Francesco/who-killed-jfk huggingface dataset:
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SECRETyou don't do that.INTERVIEWER: Memory was there.MR. HALPERN: But boy, I'll tell you. But on the other hand I don't think it was busy work any more than it was busy work to try to collect intelligence. Most of the stuff was done against requirements. Somebody wanted some information, somebody wanted something done. And the guy in the field had to figure out how to do it. And some of it was very wasteful. It's like a war. War is a wasteful business. And this is a wasteful business. As I think I mentioned the other day, collecting intelligence by clandestine means is the toughest, most expensive, most time-consuming way to collect intelligence. But it has got to be done. And you are going to make a lot of mistakes. And you are going to loose a lot in the way. And you are going to waste a lot of time and effort and money, no question about that, to collect the little bit of information. And a lot of the information you are going to collect is going to be useless, totally useless. But there is going to be a few nuggets somewhere along the way. I think we have figured out, people have estimated -- God knows he can't do it -- for the non-denied area countries, I think it was estimated that clandestine collection produces no more than 5-10 percent of the total take. That's a small percentage when you consider the amount of information that rolls into this government. And particularly with overhead reconnaissance and with SIGINT. That's a hell of a lot of stuff that's pouring
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SECRETin. And maybe Seymour Hersh is right. Maybe you can do without that 5 percent. I don't know. But I don't want to try. He is willing to try. But a lot of it is wasteful. No question about that. You got an Army, you got a Navy, you got an Air Force. If that ain't waste, my God. But when you need them, oh, you need them.INTERVIEWER: It takes time.MR. HALPERN: You've got to have lead time. And this is why I remember we were talking in terms of clandestine collection. Why we try so damn hard, particularly in the beginning, being purists to not even talk to the DDI analysts because we might get captured by them and become their researchers or their legmen, running around in the middle of Africa finding out where the hell the wheat fields were or the bridges were up or down or the railways weren't operating or what. And you can go to the Library of Congress and spend two or three months and dig it all out. So we'd try to keep away from those guys for years. And the whole requirements mechanism was created to screen all these requests. And from all over the government for information on things happening abroad. And I'm sure the analysts thought we were a bunch of nuts not wanting all these things to do. But we didn't. You know clandestine collection is a tough goddamn job if you are going after hard targets. It's not cocktail gossip. In fact, the Russians used to say, get me a piece of paper, get me a document. That's what you want. You want some foreign government's document. You don't
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SECRETwant somebody's opinion or ideas of what the hell he thinks is happening in a cabinet meeting. You want the minutes of the cabinet meeting. And we are theoretically in business for strategic intelligence, not even tactical stuff. We left that for the military and the State Department.INTERVIEWER: So just strategic?MR. HALPERN: We were designed as a collection of strategic intelligence. That means the top stuff. That means intentions. Much more so than counting trucks or counting airplanes. And we did both. We pulled the overhead reconnaissance. And it's the worst kind of way to collect information. That's all I keep saying. So, this so-called busy work, I think is a misinterpretation of the fact that a lot of the work that was done was utterly useless. But that's the nature of this business. And it still is to this day.INTERVIEWER: Very good.MR. HALPERN: Sorry.INTERVIEWER: No, very good. What about any reflections on the competence of the Senate members on the Church Committee?MR. HALPERN: Of the Committee members themselves?INTERVIEWER: Uh huh.MR. HALPERN: Well, I don't remember all the Committee members.INTERVIEWER: Church, and we've got Mondale . . .MR. HALPERN: Yeah, go ahead.INTERVIEWER: And Goldwater, and Philip Hart, and Gary Hart, Huddleston, Mathias, Schweiker, and Morgan and I think I
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SECRETmentioned Mondale. Howard Baker.MR. HALPERN: Yeah, Baker.INTERVIEWER: Any of those at the time strike you as . . .MR. HALPERN: Well, I can't talk from personal knowledge except that one time that I testified before them. I think I mentioned to you, Huddleston and, this was in June of '75, maybe they were just new guys on the block for all I know, but they theoretically were on business since the end of January or early February at least. And maybe they didn't have decent staff officer to brief them. But the impression I got was that this was being done by these guys solely on gut feeling, pure emotion, thinking in terms of James Bond, and no real knowledge or feeling, even, for an appreciation of what the business was all about. It was all out of books. In terms of Ashenden, the secret agent, goes way back. But it was that kind of fiction stories, and movie impressions that these guys were using in terms of asking the questions and in terms of what they thought intelligence was all about. They had no concept. I would have thought by June, at least, they would have had some chance to have talked to people -- knowledgeable people and fair people -- to just learn what the hell the business is all about. What are we talking about, including covert action. But it was all in terms of a circus atmosphere, I think. I mean, it was just -- I was appalled. I shouldn't have been. I should have known better. Basically, in terms of some of the guys who never even bothered to find out what they could, or even the few members
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# SECRETwho were on the four committees that were, or theoretically, doing oversight. And it wasn't there. No appreciation at all. And every time something came up, it was always "OH, REALLY!" You know, great astonishment when you were trying to tell them a fact. Like when I mentioned the fact, you know, we've got female case officers as deputy chiefs of station and chiefs of station. And that came as a great shock and surprise to them. I don't know what they thought. I wasn't able to get into their brains and find out. But this was not true of Mathias, though. Not true of Barry Goldwater.INTERVIEWER: Tower?MR. HALPERN: I don't know. Tower didn't sit in the day I was sitting there. This is based with the guys around the table. I mean, they were in kind of a horseshoe and I was in a long table facing the horseshoe. And I was alone. And here were all of these guys with their staffers and what have you around them, behind them, mutterings and what have you. Schweiker, oddly enough, Schweiker made some sense. He seemed to have a better appreciation than Huddleston or Mondale. Gary Hart was just a fly flitting in and out, kind of. He didn't really know what the hell it was all about. Phil Hart, again, was very moralistic about the whole thing, including collecting intelligence using human sources. He was quite sure that that was the way to go. At least that was the impression I had. Maybe I am wrong, but that was what I felt. Mondale was the worst, I thought, in terms of his approach to the thing. Then
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SECRETagain, I don't know who his staff officer was or who was briefing him beforehand.INTERVIEWER: When you say worst, you mean; informed or not informed?MR. HALPERN: It seemed to me ill informed.INTERVIEWER: Ill informed.MR. HALPERN: Ill informed. And by the time they were talking to me, as I say, I think it was June of '75, hell, I'm a junior officer of all of the brass that went up to that place for debriefings or testimony or what have you. I would have thought by that time they would have had a better appreciation of what the hell the world is all about. And how foreign policy is made and conducted. And what international relations is all about. And just, I'd send them back to International Relations 101 in Political Science 101 or some junior college somewhere. It was just pathetic. I'm no great brain. But at least I went through City College in New York where I had some decent professors who taught me what the hell the world was like.INTERVIEWER: What about the Pike Committee?MR. HALPERN: I had nothing to do with the Pike Committee.INTERVIEWER: Nothing at all?MR. HALPERN: Thank the Lord! Nothing. All I know is what I heard from friends of mine, including Seymour Bolton who had a lot to do with them because he was the Agency contact with them. And both committees as a matter of fact. He and Scott
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SECRETBreckinridge and, I guess, Walt Elder were involved, too.INTERVIEWER: Yeah.MR. HALPERN: And just to listen to the kinds of -- well, the Representatives themselves were bad enough but on top of that they hired, I think Seymour used the phrase something like "kids with drippy noses who weren't even out of their swaddling clothes." And these were the staffers who were running around like crazy. You know, they were having fun in their bare feet trying to upset all the apple carts and what have you. And it was just, he said it was impossible to talk to any of them. You know, intelligence officers, my God, they were worse than the devil. Which was not quite true of the guys on the Senate staff. The Senate staffers were deliberately involved, I think, in wrecking the intelligence community. I think for whatever reason -- political or whatever -- but I think, as I said before, in terms of the buildup as to what was happening, including in December of '74 even before the Hersh stories, having a bill to create the same committee that the Church Committee finally turned into with the same title, they were doing this deliberate work. And so the Senate staffers always seemed to be better read, better educated, better organized. They were deliberately doing something. They knew what they were after. And I must say they ran a very good operation. A good covert operation. They go to the head of the class. Whereas the House staffers, the Pike Committee, they were just a bunch of kids mucking around causing trouble. Didn't know
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# SECRETwhat the hell they were doing.INTERVIEWER: And the motivation of the Church staff members?MR. HALPERN: I wish I could prove one way or the other. I just don't know. It all seemed to end up at one point, which was destroy, destroy, destroy. Muck up, muck up, muck up. And they did. They were very effective at it. And all I say is, you know, if it looks like a duck, acts like a duck, squawks like a duck, it's got to be a duck. And I don't know whether they were involved with the far left or the far right or what have you, but there sure looked like some political motivation there somewhere. I can't prove what I am saying. It is just a conjecture. It is a theory.INTERVIEWER: And you felt that at the time?MR. HALPERN: Oh yeah. Yeah. Felt that very much at the time. And since, I have never gotten that out of my head. They were deliberately active in destroying something. And I think my theory, and it is a theory, in reference back is probably correct because it's quite clear that after the circus and after the Senate and the House both created their respective committees, the Senate in '76 and the House in '77, in very short order, wiser heads prevailed among the Senators and the Representatives. I don't know about the staffers. But the staff, some of it changed. There's some of them still there. And if you take a look and you'll see that even under the later years of the Carter administration, talking about '79 and '80, the Committees started to give the Intelligence
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SECRETCommunity more and more and more budget and personnel slots. More money and more people. I think they were trying in some way repair the damages that they saw themselves finally when they saw and new faces that had been done and I think they were kind of feeling guilty about the whole thing. As a body.INTERVIEWER: You think the hostage situation in Teheran?MR. HALPERN: I think that helped. That helped in terms of getting concerned. But it was more than that and it happened before the hostages began. They started to come around in terms of, and I know just from friends, in terms of the Intelligence Community as a Community was starting to get more money and slots than they could handle than they really needed. Congress was just "Use it, use it, use it." And so by the time Casey comes along in '81 and he gets lots of credit for more money for the community. Baloney. Well maybe he did. He did. But the momentum was there beforehand. You know. And Congress was pushing stuff into the Community. Not just CIA, but the whole Community. Look, the Pike Committee and the Church Committee, I think both of them, maybe just the Church Committee recommended abolishing DIA. Well, take a look at DIA today with a brand new building and everything else. I mean, Congress insisted to keep it that way after the circus period. And so there is a whole new attitude that came after this '75/'76 circus era. And it was just a bloody mess. But the damage was done. And you don't build intelligence organizations overnight. Again, you need time. It took us in
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SECRETmy generation a whole generation. And we had a war to start with to help us go and get off the mark a make connections and contacts and friends and all that kind of stuff abroad. And that one was destroyed. Whether it's ever, I don't know, maybe it will take another generation to rebuild. Who knows. Or more. So the attitude, I think, was that maybe we in Congress went too far. And we've got to redress to balance. Which is what they were doing for a good long while.INTERVIEWER: You sense any role of President Carter in this?MR. HALPERN: I'm not sure. I don't know. All I know is the end result was the money started to come and the slots started to come. Well, for example, I think it was in '77, Congress refused to give the FBI additional slots for counterintelligence officers. And that is public's information. It was brought out in hearings and what have you and you've got to be a nut to read all that crud. But when you get interested in a subject, you browse through it. I've got some. I haven't got anywhere near what Walter's got. I may have 1 percent of what he's got. But you read it in the newspapers. You know, you don't have to go very far. And Congress deliberately and literally said "no" to the request from the Bureau for more personnel to watch all these Soviets and satellite countries and their offices in this country.INTERVIEWER: In 1977?MR. HALPERN: I think it was '77. And later on, of course, they were part of the Intelligence Community, they got their
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SECRETslots, they got their money. Just like CIA did, DIA did, every.. NSA did, everybody. But now I guess with everybody tightening up the belt they will suffer too. And maybe it is about time. You can do just so much. It takes, for example, you talk about rebuilding. I have estimated, and I think other people have estimated similar figures, it takes about seven years before a clandestine service officer in intelligence collection, let alone counterintelligence, can be considered to have been around long enough to be a decent officer.INTERVIEWER: Seven years?MR. HALPERN: Well, look at it. You come in. You got about a year, off hand, about a year of training. You've got a first tour of duty on a desk or maybe overseas. But anyway, and that's a two or three year hitch. That gives you four years. You ought to have a little bit more training somewhere along the way. Like another half year, at least. That isn't much. Preferably another year. That's five years. Your second tour, whether on a desk or overseas. You can't do both at the same time. So one has to be here and one has to be abroad. Another two or three year hitch. Have I got my seven?INTERVIEWER: Sure.MR. HALPERN: And then some. So it doesn't happen overnight. And you can't expect, particularly in this day and age, you can't expect a guy you bring in, I don't care if he's got a Ph.D. and he's got Phi Beta Kappa and he's got everything else under the sun. And he's a great academician. He's been
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SECRETthrough everything. He knows it all. And he knows all thesixteen languages you need to have before you bring him in.You don't have to waste time teaching him a language. Youcan't suddenly throw him overseas and say, "Okay aboardoperations, collect me the intelligence on what the hell theSaudi's are going to do about oil prices tomorrow." It won'twork. It just won't work. You've got to have a feel for whatthe hell is going on. They've got people on the desk now, I'mtold, who've never been in the country that they are assignedto. They don't even know what the hell is going on there.They may know it from books. But that is not good enough.INTERVIEWER: You have to build up your contacts.MR. HALPERN: Yeah. And take over contacts from somebody elseand be able to prove to the foreigner you are dealing with thatyou are as good as the guy who recruited you. Things likethat. You see I make one of those points in that book review Igave you on Turner's book. You can't do it overnight. It won'twork. And it didn't work. So when you are talking about sevenyears for an officer, that's a minimum -- seven years before heis even ready to really do something and become a decent allaround officer, both Headquarters and field. You've got a longway to go before you rebuild when you suddenly lose 200 peopleat one pop. Or with Turner, 800 slots get wiped out likethat. 820 as a matter of fact.INTERVIEWER: Was that the number that left?MR. HALPERN: Yeah, you'll see why -- I've got to make a note
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SECRETon that number. I'm not going to give it to you now. You'11read it. And when people up on the Hill or other people say,you know, "What's so tough about going out and collectingintelligence?" Try it. It just doesn't work the way it isdone in the movies.INTERVIEWER: It takes a lot of experience.MR. HALPERN: You need experience, you need to have somebodyyou can talk to, somebody who has been around before.INTERVIEWER: Judgment.MR. HALPERN: Yeah. And initiative. Lots of initiative. Andthat's where you get people who say, because of thatinitiative, "Look at that idiot. He spent six months andnothing has come out of it." Yeah, it's wasteful. You've gotto try. But I would rather have a guy go out on his own tryingthings, than me having to sit at a desk or using a bull whip topush him out, or dragging him out by the ears. He's got tohave enough initiative to go out and do it on his own. This iswhat all these things that have happened. And are stillhappening. And all the attacks on the Intelligence Communitypeople and what have you. I don't care whether it is CIA orFBI or what have you. It's all the same problem. You know,the officer who has got to start saying, "You know, why shouldI stick my neck out? You know, if I could just do it thecareful way I'll get my promotion. I'll move ahead slowly.I'll push the paper." But collecting intelligence is not apaper job. You've got to go out and talk to people. It's
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SECRETtalking to human sources. It's working with humans. It'sdifferent than sitting in the laboratory coming up with a blackbox. And some of the black boxes, at least, we used to have tohave humans put the black boxes in the right places. Some ofthe operations that we had where we were trying to drop them inthe right places from overhead -- as a matter of fact, to giveyou some idea of the problem, one of the operations was calledJAVELIN. You know what a javelin is?INTERVIEWER: Yes, sure.MR. HALPERN: And that's what we were trying to do at one pointfor our operation with black boxes. To get the black box inthe precise point where the black box had to be. Technicalstuff is very good when it works. But it's got to be so damnprecise many of the times that it is almost impossible. Itworks in the laboratory. Fine. Beautiful. And you can set upexperimental conditions and demonstration conditions. Easywhen you have total control. Try to do it in the real world.INTERVIEWER: Yes, with it's traffic lights.MR. HALPERN: Just use your imagination.INTERVIEWER: Sure.MR. HALPERN: Try to do it in the real world. And so theproblem of training an officer and experience of an officer andgetting people back into the business and making your contactsand all that goes with it. Yeah, our generation was not bad.INTERVIEWER: It's truly a profession isn't it?MR. HALPERN: Yeah. That's what we have been trying to tell
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SECRETpeople. And that is why we have been trying, I think with a little bit of success, very little, starting to get in academe, in this country at least -- it's pretty hard in some other countries -- but in this country to try to get academics to understand government, history, political science courses, international relations courses, you name it. After all these years they have been missing abet in terms of the impact of intelligence by all governments, I don't care who they are, on foreign policy and foreign activities. You read history books in the 1930's, '40's, '50's, '60's. And then in the '70's beginning barely to mention the fact that there might have been some intelligence action, that some information a government didn't know or did know, which made a big impact. And until ULTRA broke in '72, I think it was, nobody had a clue. And yet thousands and thousands and thousands of people had been involved in ULTRA.INTERVIEWER: Yeah, somebody called it the missing dimension, the intelligence role.MR. HALPERN: That's it. Sure it's a profession. It has been a profession for a couple of thousand years that I know of. The people haven't regarded it as such.INTERVIEWER: Textbooks just . .MR. HALPERN: Totally ignored it. Way off in limbo.INTERVIEWER: I still, from time to time, look at different diplomatic textbooks. There is no mention in them about the Black Chamber that Yardley was running out of New York City in124SECRET
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SECRETthe 1920's. They don't mention it.MR. HALPERN: It wasn't mentioned. It wasn't thought of. It'simpact on the Washington Naval Conference. We knew what thehell the outside was going to do. And the fact that, forexample, we had some good operations in terms of -- and not allintelligence is strictly politics or military. Economics is abig one. We had some good, but I won't even tell you which oneit is, even though it's on a classified tape. But you can findit later. We had a good penetration of a foreign government'seconomic delegation through a conference of ours on trade. Andwe had dead to rights, we had the text of their negotiatingpositions, what they could say, how far they could go.Everything. The whole "shmear." The State DepartmentAmbassador and the Deputy Chief of Mission from that particularcountry, our Ambassador from DCM, refused to believe theinformation we gave them. Literally, said, "That'simpossible. You couldn't possibly have gotten this. Somebodyis making it up for you. And you are paying them good money"and all that kind of stuff. But we weren't paying him anymoney. The guy didn't know and we weren't about to tell him.This was one of those things where the agent, it was donesimply on friendship and loyality of the case officer which haddeveloped over a long period of time -- family relations,family friends and all that kind of stuff. Anyhow, the StateDepartment said this is nonsense. The US Trade Representativesaid this is nonsense. "If the Ambassador wouldn't believe it,