Francesco/who-killed-jfk huggingface dataset:
[104-10324-10002.pdf — page 126]
# SECRETwhy should I believe it." Well, the negotiating went on bit by bit, bit by bit, day after day. It developed everything. All they had to do was look at the information and the guy was following the text. It was unbelievable. And fortunately, fortunately, before the conference was over the US representatives believed what the hell we had told them and were able to work out a deal in such a way that the US benefited by it by $700 million. It's a simple little watering operation. So it takes time to work these deals in terms of not all sources require lots of money. And not all sources are the kind of people you just walk in and say, "You work for me." It takes time to develop and what have you. And the guy was doing it simply out of friendship and loyalty to an individual. It wasn't the US he was concerned about... And it wasn't his own country he was concerned about. Just mutual friendship. Maybe they have got them today, too. Maybe they have got that operation, too. I hope so. It takes time.INTERVIEWER: Yeah, I think some textbooks almost present the world as though everything that's said in the United Nations, that's the sum total of what's going on about all the backstagesMR. HALPERN: Well, it's more than backstages, too, Ralph, because I remember Professor Janowsky at City College. He said, you know, we all sit around and we study things. Great documents, like the Monroe Doctrine. And as if somebody sat around and thought this up one day. And it's like coming off
[104-10324-10002.pdf — page 127]
SECRETof Mount Sinai. You know. And he said, "Most of these thingsare done by people like you and me." He said, "I don't knowwhat you had for breakfast. Whether you had a fight with yourwife. Whether you had a cold and a headache that day." And alot of these decisions are done this way. And they are made atthe spur of the moment. They are human decisions by humanbeings. And I remember very clearly, I was still wet behindthe ears, this is 1948 or '49, '49 I guess it was. I happenedto be the desk officer in Indonesia (Clandestine Services).And we had very good operations. This was, oh yes, the Dutchpolice action, I guess, in '49. And we had a very good agentin Indonesia who was able to follow and keep us very current,almost minute by minute, actually hour by hour the location ofwhere the Dutch were taking the Indonesian political leaderthat they had captured in Jakarta. And where they were movinghim, from city to city to city to city or town to town to townto town and where they finally put him. And I was going overregularly because I didn't want to trust the telephone. And Iwas going over from the old building around the well knownReflecting Pool. I was grabbing the intelligence and it was inraw form. We didn't even bother going through the ReportsBoard in those days which had to clear everything go out, besure the commas and the semicolons were in the right places andwhat have you. And I had some hot intelligence that I gotpermission from my boss just take it over to my opposite--well,he was more than my opposite number, he was the Chief of the
[104-10324-10002.pdf — page 128]
SECRETSouth East Asia desk -- all the Southeast Asian countries --William S.B. Lacey, W.S.B. Lacey. Nice guy. Nice bigmoustache.INTERVIEWER: L-A-C-E-Y?MR. HALPERN: L-A-C-E-Y I think. Yeah, Bill Lacey. And I wasall of 26 or 27 at that time. And I kept bringing this stuffover to him. Piece by piece. As we got it. I was wearing apath between us and the State Department and the ReflectingPool where we were. And I saw how US policy toward the Dutchand hanging onto Indonesia, how that changed like that. BillLacey said to me, he said, "The Dutch should have told me --not the US -- should have told me that they were going to dothis and what they were going to do with the politicalleaders. They should not have surprised *me*." Sure, Bill. Isaid, "I'm not involved in that, I'm just giving you the poop.You are making the policy." He says, "You're damn right,Sam." He says, "As of now Indonesia is going to be a freecountry. And we are not going to stop the Indonesians. We arenot going to help the Dutch anymore. They didn't tell *me* thatthey were going to do this."INTERVIEWER: Oh wow.MR. HALPERN: There's American foreign policy.INTERVIEWER: Yeah, exactly.MR. HALPERN: Right there. You know, Bill didn't have to sitaround with a lot of people, a lot of staff. I'm sure he wentand got whatever he needed to do to get the thing approved and
[104-10324-10002.pdf — page 129]
SECRETnobody knew the difference.INTERVIEWER: Good point.MR. HALPERN: So. You know. And the academics in this countryhave never caught on. Maybe they are catching on slowly now.INTERVIEWER: Slow.MR. HALPERN: Yeah, very slow. That there is an impact on thisstuff. You got humans and humans and humans. And that's allthere is. And I think, for example, Roy Godson, started in1978, at Georgetown on the National Strategy InformationCenter. And he has a number of academics come almost everyyear up in Maine.INTERVIEWER: And he is running another one this summer.MR. HALPERN: Yeah. Okay, that's beginning to have an impact.I don't know how many thousands of academics there are in thecolleges and universities. But he is just barely scratchingthe surface. And it has taken him 10 years.INTERVIEWER: He ran the first one up at Bowdoin in '81. I wasup there.MR. HALPERN: Okay. There is one. I was one of the guys -- heasked me to come to tell them about the intelligence of '78which I did. And unfortunately Angelo Codevilla got a hold ofhim too and so changed Roy Godson's views, but at least we gotstarted on this thing. And I attended a lot of those seminarsthat he started in '78 and '79 and so.INTERVIEWER: Were they local?MR. HALPERN: They were all here, but he brought in people fromall over and they had a good foundation.
[104-10324-10002.pdf — page 130]
SECRETGodson was the first guy to get a group together. And you know, he is now regarded as a great intelligence expert. And I keep kidding him about that. But he doesn't -- you know, he knows something. But he has never been in the business. He doesn't really appreciate it. Anymore than Angelo Codevilla knows what the hell is going on. But at least he had the foresight to start something like this going. And he got a lot of good people involved. From former intelligence officers, to current intelligence officers, he got a lot of people with a lot of experience to write good papers and mediocre papers and bad papers. Mine's a lousy one that I did, the first one on clandestine collection, because it was being done -- I mean, I did it -- for the lowest common denominator. You know, it's like trying to teach somebody ABC's. There's no point in using a lot of high "falootin" jargon. So it is, from an intelligence professional point of view, it's a very weak paper -- mine on clandestine collection. Because it just barely skims the surface. It doesn't go into the details at all like we've been discussing. But at least Roy was very good in pushing this idea, trying to get academics to look at this new dimension. And it has to be. There has been a tremendous gap. Just like there was a gap on the military aspects of World War II until you got a hold of the ULTRA aspect. And as somebody said, they have to rewrite all the history books. Sure they do. And they ought to rewrite all the history books for everything else in terms of the missing dimension of
[104-10324-10002.pdf — page 131]
SECRETintelligence and its impact throughout history. Whether it's Moses or . .INTERVIEWER: Or George Washington.MR. HALPERN: Anybody. And people are beginning very slowly to pick it up. Very slowly.INTERVIEWER: Yes, I am encouraged. Slow.MR. HALPERN: It's is going to take a generation in there. Easily. Easily. And I am told that there are still academics in this country who won't touch intelligence.INTERVIEWER: I am told that too.MR. HALPERN: They think it is a dirty name and a dirty business. You don't have to be involved in it, for God's sake, to do some research and look at what the heck happened. And what made people come up with certain decisions or not come up with a decision. You know, it's been there.INTERVIEWER: Strange. They sometimes will deal with Congress and Congressional elections and there is an awful lot of skulduggery that goes on in that process. And they don't seem to realize that that happens.MR. HALPERN: That happens all the time. And I guess maybe what you need is an Ida M. Tarbell to do a study on politics or intelligence or foreign affairs like she did on Rockefeller. You know, wake people up. Or even do a Beard -- economic interpretation of the Constitution. Do an intelligence interpretation of foreign affairs. I don't care what you call it. But it is there. Nobody is hiding it. Not any more we
[104-10324-10002.pdf — page 132]
SECRETaren't. And you can go back, like you did in your book, youcan go back, it's there in the record book. Go find it. It'sa hell of a job. It's a lot of work. A tremendous amount ofwork. I don't envy anybody wanting to go into the OSS records,those that have been declassified in the Archives now.Horrible, horrible.INTERVIEWER: They will. Little by little.MR. HALPERN: Little by little.INTERVIEWER: What about this, Sam. Earlier, well, the late'70s in an interview one of the Agency Directors said that theAgency is part of the President's bag of tools, and my questionis: Do you see the Agency as also part of Congress' bag oftools?MR. HALPERN: No, it is the President's pretorian guard andeverything that means. It's an executive tool of thegovernment. Well, it's a tool of the executive branch of thegovernment. It is not a tool, in my opinion, of thelegislative branch of the government anymore than it is thejudiciary branch of government. You've got three branches inthis system. And I know a lot of my friends do not agree withme. And a lot of my close chums have testified on the Hillabout, if the Congress should be in with the President ondirecting: a. foreign policy, b. intelligence, c. themilitary, etc., etc. I don't think you can work that way. Oursystem can't operate that way. You've got to have an executiveon top who is answerable to the people and to the Congress for
[104-10324-10002.pdf — page 133]
SECREThis actions. But you can't have 535 so-called electedrepresentatives plus 18,000 staffers second-guessing what thePresident and his entire government bureaucracy is doing day byday, hour by hour, minute by minute, second by second. Itwon't work, it just can't work. The Executive has to take theresponsibility in my opinion. For what it does, the good, thebad, and the indifferent. Not everything the Executive does isright in my opinion. For example, I think that the mining ofthe harbors in Nicaragua was the silliest goddamn thing thoseguys ever did. And I was involved in operations similar tothat deliberately and directly. But you target. If youwant to go for ships target the bloody ships. We did. We madesome successes, we had a lot of failures. A lot of wastemotion. No question. And I remember some of my buddies whohad been retired were called back a few of them had been inLatin American affairs, and also covert action, paramilitaryaffairs, and covert action affairs and political action, alsocovert action were called back for a session with the guysrunning the Nicaraguan activities. And among the things theywere beating the bull about was, what about mining theharbors. And without exception, I am told every single guythey called back for consultation in this meeting -- 4, 5,maybe a half dozen every single guy said, "Oh Christ, don'tgo anywhere near that. That's silly." At the end of theconference they were told the mining of the harbors had alreadystarted. And as one of my friends said, "What the hell did you
[104-10324-10002.pdf — page 134]
SECRETcall us in for, then?" So not everything the Executive does is right. Obviously. At least I don't think it is right. Nixon's forcing the Agency to go after Allende in 1970 without any kind of lead time, at the last second, was absolutely stupid. And we told them that. But the orders were to go, so we went. And there are lots of other examples of that. But again, under our system you've got to have the Executive make the errors. You can't have Congress sitting around and deciding what the President, what the hell he is supposed to do. It's like, take Metzenbaum and Qadhaafi. So one day Metzenbaum says, "Yeah, we go after Qadhaffi, let's go get him." The next day there is another problem with somebody else, Mr. XYZ in some other country, and Metzenbaum says to the President, "Oh no, you can't touch him, he's a friend of mine!" Well, what the hell. You can't have that kind of nonsense. The President is responsible. I don't care who the President is. Whether it is Reagan or you or me or the next guy. That's the system we've got. And I don't think that CIA or the Intelligence Community has got to or should be part of the side pocket of the reference library of the Congress. Sure, give them the intelligence reports that you give everybody else. You go up and tell them what's going on in the world. They can have NIE's if they want to read NIE's. They can have Special NIE's if they want to read those. But when it comes to decision making, based upon that stuff, uh uh. That's the President's responsibility. And whether it's covert action
[104-10324-10002.pdf — page 135]
SECRETor whether it's collecting intelligence, that's his job. Itwas up to Ike Eisenhower, for example, to tell them, "Okay, flythe U-2. I know I'm going to see Khrushchev in Paris. Go flythat U-2." And he did. Can you imagine trying to ask? Who doyou talk to in Congress? Which committee do you go to? In theold days, at least, you had maybe a handful of guys in eachHouse who had some kind of control over the House or theSenate. And you could work with them. Who do you go totoday? Look at what happened yesterday. Jim Wright couldn'teven get a bill through. And he had to muck around with theclock literally change the clock of the calendar day on thebusiness of the tax bill. So one minute they have to announcethat the vote is, I think, 206 to 205 against, and Jim Wrightstops the day's activity -- literally stops it on the clock --gets ahold of some guy -- I forget the Representative's name --twists his hands or his arms or his balls for all I know, andthe next thing you know there is another vote. And the vote isnow 206 to 205 and the bill is passed.INTERVIEWER: In favor.MR. HALPERN: You know. But who the hell do you go and talk toin Congress when you say, should the Agency be part of theCongressional team? No, it can't be.INTERVIEWER: Then how about this statement, this is astatement someone made: "Since the mid-1970's, some say, theCIA is poised nearly equidistant between the Executive and theLegislative branches and Congress may actually have more
[104-10324-10002.pdf — page 136]
SECRETinfluence today on CIA priorities and how much money is spentrather than the Executive Branch."MR. HALPERN: I've seen that statement. I know who made it andI don't agree with it. It may be the truth. He may beabsolutely right in what the situation is today. I thinkthat's wrong. I realize CIA and every other member of theCommunity has to go to Congress to get his money, his men, andhis material. I understand that. And you've got to playfavorites and you've got to butter-up people and all that kindof stuff. But as far as being in between the Congress and anExecutive in terms of running an intelligence organization,it's dead wrong. It belongs to the Executive. It's a part ofthe Executive. And it is in every other country that I knowof. It's not the Congress that runs the business. It's thePresident that runs the business. You can't be in physically,and literally, and actually they may be in between. He isabsolutely right. But that's a wrong system. And if that'sthe way it is going to continue, you are not going to have anintelligence organization.INTERVIEWER: Really in trouble.MR. HALPERN: I think so. Who is your boss? If Congress tellsyou to do something and the President says don't do it, what doyou do?INTERVIEWER: Your're equidistant like the old story of ancienttimes that if you put a mule midway between two stacks of hay,the mule would starve to death.
[104-10324-10002.pdf — page 137]
SECRETMR. HALPERN: I am serious. What do you do? Congress says do this. The President says don't do that. What do you do? Do you go to the Congress, listening to some of the guys on television and reading what they say and listening to some of their speeches, or if the President tells me to do something that I don't think is right, I'll come running up here to the committee right away and tell you all about it. Okay, then the President has no confidence in the man and there is a new Director. Okay. On the other hand if the Congress tells the Director to do something and he doesn't tell the President, then what? So, if you've got a strong President, that Director is out on his ear too. And I use specifically Bill Colby in 1975. On January 15th, 1975, and it's in his book, so I am not saying anything special. Bill Colby goes to the Hill before the Stennis Committee, the Senate Armed Services, and blows his gut all over the place. The entire organization of CIA, men, women and children are all laid out for everybody to see, despite the fact that the law, the Central Intelligence Agency Act of 1949 says he doesn't have to do this. So he just gives the whole store away. Maybe no great damage was done, but anyway, he does it. "On their way back from the Hill," says Bill in his book, "something dawned on me. Gee, I'd better stop off at the White House and tell them what I've done.". Now if I had been President Ford, there would have been a new Director that afternoon. Bill worked for the President. He doesn't work for himself. His commanding officer is the
[104-10324-10002.pdf — page 138]
SECRETPresident of the United States and not the Congress of the United States. And he should of at least had the decency, the plain ordinary decency and courtesy, on the way to the Hill, to stop off at the White House and say, "Hey, this is what I plan to do on the way up." He does it in reverse and there isn't a thing that the President can do at that point. His hands are tied. He may have agreed with Bill. He may have disagreed. I don't know. But that's not the way you run an organization.INTERVIEWER: He had no options by the time he found out about it.MR. HALPERN: That's not the way you run an organization.INTERVIEWER: It's a good example.MR. HALPERN: So coming back -- if that's where they are today and if Judge Webster is now equidistant between the Hill and -- well, Gates is in between. I know who's involved. If they are at equidistant now, they are nowhere. Absolutely nowhere. They either work for the President, or they don't work. And I've used the term "pretorian guard," and I mean that. And it may be the wrong way to run the system. Then my comment is, "Change the system." That's all. And I am perfectly willing to take a look at any system they want to propose.INTERVIEWER: What about this statement: "Sharing intelligence with Congress is one of the surest guarantees of CIA's independence and objectivity."MR. HALPERN: No way. I don't understand that at all. I don't see how the two have anything to do with each other.
[104-10324-10002.pdf — page 139]
SECRETINTERVIEWER: I think that was made in a recent speech.MR. HALPERN: Yes, it was. I know. But I still don't understand how that can follow. If the comment is meant to refer to the fact that a DCI can cook the books like Casey has been accused of doing, in terms of presenting the information to the President, I don't see how that is going to wash. If you've got an analyst who believes in one view of a certain event, and the Director tells him to change his view, you're a lousy analyst. Sure, he might want to keep his job and all that kind of stuff, but going up to the Congress and telling them, I think such and such and my Director thinks differently, is not going to keep things honest in any sense of the word. The Director can still tell the President what he thinks. And that's where the decision is made on any particular activity. I don't think even the crazy people in Congress say they are going to make all the decisions. Take a look at the case of John Horton on the Mexico business. I don't know the details at all. I know John very well and he has never talked about any of this stuff, except what he said in the public press. I read that and I've seen him on television and what have you. But even when the House Committee, the Intelligence Committee, after the brouhaha of John having left, when the House Intelligence Committee examined the situation to see whether Bill Casey actually did cook the NIE as was alledged -- John never alledged this but other people have -- if I remember correctly, and I think I've got the clipping somewhere, the
[104-10324-10002.pdf — page 140]
SECRETHouse Intelligence Committee said they had looked at all their drafts, they looked at the final version, and there wasn't any cooking. So what the hell are people talking about, the best way to insure objectivity is to bring Congress into the act. This is nonsense. That's the trouble with a lot of this stuff. People think that you have got to get the Congress to look at things, and therefore everybody be very careful, otherwise somebody is going to say, "Well, you didn't do it right." Well, this is nonsense.INTERVIEWER: Why do you think there is so much more talk about the Congress being involved in the process?MR. HALPERN: Oh, Congress has always been, always wanted to be, in the history of the country, ever since the Constitution was written they've wanted to be involved. Go back to the Jay Treaty, when the House of Representatives insisted on seeing all the documentation of the Jay Treaty. And the President said, "No way, the Senate gets it." And the Senate got it. The Senate got everything they wanted. It was months later before they decided what to do with it. But you start with Washington.INTERVIEWER: And they debated that whole treaty in secret.MR. HALPERN: Oh yeah. That's right. But the House wanted to get into the act. And thank the Lord we had a strong President who said, "The Constitution is very clear. I have to work with the Senate on advise and consent. Not you, the House. Go away."
[104-10324-10002.pdf — page 141]
SECRETINTERVIEWER: Do you feel the Congress is more involved in thelast 10 years?MR. HALPERN: Oh, they've been pushing harder and harder andharder and harder. Now again, let's change the system if youdon't like it. It's been a rough one starting out, you know,200 years. They have been battling the same fight. Nothinghas changed. If you haven't seen it, you ought to take a lookat three volumes done by Professor Goldsmith called *The Growthof Presidential Power*.INTERVIEWER: I haven't seen them.MR. HALPERN: Well, I've got them if you want to look at them,take the time later. You can browse through them. And itstarts out with this business of the Jay Treaty and goes righton through. It doesn't cover every minute of the government'shistory.INTERVIEWER: The tensions between.MR. HALPERN: This book is dated 1974 so it stops with theHuston Plan. But I don't see Congress, at least the way Iunderstand the system and the way it operates. Congress has achance to do more than they have been doing. I think it'swrong for them to get into the act. They always have the powerof the purse. That is very clear. And they can stop what theydon't want to see happen. They haven't got the guts most ofthe time to do that. This is what happened, you know, inVietnam. Nobody declared war. You know, Vietnam conflict, Isuppose, is a fancy word for it, or the Korean police action or