However, if we are all agreed that information is power, then the distinction between increasing the covert collection of information and covert action is at very best a blurry and problematic one. It is not surprising, therefore, that among the reactions evoked has been a demand that fire should be fought with fire, that countries threatened by efforts of this nature should respond in kind with similar efforts . . . Operations of this nature are not in the character of this country. The effort to conduct them involves dilemmas and situations of moral ambiguity in which the American statesman is deprived of principled guidance and loses a sense of what is fitting and what is not. One must not be dogmatic about such matters, of course.
Foreign policy is too intricate a topic to suffer any total taboos . . .
But such operations should not be allowed to become a regular and routine feature of the governmental process, cast in concrete of unquestioned habit and instutional bureaucracy. It is there that the dangers lie. One may say that to deny ourselves this species of capability is to accept a serious limitation on our ability to contend with forces now directed against us. Perhaps, but if so, it is a limitation we shall have to live with. The success of our diplomacy has always depended, and will continue to depend, on its inherent honesty and openness of purpose and on the forthrightness with which it is carried out.