(00:00:01) Oh no with modern Communications, you can control it from the center and anything is delicate is that you're really not going to confide very very dangerous decision to to anybody but the highest level and you can do it from the heart from the highest level Now 50 years ago. You couldn't because you couldn't make the communication go fast enough. But today you can so that does give the (00:00:27) president when (00:00:29) President Kennedy was managing the Cuban Missile Crisis. The White House was in direct contact with the commander of a destroyer and next to us next to a Soviet freighter with the missiles on it. And that makes sense. I mean you're dealing with things that have enormous capabilities to go wrong and it's right that the decision and the responsibility be taken at the highest level for those decisions. Oh, no, I think I think we had a mechanical problem. And that seems to have been the basis for it. Murphy's Law is going to work and these operations both barrels when I took off to drop into Norway eight planes took off to drop four of them made the (00:01:19) Target and (00:01:22) that was about what you might expect. Some of it is Pure (00:01:31) Fantasy. The James Bond is obviously fantasy this Superman able to do everything and all sorts of athletic and sexual and other exploits which is just somebody's dream. There are other authors like Graham Greene. Look how a some of the (00:01:53) others who have spent some time (00:01:55) in intelligence work and while they naturally dramatize the situations that they're recounting. There's a (00:02:04) fundamental reflection of some of the (00:02:06) realities of the other problem. (00:02:09) Those normally are the kind of experience that that individual had an intelligence. I mean for instance the Caray's experiences heavily heavily influenced (00:02:23) by the fact that his working experience was when he was in the British service in Germany and in the somewhat backstage war that was occurring there between the Soviet and American and intelligence are and British intelligence services in the in the Cold War period now (00:02:42) what he some of his the sourness (00:02:45) of his his novels (00:02:47) is a reflection of some of the (00:02:49) atmospherics of that particular campaign (00:02:54) some of the other ones (00:02:56) the the His effort and I have I haven't read the school boy. So I really can't comment on that. (00:03:06) I think the stress on the enormous Arcane Intrigue of (00:03:12) the mole within the mole within the (00:03:14) mole is an a novelist. So quite legitimate dramatization of the problem of a mole. I mean we had to mold (00:03:25) we had Kim philby Alger Hiss was convicted of perjury when he said he wasn't a Soviet agent. (00:03:32) So there are such things but then I think for dramatic purposes (00:03:37) you stress certain elements of it and make it a little more dramatic than maybe the reality actually was so George Smiley is at least in part. It's (00:03:46) yeah, there's some truth in it. There is truth in it. Any good (00:03:50) art will have a reflection of reality. What about the picture that is painted not only in novels but a lot of times in news. That the CIA tends to be very Gadget or a heavy on technology and lacking and flare and Imagination and individuality. Well Americans are Gadget oriented. Let's face it. It's one of our problems. We are to gadget oriented. We look for gadgets to do things whether their satellites or whether they're bugs or whatever to do things of frequently. This is particularly true in our military services. We look for some new weapon that's going to be the solution to all our problems (00:04:31) at the same time. I think we have people who have learned the art of human relations, which is the fundamental one of Espionage work (00:04:40) how you develop a relationship with an (00:04:41) individual where he trust you and you trust him and (00:04:45) and yet you have certain controls on the situation on both sides and certain protections. So I (00:04:52) would say Americans (00:04:54) just as a as a nation are no little one inclined to her gadgetry. (00:04:58) We've had enormous success with our gadgets (00:05:01) are satellite photography. Our (00:05:02) Electronics have (00:05:04) revolutionized the world of intelligence. (00:05:07) We don't have to send spies (00:05:09) out of Hong Kong up to the Manchurian border (00:05:12) to find out what might be going on there because we look down on it and we know exactly what's happening there. So don't knock the technology that it's sometimes popular to say that while we've turned away from Human intelligence and gone totally for technology. That's not true. But we have enormously increased our knowledge of the world's (00:05:33) thanks to and (00:05:34) Technology. We still have many things that have to be met by good intelligent human beings the subtleties of political (00:05:43) problems the the (00:05:45) pratley psychology of foreign groups and Nations and individuals. These can't be determined by any technology. They have to be determined by good people who can have a sense of feel for (00:05:58) This and then (00:05:59) of course the really end product the process of thinking about what all this information means. That's the big question now and that's the one we have to improve our capability on (00:06:12) we're not enough. We're not (00:06:14) talking about the need for a good batting average. We're talking about the need not only for a good Fielding average. We're talking about a situation in which we can't afford any errors and that puts a very high standard indeed in the accuracy not so much of our collection but of our judgment about what it means and what we then do about it. So you (00:06:35) get enough information in it's just a matter (00:06:37) of the information is collection process were doing fairly. (00:06:41) Well thanks to the technology. Thanks to the scholarship. Thanks to the the (00:06:46) operations that are still going on that people still do conduct. We need to protect those a little better than we're doing now, but I think the basic techniques are (00:06:55) fairly well worked out about collection. (00:06:58) We need to improve is our analysis and our communication of the results so that we can really make more sharp the warnings that we need to be aware of of things that might happen. The purpose of intelligence is not to put a crystal ball in front of you to show you what the future is going to be and then condemn you to live it. The purpose of intelligence is to alert you as to what the future may be so that you can act so that it comes out better than the prediction was (00:07:31) and therefore the prediction turns out to be wrong incidentally but wrong for the right reason (00:07:37) now this I think is the thing we need to do a better job of you can't quite cry wolf wolf every day and expect anybody paying attention to you. So you have to become more selective. You have to focus on the fundamental threats the fundamental dangers, but build up a very very area error free (00:07:57) estimate. Those major dangers that can occur to us (00:08:00) and you may never reach total Perfection where you never make a mistake, but we've got to raise the (00:08:07) level of that Fielding average as high as we can start a function of money (00:08:11) or no. No, it's a function of training education Personnel (00:08:16) techniques all the rest money as a part of it, but I don't think you know spending an extra x billion dollars would really solve that problem. It's a (00:08:26) problem of of discipline (00:08:28) of imagination of how we go at it one last question. Are there really a lot of people like Gordon Liddy working as a (00:08:36) spy. So thank goodness Gordon Liddy never did work for (00:08:39) CIA thank heaven (00:08:42) and the question but your question is well taken the fact is that a few people in the agency began to read the Spy novels and believe began to live them. Howard hunt of course not only read them but wrote them (00:08:59) and then began to live them (00:09:02) and that super dramatic kind of approach is what usually gets people into great deal of trouble and that's what the improved discipline (00:09:12) of the agency and the improved (00:09:14) accountability and the improved control Machinery. I think is designed to eliminate it is it will also be (00:09:23) eliminated by the higher quality (00:09:24) of young people the better training the better indoctrination the more sensible indoctrination then in my generation where people just started it and did what they thought was useful, but now we have a track record that certain things are are not (00:09:41) only (00:09:43) counterproductive, but just plain wrong and we scratch those out and we don't do those (00:09:50) anymore. So that's at least that part of the problems out. We still have some more problems of (00:09:54) improving. (00:09:55) Things but I think that (00:09:59) over romanticizing (00:10:00) problem (00:10:01) you can have certainly and we've had it in various people in the agency in the past. I think we're apt to get a little less of it. Now on the other hand. We can't eliminate it entirely because you do need some people with a flare you do need to some people who will take risks who will go into the dangerous situation and you're not going to do (00:10:26) that with pure career service types. (00:10:30) You've got to have people with a commitment with a belief that they're doing something important for themselves and their country and that's why it's so important to me to have this new Charter for CIA so that there will be clear statement of what we (00:10:44) expect our intelligence agencies to do. There will (00:10:46) be a clear set of controls and we can once again admirer. The people who devote themselves anonymously to their National nation's service and not feel that they're all a bunch of liddy's or assassins or something else. That's the importance of the charter that we once again. We have to straighten out the our relationship not overdramatize and dream (00:11:12) about our intelligence agents, (00:11:14) but don't kick them around either. They're doing something important (00:11:17) for our country.