Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume XXXVIII, Part 2, Organization and Management of Foreign Policy; Public Diplomacy, 1973–1976

43. Speech by Director of Central Intelligence Colby to Central Intelligence Agency Employees¹

Washington, June 18, 1975.

I am delighted to be here. I set this meeting at this early hour to be sure I could be here and not have to cancel at the last moment. Then last night I was told that I was supposed to be downtown at 9:00 this morning, but I have arranged to change that.

Are we in trouble? Sure. We’ve been in trouble a lot of times and we’re in trouble now. Are we rightly in trouble? Yes; partly. Did we do some wrong things? Sure. Did others participate in some of those wrong things? Yes. Was the organization responsible for every one of those wrong things? No; but the organization was responsible for the climate and the procedures of the organization and so was the rest of the country.

I think this last is the key point in our present trouble. CIA was established in 1947. At that time we were facing a cold war. There is some very dramatic language in some of the official reports at that time about the problems and dangers our country faced and the necessity to meet them with every weapon at our disposal.

We adopted essentially the old tradition of intelligence, that nations conduct intelligence but they don’t talk about it. We set up our structure and legislation to conduct intelligence privately so the war could be fought quietly without any exposure. Is this appropriate today? No, of course not. The climate of opinion, the climate of our country and the climate of the world is changed.

But, in the process of this change over time, we must admit that things have happened that we now wish had not happened. No question about it. This old tradition brought with it an ambiguity in our directives. It brought about policy pressures to do things, to do more. We were going to go out and we were going to be better than anyone else and do more than anybody else. It also brought very little outside supervision of what we were doing and to some extent little supervision within the organization. I think that if you give this kind of authority and kind of power to any large organization—with little supervision—and place strong pressure on it to produce results, you are apt to get missteps, misdeeds, wrong actions over a course of a 25-year history.

Were we involved in plots to assassinate? We have not said so publicly and we don’t want to, but leaks and independent evidence are suggesting answers.² Were others involved in these affairs? Our records are very obscure. They indicate that there was a climate of opinion in certain parts of the Agency and that it also existed in certain other elements of our Government. It reflected concern at the time about certain nations and in the process there were suggestions. Some of these suggestions were turned down inside the Agency. Some of them were turned down by case officers who were approached by foreigners asking for help. Some of them were turned down at the top level of the Agency.

Were we in contact with groups who in the course of trying to overthrow their government killed someone? Yes, because when a government is overthrown somebody is apt to get hurt in the shooting. Did we contemplate this? In some cases, no. In some cases we might have been warned that it might happen. In some cases we provided weapons to groups to help them in their program. This does not mean we had a specific intent to assassinate anyone. In several cases, we specifically did not. I do not want to go into detail on this subject because I believe it in the best long-term interests of our country not to, and because our policy has been clear since 1972 and 1973 that we will not engage in such activity.

Did we surveil American citizens? Yes, the Rockefeller report³ outlines this in some detail and number. We surveilled mostly our own employees and mostly for good reason because these people were reported to us as having very obscure contacts with foreigners. They were under suspicion. We thought they might have taken classified material with them. In a period of concern about leakage, of concern about discipline, there were steps, some perfectly proper, to find out whether this was going on. Some of our surveillance overstepped the bounds and went beyond what was proper. Sometimes it was done out of frustration that nobody else would help us on a serious problem, that we could not get assistance from other agencies and organizations.

In the process, did we make some missteps? Did we go outside our employees? Yes, we did. We listened to some telephone conversations. We stopped, incidentally, the telephone business in 1965 when the President said it would not be done without the Attorney General’s approval. Only one tap took place thereafter—still in 1965—and that was done with the Attorney General’s approval.

Were we involved in some kind of experimentation with drugs? Yes, because in the 1950’s there was great concern after Cardinal Mindszenty was put on trial,⁴ with the indications that some kind of influence was being exerted over him. We were also concerned about brainwashing in China and Korea. LSD was first appearing in this country and people didn’t understand what it was about. The Army had a large institution at Fort Detrick for chemical and biological warfare. At that time, yes, we participated with the Army in seeing what the nature of these particular drugs were, what were the possible defenses against their use against us. We were concerned about their application to one of our officials in a foreign country so as to discredit him and put him under control. In the process, were some steps taken that should not have been? Yes, it’s true that on one occasion, in a totally indefensible action, one of our officers did put some LSD in the drinks of several people from Fort Detrick and the Agency, as a part of testing the impact of these drugs. The LSD so depressed one of the people involved, a Department of Army civilian, that he committed suicide some days later.

Were we responsible for that? Was the organization responsible for that? Was the individual who put the drug in his drink without his knowledge responsible for it? I think we all share a little of the responsibility, and let’s say the climate of opinion, the procedures in the organization, the excess of zeal, and the lack of control created the occasion, whether the individual was also responsible in that case or not.

There are a number of other things mentioned in the Rockefeller report and, undoubtedly a number of other things will come out in the further investigations going on. But, I think it is important as we look at this and as our country is shocked and shaken by some of these revelations, that we in the Agency, of all people, keep a perspective. We need also to put in perspective what this Agency has done to reflect the climate of opinion in America today.

You will remember that in 1973 we asked all of you to recall any questionable activities that the Agency may have conducted, and to report those either to the Director or to the Inspector General.⁵ We collected a list of these including the ones I just mentioned and some others. For example, there were situations in which we had helped federal narcotics organizations in their work; situations in which we had helped certain of the police organizations around the country as a matter of courtesy, and we had given them briefings and training and, in some cases, equipment. In some cases we had overdone our willingness to be helpful and gone into things that we should not have.

We thought we had a complete list of questionable activities at that time, but we didn’t. We’ve been collecting additional cases by bits and pieces ever since. I testified last January as to certain numbers of surveillances; certain numbers of wiretaps.⁶ I had to amend those figures later to add more. The Rockefeller Commission has added more. And, I suppose we’ll find still another case some day because we don’t file things in the Office of Security under the heading “Improper Surveillance” or “Illegal Wiretaps.” We file them under cases, and it’s only by going through the thousands of cases that you do find that yes, there was a break-in in that case; yes, there was one in that case; and this was the reason for it.

But I think the point is that after collecting these, we did something about them. I myself wrote specific directives on each of the cases that was reported to me at that time. I sent detailed memoranda to the Deputies to say what our policy and our attitudes would be henceforth, and a few of those are pretty obvious. We will not follow American citizens outside of this organization. We will not surveil them. We will not wiretap newsmen. We will not engage in, support, assist or stimulate assassinations. A variety of directives of this nature were given in 1973.

The information we collected at that time has been the foundation-stone of the investigations that we are now under. It has been supplemented by additional testimony taken from ex-employees and from outsiders. There are some things that we don’t know about our own history because the memories and the records are not in our possession. The information is in the memories of others or in the documents of other agencies. So we sometimes do not know the full story. In some cases it looks like we were involved in something when additional people were cognizant of it and also aware of it.

Is this justified? No, because our system ought to be such that we shouldn’t allow ourselves to do things we should not. At my confirmation hearing, I was specifically asked, “What do you do if a President tells you to do something that is clearly improper?” and at that time it was easy to answer. I said I would leave the job. That’s an easy answer now. Suppose that had been asked in 1950. What would have the Director been expected to answer? In my confirmation testimony, I said I wouldn’t lie to anybody in Congress. I wouldn’t tell them the things I can’t tell them because they should be secret, but I wouldn’t lie to them.

We got rid of the word “plausible denial” which was a foundation stone of much of the thinking of the 50’s and 60’s, that somehow the United States Government could deny something if it could plausibly do so, even though it were true. We’ve gone into a “No comment” situation. Sometimes we have to “No comment” the questions whose answer is “No” just so we won’t build up a record of four “No’s” and then a “No comment” to the last question, and thus give an obvious “Yes” to that one.

Now, what are these investigations all about then? They are an investigation of how we Americans want to conduct intelligence in this period of our history. The investigations are a look backwards in order to find out what we did which we now consider wrong and what directions we want to apply to us for the future. We are doing it in the somewhat clamorous American way; we’re doing it as a direct result of the Vietnam War and of Watergate because there is a desire in our people and in our press especially to look at the activities of the government, to open them up, and see if they really are what they appear to be. We are the focus of that because we are one of the most secret parts of the United States Government and there have been various situations in the past where we have come to public notice with some notoriety.

The Vice President’s Commission of course has finished its activity and you have seen its report. I urge you to read it. I urge you especially to read page 10, which says that the great majority of the Agency’s activities over the years have been proper, which also says that some of these activities were improper and should be criticized. It points out that some of these activities were undertaken under the direct or indirect pressure of Presidents; some of these activities were in gray areas where it was debatable whether we should properly or should not properly have done them; and some, and I say they are few over 28 years, were improper. There are those who will argue with me but I think 32 wiretaps in 28 years, the last being in 1965, were really few; I think 100-odd surveillances, most of which were either of our own employees or foreigners, were few.

I think 7,200 files on American dissidents with possible foreign links were few when a quarter-million Americans were demonstrating outside the White House. The Commission’s report also says that the Agency itself in great part has corrected these situations by actions taken in the last couple of years. In other words, the Commission says that the Agency is sensitive, still sensitive I might say, to American opinion and it has responded to this new climate of opinion and has cleaned itself up. I think it’s an important perspective to get into the situation.

The Senate hearing is a very serious and thorough look at our whole effort. It is looking into the estimating process; it’s looking into the budgetary process; it’s looking into the organizational questions; it’s looking into the legal questions; it’s looking into covert action; it’s looking into the intelligence collection function and how we relate to the other agencies; it’s looking into the broad sweep of intelligence.

It is focused now, of course, on the assassinations. I would say in this regard that I think the Senate Committee is trying to keep the secrets given to it secret. There is clearly an effort being made by them to restrain leakage. Leaks, however, are occurring; they are occurring from current employees, perhaps; ex-employees, certainly; ex-officials, certainly; various other people in the U.S. Government.

The Committee is working at the assassination problem because it is the most sensational one at the moment and because it reveals some of these matters that I was telling about, about the climate of opinion and the procedures for approval of activity, and the controls within the organization and outside. It is looking into a matter which does concern the American people.

The House Committee, as you know, is in a state of some disarray at this moment,⁷ but there are developments that are encouraging. I think it is encouraging that there was a 290 to 64 vote in support of a chairman who took his responsibilities seriously, who did do a good job of supervision, and who was then confronted by an attempt to unseat him. I think we should take heart in the fact that five to one of the representatives of the Congress feel that they want to undertake a responsible investigation and not a spectacular one.

We don’t know how the House situation is going to come out. I think the House will feel it has to conduct an investigation as well. But I think we can take heart from this expression of the basic sense of responsibility of the constitutional structure that we have in our country.

Now, what are we going to see in the future? The Rockefeller Commission has made certain recommendations, and we will get additional ones out of the other committees. We are in the process of putting together our comments on the Rockefeller Commission’s recommendations to submit to the President. The other agencies will also be submitting their comments, and the President will then decide what action he wants to take. The various committees of the Congress will get together and make their recommendations for legislation or for changes in procedure, and this will occupy us for a considerable time.

In general, I think we can look ahead to clearer guidelines. Those nice, broad, phrases like “such other functions and duties as the National Security Council may direct” in the 1947 Act will be replaced by more specific direction. For instance, as the Rockefeller Commission recommended, and as came up in my confirmation hearing, the word “foreign” will be put in front of intelligence when it applies to CIA. Let’s make it very clear that that’s our job. We know it; we’ve always understood it that way, but let’s make it clear so that we don’t overstep the edge and go into things that we shouldn’t, and then say well, it was an intelligence activity. Let’s make it clear that our job is foreign intelligence; that’s what we do; that’s the profession we joined; and let’s make the statute plain.

Let’s make a lot of other things clear. Let’s decide whether and how we want to conduct covert action. This is a question that’s been raised, as to whether we should or not. I think the nation needs that capability. Some people think it doesn’t. Some people think we ought to do away with it. Let’s have it out; let’s have a vote; and let’s decide clearly whether we are going to do it or not; and let’s put in some specific language as to whether we do it or not.

Let’s look at the structure of intelligence. What is the relationship between the different agencies? What’s the relationship between the FBI and CIA? What’s the relationship between CIA and the Defense Dept.? Let’s get clear what the structure is, and let’s get some supervision.

There is a recommendation in the Rockefeller Commission report that we strengthen the Inspector General in this Agency, and that’s a direct recommendation that I correct what appears to have been my mistake, and I’m for it. We’re going to have a bigger Inspector General’s office. I think we are going to have a lot of internal procedures around here which will perhaps tighten up and make clear the way in which we do things and force a conscious approval process on some of the questions. We have put the main effort on the command line and with the staff level clearly secondary. Obviously, at a time like this, there’s a tendency to increase the staff and increase the review process. Later we may find that this would begin to throttle our flexibility and throttle our activities.

I think we’ll try to come out somewhere in the middle to give us a still flexible and straightforward command chain but increase the degree of review. Our Inspector General, of course, for the last two years has been totally occupied in such things as Watergate and this particular set of investigations. So he has not been able to do even the kind of review and surveillance of our own activities that we had intended when we reduced the size of this effort and stopped those regular, periodic and, in my mind at that time, somewhat sterile reviews of how many people worked on this problem and how many people worked on that problem. Let’s get it down to an investigation of the questionable areas of our activity so that we are sure that we have an approval process, that we know exactly what we are doing, and that what we are doing is correct.

And let’s increase the supervision by the executive branch. The Rockefeller Commission recommends a strengthened Intelligence Advisory Board; I think this is a good thing. The President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board has been a very great supporter of intelligence and of this Agency over the years. But, it has not been an active critic; it has not been an active investigator of our activities. It has a small staff. Maybe we can work together with it to obtain somewhat more active supervision.

I had a talk with the Board a few months ago and one of the members who runs a very large industry says that the relationship between his board and the president of his company is very clear. It’s on a basis of “no surprises.” The president need not bring every question to his board, but the board is not to be surprised by any development. I think this is a good system, and I undertook to follow that system with the Board—that there be “no surprises.” That is essentially the relationship I have with the Deputies here in the Agency, and I think it has worked quite well in terms of giving them the flexibility to act but to keep me informed of anything that I ought to know before it happens.

Let’s also strengthen supervision outside the executive branch. The Rockefeller Commission recommends a joint committee. At this stage, when we have to report our covert action to six committees, when we have to testify before the Post Office Committee, when we’re asked to testify before any committee on the Hill, the idea of a joint committee is very appealing as far as we’re concerned. We can look forward to working with a specific committee which has a right to supervise us, whose staff will be a nuisance once in a while as it comes around to ask questions and gets into our affairs; but we will find that the stronger the outside supervision of our activities, the stronger the inside supervision. If we don’t get supervised outside, then we are apt to be a little lax on our supervision inside. I think the people, the Government and the Congress at this particular time in our history require that there be more vigorous supervision outside as well as inside.

And let’s decide how big an intelligence effort we want to run, how do we want to divide it between Defense and ourselves. What’s the difference between national intelligence and tactical intelligence? What are the ways to make sure that this all works together? Is the 1971 directive to the Director to take a leadership role in the community a good one? Should it be strengthened? Should it be changed? How should we accomplish this? How much money do we want to spend on intelligence? Should we be spending $1 billion or $5 billion or $10 billion? How do we decide how much we should be spending? Or should we not spend anything on certain kinds of activities? Should we divide it up between the agencies or should we stress a consolidated approach to it in a single budget? These questions I think will be looked at and I think it will result in some arrangement which will reflect today’s approach to intelligence.

I still recommend that we not have an open budget. An open budget will force a debate on the floor about the size of our budget. This debate will undoubtedly get into “Well, what does this include? Does it include technical programs, does it include covert action or does it include the military? Does it include the foreign service functions? What does it include?” The debate will begin to pick it apart and then get to the question “Why did it go up? Why did it go down? Let’s have good explanations for changes.” The inevitable exposures which would occur in this process could make it almost impossible to operate this secret agency.

I recommend that we not have an open budget, but that we deal with a joint committee in great detail. I’ve just finished my fourth session with the House Appropriations Committee this year, and I left there with about 75 further questions devoted to CIA which I must answer.

Lastly, I am convinced that this review of what intelligence needs and what we Americans need now in intelligence will be accompanied by some improvement in our ability to keep secrets. Our inability to keep the secrets of intelligence is a national scandal. It is becoming a very serious problem for our Agency in its relations with foreign services, in its relations with brave foreigners who have agreed to work with us, in its relations with Americans who have helped their country by contributing to our activities. They are all worried that their names are coming out, that they will be put in jeopardy, that they will have a political problem in their country, that their lives or their livelihoods will be in danger or that their businesses in America may be ruined by this exposure of their CIA connection. We are going to fight very hard to keep those names out of the investigation in which we have the sympathy of the Senate investigators and had the sympathy of the Rockefeller Commission in this regard. But, I still think we have a serious problem that can only be overcome by improved legislation.

So, as we go through this investigation and as more and more of my time, which last year was spent on the early 70’s and this year seems to be being spent on the early 60’s and maybe next year will be spent on the early 50’s, let’s remember three main points about intelligence and I think they are all critical points.

First, intelligence is important to our country. It is important to our country’s safety; it is important to the welfare of our citizens; it is an important activity to our survival as a free nation.

Secondly, our intelligence is the best intelligence in the world. Let us make it very clear that no nation can come within miles of the excellence of our intelligence. We have had certain exposures which have helped to demonstrate this to some extent, for example, some of our technical exploits. The fact is that more than our technology is good. The analysis is good; we are producing good analytical decisions; clear-cut positions; reporting to our Government regarding problems that they face around the world. The clandestine work is good; it is producing clandestine material from within some tough, tight, closed societies on matters of great importance to our country. Our intelligence is good and the other countries admire it, because it is so good. And a lot of them use it and depend upon it. Our intelligence is being useful not only to our executive but also to our Congress and also to our people as it is properly revealed to them through proper briefings and proper explanations of the complexities of the problems of the world.

And lastly, let’s remember that our intelligence is American. It is going to reflect American opinion; it’s going to reflect American values. I think it did in the past. In that period, there was a conscious assumption that from time to time things might have to be done by intelligence which might not be quite proper. That assumption is no longer held. America doesn’t want it to be part of American intelligence and we are not going to have it either. We are going to run an American intelligence service. It’s going to reflect our country’s attitudes; it’s going to reflect our country’s standards; and it’s going to reflect our country’s laws.

But let’s face it, the most important things about our intelligence—the fact that it’s important, the fact that it is good, the fact that it’s American—depends on you, because you are the people who are the leaders of American intelligence, and it’s on your discipline, your initiative and energy that we have become good. And it’s on your conscience that we have depended for the revelation of things that we might have done in the past that we don’t want to do now; and it’s on your conscience, on your energy, and on your intelligence that our intelligence is going to keep on getting better as we go into the 70’s and 80’s and eventually stop reconstructing the 50’s and 60’s.

[Omitted here is a question-and-answer session between CIA employees and Colby.]

1. Source: Central Intelligence Agency, OPI 10, Executive Registry, Job 79M01467A, Box 21, Papers Relating to Rockefeller Comm Recommendations—Misc Others, 010175–300675. Administrative; Internal Use Only; Special Distribution.
2. In a Washington Post article, May 22, Senator Church was reported to have “indicated” that Colby acknowledged “CIA involvement in assassination plots directed against foreign leaders” in testimony to a closed session of the Senate Select Committee investigating intelligence abuses. (George W. Lardner, Jr., “Colby Said to Concede CIA Involvement in Death Plots,” Washington Post, May 22, 1975, p. A8)
3. See footnote 2, Document 42.
4. Hungarian priest József Cardinal Mindszenty, an anti-Communist dissident, was tried for treason by Hungarian authorities in 1949.
5. See Documents 6 and 7.
6. See Document 28.
7. On June 16, the House of Representatives rejected the resignation of the Chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, Representative Lucien N. Nedzi. Nedzi had offered his resignation following reports that he had received secret briefings in 1974 on illegal CIA activities as Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee’s intelligence subcommittee, prompting calls for his removal and a vote among committee Democrats to place members on a new subcommittee under the chairmanship of Representative James V. Stanton (D–Ohio). A month later, on July 17, the House voted to reconstitute the Select Committee with 13 members instead of the original 10. The resulting resolution (H. Res. 591; H. Rept. 94–351) preserved the Select Committee’s original mandate, but named Representative Otis G. Pike (D–New York) as the committee’s new chairman. (Congress and the Nation, Vol. IV, 1973–1976, pp. 191–192)