Word: public
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Stansfield Turner is director of the Central Intelligence Agency. The following article is excerpted from a speech delivered November 30 at the Kennedy School of Government's Arco Public Affairs Forum...
There are few public institutions in history that have undergone such thorough public scrutiny as has the intelligence community of our country in the last four years--particularly, of course, the Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA is and should be our most secretive government agency. The fact that it has undergone this public scrutiny is really extraordinary; perhaps it is the first time in history that the world has had opened up to it a major intelligence organization in almost all of its aspects...
...been a traumatic experience, traumatic for those of us in the intelligence community. It has damaged morale: the typical intelligence officer, for instance, feels he is performing a difficult, patriotic task, and when he finds his activities exposed in the public media, he feels sometimes as though the country does not appreciate what he is attempting...
...been a traumatic period for the American public, also. The American public likes to view the world in idealized terms--and yet the world is not idealized, it is not an open, free society. The world is highly competitive, and more nations than not are closed totalitarian societies. And not all countries, by any means, are willing to inform us in advance of what they are going to do, even if it may be inimical to our national interest. An example of this was the great Soviet wheat steal of 1972, where we simply lacked the statistical data base...
...past, public oversight and public accountability was an impossibility--there was simply not enough information shared with the public. Today that's no longer true. The recent revelations, the public inquiries and investigations, the Freedom of Information Act, have all made our intelligence community much more accessible to the public than heretofore. In addition, over the past several years we have made a very definite and deliberate effort to be more open as an intelligence community. We are responding to the press more forthrightly than ever before. Clearly we can't answer every question, but I can assure you that...