in the Soviet Union today and we will see them tomorrow in China And it is odd that at this time the perception of the American people of the threat is perhaps lower than at any time since World War II - Approved For Release 2003 01 30 CIA-RDP80R01731R002000120010-0 Approved For Release 2003 01 301 ICIA-RDP80R01731R002000120010-0 Right now the intelligence agencies of the United States are being pilloried for their alleged sins of commission what I'm worried about is that in 1990 our successors will be pilloried for their sins of omission You mean you weren't watching this you mean you weren't keeping track of that you mean you weren't following this And these are the things we have to do if the United States is to survive as a free nation -------------- The one basic reason why we exist is we cannot let our country be surprised There isn't any second prize any more One of our Founding Fathers said that eternal vigilance was the price of freedom That was when the United States had a two-month cushion on either side any more We don't have it We've got a 15 to 30-minute cushion now And if we don't know in advance not much else is going to do us any good We've got to get this intelligence we've got to collect it we've got to carefully and painstakingly and objectively analyze it and most of all we have to get it to the people in the United States who have to make the decisions And we have to get it in timely fashion Approved For Release 2003 01 30 CIA-RDP80R01731R002000120010-0 If Approved For Release 2003 01 301 JCIA-RDP80R01731R002000120010-0 it doesn't get there quickly it's not intelligence it's history And we and I repeat this--you've all read all these stories about the influence and everything else -the Central Intelligence Agency is a service organization We provide intelligence to the Government When I go to the White House or the National Security Council or to the White House Special Action Group or any other meeting or a SALT Verification Panel all I do or all the Director does if he is there is tell them what the intelligence is If they are considering five options we tell them that if you do option one this is likely to happen if you do option two that's likely to happen if you do option three the other is likely to happen When State and Defense and Treasury get down to the discussion of what the United States is going to do we do not take part in that discussion As a matter of fact once I was sitting at a table and Kissinger went around the table asking everybody what they thought The first man said Yes the second man said No ' ' the third man said Yes I said No He said You don't have any vote and he went on to the next because we don't have any vote We provide intelligence we do not determine United States policy Approved For Release 2003 01 30 CIA-RDP80R01731R002000120010-0 Approved For Release 2003 01 3 0_J_ 2 IA-RDP80R01731R002000120010-0 In some measure we obviously do by what we tell them as to what is going to happen but they have other sources of information they have the vast apparatus of the State Department which works extremely effectively in our embassies abroad they have the Treasury attaches they have Commercial attaches they have others that are in a position to tell them to make a judgment You sometimes hear that the CIA and the Defense Intelligence are true duplicating one another Well that's not We have a very small number of people working on military intelligence in our business All we provide is an independent assessment by a Government agency with no bureaucracy other than its own life to sustain and when people say Isn't there some duplication I say Yes there is but I've always been able to see a lot better through binoculars than I could through a telescope We are all working from the same data base the idea that we have a little bit of intelligence which we are hiding off in one corner in DIA the Defense Intelligence has another urre hiding off in a corner is nonsense We have a meeting once a week of the United States Intelligence Board where the top people of all the agencies get together to discuss what is going on in the intelligence world and what we should do about it Approved For Release 2003 01 30 CIA-RDP80R01731R002000120010-0 Approved For Release 2003 01 301 A-RDP80R01731R002000120010-0 You know one of the reasons that led to the creation of the Central Intelligence Agency was the investigation that occurred after the war in '45 and '46 which lasted for seven months in which there was great recrimination and sensationalism which came to the conclusion that various parts of the U S Government had pieces of information which if they had been brought together in one place would not maybe have avoided Pearl Harbor but would certainly have diminished the losses the United States sustained there But everybody was squirreling away his little private piece of information So there was created a central point for the intelligence from all parts of the U S Government which gave rise to the creation of our agency which was created under the National Security Act of 1947 which is why we are primarily responsible to the Armed Services Cammi ttees of the House and Senate Now the Armed Services Committee the Appropriations Committee and the other committees of the House exercise oversight over us the American people This is varied according to the threat to At periods when the American people felt very threatened this oversight was almost perfunctory At periods when the American people do not feel very Approved For Release 2003 01 30 CIA-RDP80R01731R002000120010-0 Approved For Release 2003 01 38 l OA-RDP80R01731R002000120010-0 threatened as they do not now then there is a demand for very great and very detailed oversight can live with it either way Frankly we As I told you our own Committees have never leaked on us so we have no problem with them From those Committees we have no secrets We would not like--and they have never asked us--we would not like them to ask us to give the name of an agent behind the Iron Curtain four years I've been Deputy Director of the Agency for I have never asked for the name of an agent I don't want to know the name of the agent much I travel too I just want to know what he is saying but I don't want to know who he is or where he is But we have no secrets from our oversight committees We tell them any- thing they want to know What is happening with all this What will happen Well I think we'll get a sort of set of restrictions you will not do this you will not do the other I might add that one of the rather passed over parts of the Rockefeller Committee Report said that nearly all of the abuses on which the attention of this Committee functioned were prohibited or stopped by the Agency before any of these inquiries began Approved For Release 2003 01 30 CIA-RDP80R01731R002000120010-0 • Approved For Release 2003 01 3t l CIA-RDP80R01731R002000120010-0 Now you hear all about these various things--assassinations You've had immense discussions of the assassinations We've had 76 000 people go through the Agency in the last 27 years Obviously we've had our share of nuts kooks over- zealous people people with poor judgment and everything else I can't tell you we haven't done anything wrong shown poor judgment sometime in the past I haven't But I would submit that if you subjected any town of 76 000 people or any other Government agency of comparable size to the kind of scrutiny that we have been subjected to over the last 27 years our record wouldn't look all that bad Yes we've had these kooks we have had people that have discussed things that they probably shouldn't have discussed or contemplated them even Which one of you who runs a business hasn't got people in his business that is doing something you don't particularly appreciate And all of these things are in relation to the function Not long ago we had a group of Congressmen out to the Agency and the question of assassinations came up And somebody said ' ell you know all of this is a question of perception somebody could have gotten Hitler in '44 or '45 he would probably have been the first recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor and the Victoria Cross And one of the Congressman said Yes · but if you could have gotten him in Approved For Release 2003 01 30 CIA-RDP80R01731R002000120010-0 If Approved For Release 2003 01 30 1 f IA-RDP80R01731R002000120010-0 '35 or '36 think how many lives you would have saved I said Congressman we were at peace with Germany in '35 and '36 are you advocating assassination in peacetime '' Oh no he said that's different Well that's the whole problem all these things are different At the time that some people were discussing Fidel Castro and things against Fidel Castro what was he doing He was shooting people every day in front of the television cameras in the National Stadium in Havana Everybody has forgotten that part of it I am against assassinations for three reasons it is against the Law of God it's against the Law of Man and it generally doesn't do you any good greater fanatic You produce an even You know people say that if you would have killed Hitler if you had killed Hitler you would have gotten Goering and Goering would have been twice as fanatic as he was then and you would have had exactly the same kind of situation It is just simply not an answer I might add that Mr Helms as far back as I think '71 or '72 put out a regulation within the Agency saying this matter won't even be considered but you know you don't get much publicity on that Approved For Release 2003 01 30 CIA-RDP80R01731R002000120010-0 Approved For Release 2003 01 30 l A-RDP80R01731R002000120010-0 Well anyway what is going to happen undoubtedly going to get some reorganization ever since Petronius Arbiter in 390 B C We are After all who said We were given a mission we trained hard we wo ked hard we worked together and when we felt we were ready to go then we were reorganized Reorganization since 390 B C has been considered a panacea for all sorts of things so we'll probably be reorganized in some sort and we'll live with whatever that reorganization is But you know there are a lot of things that are spectacular but I have great faith in the good sense of the American people and their representatives For instance there was a great agitation to make our budget public Why shouldn't the budget be made public Well there are a number of reasons If we knew the KGB budget over a period of time we could find out a great deal about it For instance any large project like the U-2 or the raising of that submarine would show a bulge that you would know that something was under way and it would call your attention to it On each occasion when that has come up in the Congress of the United States very quietly by majorities ranging up to two-to-one that has been defeated Approved For Release 2003 01 30 CIA-RDP80R01731R002000120010-0 Approved For Release 2003 01 39 l IA-RDP80R01731R002000120010-0 You know if you go back to the beginning of our his to ry we had a thing called the Committee of Secret Correspondence which ran espionage for the Revolution Notice they wouldn't call it the spy agency it was called the Committee of Secret Correspondence because we Americans don't spy Unfortunately at a training center which I don't like to talk about because the name of the training center was Fort Looney but they were not required to report to the Congress the names of the people with whom they were in contact nor were they required to report to the Congress who their agents were--they were required to report how many they had but they weren't required to report who they ere or who they were in contact with Well you've asked me what has all this done to us Well I would like to be able to tell you that it has had catastrophic results and that it should stop at once except that isn't true We had some concern from the friendly foreign services with whom we work that we would reveal them because they don't share our ethic about making everything public Then they found out that we did not and we were able to work out agreements with the investigating committees to shield these friendly foreign services who would have just pulled away from us and done nothing more with us Approved For Release 2003 01 30 CIA-RDP80R01731R002000120010-0 Approved For Release 2003 01 30 l t-A-RDP80R01731R002000120010-0 When we tried to get names deleted we were misunderstood We had a tragic example not long ago of what this sort of thing can do I don't think that this particularly led to that it was just part of the function of the time and part of the general picture that has been painted of a group of assassins and butchers and poisoners and everything else But to get back to these things What was the ultimate report of the assassination inquiry that nobody was assassinated What was the ultimate report on the toxins they were never used You all saw the picture of the dart gun being flourished What was the report on that dart gun was never used the Why did we do these things Well as I mentioned before there are always people with poor judgment there are always people who are fanatics there are always people who are nuts you eliminate abuses in intelligence People say 'How can Several Congressmen have asked me this and my reply has been Congressman as long as intelligence agencies like Government and congresses are made up of human beings you cannot abolish abuses You can minimize them and you can take steps to make the people responsible that you will punish if anything goes wrong But the idea that you can pass a law and everybody will be Approved For Release 2003 01 30 CIA-RDP80R01731R002000120010-0 Approved For Release 2003 01 30 A-RDP80R01731R002000120010-0 virtuous ever after just isn't so and lt didn't work We tried Prohibition The idea that you can legislate virtue is just not taking account of what the facts or life are Why do we do some of these things Well assassination obviously was triggered by people who were talking with someone who had a relative shot by somebody or killed by somebody We go on to the drugs with drugs Why were we experimenting Well we saw a man like Cardinal Mindzenty who had resisted every pressure every torture every imprisonment that the Nazis could bring to bear on him Suddenly he appears before the movie cameras hollow-eyed confessing everything his Communist masters want him to confess Those of us who are old enough to remember believed and all of us believed at that time that this was done with mind-bending drugs They might be used against our armed forces and against our agents against our diplomats and we have to know about them and we have to find out about them drug research So we engaged in We engaged the armed forces engaged the National Institutes of Health engaged many universities engaged in this research and saw nothing immoral in it Now somebody obviously used extremely bad judgment in giving it to this man without his knowledge And as I said I can't Approved For Release 2003 01 30 CIA-RDP80R01731R002000120010-0 Approved For Release 2003 01 30 2flA-RDP80R01731R002000120010-0 tell you we haven't had people who have exercised extremely But bad judgment who haven't made some great mistakes we have we have had such people The toxins The Soviets during the Fifties killed a number of Russian emigres in Western Europe by using these toxins against us Again the question came will they be used Can we defend ourselves deterrent as a means of retaliation Will we have the The United States between World War I and II undertook not to use poison gas That did not prevent the United States from building several million poison gas shells to use in case the Germans and the Japanese used them against us In large part a great many of these things that have been brought out about us have been contingency plans Every country has a contingency plan for what it would do in case it was forced into a war it doesn't expect You take it out and say Did you draw this up Did the Yes Chairman of the Joint Chiefs approve it the Secretary of Defense approve it you intended to do so and so Yes Yes Did Ah ha then And it's very hard to get things put back in balance We have all this stuff about assassination and so forth and so on but the final conclusion that nobody was ever Approved For Release 2003 01 30 CIA-RDP80R01731R002000120010-0 Approved For Release 2003 01 302 ZC A-RDP80R01731R002000120010-0 assassinated is passed over almost in silence with almost all of these other things Just as These were contingencies against various extreme things happening or people using them against us and having the means to retaliate I repeat I am not telling you we didn't do anything wrong We have at one time or another But I submit that if you take 76 000 people in any other organization and subject them to this kind of thing we would not look all that bad Anyway as I say the real issue ahead of us is are we going in the future where Obviously these things cannot matter of fact in most of these cases there were restrictions within the Agency before these investigations started--prohibiting these particular activities I might add that no one discovered us doing these things We reported them all to the Congress We were not caught doing any of this we ourselves reported to the Congress various questionable actions which we had picked up in our own investigations So where are we going from here Well I am fairly optimistic because I think the American people are intelligent enough to realize that if they are not an enlight ned informed people we may not have anywhere to go _-- Approved For Release 2003 01 30 CIA-RDP80R01731R002000120010-0 Approved For Release 2003 01 301 §AA-RDP80R01731R002000120010-0 You hear all this discussion about helping our friends abroad and so forth Call it political action covert action Every country throughout history has tried to help its friends abroad in various forms and in various ways I think Americans should be particularly cautious about condemfiing such action because if the French hadn't had 17 000 political agents in the form of troops ashore in North America before France had declared war on Great Britain we just might not be celebrating a bicentennial this year I am not going to go into details or get into comparisons but the other side helps its people all over the world Well we can stand by and do nothing if we want to and we will just have not learned from the lessons of the past We live in a very small world we live in a world of instantaneous communications We do not live in a world in which James Madison said he hadn't heard from his ambassador in Spain and if he didn't hear within the next year he was going to send somebody over to find out what was happening We live in a world of instant communications where there is an immediate desire to know what is happening and what is going to happen I think the best way we can ensure the future of our people is to have the American people understand what it is their intelligence services are trying to do If they under- Approved For Release 2003 01 30 CIA-RDP80R01731R002000120010-0 Approved For Release 2003 01 38 2 IA-RDP80R01731R002000120010-0 stand it I am convinced they will support it And after all we live only by the support of the American people If the American people will not support us we will cease to exist I am confident we will have that support We face the future we face the future tomorrow which we cannot quite plainly see We hope that detente will pro- vide a lessening of tensions with the Soviet Union but it reminds me of a story that one of my European friends told me He said You know two young Americans were in Moscow and they were being taken around by a young Russian who took them to the Kremlin the Cathedral of Basil the Blessed Novodevechye Monastery and then he took them to the zoo In the zoo they saw this great big cage and in this cage was a huge Russian bear with a worried-looking Tittle lamb But the lamb appeared to be in pretty good shape and the young American said to the young Russian Why do you put those two in the same cage That's an odd couple And the young Russian said This is to prove that peaceful coexistence is possible The young American said Well I must admit it's pretty impressive It sure is convincing And his buddy said The young Russian looked around and seeing no one he said Of course you understand every Approved For Release 2003 01 30 CIA-RDP80R01731R002000120010-0 Approved For Release 2003 01 5_CIA-RDP80R01731R002000120010-0 morning you have to put in a new lamb And as long as you don't run out of lambs there is no problem Approved For Release 2003 01 30 CIA-RDP80R01731R002000120010-0