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57
utilized, such an office would be justifiable in terms of money and effort
as a war plans unit, expandable in case of international conflict. A
joint congressional committee should find such a unit easy to monitor,
and the intelligence personnel working in it could then expect a reduced
number of congressional overseers, as opposed to the six committees
now observing covert operations.
The office I propose would call on expertise derived from experience.
It would not employ airlines or mercenaries or exotic paraphernalia,
but would need the capability to provide friends with imaginative advice
and what British intelligence officers have sometimes called "King
George's cavalry"-money.
Covert action is a stimulating business, a heady experience for those
who sponsor it and for its practitioners. If not used in moderation it is
as dangerous as any stimulant. But to suggest that covert action be
abandoned as a pohtical option in the future is, in my opinion, injudicious,
if not frivolous. Some say that covert action should be abolished
because of past mistakes. This would be as foolish as abolishing
the office of the President because it has been once abused, or to disband
our army in peace time would be.
The committee is aware of the 2-year study recently conducted by the
Murphy commission.1 A conclusion of this review is that:
Covert action should not be abandoned but should be employed only where such
action is clearly essential to vital U.S. purposes, and then only after careful high
level review.
I agree. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. Phillips. That was a very interesting
presentation. And now, Mr. Halperin.
STATEMENT OF MORTON H. HALPERIN, FORMER DEPUTY ASSISTANT
SECRETARY OF DEFENSE FOR INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS;
FORMER ASSISTANT FOR PLANNING, NATIONAL SECURITY
COUNCIL STAFF
Mr. HALPERIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
It's a great honor to be here and especially by the fact that I'm
appearing on a panel with two gentlemen under whom I had the great
honor of serving in the Department of Defense, Mr. Vance and Mr.
Clifford.
I have a somewhat longer statement than the others, Mr. Chairman,
and I would, therefore, propose to summarize it. But I would ask that
the full statement be included in the record.
The CHAIRMAN. Very well.
[The prepared statement of Morton H. Halperin follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF MORTON H. HALPERIN
Mr. Chairman, I consider it an honor and a priVilege to be invited to testify
before this committee on the question of covert operations. From this committee's
unprecedented review of the activities of our intelligence agencies must come a
new definition of what the American people will permit to be done in their name
abroad and allow to be done to them at home. No problem is more difficult and
contentious than that of covert operations.
1 Report of the Commission on the Organization of the Government for the Conduct of
Foreign Polley, June 1975.
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It appears that I have been cast in the role of the spokemlln on the left on thi"l
issue. It is an unaccustomed position and one that I accept with some discomfort.
It should be dear to the committee that there are a great many thoughtful and
articulate Americans whose views on this question are considerably to the left
of mine, at least as these terms are normally used. I would not presume to speak
for them. Nor, Mr. Chairman, am I speaking for the organizations with which
I am now affiliated. I appear, as you requested, as an individual to present my
own views. .
I believe that the United States should no longer maintain a career service for
the purpose of conducting covert operations and covert intelligence collection
by human means.
I believe also that the United States should eschew as a matter of national
policy the conduct of covert operations. The prohibition should be embodied in a
law with the same basic structure as the statute on assassinations which the
committee has already recommended.
These proposals are not put forward because I believe that no covert operation
could ever be in the American interest or been use I could not conceive of circumstances
where the capability to conduct a covert operation might seem to be
important to the security of the United States. I can in fact envision such
circumstances. However, I believe that the potential for covert operation has been
greatly over-rated and in my view the possible benefits of a few conceivable
operations are fur out-weighed by the costs to I)ur society of maintaining a capability
for covert operations and permitting the executive branch to conduct such
operations.
The relevations made by this committee in its report on assassinations are in
themselves suftlcient to make my case. I will rely on these illustrations not because
there are not many others of which we are all aware but rather to avoid
any dispute over facts.
The case against covert operations is really very simple. Such operations are
incompatible with our democratic institutions, with Congressional and public
control over foreign policy decisions, with our constitutional rights, and with
the principles and ideals that this Republic stands for in the world.
Let me begin with the last point. The CIA operations described in this committee's
assassination report are disturbing not only because murder was planned
and attempted, but also because the operations went against the very principles
we claim to stand for in the world. In Cuba, the Congo and Chile we intervened
in the internal affairs of other countries on our own initiative and in the belief
that we had the right to determine for others what kind of government their
country needed and who posed a threat to their welfare. We acted not because we
believed those that we opposed were the tools of foreign powers kept in oIDce
by outside intervention; rather we acted in the face of assertions by the intelligence
community that the leaders we opposed were popular in their own lands.
In the Congo our e!Iorts were directed at keeping Lumumba from speaking and
keeping the parliament from meeting because we believed that allowing him to
speak or allowing the parliament to meet would have meant that Lumumba would
be back in oIDce. In Chile we preached to the military the need to ignore the constitution
and to overthrow a democratically elected government. We warned
that the alternative was deprivation and poverty for the Chilean people.
All of these things were undertaken in the name of the United States but
without the knowledge or consent of the Congress or the public. Nor could such
consent have been obtained. Can you imagine a President asking the Congress to
approve a program of seeking to reduce the people of Chile to poverty unless their
military, in violation of the constitution, seized power; or the President seeking
funds to be used to keep the Con~olese Parliament out of session so that it could
not vote Lumumba back into oIDce; or the authority to promise leniency to Mafia
leaders if they would help to assassinate Castro. These programs were kept
covert not only because we would be embarrassed abroad, but also because they
would not be approved if they were subjected to the same Congressional and
public scrutiny as other programs. That is one major evil of having a covert
capability and allowing our Presidents to order such operations. The assassinations
themselves may have been an aberration; the means and purposes of our
interventions were not.
Another inevitable consequence of conducting covert operations is that it distorts
our democratic system in ways that we are only beginning to understand.
Covert operatIon8 by their nature cannot be debated openl;r in ways required by
our constitutional system. Moreover, they require e!Iorts to avoid the structures
59
that normally govern the conduct of our officials. One obvious area is lying to the
public and the Congress.
'VI' should not forget that the erosion of trust between the government and
the people in this Republic began with the l;-2 affair and has continued through
a series of covert operations including Chile. Whether or not perjury was committed-
and I see little doubt that it was-it is surely the case that the Congress
and the public were systematically deceived about the American intervention
in Chile. Such deception must stop if we are to regain the trust needed in this
nation; it cannot stop as long as we are conducting covert operations. Given
the current absence of consensus on foreign policy goals, such operations will
not be accorded the deference they were given in the past. Critics will press
as they do now on Angola and Portugal. And administrations will feel the
need and the right to lie.
Surely at this point in time it is not necessary to remind ourselves of the
certainty that the techniques that we apply to others will inevitably be turned
on the American people by our own intelligence services. Whether that extends
to assassination has sadly become an open question but little else is.
The existence of a capability for covert operations inevitably distorts the
decision making process. Presidents confronted with hard choices in foreign
policy have to face a variety of audiences in framing a policy. This in my view
is all to the good. It keeps us from straying far from our principles, from what
a majority of our citizens are prepared to support, from a policy out of touch
with reality. The overt policies of the American government Ultimately come
under public scrutiny and Congressional debate. Long before that they have
been subject to bureaucratic struggles In which the opponents of the policy
haVI' their day in court.
Our intelligence analysts are free to explain why the policy will not work.
With covert policies none of this happens. Intelligence community analysts
were not told of the plans to assassinate Castro and so they did not do the
careful analysis necessary to support their view that it would make no difference.
The Assistant Secretary of State for Latin America was kept in the
dark about Track II in Chile so he was not able to argue against it and inadvertently
deceived the public.
In fact, I would argue that the route of covert operations is often chosen
precisely to avoid the bureaucratic and public debate which our Presidents
and their closest advisers come to despise. That is precisely what is wrong with
them. Our Presidents should not be able to conduct in secret operations which
violate our principles, jeopordi7.e our rights, and have not been subject to the
checks and balances which normally keep policies in line.
You will hear, I am sure, various proposals to cure these evils by better
forms of control. Such proposals are important, well-intentioned and certainly
far better than the status quo, but I have come to believe that they cannot
succeed in curing the evils inherent in having a covert capability. The only
weapon that opponents of a Presidential policy, inside or outside the executive
branch, have is public debate. If a policy can be debated openly, then Congress
may be persuaded to constrain the President and public pressure may force a
change in policy. But If secrecy is accepted as the norm and as legitimate, then
the checks put on covert operations can easily be ignored.
Let me conclude by violating my self-imposed rule to draw only on cases in
the assassination report and discuss some rumored current covert operations.
I ask you to assume (since I assume that the committee is not prepared to
confirm) that the {'nlted Stfltes now has underway R major program of
Inter>ention in Angola and a plan to create an independent Azores Republic
should that prove "necessary". I ask '1"011 to consider how the Congress and
the public would treat these proposals if they were presented openly for public
debate. Congress could, in principle, vote publicly to send aid to one side in the
Angolan civil war as other nations are doing and we could publicly invite
the people of the Azores to choose independence and gain our support. But
because we maintain a covert operations capability and because such operations
are permitted, the President can avoid debate in the bureaucracy and with the
Congress and the public. We can be drawn deeply into commitments without our
consent and have actlonR taken on our behalf that we have no opportunity
to stop by public pressure or to punish at the polls.
Mr. ChairmRn. in l'Psponse to the nnRitinn J hllve nlltlinpd briefly this morning,
one is confronted with a parade of hypothetical horribles-the terrorists with
60
the nuclear weapons, a permanent oil embargo and the like. To these I would
reply in part that such scenarios seem implausible and should they occur the
likelihood that covert capabilities could make an important difference also
seems remote. As to the consequence.'l of legislating a total prohibition in light
of the possible unexpected catastrophe, I am content to call your attention
back to the committee's excellent treatment of this issue in your assassination
report.
This country is not, in my view, in such dangerous peril that it need continue
to violate its own principles and ignore its own constitutional system to perpetuate
a capability which has led to assassination attempts, to perjury, and to
the subversion of all that we stand for at home and abroad. We are secure
and we are free. Covert operations have no place in that world.
Mr. Chairman, let me say again how grateful I am for this opportunity to
participate in this historic debate. I have published two articles on this subject
which I have attached to this statement and which I request be made part of
the record of your hearings.
I look forward to your questions.
Mr. HALPERIN. Mr. Chairman~ my view is really very simple. I believe
that the United States should no longer maintain the career service
for the purpose of conducting covert operations or covert intelligence
collection by human beings.
I also believe that the United States should outlaw as a matter of
national policy the conduct of covert operations, and I think this prohibition
should be in a law similar to the assassination statute that
the committee has already proposed.
Now I do not put forward these proposals because I believe that
there never would be a situation in which the United Stat~ might
want to conduct a covert operation or indeed, that there might not be
a situation where that would seem important to people.
I do so because I believe that the evil of having a capability for
covert actions, the harm that has come to our society and to the world
from the existence of that capability, and the authority in the President
for using that capability far outweighs the possible potential
benefits in a few situations of using covert means. And I believe that
in such situations the United States will have to use other means to
promote its interest.
I think that the revelations made by this committee in its assassination
report are sufficient to make that case, and I will therefore draw
my illustrations from those.
'It seems to me that covert operations are incompatible with our
democratic institutions with congressional and publIc control of foreign
policy decisions, with the constitutional rights of American citizens~
and with the principles and ideals that we thought this Republic
stood for in the world.
Let me begin with the last item.
The CIA operations described in this committee's assassination report
are disturbing, not only, I would say, much less because murder
was planned and attempted, but because these operations went a~ainst
all of the principles that we believe in and stand for in the world. In
Cuba and the Congo and in Chile we intervened in the internal affairs
of other countries on our own initiative because we thought that we
knew better than the people of those countries what kind of government
they should have and whether they should be prepared to resort
to assassination to change the kind of government that they seemed to
be getting.
We acted not in the belief that the leaders of those countries were
tools of the Soviet Union or of the international Communist con61
spiracy. Our intelligence agencies were telling us correctly that these
men were popular leaders at home who had broad support within their
societies, whether or not we liked their policies.
Indeed, it seems to me the case that we acted against them because
we feared their popularity, we feared that Lumumba was a spellbinding
speaker and so on.
In the Congo our efforts were directed at keeping Lumumba from
speaking and directed at keeping the Parliament from meeting. We
thus violated basic principles of American values, that a society should
determine its course by free speech and by parliamentary democracy.
These are the things precisely that we feared and that our agents
sought to defeat.
In Chile we preached to the military the need to ignore the constitution
and to overthrow a popularly elected government. We warned
them that the alternative would be the deprivation and starvation of
the people of Chile. And then we carried out that plan after they
ignored our proposals.
In my view these proposals and these operations were covert, not
only because we would be embarrassed abroad if they came out, but
pl'ecisely because they would not and could not be approved by the
Congress and the public if they were revealed.
This is in my VIew the major evil of having a covert operutions capability
und permitting our Presidents to order covert operations,
namely that they will order things that they know this society would
not condone and that the Congress would not condone if they were
made public.
Another inevitable consequence of conducting covert operations is
that it distorts our democratic system, it distorts the way we should
make decisions and normally do make decisions in this society, and it
distorts the way public officials are supposed to deal with the Congress
and the public.
One obvious area and one very disturbing area is lying. I think it is
clear that lying is an essential part of covert operatIOns, and the history
of that bears it out. I think we should not forget, Mr. Chairman,
that the erosion of confidence between the President, the executive
branch, and the people in the society, in my view, started with the U-2
affair. We learned then that Presidents lied to us about what we do to
other countries and what the United States is about. And that has continued
through a long series of covert operations, the latest of which
is perhaps Chile, or pl.'rhaps now Angola.
In my view, in the case of Chile, actual perjury was committed befnre
Senate committees. Whether or not that is the case, it surely is
clear that the Congress and the public were systematically deceived
and systematically lied to about what we had done in Chile.
Now in my view such deception needs to be stopped if we're going
to regain the trust that we need in this society. It cannot stop as long
as we conduct covert operations. Given the current lack of consensus
in our society about what our foreign policy interests are, every major
covert operation will produce controversy inside the executive branch.
It will produce controversy among those few Congressmen and Senators
who are told about it, and the inevitable results will be press
67-146 0 - 76 - 5
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leaks and the inevitable response to press leaks will be additional lies
or additional deception of the America.l people.
Now, Mr. Chairman, I wrote those remarks before I read the committee's
report on Chile, and I must say that reading that very much
reinforces this view, and I would like to just call your attention back
to the description in this committee's report on covert action in Chile.
From independence in 1818 until the military coup d'etat of September 1973
Chile underwent only three brief interruptions of its democratic conditions.
From 1932 until the overthrow of Allende in 1973 constitutional rule in Chile was
unbroken.
(See Appendix A, p. 144.]
Mr. Chairman, we are all aware of the precious few number of
countries in which that is true, and I think all of us believed that the
function of American }?olicy in part was to maintain those kinds of
institutions in those kmds of countries, and indeed, apologists of
covert operations tell us that that is the purpose of covert operations.
But if one looks at the objective of the American covert operation
in Chile during this period, they were not designed to maintain that
system.
Our objective was not to preserve a free democratic election
process in Chile. Our objective was very simple. It was to keep
Salvador Allende from coming to power. We tried to do that by
intervening in elections. We tried to do that by buying newspapers.
We tried to do that by creating false propaganda which would scare
the people of Chile. And when all that failed, when Salvadore Allende
received the vote and was going to be elected President of Chile, we
went to the military of Chile, and said, you now have a higher duty.
It is the duty to prevent him from coming to power by overthrowing
the constitution, by overthrowing more than 40 years of constitutional
democratic rule and the tradition going back more than a century.
We told them that if they did not violate those conditions, that we
would do everything we could to destroy the economy of Chile, and
when Salvador Allende came to power we did everything in our power
to destroy the economy of Chile. And then we were told by the
administration that we were not responsible for the coup because the
day before the coup the generals who carried it out did not come to
us and say, "should we carry out the coup?"
I think our responsibility for the coup in Chile, for the fascist
dictatorship that exists there now, for the repression that exists there
now, is very clear and is very clearly spelled out in the committee's
report on covert action in Chile. We are told in that report that the
actions in Chile are striking, but not unique. Unusual, but not
unprecedented.
And I must say, Mr. Chairman, that in my own view, what the
United States did in Chile would stand as a reason to abolish covert
operations almost on its own.
I think we also know how these techniques can be turned back
on our own people. The false propaganda, the surveillance, the
COINTELPRO operations of the FBI, are of a piece with the things
the CIA was doing abroad. Moreover. the existence of a covert operations
capability inevitably distorts the decisionmaking process both
within the executive branch and outside.
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When the President proposes to do something overtly, he must consult
with a large number of people within the executive branch. There
is often an opportunity for debate. Officials on the intelligence side
of the CIA can give their views and are consulted, and then thE!l
President must come before the Congress and debate the issue.
All of this can be avoided, all of this is avoided with covert operations.
A very small number of people, most of whom are career officials
who have spent their life planning covert operations, propose
these things, and then four or five very busy senior officials, we now
learn, by telephone approved these operations.
The United States is now conducting operations throughout the
world which had been subjected to a telephone vote of senior officials
based on the recommendation of career covert operators. Indeed, I
would argue, Mr. Chairman, that one of the reasons Presidents choose
covert operations is precisely to avoid the bureaucratic and public debates
that they come to despise. They want to do things quickly. They
want to do things without debate. Covert operations provide a way
to do that, and that is why they choose those policies, and that is my
view of what is wrong with them.
Now, Mr. Chairman, in response to the proposal that we should
abolish covert operations, one is confronhd with a parade of hypothetical
horrors. The terrorists armed with the nuclear weapon, a
permanent oil embargo, and the like.
To these I would reply that these scenarios seem to be exceedingly
implausible, and should they occur, the likelihood that a covert capability
would make an important difference also seems to me to be
remote.
And if there is an unexpected total catastrophe, I would refer the
committee back to its own dealing with this subject in the question of
assassinations. The Constitution IS not a suicide pact. The President
does have the responsibility to act if it is genuinely necessary to save
the Republic, and then he has the obligation to do what Lincoln did,
to come before the congress and the public and to say openly, "Impeach
me, don't reelect me. Stop this operation."
With covert operations as they now exist, the President never has
the responsibility to come before the Republic to say what he did and
to ask that it be approved or ratified.
Just to conclude, in my view this country is not in such dangerous
peril that it needs to continue to violate its own principles and to
ignore its own constitutional system to perpetuate a capability which
has led to assassination attempts, to perjury at home, and to the subversion
of all that we stand for in the world.
In my view, Mr. Chairman, we are secure and free and I do not
believe that covert operations have any place in that world.
Thank you very much.
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Halperin.
I think I will begin my questions with you, if I may. The committee
chose the Chilean case as a case history of a covert operation which
should be made public because of its belief that it contained all of
the elements, nearly all, that are normally associated with covert
operations, and for that reason it is a hip:hly instructive kind of report
to issue. Second, because in the view of ~ost members of this com64
mittel', at least, it contained the most drastic examples of abuse conflicting
with all of our professed principles as a Nation and
interfering with the right of the Chilean people to choose their own
government by peaceful means in accordance with their own constitutional
processes.
Now, you have suggested that all covert activity be banned. 'Would
you include in that clandestine collection of information important to
the intelligence needs of the country?
Mr. HALPERIX. I would not, but I do not believe we can collect intelligence
information vital to the security of the United States by
having human agents in the developing parts of the world. We could
have a spy in the Kremlin. I'm quite prepared to have that. But as the
committee report itself shows, if we send people to Chile to find out
day to day whether there's going to be a coup, they end up influencing
that coup just in the way they respond to the information, thus the
Chilean military learned that we would want a coup.
In my view, the only purpose for which information of that kind
is essential is to carry out coups, and if we give up covert operations in
the Third World, then I think we can give up the presence on a routine
basis of individuals in those countries who collect information.
Now, there may be cases where one can in fact collect very important
information about the Soviet Union by having an agent in
Paraguay. I would suggest that those be done on a case-by-case basis.
I would say no agents abroad except if they are approved on a caseby-
case ba~is to collect information about countries of genuine concern
to us, and then put under very tight control.
The CHAIRMAX. In other words, you are not actually proposing a
total ban on all covert operations but you would impose severe restrictions,
even on the use of clandestine agents, for the purpose of collecting
intelligence information.
Mr. HALPERIN. I am proposing, without the exception I mentioned,
a total ban on all covert operations. I am suggesting that we greatly
control but not eliminate human collection.
The CHAIRMAX. I personally believe that in our society, sooner or
later, any covert operation of any scale is going to surface. It's just a
question of time, and since that is one of the attributes of a froo
society, and a price that we are willing to pay. we might as well face
up to it. This means that sooner or later any sizable covert operation
that we undertake in a foreign country is going to come to light one
way or another.
It is also my personal view that since that is true, and has indeed
happened, the cumulative effect of these exposures has had an extraordinarily
damaging effect on the good name and repntation of the
United States throughout the world.
I'm concerned about the propriety. however, of writing into law an
absolute ban for two reasons. The first you have covered. Who can
forecast the future? 'Ve might be on the brink of some horrifying
nuclear holocaust. and a covert oneration of some kind might prevent
the destruction of civilization. You say in that case don't worry because
the Constitution is not a suicide pact and the President has and
could draw upon his constitutional authority to preserve the Republic.
But I see a second case. unrelated to the imperatives of national
survival. and that is a case like Portugal. where 85 percent of the
65
people have expressed themselves against a Communist regime and
are struggling to achieve some kind of democratic government.
:Now, assume in that case, that a very small and mIlitant Communist
minority covertly supported and financed by the Soviet Union is attempting
to impose such a regime against the express will of a commanding
majority of the people. :Now, in that kind of case, if we were
to elect to attempt to assist the democratic parties in the struggle, and
the facts surfaced some months or some years later, that's not the kind
of thing that we would have to plausibly deny in accordance with that
doctrine. It would be a case that we can say, "Yes, we were there and we
are proud of it, because what we tried to do clearly conformed with
our traditional values as a nation. We stand for that."
I think that kind of covc.t activity would not be damaging to the
good name and reputation of the United States, gIVen those
circumstances.
Now, my question to you is, what about cases of this kind in connection
with your recommendation of a total ban ~
Mr. HALPERn,. Let me answer that in two ways, Mr. Chairman.
First, I would say that one has to weigh whatever benefits you think
might accrue from that kind of activit,)' in those situations against the
cost of having the capability and havmg the President able to use it.
Second, my recomendation is not that we do not interfere in the
affairs of other countries, but simply that we not do it by covert
operations.
In my view the United States and the countries of Western Europe
have quite properly interfered in the affairs of Portugal by saying
to the Portuguese people, if you maintain a democratic, open system,
we will give you some substantial economic assistance. If you get a
government we consider closed and repressive, we will not. And I
would say that we might well want to step up and increase that aid.
Now, as far as covert aid, I would say first of all I would not go to
them, I would let them come to us. And then I would say, we will do
it, but we will not do it covertly, and you have to choose between
taking the aid openly or not taking it at all. It is no secret, for example,
that the socialist parties of Western Europe give aid to Portugal,
and Portugal takes it.
The CHAIRMAN. The difficulty I find with your answer to the situation
I posed is simply this. It is easy to say in such situations, "Do it
openly." But in the situation I described, there is a struggle going on
for the kind of government that is going to be established, and overt,
open foreign interference in that struggle would probably be highly
counterproductive. It would be resented the way open, foreign interferenc~
in the political process in the United States would be resented.
Doubtless it would backfire on the very groups we sought to help.
Thus, I think that answer is too easy. It is too easy to say in such a situation,
"let it be overt, let it be open, let them come to us and we will give
them economic assistance or foreign aid," when that doesn't really
address itself to the kind of situation that exists there.
The Russians, if it were profitable for them to come in openly,
would be doing it openly, but they recognize, I suppose, that such open
intervention would be counterproductive to their cause. I'm saying
that there may be situations where the United States could act covertly,
but would not be embarrassed later when it became known because our
66
action was in line with our best traditions, helping people when they
needed help to achieve free government.
The problem I see with covert operations in the last 20 years is that
they have been utterly directed toward the opposite objective, keeping
all kinds of despotisms, corrupt, rotten regimes in power all over the
world. When we have been exposed in having done it, we have been
severely damaged, and we have really lost our capacity for moral
leadership.
Mr. IlALPEmN. If you say that, if the situation is one in which the
aid could only be given secretly, I would think one would have to
weigh how often you think it will occur, how important you think that
will be against the consequences which we have seen in the past of
having a covert capability, and whether you think you can correct it.
But I agree that is a hard balance, and my view is that we can help
those people enough in open ways that we should not take the course
of having covert operations.
The CHAIRMAN. Would any other members of the panel care to comment
on this particular question ~
Mr. CLIFFORD. Might I do so ~
The ClIAIRMAN. Please.
Mr. CLIFFORD. I find Mr. Halperin's eloquence on Chile very impressive.
The main reason I find it so is that I agree with him completely
insofar as Chile is concerned. I think we never should have gone into
Chile. I think that our so doing violates the restriction that we should
use covert operations only when the national security of the United
States is involved.
I do not believe the national security of the United States is involved
in Chile. I think we never should have gone in. So when he talks about
Chile, I agree with all that he says, and I agree also with the emotional
factor that is present there in his comment. At the same time, we must
be careful when we feel emotionally about a situation of that kind that
we don't permit ourselves to be affected when we must reason out a
legislative enactment for the future. .
We cannot foresee what lies ahead. We must be very careful that we
do not restrict ourselves because of the lack of prescience that we have
as to what the future will bring.
Now, I know there have been covert activities on the part of our
Government that have been very valuable. Almost the first one that we
took, the first step that we took was in early 1948 under President
Truman, when it was entirely possible that the future of Western
Europe was at stake. You will remember that he enunciated the Truman
doctrine message in 1947 that saved Greece and Turkey, most
historians believe, and then in the spring of 1948 there was an enormously
important election in Italy. The Communists were very prominent.
It looked as though they were going to win. If Italy had gone
Communist, at that time, the Mediterranean could have very well gone
Communist, and the impact on France and Belgium and other countries
in Europe would have been very profound.
The United States saw fit to conduct a covert operation in Italy. Had
they done so openly, it not only would have been counterproductive,
but I think it would have assured a Communist victory.
The United States is not liked ina great many parts of the world.
It isn't particularly liked in South America, for instance, and as soon
67
as the United States presence is known, then its allies in that particular
country are under suspicion. I think, for instance, one of the curious
results of our efforts in Chile is probably to reduce substantially the
standing of the Socialist Democratic Party which we were attempting
to help. And that's what we have to be so careful about.
So, because there have been failures, we should not restrict ourselves
because there have been successes. We should not freewheel. We should
find a middle ground so that we profit from the mistakes of the past
but still leave ourselves open to the opportunities of the future.
Thank you.
The CHAIRMAN. I have just one followup question for you in that
regard, Mr. Clifford, and then I will turn to other members of the
committee.
You have given us some recommendations concerning changes that
need to be made, and one of those recommendations was to establish
a joint congressional oversight committee which would participate in
future covert action decisionmaking.
I take it from what you said that this is not a matter that can be
likened to the present law in which the Executive decides to undertake
covert action and afterward simply reports that decision to six different
committees of the Congress, but that your concept would be such
that a new committee would at the very least have a consultative role.
In other words, it would be advised in advance of the initiation of any
new significant covert operation. This proposed committee would De
given an opJ?ortunity to express its own opinion either for or against it,
and thus brmg its influence to bear on the final decision of the President.
It would have the tools, that is, the fiscal tools, if an administration
persisted in going against its advice, to reduce appropriations or
to retaliate in some way that is consistent with the congressional control
of the purse strings.
Mr. CLIFFORD. Yes, Mr. Chairman. I think that on this particular
issue, the whole future of the efforts of this committee and the future
of our country insofar as covert activities are involved, depend on that
major premise. You cannot be assured of proper oversight if you leave
it all to the executive branch of the Government. It doesn't work that
way. The power of the institution of the Presidency is so great in the
executive branch of the Government that he can avoid almost any kind
of oversight that you might set up within the executive branch. He, as
a member of the National Security Council, appoints the other members
of the National Security Council, so they become his men.
They in turn appoint the 40 Committee, so he has complete control
over them.
The Rockefeller Commission suggested that the President's Foreign
Intelligence Advisory Board be greatly strengthened and that they
could constitute the oversight. I disagree. It is very limited, the function
that they can perform. They are all appointed by the President.
If the President chose to, technically he could just appoint individuals
whose views he already knew, and whose attitudes were exactly similar
to his.
So there is no real protection there within the executive branch of
the Government. If you're going to get the protection that we have to
have, you'll get it only, I believe, from the legislative branch of our
Government. In this regard, if I might say with all respect, I believe
68
the Congress has failed up until now because since the enactment of the
National Security Act of 1947, 200 bills have been presented in the
Congress of the United States looking toward greater control and
oversight. Of these, about 147 of them had to do with setting up a
special committee of the kind that we are talking about.
Out of 200 bills, all of them died in committee, I think, except two,
and those two got to the floor and were very substantially defeated.
Now, what the background of that is I do not know. Lots of time I
don't understand the legislative mind, but I'm telling you only what
the result is of those particular efforts.
Now, what we must do is recognize that this is where the oversight
must be. I think that we can arrive at a plan which is constitutional
and does not involve the encroachment upon the executive branch, as
you suggest. If the President is under the obligation of referring a
covert plan to the special committee, I would hope it would be a small
committee, and after referring the plan, the committee has a chance
to study it. They then report to the President, and they could report
to him that they are opposed to it.
Now, that cannot control the President under our Constitution, but
he certainly proceeds at his peril after that. He might choose to abandon
it if he finds that the oversight committee refuses to approve it.
He might choose to modify it in such a manner that he would gain
their consent. If, however, they still say we reject it, and he chooses to
go ahead, he must have that right to do it under our Constitution.
Then, however, the Congress, through this committee, can choose to
exert its appropriating capacity, and can refuse to appropriate the
money.
In this way I think we get a kind of oversight that we need. We
know that the whole CIA operation has been abused in the past because
of the enormous power of the President. This plan, I believe, in
this area will prevent the kind of concern that Mr. Halperin properly
has about many mistakes of the past that we have engaged in. Thank
you.
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. Do you have any comment you'd like to
make, Mr. Vance, on that aspect of the committee's function ~
Mr. VANCE. No. As I indicated in my opening remarks, Mr. Chairman,
I agree with what Mr. Clifford suggested.
The CHAIRMAN. Let's go then to Senator Hart.
Senator HART of Michigan. Maybe my asking you to define national
security is asking the impossible, but if it is, the Congress won't be
able to define it either. So we ought to face it. So I ask you, Mr. Clifford,
what do you mean by "national security" specifically ~ Today in
An/!ola ¥Years ago in the Congo ¥
We're told that Soviet aid and Cuban military people are in Angola,
and there are a lot of financial resources there. 1£ the national security
of this country involved--
Mr. CLIFFORD. Senator, there is no definitive decision or definition of
the expression "national security" and there cannot be. What is a
national security problem today might not be a national security problem
at all 6 months from now, and vice versa. But we have to have an
inclusive type of expression of that kind so that those who are in
charge of our Government will be faced with the responsibility of
determining whether the threat that exists is such that it has a profound
impact upon the continued existence of our country.
69
I give a rather serious and rather restrictive connotation to the expression.
At one time it was said that we were in Southeast Asia becaUSe
our national security was involved. I think that was erroneous. I
don't need to go back over that whole thing, but I think our national
security was not involved in Southeast Asia. I believe our national
security was never involved in Chile.
Now whether Portugal involvement is a matter of national security
is a question that must be left to our country's leaders who have the
information to understand what other countries are doing there, who
understand how serious the threat is, whether there would be an impact
upon NATO, and whether to have a communist country within the
confines of the NATO organization would lead us into a posture where
we would be concerned about the continuation of that program in
Europe.
Also, Senator, I think our country's leaders must have a general
idea of where our country's interests lie in the world.
Now we know, for instance, that all that happens in, the northern
hemisphere is of importance to us. We're very concerned with what
happens in Canada and Mexico, and perhaps in the Caribbean. That's
an area of immediate concern to us. Also, Europe, traditionally after
two world wars, we know, is an, area of enormous interest and concern
to us.
I think we have come to know the Middle East is. I think we know
that the position that Japan occupies in the Pacific is a matter of continuing
concern.
So I believe we have to have some general concepts in our mind as to
where the areas in the world are that really involve our national security.
This then eliminates a lot of areas in the world where we are
spending a lot of money now and spinning our wheels and I think
doing it improperly.
Senator HART of Michigan. But your answer suggests that there
are many factors which, forgetting the geographical location, could
be assigned as justification for the conclusion that there is national
security sufficient to justify covert action.
Several of you have spent time in the White House. Is there something
about the 'White H01L<;e that generates the tendency to view as a
grave threat activities and developments which are seen by outsiders
as merely intense economic competition ~ Is there something about the
responsibility, perhaps attached to the Executive that produces this
kind of dynamic that you and I outside would think was just hardnosed
diplomatic convenience, but if you were the President you would
regard it as---
Mr. CLIFFORD. I'm not conscious that such an attitude exists, Senator.
To a great extent the attitudes within the 'Vhite. House are controlled
by-the attitude of the President of the United States. And if
a PrP..sident has, as a part of his makeup. It feeling of concern over certain
types of developments in the world, if, for instance, on occasion,
he feels that his personal reputation is involved in some international
imbroglio, those attitudes will be reflected by the men who work for
him in the White House.
'We've had some men in the White House who reacted very conservatively
to developments abroad and handled them very intelligently.
'We've had some dire emergencies like American planes being
70
shot down or ships being sunk, and some men reacted violently to such
incidents and some reacted, I think, with great maturity.
So that there is no generalization that can be made. We've had a recent
incident, p,s you know, that I think to a great extent divided the
American people, and that was the decision that was made with reference
of theMayaguez.
Senator HART of Michigan. That wasn't covert.
Mr. CLIFFORD. But I'm talking about the geheral reaction to danger
that occurs in the world. Some felt that that was the thing to do, and
I thought it was a disaster from the standpoint of our country. But
that's the way different men look at it. So there is no generalization
that I think can be made.
Senator HART of Michigan. Mr. Vance, do you have a memory of
those days?
Mr. VANCE. Yes. In addressing the first question that you put to
Mr. Clifford, I don't know whether it really helps but I think I would
define national security as a matter that affects the vital interest of
the United States. That helps me a little bit in trying to describe the
kind of matters that would be encompassed within the national security.
I don't know whether that would help others, but it helps me.
Senator HART of Michigan. Where does that leave you on the business
of the Congo and the threat of a pro-Communist government involved
in the Congo [now Zaire] ? Does that justify covert action in
theCongo~
Mr. VANCE. I can only answer that by saying that one has to, I think,
take it in the context of the world situation as viewed by the President
and his advisers at that particular point in history. I agree with what
Mr. Clifford has said and I don't think that you can write a statute
which is so precise that one is going to have a yardstick against which
to measure it. So it's ultimately going to depend on the President and
his advisers and those in the Congress with whom he will be
consulting.
Therefore, that would lead me to the conclusion that if you established
the oversight committee that we had been talking about, this
then broadens the focus that is brought to bear in determining whether
or not the matter in question indeed affects a vital interest of the
United States and thus its national security.
Mr. CLIFFORD. Senator, could I add a sentence to that ~ I think what
we've been going through as a country is that after the Second World
War we felt very strongly the responsibility that existed upon this
Nation because we came out of the war with enormous power. The rest
of the world really was prostrate and so we accepted more and more
responsibility. When any trouble happened in the world, we felt it was
our burden to go and straighten it out, whether it was in the Congo or
whether it was in Chile or wherever it was. Well, finally, it got to be in
Southeast Asia, so we had an international concept at that time which
I think, as the years have passed, has proved to be erroneous.
So that today I think the proper attitude is, we do not have this
worldwide responsibility if we're talking about being the policeman
of the world.
So if before we thought that the Congo was important, I don't think
it is so today. I don't believe that Chile affects our national security.
71
It's difficult for me to find places in the world outside of the major
powers that I believe actually affect our national security.
So my hope is that we have been through a period that greatly enlarged
the tBI1n "national security," and I hope now in the future it
will be greatly restricted.
Mr. VANCE. I would like to say I agree with that.
Senator HART of Michigan. When Mr. Halperin commented that
actions had been undertaken covertly which Congress and the
people of this country would not have tolerated if they had been
brought up to debate, I made a little note here. I'm not so damn sure,
because it's hard to recreate the mood of the 1950's. We shouldn't have
permitted them, but I'm not sure we would have prohibited them.
The suggestion is made, however, that we grapple with the definition
of national security. Mr. Clifford says "whether or not a certain
covert project really affects our national security." Mr. Vance suggests
"essentIal to our national security." And however we handle that, you
then say both of you that we need a joint congressional committee so
that we cun filter the covert action proposals that a President wants to
undertake.
Mr. Halperin makes the point that the basic charm to covert action
is its secrecy, and that joint committee is going to come in and respond
to the problem of secrecy. There will be a vigorous public debate with
respect to the justification for it or the assumption which gives rise to
the conclusion via the White House that this is essential to our national
security.
My question is-and this admits to something less than perfection on
the part of Congress-is it realistic to expect 5 or 10 Members of Congress,
no mattBr how dedicated, to really be able to challenge the arguments
of the whole national security apparatus without having the
political support of public debate and public reaction ~
Mr. CLIFFORD. 1£ you're asking me, Senator, I think the answer to
that has to be, yes.
Senator HART of Michigan. You mean you hope the answer is yes ~
Mr. CLIFFORD. Well, it has to be yes, if we're going to continue to
stay in the covert business.
Senator HART of Michigan. Well, that's the big "if."
Mr. CLIFFORD. And I am convinced that it is important that we stay
in the covert business on a greatly restricted basis. I find that in analyzing
all of the different oversight plans suggested to me, the best
is where a President or his chief intelligence officer must bring the
matter to a congressional committee and there get their reactions.
I believe that any President would proceed under substantial duress if
he was proceeding against, let's say, the unanimous opinion of a 10member
committee in the Senate and the House.
Senator HART of Michigan. I'd like to have Mr. Halperin react
quickly to that, but I described the massive national intelligence apparatus
and I don't know how massive it is when it comes up here,
but we can't wrestle really effectively even with public debate with the
massive professionalism of the Pentagon. They run us around this
track even with the benefit of public debate.
Mr. Halperin, how do you feel?
72
Mr. HALPERIX. Senator Hart, I disagree with Mr. Clifford only at
great peril. I think that what he has told you comes out of a profound
knowledge and experience in the executive branch that what many
members of the Congress think is a solution to the problem, executive
oversight, will not work and cannot work. I think it's very important
that you take the experience of men like Mr. Clifford to understand
that.
I would submit that if Mr. Clifford had spent 15 or 20 years working
in the Congress, as he has with the executive branch, that he would
be equally pessimistic about the possibility of the Congress exercising
that oversight. And it is only out of an ignorance of how the Congress
works, that he told us about before, that he thinks that Congress can
fulfill that role.
My view is that neither executive oversight nor legislative oversight
can work, precisely for the reason that you suggest, namely,
that there is no standard. What is vital to the national security interest
is what the President wants, and the President will always be
able to overrule or persuade 10 Members of Congress, or people he's
appointed in the executive branch.
Senator HART of Michigan. I think the records should show that Mr.
Vance is shaking his head in disagreement with Mr. Halperin.
The CHAIRMAN. I would like to ask Mr. Phillips a few questions
about his proposal that covert action should be taken out of the CIA
entirely and lodged with a very small, new agency which would be
available on those few occasions when it was needed. But it would not
be an apparatus of the kind that we have today which initiates, or
tends to initiate, covert action on a broad scale.
I think that this point has a great deal of validity. From what I
have seen, the apparatus that exists today is not only self-perpetuating
but it tends in the direction of expanding covert actions of every
kind and character, because those who are engaged in it are professionals
and depend for their promotions, for their advancement within
the Agency, upon thinking u.p such schemes and pulling them off. Thus,
you have a kind of self-initIating process that presents these schemes
to the President in such a way that he can scarcely resist them, and
off we go this way and that. Are you proposing something that is
comparable to the discreet sort of British system that I am told once
existed and maybe still exists? Is that your idea?
Mr. PHILLIPS. Not precisely, Senator, but perhaps to some degree.
There are a number of reasons. I think perhaps the first reason is that
there has been a debate for a number of years and this debate has
ensued within the CIA intelligence community, as well as the public, as
to whether it is appropriate to have covert action practitioners working
in the same organization which comes up with intelligence estimates.
As I say, this has been pretty much of a 50-50 proposition, but I
think that if you can take a vote out at Langley, you will get sort of
that split. And I would hope by changing this, it certainly would reo
solve that problem. I think a step like this might be important because
there's no question that at this moment the CIA and the intelligence
community has a public relations problem of some magnitude. When
you have public relations problems of that kind, you try to take some
73
sort of action to help resolve it, and this would be one of the steps that
would do it.
By limiting such a new office in its capabilities and paraphernalia,
there would be less chance that we would engage in those massive kinds
of covert actions, the Bay of Pigs for instance, which are clearly not
going to be covert and not in the long run going to be productive.
There's a third reason, and that reason is that I know that there
are an awful lot of people working in American intelligence, dedicated
people who have spent their lives working in intelligence, and some
percentage of that time, perhaps, in covert action.
Until recently, these people have been pleased that they have been
called to the White House and thanked by American Presidents, but
now they feel that they are shabby people.
If covert action were taken from the CIA, these people could get
on with the essential business that they have of foreign intelligence
collection. It would restore some faith that has been lost between
different departments of the Government.
In this committee's report on covert action in Chile there was the
question: 'Was this an aberration? There is one aspect of it, while there
may have been other examples around the world, in 25 years of covert
operation and covert activities, the Chile example is the only one that
I know of in which the Department of State did not advise the ambassador
on the scene of the covert operations.
Now this separation would erase, I think, any tension that might
arise from that sort of thing. I think probably the real answer is that
with the large public relations problem, you have to do something and
do something decisive.
The CHAIRMAN. 'Well, the public relations problem is really more
acute for the United States than it is for the CIA. I sometimes think
that the Army Corps of Engineers is a cement mixer run amok, and I
feel that the CIA in its compulsive intervention in the affairs of other
countries, and all the techniques that have been used to try to manipulate
foreign governments and events abroad, have caused the United
States of America to he supplanted by the CIA in the minds of millions
of foreigners, and that has created an acute public relations
problem for the United States, and accounts. I think, for the fact that
we now lack the eapacity to give the kind of leadership that once commanded
the support of most of the world. 'Ve can't even win any votes
in the United Nations anymore, snch is the present disability under
which ,ve operate.
Senator Mondale?
Senator MONDALE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I think the suggestions we've heard from the panel are very helpful
because, it seems to me, running through them is a couple of crucial
principles which must be at the core of any legislative reform.
One, you all seem to agree on the need for executive accountability,
namely, that the President himself should be clearly and unquestionably
responsible and accountable for the actions, so that we can get
away from this fog that we have been trying to penetrate in determining
who did what and why and so on.
Second, you all seem to agree that there has to be congressi?nal
accountability from the Executive to the Congress, structured III a
74
way that, to the fullest extent possible, requires full and candid consultation
prior to the time covert activities are developed. I think this
is essential.
It seems to me, then, that the one crucial policy question in dispute
which must be decided by the Congress is what should be the role,
if any, of this country in covert activities and covert collection. The
work of this committee shows that that could be a very fateful decision.
Running through all of these covert activities, in my opinion, has
been an incredibly naive view that somehow covert operations could
be kept from the public, even though we have an open society. They
never have been. They never will be. Because of that, our public officials
are put in the position of lying about it or perjuring, or dissembling
in one way or another, and that certainly has been a humiliating
experience for this great Nation.
Third, since covert activities are secret, the record shows that there
is an ahnost unc:lntrollable tendency to play God with other societies
in a very naive way, to believe that we can manipulate, control, and
direct another society secretly with a few dollars or a few guns or a
few bucks or a few lives, in a way that we know we would never be
controlled by another society that attempted the same tactics on us.
The question that we have to ask ourselves as a nation, despite all
of these risks which the record now clearly shows exist, is: Must we
nevertheless agree to permit the authority for some covert activities?
And three of you say yes and one of you savs no.
Could you try to make your case, very briefly, as to why you think
it is essential to this Nation's interest to contmue to grant that authority
to the Executive?
Mr. CLIFFORD. I would take a first try at it.
I think it would be a serious mistake for this committee to recommend,
and for the Congress to adopt language that would restrict
future governments, future Presidents, and future Senators and Congressmen
from meeting the problems that confront or will confront the
United States which we cannot now foresee. I believe there is not such
a moral or ethical question involved that we have to say now this must
never happen, this is so bad that under no circumstances can we ever
go down this road again. I think covert action does not fall into that
catego~y. . .. .
I thmk that even though later on our covert actIVItIes m some areas
might have become known, yet because they were unknown at the time
the action was taken, I think they brought great benefit to the world
and to this country. I think that some covert actions have assisted us
in maintaining freedom in the world, and that's what we have stood
for and I think that if we restrict our actions in that regard, there
couid be in the future, areas of the world that might lose their freedom
because of our inability under a law to go in and help under those
circumstances.
So I think that when we talk about possibly the men in the CIA
playing God I think that has happened. I think we have to be awfully
careful that'we don't make the same mistake in attempting to play
God in vriting legislation that would so :estrict our future actions
that it might damage our hopes for freedom III the world.
Senator MmwALE. Mr. Vance?
Mr. VANCE. I essentially agree with wha~ Mr. Clifford has said. He
said it very eloquently. I really do not thmk that we can foresee at
75
this time what the indefinite future is going to bring. I think it is
possible, under revised procedures and concepts, to prescribe the extent
and the manner in which any covert action would be permittBd. I believe
that with that kind of change, it is possible to maintain reasonable
control and not to take what is a drastic and awfully hard step to
change by saying by law there shall be no covert action in the future.
Much of what Mr. Halperin has said is very persuasive, but I don't
think he answered the question of what one does if one comes to the
point where there is a proposed action that is determined to be essential
to the national interest. Do you then call the Cong-ress into session
or put before the Congress a change in legislation whICh says we want
to ~hange what we have said before; that is, that there will be no covert
actIOns?
It seems to me that raises all kinds of problems, that what we ought
to address ourselves to is how you limit action in this area to a very,
very limited number of operations and provide the controls and oversight
to permit that to occur.
Mr. PHILLIPS. Senator, let me answer you from the viewpoint of the
field 0Eerator. In working with the CIA I knew roughly three CIA's.
There s one CIA that I don't know, and I'll do this within the framework
of Latin America because that's the area of my experience.
There was the time of the cold war in the fifties. The United States
adopted the policy of containment, which started out to work pretty
well in Europe and turned out to be folly in Southeast Asia. But the
fallout from that was very evident in Latin America. In a cold war,
less than a hot war, the skirmishes in that conflict turned out to be
between opposing intelligence services, the Soviet KGB and the
American CIA.
The Marshall plan saved Europe. A minor role was played in the
skirmishes. It seems to me important work and perhaps the sort of
thing that an American President might decide would fit in the category
of national security.
Next was roughly a period of 10 years in the sixties in Latin
America. During that period Fidel Castro attempted to export violent
revolution to most-not some, but to most-of the countrIes of Latin
America. He was completely unsuccessful, and I believe that I can
state unequivocally that covert action played a major role in that
defeat of Castro.
The next period that I have known was the seventies, the tail end of
covert action on a grand scale in Latin America. My secrecy oath
means that I can't talk about things that the CIA has done that I
learned while working there, but there's nothing in my oath, Senator,
to tell you what the SItuation is about things that are not happening.
This is what is not happening in Latin America in the field of
covert action. Since the Chile proJect, which had gone on for more than
a decade, that was the tail end; and at this moment, if you accept my
previous definition of covert action as opposed to covert activity, there
is no covert action going on in Latin America, or at least there wasn't
when I resigned less than 7 months ago, and the reason, I believe, was
that Fidel Castro abandoned his concept of the export of violent
revolution and there's no neBd.
I've been making a number of speeches around the country, and I
make this point, and people-I find this is one of the things that people
76
sort of give me a funny look about. They don't really believe it, but
the CIA, before the current controversy began, before the revelations
in Latin America, did not have a single covert action problem. No
group of students was getting money. No newspaper was subsidized.
No radio stations were being purchased. No intelligence services were
being subsidized.
So there's three. There's one role of the CIA that I don't know, and
that's the eighties. Are we ready to legislate for the eighties ~ Say in
the case of Castro, we read in the newspapers that he has perhaps 3,000
soldiers in Angola. Is it entirely out of the question that Castro, heady
from some success in Africa, might renew his attempt to create not
one, but many Vietnams in Latin America? I just don't see how we can
legislate against such a possibility.
Senator MONDALE. Mr. Halperin ~
Mr. HALPERIN. I've already made my comments, but first I would
urge Mr. Vance and Mr. Clifford to look at this committee's assassination
report on page 284, where it seems to me it deals very well with
the question of assassinating Hitler or seizing a terrorist's weapon.
There's no way that we can rule that out. You don't need the authority
to do something because of this one grave emergency.
Second, I think we have to understand that we're not talking about
whether we should keep three individuals locked up in a room in a
safe house in Virginia who we must turn loose if there was It national
consensus that we have a covert operation, because the covert operators
would tell you that it is too late if you called those men out of
the room and said "go fix the election in Chile."
They will tell you that it's a long, slow process that requires permanent
assets, and if we were to leave open the possibility of a covert
operation in Latin America, it means that we must have a permanent
career service, it means we must have people constantly stationed in
these countries, it means they must contmue to make contacts to locals,
they must continue to collect information which would otherwise be
irrelevant, and we're talking about them. What are those people likely
to be doing all that time while we're waiting for this one decision, that
there be a covert operation ~
So we're not talking about should we, once or twice in a century, do
a covert operation. We're talking about whether, because we think the
future is uncertain and obviously it is, should we maintain a very
large permanent establishment which has done all the things in the
past that this committee knows very well it has done, and which I
submit and Mr. Clifford has told you cannot be controlled by the
executive branch, and as you know very well, cannot be controlled by
the Congress.
Senator MONDALE. One final question. Mr. Phillips suggested something
that I think makes a lot of sense; namely, if we decide there
must be some residual authority remaining for covert activity, then
he said regretfully he would 'propose taking it out of the CIA entirely
and putting it in some other mstitution. I gather, from Mr. Clifford's
testimony, this was the way it originally started, with a separate office
for covert action from the CIA.
That makes sense to me because it seems first, that the separation
would serve as a restraint upon it. Second, it would avoid what I think
is the inevitable corruption of the intelligence gathering and esti77
ma~ing. functi~n when the same agency that is already engaged in an
actIOn IS also III the process and charged with the responsibility of
reporting and evaluating it.
Would the other members of the panel agree that if you have covert
action, it should be separated as Mr. Phillips suggests, and would
you also agree that the line between covert action and collection is
not nearly as fine as is suggestBd. A lot of the dirty work we've
seen has occuITed in the name of covert collection, and therefore
there's a nasty question of how you sort those two out.
Mr. CLIFFORD. A brief response to that. I doubt that the question
is fundamentally important. I would be satisfied either way. I believe
that if Congress creates this new intelligence individual, a director
general of intBlligen~ who is over the entire intelligence community,
I think that he could then direct the covert activities, Senator, whether
they come under a separate agency or whether they stay as a division
in the CIA.
The reason I did not specifically recommend it is twofold. One, I
would bea little concerned that if you took out the covert operation
and set it up as a separate agency and you had maybe, as you mentioned,
50 to 75 people, because they are solely the covert operators,
I think that their attention is given to developing covert opportunities.
They have to justify their existence, and I believe as you
say, you 76 men must devote yourself to covert activity, and I think
they would all go to work and begin to find where there are covert
opportunities in the world.
The second concern I would have about it is that if they also, in
addition to planning covert operations, are to carry them out, then
I think you begin to get some competing factor between that separate
agency and the CIA. That would bother me.
We would have two outfits perhaps operating in something of the
same area. I believe that if you leave it where it is and give it the
kind of control that a new director general would give it, in the
event that their decision had been made, after going- through this
elaborate process, to launch a covert project, then the covert project,
after being planned, must be able to use all the assets of the rest of
the intelligence community. It might very well need the rest of the
assets.
'So I don't think it can ever just operate separately. For those
reasons, rather than create what I think would be an artificial distinction,
I think I would rather prefer to leave it where it is, if the
Congress would see fit to create a new position of the director general
of intelligence.
Mr. VANCE. Senator Mondale, I simply must confess that I don't
have the knowledge to g-ive you a precise answer. I think the proposal
that has been suggested by someone as knowledgeable as Mr. Phillips
requires very careful consideration. Indeed, I don't know whether
or not you need any so-called continuing capability. I don't know
what the facts are that would lead to the conclusion that you would
have to have that capability. I'm not sure that you couldn't, when it
was decided that it was necessary or essential to the national interest
to go forward on a project, put tog-ether an ad hoc small group
to carry the project forward.
117-146 0 - 76 - 6
78
So I would want to know a lot more about it before I came to the
conclusion that the maintenance ofa continuing capability is
necessary.
Mr. HALPERIN. Senator, I would think-I would make a different
point. I don't think you can separate human collection from covert
operations and I think the Chile report shows that and everything
we know shows that. But I think it's important to take that service
in whatever dimension it's going to have and separate that from
the CIA, and I propose that for two reasons.
One, I think it's very important that we have a director of CIA
for analytical purposes who doesn't have any programs to defend,
who is not operating, whether it's covert intelligence collection or
opera.tions.
Senator MONDALE. That was the original idea. of the 1947 act, and
I think one of the great crises in the CIA has been the number of
times we've been caught without mature, balanced estimates of what's
going on, whether it's the last Middle East war or the collapse of
the South Vietna.mese forces, or the collapse of Portugal.
Time and time again, perhaps understandably, this whole apparatus
has been established to ga.ther and evaluate information, but I think
there is a crucial issue of how we can restore to the CIA the capability
and the structure that permit it to perform its most crucial and
essential function.
Mr. HALPERIN. I think part of the answer to that is to have it do
nothing else and whatever else you're going to do, have it be done
in separate organization.
I think a.nother a.nswer is to ha.ve it he headed by an ana.lyst, which
has never heen done, someone who understands the problems in
producing good intelligence analysis.
Another reason I think it's important to separate it is that I would
look to the director of this analytic organization as the one person
in the executive branch who would be the natural enemy of covert
operations. I would think he would be the man that Congress would
call a.nd say, have you done intelligence evaluations~ If we kill
Castro, are we going to get a worse lea.der ~ How popula.r is Lumumba ~
What are we doing here ~ And he is the man to hopefully go to. The
President and the Congress can look to him to sa.y, is this going to
work ~ If it will, is it going to he worse than if it doesn't work? Have
we considered the alternatives and so on ~ And that even for covert
human collection, he would he the person who would be called in to
sa.y, do we redly need to infiltrate the cabinet, or whatever it is.
Can't you find out that information by other means~
So I would look to tha.t individual as a possible check on the excesses
of covert collection as well as covert operations.
Mr.PHlLLIPs. I'd just like to add something, Senator. First, I
welcome the opportunity to agree with my good friend and next door
neighbor, Morton Halperin, which we don't always do. I want to
make another point about my proposition. Those people I'm talking
a:bout who would he operating that small unit would not be allowed
to operate overseas. They would be allowed to travel overseas, but not
to reside in a forei~ country.
Another element of my proposal is based on this. I believe that the
CIA is highly professional and very capable of doing certain kinds
79
of oovert actions. Those are one-shot deals, small in concept, the sort
of thing that you really can do and keep secret.
I think that even your own report on Chile acknowledged the fact
that a lot of it was done professionally. I think that a capability
should be retained. With such a small unit we would avoid the temptationto
be drawn into ever greater operations.
I was listening when the last broadcast was made from the survivors
at the beach at the Bay of Pigs. I talked to a man whom I considered
to be very wise, and said: "I know that before you told me you were
concerned about this operation, and that we decided how it happened
that we were involved in a secret operation that involved tanks landing
on a beach. Did you really realize there was going to be such a fiasco
and it would be such a faiture~"
His answer was, "No, not in this case." But he said that he knew
that failure was inevitable. He explained, "As you are aware, the
popular characterization of the role played by CIA in Iran was that
the CIA also got on the top of the tanks and led the troops into the
palace. A year later in Guatemala a relatively limited number of
advisers accomplished a facet of American foreign policy that our
President at the time wanted. And so," my friend explained, "it is
inevitable. Every success will leave the desire on the part of a chief
executive or secretary of stllite to seek the easy way to do things and
to task us with an impossible job."
That's why I think it has to be small.
Senator MONDALE. I think that last statement makes the whole hearinA'
worthwhile.
The CHAIRMAN. Senator Huddleston.
Senator HUDDLESTON. Thank you Mr. Chairman.
I think it's apparent in our inquiry and the responses that you
gentlemen have made that we have a very difficult problem, the resolution
of which, designing legislative requirements and guidelines to
meet every possible contingency, is cert'ainly not going to be simple.
One thing that is evident is that when you speak of covert actlOn,
when you think of devising a policy related to covert actions, you're
in a very broad area of operation. I think, as Mr. Phillips has pointed
out in his statement, that there can be covert action with a ca,Pital "e"
or with a small "e," and it can involve all the way from giVIng a ffYW
dollars to a political organization thllit may be favorable, to supp-lying
weapons for assassination or military material for a paramIlitary
operation, which if; in ef'sence a war. So I'm wondering whether or not
in that context there is any way, or should there be any way, of
delineating between various types of covert action, some specifically
limited and some acceptable under certain conditions ~ Is there any
way to approach that problem on that basis~
Mr. PHILLIPS. Senator. I think there is a very easy way for a professional
intelligence officer to understand.
In my mind, the difference between covert activity and covert action
might be characterized in this way. If you decide that it's necessary to
have a public opinion molder working for you, and you do something
nice for him or he's cooperating because he likes your government
or perhaps because you give him a stipend, that's covert activity. If
he decides that he wants to start a weekly newspaper and needs only a
few thousand dollars to get it started, and you give him that money,
80
you are engaging in covert action. If you are abroad and there's a
problem of terrorists threatening the lives of American diplomats, and
you say to the man that you are working with in another security
&ystem, why don't you do something so it's a little safer for us around
the embassy, that's covert activity if you are an intelligence officer.
If you say to him, I want to help you create a unit to attack looal terrorists,
that's a covert action.
Let me put it in a more specific way. If a cable comes in from overseas
to CIA headquarters and says we have a politician we would like
to hire or rent, and this man is going to cost us $1,500 a month, the
answer would go back, no, you're not, you're engaging in covert action.
You want to help that man with his political ambitlOns.
And so the line really is there. Over a period of time the rules of
that game can be learned, and learned very quickly.
Senator HUDDLESTON. Well, I think the basic decision that has to be
made is whether or not the policy of the U.S. Government will be to
intervene in the life and political and social direction of a foreign
country.
Now once you make the decision that we will keep our policy flexible
enough that we will be able to intervene when we deem it to be in the
best mterest of this country, you still ought to have some guidelines
or some parameters about that intervention.
Maybe there's some extent to which you will not go. Now I don't
know which is more dangerous to this country: a heavy media-type
intervention which we have indulged in on a number of occasions, or
the more direct intervention of supporting an individual.
Mr. Phillips, in your experience, where we have gone into a heavy
media campaign to the extent of renting, as you say, commentators
or newspaper reporters, owning newspapers or broadcasting facilities
ourselves, what are the inherent dangers of that kind of operation to
our position in the world and within the specific country ~
Mr. PmLLIPs. Well, Senator, I think that within the framework of
your question and the dangers that have been discussed this morning,
there may be problems in such an operation. Let me draw an analogy
between amba8sadors and Congressmen, because I had a good deal of
experience with ambassadors and some with Congressmen, and I find
that there are two kinds. There's an ambassador, and you go to him
and you say: I have this clandestine operation and it's ~oing to be
tricky. And a good ambassador will say, fine, tell me all about it and
let's decide whether it's worth the risk.
There have been some ambassadors who say, that's your department.
That analogy holds true to some extent with the relations between the
intelligence agencies and Congress. As to what is covert activity and
what is covert action, I assure you that the very good and very dedicated
American ambassadors around the world know in 1 minute
whether you're engaging in one or another. Certainly the more senior
officials in 1Vashington know.
The problem, Senator, I think is this. One, you're absolutely right in
saying that the first decision is whether we are going to have covert
action. If we're going to have it, how can you achieve a perfect covert
action system 1 The answer is very simple: have a perfect foreign
policy.
81
Senator HUDDLESTON. That's not any more likely to happen than to
remove us from our intervention in other countries. But it seems to me
that there are calculated risks relating to each of the kinds of actions
that we think of as covert actions wluch would in some cases totally
preclude the use of some.
You mentioned of course that we ought to outright eliminate assassinations.
Paramilitary operations are a little fuzzier category and
there's some question as to whether we should keep that capabIlity. I'm
concerned really about the internal propaganda effort, the use of the
media. Hhink this is something that we ought to be very careful about.
I don't know how effective it is. You may be able to point to instances
where it has been very effective. But this is a situation where
in this country, at least, we think very strongly that the media ought to
be as free as we can make it. Our Founding Fathers thought that and
court decisions through the years have strengthened that. And here we
are willing to subjugate a media in another country in order to accomplish
our ends. It's contrary from the very beginning to our own basic
and fundamental beliefs. I don't see how we can really gain in the
~orld or in a specific country when this is revealed, as it nearly always
IS.
Do you know of any instances, for instance, where we have been the
victim of our own media effort within the country, that our intelligence
information gatherers sometimes lose sight of the fact that they are
picking up information that we have supplied ourselves and thereby
get a false impression of what the true picture is within the country~
Mr. PHILLIPS. Certainly, Senator, that has happened. But there are
mechanisms set up to see that such information shouldn't reach policymaking
decisions, but I don't think anyone would tell you that secret
operatIOns, covert operations, are going to always be perfect in every
detail.
The word "hugger-mugger" means, in stealth and secrecy, and it has
a second meaning, in confusion. It's inevitable that when you're dealing
in these tricky fields, there's going to be some foulup that you don't
want.
The point that I made and the answer which I hope will not appear
to be flip about foreign policy, is this: I believe that you gentlemen,
with as much as you're learning about intelligence operations overseas
and especially covert operations, have observed that in covert operations
the intelligence services have served as instruments of foreign
policy. It's just that simple.
So if a President says, do everything you can in a given situation,
everything includes working with newspapermen. I don't think it
should include assassination, but it does say work with newspapers. It
would make it very simple, indeed, if legislation said covert action cannot
use media. But it would take away a major part of covert action,
and that would have an impact.
Senator HUDDLESTON. Mr. Clifford?
Mr. CLIFFORD. I have this feeling that when you get into that degree
of detail, Senator, we have a tendency to get away from what would be
my major concern. If you get it down to the point where in legislation
you begin to define what is a covert activity or what is a covert plan,
then I become deeply concerned.
82
Now, not to be overly dramatic, but suppose at some time in the
future we were to learn that the Soviets had a plan to place offensive
nuclear weapons in a circle around the continental United States, and
suppose they picked points in southern Europe and in Africa, and then
suppose some effort was being made in either South America or Mexico,
and then suppose they came around and entered into the Pacific, and
then suppose they came into the Arctic, and then it came to our attention
that there was a conceived plan by the Soviets to try to get the degree
of control that they could in various countries so that they could
place offensive weapons that were directed against the United States.
I would suggest to you that it would be unwise, if, under those circumstances,
our Government at that time was to find itself restricted
in its efforts to prevent that plan from being carried through to
fruition.
Senator HART of Michigan. Could I ask a question here? What would
Mr. Halperin say?
Mr. HALPERIN. Well, I think that we would be obviously free to take
the various kinds of steps with overt action we would take to that. The
notion that the way to deal with that problem is a covert capability I
find exceedingly dubious. We presume the Soviet Union is trying to
extend its influence, and I think we can counter it and have countered it
by a variety of overt means. One would have to look at the details of
the scenario. I find it a very implausible scenario, and one in which I
would say that our capability to deal with it would be sufficient without
a covert capability.
Now, if it got to the point where we really were talking about a
threat to survival of the United States, then the President would act,
and I think it would be appropriate for him to act. I find it hard to believe,
even in this kind of scenario, that the critical thing would be a
covert operation, not to say that a covert operation migbt not be of
some value, but the question is whether it's critical to the success of the
operation, or whether we want to maintain the ca'pability for having it.
The CHAffiMAN. I've been called away and I'm going to ask Senator
Hart of Michigan to take over as chainnan.
Before I leave, I just want to make this one point. I can't recognize
the double standard being applied in all of this kind of talk. When we
talk about a benign intervention in Chile involving a contribution by
our Government to EI Mercurio, one of the most important newspapers
in Chile and suggest what's wrong with that, what would we
think if the Government or Brazil were subsidizing the New York
Times?
Do we live by a separate standard? Do we have a superior right?
Or do we recognize that if we can play this kind of game, then other
governments are free to play it here. Are we to be treated on the basis
of a different principle than we apply to foreign people?
That's the thing that never seems to get answered, because I think
the question answers itself. We do live by a double standard and do
we have certain rights against other people that we would not tolerate
for a moment for them to assert against us?
Senator HUDDLESTON. The chairman suggested that we should perhaps
invoke the old Biblical standard of do unto others as we would
have them do unto us.
83
Mr. CLIFFORD. I think the trouble with that is that if they did it to
us first, then it might be all over.
Senator HUDDLESTON. Are you suggesting, Mr. Halperin, that in
most or even all of the instances in which we have become involved in
covert activity, we might have had just as great an opportunity for
success if we had proceeded in an overt way?
Mr. HALPERIN. I'm not saying that there's never been a case where
covert action was important. I'm sayin~ that in most cases a decisive
form of intervention, as in Western Europe after the war, was public
and overt and had the virtue of debate within the American society
and would be decided within a constitutional procedure, whether to do
it or not. In my view, that's not only an appropriate but an inevitable
form of intervention in most of the countries in the world. Weare too
rich and powerful to avoid that. But that's very different from our
deciding to secretly intervene.
Senator HUDDLESTON. I think my time is up, Mr. Chairman.
Senator HART of Michigan [presiding]. The Senator from
Maryland~
Senator MATHIAS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I would first like to thank all of the members of the panel for
sharing their thoughts and experiences with us. I personally feel that
what we're doing today will have more value for the future than some
of the previous hearings that we've held which may have been more
dramatic but which will have less real positive force in deciding what
ought to be done in the reform of our institutions and the changes in
our system. This may not only prevent abuses we have been learning
about, but will also make the system work better than it has worked
before.
One of the interesting facets of today's discussion, I think, has revolved
around the question of what is national security, what is a
question of vital or essential national security ~ And I was interested
in Mr. Clifford's suggestion as to certain areas in which we might say
tha.t there was indeed a vital national security.
But leaving aside for a moment what particular subjects would be
called vital to national security, because good men could disagree
on that, by what procedural process do we arrive at a definition in
any given moment of what is vital to national security ~ Is that to be
the decision of the President alone? Is it to be the decision of the
President acting on the advice of the National Security Council? Is it
to be the decision of the Congress alone? Or in fact, if it is to be defined
as something which is truly a matter of the ultimate national
security, doesn't it require the joint action of the executive and the
legislative branches in some form?
Mr. CLIFFORD. If it is a public matter, then obviously we understand
what happens. We understand that when there is a threat to our
country. and the Prl:'sident presents the fact, he will say it in a message
to the Congress, and the Congress will debate that threat. This is an
ordinary instance. And then the Congress with its constitutional
power may choose to declare war, after which the President goes
about carrying on the functions given to him.
84
Senator MATHIAS. That is, of course, the ultimate example of joint
action.
Mr. CLIFFORD. That's right. That's under ordinary circumstances.
But in the world in which we live today, we have found in these past
years, particularly since the Second ·World ·War, that you cannot conduct
all of our Nation's affairs in that manner. That is the conclusion
that I think a number of people have reached, so that when the question
has come up as to whether the national security of our country
is involved, generally speaking up until now the President of the
United States has made that decision alone in a number of instances.
vVe assume that he knows of all the covert activities that have taken
place. It is written in the 1947 law that before one can take an action
of this kind, that national se(',nrity must be involved. So one assumes
he has made that decision in a number of cases.
Now, I find that a faulty method for reaching this very important
conclusion. I have suggested that the Congress should have a part to
play. It really has not up until now, and I think that it must meet
its responsibility and pass a law so that it will aSSume some part of
that burden. Now, it may be-and I do not say this critically-it may
be that Congress has not wanted to assume this burden because it is
better to stay on the sidelines, and if a President's decision turns out
badly, then the Congress is in a position to say they had no part of it,
and they can then criticize the decision made. The world is too dangerous
today for that attitude, in my opinion. I think that Congress
must agree that it must divide some of this responsibility with the
President under the kind of plan we have discussed.
Senator MATHIAS. Mr. Vance?
Mr. VANCE. I really have nothing to add to that. What I was trying
to say earlier was just that there must be a way of having the Congress
share in this process. ·What a number of us have. recommended is that
it share the process through the review function with the right to express
their dissent to the President, but not veto.
As Mr. Clifford has said, if it continues thereafter, then they have
the power of the purse which they can apply.
Senator MATHIAS. But this is a very hard power to apply under emotional
circumstanc('s such as those we had during the Vietnam war.
Mr. VANCE. That's entirely correct. I share with Mr. Clifford the
feeling that if a President, after proposing to the oversight committee
the undertaking of a covert action. finds that he g-ets a unanimous
view from the oversight committee that this should not be done,
and he meets with them and hears the reasons for it, then he is very
likely to change his mind.
Senator MATHIAS. Moving to a slightly different subject, Mr. Vance,
a lot of the discussions today have centered around political covert
action. What about the somewhat different problem of paramilitary
action, the kind of thing that went on in Laos. which was a Defense
Department operation but which was essentially concealed from the
Congress for a long period of time?
Mr. VANCE. I would consider that a form of covert action. It is a
larger form of covert action than other types that Mr. Phillips has
referred to. That clearly is a form of covert action, with special problems
involved with it, particularly in light of the elll1ctment of the
War Powers Act. The issue is raised as to whether or not the War
85
Powers Act prohibitions would cover paramilitary action if U.S. military
personnel were not being used and if the action was being conducted
by a foreign country with nonmilitary advisers, but with
equipment provided by the United States. [See app. C, p. 226.1
So that's a different complex of problems.1
Mr. CLIFFORD. Senator, under the law that has existed up until now,
President's had the feeling that their obligation to the Congress was
minimal. Even under the 1974 Foreign Assistance Act, which required
a President to report to this special con~ressional committee, there is
considerable doubt as to whether he had to report in advance of taking
the covert action, or whether he could report after it had been
started or even after it was concluded. [See app. D. p. 230.]
I think that grants him much too much power. Under the concept
that we have discussed here, I think that we could prevent actions that
have taken place in the past. You will recall in early 1969 our Government
started the bombing of Cambodia, and then in order to conceal
the bombing of Cambodia they filed false reports with both the Senate
and the House of Representatives.
Now, I am suggesting that there was no original obligation
upon a President, one might assume under the law, to come in and
make a report to the Congress. It would be infinitely more difficult, I
believe, to follow a course of action of that kind if a President were
under an obligation of reporting to this oversight committee before he
launched such an activity.
Senator MATHIAS. I would agree, certainly, with that recommendation.
I have one other question for Mr. Phillips. Could he estimate for us
what proportion of the covert actions run by your stations were initiated
at the station level ~
Mr. PHILLIPS. I'll take a rough stab at that. There are a lot of different
countries with different circumstances, but I would say perhaps
25 percent. Of that 25 percent I would say that the first 20 percent
originated because of some feeling that the President of that country
had and would be havinf lunch with the American Ambassador, and
he would say now look, I m fighting a "just war" and someone's coming
over the mountain and trying to topple my government and I need
some help. And if the American Ambassador said fine, we will send in
troops and go through with it and have an overt program of help, that
President, in most countries of Latin America, would say thanks very
much, but I can't stand that politically from a domestic standpoint. I
want clandestine help. So that's why I made the point that the best
operations in the covert field have been where we have tried to help
friends because they felt they were in situations where they were in
peril.
Senator MATHIAS. But that by definition would be originated or initiated
by a hint or a suggestion from the host government. But what
10n December 5, 1975, Mr. Vance wrote the select committee with the following supplement
to his responlle to Senator Mathias' question: ... • • paramilitary opera.tlons are
perhaps unique In that It Is more difficult to withdraw from them, once started, than
covert operations. This is weli l11ustrated by the case of the Congo, where a decision was
taken to withdraw In early 1966, and It took about a year and a half before the operation
was terminated. Once a paramilitary operation Is commenced, the recipient of the paramlIltary
aid tends to become dependent 1I00n It and Inevitably advances the argument
that to cut bflck or terminate the aid wouM do the recipient great daJml;ge. ThlIJ malres it
especially difficult to disengage."
86
about projects that were genuinely thought up, the brain children of
the station ~
Mr. PHILLIPS. By saying that it was 5 percent of a total of 25, I
would say it's about 5 percent. And those proposals would generally be
characterized as ones that I might call covert activity rather than covert
action.
Senator MATInAs. Were these ever vetoed by the 'Washington headquarters,
in your experience ~
Mr. PHILLIPS. Oh, yes, absolutely. Senator, I think that Foreign
Service personnel in general feel the obligation to report back to Washington
as many ideas as they can about how certain things should be
handled. Intelligence officers certainly fit that category, and they try
to come up with imaginative proposals and so forth. Sometimes their
proposals are absolutely ridiculous and they get slapped on the wrist.
It happens quite frequently. Usually the ambassador tells them, don't
be silly.
Senator MATHIAS. Has your experience been that the ambassadors
have played an important and significant role in these decisions ~
Mr. PHILLIPS. Absolutely, with one exception.
Senator MATHIAS. What was that ~
Mr. PHILLIPS. Chile.
Senator MATHIAS. Have they generally had an effective veto ~
Mr. PHILLIPS. Yes. There's a myth about people who work overseas
in intelligence, that the ambassador really doesn't know about them.
He knows a great deal of them, who they are, where they're working.
Indeed, he finds out what their personal problems are. And so on
ambassador overseas is really a very important man. He has a long
black car and he is the President's representative.
After President Kennedy sent out a letter, it was made quite clear
to station chiefs that the ambassador was a very important man [exhibit
71
]. As I said before, the only time I've known that an ambassador
was not in a position to say stop or go slow or start, was in one single
case.
Senator MATInAs. Thank you very much.
Senator HART of Michigan. The Senator from Colorado ~
Senator HART of Colorado. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I think each of the witnesses today has repeatedly said something
very important. That is, there is a temptation to allocate responsibility
to and, in fact, blame the intelligence community without equally involving
Congress. This is a theme which this committee constantly has
to be aware of in my judgment.
Many of the abuses of the past have in fact flowed either from the
lack of congressional involvement and congressional lassitude, or in
fact even from pressure from Congress to take action of some kind to
resolve some sticky situation abroad. So I think Congress and politicians
generally have to share the blame. As President Kennedy said
with regard to Cuba, there's plenty of blame to go around. So I think
that we always have to resist the temptation to point the finger at the
CIA or FBI or someone else.
But Mr. Clifford, I note a distressing theme in the correspondence
that you had with President Kennedy in October of 1961 in response
to a request from him for advice on how to handle the CIA particularly
1 see p. 137.
87
[exhibit 81
] I think you outlined four of five points to keep in mind in
early discussions with the Director of the CIA what might be done to
make the CIA more effective.
The fifth point is the one that I think is of most concern. And you
sayfrom
time to time, efforts are made in Congress to institute investiga'tions of
intelligence activity or establish a joint congressional committee on foreign
intelligence. Such efforts must be stoutly and intelligently resisted for they can
seriously hamper the efficient and effective operation of our intelligence
aetivities.
Now, you pointed out the 147 out of 200 bills that had to do with
establishing just this kind of committee and the success with which
they all met in the Congress. What, in your judgment, can be done
first of all to resist the temptation on the part of the White House to
treat the Conwess as a second-class branch of government? Second,
if your own VIews have substantially changed since this memorandum
was written, what can be done to get the Congress back in the
ballgame?
Mr. CLIFFORD. Senator, I think they have changed somewhat but
I think the context at that time had to do with efforts that were being
made in some areas by some members of the Congress to bring the
Bay of Pigs into such focus that it brought it into the political arena
in the United States.
And Senator, as President Kennedy said at the time, there was a
good deal of blame, and enough blame to go around.
Now at the time there was a very substantial effort being made in
some quarters to point out that the incident had been poorly planned,
that those involved should have known better, and the attitude at the
time was that their culpability should be decided and the CIA was
under bitter attack in a number of areas. The NSC came under attack
also for certain failures on their part.
There was a very real concern within the executive branch of
Government that should this attitude be carried on indefinitely, that
serious damage could occur to the whole intelligence operation of the
United States.
The comment was not made in the light of informing Congress on
the subject we're now discussinl! but in efforts that were being made
at the time that we felt would be so damaging to elements in the
intelligence community that it would be inimical to our interests.
Now in addition there is a second answer. I think that that's 1961that's
14 years ag(}-I think that a weat deal has transpired since
then. I think that to a certain extent we felt that the system was working
reasonably well at the time insofar as the Congress was concerned.
There were senior Members of the Congress in both the Senate and
the House who were in contact with the intelligence community and
I think that we felt that the system was going reasonably well.
However, in the last 14 years the operation has not gone well, so
that I think that we must face up to the fact that there have been
dangerous developments. Our country has been damaged severely by
the publicity that has come out, and because of the lessons of the past,
I would like to make the Congress somewhat of a partner with the
executive branch before we launch on these very dangerous missions.
1 See p. 100.
88
Senator HART of Colorado. Well, in that connection, I again, with
my colleagues, would like to open this question up to all the members
of the panel and not to a specific individual and would invite other
responses. Is it feasible to erect a standard for the people making the
decisions about future operations, rither in the 'White House or in the
Congress, or hopefully in both; a standard that the operation will
only be undertaken if it is the opinion of the people making the decisions
that a majority of the American people would favor that operation
if they were given all the facts?
Now that kind of standard is difficult in two regards. It still leaves
a great deal of judgment in the minds of those making the decision.
And second, it is based upon a very difficult premise, and that is, if all
the facts were available.
We have difficulties with these operations in two respects. In the case
of the Mayaguez, which has been discussed, apparently all the facts
were not available, even to the person, the President of the United
States, making the decision at the time. In other cases the facts had
been available, as in Vietnam and other places where the President
or whomever was making the dedsion, sought afterward to conceal
the facts available to him or to them, from the Congress or from the
American people.
So I think the political realities or the recent political history is
such that that's a very difficult standard to achieve, if all the facts
were available.
But can any of you respond to that general proposed standard ~
Mr. VANCE. I will try to respond to it, Senator Hart. It seems to
me that could be onl:' of the criteria and I would expect that to be in
the minds of the President, his advisers in the National Security
Council and on the joint oversight committee. This would be a factor,
particularly in light of history and the problems that we have
seen with respect to covert actions. But I don't think you can make that
the sale standard.
Senator HART of Colorado. How do you avoid the situation that
apparently we had in Vietnam where the 'President or successive Presidents
knew, if all the fads were available to the American people,
that that venture would not have had the support of the majority?
Mr. VANCE. That gets to another factor and it doesn't relate to
intelligence operations. I, for one, have felt that many Presidents have
failed to make proper use of their Cabinets. When it came to sensitive
foreign policy or national security issues, it was always a small group
of us who were involved in such matters on a day-to-day basis, who
were called in to advise on making the decisions.
In my judgment it would have been better if on some of those broad
issues that affected the future of the country the matter had been discussed
more with the full cabinet so that the views of those who are
out and around the country or those of us involved in national security
affairs, could have been heard and could have brought to bear
the thoughts of the people of the United States on what's going on.
I don't think that's unique in the administrations that were around
in the sixties. I think that that has always been a problem. Whether
anyone can do anything about it, I don't know. I think that's one of the
things that has been a problem.
Senator HART of Colorado. But there's some horror stories that are
in print that have not been substantially denied about the Johnson
89
Cabinet-that Cabinet members at various times were so intimidated
by the President that any dissent was tantamount to termination with
some prejudice.
Mr. VANCE. I never saw anything to support that. It may be a
factor, but, not in my experience.
Mr. CLIFFORD. You have touched upon a subject that I think is not
susceptible to legislation. I believe that, perhaps more in Washington
than any other place, there is a human sentiment that is as deep as any
that fixes itself in a man's mind, and that is the desire for vindication.
So if a President launches upon a certain course of action, he will
feel that given some more time and some more effort, it's all going to
turn out as he thinks it will turn out, and, if along the way he has
to get a little more time and possibly a little more force in order to
accomplish his end, this overpowering desire will be vindicated, and
his judgment is such that at some times these individuals, not only the
Presidents, will perhaps be in false positions.
Senator HART of Colorado. Mr. Phillips, what is appalling to many
of us and I think it's unfortunate that our committee has not gotten
into it more, is the quality of intelligence.
We spend billions of dollars a year; estimates range from $6 to $8
billion for the entire community. The House Intelligence Committee
and others have gotten into the fact that as often as not, presuming
you want to get into covert operations, decisions which are made about
when and where and how to launch these operations are based upon a
chaotic, insufficient set of facts or on misinformation, and they result
in great tragedies in this country or to some other country, or both.
In your judgment what can be done to get people out of the kind of
farcical kinds of operations or tragic situations that have gone on, and
get them in the business of hard intelligence and coming up with a
better set of information, a higher quality of work ~
Mr. PHILLIPS. In answer to the first part of your question, I must say
very frankly that predicting and estimating is not an exact science.
It's a little bit like putting together a Broadway show. You can have
a number of facts-David Merrick can be the producer, Katherine
Hepburn will be the star, Tennessee Williams will write the script. It's
going to be a big hit. Right? Xot necessarily.
It's pretty much the same with putting together the pieces of an
intelligence jigsaw puzzle, and it's very easy to forget in this mosaic
that you should put in a little piece about people bemg irrational. So
it's a very inexact science and very difficult. You would be deceived if
someone told you they could always tell you just what the facts were, so
you could make a rational decision.
The answer to the second part of your question is so broad. Staying
out of things that we shouldn't. That, I find that with my experience,
I believe that. While I'm absolutely convinced that we should have
a capability to do these things, we shouldn't have one so that it can be
turned into a circus. By reducing the personnel and reducing the equipment
and paraphernalia that is available to them, it will be less lIkely
to happen.
Senator HART of Colorado. Well, I think that if I were an investor
in a Broadway show, I would try that formula once and if I got
burned, I wouldn't invest in that kind of a show any more. The American
people are investing in this show all the time, and you get a
Mayaguez and you get a Vietnam and you get a Gulf of Tonkin.
90
I mean this committee in the last 10 months has seen instance after
instance where decisions were made on the most bizarre and incomplete
and wrong sets of information. They were instant decisions and a lot
of them had to do with Mr. Clifford's description of the desire of the
politician for revenge-a kind of a macho, we will show them, and
they can't do this to the United States, and all that.
The Mayaguez incident, and again retrospect is easy for all of us,
would have been a common occurrence had it not cost 50 or 60 American
lives. We were bombing at a time they were trying to give more
people back to us. Now I know that's not a set of facts or a circumstance
that the CIA is best equipped to deal with-raid aboard a ship at
sea-but almost the same type of situation got us into Vietnam.
Mr. PHILLIPS. Senator, your question is certainly a good one. It encompasses
most of the aspects of the dilemma over secret operations
and having to operate sometimes on secret information which cannot
be perfect.
I think that all of us here agree that in resolving this difficult question
it is implicit that Congress must playa role. Perhaps playing a
role in the decisionmaking process is the best answer we can expect.
Senator HART of Colorado. Do any of you draw any political or
economic conclusions from the fact that overwhelmingly in the last
couple of decades covert operations have involved the Third World
and not involved major natlOns, that we, in fact, suspended our operations
to assassinate Castro at a time when he was most intimidating
us ~ What I'm getting at is obvious. Are we picking on the small
countries~
Mr. PHILLIPS. Senllitor, it has been my experience that throughout
this time there is one country that's not a small country, and that most
of the covert action, direct or indirect, even though it's done in a third,
country, is proposed and approved and executed within the frame'
work of our conflict with the Soviet Union.
Senator HART of Colorado. But carried out in the arena of the smail
emerging nations of the world ~ How many Soviet leaders have we
attempted to assassinate ~ How many covert actions have we had
inside the Soviet Union ~
Mr. PHILLIPS. We've had a number of clandestine operations, not
covert.
Senator HART of Colorado. I'm talking about covert actions with a
capital "C."
Mr. PHILLIPS. Senator, you're putting me in a corner where I'd
have to come back and ask a question. Defending the idea that we
must engage in covert action because other people do-I do not want
to take that stand. My point was that it is absolutely true that the
Soviet Union does have intentions which include all the countries of
the world, if they can manage it.
Only a few years ago the Soviet Union had re1ations with fOUf
countries in Latin America. Today they have relations with twelve. I
think that it is incumbent upon us at least to be prepared, should that
mechanism turn into a national security threat, to be able to meet it.
Senator H\RT of ('olofnoo. T think von wOlllo recoPnizp nhove all
others that the Soviet Union is conducting operations clandestine and
otherwise in Great Britain and France and Scandinavia and all over
the world and that we are not overthrowing those governments. Does
91
anyone have a comment on this fact that the covert actions, covert
operations, are Third-World-oriented?
Mr. CLIFFORD. Perhaps this would help answer it.
After the Bay of Pigs debacle I went to see President Kennedy and
I remember very well the way he had analyzed that failure ill his
mind.
He said he had made a catastrophic decision to get into the Bay of
Pigs. He said he made that decision because his advice was wrong. He
said the advice he received was wrong because it was based upon incorrect
facts, and those incorrect facts were due to faulty intelligence.
So that's how he traced it in his mind, which confirms the point that
you are making. That was when he appointed the Presidents Foreign
Intelligence Advisory Board. A group of nine citizens went to work
and worked hard for the next 2 years. I think they had some beneficial
effect upon the product that was being turned out.
But this is an extraordinarily difficult job to do. You would suppose
that with all of the contacts we had with Cuba, that we would have
some penetration in Cuba, and we do not. We don't have any penetration.
The difficulty is if you go into a totalitarian type of country, it is
organized to prevent your getting information. They have a top intelligence
man and then they have one for each province, for each town,
for each block, and then the blocks are even broken down, so that there
is a constant web of information flowing in.
We sent teamsllit one time or another in Cuba to try to get information.
They were "all rolled up," is the expression, and we never heard
from them again.
We have no penetration in the Soviet Union. We would like to have
but the job of penetrating a totalitarian government is enormously
difficult. We've had to turn to other means, and we have been enormously
successful in that regard with the Soviets, that is in our scientific
effort. We get most of our intelligence, the percentage is overwhelming,
we get most of our intelligence from scientific means. 'Ve have
means by which everybody knows. We have satellites and a photograph
force. We have agencies that analyze all the electronic signals
that go through the air that emanate from the different countries.
So we get a great deal of our intelligence this way. We hope it's
improving all the time. It's not been very good in the past. I hope it's
better now, but I assure you they will continue to make mistakes in
the future because of the difficulties.
Senator HART of Colorado. I think vour observations are true about
the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, Ohina, Cuba and so on. I'm talking
about the Latin and Southeast Asian countries which for all purposes
are intelligence sieves. We had agents all over Vietnam and still
for Teasons that have been detailed did not get accurate information.
Or at least it didn't get to the President or he chose not to pay attention
to it. We had all kinds of operations going on in Chile which
were described yesterday. The predominant situation and set of circumstances
in most of these countries is that we have little or no
trouble infiltTating and operating.
One final question. particularly for Mr. Phillips. Do you think that
we should be held, because of our Constitution and traditions, to a
92
different standard, a higher standard than our principal adversary, the
Soviet Union?
Mr. PHILLIPS. First, for 1 minute, Mr. Clifford, about your statement
that we don't have penetration of the Soviet Union and Cuba. I
think that's not entirely accurate. I think that would be unfair to our
intelligence service.
Answering your question, Senator, the people who work in intelligence
have had these same problems which have been posed today.
It's obvious that this committee has been agonizing about them, and
you can imagine that the people who have been instructed to carry
out the tasks that entailed these ambiguities find it even more difficult.
It has often been suggested to me that if you were in the intelligence
business so long, and you admit there were mistakes and things went
wrong, why didn't you quit? And the reason is that when you are
faced with a personal, ethical, moral problem of this kind, you must
resolv~ it in the context of a long period of time, throughout your
expenence.
I recently read a book called "Resignation and Protest," by Thomas
Franck and Edward Weisband, that indicated there were only two
U.S. officials in our political history who had resigned successfully
in protest. One of them was Harold Ickes, and the other was Elliot
Richardson.
So you face this personal situation, and that leaves the broader question.
My answer to that is I wish that the problem did not exist. I
wish there weren't dark alleys. I wish that the policemen in London
still wore those funny little hats and didn't carry guns, but I'm
afraid they must.
So we must try to resolve this dilemma, given these different facts.
It's a question I find very difficult to answer, Senator.
Senator HART of Colorado. Is it impossible to answer?
Mr. PHILLIPS. I think we now hope that we can with this very distinguished
group of Senators wrestling with the problem. I think
it's a good test of whether or not it's resolvable.
Senator HART of Colorado. I think the Senators are going to turn
out all right on it. We're concerned about the CIA agents.
Mr. PHILLIPS. Yet, it's easily resolved, when CIA people are concerned.
What are the guidelines, what does the instruction "other
duties and functions" mean? It's a very simplified answer. Legislation
written by someone who has the Constitution at his left elbow. That's
the way to resolve it.
Senator HART of Colorado. Or maybe a director of the CIA who
kept the Constitution at his left elbow also.
Mr. PmLLIPS. Absolutely.
Senator HART of Michigan. I don't know who wrote that book, but
we might make a footnote. You know, Richardson's resignation was
the result of a commitment he made under oath to the Judiciary
Committee, after 2 weeks of wrangling.
Mr. PHILLIPS. Sir, I was quoting the author.
Mr. HALPERIN. I think we're down to one person who resigned
under protest successfully.
Senator HART of Michigan. Gentlemen, you've been patient with us
for a long morning.
93
Before expressing my thanks again, one or more of you might have
something that you would like to add to the record.
Mr. Vance?
Mr. VANCE. No.
Mr. CLIFFORD. No, I think we'ye covered everything.
Mr. PHILLIPS. No.
Mr. HALPERIN. No.
Senator HART of Michigan. Well, as I'm sure Senator Church did
at the outset, as we conclude I would like to thank each of you on
the panel. As Senator Mathias said, there are fewer skyrockets this
morning but a lot more substance.
We are grateful to you.
[Whereupon, at 12 :55 p.m., the committee recessed subject to the
call of the Chair.]
67-146 0 - 76 - 7

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