Given Refreshments in the atrium. You haven't you have all been given these cards with your programs. If you would like to ask a question at the appropriate point after the break in the program write it down on this card. You can give it to any staff person during the intermission or here in the hall afterward. Before the buzzer goes off on me. Let me say a few words about. Mr. Mondale many of you were here during the first lecture in February when Maxine Isaac's asked us what it is about. Mr. Mondale that makes us keep coming back to be with him and to learn from him. She noted his great mind his core beliefs his wit and centered on his extraordinary Grace humility is not a characteristic. We ordinarily associate with people who have spent a lifetime in politics, but there is about this man a genuine modesty and appreciation for the worth of others that are awesome evidence of that Grace, but that's not all he has Clear Sight through the span of his career his words and deeds shine borrowing from a traditional Moravian children's him his Words indeed shine with a clear pure light I worked on mr. Mondale staff during the church committee era and for many years after I don't remember him once boasting of what he had done or complaining about the pressure. He was under only many years later did I learn from a former staffer to another church Committee Member that mr. Mondale was absolutely unique among his colleagues in pouring through synthesizing and using their extraordinary findings to drive the committee to drive the Senate and later to drive the new Carter Mondale Administration to take effective concrete action. He really LED our country through those tough decisions. It is emblematic of mr. Mondale's Integrity that while preparing for this lecture. He never thought twice about turning over the entire 900-page file the FBI compiled on him when a reporter asked for it. Mr. Mondale's decency courage and very clear sight are evident in what you will hear this morning. It is a privilege to introduce to you Walter F Mondale. Thank you very much. Thank you very much Gayle for that those very very kind words and I want to thank everybody here for this wonderful. Turnout. We thought this was a lecture series that would give a few of us a chance to be alone. But but instead you're here in high quality and great numbers and I am personally grateful for that. I want to thank Gail Harrison who just spoke for her leadership in this program Max Isaac's our senior advisor who's here today? Michael Lerner are talented historian Genet dud row. My research assistant Barbara Thompson who made everything run smoothly today and Linda Patterson my Administrative Assistant also want to thank Northwest Airlines for providing transportation and my partner's at Dorsey and Whitney for their encouragement. I'm grateful to our sponsors who have done so much to make this. Series of success and PR McAllister historical society and of course the Humphrey Institute the panelists will be introduced later, but I'm very very proud of this panel. And I think we're all going to have a wonderful morning listening to them and a young my old friend from many many years Taylor Branch David Aaron and James kallstrom last February in the first lecture of this series. I tried to use the seating of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic party at the Atlantic convention in that long hot summer of 1964 as a lens for looking at the Civil Rights Movement. Looking back at that lecture. I think two themes emerged one was the struggle for social justice in this country was an inspiration to so many Americans Civil Rights was a rallying cry a called get involved a summons to public service that message of Fannie. Lou Hamer was a message not only of courage and dignity but also of Engagement and commitment the other theme that emerged was the battle between faith and fear people in the Civil Rights Movement had a deep religious Faith to be sure and it comfort that him through jailings and beatings and far worse, but they also had a profound Civic Faith a Faith in American democracy and its institutions a belief in the rule of law and its protection of personal Liberty with all that people had to endure it is amazing how tenaciously they held onto their faith in government. What we saw poised against that Faith Was Fear the fear that democracy might be too fragile to tolerate diversity or descent the fear that made racism and discrimination. So virulent the fear that Bull Connor for fed on the fear that killed the young civil rights workers shorter journey and Goodman. So today I want to look again at the battle between faith and fear a decade later and in a different area. In the early 70s, we saw the struggle between faith and fear played out and key historic events are painful National debate over the war in Vietnam. The revelation of the government's public deceit in support of the war and the Watergate scandal which for the first time forced the resignation of an American president by this time. I had been in the US Senate for almost 10 years. I had just abandoned my race for the presidency to widespread Applause and and I was now back full time in the Senate and slowly but surely seniority had become my friend. These were some of the most productive years in my career. It was during this time that I led the fight to reform the Senate filibuster rule. Chaired hearings on disadvantaged children, which led to the adoption of the Child and Family Services act later vetoed my by my dear friend. Mr. Dixon and I wrote my book the accountability of power toward a more responsible presidency. It's sold about four copies, but in and I tried to Grapple with my alarm over the steady downpour of government deceit then came the shocking news disclosed by Seymour Hersh in the New York Times accusing the CIA of massive spy operations aimed at American citizens here at home reports of other abuses soon followed and it ignited a firestorm of protest. I remember thinking for the first time that our democracy could be at risk. I believe that and I believe now that the threats from the Soviet Union were real and very dangerous. I believe there were a few Americans very few who wish the Soviet Union to Prevail but what many people feared but what was never true was that large numbers of Americans were allied with the Soviet Union against our own country this irrational fear led many people to believe that to protect our democracy. We had to violate some of its most basic principles. Against these fear was faith faith in the rule of law faith that when America protects the personal Liberties of its citizens. It is stronger not weaker faith that when America honors its Constitution. It is more secure and Powerful in the world and not less against these fears was the belief that our public officers even those who must operate in secret must obey the law as I read her. She's story. I wondered what had become of these most basic principles and I was not alone in January of 75 Senator poor story of Rhode Island moved that the Senate create a select committee on government operations to investigate these intelligence agencies. I don't believe that any of us were out to weaken the FBI or the other intelligence agencies in a world of crime and terrorism and foreign adversaries. We need these agencies and we need the best officers we can find I have worked with many of them over the years. They are gifted and committed. They often risked their lives for us and they deserve our respect when James cost him too speaks to us later this morning. We be we will be reminded of how important their work is to all of us. The committee we created no one is the church committee for its chairman. Frank church was really an unprecedented thing. It marked the first time in the history of this nation or any other that intelligence agencies would be subjected to this kind of thorough investigation by an outside Source there were 11 of us on the committee Frank Church filled heart D. Huddleston Bob Morgan Gary Hart, John Tower Howard Baker Barry Goldwater Charles Mathias dick schweiker and myself. As the investigation progressed. I was named chair of the domestic task force charged with investigating. The intelligence community's abuses against Americans here at home. We had an enormous responsibility investigating the FBI the CIA the NSA the Army Post Office and the IRS fortunately, we had a brilliant staff some of who are with us today Ambassador David Aaron who will be participating the panel Professor lock Johnson of the University of Georgia who was very very helpful to me in preparing my remarks. I must also mention Mike Epstein Mike was Central to all of our work and was to participate in today's conference tragically Mike died of cancer a few weeks ago and I would like to dedicate today's lecture to this wonderfully brilliant and caring human being who had a lot to do with the success of this committees work. It was Mike who came to me early in the investigation to warn that what we were uncovering was beyond belief that proved to be an understatement our investigation brought to light and appalling pattern of government lawlessness directed at American citizens much of it but not all had been are encouraged or ordered by top officials and presidents of both parties are final report filled 396 pages. And those were just the domestic abuse has all told the committee produce 13 volumes of evidence of abuses by American intelligence agencies and 96 recommendations for reform. None of the agencies question the accuracy of our findings and here's what we found. The FBI had kept files on 1 million Americans investigated a half million so-called subversive between 1960 and 74 without a single conviction the CIA with the post office cooperation illegally opened mail for over 20 years collecting information on a million-and-a-half Americans including John Steinbeck Hubert Humphrey Arthur Burns. And guess what Richard Nixon the National Security Agency intercepted every overseas telegram sent or received by Americans between 1947 in 1975. The IRS gave the FBI the tax returns of 11,000 groups and individuals and conducted audits of them as a form of political harassment Army intelligence investigated a hundred thousand American citizens during the Vietnam war the CIA conducted experiments with LSD and unwitting subjects the FBI designated 26,000 individuals to be incarcerated in the event of a National Emergency the list included Martin Luther King and Norman mailer. The FBI conducted hundreds of burglaries so-called black bag jobs a political group a master spy plan known as the Houston plan was prepared for and approved by President Nixon to monitor Vietnam War protesters who were assumed to be under the influence of foreign powers Nixon later called the operation off but major aspects of the operation were implemented. Anyway without formal approval some had been underway for years. Even today I find it almost impossible to fully explain the enormity of what we found or for that matter. The inanity of much of what was done. One of the things that surprised me during the hearings was the response. I often received about the committee's work from the public many people ask me. What's the problem these agents are looking for bad people and if you haven't done anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about I heard that repeatedly. Well, what about it were innocent people and decent causes hurt by these secret investigations did these agencies ever go after American citizens who had broken? No laws, simply because their ideas were different the answer to these questions is a clear. Yes. These investigations targeted Americans from every Walk of Life. No meeting was too small no group to insignificant. The FBI investigated women's groups veterans associations academic religious environmental civil rights organizations, the American Indian movement here in Minnesota and a deewar groups in our own State and there is no example that better proves the danger of these practices to Americans innocent Americans, then the FBI secret war against dr. Martin Luther King This Record still astounds me all these years later. Dr. King had violated no laws. He was the nation's greatest civil rights hero. He was a gentle Apostle of non-violence a religious leader acting from his deepest beliefs yet under the bureau's counterintelligence program known as cointelpro king Southern leadership conference was classified as a black hate group and King himself according to the bureau was the most dangerous negro leader in America and until his assassination in 1968 the bureau sought to discredit him and in their words take him off his pedestal Hoover went so far as to suggest the bureau replace king with a safer black leader of Hoover's own choosing. I think that was Sam Pearce was that they wanted Reagan's secretary of housing. Remember Reagan called mr. Mayor once The bureau's the bureau's campaign against King involved wiretap paid informants and agents who shadowed his every step and it didn't end with spying the bureau set out to destroy his career and his marriage. It said Anonymous letters to newspapers denigrating his record The Bureau tried to block King from receiving honorary degrees to keep him from meeting with the Pope. They bugged his hotel rooms to record his romantic Liaisons and then supplied reporters with a stream of pure Aryan stories about his private life at the height of the campaign the bureau mailed an anonymous letter and embarrassing tapes to King. And what has been taken as an attempt to push King to suicide letter read as follows King. There is only one thing left for you to do and you know what it is you are done there is but one way out for you, you better take it before your filthy abnormal fraudulent cell is Bared to the nation my old friend Andy Young Who was one of the Kings closest aides and Taylor Branch the foremost chronicler of the Civil Rights Movement will talk about the impact of his efforts on dr. King the civil rights movement and American democracy later J. Edgar Hoover deserves special mention here. He had been director for for 48 years. It is later years Hoover was a twisted man who sue saw the bureau as his personal fiefdom many believe Hoover became angry with King because King wants publicly questioned whether the bureau had done enough to protect civil. Rights workers from violence. But whatever. The reason Hoover hounded King for years subjective subjecting him to vindictive and Relentless harassment after all those years in office who were had gained far too much power armed with a personal collection of secret files that he kept in his own office Hoover collected embarrassing information on gossip and nearly everyone in Washington. No one not the Attorneys General who were supposed to be in charge of him. Not even the president has dared to challenge him respect to reporters some of the best who knew about the FBI attacks. And dr. King later admitted that they were afraid to write about it. Even Lyndon Johnson. When asked why he had reappointed Hoover who was then deep into his 70s. He said he would rather have him inside pissing out than outside pissing in Hoover Hoover was so powerful and I doubt very much that we could have conducted our investigation if he'd still been in charge of the bureau and alive, but it is too easy to portray Hoover as the sole villain as I mentioned in my first lecture and lecture Lyndon Johnson proved of the FBI says surveillance of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic at our 64 convention because he wanted to keep one step ahead of their political strategy. Even the Kennedys were guilty of intelligence abuses. In fact our committee found that every president from Roosevelt to Nixon had pressed these agencies to go beyond the law. This was a bipartisan problem these president saw the intelligence agencies as extensions of their own personal power as indeed. They were in an office whose Frustrations have driven every one of its occupants crazy the temptation to use these secret agencies to accomplish their agendas was just too much to resist. It was welcomed relief, no restraints no arguments what those presidents and who were also shared was a fear that we might not be able to protect ourselves from our enemies without breaking our own laws. But these fears were always exaggerated William Sullivan the top agent in the co until program that ran all these things for years at the very top close to Hoover for many many years told me that at their heart at their height. There were never enough American Communist to carry the smallest Precinct in New Hampshire. Besides you said the head of the national Communist Party Gus Hall was always going fishy when he was supposed to be working Gus Hall is you know is from Minnesota's Iron Range. No secret no surprise there but Hoover nevertheless fed the public sphere of widespread disloyalty when William Sullivan told Hoover that his agents could find no evidence that Martin Luther King was under the influence the Communist Hoover angrily rejected his report when Sullivan eventually reversed himself to satisfy his boss who were wrote. I'm glad to see that the light has finally though disability dismally delayed come to the Intelligence Division. I struggled for months to get over the fact that the Communists were taking over the radical over the racial movement, but our experts here couldn't or wouldn't see it. Ironically and the last few years we've been able to get into the KGB archives Soviet archives and we find out there that the KGB was in fact trying to discredit King at the same time because they considered him to be to moderate. The campaign against king and the other intelligence exercises excesses showed that we had created a secret world within government not a pot countable to the courts to the Congress or ultimately the American people as I reread the reread the long hearing record the other day. I realized that I'd made a pest of myself as I pressed one witness after another with one key question. Whatever happened to the law. The answers were stunning. I asked Tom Houston who devised the massive domestic spy plan the Nixon White House whether he was concerned. About the violations of the law. Here's his answer. None of them offered evidence that they were opening mail or intercepting private Communications and other acts which it was requested that the president authorized is that correct? The report indicated that there were no male openings. There were no surreptitious entry. And in fact, there were well, apparently there were all right. That's the information. I had the laws the law and we're doing folded if it's not popular you change it you don't take the law into your hand and play God and interfere with the rights of the American people just because there's something you don't like Center. I agree with that, but that isn't what you did. Well I Senator I understand that's not what I did. I also grilled an officer from the secret National Security Agency and here's his answer. Well you concerned about its legality. The gala T whether it's in what sense whether that would have been illegal thing to give. That particular aspect and didn't enter into the discussions. No, I was asking whether you were concerned about whether that would be legal and proper. We didn't consider it at the time. I asked to postmasters General if they were concerned that the CIA was breaking the law by opening the mail which was against the law. Here's what they said. I didn't know that and I don't know now that what the CIA was doing was illegal my feeling then and my feeling now is that the CIA had overall powers that put them in a different situation than other people. I must see the testimony of just heard from you. Mr. Day and you mr. Blunt scares me more than I expected to be because not only found gross an unconscionable interference with the male's which threatens the civil liberties of every American that we have the testimony of two former postmaster generals that they don't think it's wrong even today. When former FBI director Kelly testified I asked about a speech which had recently given in which he said quote. We must be willing to surrender small measure of our liberties to preserve the great bulk of them. Which rights would you have us give up? Under the fourth amendment should have the right to search and seizure. Where you at, you wouldn't give up the Fourth Amendment, right? Oh, no, not the right in general. No art. And then what right did you have in mind the right to be free from search and seizure. There's there's no such right in the constitution is there you can have search and seizures, but they must be reasonable under Court warrant that you mean that to go beyond that as right that you should be you should be able to go beyond all I do not mean on that. We should ever go on beyond the constitutional right here and at the end the hearing I remember my friend Phil Hart in a voice weakened by cancer saying that his family had been right all along. He said they had told him repeatedly that the FBI was trying to thwart his dissent against the Vietnam War. As a result of my superior wisdom and high office. He said I assured them that they were on pot. It just wasn't true. The FBI wouldn't do it then turning to the witness. Phil said in his sad voice what you have described as a series of illegal actions intended to deny citizens their first amendment rights, just like my children said none of us will ever forget that more moment. Unfortunately what we saw the victory of fear over faith was nothing new for us. We saw it in the alien Sedition Acts 90 1798 in the infamous loyalty Crusades here in Minnesota of the Minnesota Public Service committee during World War One in the detorri has Red Scare Palmer Raids following World War one and in the disgraceful internment of Japanese Americans during World War Two, that's what Joe McCarthy the house on American Activities Committee were all about and we now know as we look back at those times. All of it was based on unfounded fear. We disgraced ourselves and hurt innocent Americans at the end of our work the committee recommended several proposals. We found that there was no inherent Authority in the name of National Security authorizing a president or any agency to violate the law. We called for the creation of a permanent Senate committee on intelligence that would have authority over the entire intelligence Community the power to investigate the agencies and approve their budgets and their responsibility to clear nominees for top CIA jobs our recommendation at our recommendation Congress limited future FBI directors to a single 10-year term. We recommended that electronic surveillance May elope. Being an unauthorized entry should be used in the United States only by the FBI and only pursuant to a Judicial warrant other reforms help restore accountability beginning with 74 Hughes. Ryan ex-presidents now required to personally approve all important covert actions and report to them to the committee on a timely basis in 1978 Congress created a special Court to review domestic wiretap requests in the field of foreign Espionage attorney general Levi issued new regulations to keep the FBI focused on criminal investigations and out of politics. And while we fail to get a legislative Charter for the FBI and the Iran-Contra show Contra shows that a fair shows that abuses can still occur. I am sure our work strengthened not weakened these agencies almost every CIA and FBI director. After sense as agreed that oversight works and helps maintain public trust and accountability George Tenet. The Sea of the CIA recently said oversight is our most vital and direct link to the American people a source of strength that separates us from all other countries of the world. It gives our intelligence agencies discipline and Direction and protects us all as you may know. I want to use these lectures to make my contribution to history and to put in writing what I believe these experience should teach us. So here's what I believe we should learn from all of this first we should always have faith in the basic loyalty of the American people we've had bad apples always will but we're not a bad people. Secondly we should do everything that we need to do we can do everything we need to do to protect ourselves here at home within the law and we Much stronger not weaker when we do so finally beware of public officers holding unaccountable power. We are wonderful people the best ever, but we are not angels in the Magnificent Federalist Paper 51 written to support and explain our constitution Madison and Hamilton wrote these words. What is government itself? But the greatest of all Reflections on human nature if men were Angels no government would be necessary. If Angels were to govern men neither external or internal controls on government would be necessary but in framing a government, which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this you must first enable the government to control the governed and in the next place oblige it to control itself a dependence on the people is no doubt the primary control and government but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary percussion precautions. That's what we try to do and that's what I truly believe. Thank you. Thank you very much. I walked in this morning and I kept thinking can I call him fritz or not? Call him Fritz and I've always done it. That way we met in 1968 met before that through my wife who used to write for the st. Paul Pioneer Press and in 1968. I was remembering flying out here. I used to cover campaign funds was covering the 68 election money in politics. And Fritz and Fred Harris and to reporters and a young man named Herbert. Allen were flying out. I think to the New Mexico convention because I used to go cover conventions. And it was a delightful moment. Then he was smoking a big cigar and smiling and he's always been smiling and he's always said the right thing and he's always made us think seriously about government. It's a great public servant. I'd like to talk a little bit the way press people do about themselves. We have huge Egos and we take it out all over the place. Originally. I was going to try to talk about content and sort of the meaning of all this but what I want to go back to is a sort of personal look at this thing, I grew up in the 40s and the 50s during World War Two it was an era in which we had great belief in government. We had a threat overseas and as youngsters, we listen to the radio and one of the great programs was the FBI in peace and War. Early in the 60s. I took a sabbatical from writing and Senator Fulbright asked me to write a run investigation for 18 months on foreign government lobbying something I had written about and I got my first look inside government. And at that point CIA oversight was a private meeting that Senator Russell and about four other Senators had with dick Helms wherever headed the CIA and no other no other Committee in Congress looked into it and then house it was even smaller was the chairman of the Appropriations Committee alone. And we all trusted everybody. I mean there was a cold war coming on and we believed and this is a trusting country. But as for its laid out things went awry and they went awry because we were fearful. And we were also unknowing and sort of naive 1959. I was writing for some North Carolina papers and working with a man named Charlie Bartlett who was writing a column and who the added sort of bonus was a very close friend president then President Kennedy. And I had gone down to Cuba right after Castro taking over. And wrote about the Cuban Revolution and within about two months of Castro taking over and interviewed people and they were so excited because they hated Americans we had used Cuba as kind of our gambling whorehouse and they had no identity of their own and it didn't matter that there were some harsh things beginning but they were their own people. I remember coming back on the plane sitting next to a Cuban who said did you visit our National Gallery? And I said, no, I hadn't been to the National Gallery and had you visited our national museum and I said no I did not visited me anymore as a reporter. I was talking to people and he said no Americans ever do they visit our casinos and they visit our whorehouses and that's going to change and I wrote that. The reason I mention it is that year. I also wrote the first story. I wrote for the Washington Post who was a freelance piece, even then I sort of poking into the budget and appropriation bills and everything and it turned out the J Edgar Hoover for the previous five years ago on up to the hill and ask for an armored car that he knew your armored car. He needed protection but five years in a row he did it and so I was in my 20s and had really seen very much of the world and decided I'd write a story and sell it to the post and in the process of gathering information. I also got the plans from the general Services Administration about how thick the armor was going to be under his car and with the place glass windows were like such and such as I wrote the piece. Without thinking twice about it. And it turned out later when I went to work for Senator Fulbright that it was one of the first things that was in my FBI file that was shown not just centerfold by bit Center Hickenlooper is the ranking Republican, but then I had done one thing was even worse. I'd been in serve my Army time in counterintelligence initially just doing Security reviews, but I ended up doing interrogations of potential spies in Washington, very exciting and After was over in the same year 59 there was something called a Vienna use Festival which I went to after I went to Cuba and Charlie Bartlett told me a group up in Cambridge was putting together an anti-communist group to go to what was essentially a youth congress for people around the world that the Soviets are running in order to recruit young leaders from abroad. And Charlie said it'd be a great story and why don't you go and it would be as I used to describe it a college weekend was Russians. And so I went it was only a hundred dollars round trip plane fare from Vienna included all your food and living you're living on a fair grounds, which had everybody lived together and what over on a Plane full of Americans and got there and suddenly discovered that the people that were with me on her all had their way paid by this cambridge-based group. And they were all college students but they were student leaders their editors and Publications and little by little they all got pulled off to go to the Chinese Opera or the Bolshoi ballet and nobody went to the meetings in which we always supposed to sort of present American View and so I ended up running and delegation. I came back and within about a month or two I had dinner with somebody who's a friend of mine who I thought worked in the Army and some out behind the arras came one of the Deputy directors of CIA to announce it. I just taking part in one of their big I student operations and what I consider joining the agency and at I was stunned I was about 26 and you know, what what the blazes was going on and but I decided I was single and sort of a Buccaneer figure and I said I'd think about it. And so will you can't think about it too long? Because in order to insert you in the job we had picked you had to go attend another Congress as the representative of the American youth movement So within about two weeks, I was voted the delegate by Young Democrats young Republic whole bunch of groups, which they were manipulating and I became a delegate and by the time I went over there, I was very uneasy with the whole thing. So I didn't Didn't join the agency, although did a lot of people still think I did and that this is one of the great undercover operations will time. The only reason I lay this all out. Is in 1961 two years after I before I win obviously cautious fellow excitement encounter childhoods. I went to the bureau and told him I was going when I came back. I was debriefed about it. I wrote about it in the Washington star. In 1961 My Den ex-wife called me on a Sunday totally hysterical. She had applied for a job with the Navy that required a security clearance. They had called her in on a Sunday in Navy intelligence and in front of Navy Intelligence Officers and to FBI people. She was asked to disclose my communist background and they had on the desk and she describes it as a sort of five inch high background paper on me and the Communist festival and everything I had said. And therefore it was proof positive and that she should disclose all my friends in college all friends that we'd have grabbed got married when I was 21. I was child and she sort of close it off by saying in if you don't do this, you can't see your son again because you're being irresponsible and just a terrible father. I was lucky enough because Charlie Bartlett New the president whose and talk to the under Secretary of the Navy and within a week. They got the clearance, but it was my first exposure to what those records could be useful instead of being rational. I then got angry and took part in a group book that was written about Hoover for conference and Princeton in the early 60s in which I again sort of went through the budget and again just like the car the cars by the way were Justified later on the grounds that he gave them he offered them to the president. Anytime president wanted to go to some City Hoover would be able to offer them a car there by the president could save money and not have to ship his own cards when a little things you used to do for people. The same thing was done in with his probation for agents. It turned out for eight years in a row, he would go up and say we need 50 more agents or hundred more agents and Congressman Rooney of New York who regularly gave him anything. He wanted gave him the money except when I added up all the new agents and got money for and the agency had he would have had twice a bigger Bureau because he just took the money and spend it on something else and when that article appeared he really went bananas and Rooney get up on the floor of the house and attack me personally and of course pulled out the fact that I was a communist because I had gone to the Communist Youth Festival. And use Festival story has followed me ever since. That's nothing compared as Fritz and said to what he did. To the civil rights movement and what he did to even minor people. And it's something that that it's hard in these days to consider and to think could happen but it did happen and although we have put safety. Clauses in this in legislation legislation is only as good as the people who want to use it. I covered ran Contra 4 5 years Iran-Contra in many ways was a failure of the Congress. To actively investigate what was going on because they were fearful that they may have been wrong about what was going on in in Nicaragua. They never felt strongly enough in their own to call the Reagan administration's Bluff to go down and make their own investigations. And so it was a sort of a deadlock between the people that should have been enforcing the rules and the people that were misusing the rules. So in a democracy, you have to keep active and you have to keep working. The last point I want to make is that as has been pointed out the church committee came about as a direct result of a articles by Sy Hersh. A lot of the FBI misuse of its powers to go after the Civil Rights Movement was was exposed by Jack Nelson. The first book on the failures of the CIA was done by Tom Ross and a wise all of them done by reporters. I have a basic belief that that kind of reporting people getting involved in people Taking Chances is important part of this whole process as is congress's being involved and the public people at large willing to take chances go out on a limb and one of my concerns about the current day is that there is less of that and in part there's less of that because the institutions of the press are less eager to take them on because they've been more and more centralized. That's just my own sort of private thing that that that you need an active populist looks at these things and raises questions, you need an act of Congress that makes use of its powers in the right way. Not the political way and you need a very active press it's willing to take chances And when they see something wrong right about it and keep writing about it until it's corrected those three things together are what make this country work and if one of them is out of balance or two of them, I think we're in real trouble. Now, I'm going to yank myself the first of our speakers and and somebody I admire very much for coming into this and taking this on and and he will do well because it's for it said the agency and the bureau are filled with good hard-working public servant. Who care about the very things that we're talking about James calcium is worked with Bureau for 27 years before his retirement worked in Washington. He's worked in New York. He's worked in Baltimore. He's best known for appearing on television, which is a tragic way for somebody to be known and for handling the TWA Flight 800 under the public pressure of having to deal with news men who don't really care what's going on. They just want to make news he retired from the bureau in 97. He senior executive with MBNA America and working for a competitor voice as a consultant CBS News James kallstrom. Take off my watch. I don't want to go over that 10 minutes and get hooked. wow, that's I was sitting there thinking what am I going to say when I get up here, but I think I'll just take my 10 minutes to tell you a little bit about myself as I think someone that epitomizes the vast majority of people that that I saw working in the FBI, I grew up in a little town in Massachusetts born in 1943 of a lower-middle-class family. My father was a musician and a car salesman. I worked my way through the University of mass and graduated and went in the Marine Corps. And the spring of 1998. That vice president Mondale talked about I was sitting in the middle of the demilitarized zone in Vietnam taking on average 500 to a thousand rounds of incoming artillery from the North Vietnamese who we could see across the Ben Hai River. I was with Young Americans in my view that were highly patriotic. Whose actions were highly honorable? but in the context of what they were doing And is portrayed by the Hollywood crowd? We're pot of events in our life that the deserve rightly so much criticism. A real complex situation. I joined the FBI in 1970. Spend a brief period of time in Baltimore, Maryland then went to New York City. and as I recall back in the challenges facing Us in the FBI That were plain to me were the influence of organized crime on our society interestingly enough in those years of the 40s 50s and 60s. law enforcement the FBI in particular Did a little in my view to combat organized crime? And when I came into New York City in the early 70s organized crime had a Stranglehold on the United States what I mean by that is they had tremendous influence in the labor movement, the international longshoremen's Union all the ports along the Eastern Seaboard of the United States the produce markets the meat markets the fish markets the construction trades the laborers union the electrical union the Teamsters Union. You couldn't build a building in New York City without paying off organized crime at multiple levels, and then you just hoped that it was built to the specifications. It was a big problem. The other thing that I remember is the Cold War many of us in this room. I'm sure remember crawling under a little wooden desks in the 50s with while the air raid sirens went off and we didn't think much of it when we were 7 or 8 years old, but I don't know what the wooden desk would have done to protect us from thermonuclear war, but when I came to New York in 1971, it was clear to me. Although I did not work in that field. I work in organized crime that this was very serious serious. Matter of the Russians were intercepting the telephone traffic. They were sitting underneath the microwave length from White Plains down into New York City. They were listening in on IBM and Grumman Aviation. It's not a coincidence in my view that the MiG-29 and the M14 look almost identical I mean We had agents in the FBI fighting the Cold War against the Soviet Union and it was a scary time course, we had kidnappings and we had Sky Jackson's Remember Sky jackings. Remember the notion where you didn't want to get on a plane without a armed Marshall because of the proliferation. These are serious matters. And I on every day of my life that I can ever remember and I believe most of the people that I worked with I certainly can't vouch for all of them, but came to work get up early in the morning and came into New York City for two reasons number one to protect the public safety and number two the protect the National Security and I never had a different opinion than that the entire time close the 28 years that I spent. In the decade of the 80s the FBI with the help of Congress passing the RICO legislation back in the late 60s and early 70s basically took out organized crime. In fact indicted the commission of organized crime and all the heads of the families. And although there still organized crime the United States. It's a it's a fraction of what it was when I came in. We move ahead to the 90s in the challenges that I faced as I was in charge of the FBI office in New York City the flagship Office of the FBI the largest Office of the FBI in the decade of the 90s in those challenges were obviously terrorism. Weapons of mass destruction. We had the World Trade Center bombing. We had the case of the blind Sheikh who was with others conspiring to blow up the Holland Tunnel the Lincoln Tunnel the United Nations and the FBI office. The night of the tragic explosion of TWA Flight 800 we were picking the jury in a federal case in the southern district of New York to try Ramsey Yosef. Who was The Mastermind of the World Trade Center and who had left the confines of the United States that evening and had spent many years as we say in law enforcement on the lam during that period of time in the Philippines in Manila has to conspiracy to blow up 12 American jumbo jet simultaneously as they translated the airspace from Asia back to the United States a conspiracy that came that close to actually happening be it for the lack of a fire that took place in a apartment house in the Philippines and the good work of the Philippine police. The protection of the national infrastructure the notion that our infrastructure our roads our water our electrical grid Communications grid is controlled largely by computers and the threat of computer hacking and the centralization of command and control in those systems is not without tremendous notice and tremendous worry. I remember cases in my tenure in New York with folks in Russia moved millions of dollars out of Citibank coming in over the internet and I remember a case where someone in Sweden the home of my ancestors. I might say here in, Minnesota. Shut down the 9-1-1 system and a good portion of Florida putting in Risk anyone who would have to call for an ambulance or need police assistance. the theft of intellectual property the notion that in the United States today at least according to scholars in the field the United States still accounts for about 70% of all the intellectual property created in the world and the notion of protecting that intellectual property as we move ahead into the new century and the fight for the global economic positioning. It's not So Much Anymore military fight, it's the fight for the economy. And of course every day cases of crimes against children and hundreds of other violations, but let me just talk about crimes against children things that I in the FBI and others were faced with on a daily basis. I'll never forget a case in Richmond, Virginia. involving a group of demented individuals in my point of view Who were planning to kidnap a child and kill the child? And make a snuff murder film for distribution to people in society that for some strange reason wanted that type of information. Those were some of the types of cases that. That the FBI worked for none of that is the say or none of that is a counterbalance to what vice president Mondale had to say to me. Most of that is just almost beyond my belief. for my experience in law enforcement You know one thing is clear to me though, the terrorist acts and other heinous crimes can only be prevented when law enforcement agencies can lawfully gather and understand the evidence in advance. This was true in 1980 when the plot to assassinate prime minister. Gandy United States wasn't covered. It was true in 1993 when The Plot to Bomb the United Nations and the other New York City landmarks was exposed was true in 1998 when for members of the true Knights of the Ku Klux Klan were arrested in Dallas for conspiracy to blow up a natural gas processing plant and commit robbery the bottom line being we had to know about these plots before we could stop them. What kept me awake at night in the FBI is the thought that one day a catastrophic weapon of mass destruction could be detonated in one of our cities. I made a practice in my tenure as the head of the office to talk to the new agents that would come in periodically. In fact when I left about a third of the investigative force in New York City was there less than three years and we'd sit in a room not too on similar to this not quite as nice. And they had been through training school to Quantico Virginia and they'd have all these challenges facing them and they've learned constitutional law and they you learn the Attorney General guidelines and they learn tons of things that was sort of gushing out of their areas and minds thinking that how were they going to fulfill this job and looking for me for advice or clues of what to do. And I would say to them probably they were mystified by my brevity of what I would say, but I said to them two things. After 27 years in this job. If you do these two things, you will be successful no matter what and the first thing is tell the truth be honest don't bend the rules. My view here running this office is that we can't solve that problem. With two of you, I'll put in for we can't do it for we do with eight. We can't do what they will do it with 20 can't do it 20 or do with a hundred. and I said the second thing is you're going to be out tomorrow in the next week in the next month's. interchanging with the American public you're going to be arresting drug dealers in the worst ghettos of this city. You're going to be interviewing in the chairman of Chase Bank. And you must always treat every individual you meet with dignity and respect. And if you do those two things representing the FBI, you will be successful. It was an interesting time. It was a paradox in many ways of Secrets and things that I always had and urging to talk about I know forget the tragedy of TWA in the advice from the bureaucracy for myself and not to participate in the public Arena of explaining that tragedy. But if I had not done that I could not tell you today or tell the public then for instance of the heroism of 18 19 20 year-old Americans from the Navy. The dough for 97 straight days. into the hundred and forty foot depths of the Atlantic Ocean and search their way with three foot visibility through the Tangled mess of a once-proud aircraft the dangerous sharp turns out a million pieces of an airplane the thousands of miles of wire dangling eerily in that morbid morbid grave and brought to the surface the bodies of children babies teenagers backpacks grandmother's Newlyweds. For whatever. We were paying them $400 a month or whatever. They never asked the race. They never asked the national origin of any of those folks. So in closing, I hope we never lose our reference for the blessings of a Democratic Society. And I'd say let us in our lifetimes take full control of our destiny use the good moral common sense that God gave us. And achieve the domestic tranquility that is envisioned and written into the Constitution. And I'd like to recall the words of Robert Kennedy who said each time a person stands up for an ideal or acts to improve the lot of others or strikes out against Injustice. That person sends forth a tiny Ripple of Hope. And Crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring. Those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of Oppression and resistance. To me. It is comforting that I know. That each of us can make a difference and I think we should never forget the words of Justice Brandeis who was quoted quite liberally in the church hearings who said roughly a page of history is worth a volume of logic. Thank you very much. Thank you, James. Our next feature is a return a veteran who's here. The first time Taylor branch is a journalist historian wrote about actually the CIA secret war in Cuba, but it's much better known for his books on Martin Luther King parting of the waters, which of course won the Pulitzer Prize. The second volume is now being considered worked on for a movie. And this is the third volume on the way for me. It's a pleasure because you know friend introduced Taylor Branch. Thank you. I'm glad to be back. I love these events. I enjoy following. Mr. Mondale. I think this is a wonderful series. I want to speak briefly about a personal view of the large issues involved here. I think he correctly in his lecture set the the tension between faith and democracy and fear and we rightly do have fears of terrorists as we've had fears of criminals and assassins and of the Nazis and the Communist party and so the whole balance between faith and fear and government is an issue that continues but in the in the in the 60s, we got out of balance. I want to take one moment to give you an illustration. Dr. King the whole movement was predicated on a hope that the national government would vindicate the founders premise of freedom and equal citizenship and they had hoped for an alliance all through the early 60s with the federal government to end segregation in the spring of 1963 after the demonstrations in Birmingham. There was this great breakthrough that got President Kennedy to introduce the Civil Rights Act. What became the Civil Rights Act of 64 and having had dr. King in the movement at arm's length for all the administration a finally invited. Dr. King for the first essentially political Council of Alliance about how to get this bill through in June of 1963. Very shortly after it had been introduced Medgar Evers had just been killed the dogs and fire hoses that just been turned loose and Birmingham. Dr. King gets his first meeting with President Kennedy and he was very eager to do this. This is an alliance that's been dreamed of to get the righteous the ideas of American democracy to end segregation in Alliance with the power of the federal government and he had a long agenda of things that he wanted to talk about came up on that morning and first Burke Marshall took, dr. King aside privately and said essentially before we can talk about this Alliance you need to do one thing you need to purge your internal apparatus of people that we suspect of being linked to Communism this took, dr. King by surprise. And he said who how do I know and what's the evidence and essentially the answer was your best friend Stanley levison? I can't tell you the evidence the evidence is secret. And dr. King got back on his heels and said, what do you mean? What am I supposed to do if he's I don't believe this but if he's that bad, why don't you arrest him know we don't want to arrest. And we just don't want you to talk to it. We want you to shun it and he said shun him. I'm a minister. If I thought he was bad. The last thing I would do is shown him that goes against my I don't shun Bull Connor that's against the whole philosophy of what we're trying to do is to heal the divisions. But so he starts preaching that didn't work Burke Marshall essentially sent. Dr. King up to Bobby Kennedy who told him the same thing. We can have no dealings in this new alliance until you get rid of Stanley levison, and some other people on our say-so and the evidence is to secret. Dr. King again resisted and was finally sent to see the president himself who said again, we can have no dealings with you until you get rid of these people their communist. They're working for the Kremlin started throwing around even more inflated charges on the basis of secret evidence. Dr. King resisted. He said I how do you know, how can I do that with no evidence with know anything to shun somebody? And President Kennedy finally said come on with me and started looking around suspiciously and took dr. King out in the Rose Garden and said looking around, you know, you're under very close surveillance. And dr. King is looking around thinking is the president himself. Why are we out here? Is he under surveillance? It's like the fear of enemies had invaded the very Oval Office but it was the condition of a political Alliance all of his hopes of the alliance were put off until he would do something. That was not only he thought wrong but when against his entire philosophy and they had a ferocious debate about what to do because people said, this is how a Witch Hunt happens if you ban Stanley levison, then you're admitting that you're a communist tainted and you won't have any do it on secret grounds. What will you do when they come and say well ban Andy young or anybody else? This is how a witch hunt starts and he said but if you hear something In the same day from the Assistant Attorney General for civil rights for the Attorney General of the United States. And from the president all asking you to do something as the price of an alliance you have to take it. Seriously. This is the power of this secrecy and the political role of the FBI coming home full Square in the in the in the movement and it it seriously strained the faith of the movement in the federal government and yet Kings Wing at least kept it and we know from the last time that other people in other wings of the movement lost their faith in the evenings government do the students after Atlantic City. They turned on the federal government. They no longer believed in it to the point that in 1965 when Lyndon Johnson proposed the Voting Rights Act the greatest blow for Freedom, probably one of them in the 20th century in domestic politics students who had worked for four or five years said that crackers just talking politics. He's Really going to do it. They had turned so much against the faith in government that they didn't even believe the realization of their own labors. They thought it was somehow counterfeit and they turned against it said Liberals are the enemy the system doesn't work now but this is not just a product. It didn't just affect the movement it spread all across the whole society to the point that both the people who believed in the faith in the government and the people who didn't all turned against the government to the degree that you had people resenting the pointy-headed bureaucrats who did enforce the civil rights laws right down to Waco where you've got a lot of people who don't believe the FBI can do anything good and we paid a heavy price for that in in throwing off the balance in our faith between our faith in government. And our fear for what government may do we still don't have it right? I want to hold that thought. And come back to it because I think secrecy mr. Mondale said the rule of law mediates between our faith in government and our fear of our enemies what government protects us from but secrecy has a way of corrupting are undermining even the rule of law. As you heard one of the to me another illustration from the Civil Rights Movement period is in Christmas of 1963 after President, Kennedy was assassinated the bureau called all its agents in for essentially a war council against Martin Luther King, December 23rd, 1963 and headquarters. This is where essentially what they said was we don't have to worry about proving that he had communist links anymore because that never went anywhere anyway, but now that we have the wiretap and we have a wiretap order signed by the Attorney General we've essentially got to get out of jail free card because this is politically we're doing this we don't need to worry about the pretext anymore. And that's when they said that they The plant agents and they wanted to get his tax records. They wanted to bug his hotel rooms. So on and so forth the document that came out of that meeting has in it five times the phrase this must be done without embarrassment to the bureau which became the standard clause for the political use and the political operations in the FBI Files. If I've seen that phrase five times in one documents. I've seen it 10,000 times in other documents. This must be done without embarrassment to the bureau and it's a Telltale sign that if one problem is people's fear for democracy that democracy is not weakened up without secrets to deal with Communists and with Hitler and with Stalin and with organized crime. There's also the fear of democracy that is if the people knew about this, they wouldn't like it. So the with this must be done without embarrassment to the bureau means the whole Martin Luther King operation must Done in secret. It's a Telltale sign that secrecy has essentially undermined this balance between faith and fear and in government one final example from the movement from the period on dealing with now having to do with wiretap and secrecy there was a time when the bureau caught people in the Civil Rights Movement stealing cars. They were the movement got very large. They were desperate for cars to move people around they were doing Noble work and car thief started volunteering cars to them because it was a safe way to get rid of cars the bureau found essentially that the F that some parts of the Civil Rights Movement. We're dealing in hot cars and they wanted to prosecute them. The problem was they had all these wiretaps and attorney general katzenback went to them and said if you prosecute these people you're going to have to disclose the wiretap. This is the reason I'm against these wiretaps. So let's get rid of them Hoover comes back and essentially says, well, let's forget this prosecution. We won't prosecute. And I met this is undermined our role here, but we really need the wiretap. And what I'd like to do is to propose that in the future if I want to wiretap somebody I give you a prediction that these people will not commit crimes so that there won't be any prosecution's that the wiretap might taint katzenback told me that this was one of his most surreal moments in government, but the the law enforcement person was so attached to the political use of the wiretap that he's willing to predict. The people that he absolutely lows won't commit any crimes that could be compromised by the wiretap. So secrecy really is an issue that we haven't dealt with and in some sense. I think we get the worst of Both Worlds because we don't we don't appreciate some of the of the of the bad things that were done in the name of secrecy that secrecy has not been a major component of American government for all of our Lives. It's a relatively new thing the difference between tactical and strategic Each secrecy and all those things have not been debated even in the aftermath of the Cold War. But I do think also the taint of secrecy that spread from the left of the political Spectrum all across to the right also does blind us to a lot of the good things that people actually do in the agency the law enforcement the FBI agents that I know who worked in the Civil Rights Movement wanted very few FBI agents wanted to sit and transcribe wiretap. They wanted to solve crimes and the criminal cases the sadness to me is there's virtually no appetite for the good stories of solving these crimes. It's all like Mississippi Burning because the political image of the agency has tainted the FBI from the from the point of view of the people who appreciate civil rights, so you don't know much about inspector Joe Sullivan what it was like to solve that schwerner Chaney Goodman bombing in the atmosphere of a bureaucracy. That's heavily politicized moments like Joe Sullivan saying I got my first Confession from a klansman but I'm not going to go taken into headquarters because if I have only one confession, I know they don't want to bring this case. They're going to say go get me another one and then they'll publicize it and I won't be able to get one. I want to have the second confession in my back pocket before I take the first confession in these are wonderful stories and we have very little appetite for them. There was another clan crime that the bureau solved by by giving a birthday cake to a klansman who had killed bushwhacked literally bushwhacked a bunch of black soldiers. They couldn't solve the case. Finally. They presented him in his den with the other klansmen with a birthday cake with 12 pink candles and one red candle in the middle and the klansmen were so taken aback by the fact that the FBI agents who had been harassing him would deliver this birthday cake that they fell into recrimination over what the red candle in the middle mint and the next thing you know, one of them's tattling on the other and it solves the case these These things are virtually unknown because secrecy and the reputation has gotten out of balance the balance between faith and fear. The true balance. I think is that faith in democratic governments without secrecy and in the power of the people themselves has worked miracles across the century and we've lost we our capacity to appreciate true public service because both the people on the left who resent the FBI and the people on the right who resent Waco and see every government agent is some jackbooted thugs don't appreciate what mr. Kallstrom just talked about the TWA investigation. We have to remember that other than the divers who went down there. This is an incredible collection of medical examiners and volunteer fire department people and everything to pull up those million pieces. They're all bureaucrats. They're all public servants. They Get out what happened in this bomb, which is an enormous public service and yet we all take it for granted and we don't honor the people for the public service itself, and the only legitimate debate it seems to me is when the book comes out about how it was done how much secrecy was necessary and if we get our balance of tactical versus selfish or or self-defeating or dangerous corrupting sequent secrecy imbalance, you can truly have the best of American democracy through these agents, so I honor the ones who worked and did their Duty and law enforcement even in a political environment where secrecy and politics did so much to poison some of the best aspects of American democracy. So, I think we need to raise up this public service. We need to honor it and we need to address squarely the issue of secrecy, which did so much to corrupt us in that time. Thank you. Thank you Taylor. It's not very often. You get a chance to to listen to somebody who was there and it's also not very often you get a chance to listen somebody who Not only was there but use there as a starting point for a really inspiring career for people who want to work in government. But Andrew Young is just that person for those of us who were young and read about it since I didn't cover the Civil Rights. Movement. I have nothing but admiration for people who have fought their way not to the top of a company, but fought their way to help other people and do it. Not just through the southern Christian Leadership Council, but also to the UN and now working to help Africans find their own way, Andrew Young I tell you this is really a fun morning and to be invited to be a part of this kind of living history and here Fritz Mondale remind us of the tremendous work of the committee and right on down and it's dangerous to put me in Taylor Branch together because he was a he read about this from the FBI side and the files and the like has done an enormous and tremendous amount of research on the civil rights movement and I was inside and whenever we talk with him discussing the other side and me saying what was going on in the inside, it's it's fascinating to me. I just like to say that the whole question of faith and fear. Is a good place to quote Hubert Humphrey and to paraphrase it a little bit if you think intelligence is expensive you ought to try ignorance. I think then Senator Humphrey said education is expensive you ought to try the cost of it and ignorance, but it's equally true and one of the reasons why we have never lost faith in this country as preachers and his victims is that we know how difficult it is to make things work positively having now been on both sides been in the government side as mayor member of Congress. It is virtually impossible for any agency alone. To maintain the security of this nation and looking back. We've always known that we've always known that our security depends really on the freedom and courage of the Democrats within our midst that the event that the tale of talked about with the president discussing with Martin Luther King dropping some members of our staff. He rejected that and finally the president said that we'll look I'll get Burke Marshall to brief you on it in more detail and Martin didn't even want to talk anymore about it. So he said you get with Burke Marshall and let him tell you if he's got any evidence. So I ended up spending a day in the only place Burke Marshall would meet with me was in the courthouse federal courthouse in New Orleans and we walked around and around and around and those huge Carter's arguing about, you know, the Communists in our midst and trying to find some some rationale for dealing with us a problem, which we didn't even feel the president believed or anybody else, but there was a fear of huva that was translated into the difficulty of getting votes from Senator Eastland, Senator Russell and the southern Senators to pass this bill. We knew we weren't going to get votes anyway, and so out of that came a strategy that really Went to the churches the National Council of churches had formed a commission on religion and race and we arranged with. I think the Reverend Robert Spike then to pull together a group of Business Leaders led by J Irwin Miller of Cummins engine and AT&T a group of religious leaders, which included Rabbi heschel and Protestants Catholics and Jews and civil rights people together and they made the rounds and visited people to try to argue this issue and they visited your Senator Hickenlooper from Iowa who they sort of felt. Once he began to see the religious and humanitarian implications along with the politics that that sort of turn the tide and we've always believed that that swing of five or six Midwest and senators are brought about by the representation of our religious communities was the thing that really provided the accurate Intelligence on the civil rights movement that moved us forward to a new dimension. The same thing was true in just about everything else. We did at the United Nations and I was always running Counter Intelligence analysis with with the agencies, but I came out of the school. Oh that understood that Ralph Bunche had his Beginnings in our nation. And I don't think that there was a final public servant in the 20th century than Ralph Bunche but Ralph Bunche began his work with the US government as a an academic employed by the office of strategic Services the Forerunner of the CIA to do an analysis of the situation and Africa before the second world war. So Ralph Bunche was down in South Africa in 1937-38. He went from Egypt and Morocco and all the way down to South Africa and Ralph Bunche has scholarly analysis of Africa a logistically and politically not only laid a foundation for the US allies survival and Military strategy in the second world war, but it Is passed on to the United Nations and became the became the basis of the decolonization of Africa. And so I think it's a mistake for us just to focus on the failures and the shortcomings of our intelligence work and it's like the failures to deal with the problems of crime in the city until the community gets involved until we all feel apart. I think that the best you know, the best answer for the secrecy is for people to talk openly and we can talk openly about secret things because we don't know that their secret missionaries from our churches feel very very uneasy about talking to official government agencies, but they don't have any problems writing to their Church periodicals. They don't have any Writing and a problem talking with them members of Congressman Congress and and to their mayor's there's a tremendous intelligence network of students of churches of government of business. That gives us I think on any given day a better feel for what's going on in the world than our agencies and secret can ever pay for and so making sure that we are mobilizing as a government of the people so that the people's intelligence discussed in a free press openly engaged in in academic institutions such as this involving the debates in our religious institutions. We really fought out the Battle of The Liberation movements in the churches as well because 60 minutes And the CIA were convinced that The Liberation movements in Africa will Marxist terrorists is ridiculous. Now when you look back they were talking about people like Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu. These were the notorious terrorists that we weren't supposed to have anything to do with we knew them all to be products of our Christian Missionary institutions and many of them the beneficiaries of Kennedy Administration and Fulbright scholarships to come and be involved in these United States and you and Minnesota have a tremendous right to be proud that one of these students that you worked with and produced is now the secretary-general of the United Nations stop and think what would have happened to him if he had been monitored investigated or in any way harassed while he was a student here at Macalester. Other than loved and embraced and involved in what democracy and faith and freedom is really all about we do have to have good intelligence. We do have to have a tremendous awareness of what's going on in the world, but we really don't ever have to give in to our fears about the world our fears about the world largely come out of our ignorance and the more we can share with each other the more we can travel the more we can interview and get to know people who work overseas a students who come from overseas the more they can see the vitality and vibrancy of the freedom and prosperity that we share as a result of that freedom. I think the more secure and safe we're going to be but will always depend on Good government, good strong wise courageous senators and good bureaucrats to raise questions and also a free press to expose us all whether we're right or wrong. And usually I think the Press is wrong, but it's good being exposed and let him have the debate and we can argue it out in the open and and by and large we are better off being ourselves and enjoying our freedom indeed celebrating our freedom in such a way that everybody else wants to be a part of it. You forgot exposing the Press which is really a good fun. Sort of cleaning up is David Aaron who first met when I was on the hill myself and worked very closely with then Senator Mondale and has since had a whole variety of roles inside government ranging from posting and NATO the UN streets is he jack arms talks. He was staff director for the church committee. He is was Ambassador the organization of economic cooperation in Europe and the Clinton Administration then over to Commerce to be under secretary for international trade. He's now a partner in Dorset Whitney with Senator Mondale and it's going to sort of deal with the overseas partible this David. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. It's really not just not just a pleasure, but frankly an incredible honor to be here and have an opportunity to participate in this and to be sharing the dais with so many great public servants and great contributors to American history. I was asked if I would try to focus on the foreign intelligence side of the church committee investigation. And as I did I was I was reminded of a story that that would help explain why intelligence is so important and it's a very old story goes back to between the two Wars in Germany when Germany was still under the constraints of the the League of Nations and under the Treaty of Versailles and in a little town in southern Germany. There was a young couple who were Struggling to make ends meet the husband worked in a baby stroller Factory and the wife also worked as a charwoman and they lived in a little apartment and the wife became pregnant and when that happened the husband started bringing home parts from the factory every day knowing that might be of value and everybody looked the other way. They knew he was stealing these parts the baby ultimately was born but no no stroller appeared. No, baby carriage appeared and still he kept bringing these parts home. And so finally the manager of the apartment who knew what was going on confronted him and said, you know, we're not going to tell anybody about this but we don't understand you bringing these parts home, but we never see the baby carriage what's going on? I said, well, I just don't I can't explain it myself this is but every time I put it together it turns out to be a machine gun. No. Intelligence plays a crucial role in the conduct of our foreign relations and in the protection of our national security and in this balance of faith and fear, I think it's important to try to appreciate how intense the fear was why it existed because only in that way can we realize how remarkable and important the faith was that dealt ultimately with some of these excesses we had fought a war against one of the most evil regimes in history. We thought we would face another one with stalinist Russia after all had murdered 40 million people of its own people in both the Revolution and in the land reforms that followed it the the Soviet Union had swallowed Eastern Europe and with it the dreams of democratic reformers in that area. It had come to power in China and by the end of the 1940s communism could say that it had its grip on At least a third of the world's population and they were actively spreading their doctrines throughout the world using left fronts using infiltration and to the extent that in that spirit of fear in that environment of fear, it was difficult to tell reformers from True communist conspirators, and we often made the mistake of not being able to tell one from the other and the young rightly points out about what happened in Africa when genuine reformers were tainted with being communists. There are those who also thought that Fidel Castro was a was a was simply a reformer and it wasn't until some I guess 10 years ago. He finally told the New York Times Reporter that yes, he had been a communist all along and this had been a plot and he was only pretending that to be a democratic reformer while he was in the mountains. We felt threatened militarily. We felt threatened politically we end I think there was also a Concern not just about democracy whether it could stand up to this monolithic totalitarian threat, but also whether the American people had enough determination to do it for the long haul whether we had the strength of will there was a fear that America might slip back into isolationism that it would be constrain Itself by feelings of fair play and that it would not be up to the challenge but in the in the process of trying to deal with those fears and trying to counter these threats are we came close to mimicking our enemy we lost our moral compass and we undermined our Democratic institutions and the rule of law when we conducted the church committee. We made the following findings about foreign intelligence. First of all United States had plotted and carried out assassinations against foreign leaders. Lumumba. Trujillo Castro were some of the targets lumumba was Was ultimately killed the others were not but it's interesting to note that almost all of these leaders came from weak countries and were from what we might call today people of color. Secondly the president knew, there were no Rogue CIA operations of any magnitude the president always knew one way or the other third that to carry out these missions. We got in bed with the mafia and interestingly enough that didn't just happen in the Kennedy administration. It had going on off and on for some time starting with the OSS in the second world war in Italy third. We were conducting covert operations from tiny little operations to enormous operation such as the war in Laos, but interestingly with very little strategic success. We might have a tactical gain here a tactical game there but no long-term success indeed at the time. The agency was fond of pointing to Iran and Guatemala. Two major successes of covert action where we overthrew governments and installed governments that would be friendly to us. Now. We know what happened. We traded 20 years of stability in Iran for a 20 years of hostility and and even worse in Iran and in Guatemala, we simply ignited a 35 40 year Civil War that version on genocide. We conduct a drug experiments on unwitting Americans are counterintelligence efforts had become a Wilderness of mirrors and the name in the words of one of its practitioners in which neither the FBI nor the CIA talk to each other about what was in fact a serious threat. We conducted a Espionage operations and recruited agents without any high-level approval so that it was not clear whether if one of these agents were to be exposed. It wouldn't be enormously embarrassing and indeed It ultimately was when some of these some of these names Came out we discovered that most intelligence is in fact collected overtly by the state department not clandestinely by the CIA. And finally we found that legitimate institutions such as churches and the Press were damaged by the use of people in those institutions as cover agents at the same time. We also discovered that there were significant successes perhaps the most important was the Strategic technical intelligence will be gained from both overflights and satellites in giving us a good fix on Soviet nuclear power Soviet military power and it made it possible for us to engage in the kind of Arms Control agreements that have now reduced the nuclear weapons inventories on both sides by more than half. We had some good agents people like penkovsky who were it's crucial in during the Cuban Missile Crisis and other human Source Military Intelligence, their work was was priceless, but it was also extremely rare and there was Always a question of the Bona fides of the agents because unlike technical intelligence. You never know. What someone is telling you whether they're working for you or the other side. That's why counterintelligence was so important and why the lack of it was so important. There are however some major counterintelligence successes not the least of which came about as the result of code-breaking of Russian codes being used in this country and it demonstrated that despite the great political controversy that raised in this country for 20 or 30 years indeed the rosenbergs were spies and we're working for the Soviet Union on the other hand. There were 12 other individuals noted in these great volume of intercepts that have never ever been identified. Finally the major success. I believe was the much more open and ultimately completely open support for press and radio activities beamed into the Soviet Union, which I believe did help people. I have the yearning for freedom and Independence and ultimately played a major part in maintaining a culture that could go through the changes that the Soviet Union has gone through so far. We made several important recommendations, which I'd like to review very briefly. The important difficulty was trying to really reconcile intelligence and democracy historically intelligence was really part of the sovereign powers the power of the king and since it was aimed abroad get by definition had no anchor in law and and that kind of restraint in America intelligence came to be part of the president's Powers as Commander in Chief and in the conduct of foreign policy, we had to reconcile That with the demands of our democratic system, and we also recognize that we could not prevent bad judgment. We had to come up with solutions that would still take into account. The human factor. What we could do is provide a system of accountability both to the president and to the Congress. It was very important that no future president be able to claim plausibly that he didn't know and when we get to mention Iran Contra in a moment that plausible denial had become implausible denial we provided a framework of do's and don'ts we did want to give the director of Central Intelligence more power to coordinate the efforts of the intelligence community and to keep it accountable. Secondly, we did not want to use the press or religious institutions are some other institutions to provide cover for agents. We did want to make covert action relate to overt policy. It's one thing to have a secret operation if it's supporting something everybody knows And is in support of its another to conduct an entirely secret policy as we did in Chile in trying to overthrow Allende Salvador Allende and finally do not assassinate foreign leaders. We have the most vulnerable president a head of state in the world. You don't want to get into that kind of a game. What were the results? I think I'd give us a grade of B because not because our recommendations were not good. I think they were terrific but every Administration it seems has to learn these lessons all over again or for themselves. Certainly the Reagan administration had to learn it in the case of Iran Contra in which intelligence was used as a channel for a secret policy. Not just a secret operation where there were I think in the most frightening moment that I've ever witnessed in public life and effort made to create an offshore off-the-shelf covert action a capability that was accountable. Nobody not just the president but to nobody except the people who were doing it but supported by the US government and finally the use of the National Security Council staff itself as an operational arm indeed. The CIA was providing cover for the National Security Council. These were all dangerous developments and thankfully exposed. Now, are we about to repeat this lesson again with the recommendations that have just been made on terrorism. I'm afraid that we are there are several proposals that have just been made this week by the counterterrorism a panel that was put together to advise the Congress. One of them would permit CIA to recruit agents with unseemly backgrounds of Human Rights abusers and tortures and the rest without checking up the line II would increase and intensify surveillance of foreign students in the United States. Another would give the Pentagon responsibility in counterterrorism situations on the all of these are misguided and the lessons of the church committee and need to be a heated even the CIA says that it's ridiculous for them to not give approval to the recruitment of Agents. It's unnecessary be an unnecessary grant of authority that could prove enormously dangerous as for the surveillance of students. I think Andy young made a very important point a moment ago these these students are vital to our economy. They come here for Liberty. They come here to breathe free. They come here to be able to make a difference and to find out that they're actually going to become major targets of intelligence activities. I don't think it's going to be very encouraging to them and finally giving the Pentagon counterterrorism Mission I think is is really enormously unwise would they have done a better job in Oklahoma City. It turned out to be a domestic terrorist event. Not a foreign terrorist event and we have Usually would have problems with the Posse Comitatus restrictions that have been used for 200 years to keep constraint on the military plane to larger role in our democracy. Would they have done a better job in the World Trade Center than the FBI did the FBI today fantastic and remarkable job. It's hard to imagine the military doing a better job. And finally, I would only contrast that to the Khobar Towers bombing where we still don't know who did it and the military has principally been in charge. Let me just conclude by saying we need intelligence Community. There are dangerous threats. There are needs in Arms Control. There's terrorism nuclear proliferation biological and chemical warfare Rogue States instability that could threaten our interests. We still need to monitor the military capabilities of potential adversaries. And we also need to know who's our friend and who's our Foe and in this world where there's a great deal more ambiguity that's becoming more and more difficult to tell but it can and must be done. Within the framework of Law and of accountability if we could do it during the Cold War and I think in after the church committee, we proved that we could we can continue to do it now. Thank you very much. We're almost on time. No, thanks to me and but in order to hold on to this position, we're now going to take a break for coffee and tea and The radio does not mean that this conference is over. In fact, our participants will continue meeting through the afternoon with the goal of coming up with a list of ideas to help Minnesota prosper in the.com age. We'll have a report on the conference results as part of our midday program tomorrow. Matter of fact, we'll be talking with three key Business Leaders tomorrow at 11:00 then over the noon hour tomorrow will rebroadcast all the special reports that we've been featuring this week. Great chance to hear the reporting that you may have missed or at least hear it all at one one Fell Swoop all of that coming up tomorrow on our midday program Sarah Mayer produced today's broadcast with help from care a fig and shoe our Engineers today where Mark DeMark Mike tomorrow brother and Denis Hansen Len wit is the executive director of Minnesota Public Radio Civic journalism initiative sponsor of today's Summit. Thanks to Ken darling for his assistance. Thanks to all of you here at the summit and thanks to all of you listening on the radio from the University of st. Thomas. I'm Gary eichten.