Many nations have investigated their intelligence services. Sometimes this has been because of abuses, suspected or real. Sometimes it is because of failings. The United States investigated its intelligence services after Pearl Harbor and drew the lesson of the need for central intelligence, to draw together all the bits and pieces of information available to our Government into an overall assessment.
A major difference exists between foreignand the one we are now conducting of American intelligence, Most haveespected individual suchudge, with full authority to conduct thein secrecy. In the fullness of time, he delivered his final conclusions and recommendationsober and serious review, unaccompanied by press coverage or leak.
Our present investigationegislative one. Some subjects are indeed investigated in privacy, but some are displayed to the TV cameras. The purpose is to ensure all of us in America that we willesponsibleservice, one which will conform to our Constitution and laws* But in this process, we Americans must beabout the way we go about our investigation. Ne must not call upon secrecy to hide failures or wrongs in our past, as President Ford has clearly ordered. But if we yield to
the temptation of sensation, we can hurt our safety. If we only seek publicity, we can reduce our protection. Our investigators must be responsible with respect to theinformation they learn in privacy. And ourpersonnel must be responsible to retain the secrets they pledged to respect, as well as to follow the oath they took to our Constitution and laws. We must draw the line between what can and should be shared withillion fellow Americans, and this, inevitably, with our foreign adversaries, and what all of us would agree should beso that our intelligence can work.
This responsibility is notoliticalitoral responsibility. Itesponsibility for the lives of our agents and for the livelihood of the American companies and individuals who helped theirwith the assurance that their connection withwould never be revealed. Itesponsibility for the integrity of the work of our technicians who discovered chinks in an adversary's armor which can be corrected if Above all, itesponsibility for the lives of all Americans who seek safety and peace from the many threats facing us in today's world and the world of the future.
We liveangerous world. uclear missileinutes away is aimed and cocked at us here. The mutual
deterrents we may have established with our major adversary can be frustrated by the spread of easily manufactured nuclear weapons to reckless despots or paranoiac terrorists. The increasing interdependence of the world's economy, the growing problems of over-population and under-production, and the instabilityorld order in which only about thirty ofnited Nations share our democratic standards of government, allanger to our country. The rush of technology into new dimensions poses the hope of its use for the settlement of human problems but also the danger of its use in unexpected weapons systems.
Thus we need good intelligence today and we will need it in the world ofss. We must not allow ourselves to be hypnotized by the mistakes or even the misdeeds of intelligence in the SO'ss so that we are blinded to the problems ahead and deprive our country of the intelligence needed to anticipate and meet them.
I do not say that we should not look backward and learn lessons from the past. But when we look backwards, let us look at the whole picture and not just the individual incidents. Let us apply the intelligence doctrine ofall the information before we make an overall
assessment about our intelligence capabilities, not depend only on one jigsaw piece. Let us see the good with the bad. Let us see the big with the small. Let us add the new to the old. Let us listen to the studious as well as the brave. Let us learn from technology as well as the library. Out of all these, we will see that we Americans have the best intelligence in the world.
The best intelligence is not necessarily perfect. We do not yet have, nor pretend torystal ball at the CIA building. Rather, we centralize all the raw informationpen, clandestine, technical. We subject it to rigorous analysisorps of experts which cannot be matched in any other country. Their products are educational in the best sense of the word. They raise the level of understanding of our Government of the forces and factors at work in the world around us. Taking bits and pieces of information, they draw precise measurements, not only of where hostile weapons are today, but also of the development andprograms which will bring new weapons into existence years ahead.
There are unknowables as well as unknowns in the world around us. We make no pretension that our intelligence
It is thus totally unjust to ask the dedicated men and women of CIA who served their country at the front of danger also to serve nowational scapegoatevision of our values and consensus of the pastears. We must investigate our intelligence, but we must do soesponsible manner, so that we do not, five or ten years from today, investigate why and how we destroyed our intelligence
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