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INTERVIEW WITH

SAM HALPERN

Ralph E. Weber

23 October 1987

30 October 1987

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Interview with Sam Halpern

23 and 30 October 1987

INTERVIEWER: As one looks into the background of the Congressional

investigations, what in your mind do you see as the most important factors for

bringing about the Congressional Investigations in 1975? It is an awfully

large area.

MR. HALPERN: I think if you look into the history of the background of why

the thing started it began long before the Seymour Hersh articles. The

Congress was planning to go into something like this anyway for a whole

variety of reasons. I think Morton Halperin and his group on the outside as

well as the ACLU and liberal Senators (particular Senators) were itching to

get at this for a long time. I am trying to think of the name of the che is

now a Washington Post reporter) investigative reporter (I'm trying to think of

his name but I can't) who was in Government for a while, didn't like what he

saw largely as a result of the Vietnam War. Oh, Walter Pincus.

INTERVIEWER: Walter Pincus?

MR. HALPERN: Walter Pincus had quite a bit, I think, to do in the background

in organizing this whole effort. And not many people realize that the title

(it is a long winded title) of the Church Committee was actually a title that

was prepared by the staff people months before the Church committee was even

heard of or even Senator Church knew what was going on.

INTERVIEWER: Is that right?

MR. HALPERN: It will take me some time to look for it but remind me to look

for it. I put together some language on this many years ago in terms of the

inner-workings, what was going on behind the scenes among the staff people in

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the Senate to look into intelligence across the board. CIA was just one of

the targets, I guess one of the main targets, but not the only one. And it

was just a happy (from their point of view), a happy combination of

circumstances. Seymour Hersh was looking at different things and had access

to different sources and wrote those two stories in December of '74, which

just dovetailed beautifully with what they were trying to do and brought

together what they needed and what. they wanted. And that is where the title

came from something the Church group came up with the title. It was the

staffers and the various other committees who had worked this out months

before. And by the summer and early fall of '74 these guys were ready to go

and when views from the Church Committee impetus came, there it was. They had

the title, they had the paperwork, they had everything done, and they just

pushed it through.

INTERVIEWER: Do you feel their efforts along these lines even pre-date the

Watergate investigation?

MR. HALPERN: Well I don't know if it pre-dates the Watergate or not. I can't

say. I just don't know. I think there were some possibilities of going in

tandem with the Watergate. But I don't think that the Watergate problem

itself was what these

guys were interested in but I wish I could identify them

better. They were targeting against intelligence as such and they succeeded.

INTERVIEWER: And some of it was disillusionment with the ....

MR HALPERN: Disillusionment

with the Vietnam war. No question about that.

There was another guy. The name was Paul and the reason I say that - the last

name was Paul. - because we, in the working of the intelligence officer, we had.

a hell of a time with two Congressional teams that used to go out for

Congressional committees -- these were staffers. One was made up of Pincus

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who later became the Washington Post guy. Pincus and Paul (I am trying to

remember what the first name of Paul was but we always regarded them Pincus

and Paul: P squared.

INTERVIEWER: That is P-A-U-L?

MR. HALPERN: P-A-U-L, yes. And they were problem children in terms of having

to advise the field; the State Department had a similar problem advising the

Embassies on how to handle these guys and how to brief them, what to brief

them. We weren't trying to hide anything, or kid them or lie to them or

anything like that, but it was a matter of how you really work with these

people to try to get them to understand what you are trying to do. These guys

were always traveling around Southeast Asia, in particular, and it was mostly

during the Vietnam War problem... And the second team (we called them L&Ms)

first the l stood for - Lowenstein was the L (and I'll be damned if I can

think of what the Mwas). But I think in looking into The New York Times in

1973 and 1974 long before the Watergate thing and the Church Committee

business began, these guys were always floating around as Congressional

staffers. I forget if they were the Senate or the House but anyway they had

these two teams which were real problems in terms of the Executive branch of

the government having to deal with the Congressional branch of the

government. The old conflict of foreign policy that lives in the

Constitution. I think the Constitution was made that way, to have the

stresses and strains that we still see today.

INTERVIEWER: Were these teams looking at the domestic?

MR. HALPERN: No, no. This was all foreign.

INTERVIEWER: Oh, all foreign.

MR. HALPERN: They were all looking at foreign at that point. They had

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nothing with the Church nonsense and MHCHAOS. It was all in the foreign

affairs field. And they were mucking around all over the place trying to get

into stuff which we held as classified both we the State Department, the

Defense Department, what have you. Including the use of the Meo tribes in

Laos, it

came out some money was involved, people were using Air America was

used, all that kind of stuff. These people were not representatives of the

then Intelligence Oversight Committees and with the advice of the then

Oversight Committees (the four of them we had) we had to be careful as to what

we told these people from different committees of the Congress. The four

oversight committees were jealous of their prerogatives you could imagine

particularly in the days when you had real strong men running the Congress and

they did not want all of these other committees, in terms of jurisdictional

fights, mucking around in what they were supposed to be handling it. And so

somehow we were caught in the middle of the jurisdictional fights in the

Congress at the same time we were handling classified stuff we didn't know how

far you can go with these people. They weren't cleared for a lot of stuff.

So they were real problem

children. And these two teams were the precursors

to what later became the Church and Pike Committees.

INTERVIEWER: Well, were these teams attached to particular committees or

subcommittees?

MR. HALPERN: Yes, well they were representatives of particular committees.

I

just can't remember what the committees' names were.

INTERVIEWER: OK, right.

MR. HALPERN: It didn't really matter to us. They were not part of the four

oversight committees.

INTERVIEWER: They were not?

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MR. HALPERN: They were not.

INTERVIEWER: OK.

MR. HALPERN: And the oversight committees, maybe that was one of the

problems, didn't do much oversight as you well know. And as a matter of fact

I remember these reports from DCI's coming back saying, "I got nobody to talk

to up on the Hill. They won't listen. All they want to do is give me money

and personnel. And they say, you know, "Go do your job." And so this is

true. I have heard that from senior officers in the jobs I have held at staff

meetings over and over again. The Director came back again and he doesn't

have anybody to talk to. Nobody wants to listen. Nobody wants to know. And

there is Senator Stennis and Saltonstall and all of those others.

INTERVIEWER: And Russell?

MR. HALPERN: And Russell who sat on the floor of the Senate. You know there

are certain things you have to just accept and not know about. Or Goldwater

even today, when he was chairman of the Senate Committee said, "This Committee

shouldn't exist." So the four oversight committees never gave us any trouble

really except toward the end, they were very clear about one thing. I think

it was Russell who told I think Dick Helms, DCI -- and you can check the

record on this one I'm sure -- who told him, "this is the last year," (I

forget what year it was, I guess it must have been '71 or something like

that. This is the last year we are going to fund those Meo tribes for you.

It's getting too big. Turn it over to the military," you know, "and lose it

in the Defense budget." Because it got to over a hundred million dollars and

all that kind of stuff, I guess in those days that was a little big.

INTERVIEWER: Well did you have the impression besides Pincus that Paul and

L&M were also Vietnam veterans or. . .?

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MR. HALPERN: I don't know if they were Vietnam veterans as such. I think

they did not like what was going on in

Southeast Asia. And the so-called

Secret War wasn't a secret in Laos. It wasn't a secret war, for God's

sakes. How could it be secret if the press was writing about it?

INTERVIEW: Sure.

MR. HALPERN: It was the press that gave it the name Secret War.

The Senators

and the Representatives, they knew what the hell they were appropriating: I

mean, at least the committee members did when they put down money into the

budget, and all the budgets and all that money was cleared by Congress. The

CIA doesn't print its own money for God's sakes. Somebody had to appropriate

the money, and it was.

there. And as a matter of fact it was (what the heck is

his name) Saltonstall, I think.

INTERVIEWER: Symington?

MR. HALPERN: Symington. I'm sorry. Symington was the guy who later got Dick

Helms in trouble in '73 in front of the Church Multinational Corporation

Subcommittee of the Foreign Affairs Committee and not his own committee. It

was Symington, Christ, he reviewed the troops out in Laos. Bob Jantzen who

was then Chief of Station, Bangkok, arranged for (I forget who the heck was

Chief in Laos and Vietnam, but anyway, he went up to the Meo tribes and

reviewed them and then he goes, "I never heard of things like this." What are

you going to do with them when they do when they do that? So, but that is

much later. I mean, earlier than the Church Committee itself, the one we all

know about. But this was all background in terms of, I think, it was the

Vietnam war basically that got people upset, the problem of the war.

INTERVIEWER: Did you also have the feeling that there was a different

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attitude that threat of the Soviet Union wasn't as great.

Not necessarily

seen that way in the Agency but outside the Agency?

MR. HALPERN: Oh. By that time people were looking at Vietnam. They weren't

looking at the Soviets. There is no question. I am talking '73, '74. There

was no question about that. The spirit of Detente may have something to do

with that. The spirit of Glassboro, do you remember Glassboro, NJ?

INTERVIEWER: Sure, yes.

MR. HALPERN: Johnson, which began even before Henry and Nixon and what have

you. But I think that all, I think, was totally overshadowed by Vietnam. I

think that was one of the big problems, the Vietnam War.

INTERVIEWER: And you

saw this not only in the public but also in the Congress.

MR. HALPERN: Uh huh. No question.. No question. I don't think Congress ever

really understood -- well, I know they never understood what Jim Angleton was

talking about on counterintelligence. Hell, for that matter very few people

in the Agency I think really understood that one. And I didn't have any

appreciation of it either until I got into the job as the Exec for the DDP.

Because unless you see an overall world picture it is hard to imagine this big

thing happening around you when you are worrying in one little area. But

anyway, I honestly think it was Vietnam that upset the apple cart.

Watergate

just added to it.

INTERVIEWER: Just added to it.

MR. HALPERN: The frosting on the cake I suppose or the whip cream on the

banana split. Whatever you want to call it. But I think with Vietnam that

hurt most of all.

INTERVIEWER: So even If Watergate hadn't occurred, it was moving toward

investigation.

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MR. HALPERN: It would have been. No question. No question. Because if I

remember it correctly, the P&P and L&M teams were concentrating on Southeast

Asia and looking into what the US Government as a whole was doing, not just

CIA, but they didn't like anything that was going on in that area and I think

that is what began gnawing away at the thing and broke it apart.

INTERVIEWER: OK.:

MR. HALPERN: You know in terms of an operation these guys did a magnificent

job in terms of their objectives. They, in effect, were able to stop the

whole machinery of government and wreck the intelligence system in the entire

community, not just CIA. And it is going to take of couple of generations to

rebuild it. If we ever can. You can't go home again. That is for sure. But

to rebuild what we had at one time is going to take at least a couple of

generations. Hell, it took us 25-30 years, that's a whole generation to get

the thing organized and then it came apart. It really came apart. And a lot

of this, because of the Vietnam, also had an effect not just inside the

government but it had the effect of the recruits you got. Even as early or

late, whichever way you want to look at it, from about 1970 on, we had been in

the war in Vietnam, for five years by then. The recruits, the new people

coming in, who passed all the tests and what have you, and been through the

first training courses and what have you, and they were on their first

assignments from the desks or some of them even going overseas for instance.

The ones that I saw, and I made it my practice sitting in the DDP's office as

the Exec, to talk to as many young officers as I could. Always had an

excuse: a cable who was coming up for release by the DoP, or going up to the

DCI coming through the channels, I always was able to call the guy who wrote

the thing. I didn't care about the guy who coordinated, I was interested in

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who wrote it. And to talk to them. If you have to stop let me know.

INTERVIEWER: No, we are fine, keep going.

MR HALPERN: Anyway, I used to talk to these fellows and women to see what

made them tick and it was a very difficult job listening to them many times

when they had all these bright ideas about intelligence, how you could do this

and how you could do that. And I had to bite my tongue and say, "Well, wait a

minute. You know, we tried that 25 years ago or 20 years ago and it didn't

work." And you couldn't just dampen their spirits by pouring cold water every

time they would come up with an idea, and yet somehow you had to try to get

them interested enough to look into the history of what happened and how you

did this and how you couldn't do this and how, why certain things would seem.

beautiful when you dream them up and write them down on a piece of paper. In

the real world it just don't work. And we learned the hard way. All of us.

Trial and error. But you hope that the next group coming up didn't have to go

through that same torture if they would look at the record. And my concern

was that very few people were borrowing stuff out of the registry. Very few

people were interested in going back into the history of what took place and

certain activities. And you can't get it all out of a classroom.

INTERVIEWER: Right.

MR. HALPERN: And this was one of the things that bothered me while I was in

that job for those last few years is that: how do you pass on the experiences

so that people understand and learn without feeling that they are being pushed

down, without feeling that they are being squashed? Because you want

initiative. Half the business in dealing with human beings is initiative and

I don't know enough about the technical side but I know enough about the human

side. But you have to stop them. Why spin wheels? Why push a lot of paper

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through if they're going to be disapproved anyway? And yet keep them

interested enough. And that's a tough job.

INTERVIEWER: And were these recruits, say, '70's - were they much different

from those that you would have had in the '60's?

MR. HALPERN: Yes, the early '60's .

INTERVIEWER: The early '60's?

MR. HALPERN: Before the Vietnam war. A lot of people were coming in, and I

blame the educational system for this, in terms of the teachers they had. And

I discovered this to my horror, as I mentioned earlier, about the Colorado

business -- the teachers there were worse than the students. Facts don't mean

anything to them. For example in Colorado it seemed to be, it was perfectly

all right for the students and the faculty to use the Church Committee

documents to prove one of their points about how bad CIA was or how bad DIA

was or what have you. But when I tried to use the same documents quoting

different pages, that was wrong. I wasn't allowed to do that. "That's just

junk. That doesn't mean anything." And I looked at them and I said, "I

thought I was at a university where you are supposed to be able to argue from.

text.". No, it was all right for them to do it but not all right for me to do

it.

INTERVIEWER: It fit in their pattern.

MR. HALPERN: Yea, and so, you know, what do you do?

INTERVIEWER: Were these recruits coming in in the early '70's and so on --

MR. HALPERN: The early '70's.

INTERVIEWER: Are they more questioning, are they . ..?

MR. HALPERN: No, that was one of the things that bothered me. One of the

things that struck me, both male and female, when they came in most of them,

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when we got into discussions about operations or what have you, they seemed to

be more concerned about

when they were going to become a division chief, a

station chief, and when they were going to become DdP and then eventually,

"how do I get to be DCI?" And finally after all of that is over, "What about

my pension rights?"

INTERVIEWER: That's already coming?

MR. HALPERN: Yea, in the very beginning in '71, '72, '73, and at least '70,

'71 and '72 when I was more concerned about talking to them because by '73 we

were having difficulties with the Schlesinger turnover and what have you. But

this was one of the things that struck me very strong, and I was bothered by

it, and these were the best of the applicants. They had already been through

all of the machinery and all the screening processes and what have you and

these were the shining.

stars from the academe, and I was concerned about

that. But again, what do you do?

INTERVIEWER: Were others troubled as well?

MR. HALPERN: Yea, some of my colleagues were. They picked it up the same way

I did except on a different level. They were doing it in the branches or in

the staffs, most in the branches, or in the area units and I was looking from

across the board. But it was the same idea. We used to kick this around at

lunch. How do you get instilled into the new group, the upcoming generation,

the guys who are going to take over from us, that there is more to this

business than worrying about your pension? I tried to tell some of them, look

some of us are going to be in this business their whole career and never see.

the DCI's office let alone be the DCI. And so I said, "In ill organizations

not everybody can be the field marshall. Some of them have to be privates and

stay as privates our whole career." And that didn't go down at all.

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INTERVIEWER: It didn't go down?

MR. HALPERN: No way. No way. You know it was frightening then and I guess

it is even more frightening now. I don't know what the situation is now but

its a bad show.

I don't know. Maybe we were brought up in a totally

different generation. I don't know different backgrounds. I don't know

whether it was things like the Depression or World War II or what, but we all

had a different -- we all wanted to get promotions; sure, we all wanted more

money; sure, we all wanted honors and titles and God knows what else and

medals but. . ..

INTERVIEWER: I wondered the same thing.

MR. HALPERN: You didn't sort of aim what the hell you were doing. "Hey, if I

do this right I'll get a medal." Or again, you may have thought maybe a

couple of these good things I do I'll get a promotion or something like that.

Yea:, but that's normal. But you didn't do it for the purpose of the

promotion.. And here these people are talking to me about: how do I get to

this and how do I get to that. I guess it's called career planning or

something.. I have been through a lot of that, by the way, on career planning

from a personnel point of view, trying to chart out people's whole careers,

and I thought that was for the birds. How do you sit there and say in 25

years from now he is going to be in X, Y, and Z. Maybe you can do it.

INTERVIEWER: That will come in with Schlesinger?

MR. HALPERN: That came in with Bill Colby. Management by Objective and all

of. that kind of nonsense.

INTERVIEWER: I've got some questions on that coming up.

MR. HALPERN: But I remember specifically, and you had better cut and paste

this tape I think, but I remember, for example, when Colby's Management by

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Objective started coming out, one of the articles that was given to us,

written by a Britisher I believe, had a whole series of things - things not

to do if you are going to go into Management by Objective. And we all looked

at this thing -- we, I mean, all of my colleagues -- every single one of these

points, things not to do before you go into Management by Objective, we had

already done. So how can we go into this thing? We went into it anyway.

INTERVIEWER: Damn the torpedoes.

MR. HALPERN: Oh yea. It was great stuff.

INTERVIEWER: And was their a feeling -- again when you talk about these new,

these young officers coming on in the early '70's -- was there still a feeling

of family or is that a term that really. . .?

MR. HALPERN: Yes, that is a good old term. "Band of Brothers" is a better

term. We really felt, all of us did, we were a Band of Brothers. Oh, sure,

we had arguments and fights and all of that kind of stuff, competition on who

was going to get what job, who was gonna be chief of station or who was gonna

do this, but we still felt ourselves a band of brothers. I like that term

better than family. Maybe other people use family but we were different. We

were guys who had gone through the war and had started from scratch, building

an organization and building a concept which was mainly an intelligence

service. And particularly us in the Clandestine Service, long before we got

into this covert action nonsense but anyway we were interested in how you

collect intelligence using human sources and with technical support, but

anyway, we were building a service. We thought we were. An important one.

And even though it only produces a very small percentage of the total take of .

the US Government, we thought it was an important take. It was never going to

match something like Ultra or this overhead reconnaissance. You couldn't

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possibly. But we were zeroing in what we called the hard targets and the

intentions and plans more than anything else. And as that kind of a group we

were all, "We came up the hard way" kind of thing. And we felt closer

together as a result of that.

INTERVIEWER: And did the Band of Brothers include everyone in the Agency or

was it --?

MR. HALPERN: No, it was just the Clandestine Services.

INTERVIEWER: Just the Clandestine Services.

MR. HALPERN: And as a matter of fact a lot of us in the Clandestine Services,

I wasn't one of them, a lot of us felt that we should not be part of CIA. We

should be separate. Totally separate and not be involved with anybody else.

And that was one of the fights that went on for a long time between the DDI

and the DoP in that most of the DDI people felt land the top brass

particularly.felt) that the DDP should be an adjunct of the DDI, responding

only to DDI requests for information and in effect be the DDI's library and

research staff. You know, find out if the bridge is still standing between

"x" and "y" in the middle of Uganda or something like that. And we felt

differently. The DDI felt that they were the national intelligence analyst

group and we felt that we were

the national intelligence collector's group -

human sources.

INTERVIEWER: Sure.

MR. HALPERN: And drew big arguments on that. Big fights. And DDI always

felt that we (DDP) should disseminate intelligence that we collect only to the

DDI. They would decide who else was going to get the information. We thought.

that was a farce. We were everybody's collector from the President on down

and it was up to the President to tell us who else to give the information

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to. And sometimes they did, like the Cuban missile crisis. And the President

stopped the distribution all across. Completely.

INTERVIEWER: Was there any feeling -- you talked about the Band of Brothers

in Clandestine Service - was there any similar feeling in the DDI?

MR. HALPERN:

I don't know. You'd have to ask somebody there that could tell

you. Because I am in effect the Johnny-come-lately to the DDP because I

started out in OSS and R&A, and then moved from R&A over into the SSU, the si

side -- the Secret Intelligence side. And I know when I was in R&A our

feeling then was we were part of OSS, the whole thing, and even though the SI

people didn't always tell us what they were doing, we found out later that we

shouldn't know. At least I found out later. There was a good reason why we

shouldn't know. We could work with them and we worked very well with them in

terms of providing intelligence support for their operations in the field in

Southeast Asia, which was my beat, and we would sit and work with the officers

who were going out (not the agents) but the officers going out to do the job,

and when I was in Ceylon (again R&A) we worked very closely together with them

in terms of planned operations against various parts of Japanese held

territory. And we wrote all kinds of papers for them and pulled together all

kinds of stuff, and the question was in those days we felt more like we were

all part of OSS and OSS was a brand new thing. At least that is the attitude

I felt from talking to my friends about it, even as a part of R&A. But later

when it became a bigger outfit (a peacetime outfit) it was more - well, we

were part of CIA in DDP but we felt for good and sufficient reasons that it

would be better if we could work out some decent cover so we'd be on the

outside totally devoid and divorced from the government. I don't know, the

number of times we had study groups planning on how to do this, to have a real

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clandestine outfit working outside the government, with proper communications

obviously and clearances and what have you. we talked about Colorado before

in one of the papers -- go out to Colorado somewhere. You know, way out in

nowhere. This was in the '40's -- the late '40's -- or go to some other part

of the country and get hooked up by telephone or wire or what have you long

before all of this computer nonsense. Or even get buried in New York City,

Wall Street, or one of those huge monstrosities that existed even then as a

private company somewhere. And do actual company business -- be a real

business, but also run your operation. Well, this has been tried so many

times in terms of study groups and nothing has ever come of it. Nothing.

INTERVIEWER: Didn't even come close.

MR. HALPERN: No. You couldn't get people willing to provide you the money,

the material, work out all of the legal aspects and it was really a hell of a

job when you consider you have the salaries and social security and workman's

compensation and how do you work out decent pensions for people and making a

career out of it and all that kind of stuff. You could do it for a few (as we

have done over the past years). We used to do anyway. We'd have decent

proprietaries. We'd run our own insurance companies and all that kind of

stuff and provide lifetime pensions for people and work on a system that would

work. But you could do it for a few and we did. I don't know what they are

doing today, and I am not interested in knowing. But to do it for a mass, it

would be tough -- very, very, very tough. So when you talk about brothers or

family, as we got bigger the DDP-DDI split was very evident and, as a matter

of fact, at one time, believe it or not, in the very early days DDP case

officers on the desks were not even allowed to talk to DDI analysts because we

thought, in those days, we thought the DDI analyst would be able to convince

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the clandestine operator enough so that pretty soon the clandestine operator

was captive of the analyst and would be doing his research for him. And we

had plenty of calls from DDI analysts which in effect, the answers were in the

Library of Congress, for God's sake go get them. We are not going down there

and get them for you and we are not going to burden the field people with

going to get those kind of figures for you. They

are right there. Go get

them. And we had lots of fights about that. Oh yea.

INTERVIEWER: I suppose there must have been a lot of tension?

MR. HALPERN: There was. There was. Because we kept saying the DDI analyst

was supposed to do their own research; do your own job. And I said in the

first place, and I remember I got into some arguments with some of them, and I

am sure my colleagues did too, that collecting intelligence via a clandestine

mechanism is the most expensive, time-consuming way of collecting a piece of

information. You have to have long lead time, you don't have a whole bunch of

agents in various departments of foreign governments so that you can just

press buttons and get answers out of them. And it takes time to identity what

you are looking for. And our job is a selected job and you have to go for the

hard targets. I am not interested in finding out the railway statistics for

you or the tonnage of wheat that goes through ports, for God's sakes. We can

get that from the Department of Agriculture or Commerce or something. This is

a very, very expensive way to do business. This is why we had to set up

actually a requirements staff which screened requirements so that we wouldn't

get flooded with this nonsensical stuff that should be done by somebody in the

US Government, don't get me wrong, but not the Clandestine Service. The

collector has got to be so fine-tuned that it is only after you've tried

everything else that you go for this particular thing. And don't expect the

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answer tomorrow morning. So we had a whole mechanism just in the screening

process. As a result the orders went out, "Don't talk to each other." Well,

over a number of years we finally broke that down which I thought we should

have.

INTERVIEWER: When would you say what point of time was it pretty well broken

down?

MR. HALPERN: It began to be broken down - let me give you two examples. One

in 1957 and '58 when I was involved as the Exec then for Far East Division of

the DDP. We were involved in an operation in Indonesia with the Colonel from

Sumatra and later the Colonel from Celebes. I told my boss I was going to do

this and he said fine. I personally knew from the war -- from the OSS days --

the analyst in the DDI, and I think it was OCI, who was on the Indonesian

desk. And I kept her very well clued on important developments in the

operation as it was going along so that she wouldn't be caught short by things

and would be able to watch what went into the President's Daily Brief and went

into the dally stuff and I mean it worked fine. But that was on a one-to-one

basis. And how much she told the DDDI personally, that was up to her. I

wasn't going to tell her how to run the show. But it never was on a DDP-DDI

basis, you see, the two got together and said, "Here's the operation." No

way. The second time we were breaking it even more was after the Cuban

Missile Crisis. After the Cuban Missile Crisis. 1963 now - we have moved

about five or six years.

INTERVIEWER: Right.

MR. HALPERN: Des Fitzgerald was transferred from Chief of the Far East

Division to take over from Bill Harvey on the Cuban operation. Under Bill it

was called TFW (Task Force W) and under Des Fitzgerald it was called Special

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Affairs Staff. This was after Operation Mongoose and Des had an uneasy

feeling that the intelligence we were collecting on Cuba was just not being

accepted by the analysts. And it wasn't. Well, it wasn't a picture and it

wasn't COMINT. The analyst only believed pictures and COMINT. And maybe

today they believe telemetry or something, I don't know, maybe if it's not a

picture it is something else. Anyhow, if it wasn't technical in one way or

another, Cuban sources, the hell with them. And they were just being washed

out. And Des took it upon himself land he was the kind of guy who would do

these things without getting approval or clearances).. He decided he would ask

the DDI to send a senior officer down to (I say down because we were in the

basement of the building) to come to us on SAs, and Des would make available

to this one man la very senior guy -- I don't remember who; my memory has gone

bad), would make available true identities of all sources, and that created

holy hell within the DDP because, obviously, it went up and down the line and

Des' colleagues (as division staff chiefs) thought he was crazy, and it was

just a really big battle royal on this thing, but Des being Des said, "The

hell with it, I'm going to do it. They're my sources, I'm responsible, it's

my operation, and goddamnit, you have to give credit where it is due. " Dick

Helms supported him against the argumentation by all the other senior

officers. Nobody else wanted to go along with this.

INTERVIEWER: Is that right?

MR. HALPERN: So this guy came down and he sat for days, weeks, I don't know,

and he had access, believe it or not. I thought he was crazy. I thought Des

had lost his marbles. The one thing you protect is sources. Allen Dulles is

supposed to have said, he would even lie to the President if necessary to

protect a source. And that was sacrosanct. You don't tel-t anybody your

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sources, for God's sakes. You don't even tell the guy who's sitting and

working next to you who your source is. But anyway this was done and after (I

wish I could remember his name), anyway, after this fellow had gone through

all this nonsense and all the information, he came up with a report that

simply, in effect, said to the DDI people involved, "You don't know what you

are missing. These are honest, bona fide sources by and large and," he said.

"I think you are crazy for not using them." So from that point of view it

starts to break down. The animosity, the differences of approach on how you

work this thing, and it was a good thing from that point of view, and I must

say not one of our sources was ever revealed by this man. He kept it, you

know - integrity.

INTERVIEWER: Sure.

→ MR. HALPERN: And he became one of us, in effect. Ok, he knew the sources.

He knew more than I did and I was the Exec. I never asked for sources. But

Des also had another thing as part of this program. Des started to expand

what is called the source description on the disseminations. We used to have

just a one liner or something like that, the guy had access on it. And we

ended up by writing a short paragraph about the source, without identifying

the source, which in effect gave the reader some idea of the source's

reliability, his access to this particular type of information, how long he

had been around with us, and, in effect, we're telling you this is good, bad

or indifferent.

INTERVIEWER: They were a tested source.

MR. HALPERN: Yes. And without going into that numbering system or the

grading system which is hard to work with. And this was a departure. And

this was a test again. And only on the task force we began that before it

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became DDP-wide and the DDP hierarchy was opposed to that too. Because if you

work with us long enough and you don't change these by-lines often enough,

somebody can sit and pretty much zero in on who the source is. And it is a

hell of a lot of extra work. Believe me, a hell of a lot of extra work. But

Des insisted. Again being Des, and then when he became DDP, he put that

system in effect throughout the DDP. And unfortunately he was in the ddp only

a short period before he died in July of '67. So when you're talking about

the time frame of breakdown, it began in '63. Des took that system into WH

when he became the Division Chief of the Western Hemisphere Division, as it's

called now LA. And then he took it into the DDP when he became DDP in '65.

INTERVIEWER: My goodness.

MR. HALPERN: And he remained there until 1967.

INTERVIEWER: Gee. That's good background.

MR. HALPERN: So best when you are talking about breakdown of the dispute, or

the fight between the two, there were very valid reasons for both sides to

maintain the position that they had at the time. I can see their side.

Having been from R&A, I can understand what their problem was, like I

understand our problem on the collecting side. And so, but gradually, I don't

know what the system is today and how it works, but anyway we began to break

it down, but it took, well, it began in '47 and took until '67. 20 years.

What you've got is two different worlds. And this is one of the reasons I

keep telling journalists who talk to me, we're both in the same business... You

are collecting information, and you want to protect sources. That's what we

are doing. You do it to get a Pulitzer Prize and we do it to protect the

United States.

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It took all this time because of the very firm positions held by both sides.

It took all this time to get a better approach, a more reasoned approach, to

talk to each other, and both sides still maintained their respective jobs.

INTERVIEWER: And Des was a key figure.

MR. HALPERN: Des was a very key figure in this and he was doing this mostly

on his own. He had a hell of a lot of opposition. And, as I say, even his

closest allies, and I was his Exec, and I thought he was crazy. And I told

him so. I said you know you are giving away the store.

INTERVIEWER: And Helms backed him?

MR. HALPERN: Finally. It took a lot of doing, but Helms backed him. Helms

said, "All right, let Des try as an experiment. He'll be the guinea pig.

Let's see what happens." And I must say if the DDI man who was chosen (it was

a very senior, goddammit), he'd been around a long time and had a marvelous

reputation. And a man of integrity and all of that, and boy he proved it.

But if he had broken, if he had slipped even just telling the DDI himself the

identities of some of the sources, the thing would have fallen right flat on

its face. But simply because of this one individual being who he was in terms

of an honest man, knew what the job was, he knew what had to be done and he

kept it all to himself.

INTERVIEWER: Great.

MR. HALPERN: He knew more about our sources when he was finished with the job

than Des did.

INTERVIEWER: Is that right?

MR. HALPERN: Well, Des didn't know what the sources were. He knew them by.

cryptonyms. You know, "Radiator," yea he is the guy from the army. You

know. Or "Lamb," he's the guy that gives the stuff on the Mig-22 or 21. You

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know, that's all you needed to know. But this guy knew who the sources were.

He knew them by name, rank and serial number. And it was an unbelievable

thing that was done.

INTERVIEWER: And no leaks:

MR. HALPERN: Not a bit. That was the most important thing. And I guess he

knew

what he was up to and he knew what the consequences of leaking were. The

experiment would have dropped dead in its tracks and nobody would have ever

tried it again. Ever. So it worked. But that's what finally broke it. So,

as I say, you were up to '65, '66, '67 when Des was DDP.

INTERVIEWER: Okay. Earlier we were just touching on Congressional committees

and there are some critics who say the Congressional committees overseeing the

Agency before 1.975 were "blind and toothless watchdogs; that members of

Congress were unaware or unconcerned about Agency excesses." What are your

views with regard to Congressional oversight of the Agency?

MR. HALPERN: Well, in those days the four committees were not blind, were not

toothless and they were not whatever the other phrase you had there.. The four

•groups were.largely controlled by senior members of Congress who really ran

the Congress in those days. And their concern was: as not themselves

getting to know too much of the secrets that went on; and b they felt

largely, you pick good people, you give them a job to do, you give them the

tools to do it and don't muck around with them. Particularly, in this

particular field. Maybe it was ignorance. I don't know. But that was the

general attitude.: As I say and as I have said before, I have had enough

reports from my bosses. The DCI was dying to talk substance with some of

these leaders on the Hill, and they did not want to listen. And that, I

think, was wrong. Maybe they could have helped. Maybe it would have been

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different. I don't know. But they weren't blind and they weren't toothless.

They were deliberate on that part. And they didn't deliberately blind

themselves. They were taken in a little, I think, sometimes when we used to

show them all kinds of little goodies and fancy gidgets and gadgets and secret

devices and what have you, just like show and tell. And I used to have to

prepare some of these things or get the stuff from the agent or from rest of

the DDP for the goodies - and we called them goodies - to show the hill.

Well, they weren't always interested in seeing even those things.

INTERVIEWER: Is that right?

MR. HALPERN: Well, "We know you're doing a good job. Go. Go. Go."

INTERVIEWER: These goodies might be radios or. ..?

MR. HALPERN: Could be radios, could be concealment devices, secret writing

devices -- all kinds of gadgets with different kinds of bugs in them. And

obviously they got smaller, and smaller, and smaller, and smaller they got

more and more heisted into looking at them, but it also meant goodies in terms

of good intelligence we picked up. I differ completely with Admiral Turner

who said that the years he was a DCI he never saw a piece of intelligence that

was worth the life of anybody. I differ with him about that. There was some

intelligence which I think was worth more than the life of a person. I can

give you an example of that later. But, the committees, I think, deliberately

didn't want to get involved. They weren't lined up or held us for fools. I

don't think they were fooled a bit. They knew what they were doing. They

wanted it that way. And they kept it that way. And even in the staffs in

those days of those.

committee people were limited staffs who were cleared for

all this kind of stuff, and they were not interested in jogging, or pushing,

or goading their bosses into unnecessary mucking around of what the hell was

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going on. They just weren't. Usually the staff directors of each of the

small units were the only ones cleared for most of things and sat in on the

meetings.

INTERVIEWER: They were cleared by the Agency?

MR. HALPERN: Oh sure.

INTERVIEWER: They went through the whole, the background. . .?

MR. HALPERN: I don't know if ... They weren't given polygraphs. That's

for sure. At least I don't think so. How they did the clearances I never

asked. But anyway, they were cleared. So that, people say they were taken

into camp. I don't think that is the proper phrase. My own feeling is there

was a different attitude. They weren't out to do investigative reporting, in

effect, for themselves. They weren't looking for titles, they weren't looking

for television headlines. They were just trying to do an honest day's work,

quietly, peacefully and get enough information. to know about the budget then

they got all the budgetary information they wanted, all the budgets went

through them without an exception. No question about that, they knew exactly

where every penny was and approved it and what have you and all these

so-called covert operations were always cleared with the proper committee.

The committees had to alert the OMB in those days, the BOB really, the Bureau

of the Budget. The BOB wouldn't release money for some of our activities

until they got the word from the committees on the Hill.

INTERVIEWER: Is that right?

MR. HALPERN: Yes, the four committees.

so we didn't have a pot full of money

that we could just willy nilly use.

INTERVIEWER: Did you have a contingency fund? Modest.

MR. HALPERN: Well, the contingency fund was up on the Hill. I mean, it was

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controlled by the Hill. And it is today, I believe. But before you get money

released by the BOB, somebody up there had to say OK. And that happened on

every one of the operations I know about. In the Far East, I don't know about

the European ones, I am

sure the system is the same. It was a well-oiled

machine. Sure, they didn't ask the kind of questions that are asked today,

but they knew what the operation was.

INTERVIEWER: There was a feeling between the Agency and the Congress that

there was good liaison?

MR. HALPERN: Oh yes.

It was overt. Completely. Always. It worked very

well indeed. And the system worked so that the Legislative Counsel, whether

it was pforzheimer or John Warner or anybody else, they knew who to call

within the DDP, for example. If they were sitting up on the Hill and one of

the members -- could be a Senator or Representative of the committees -

wanted to know something, they knew who to call, and when I had the job they

usually called me for the DOP because I was able to get them the answer and it

worked very well. In case someone didn't know everything, they knew where to

get the information. And when Congress asked you gave it to them.

INTERVIEWER: Do you think this was also a reflection of the view that the

Agency and the Congress both saw the Soviet threat as a real threat?

MR. HALPERN: I am not sure that was part of it. It may have been. But

that's a conjecture on my part. I think it was more the people we were

dealing with on the Hill had also been through the same things most of us had

• been through. They are all part of the same generation. We were all working

together in terms of protecting the country. At least we thought we were

protecting the country. The business where some of this falls down is when we

started, because we had to, start working operations more in the United States

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in order to get assets to go abroad, and once you start that you're touching a

very sensitive area and we all knew that. And we'll talk about that later.

We'll talk about MICHAOS.

INTERVIEWER: Yes.

MR. HALPERN: But until then the consensus was, you know, we've got to have a

united front, we've got to find out what's going on in the world, we're

getting more involved in the world, and we all need to help each other. And I

don't think - yeah, the Soviet threat was there but it was different, I

think, it was a different -- I mean, we weren't expecting the Soviets to march

over the border except very early in the late -- right after the war in the

'40's when you had the Berlin blockade and that kind of stuff. Yeah, at that

time people were expecting the Soviet troops to come marching not only into

Bonn but also into Paris. But that didn't last into the '50's. It was a

totally, sure there was a Soviet threat abroad and later a Chinese Communist

threat in Southeast Asia, no question of that. And there was a matter of, I

guess when Dean Rusk said many years later in the '60's, something about,

there is a dirty war going on in the alleys of the world in which we don't

see, but he said it's important, and, yeah, we were there.

INTERVIEWER: Was there much more cooperation?

MR. HALPERN: Oh yeah, it was total.

What broke it down was the Vietnam war

again and I guess Watergate.

When '74 came around, I mean the Congressional

elections of '74 came, and you had a totally different bunch of guys coming

in, and Congress became 435 on one side and 100

on another side. Totally

independent kingdoms and principalities. And you had no cohesion and no

control. I think that's when it all broke. You couldn't go to two or three

guys on the Congressional Hill and say, "Here are the facts, this is what we

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think we ought to do about it. If you agree, fine; if you don't agree, fine.

Tell us." But these guys could sit up there and they could say, okay, they

can commit the congress.

As a cohesive unit, they could get those votes when

they needed them. And if somebody, some freshman Congressman said, "Hey, I

want to know about this." "We'll tell you later buddy, you can't vote." And

it worked.

Today, there is no way you could do it. We haven't been able to

do it since the Congressional election of '74. But coming back to what I said

earlier though, those guys who were working in the

committees

in advance of

what later became the Church Committee on Intelligence, they were with the old

crowd but they were beginning to break. apart then and they were working within

the framework, and what helped them, obviously, was a totally new Congress in

'75. And all hell broke loose.

INTERVIEWER: Yes, yes, and it still. . .

MR HALPERN: And it still hasn't been put back together. . Even Tip O'Neill

couldn't control it. In all what, he had 30 years up there or more, and he

couldn't control it. And until you get - I'm not even talking consensus

now -- but until you get back to some kind of a better hold on a Congress so

that you don't have these independent kingdoms and fiefdoms and they work

together more as a cohesive unit on various activity - talk about special

interest groups - that's where they need them up there. They have to get

together. I don't care whether it's a special interest group on social

security and on medicare and on intelligence and on something else and on

something else but you've got to have better control.

INTERVIEWER: It's really fragmented.

MR. HALPERN: It's very fragmented. You can't run a government that way.

Impossible. You don't know who to talk to. And even with the Intelligence

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Committee, I remember, for example, Senator Huddleston, who was on the Church

Committtee and later was on the Intelligence Committee. During the days of

the Church Committee he was talking about, "You can't just have CIA or the

intelligence people talk to a couple of people up on the Hill and that's it.

You've got to talk to everybody." After he'd been on the Intelligence

Committee for a while, and I've got his clippings somewhere in my stack of

clippings, Huddleston said, "The Congress, the members of Congress" -- he was

addressing his own buddies - "the members of Congress have to accept us on

the Intelligence Committee as your surrogates." And that is all we were

trying to do. In an intelligence community to have an intelligence committee

be the surrogate -- and there was four of them -- be the surrogate for the

whole Congress. But Huddletson when he was on the Church committee said, "You

can't do that, you can't do that. We all have to know." Well, he found out

personally.

INTERVIEWER: He finally changed.

MR. HALPERN: He changed his mind.

INTERVIEWER: That's neat.

MR. HALPERN: So you know, that's all they were saying. And it finally, it

took him a long while to get around to it, but he finally did it.

INTERVIEWER: Some get educated faster than others.

MR. HALPERN: That's right. So when you talk about. . : The '74 break, I

think, was a big thing, a big thing. And I think if the election of Congress

in '74 had gone a little bit differently, and there hadn't been that total

break and disorder up on the Hill, the disarray I call it, which all began

with the Vietnam business and aided by the Watergate -

INTERVIEWER: And Nixon resigning in '74.

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MR. HALPERN: Yeah, he did in '74. He was pardoned in, what, August of '74.

But I think if the election had gone differently, and there had been some

control under the Congress - more cohesion;- the Church Committee and Pike

Committee might have been prepared a little better. I don't know. I'm just

guessing. Obviously we can't rewrite history.

INTERVIEWER: No reruns.

MR. HALPERN: No reruns, no reruns. None at all. i

INTERVIEWER: Okay. How about some indications that younger Agency officers

were troubled by certain domestic practices such as mail openings in the years

before 1974.

MR. HALPERN: That's correct.

INTERVIEWER: Were you aware of these tensions?

MR. HALPERN: Oh sure. They were all over the place. When the MHCHAOS

program began, I think it began in what - I'm trying to think now -- '69, '70

something like that?

INTERVIEWER: Yes.

MR. HALPERN: '70, something like

that. Anyway, yes, this was very much felt

by all the officers, well not all but a good majority of the officers. They

didn't like

the idea of following Americans abroad unless we had some real

hard evidence that such and such was happening with an. American and Soviet

agent or whatever. But then you had the old question of the chicken and the

egg. How do you find out whether the guy is alone until you follow him?

Where do you begin? How do you get to the point where you know he is involved

until you start somewhere? Obviously it got out of hand in terms of the

number of people we started to follow and look at. But it basically began as

a way of getting support and finding assets in this country (leftists assets)

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who could go abroad as bona fide leftists as reporting mechanisms. It was all

targetted abroad. We never targetted it here in the United States. I think

the record of the Committee proves that, even the Rockefeller Commission or

what have you. And this was something new, we'd never tried before on a

massive scale, and we worked very closely with the FBI on this. And most of

the files we opened up were names the FBI gave us with duplicate copies of

what they had in their files on a lot of these Americans with leftists

leanings and what have you. The officer corps in the DDP didn't like it,

thought we were going beyond our charter, obviously thought we were trying to

become a Gestapo, in effect, in the United States. And that was never the

case. The appeals from various officers from various levels, and it was

intensive argumentation, both here and abroad, the appeals went up the line.

There was no intention of trying to dampen down the arguments or the

objections or the concerns. The appeals went up, not once, but several times

-- right up to Helms, the Director - each and every time these things were

examined again, looked at again, and orders came down to continue in terms of:

our target is abroad, not the United States. Everything we are doing here has

to be geared to something abroad. And we even changed procedures on a lot of

this stuff.. It was tightly held information, the cables were tightly held,

and MHCHAOS itself as an indicator. (The MH was just a digraph of the

DDP-wide activity.) Everything was done on special channels, special cable

channels, special pouch channels. It wasn't given wide distribution at all.

Well, everyone knew the program was going on. We had many a staff meeting

about this, DDP staff meetings. There was a lot of tension, no question about .

that.

INTERVIEWER: And was the tension just with the young officers or. :.?

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MR. HALPERN: No. It was up and down throughout.

INTERVIEWER: Throughout?

MR. HALPERN: Including some of the old hands who didn't like the system,

didn't like the program. And even those who understood that this was

basically geared abroad as a counterintelligence operation, just didn't think

that we should be involved in it. We preferred to have the Bureau or somebody

else get involved in it. But again, you talk about turf battles and equity or

what have you, a lot of the liaison services abroad -- the foreign liaison

services. -- we had a deal with. Many of them didn't want to work with the

Bureau and only wanted to work with us. And you can't have both agencies

suddenly hitting the same foreign service and asking the same questions. It

just gets silly. So there were lots of problems on this one and the officers.

as I say, even some of the old hands, didn't like it. They wanted to go back

to doing the normal collection job and not go looking for what amounts to, you

know, Bolsheviks with bombs under the bed. And that tension was there and I

think it continues, and even under Bill Colby who modified the program even

more in '73, in late or middle '73 with Schlesinger and Colby. But the

program by and large continued in a slightly reduced fashion and a different

terminology and with much more emphasis on doing that over there than in the

States. I think it's

the kind of thing that, you know, you're damned if you

do and you are damned if you don't. I don't think we ever convinced everybody

that what we were doing was within bounds and, obviously, we had the

information, the information wasn't going anywhere. Nobody was going to court

on it, nobody was going to get shot, nobody was going to get put in jail. I

mean, we were just pulling it all together.

INTERVIEWER: Would you say dozens of officers knew about this?

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MR. HALPERN: Oh, hundreds of them.

INTERVIEWER: Hundreds of officers.

MR. MALPERN: Sure. I think everybody in the DDP knew about it. They didn't

see the traffic, but they knew about it.

INTERVIEWER: They knew about it?

MR. HALPERN: Oh yeah. It was common hall gossip and lunch room gossip and

what have you. And as I say, there was lots of opposition to it by senior

officers as well as -- well, in the first place a lot of the senior officers

thought that we were taking our time and effort and our assets away from the

important job, which was the Soviet target. You know, it takes time, it takes

people, and it takes money. And you only have so much that you can do in 24

hours a day, and you can't do everything. That's why you end up with what we

used to call a Related Mission Director for the priority - trying to do things

in some kind of priority order. And you can't just pick the easy ones. You

know, you would get a bad report card if you pick only the easy ones. You've

got to pick some of the hard ones too.

INTERVIEWER: Where was it thought that these orders came from, relative

to . .?

MR. HALPERN: Oh, they knew, people knew where the orders came from. They i

knew it was a Presidential directive. Nothing was hidden from them. Oh, no

question about that. This was a part of the Johnson presidential

requirement. What he was looking for was evidence of Soviet or domestic

upheaval in the United States. We couldn't find it. And no matter, and every

time we told him that, he said, "Intensify your efforts." You know, and as

Dick Helms has said, you know, "I only have one president at a time.. That's

where I get my orders." So what do you do? And if Dick said that I'm not

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going to do it, there would be a new DCI in 24 hours - or thereabouts.

INTERVIEWER: And I think your point that it went up and down wasn't just the

younger. . .

MR. HALPERN: No, no. It was up and down on the entire hierarchy. There were

pro and con argumentation and what have you. Now they say a lot of the older

hands are saying, you know, "We haven't got time to do everything for God's

sakes. Which is more important: the Soviet target or to find out if there

are a couple of bucks coming into the country? People are going to be in the

streets anyway whether they get Soviet money or not." I mean, it doesn't take

very much to get people into the streets in this country, as you can see. And

that is part of the breakdown. And that is Vietnam. Not Watergate. You

know, Kent State didn't happen until 1970. We'd been in the war since '65

basically. And I remember arguing with my National War College colleagues,

the military and the State Department guys and what have you, and I said when

we went in... Let's see -- the Marines went in in March of '65 in Danang.

The class didn't start until August of '65. I was with the class of '66, so

we'd been in there a few months. And we went to a briefing in one of the

secure rooms down in the bowels of the Pentagon. And this was DCSLOGS (Deputy

Chief of Staff Logistics) DCSLOGS, and they had a big briefing for us. We

were all senior officers in the War College with clearances and what have you,

and they were telling us -- this is October of '65 - they had the usual

Colonels with pointers attached showing us the charts for what they were

planning for Vietnam. And the graphs were going like this for five years.

The number of troops that were going to be in Vietnam - five years! I looked.

around at my buddies and I said, "What the hell is going on here? We just got

there! How the hell you are planning a five year war? You guys are crazy!"

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I said, "This country -- the only time it's had a war. longer than four years

was the American Revolution. You are not going to have the support of the

American people if you go that long. . It's crazy! You can't plan five years

ahead." They had half a million men. Five year plan. This wasn't out in

public, obviously, in October '65. If the American public or the Congress

knew about that, there would have been a revolt right then. And I told them,

I argued with my buddies who were members of the State Department - not

military, State Department. "Oh, Sam, you don't understand the American

people. They'll go along with you as long as you do it. It'll be slow,

sure." I said, "No way. You mark my words. If you plan that way, it's

crazy. If you're going to go fight a war, fight a war. Don't tickle them."

Anyway, what you had there in '65 when we went into the war, and I think

Johnson thought with the American flag flying nobody was going to dare do

anything with him, and everybody melted in the background. But by '70 you had

lost the consensus in this country. Totally. And Kent State just added to

it.. I don't blame Nixon for Kent State. Obviously nobody can.. Crazy

National Guardsmen with young kids, sensitive triggers, and unfortunate

deaths. But that just added to it.

INTERVIEWER: And you have all the street rioting and civil rights issues.

MR. HALPERN: Civil rights is another one in '68. But that wasn't really part

of the Vietnam problem.. That was a totally separate issue. And when you add

it all together, it was just bad. So that when Johnson says, "I want to find

out about Soviets supporting all of this stuff," I think he was crazy. But he

wouldn't listen. And so we had to keep going. And so the Officer Corps in

the Clandestine Services didn't like being taken away from their job. And we

didn't like being... I know this was a big problem too, the Vietnam station

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got bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger - it was crazy. We even had what

was called a Vietnam levy. Des Fitzgerald decided, when he became DDP, he was

going to have each division and staff charged with producing so many bodies.

And I mean bodies.

INTERVIEWER: To go over.

MR. HALPERN: Yeah. To go to Vietnam. Because it got bigger and bigger and

you had to have men all over the bloody country. And so he wanted some good,

some bad, and some middle. But he didn't want all bad. You know, and that

kind of stuff. And so, we were putting our assets into one little place and

it was the most important thing, sure, I understand, but that wasn't the main

target or what the hell CIA was in business for. We weren't, at least the

clandestine side wasn't supposed to be out there fighting a war. It's crazy.

And so the people were objecting to that.. The officer corps was objecting to

the Vietnam levy. On top of that comes CHAOS and CHAOS really takes us away

from more of our normal activity and who the hell is going to worry about the

Soviet target in terms of intelligence collection. And by that time, more

than just Soviet targets, a lot of other targets too. So yeah, there was a

lot of opposition.

INTERVIEWER: Okay. Do have any feeling about the Presidents. Do you feel.

that they knew about the mail opening program?

MR. HALPERN: Oh; in a general way.

INTERVIEWER: In a general way.

MR. HALPERN: Yeah, Presidents don't ask detailed questions. They don't

normally ask that kind of stuff.. They just want to know, they want to see a

piece of paper. They want to know what is going.

on.. And if he is bringing in

something hot, he might ask, "Hey, how'd you get this?" But, let me give you

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another example, not a President but a Secretary of State, Dean Rusk. We put

out at one point, Des was DDP at the time, we put out a very good report from

an asset from behind the Curtain, if I can still use the old phraseology. And

so, it was a good report. And suddenly we get

a call, the DDPs, not the

office but the DDP mechanism, gets a call, a requirement he get a call from

somebody in the State Department asking for the identity of the source. The

guy comes hot footing it up to me and says, "Sam, the State Department wants

to know the source." I said, "Who in the State Department? State Department

wants to know. Tell me who." "Secretary wants to know." I said, "Oh, okay:

You have whoever you were talking to tell the Secretary to call Des Fitzgerald

or Dick Helms. It's simple." "I can't say that." I said, "Well, if you

can't, I will. The man is crazy. We don't give sources." And so, I go in

and tell my boss that such and such is going to happen. He might get the call

from Dean Rusk on the secure line. I tell him what the story is, and he says,

"Okay I will wait for the call." And sure enough, I happened to be in the

office on something else when the call came later that day, and it was Dean

Rusk. And I could tell from the conversation what is going on. And it points

out that Dean Rusk didn't want to know the identity of the source, never asked

for the identity of the source. All he wanted to know was how good is this

piece of information. And Des said, "I'll put my arm in the fire up to the

shoulder blade. It's a good source." Knew what he meant. End of

conversation. You know, Presidents don't ask, Secretaries of the State don't

ask for details that they.

shouldn't. They know that. And they've been around

long enough. I mean, I don't know about Jimmy Carter, but the other guys

don't. And so, I think presidents knew in general terms that there was mail

opening, wire tapping, and that kind of stuff. Well, they engaged it

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themselves for God's sake, not the mail opening but the wire tapping, and

bugging offices or bug somebody elses or tell somebody to bug

somebody. Hell,

it started with Roosevelt himself, you know, nothing new.

INTERVIEWER: Was the mail opening program known very extensively in the

Agency?

MR. HALPERN: No. I'11 give you an example. I didn't know it.

INTERVIEWER: You did not know it?

MR. HALPERN: I did not know it and even when I was Exec to the DDP I knew

some operational cryptonyms, and all I know was that they were good sources of

information. I never asked beyond that. And nobody ever told me beyond that

and I had no reason to know. I didn't. As a matter of fact, to give you an

example of how naive I was, when I was called back, right after I retired in

early '75 to help on getting ready for the Congressional investigations, which

we didn't even know was going on at the time (this was January of '75), the

newspaper stories were talking about mail openings and that kind of stuff.

And I was silly enough and foolish enough to say to the security guy I was

dealing with -- the security officer (the Office of Security ran HTLINGUAL) --

that what we were doing was in support of trying to get information about how

the Chinese or the Russians were operating and what it took to get

documentation and all that kind of stuff -- what you needed. Hell, perfectly

honest. I didn't know what the hell was going on. And all I know is that the

security guy said, "Yeah sam yeah yeah that's a good idea. We'll think about

that yeah Sam that's a good idea yeah yeah we'll think about that." They

never said anything at that point that they were running a real mail coverage .

and what have you. And I didn't know that I was doing the normal, you know.

This is what you were in

an operation for. But it was more than that,

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obviously. So, it was not widely known.

INTERVIEWER: No. No.

MR. HALPERN: Information. You might have had access like I did to

information and you knew a good source or a bad source.

INTERVIEWER: And you might know the information came from HTLINGUAL.

MR. HALPERN: No. I never heard the cryptonymn.

INTERVIEWER: Never heard the cryptonymn. Okay.

MR. HALPERN: Didn't even need that. All I knew is that it was a good source.

INTERVIEWER: Okay. How would you characterize morale in the Agency in the

two to three years just prior

to the Church and Pike Hearings.

MR. HALPERN: Oh, I think it was largely unsettled because in '73 you had the

turnover under Schlesinger.

INTERVIEWER: Right.

MR. HALPERN: And it was unsettling, totally unsettling. In the end of '72

when Schlesinger was announced as the new man on the block and everybody knew

Helms was out, from there on it was utter turmoil and debacle. Both in the

DDP and God knows, where

else.

INTERVIEWER: The worst you had seen?

MR. HALPERN: On yes.

Totally. Never had anything that bad before.

Unbelievable. It was bad. And we had had reduction in forces before

throughout the Agency from time to time. We had a "701 Program," It was

called, one of them I remember. And several others from time to time. You

had reduction programs and it was bad in those days. But nothing like '73.

Absolutely nothing. All hell broke loose.

INTERVIEWER: Bad in the sense that he was going to cut a thousand or two

thousand?

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MR. HALPERN: Bad in terms that the leadership had no trust in us.

INTERVIEWER: Which leadership are you referring to, Sam?

MR. HALPERN:. Schlesinger/Colby, obviously. Leadership no longer had any

trust in us. They were treating us like dirt. No appreciation of what we had

done or what we could do. No reason and no appreciation that we even exist.

They wanted to wipe us out. Then, of course, the personal aspect of it -- my

job and where am I going to go from here and do I get a pension or don't I get

a pension -- and so on.. And it was awful. Unbelievably awful both here and

abroad. And I don't know what happened when the Halloween Massacre under

Turner came around. That I guess must have been equally dramatic. But in '73

none of us had ever seen anything like that before. When, you know,

everybody's life work was suddenly up for grabs. And it was just a horrible

mess.

INTERVIEWER: Well, was there a feeling that President Nixon, while Helms was

Director, that President Nixon was supportive of the Agency?

MR. HALPERN: Yes, yeah there was. Largely because, I don't know if it was

Nixon, but it was Kissinger who supported the Agency. And most of us knew

that most of the foreign policy was coming out of Henry anyway. But with

Nixon's support of course. And he had Nixon's chops to do what he had to do

or wanted to do. But by and large we worked very closely, as an Agency with

Kissinger. We provided all kinds of support, assets, did all kinds of things

at his request and so on. I was on the phone to Al Haig, for example,

although I never met him, but was on the phone almost daily when he was still

a Colonel on the Kissinger staff doing all kinds of things. And exchanging

papers with him via the new (I forget what it was called in those days) long

distance

xerography but it was totally encrypted. We had one machine up in

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the Ops Center and he had one machine up in his Ops Center in the White House,

and at first we were standing at the machines separately waiting for the piece

of paper (nobody else was allowed to see the paper). So, you know, we

worked

together as a team. And the Agency, I mean at least the Clandestine Service

side of it worked very closely with them. And I remember right after Nixon

was sworn in in January of '69.

INTERVIEWER: '69 when he came in?

MR. HALPERN: Yeah, he came in in '69. There was a meeting -- Nixon,

Mitchell, Kissinger, Helms, and Tom Karamessines in

the White House.

INTERVIEWER: Was Rogers there?

MR. HALPERN: No.

INTERVIEWER: No, Rogers?

MR. HALPERN: You mean the Secretary of State? No. Who is he? He didn't

count. You know that. I mean the history books are full of that now. No,

Mitchell was there. I don't know why but he was the Attorney General but I

don't know why he, at. least, the Attorney General nominee. But anyway, he was

there. I got this from Tom. As Tom's Exec, Tom came back and reported on the

meeting. And there was a very close bond right there established. Nixon then

Kissinger asked a lot of questions as to our capabilities, our assets and what

we could do to help and what have you on different aspects, and Tom was asked

to give the details. Dick knew some but he didn't know all the details

because he was out of the job for a number of years. When they came back,

they had marching orders. It worked.

INTERVIEWER: So that in 'T3 when Helms is out, that's the big big change?

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MR. HALPERN: Yes. As I say that began in '72 right after the election.

Nixon had his own raid but that is another story. But there was when

Schlesinger came in it was just a traumatic, really traumatic, experience..

INTERVIEWER: Was Schlesinger known to the Agency?

MR. HALPERN: No, just by reputation.

INTERVIEWER: Just by reputation.

And that was?

MR. HALPERN: Bad. Because of the things he had done in the Atomic Energy

Commission and the Bureau of Budget. And his whole approach. Totally

impersonal. The new. "machine man" kind of thing, you know, the mathematical

brain or whatever -- oh, I guess machine is a better stated cause.

INTERVIEWER: So that reputation was known and therefore. . .

MR. HALPERN: Oh yeah, not only known but it was, you know -- immediately the

phone calls went out all over town asking, "What.

about this, who is this guy,

what's he like?" And everything we got back was bad. Bad, bad, bad, bad,

bad. . .

INTERVIEWER: And then Colby will support Schlesinger while. . .

MR. HALPERN: Oh, he not only supported him but he was one of the guys who

made inputs of the information for whatever attitude Schlesinger had on the

whole thing. Now Schlesinger's attitude about what he did totally changed

since he's out of government, since Helms' out of government, and everybody

else. It was 180 degree switch.

INTERVIEWER: For Colby?

MR. HALPERN:- No, for Schlesinger.

INTERVIEWER: Schlesinger.

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INTERVIEWER: Yeah. And I tried to tell them. See I was Exec to Colby for

about 3 months, and I tried to tell my friends -- who wouldn't believe it --

don't blame Schlesinger for what is happening to the DDP. Blame Colby. It

was all Colby. He's the guy who was pushing this. And in effect even says so

in the book, if you read the book, where he says he told Schlesinger he'd take

care of cleaning up the DDP. You know, he knows that function. Well, yeah

that's true.

INTERVIEWER: What three months were you serving Colby?

MR. HALPERN: February, March, April and part of May of '73. When I was his

Executive.

INTERVIEWER: And did the tensions simply grow after Schlesinger and Colby are

working away. . .

MR. HALPERN: Oh yeah. It lasted until. . .

Well, Schlesinger left early.

He left in June of '73. And it lasted even afterward. The thing didn't get

settled down for a long while.

INTERVIEWER: Continuing on?

MR. HALPERN: Yeah, it continued. Became public.

INTERVIEWER: And then people being separated from the Agency?

MR. HALPERN: And I saw how some of those separations of some senior officers

were done. And believe me, it was brutal. Brutal and awful.

INTERVIEWER: Brutal in the context of?

MR. HALPERN: No sense of personalities. No sense of humanity. No sense of

the dealing with individual problems. We used to be a Band of Brothers.

INTERVIEWER: Right.

MR. HALPERN: I think I said that before.

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INTERVIEWER: Yes.

MR. MALPERN: That stopped with Schlesinger and Colby.

INTERVIEWER: Now that stopped throughout the Agency or

MR. HALPERN: I don't know

about the rest of the Agency.

INTERVIEWER: But it stopped in the clandestine . . .

MR. HALPERN: Let me talk about what I know about.

INTERVIEWER: Sure.

MR. HALPERN: I can conjecture about that other ...

INTERVIEWER: Right, yes.

MR. HALPERN: My conjecture is almost as good as yours. Maybe a little bit

better having lived there all these years.

INTERVIEWER: Sure.

MR. MALPERN: But, no, I am talking basically what I know about clandestine

subjects: It was awful. I mean, even old friends were just, you know,

ignored, looked down upon. Given no consideration whatsoever. In the old

days we took care of each other as a Band of Brothers does. We helped each

other.

INTERVIEWER: And this included what sorts of things?

MR. HALPERN: You mean the helping?

INTERVIEWER: Uh huh.

MR. HALPERN: Oh, if a guy had a family problem, we'd worry about his next

assignment so that the family problem was taken care of. If a guy had a

medical problem he didn't want people to know about, talk about, we helped him

with that. People with husband and wife problems, we'd help on that. There

were even problems with kids. We'd help with that. Drugs, somebody

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impregnating somebody - what do you do about that kind of thing. We'd try to

look out after each other. That didn't mean we didn't have professional

rivalry. and all of that. There was a lot of that, believe me. Who got what

job and who got what promotion. But basically, when the chips were down, we

were helpful to each other. We tried to find interpretations of rules

and

regulations to assist each other, even financially, so that you weren't so

out-of-pocket on a lot things and the government might be able to help. If

somebody had a problem, you know, if he was abroad for example, and something

happened to a family member back here, we'd suddenly call the guy back on TDY

- we had a big important problem to worry about and discuss with him. You

know, that kind of stuff.

INTERVIEWER: Yes.

MR. HALPERN: AlT

perfectly legal, and it was all, we used to, as a matter of

fact, we in the DDP used to look at some of our support officers and

administrators and what have you in terms of how well they were able to

interpret the regulation in order to help us out with a job, whether it was a

personal thing, or a professional, or an operation or what have you, and I

remember one of them. I'd pick up the phone and say, "Charlie, here's my

problem: I've got to get from point A to point B and I've got to do it

fast. "

"Jesus Christ. All right. I'll call you back." And within the hour,

or whatever it took him, he'd say, "You go from A, to A Prime, to A Prime 2,

to A Prime 3, and then you end up in B over there, and you'll get there and

you'll be fine and it won't take you any time. You'll just go. Just do it my

way." I said, "Fine. You prepare the papers. I'll sign them." And that's

the way it worked. You know, a Band of Brothers. We knew what we were doing

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in terms of trying to get the job done and stay within the bounds of the

Agency..

INTERVIEWER: And if somebody came up for retirement, and they might need

some . . .

MR. HALPERN: I think, we'd try to, well, in the early days when you didn't

have the bulk of people suddenly coming out, you'd even try to help them find

a job. Pick up the phone, call friends, connections, what have you. And it

was done. Now later, when it came into the hundreds, you couldn't do it,

obviously. And then everybody fell by the wayside. But it was a totally

different attitude; instilled right away when Schlesinger came along. Some of

his language is even being quoted in the newspapers and magazines. I don't

know if he said the words that way but anyway things like: "I am not

interested in people, I am interested in the United States taxpayer." Well,

we were interested in the taxpayer too, but that didn't come first. Maybe

that was

wrong but at least we didn't think so. Considering the time and

effort most of us put into that place, I don't think Uncle Sam was ever on the

short end of the stick.

INTERVIEWER: And so someone being separated might not know he was being

separated until..

MR. HALPERN: Until it hit him.

INTERVIEWER: Until it hit him.

MR. HALPERN: Yeah. I remember Colby, for example, taking home with him,

which he shouldn't have done but he did, stacks of personnel folders to, you

know, be the great decider: This guy goes, this guy stays.

INTERVIEWER: So the morale was not very good?

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MR. HALPERN: Oh, it was nonexistent. Nonexistent, less than nonexistent.

INTERVIEWER: Gee.

MR. HALPERN:

'73 was a bad year. A very bad year.

INTERVIEWER:

'74?

MR. HALPERN: Well, I don't know. In "74 it probably got a little bit

better. Things were settling down a little bit under Colby. And we weren't

quite so much under the gun. About that time most of the people had been

separated.

INTERVIEWER: And was that harshly, that separation issue, is that Agency

officers were coming back from Vietnam.

MR. HALPERN: Partly that. But only partly. We had a program under Tom

Karamessines and under Helms. We knew that we were going to have to bring

back a lot of people from Vietnam gradually, and we started actually, believe

it or not, we started earlier than most people give us credit for to plan for

this kind of reduction in force in Vietnam, the Far East Division, and

gradually try to sort of spread the officers back to their proper divisions

and areas, and we knew it was going to take a long time. And we knew we were

going to have to reduce the total strength -- we were getting cut budget wise

anyway and personnel slot wise. But it was a long range program. We were

going to do it over

a period of time. We weren't going to do it in a day.

And it was a totally different approach. One with humanity, one totally

without humanity. And I think we were right in feeling that we owed the guys,

after all of their years and effort, some consideration. And, you know, there

are perfectly legal ways and means of using the personnel rules and

regulations and financial rules and regulations to ease the passage.

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INTERVIEWER: And make it more gradual.

MR. HALPERN: Yeah, and make it more gradual and make it easier on people, and

what have you. And, look, even Schlesinger had to go to Congress to get the

number of retirees' positions opened under the CIA Retirement Act. He had to

get those numbers raised to take care of the mass of people he was suddenly

getting rid of. And he didn't even know that initially. And that was finally

brought to his attention, that a lot of these people could take us to court if

you just throw them out without giving them the CIRA benefits. And so they

went to Congress, and Congress upped the figures (with a little bit of

doing). I mean, that was one of the things, you know, just sheer humanity.

INTERVIEWER: Sure.

MR. HALPERN: You know..

INTERVIEWER: The Ramparts article on the Agency and the National Student's.

Association.

MR. HALPERN: '67.

INTERVIEWER: Yeah. Was that very harmful to the Agency?

MR. HALPERN: Yes. Very much so.

INTERVIEWER: The flap was?

MR. HALPERN: It was a big flap obviously. We had to cut back on a lot of

operations.

INTERVIEWER: Involving students?

MR. HALPERN: Well, the students was only one of it because if you remember

the Ramparts exposure went far beyond student activity.

INTERVIEWER: Yeah.

MR. HALPERN: It covered all kinds of things - labor unions, women's

organizations, religous groups - you name them and we were involved in some

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way or another. And practically all of those had to be dismantled. The DDP,

then Des Fitzgerald, just before he died as a matter of fact, came up with a

term call "Surge Funding." S-U-R-G-E funding. And what we were able to do,

all legal and all checked out with Katzenbach and the Attorney General and

everybody else, was in order to ease the way for a lot of these activities

that we were involved with, we gave them extra money, a pile of money kind of

thing, you know you are on your own from now on. Here, get going. Start up.

And so we really did a big dismantling job. And it was very, very painful.

Not only for the people involved in the activities, and including the officers

who were the case officers running the thing from inside, but it hurt the

overall effort. And one of the things, for example, even Congress finally

recognized the need and picked up the RFE and Radio Liberty -- or Radio Free

Europe and Radio Liberty -- and is now run by the government instead of CIA

funding it. It's still the same money from Congress, except they now call it

something else and they have a broadcasting committee that oversees it. You

know, no difference except it doesn't have those nasty letters -- CIA --

involved.

INTERVIEWER: Right.

MR. HALPERN: So that's the running of it. And that used to be one of the

biggest costs of our covert action operations. Those and the any paramilitary

activity you get into. That's where the money goes.

INTERVIEWER: Sure.

MR. HALPERN: Intelligence operations don't cost much, propaganda operations

don't cost much and so on.. So it did have a tremendous impact, no question.

'67 Ramparts.

INTERVIEWER: And this was fairly new in Helms' term of office wasn't it?

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MR. HALPERN: Yes, Helms was the DCI then. Yes, '67.

INTERVIEWER: Okay. How about, the question is raised sometimes: how are

reforms and real or potential abuses processed within the Agency in the

decades before 1975?

MR. HALPERN: In practically every case that I know of, at least it went

through the entire chain of command. Usually the IG was involved, and then

the Legal Counsel got involved. And people were demoted, people were fired,

people were reassigned. It all depended on what the gravity of the situation

was and there were all kinds of different activities including some people who

did nothing more than try to swipe: a few bucks. And some of those went to

court actually.

INTERVIEWER: Is that right?

MR. HALPERN: And, in those days, we could do, with the help of the judge,

have the trial in camera so it didn't get a lot of publicity. But we went

through all the ins and outs on a lot of this stuff and depending on what the

situation was, the General Counsel would take it over the Attorney General if

necessary. It all depended on what happened. But there was every effort made

first to try to clean it up inside the organization, inside CIA if possible.

And if not you went outside and got whatever help you needed and invoked

whatever laws were necessary to make sure something like this didn't happen

again, and people were told. Usually you didn't get the names of the

individuals involved, we always tried to protect that. And it wasn't just

because of privacy or anything like that, it's the nature of the business.

You don't talk about names. But the kind of activity were usually well

publicized at staff meetings and passed down the line. So you tell people so

these things don't happen again. You can't always be sure they don't, but you

try.

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INTERVIEWER: And how about the comment I had read earlier that Helms was

betrayed by Nixon, that if Helms had gone along on Watergate and all that type

of thing he would have kept his job?

MR. HALPERN: Well, that sounds, it's a plausible theory, but I don't think

so. I don't think it was in the cards because my own feeling is that Nixon

was ready for a change, and he was ready to just clean house.

Because look at

the rest of his changes on personnel throughout the government after the '72

election. I mean, it was just all those crazy things. He just felt he wanted

to have. a new team. I personally don't think that that would have made much

difference with Helms. I mean, Nixon and Helms in terms of keeping him on the

job. I think he was ready for a new guy anyway.

INTERVIEWER: Did you ever hear how Schlesinger happened to be chosen?

MR. HALPERN: No, I don't know, except that in '70 or '71 he was the deputy in

OMB and he wrote a directive, well, he wrote a study and not a directive,

changing the intelligence community relationships and the Director's

relationships. to the intelligence community and therefore I think he was

considered an expert on the intelligence community and national security

policy and so on. And when they were looking for a new boss, I would think

that there he was sitting over at Atomic Energy which Nixon probably didn't

know what he was doing over there anyway. And so he did in 1970 or '71, I

think it was '71, a study and a report and moved him over.

INTERVIEWER: Had it ever been mentioned that maybe he was Kissinger's choice?

MR. HALPERN: I haven't heard that. I would doubt it.

I would doubt it.

Very much. I just hadn't heard that one before.

INTERVIEWER: Okay. All right.

MR. HALPERN: That's a new one. I presume some of your other sources

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mentioned that to you.

INTERVIEWER: I don't know. There was simply speculation.

MR. HALPERN: No, I don't think so.

I would be very surprised if that turned

out to be the fact.

INTERVIEWER: Okay.

MR. HALPERN: Henry doesn't take credit for it in his books. That's for sure.

INTERVIEWER: And he would.

MR. HALPERN: And those are nice, big, two heavy tomes.. If you forgot, I've

got them right down here.

INTERVIEWER: I haven't worked my way through all of them yet.

MR. HALPERN: He was supposed to have written a third one you know.

But he

never has.

INTERVIEWER: Is that right? A third one is coming?

MR. HALPERN: The third one is going to be on intelligence and national

security.

INTERVIEWER: Oh really.

MR. HALPERN: But he never did it.

INTERVIEWER: It has not been

written? Not yet anyway.

MR. HALPERN: Not yet.

INTERVIEWER: How about the Schlesinger memo of May 1973 regarding improper

practices in the Agency?

MR. HALPERN: That's Colby's memo. Schlesinger put his name to it, but it's

Colby's memo.

INTERVIEWER: Okay. So, written by Colby?

MR. HALPERN: Yes.

INTERVIEWER: And signed by Schlesinger?

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MR. HALPERN: Yes.

INTERVIEWER: And the results of the memo are sometimes called the "Family

Jewels" or "693 List"?

MR. HALPERN: That's right. That's right.

INTERVIEWER: How was that memo received?

MR. HALPERN: Well, I think in several ways. One of the ways was some people

were shocked and surprised that anybody would put it all on a piece of paper.

Number 1. Some accepted it as just another order. and filled out all kinds of

stuff. I accepted it in terms of reading the words that were in there. I

never responded to it. Because it didn't apply to me, as far as I was

concerned, because none of the things that I had ever done were, as far as I

was concerned, beyond the pale, beyond the law, beyond interpretation of the

law or anything like that. And so it depended on how you wanted to read and

interpret the language. Because if I remember correctly it said something

about things that you did that you thought were beyond the charter or outside

the regulations or something like that. But I don't remember anything I ever

did beyond that, so I didn't respond to the thing. I never answered it. And

I'm sure that I wasn't the only one who didn't answer it.

INTERVIEWER: Was there much talk about it at the time?

MR. HALPERN: Oh yeah, a lot of talk. Obviously. What's this all about?

Why? All that kind of stuff.

INTERVIEWER: Was it thought that it was related to a management style or

related to Watergate or related to . . .?

MR. HALPERN: No, I think it was written in terms of the Watergate business,

in terms of a CYA-type activity - "Cover Your Ass" Activity. I heard, again

obviously, I talked about it to a lot of people, and they talked

to me about

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it. And I told them what I was doing. I told them I wasn't going to reply to

the thing, I didn't need to as far as I was concerned, but I left it up to

each individual that talked to me to make it up in his own mind. I don't know

how many did or didn't, but I think it was in terms of a CYA thing, in terms

of: here's a new man on the block, schlesinger, and he wants to know what

happened since Genesis. You know, doesn't he have anything else to do? He's

got a whole Agency and a whole new world to conquer. What the hell is worried

about all that stuff for? So, I think it was basically in terms of, at least

the guys I talked to or talked to me, it was a CYA activity on the part of

Schlesinger who didn't want to get blind sided by something that might have

happened that CIA would be accused of. But the attitude was, what the hell is

he worried about, it is not on his watch. If there is something is wrong, and

even if CIA is accused of it, it's not on his watch. Nobody can hold him

responsible for it. If it happened, even two years ago, what the hell. I

mean, so. It might have happened under somebody elses aegis, and CIA takes

the heat, but he could say, you know, it wasn't me. I wasn't around. So that

was the general attitude. And as I say, a lot of people responded like good

soldiers and wrote all kinds of tomes about things they thought were wrong,

and not all of them were accepted. I mean that 690 whatever thing. . .

INTERVIEWER: Yes, it's a list which is simply the number of pages that. . .

MR. HALPERN: Yes, and these things were each on a page if I remember

correctly. And these were the ones that Bill Colby finally accepted as going

quote beyond the pale unquote. But even then when Bill issued his kind of

after action directives, there were a whole bunch of stuff. He said, you

know, these don't count. Even though I've got them, these don't count because

they are not beyond anything -- they are perfectly legal and all that kind of

stuff and perfectly proper. In some of these he said, we are going to stop

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these completely, some of these we are going to modify (and CHAOS was one of

them). He didn't stop it completely. At least not initially. And these, he

said, have no bearing. So his own orders, later after he got all this stuff

together, when he finally tallied them all up, they were just, you know, "no,"

"maybe," "yes."

INTERVIEWER: At the time the memo came out, was it known that colby was the

author or the drafter of it? Do you recall by chance?

MR. HALPERN: My friends wouldn't believe me. I knew. But . .

INTERVIEWER: You knew that he drafted it?

MR. HALPERN: His hand was there all the way. Now maybe he didn't do all the

drafting, but it was his initiative or what have you.

INTERVIEWER: And your friends thought it was Schlesinger?

MR. HALPERN: Yes. Oh, Schlesinger was getting all of the rap, which I

thought was all wrong. All wrong. From the firing of everybody -- or a lot

of people -- to this kind of stuff. And it was Bill who was the guy who was

pushing Schlesinger into this kind of stuff. And Schlesinger was willing to

be pushed, don't get me wrong, and he wanted to do a house cleaning and a

sweep, and all that kind of stuff, but without Bill it wouldn't have gotten

half as far. I'm sure.

INTERVIEWER: Why was Bill doing that?

MR. HALPERN: That's a good question. People have asked me that continuously

and I don't know. Some people have said that partly it was because of his

daughter's problem. And you know she died very early on when he was DDP --

DDO; sorry: I get my terminology confused by the dates. And I don't believe .

that because his daughter's psychological problem was there long before, even

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when he was in Vietnam and she was in Vietnam. So I really don't know. Other

people say that Bill was just being a good novice. Some people said he's

going to end up in the monastery some day, even though he's got a new wife and

all that, new company, and what have you. But, I've had all kinds of

interpretations, but I don't even know if Bill knows why.

INTERVIEWER: And at that time it was as much a mystery as . ..?

MR. HALPERN: Well, at that time everybody thought it was Schlesinger.

INTERVIEWER: Oh, I see.

MR. HALPERN: That Schlesinger was the Big Bad Wolf. And sure he was but he

was aided, and abetted, and goaded by one William Colby. And why Bill did it,

I just don't know.

INTERVIEWER:

Was there any sign of that before Schlesinger came in? In other

words while Helms was still there? Was Colby...:

MR.. HALPERN: Not to the same extent. But Bill first came -- when I first got

to know him -- was in 1956.

INTERVIEWER: That early?

MR. HALPERN: '56, yes.

'56. Des Fitzgerald met Bill Colby when Bill was a

case officer in the Rome station. And Des came back thinking Colby walked on

water. The greatest thing since little apples. And he wanted him in the Far

East Division right away. Well, he made some arrangements, and he got Bill

into the Far East Division and assigned him as Deputy Chief of Station of

Saigon. The Chief then was Nick Natsios. And Bill went out as Deputy Chief.

And Vietnam then became his career -- God knows how many years. Ten years or

more. And we in the Far East Division - we the case officers and the

operators in the Far East Division, the troops -- while Bill was here in

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Washington getting acclimated to what FE was all about, who the people are and

what have you and the various talks and the various comments and what have

you, and later while he was out in Saigon, we regarded him as a great "nation

builder" -- quote unquote. That he was not a clandestine operations officer

in terms of espionage or counterintelligence. He never understood

counterintelligence. Even to this day I don't think he understands

counterintelligence. And I don't think he knew what a recruitment of an agent

was -- even the fact that I haven't recruited many myself. But if you look at

his book, he says the first agent he recruited in Italy was a member of the

Communist Party. He recruited him as a reporting source, as strictly an

intelligence agent, not as a propaganda CA officer. And you read his book and

he talks there about his, Bill's, problem —- whether this is the right thing

to do, and how can he live with himself, and manipulating a human being and

all that kind of stuff. And it's very clear. that he is not an intelligence

operations officer. He is a great boy scout and he is a great guy for quote.

nation building unquote.

INTERVIEWER: When you say nation building, what do you mean by that, Sam?

MR. HALPERN: He wants to help other countries become like the United States.

He wants, you know, the Declaration of Independence and Thomas Jefferson . .

INTERVIEWER: Democracy:

MR. HALPERN: Yes, and everybody vote. One man, one vote. Without any regard

at all for the history and the social mores and background and customs of the

country. Where votes in most cases don't mean anything. And it's silly. You

work by chieftains and what have you and tribal systems and the whole business..

INTERVIEWER: Sure.

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MR. HALPERN: But Bill wants to build nations. And its very laudable and

maybe some government agency ought to build nations. And maybe he ought to be

in the AID, or ICA in the old days, or the Red Cross or wherever. But not as

a clandestine operations officer, trying to collect intelligence and recruit

human beings to be your agent, your spy. A lot of us in the old fE division

on the working level thought, there is going to be trouble with this guy.

INTERVIEWER: Did you meet him in '56 then?

MR. MALPERN: Yes, sure. Yes I was Des' Exec then too.

INTERVIEWER: I see.

MR. HALPERN: In FE. So, a lot of us thought this was a problem guy but Des

wants him around, and Des is the boss, so what the hell. There's nothing we

can do. You know, maybe he'll learn something under Nick we

used to say.

Nick was a tough old Greek, old hand and he knew the business.: In fact, he

was a poet.

INTERVIEWER: So it was thought that maybe he'd change.

MR. HALPERN: Yes, but he didn't. Bill never changed. And so a lot of us --

well, for example, Bill, when he was Division Chief in FE -- I wasn't even in

the Division at that point - but Bill had an idea, for example, on how the

OCI's Daily Intelligence Report should look. He thought it ought to be like a

tabloid newspaper and even had a dummy made up for this thing. Well, it was

laughed out of court at the time. Bill kept that dummy until he became DCI

and he put it into effect. It became what is now called the National

Intelligence Daily although I am told it is no longer in the newspaper

format. That was changed as soon as Casey came aboard. But that is Bill for

you. Once he gets something in his head, you don't change him.

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INTERVIEWER: Tenacious?

MR. HALPERN: On, very, very.

INTERVIEWER: Well did you have much contact with him after '56?

MR. HALPERN: Oh, I didn't have too much contact with him in '56 until 1961

when I was shot down by Dick Bissell and Des Fitzgerald. Bissell was then DDP

and Des was Chief, FE. I was enjoying life in Tokyo -- my one and only

overseas full time tour and I was having a good time in Tokyo. And suddenly I

got shot down to a place called Saigon. Which I had known about before during

World War II and all that kind of stuff, but anyway, I got shot down on a

special operation to work with the ASA teams, which is the Army version of NSA

(Army component rather). And this is because Ed Lansdale, who was then in

General Erskine's office at the Pentagon, had a bright idea. This was before

the US was fully committed. There were 3,000 Americans -- men, women and

children from all agencies -- including the military -- in Saigon in the

summer of '61 when I got down there. Saigon was still a nice, sleepy, old

French town. It was a lovely place. There were parts of Saigon that you

couldn't go. And you couldn't go to parts of Chalons because there were VC

all over you, but anyway, it was a nice area. But this was a crazy idea that

Ed Lansdale had sold the brass in Washington and it didn't make any sense, but

anyway, there we were. And I was shot down to work as liaison officer between

the station and the ASA teams. I got to make some very good friends, as a

matter of fact, as a result of that and Bill Colby was Chief of Station.

INTERVIEWER: Oh?

MR. HALPERN: And one of the things we did, and the first thing, the first

place, I built the first war room, or officer room (if you want) in the

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Embassy. It didn't even have one at the time. The only one that was in town

was the one on G-2 under General McGarr. And what the hell was the G-2

officer, Colonel someone, I can't remember. Anyway, so I built a war room for

Bill so we could plot and have handy our own operations (we were running into

the North at that time

and none of them worked but we tried) and at the same

time decided to take a look at what the hell the target was, what the enemy

was. And I built a second war room or had built rather a second war room in

the Embassy where me. and my military friends, the head of the ASA team, the

sso in saigon, I forget his name, Major something or other, and we got sent

down to us from Japan, from the Army in Japan, an order of battle specialist

whose specialty was actually the Chinese Communist, the PRC army, a military

breakdown, and he came down to go over the order of battle aspects of the VC.

And I had put up on the wall, all four walls in this room that we built in the

Embassy, a 1-50,000 set of maps of South Vietnam only. And then we took all

of the information, from any source whatsoever, good, bad, or indifferent,

including COMINT; and all the liaison junk we were getting from the South

Vietnamese government, any of our own reporting, the US, all agencies and we

actually physically plotted every piece of information on maps. And the order

of battle specialist made his usual 5X8 order of battle cards and correlated

to the maps. So that you could look at the map and go to the card or take the

card and go to the map. And we came up with a figure of VC effectives in the

field of over 18,000. That doesn't sound like much today, but this was the

summer of '61. And the agreed-upon figure was 10,000. Everybody in the US

Government used the figure of 10,000. I think they've been using it ever

since the war began with the French. But anyway, 10,000 was the figure. And

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we came up with almost double.. All holy hell broke loose. Bill Colby -- and

I was on TDY from Tokyo. Dick Bissell had offered to have my family come with

me and all that kind of stuff but I said un uh.. I'll go down from Tokyo, the

family can go home. And they did. But when this 18,000 figure hit, the G-2

in Saigon refused to accept it, General McGarr refused to accept it,

Ambassador Nolting (I guess it was) refused to accept it, and Bill Colby

refused to accept it. And I said to Bill -- and they wouldn't let us send the

information out. They just refused. They thought it would be best to

transmit the information to our respective Headquarters.. That is the NSA

type, the SSO type, and back to CINCPAC and so on. And I said to Bill, I

said, "Bill, this is silly. First of all, I'm here TDY. I've got my own

ticket, airplane ticket, I've got my own passport. I can be out of here

unless you shoot me on the way out. I'll be at Tan Son Nhut whenever I want

to. And you know me well enough, Bill. I'll get to the first available CIA

station, which is either Hong Kong, Manila, Bangkok, or Singapore. I get into

the Commo shack, and my message will be in Washington within minutes. And I

think you know that my relationship with des is such that he will at least

listen to me - he may not accept what I am telling him -- but he will at

least listen. And I know in the meantime you can say, 'Get the guys with the

white coats and what have you to get Sam. He's gone crazy, he's mad, he

doesn't know what he is talking about, he's gone beyond the veil.' I know all

of this, Bill. But I think Des will give me a hearing even wrapped in one of

those --"

INTERVIEWER: Straight jackets.

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MR. HALPERN: Straight jacket. He looked at me and he knew me well enough and

I knew him and he says, "Okay, Sam, what do you want to send?" "I want to

send back we got 18,000. You know, and tell them how we got it. And give

them the facts. I'm not trying to make policy. I'm just here to get the

information. We're the intelligence officers, that's what our job is." He

said he can't send 18,000. I said, "What is this? Some kind of a Persian rug

merchant bargaining or something? What do you want to send? We can't go with

10 anymore. That's gone. We've got 18." Well, to make a long story short,

we ended up, just like Sam Adams later, many years later, but he was in the

hundreds of thousands, I was in the tens of thousands, and so we ended up

whereby, I think we said something like -- we compromised, no question about

that - something like 14, 15 effectives, plus support troops, just like Sam,

it's exactly the same play as Sam Adams except much smaller figures and much

earlier. This was 1961. But the total figure, if you add it all up, you

ended up with an 18,000. That much I got through. But again it was a

stretched-out thing. So when the message finally went out, it went out in

several channels: I mean, to CIA, the military and to State Department.

Everybody got it. When it got to CINCPAC I'm told that almost like a bomb hit

the place. And the next thing we knew was a message saying, "Colonel so and

so from CINCAC Staff is arriving to discuss this latest nonsense," or

something like that. It was just, you know, crazy. And this Colonel had been

on the Vietnam desk for CINCPAC, but he served in Vietnam -- with the French

when they were there. And he was the expert as far as CINCPAC was concerned.

So when we were saying 10,000, we were in effect flying in his face. We were -

becoming idiots. It was off base. We didn't know this guy from Adam. And to

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show you how we felt, me and my buddies, these three other military guys, when

the Colonel arrived -- I was the only civilian and these guys were all

majors. They were, you know, "There's a colonel coming." So I was the guy

chosen to, and I volunteered too. Okay, we meet this guy and we bring him

in. And I said, "Colonel, here's the war room, there are the maps, there are

the order of battle cards. All the information is cross-indexed, so if you

look at the cards you can find it on the map, if you look at the map, you'll

find it on the cards. We'll just leave you here. See where we went wrong."

We went off and got drunk. And I mean drunk. It was a bad one. But anyway,

we said, "The hell with this nonsense." I got my military buddies out of the

range of fire. And the four of us went off. We came back, I think it was the

next day, but anyway, when we came back the Colonel said something to the

effect of, "I wouldn't have believed it." And I said, "We didn't make it up.

It's all there. You had it all in Honolulu. Everybody in Washington has had

the same information. We didn't make up any new stuff. It's the same stuff

everybody is using. We just added it up and you guys didn't. That's all.

Everybody was using pieces, using the magic figure it appeared was made up

some years ago. Times have changed. The enemy has doubled its strength right

under our very noses." That was my one nice big session with Bill Colby.

That's what we started out on. And so that's when we finally sent the

messages out after this Colonel was here, then we sent the messages which had

that 18,000. It was a long total, but anyway. And Bill and I have been on a

fighting relationship ever since, I think. I never mentioned it to him and he

never mentioned it to me again. It was done and that was it. Then I left.

INTERVIEWER: You left?

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MR. HALPERN: Oh yeah, I left at the end of '61 -- well, not the end because I

arrived back in Washington. Well, even after that, Bill Colby made me in

effect the third man down in the station because he and his Deputy, Ed Barbier

who is now dead, were just swamped with paper - release of documents, release

of cables, relief of dispatches, what have you. They were working 20 hours a

day and it was getting crazy.

I said, "Bill if it is one thing in the world I

can do -- and everybody knows I can do it -- I can move paper for you. Get it

out of here. And you know damn well you'll see the ones you are supposed to

see. And let me get rid of the junk." And so he gave me releasing

authority. And I sat there as a station officer, because I said, "Bill, you

know, my job with the military is finished. And, you know, what do I do

next?" He wanted me to stay on and I didn't feel like staying on. And so I

sent a wire back to Washington, and he agreed. I said, in effect, "My job is

done here, I did what you asked me to do. What is my next assignment?" Just

like that. And they finally said, "Come on back to Washington." And I came

back to Washington and briefed everybody. But anyway, that was my

relationship with Bill. I knew him well enough then. He's just a different

kind of a guy. A nice guy. Easy to talk to, easy to get along with, but very

opinionated, very firm in what opinions he holds, he holds, period. And it's

a hell of a job to try and get him to change his mind. I'll give you a simple

thing. He was running air operations, dropping agents into North Vietnam.

And one night I remember we were in the communications shack (communications

room). And he had sent an "Ops immediate" and didn't get an answer. The

plane was warming up on the field, waiting to go. And they had to get a "yes"

or "no" to go. I said, "Bill, they haven't answered in over an hour, for

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God's sakes, hit them again." He said, "Oh no, you can't do that." "What do

you mean you can't do that? Send another message.

What the hell, it doesn't

cost you anything. It doesn't hurt. Tell them you are still standing by."

And he said, "Well, they know that." And I said, "Bill, send them a message.

The message could have gotten lost in Manila." He said, "Nothing like that

ever happens at Clark Field," actually. He said, "Nothing like that

happens." Well, in this case it did, it actually did get lost because of the

way they had to handle,

"man handle," these tapes in those days. And I've

been there and saw the way these guys were working, down to there skin, I

mean, they didn't have their shirts on, even undershirts. And it was sweaty

and hot even with the air conditioners going in those days (room air

conditioners). And these big perforated tapes were around their necks and

what have you. One of them got lost and if it happened to be an "Ops M" then,

it was too bad.

INTERVIEWER: An Ops M?

MR. HALPERN: Operational Media was the precedence. You had "Routine,"

"priority," "Operational Media

slash" something like that.

INTERVIEWER: Okay.

MR. HALPERN: There were several routing precedences, basically. And we got

to call them Op M simply because you didn't want to say Operational media ali

the time. And one of them got lost. You know, they weren't "Flash"

messages, which I hope won't get lost ever. But I finally had to convince

Bill just to send another message back saying, "I need an answer." And it

took a hell of a long while: It took longer than it should. It took almost

two hours for me to tell him, "Get the

goddamn message out." And we got a

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message back, and the first thing it says is, "Didn't get your reference.

What are you talking about?" So we had to hit them again. You know, explain

what happened. And, but that's an example of. . .

He's reluctant. You know,

if he's got a firm view of something, it's tough to get him to change his mind.

INTERVIEWER: When did you work with him again after that?

MR. HALPERN: Oh, actually --

INTERVIEWER: Saigon.

MR. HALPERN: That was '61 and I guess the next time I worked with him again

very closely was when I was for three or four months his his Exec. When he

came back from Saigon, and Dick make him the Executive Director Comptroller, I

had some dealings with him because I was the Exec in DDP and just working with

him. It wasn't that close in terms of the way I did in Saigon, the way I did

later in his own office... I just saw him the other day as a matter of fact

at a meeting. I was in town. We're still friends. We say hello to each

other.

INTERVIEWER: And you were his Exec for three or four months.

MR. HALPERN: Yeah, he took over from Tom in February of '73 and I was

reassigned out of his office, I think it was May '73. So it's March, April,

May -- three months for sure -- and a couple of weeks in February and a couple

of weeks in May. So it's roughly three, three to four months.

INTERVIEWER: So you were there when that memo was being prepared?

MR. HALPERN: Yeah.

INTERVIEWER: Uh huh.

MR. HALPERN: That's why I keep saying, I keep telling my friends, "You're

blaming the wrong guy!"

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INTERVIEWER: You have reason to know.

MR. HALPERN: Yeah. And you see part of my problem too was, and this was true

later when Bill took over, and even that summer, and later when he took over

as the DCI, he was talking in terms about one Agency. He wanted one big

Agency.

He didn't want this split between DDI and DDP and the DDA and the DDS

then and now they have S&T. One big Agency. Everybody know everything. And

I said, "What are you going to do, tack all the cables up on the bulletin

board? Put all the operations up on the bulletin board so everybody can read

all this stuff?" And this lasted for a little while, like a couple of months,

I think.. And finally it even finally began to sink in on a guy called Bill

Colby.. Jesus, there have got to be some compartmentations somewhere. And

we've got to stop all this, everybody know everything. He wanted one Agency,

one Agency. All does not run a... That was part of Turner's problem. Read

Turner's book. And read my review of Turner's book if you haven't. I'll give

you a copy. Turner could never understand it. He couldn't understand why he

had all these different Directorates, which he for some crazy reason called

branches. And he still talks about it as branches. He didn't understand that

they're simply separate activities. Each one of those things, except the DDA,

can be its own independent Agency. Literally. And the DDA simply supplies

the men, money, material (the three m's) for everybody. And at one time, at

least in the early days, 80-85% of what the DDA did for a living, they did for

the DDP.

INTERVIEWER: That

high a percentage?

MR. HALPERN: Yeah, and that was before DDS&T came along.

INTERVIEWER: Right, yeah.

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MR. HALPERN: And I said, in those days, I said, "Well, why the hell don't we

just absorb them, make them part of us, you know, as part of our command?"

And that led to another big hoorah, but we never did get command. But they

did. Eighty-five percent of their activity was for us.

INTERVIEWER: Did you, at the time Bill Colby was talking about one big

Agency. . .

MR. HALPERN:

'73, '74.

INTERVIEWER: Yeah, why?

MR. HALPERN: Well, because of what we were talking about before. The

difference of views, the different cultures involved,

in both what the

collector and the analysts. And then of course you had the new thing called

technicians -- technical people -- which is a totally different aspect, even

for us in the DDP. Our technicians were our TSD types or the commo types.

And we did some SIGINT of our own and that kind of stuff, but with the use of

the commo guy, the operators of the machines.

We weren't into overhead

reconnaissance and things like that, for God's sakes, and other black box

activities, except even the black boxes, they asked us to deliver in many

parts of the world. We had to do the drops, we had to get them in either by

hook or by crook and things like that into the right location and all that

kind of stuff. So there was a marriage there. But basically, as I said, each

one of these

three Directorates could honestly, and you could come up with

good rationale for making separate Agencies of each one of them. And so when

Bill talks about one Agency, one big family, he was trying to merge us all

together and make us, like Turner says in his book, he wanted to make

everybody be able to do everybody else's job. Well, that is kind of silly.

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And as l point

out in my review of his book, I said, "You don't take an.

artillery officer and make a submarine captain out of him. Or vice versa.

Sure, you can do it over a period of training, but if a guy wants to be a sub

captain, he goes into the sub service. He doesn't join the artillery. And

vice versa." And I said, "You know, people are not that changeable."

INTERVIEWER: Were you surprised when Colby tried to do this?

MR. HALPERN: No. Not really. I am never surprised at anything Bill Colby

wants to do. Never.

INTERVIEWER: And that dates back to '56?

MR. HALPERN: Yeah. That dates back to '56. And I wasn't the only FE officer

who saw it in '56. Believe me.

INTERVIEWER: Is that right? That early on?

MR. HALPERN: You could spot it. We did. I am not unique in this. Talk to

some of the old FE hands and see what they tell you... Just don't take it from

me.

INTERVIEWER: How about the, we will come back to that later, how about, did

you have much of anything to do with the Rockefeller Commission?

MR. HALPERN:: No. I didn't have anything at all. None of it. I read their

report. I'll show you my copy. It's all marked up. They've got so much

misinformation in there, it's not even funny. I mean, even they're screwed

up. I mean the nature of the business. It's like Robin Winks, he's got a lot

of misinformation in there, Ranelagh got a lot of misinformation. People just

can't get ... If I wrote a book, I'd have a lot of things wrong if I

started to go outside of things I personally know about. You know, all you

can do is conjecture. And how do you sort the wheat from the chaff? You are

going to have a hell of a job.

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INTERVIEWER: I think so. Okay. How about moving towards the Hearings. One

writer said about Mr. Colby that Mr. Colby believed salvation for the Agency

lay in cooperation with the investigations, while other intelligence

professionals thought intelligence secrets were forever.

MR. HALPERN: I'm with the second group.

INTERVIEWER: You are with the second group.

MR. HALPERN: Yeah. And I will refer you to colby's own book in which he says

-- this is before the Church Committee was created -- January the 15th, 1975.

Colby went to testify in public before the, I think it was the Armed Services,

it might have been Appropriations. I forget now. I think it was Russell or

Vinson, I forget the exact person. But anyway, and he says in his book after

he testified, after he testified in which he exposed for the first time, even

though the law didn't require him to do that, by the law, as a matter of fact,

you're supposed keep secret the organizational structure and breakdown of

CIA. Colby blew it for the first time, exposed the whole organizational

structure in public and went far beyond even that for the first time in public

testimony. And he says in his book, on the way back from the Hill going to

his office in Langley, it suddenly dawned on him that he might stop off at the

White House and alert them to what he has just done so that the news doesn't

hit them cold. And in my book, that in effect damned the hell out of Bill

Colby. Because as a serving. officer, as a serving DCI, his first port of call

even before he went near the Hill would have been to go into the President's

office, I don't care who the President is, his boss and say, "Boss, this is

what I've been asked to do, this is what I intend to do. Is it okay with

you?" He never did. By the time it got to the White House, it was too late

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to do any kind of damage control or approach it a totally different way, and

the President may not have wanted to, because Ford wasn't the strongest guy in

the world, may not have wanted him to say anything. He may have wanted him to

invoke Executive immunity or whatever. But Colby by doing what he did, by

testifying first, cut the feet out from under the President. The President

had no choice except to continue. And after that Colby just went on and on

and on and on and on. And never held back. And he had every reason to hold

back, particularly in the public hearings. Executive hearings, it might have

been different. But in public hearings, you know, in my book he went far far

beyond what he needed to do.

INTERVIEWER: Was there ever any talk when these.

MR. HALPERN: And I was out of the Agency by then.

INTERVIEWER: You were out?

MR. HALPERN: By "75.

INTERVIEWER: When the materials were gathered, "Family Jewels," ever any talk

about why that didn't get over to the White House or apparently he had

briefed, he Colby, had briefed some committee, but did not fill the White

House in.

MR. HALPERN: I don't know.. I don't know. I was back in the Agency in

January '75, because I retired December 31, '74. My sidekick and buddy,

Seymour Bolton, who is now dead, unfortunately, may he rest in peace, also

retired December 31, '74, but he went back to work right after the new year.

To start, we didn't know that a Church Committee and he didn't know that a

Church Committee was being created and what have you, but he knew that there

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was going to be problems in terms of the two Hersh articles. And Seymour

convinced several of the powers that be in the Agency, including Bill, and

then he finally convinced me to come on back to the Agency to help out,

pulling together the stuff, because they kind of felt that I knew where the

poop was. I knew roughly where it was hidden, perhaps even what safe it was

in, and maybe what the hell the color of the paper was. And so I agreed to

come back, and so I was in there in January of '75 and stayed on until about

March, I think, maybe April '75 when it dawned on me, that this is silly, a

waste of time on my part because I was getting responses to my queries from

all the Directorates, I mean, I was getting substantive responses from all the

Directorates except one -- the DDO. And I knew damn well where the hell the

information was, that they had the information. In most cases I did. And I

wasn't getting it. And the rationale I was given by several of the officers

in the DDO was that, "We're not sure" -- or roughly like this -- "We're not

sure what Bill Colby is going to do with this information. We don't trust

him. What do you want comment for?" So I mentioned this a couple of times to

Bill and he kind of said, "Okay, okay." I thought, "This is crazy." And I

finally wrote him a letter, and I sent it to his home, not to the office,

because I know what the hell happens with paper shuffling. Because I've done

enough of it in my day. And I said to Bill, "I quit for a very simple

reason.. You are no longer the DCI." I said, "I agree with the guys in the

do in that nobody knows what you are going to do with this information. But

in my book you are still the commanding officer.. And it is up to us as troops

to give you the information you ask for. What you do with it is up to you.

It is your conscience, not ours. So since you are not acting as the DCI and

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insisting that you get the information you need or you want, there's no point

in me hanging around.

I'm retired and I'm going out of your life." And I

walked out.

INTERVIEWER: My goodness.

December?

Was it Scotty Miler also, didn't he retire in

MR. HALPERN: 31, 1974, and Bill Hood did too and Ray Rocca did too. Well a

lot of guys went out. I think there were over 200 of us from the DDO that

went out December 31, 1974. Largely, there was a lot of reasons, but one of

the big reasons was the fact of the numbers, the retirement numbers. Just

turned out to be right because there was a big increase coming up and if you

left by that date you got a little bit extra and that kind of stuff. So

everybody walked out at the same time. I was surprised when I got the figures

from the retirement people what the hell I would be getting. So I figured I

might as well go out in December then, too. And this was long before the

Hersh articles appeared that we put our papers in.

INTERVIEWER: That you had made your decision?

MR. HALPERN: Yes, we all did. Of course, you had to have your papers in at a

certain time anyway. And in my case, see, I wasn't on the CIARDs initially.

And I had to write a special memorandum to try to convince the powers that be

in DDO and in personnel and in the Director's office that the things I had

done which were not overseas -- I didn't have enough to qualify.

I had to explain and get their approval for the activities I had done earlier

done a lot of it in the States, even while serving in Washington. to equate

X number of years abroad that I needed. And I forget the exact figures. But

anyway, and that paper had to be put in long before the Hersh article

appeared. And low and behold, they wanted to get rid of people and I was a

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super grade. I was a GS-17. They figured they would get another slot, and so

they let me go. They made me a member of CIARDS. And as a result of being

CIARDS, when I told the retirement people what would happen if I was CIARDS,

then they gave me a new figure on my retirement which went up by a goodly

proportion. I said, "I have no idea."

INTERVIEWER: • What is CIARDS?

MR. HALPERN: CIARDS is that Central Intelligence Agency Retirement and

Disability System.

INTERVIEWER: Okay.

MR. HALPERN: C-I-A-R-D-S. It's the name of the bill in 1964 which set up

this earlier retirement for certain people with certain qualifying service:

And so it's called CIARDS. And I can take it right out of the title of the

act. It has been amended a number of times since then.

INTERVIEWER: What would you say the most difficult demands were in conducting

the Congressional investigations in '75 as you may have sensed at the time?

MR. HALPERN:

Sensed is a good word and also when I testified. I always felt.

that when proper people in Congress ask questions, you gave them the answers.

That's why I'm opposed to this Ollie North/Pointexter nonsense and what they

did was wrong in the way they, you know, handled the Congress. And Bill Casey

was wrong on that. Congress, for good or bad, for good or evil, they are the

ones who set it up. They are the ones who make the rules. You've got to live

by the rules. Otherwise, you'd have chaos. And so the biggest problem I

felt, and still feel today, and felt at the time that I was testifying, is

that yeah, I am giving you the truth and it is up to you, Mr. Congress, to

keep that information privileged. I don't want it all over the street. And

one of the worst things that I thought that Frank Church did was after every

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single executive session up on the Hill, including the one I was at, he had a

television

show right after the meeting broke up. They were waiting for him

outside the door with cameras and lights. And we, you and I, as American.

citizens paid for all of the electricity involved because they were all

plugged into the walls. But I saw it there as I came out. Fortunately,

nobody ever stopped me going out. I don't know what the hell, what it was,

but maybe it was because I looked so nondescript. or so ignorant or whatever,

because when I left that meeting, I thought there they were in the hall and

walked right by them. And they were waiting for some big shot and I wasn't a

big shot. A little shot, or a little punk anyway. And I walked in, walked

right by them, stepping over all the wires and all their legs because they

were sitting there leaning against the wall like this, you know, and snoring

some of them.. And I went into the men's room, and I didn't have on my award

pin from the Agency and had just an ordinary dumb old blue suit, I think it

was. And I went right by them, went into the john, did my business, came out,

walked by them the other way, and got out of there. And that night I see

Frank Church on television telling about all this stuff they had just heard.

Not once, he never mentioned my name. My name was never mentioned except, I

was told later, in the late edition, a late city edition of The New York Times

in New York, in one of the stories my name appeared. And I was in the

executive session. Nobody should have known my name. Somebody gave somebody,

somebody inside gave somebody outside, my name.. And it was there on one

line. Except I have gone to look at The New York Times index a couple of

times and they've got my name listed in that year, '75, but the page number is -

all wrong. So it's one of those historical things that you will never find.

You'll never find it unless you know exactly where to look. The index will

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not lead you to my name, even though it says that you should find it there.

It's not the only time I have had trouble with The New York Times index. So

when you talk about the biggest problem, the biggest problem is security and

leaks. That is the biggest problem on the Hill. And the Hill, I think, is

beginning to realize that, maybe they have, and I think the more they talk

about the joint committee with a small professional staff, they will be going

in the right direction. I've argued for it and have written about that, too,

about a single committee, a joint committee, for years now, and maybe they'll

get to it. It's going to be tough but maybe they'll get to it.

INTERVIEWER: What was your feeling in the executive session in which you were

being questioned?

MR. HALPERN: I felt that I was dealing with a bunch of nincompoops and idiots.

INTERVIEWER: On the part of the staff?

MR. HALPERN: Staff and the Senators present. Goldwater was the only one that

I thought had a feeling for what was going on. Schweiker was an ass.

Huddleston and Mondale were totally incompetent on this particular subject,

maybe because he was new. I testified in June of i75. I would have thought

by that time they would have gotten some briefings from their own staff as to

what the hell was going on. About what was going on. I'll give you an

example. I mentioned somewhere along the way, I forget what the specific was,

but I mentioned something about female case officers. And I was interrupted.

by Mondale and Huddleston with kind of a learing kind of a question. "And

what do female officers do?" I just looked at him and I said, "What any other

case officer does. They do exactly the same thing. No more, no less.

They're Chiefs of Station, they're Deputy Chiefs of Station, they're ordinary

Case Officers, they pound the street, they write reports, they handle paper,

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they do everything everybody else does. They recruit people. They handle

people, they manipulate people. What else did you expect them to do?" You

know, the whole approach was, "Female case officers?" That really set me off

and if I hadn't been constrained to where I was, I would have really let go in

my better language, and I didn't. I tried to

hold off.

INTERVIEWER: How did they happen to have you come and testify?

MR. HALPERN: I don't know for sure. I think it was because Helms was being

called back so many times for the various committees, that he was almost like

a yo-yo from Teheran as Ambassador. And I think he practically had a commuter

ticket on some of the airlines the way he was coming back and forth. And on

one of his trips, he asked me to brief him, and Tom Karamessines, a matter of

fact, about the background on the Cuban Missile Crisis and some of the

activities during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The whole Operation MONGOOSE

thing. Particularly MONGOOSE which was very hot at that particular point.

And a few other details. The brass isn't suppose to remember details. That's

what they got guys like me around for. That's what I get paid for. So I

talked to Dick and talked to Tom and gave them as much as I could. And I just

guessed that somewhere along the way in their private discussion or private

testimony the stuff that wasn't the public stuff, before you get in front of

the public television and what have you, Dick must have said or Tom must have

said, "and if you want any more detail get a hold of Sam." Or something like

that, I guess. And

so sure enough, I get the call. I didn't care. I got

nothing to hide. Because I'm proud of what I did all these years.. And so if

they don't like it, that's tough. Change the system. And that's how I think -

I got picked. And I remember when the Church Committee began, one of my

retired colleagues, and his wife who is also a retired colleague, his wife was

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on the Committee staff. She arranged a dinner party with several of the new

staff types - this is the Church Committee not the Pike Committee. Seymour

Bolton called the Pike Committee guys a bunch of young whippersnapper,

snot-nosed kids. Really. The staff on the Church Committee was a little bit

better. Anyway, at this dinner party, my wife came along too. But anyway, I

was the target of the night, obviously, and everybody zeroed in on me, before

dinner and after dinner and everything else. In terms to the approach to this

whole business, where do we go from here and how. And I pointed out that

they were in a totally different environment than they've ever been before,

telling them this was a different kind of a game, and I said, "You are going

to be surprised at the fact that you are not going to find very much paper

around. And you are not going to find whole treatises like you do in law

cases and what have you." And I said, "You are going to see my name and my

initials on literally thousands of pieces of paper. But I'd be willing.to

bet

you're not going to find more than a smattering of any substance before that

initial or before that name. You are going to find all kinds of references to

'as we discussed' and 'why don't we talk about this' and, you know,' let's see

what we.can do about this', 'why don't we talk about this sometime in the

future'. You are going to find very meaningless comments." And the guy said,

"Don't you guys ever put anything in writing?" I said, "We can, but if we can

avoid it, no." And he said, "Well, how do you get approvals for projects?"

And I said, "You write a project, and that you'll find. You'll find lots of

stuff, lots of projects that we did. Some of them are one pagers, some of them

are ten pages. But that's not what makes the whole place operate." And the

whole purpose was to try to get me, I suppose, to tell them how to find things

and what to look for. You know, I don't have to tell them.. First of all, I

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wasn't witting there under oath, in the first place. And when I got under

oath, yeah I told them the truth. They didn't like to hear it. I got into a

big shouting contest with a guy called Gary Hart. He was sitting in the

background. He wasn't even -- he was sitting with the staff, as a matter of

fact. I guess that was part of his popularism or something. And he made some

remark in the back there and I shouted back at him. I didn't give a damn. I

made some remark about the Operation MONGOOSE we were talking about at the

time and I said this was, as far as I was concerned, this was American foreign

policy made by the President. And this voice in the back, I later found out

it was Gary Hart, said something about, "Hey, well that doesn't make American

foreign policy." I said, "As far as I'm concerned if the President says that

is what we are doing and the Attorney General agrees, that's what we are

doing. That's foreign policy." You know, and Church cut off.

INTERVIEWER: Was Mathias there, do you remember at all?

MR. KALPERN: Yes, yes he was there. He didn't bother me much. I think it

was Mac that was there.. I know schweiker was there and I know Goldwater was

there.

INTERVIEWER: Tower?

MR. HALPERN: Yes, Tower was there. He didn't say much.

INTERVIEWER: No.

MR. HALPERN: It was mostly Church and, of course, F.A.O. Schwarz as the Staff

Director. Yeah, that was a funny one too. I'd been called to talk to Schwarz

on the Staff first in the morning, a crack of dawn kind of thing. And I got

down there. And this was in the old, oh, what the hell is the building, the

Senate building, not the Rayburn Building, the other one.

INTERVIEWER: Cannon?

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MR. HALPERN: No. No. The one next to the -- it's on the corner. Big

building, before they built the Hart Building. Well, I forget. It was the

guy who came up with that - from Indiana, I think it was, or Illinois -- but

anyway, they had taken over the auditorium in that building and they were a

so-called secure area.

They had safes and what have you all over the place

and they had taken the seats out and what have you. And I was in there, I

went in there, talking to Schwarz and some of his cohorts, then suddenly out

of the clear blue sky he says, "Well, let's walk over to the Capitol

Building. The Committee is going to go into session and they want to talk to

you." And I said, "You mean just like that?" He said, "Yeah, you got nothing

to hide, have you?" And I said, "No, I got nothing to hide." He said, "Yeah,

I was thinking you might as well go and talk to them directly.". So after

spending a couple of hours with Schwarz and company, I was ushered across the

street and we walked all the way over to the Capitol Building and went up to

the fourth floor or whatever it was and testified that night. I was told to

stand up, and sworn in, and we went to town.

INTERVIEWER: And you didn't know that you were going to do that before? On

my.

MR. HALPERN: I had no chance to talk to a lawyer or anything like that. Not

that I cared. It didn't bother me. But it was a lousy way to do business,

and it wasn't according to the rules at the time, because I had the rule book,

procedures, and what have you and it wasn't what I was supposed to be able to

do. And they were supposed to give me a notice for that and that kind of

stuff. But I didn't want tó stop the proceedings.

INTERVIEWER: Was it a very long session that you were in?

MR. HALPERN: Yeah, it was all day.

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INTERVIEWER: The executive?

MR. HALPERN: Yeah, it was the executive session. I think it was, I don't

know, several hours. I mean,

I got. out late in the afternoon. After five

o'clock or later. •

INTERVIEWER: Was Bill Miller involved at all?

MR. HALPERN: Yes, Bill was there, yeah Bill was there. And Schwarz was

there, and a lot of the other staffers were in the back. That's why I thought

Gary Hart was a member of the staff. He was sitting with the staffers. And

it should have dawned on me that a staffer wouldn't have dared shout that way

across the heads of the guys in front of him - the Senators. And Schwarz was

at the table, too. But the rest of the guys were in the back. Why Gary Hart

sat in the back I'll never know to this day.

INTERVIEWER: Did you have any impression that what you had said in that

session went beyond that session?

MR. HALPERN: Oh yeah. Because I started to open up on MONGOOSE, on Ed

• Lansdale's connection, and the fact that this was not a CIA operation,

regardless of what anybody might want to tell them, that it was a

government-wide operation and it was run right out of Robert Kennedy's office,

by Robert Kennedy, and even Landsdale was not in charge. He was the chief of

staff to Kennedy, Robert Kennedy. It was run right out of Kennedy's office

and Robert and Jack Kennedy were one practically, and that McCone, McNamara

and Rusk had each refused to go along with one of Landsdale's ideas that even

Kennedy couldn't force on them. And that was, originally, Landsdale's idea

for MONGOOSE was for each of the agencies in town to detail men, money, and

material out of the Agency to what amounts to a new MONGOOSE agency under

Landsdale and Kennedy. And McCone was the first to have said, "Hell no." He

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said, "That money was appropriated by Congress under my command, my

responsibility. It stays with me. We'll work with you and we'll help you and

we'll be part of your team kind of thing. But I can't relinquish control over

men., money, and material as appropriated to me." And McNamara said the same

thing and Rusk said the same thing so that they didn't

achieve creating a

brand new Agency in effect. And this was all brand new to the guys sitting

around that table. It might not have been new to schwarz, who seemed to

understand something about Landsdale's role, because when I started to talk

about Landsdale being in command and being in direct communication with us and

issuing orders directly in the name of Kennedy, etc., etc., I remember Church

saying to Schwarz, "Is General Landsdale available anywhere?" And Schwarz

saying something, "Yes sir. We have tracked him down, he lives in..." I think

he said Falls Church or something. He lives in Virginia anyway, "and we're

trying to get in touch with him to have him come here." And a little later on

he did come and testify. But this was seen like brand new stuff to them.

This was June, mind you. And one of the things they were after was Rogue

Elephant running operations against Cuba. And it had been written about quite

a bit and all that kind of stuff. And they didn't have a clue. And they

didn't like the idea that, as far as I was concerned, the Kennedy boys were in

charge. And they were running the war. And we were fighting a war against

Cuba, undeclared or otherwise, but we were fighting a war.. I said if we were

sending people in to create sabotage activities inside Cuba, we were blowing

things up, people got killed on both sides, on their side and our side. And I

said -- that's when I got into a fight with Hart. I remember that now. And

that was foreign policy as far as I was concerned. And that's Hart said, "It

wasn't, the Congressman is involved." I said, "The hell with that." I said

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Congress was providing the money. And we didn't create our own money. We

didn't create our own weapons. And they knew what we were doing. And so,

that was, I remember now, that was the fight with Hart.

INTERVIEWER: And did they push the issue whether John F. Kennedy knew about

all these activities?

MR. HALPERN: Yeah, with me as far as I was concerned. Yeah, I said I assume

that the Attorney General reported to the President and Landsdale reported and

Landsdale did not leave his office. He was in General Erskine's office in the

Pentagon. And he didn't leave his office. He stayed there physically and in

that office but he directed activities from there in the name of the President

and the Attorney General. That was MONGOOSE, I said. And it is all written

up now in the Church Report. They finally got all the stuff straight, pretty

much straight. There are

some errors in it. But I try to correct them. It

doesn't always work. But that was, one of the things that bothered me, the

Senators themselves were being led around as they usually are, I think, by the

staff. They don't have enough time in the day I suppose to do all of these

things. And the staff, even by June, is just beginning to get their feet wet

on something like this. And they were looking into other operations. One was

an Indonesian operation which was brought under Eisenhower's aegis. And I

think they were hoping to use that again as another example of a Rogue

Elephant. But my own feeling, and they never talked to me about that,

although they should have. They talked to a lot of other people and I guess

they figured by the time they talked to enough people they didn't have to talk

to me, because the record on that is so complete. You talk about paper. Now

that one we had plenty of paper on, because everything was done by cables and

memos. And it was so complete and so accurate, in terms of starting with the

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President's approval, Eisenhower's approval, and all the things that we did

through the then 5412 Committee, and the papers on that were clear, and all

the cable traffic was clear, that they figured there was no way they were

going to pin that on CIA as a CIA operation because that was again, State, CIA

and Defense all working as a team. We were carrying the main load at that

level, but everybody was involved. No question. And all the

record was

there, so I guess they couldn't use that as a Rogue Elephant operation. The

reason they hit the MONGOOSE one, I think, was because, Cuba being Cuba, the

assassination efforts and that kind of stuff, they had to keep it back.

INTERVIEWER: And it seemed to me that there was some mention along the way

that the Agency was not going to call back people from retirement to

participate in the investigations.

MR. HALPERN: That's correct. And the Agency did nothing to help anybody,

even serving officers without giving them any legal assistance. They were

told to go get their own lawyers.

INTERVIEWER: They didn't get support?

MR. HALPERN: And that also broke the Band of Brothers, and there wasn't

anything left by then. This was '75 now. But the Agency made it very clear

in their memoranda and the Notices, the Headquarters Notices they issue to all

employees that you are on your own, you get your own lawyers, etc., etc. You:

got no help from the Agency. Which was not true in the old days. Not true at

all: There was a completely adversarial relationship that was developed.

INTERVIEWER: So no legal support.

MR. HALPERN: None whatsoever.. You can, hell, go ask Paul to get you the old

Notices that was put out on the Committee. No legal support whatsoever. Not

even advice. Colby released everybody from their oaths by the way -- from

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their secrecy oaths in terms of testifying to Congress. Well, hell, first of

all I think that was a silly thing to do because when you, even the oath

itself that you sign, the secrecy oath, look at the one you signed. It

doesn't say anyting about withholding anything from Congress. In addition to

which Congress has made it very crystal clear in the laws they passed since

then that nothing in here is to imply in any way you were to withhold any

information from Congress, through duly authorized Congressional requests.

Correct.

INTERVIEWER: Sure.

MR. HALPERN: So he shouldn't have issued that one about releasing you from

your oath when testifying before Congress. That's nonsense, utter nonsense.

INTERVIEWER: And I imagine the people were really, I suppose, surprised that

they didn't get any legal...

MR. HALPERN: Oh, very much surprised. Particularly the retirees.. Every time

a retiree, you know, tried to get in touch with the Agency to get some kind of

help or guidance, what do I say, what do I don't say. You got nothing. You

were on your own.

INTERVIEWER: Were there any lawsuits that you were involved in?

MR. HALPERN: No. There were lots of lawsuits that other people were in. I

think Tom K's estate is still involved in several and I think Dick Helms is :

involved in several. So on, there goes it. I called them the kook cases, but

they are legal cases.

INTERVIEWER: And they are real.

MR. MALPERN: And they are real.. And they are going through courts and what

have you, no question about that.. The courts have not thrown them out. But,

in terms of testifying before the Congress, a lot of the people were called

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in. Like me, I'd never testified before Congress.

INTERVIEWER: It was your first time.

MR. HALPERN: Yeah. First time. And so far my only time thank the Lord. But

I don't care about going before them

again. They walk on water, they don't

walk on water any more than I do. And the old story about they put on their

pants one leg at a time like I do. Well, what the hell.

INTERVIEWER: Did they contact you at all after the Hearing relative to any of

the testimony?

MR. HALPERN: No. No. You are given copies.of the testimony and then you are

allowed to make corrections on it because: a. the tape doesn't always work,

and b. the guy who is listening and talks into it doesn't always get it. And

sometimes the repartee is so fast nothing can catch it. And that happened

with my argument with Gary Hart. That is totally missing from the written

record. But you know, so, life goes on. But that is what you get and then

you are allowed to adjust it and send it back or you can take it back and

argue with them, or what have you.

INTERVIEWER: They didn't give any indication that you might have to come to a

public hearing?

MR. HALPERN: No. I'm not big enough for that. I'm all over the Church

Committee Report. I'm listed as the "Executive Officer to" or the "Executive

Assistant to" or whatever phraseology. And that has been blown by Tom Powers

and God knows how many other people. I didn't blow it but a lot of other

people did. So, it doesn't take long to put two and two together.

INTERVIEWER: Okay. How about some people say that the intelligence

collection and analysis were seriously impaired during the year of

investigation because of the man hours spent in preparing and transmitting

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responses to the committees. Did you . .

MR. HALPERN: I wasn't in there so I can't say. But I would say based upon

what I know about the bureaucracy, it had to have a bad impact, a very adverse

impact on: a. the morale of the people, b. the initiative of the people,

which goes to zero or less than zero, you know, why should I stick my neck out

kind of thing. It's got to then badly impact on any prospective agent you

might want to recruit. A foreigner's got to have rocks in his head to be

willing to work for the US Government these days in a clandestine capacity.

And if I were a Case Officer today, I'd have to think about the sanity of the

guy I am trying to recruit. Doesn't he read the newspapers? Doesn't he watch

television? In my day, we were able to protect the identities of a source.

Really protect the identity of a source. And there were really, literally, no

more than a handful of people who knew the true name of an individual. They

might know something about the guy's background, his capabilities, his access,

that kind of stuff. A person might never ask but even if they did it would go

in one ear and out the other. We usually referred to sources by their

cryptonyms. And that was good enough for us. And that goes all the way up to

Director. True names were things that you just don't talk about. And so in

this day and age though, I'm not sure they can protect the true name of an

individual. I was told, this is all hearsay, I was told that during the

Carter administration that true names of agents were requested by and given to

staff members of the White House staff. They obviously had the authority to

ask for it and somebody gave it to them. I don't know how often that was

done, but it was done enough. The mere fact that the cryptonym, mind you the

cryptonym, of Hussein, King Hussein, from Jordan was front page of The

Washington Post and that scared the pants off them. And that was early on in

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the Carter administration. That scared the pants off Carter and, what the

hell was his name - Jody Powell, who was the press officer and Brzezinski --

to the point where they even made public statements about, you know, you've

got to protect all this kind of relationships and what have you and what have

you. Where Senator Moynihan said Jimmy Carter suddenly discovered CIA, which

he campaigned against. You remember his litany about Watergate, Vietnam, and

CIA were part of Jimmy Carter's campaign litany. Then Moynihan said something

to

the effect of: "Jimmy Carter, despite the campaign, has suddenly

discovered that the CIA is now his." You know.

INTERVIEWER: Sure.

MR. HALPERN: But, I think, so when you are talking about the impact inside

and the impact on operations, let alone what you do in terms of the amount of

paperwork that had to be generated to supply the requests from the Hill. God,

well, Scott Breckinridge, I guess you want to talk to him about that?

INTERVIEWER: Yes I will.

MR. HALPERN: Scott and Seymour Bolton were the team and they had a staff.

And it was created by Walt Elder, was part of that, to help funnel papers to

and from the Hill. And that became an industry all of its own. I'm sure, I

mean, just without even having been there, I know enough about the bureaucracy

as to how it works. And it had to be. And it was a continuing operation.

And it creates a hell of a lot of trouble among the troops and the secretaries

and the clerks and everybody else involved. You don't have time to do

anything else. So how do you carry on the job of collecting intelligence?

INTERVIEWER: Was there any; in your last year or two with the Agency, that

you knew of, comments by intelligence services of other countries? Any

indication that they were becoming anxious or apprehensive about . . .

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MR. HALPERN: Just the bare beginnings of that because, you see, the Freedom

of Information Act wasn't actually amended until '74 and didn't go into effect

until, I think it was, December of '74. Just as I was getting ready to

leave. And we all knew that was going to be a problem. A real problem. And

it became a problem. All you've got to do is read the testimony of George

Cary, John McMahon, Admiral Inman. Well, you can go through the old great

hearings. The amount of bad impact, adverse impact, it had with various

intelligence services around the world. Particularly our old friends. And

I'm sure it's gotten worse rather than better. With books like Woodward's

book and so on and the continuing leaks. But I must say from where I sit on

the outside, and I am only guessing, most of the leaks seem to come from the

Executive Branch of government. I'm not just talking the White House but I'm

talking the whole slew at all levels rather than the Hill. The Hill has got

its problems but the Hill is doing more in terms of protecting itself, and

protecting the information that's given than the Executive Branch has been

able to do.

INTERVIEWER: More recently?

MR. HALPERN: Yeah. And over the last ten years. It's quite clear. You

just, you know, you do this with a sixth sense and a gut feeling. You can

tell what's right and what's wrong and what's true and what's false. More or

less. You can't be totally right but you get a pretty good estimate or a feel

on this thing. And so help me, the Executive Branch is a rotten

sieve all

over the place. Much worse than in my day.

INTERVIEWER: Is that right?

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MR. HALPERN: Oh yeah. It's not just me or my guys, it's all the way through

the government. The Executive Branch everybody talks, that's all. On all

kinds of stuff. It's not just. . .

INTERVIEWER: Yeah, we're going to come back to that.

MR. HALPERN: All right. It's not just one Agency. By a long shot. And I

think the Hill is making better strides on this and think they are beginning

to realize and have for a number of years, a number of them anyway. Even what

I told you about Huddleston. You know, you Members the Congress, trust us as

your surrogates. Well, okay, that's a step forward. Instead of trusting 535

guys, you gonna trust 135. Well, that's a big step forward. And I say 135

because I am adding up staffs as well as members of Houses and both

committees. And don't forget, and people -- most of them - do forget, that

in addition to the two intelligence committees, you still have Appropriations

in

both Houses, you have Armed Services in both houses, and they still

jurisdictionally ain't going to give up. But they get clued in about what's

going on, but it's far more than just a two bit leak. Remember

that.

INTERVIEWER: In practice.

MR. HALPERN: In practice. Don't kid yourself. Far more people know and they

are better, they are beginning to learn, they are handling themselves much

better, they have control of the stuff. Look at the Iran/Contra stuff. Very

little stuff leaked from the Hill. What you've got is what they want you to

get. They are controlling that stuff. Very well indeed. They are

controlling the pieces of paper, they are controlling the reproduction

machines, the xeroxes and all that kind of stuff. Much better than the

Executive Branch is doing. Yeah, sure, they are a smaller group. You know,

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they've only got 18 or 19 thousand people on the Hill to begin with and it's a

hell of a lot better than what CIA must have: at least 16,000 probably.

Alone. So look at the Pentagon, look at the State Department.

INTERVIEWER: Isn't it interesting that time after time when one talks about

leaks or when one reads about it, frequently an article in newspaper stories,

the congress is oftentimes the bad guy, the executive department is not very

bad.

MR. HALPERN: Well, that's why I'd take another look at that article and it

leaked the information in it and read it again. And sometimes you wonder,

hey, it probably didn't come from the congress, because they are tightening

up. Not every staff member, for example, on the committees has access to all

the information anymore. That's been true for quite a while.. Not every

Senator or Congressman can come and -- well, they better not take anything

away from the Hill. None of them can take even their notes away. They're not

supposed to make notes of what the hell they are reading. So the days of

looseness up on the Hill have long since gone on this kind of stuff.

INTERVIEWER: There have been some.real improvements on it.

MR. HALPERN: They have learned the hard way. And they really mean it. And

they realize that their own reputations are at stake. Which I think has a big

thing going for it. And I hope they get to a joint committee someday, and

remember that the House committee staff is, in effect, a small professional

staff now. It's not run the way the Senate committee is run. It's a smaller

group, they've been there a longer time and the staff director, Latimer, Tom

Latimer, has been there from the beginning. It's his second career. I knew

Tom when he was one of the guys up on the seventh floor in the Agency and over

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at the White House with Kissinger. And he worked his way up, but anyway, that

is another story. But he's been there as a pro, minding his p's and Q's. He

has a very small staff. I think there are a total of a dozen people, all

told. They are all pros.: I mean, former professionals from one agency or

another. Which is unlike the Senate committee which is still more or less

beholden to each Senator and the staff guy really is a Senator's appointee.

And the staff director doesn't have much control over him. It's a different

story. So it will give you something to watch. And maybe as a result of the

Iran/Contra stuff, they must be having a hell of a time coming up with their

report. Oh God, they must be fighting like cats and dogs!

INTERVIEWER: That's the impression I get from snippits in the newspaper

column.

MR. HALPERN: The reports now are at least three weeks overdue. And you know,

they could have had a minority or majority report. They must be having a real

go through on that one.

INTERVIEWER: I just happened to think when you were mentioning the earlier

and, I'm not sure that it may be coming up a little bit later, were you

surprised when Mr. Colby agonized for a time over Mr. Helms' testimony and the

decision to turn the testimony over? Were you surprised at that?

MR. HALPERN: Uh huh.

Really something.

INTERVIEWER: You didn't think he would?

MR. HALPERN: I didn't think he would. I didn't think he should. But I'm

told by one of the principals involved, namely John Warner, who was then Legal

Counsel or General Counsel :..

INTERVIEWER: Yeah, General.

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MR. HALPERN: ...that Bill had no choice at that point. I've talked to John

about this, I listened to his argumentation. I'm no lawyer. And I still find

it hard that something couldn't have been done about that.

INTERVIEWER: Yes, he spoke about that to me and put it on tape.

MR. HALPERN: Yes, John is an honest man. I'm not saying anything about

that.

John said by the time it got to that point he couldn't advise Colby in

any other way from a legal point of view. He had to tell him to go. And that

I find very hard to accept. Although again, as we said before, times have

changed. And times change and poor Dick was caught in the middle. Absolutely

caught in the middle.

INTERVIEWER: He sure was. What about certain issues raised by the Church and

Pike Committees? What are your thoughts about certain of them such as mail

opening?

MR. HALPERN: Well, I think they did not prove the case, that it was

illegal. And take as my text the fact that the Justice Department, in looking

into this after the

Church Committee and after spending God knows how many

months and years looking into this thing, had to decide even under the Carter

administration there wasn't anything we could do. There wasn't enough

evidence one way or the other and when you had Postmasters General who

testify. Some testified it was totally illegal. But some say it was

perfectly legal. Nothing wrong with it. We knew what was going on and we

agreed. And that's got nothing to do with whether the President is approved

or not. When you have a difference of view from postmasters themselves, how

the hell can you go to court on that? So, oh sure, it was another one of '

those headline grabbing things. And as somebody said, I don't know of anybody

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who was hurt by the fact that the mail was opened. Either physically, or

legally, financially or any other way. And in most cases, we didn't even know

it happened until years afterwards. And in some cases I think they had

perfectly good justification to go look at somebody's mail.

INTERVIEWER: All right. And how about the drug experimentation. Did that

come as a surprise to you?

MR. HALPERN: That was a surprise to me and it was a surprise to a lot of

people. And a lot of people, I think, took very great personal affront in the

fact that they, because they were a part of CIA, were now and forever more

tarred with this kind of thing. I don't like it. I didn't like it when I

heard about it for the first time. Particularly some of the nasty details

about the two-way glass and getting a drunk in a bar and giving him something

and following him to see what he did and that kind of stuff. But I also know

the people involved in some of it and I know Sid Gottleib very well and I know

Knoche very well and I can't imagine them doing this because they are a bunch

of sadist or a bunch of Dr. Frankensteins who like to pull wings off of flies

and watch the flies flop around. Nothing like that at all and I think if you

look at Sid's testimony, at Gottleib's testimony, before the Kennedy Health

Committee a couple of years after all this nonsense, in which he pointed out

that we were really trying to find out what the hell the Soviets might have

been up to when they used drugs. LSD was a completely new and untried

substance. We didn't know what the hell it was. All we knew was that the

Soviet were buying up a hell of a lot of it out of the Swiss drug houses,

pharmaceutical houses. We didn't know what the hell it was going to do. We

didn't know what the hell it was going to do to anybody. And we had to find

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out. Sid's example of American diplomats being disoriented when they were in

Moscow coming out and not knowing what the hell hit them. And I think that

what we were trying to do, or what they were trying to do rather, was to find

out what the hell it was all about. And what was this new weapon that was

going to be possibly used against us: a. How could we defend ourselves, and

b. how would we use it if it was a proper weapon. And yeah, I was surprised.

But I didn't take it the way a lot of guys took it. I remember during those

several months when I was in there in early '75 in the building trying to get

some answers for Colby, which he kind of didn't want, when some friends of

mine stopped me in the hall and started to berate the living hell out of me,

because since I worked in the DDP's office, therefore, I knew everything. But

obviously I didn't. They didn't know that. But anyway, and therefore, I was

part of this thing. And how could I and how dare you and all that kind of

stuff. And really a shouting match in the hall.

INTERVIEWER: And they figured you knew.

MR. HALPERN: Oh yeah. Well, that didn't bother me. But I knew I didn't

know. And they were also attacking Sid through me and they knew I was a good

friend of Sid's. And I was trying to defend the point as I did just a few

minutes ago with you. They wouldn't listen. And these were old friends. Go

way back. I mean, a part of my generation. It was just something that they

felt was beyond the pale. And maybe they are right, but I don't think so. I

was asked once without knowing it at the time, I was asked by Sid if I would

partake in a

drug experiment where I would be given something and I would not

know what I was given or when I was going to be given it. And I said, "Sid,

I've got other things to do with my time.. I've got to be responsible for the

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forces, the people who are down there. I can't be out of action. I don't

know what's going to happen. Maybe nothing will happen. But I can't take a

chance."

INTERVIEWER: And he was talking about you taking the drug at work then?

MR. HALPERN: He didn't say.

INTERVIEWER: Oh that's right.

MR. HALPERN: He didn't. All he said was, "If you are willing to take part in

the experiment, you will be given a drug. You won't know what it is and won't

know when you get it. I said, "Sid, I can't take a chance. I've got too many

important things here. Not that. the world is on my shoulder or anything like

that. But I've got a job to do and I can't take that chance."

INTERVIEWER: Was the Olson case new to you?

MR. HALPERN: Totally, absolutely totally.

INTERVIEWER: You knew nothing about that earlier?

MR. HALPERN: All I know is what I have read. It was quite clear. Olson had

agreed to do exactly what I had agreed not to do. He was a scientist for

God's sakes. He was a medical guy or something. At least he knew drugs and

he knew what the hell he was getting into. He let himself in. He was going

in as a guinea pig in an experiment. And sure, I'm sorry that something

happened to him but he knew what he was letting himself in for.

INTERVIEWER: But you had heard nothing about it until the case broke?

MR. HALPERN: No. This was one of those things that everybody assumed because

I was in the job I held for seven years that I knew everything in the

Clandestine Service. And it was the furthest thing from the truth. Quite

often, you can ask my wife about this, quite often I'd be held in the office

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long after, without even being able to do my own paperwork, because my door

was always open, everybody knew it. And people would come in at all hours,

particularly after hours, and they'd want to sit and talk. And I was told

more things about things. I should never have known about. Had no reason to

know. Didn't want to know. Had plenty on my mind. And I couldn't do

anything about it.

But they wanted to talk.. And in a way they were letting

off steam. And in a way they expected me to screen whatever their problem was

to give to the DDP. And little did they know that very little of what they

told me ever got to the DDP. He had plenty of things on his plate, too. But

in any case, it is the kind of a job where you have got to be available to

everybody. At least the way I ran it. And you learn a lot of stuff. Very

unofficially, you know. But it never went anywhere. And so my head was full

of a lot of stuff but not everything. And I remember once my boss came down

from the Hill - this was Fitzgerald. And this was that time that Colonel

Grogan who was the public affairs officer had written a letter in Helms' name

attacking Senator Fulbright. Remember that crazy thing?

INTERVIEWER: Yeah.

MR. HALPERN: Well anyway. Dick had signed it or Grogan had signed it or

something like that. All hell broke loose and Helms had to apologize and Des

came down from the morning staff meeting and he called in me and he called in

the secretary and he said, "I don't want to ever see a piece of paper that Sam

hasn't seen first." And I said, "That's crazy, Des." He said, "What's the

matter, can't you take the work?" And I said, "Yeah, you know better than

that.

But that's wrong." I said, "Your staff chiefs and your division chiefs.

have got to know that they've got a private line to you personally without my

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kibitzing. After you've seen a piece of paper if you want to give it to me to

staff out I'll do whatever you want me to do with it. Fine. But they've got

to be able to talk to you privately." And he looked at me and he said, "Yeah,

yeah." And he never said anything about it again. So, I didn't know

everything. But I didn't need to know everything. That's crazy. Oh sure,

while Des was there I ran operations for Des as his case officer and case

officer for him. He didn't tell his deputy, Tom Karamessines, who didn't know

anything about it. It was up to me after Des died to go in and brief Tom on a

bunch of activities that Tom may have known about but not officially and to

clue him in. And then he had to do the same thing in turn to Cord Meyer when

Cord became the deputy. So no, I didn't know everything that went on. And I

never claimed that I did. The only thing I couldn't do was that I couldn't

stop people from unloading on me. They had to have somebody to talk to so I

let them talk.

INTERVIEWER: Nice to have somebody. How about the assassination. Did that

business surprise you when it came out?

MR. HALPERN: No, because I was involved with one. Some of the others that I

hadn't known about, yeah sure, It wasn't in my area. So I wasn't involved and

I didn't know. The one I was involved in was the one, I guess the ‹I'm

forgetting the crypts for these), the one against Castro. One of the ones

against Castro. I did not know about the use of the Mafia by Bill Harvey.

INTERVIEWER: You didn't know about . :.

MR. HALPERN: No, Bill, you think I was tight lipped. He could run rings

around me.

INTERVIEWER: I can imagine.

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MR. HALPERN: He'll teach you lessons in how to keep your mouth shut. Oh

brother, that guy was great. No, but I wasn't the only one personally. I was

the one who testified on that to the Church Committee.

I was one of the guys

that testified about that to the Church Committee. AMLASH. And I know the

case officer involved, the doctor involved who prepared the hypodermic pen,

etc. So, you know, yeah, that didn't surprise me at all. And the fact that

there were other attempts on other people around the world, that didn't

surprise me what had happened. Because I knew enough about what the hell the

system was all about and I remember that one of the reasons I was even less

surprised is in those several months that I came back in early '75, I saw the

original papers about the ZR/RIFLE activity and the fact that one of the first

things that John Kennedy, John, not Robert, asked Dick Bissell for in January

'61 after he had gotten inaugurated, one of the first things was an

assassination capability. Nobody in particular in mind. Just an

assassination capability. "Create one please." And that's when Bissell got

ahold of Bill Harvey and ZR/RIFLE was created. I didn't know, I'd never heard

of it until after the thing hit in '75. But I had seen the original paper, so

by the time the Church Committee had announced it all, yeah, I was aware of it.

INTERVIEWER: And LASH. You got involved in that one?

MR: HALPERN: Oh yeah.

I remember that one. I didn't see, I didn't know

LASH. I don't speak Spanish. But I know the case officer, and I was the one

who took the case officer to see the doctor and there was another thing the

Committee, the Church Committtee guys, when I was talking to them, couldn't

understand a medical doctor getting involved in the preparation of a

hypodermic to kill somebody. And they wondered, was he a medical doctor?

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forget which one of the guys said that. But I said, "Yeah, he was an MD."

His job was to help us in operations from a medical point of view. He wasn't

a Ph.D, he was a medical doctor. "Oh really." You know, they just had signs

of and visions of Buchenwald and Auschwitz and God knows what else. But yeah,

I took the case officer

to see the doctor because I knew the doctor pretty

well. A lot of activity. A lot of

assassination activity. We needed medical

support of all kinds. You'd be surprised how much you need medical support in

operations. And it was the doctor who came up with idea of the Black

Leaf-40. I don't think the Church Committee should have published that. As

it was I don't know whether it's still available but it was a publicly

available poison that you could buy in any drug store. And to tell the whole

world how to use it to kill somebody I thought was crazy. Totally unnecessary

to get their point across. They did not have to reveal that. I thought that

was ill advised on their part. But yeah, I took the case officer there and

the doctor who spent, I think he was up all night making that damn acid, which

LASH didn't take anyway to begin with. He thought it was crazy. It may have

. been. But you know, the assassination didn't surprise me.

INTERVIEWER: Had there been any of that kind of talk before Kennedy, in other

words, the Eisenhower Administration?

MR. HALPERN: Oh yeah, sure. If you look at the Church Committee report

you'll see it's there.

INTERVIEWER: Last time we were talking about, just as we were winding up, we

were talking about assassinations and LASH, and so on, and wondering at that

time, that time being discussing. LASH, was there much of a sense of anxiety

about this kind of approach?

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• MR. HALPERN: Oh, if by anxiety you mean concern that the thing

might leak . . .

INTERVIEWER: Yeah.

MR. HALPERN: Yeah. There always was and this is why it was so

tightly held.. If you are thinking about using anxiety in terms

of morality, no. Because as far as we were concerned, I think

most of the guys on the Task Force, we were at a war with

Cuba. I mean, when you start sending in

people to shoot up

somebody else's country and blow up parts of somebody else's

country and they take losses, I mean human losses, and we take

human losses, that's war as far as I am concerned. I don't

care what you call it, call it police action, call it something

else,

but anyway, we were at war. And of course, some people

could even call it by

today's terminology, terrorism.

International tarrorism.

We weren't targeting market places,

though, and bus stations and things like that obviously. We

were going after industrial plants, power plants, sugar

plants. Things like that. But people did. get hurt on both

sides. So yes, there was that kind of an anxiety in terms of

keeping our hand out of the assassination plots as much as

possible. Having been involved in only one of them, I have no

idea, for example, if Bill Harvey was mucking around with

Rosselli of the Mafia. Bill knew how to keep a secret. And

even though I was his Exec, I had no idea and I know his deputy

had no idea at all. And as a matter of fact the deputy didn't

have any idea of the AMLASH operation.

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INTERVIEWER: Did not?

MR. HALPERN: Did not. There were four people that I knew of.

Oh, I think the deputy knew that the case officer involved was

meeting with AMLASH sure. But that was strictly as an

intelligence operation. And maybe as a political action

operation. But not assassination. There were four people who

knew about the assassination aspects. I think I mentioned to

you. The case officer, me, the doctor to whom I introduced the

case officer to prepare the pen, and my boss, Fitzgerald.

Those were the four. And I don't even think that Des told

Helms about the pen. That's a technical detail. How much else

he told him, I have no idea. I never asked him, he never

mentioned, so we went on ahead and did our business. But yeah,

there was anxiety in terms of trying to maintain a secure

operation, a sensitive operation, and that was it. I mean, we

were really trying to hang onto what the heck we were doing.

INTERVIEWER: How about when the Hearings occurred. Suppose

those Hearings, this is an iffy question -

MR. HALPERN: Go ahead.

INTERVIEWER: Had occurred back in '62 or '63.

MR. HALPERN: Well, it would be into '63 because that's when we

started.

INTERVIEWER: Okay, '63, '64. You think the quote outrage

unquote would have been different?

MR. HALPERN: It's hard to say. It would depend upon the

circumstances in which the Hearings were held. And what kind

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of a circus atmosphere there was. If it were a simple

executive session kind of look-see and the Senators or the

Representatives involved were not running for President -- some.

of them like Church did, and others -- depends on a whole

atmosphere. It's hard to say. I think, and if our own

President hadn't been assassinated, with or without attribution

to Cuba or Oswald or KGB or God knows what else. If it were

just simply an operation gone bad and Congress was looking into

it, I just doubt in the '60's, the early '60's I'm talking

about '60-'65, whether there would have been quite as much

brouhaha about the whole thing. People wouldn't have liked it

when you talk about assassination, obviously, but remember when

it took place in '75, ten years later, you've got to remember

there is a whole Watergate, ten years worth of Vietnam, and a

couple of years worth of Watergate involved. The Vietnam thing

worst of all changed the attitudes completely. Because we only

went in with Marines in '65. Sure we were in Vietnam long

before that; we've been there ever since '54, for God's sake,

but actually before that, from '45 on until the end of the

war. But I think it would have been a totally different

atmosphere. You know, conjecture.

INTERVIEWER: Sure, yeah.

MR. HALPERN: A "What if

..." kind of thing.

INTERVIEWER: But I think your point about the assassination of

Kennendy is . .

MR. HALPERN: Made a big difference.

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INTERVIEWER: Yes.

MR. HALPERN: And Vietnam made a big difference.

INTERVIEWER: Yes.

MR. HALPERN: After 10 years of that stuff, people were fed

up.

INTERVIEWER: Were you surprised in '75, '76 about the

Congressional reaction to this topic - the assassination?

MR. HALPERN: Oh yes, yes, yes. But only surprised in the

sense of its vehemence more than anything else. And not all of

the Senators and not all the Representatives involved had that

same attitude. There were some of them, like Barry Goldwater,

for example, for good or for bad, and others. You know, I

understand that this is what sometimes has to happen with

governments. And even when, well, take it up to today when you

have Metzenbaum, this great liberal that prides himself as

being a liberal of the liberal. And he says, "You know, it

might not be a bad idea to knock off Qadhaafi." Where the hell

is he coming from? You know. And who the hell is going to do

it if not something like CIA? But you talk to him about the

morality aspects of it, it's like Church being pro-covert

action and anti-covert action. So is Metzenbaum for

assassinations or isn't he for assassinations? If he is going.

to pick and choose then that isn't all right. I mean, this is

silly. But that kind of attitude has always bugged the hell

out of me.

INTERVIEWER: Me too.

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MR. HALPERN: I don't mind, like Hersh, you're against using

human spys? Fine, stay that way all the way through.

INTERVIEWER: Right, be consistent.

MR. HALPERN: Yeah, that's right. But don't go saying it's all

right to shoot somebody, but not shoot somebody else. Or

whatever, however the hell else you want to do. And I remember

we were arguing even at the time of '75 and '76 when we were

discussing, how do you think Admiral Yamamoto died during World

War II? We picked up, using COMINT, where the hell Yamamoto

was going to be. And we deliberately sent out P-38s at extreme

ranges of the P-38s with just enough gas maybe to come back on,

if they were lucky enough with no maneuverability really. They

had to know the exact spot to go get them. And the orders were

"Get Yamamoto." That's killing a guy. That's deliberate

murder. Sure, we were in the middle of a war where people get

killed all the time. Well, as far as we were concerned on

Cuba, we were at war. Castro was a target. I don't see no

difference, I don't see any difference between going after and

specifically killing the leader of a country, or killing some

poor Joe private at the end of the line and I don't even know

his name. And I'm shooting at him and he is shooting at me. I

mean, that's ridiculous.

I mean, what the hell, you are going

out there the kill somebody. I don't care what you call it.

INTERVIEWER: They keep looking for a declaration of war.

MR. HALPERN: Well, that went out with the Indians, a thousand

years ago. The Japanese didn't use it against the Russians in

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1905, they didn't use it against us in 1941. I mean, this is.

you know, archaic that's all. Life doesn't work that way. And

the Germans didn't do it against Poland in 1939 either:

And

the British and the French did it against Germany after that,

but that was silly. People are, you know... You asked

about, was I surprised? Yeah, I was surprised because I .

INTERVIEWER: You didn't expect that?

MR. HALPERN: I didn't expect that kind of hypocrisy. That's

all. On the part of so-called leaders of a country. And these

guys claimed to be leaders of a country. And that's being

sheer hypocrites.

INTERVIEWER: That theme continues on.

MR. HALPERN: As I say, Metzenbaum, what was it, 1985 when we

hit Lybia, or '86, whatever? And Metzenbaum suddenly, of all

people, to suddenly say, "It'd be a good idea to knock off

Qadhaafi. "

INTERVIEWER: Okay. How about employing journalists. Did that

topic ..

MR. HALPERN: Journalists to us are the same as any other human

being. They are a source. Or an access to the source. And if

the guy wants to work for you, why stop him? I think any

American citizen or non-American citizen, I don't care who he

is, if they want to help the United States Government, more

power to them. I don't care whether he wears a collar turned

around or whether it's a woman or a child or anybody. If you

start breaking up and defining certain groups of people that

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you don't touch, pretty soon you can fine-tune that to the

point where there isn't anybody in the world you are allowed to

go talk to, do any work. for you. And that is crazy. From

the

very beginning, we always had rules against using Peace Corps,

Ford Foundation, Red Cross, I don't know, a whole bunch of

humanitarian organizations. And that we understood. So we

didn't. You know, we followed orders. No problem with that.

Because certain activities were just off limits. But we never

sorted journalists. Journalists and clandestine operators are

in the same business. We're trying to get information. We

protect sources. That's the whole purpose. You know, that's

the first thing the journalist says -- protect the source.

That's what we do. Except we don't use the terms, you know,

talk on background and all that kind of stuff.

INTERVIEWER: What about the reaction to that? Did that

surprise you?

MR. HALPERN: No that didn't surprise me. I knew the hypocrisy

on that was going to be quite clear and always was. It's like

academics. I mean, that's crazy.

INTERVIEWER: That was the next one I was going to bring up.

Same thing.

MR. HALPERN: Same thing.

INTERVIEWER: Sure.

MR. HALPERN: I mean, an academic. We're not forcing people to

do these things. No point in forcing anybody. If you get an

agent that you are forcing to do something, I'd question the

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value of the information that he gives you. But if somebody

volunteers and wants to work for you, I don't care what he does

for a living. Except if you are keeping him we are staying

away from the humanitarian, eleemosynary organizations. Okay,

that's a ground rule. We'll live with it. And we stay away.

And we've had people from those kinds of organizations come and

offer help and we tell them, "Sorry, we can't do it. If you

want to go give the State Department whatever information you

pick up, go ahead. They will be glad to have it. But we can't

do it."

INTERVIEWER: Good.

MR. HALPERN: You know the thing that the whole '75, '76 circus

era, and I call it circus era, confirmed to me is that maybe I

am just being a cynic. It just confirmed to me the hypocrisy

of the political world. It's just unbelievable.

Unbelievable. They hold executive sessions -- they mean

executive session -- they're supposed to. And Frank Church

comes out after every single one of them for the cameras and

gives a brief summary of what took place. That's not, in my

opinion, that's not executive session. Executive session is,

you know, no comment. You walk away from the cameras. You

don't go near the cameras if it's executive session. If not,

what the hell, make it a public session. He's doing it

anyway.

INTERVIEWER: What about the Church Committee and its focus on

covert action? One view that was expressed is that there was a

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worldwide network of offices engaged largely in what -- this

again was a critic's view -- largely excessive, self-defeating

busy work.

MR. HALPERN: Oh, that's nonsense.

INTERVIEWER: Nonsense?

MR. HALPERN: Utter nonsense. Most people didn't go near

covert action in any sense of the word.

Not even political

action. Most people were trying to do a simple job of

intelligence collection basically. A few were trying to do

counterintelligence, but

it was a tougher job, much tougher

job. And these others who were involved in covert action in

terms of planting editorials or news stories or working with.

political parties in foreign countries and what have you. It

wasn't busy work.. None of this stuff was made up by anybody.

These are all approved activities up and down the line. Sure,

not all the nitty-gritty, the details of everything were

approved up on an upper level then what are you going to even

approve back here in Washington by a desk officer. The guy in

the field has got to have some leeway in what he does and how

he does it. You can't tell him where to meet

an agent and you

can't tell him how many drinks to have when he goes out to

dinner with him and things like that. Although some people

tried. And it pretty soon backfired. Particularly it

backfired if the guy who was on the desk before was trying to

tell somebody what to do or not to do when he got out in the

field. He found out soon enough on his first tour of duty that

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you 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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in. 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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want 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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mentioned 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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who 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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again, 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 i11 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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Breckinridge 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.

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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what 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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Community 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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my 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 I 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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slots, 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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through everything. He knows it all. And he knows all the

sixteen languages you need to have before you bring him in.

You don't have to waste time teaching him a language. You

can't suddenly throw him overseas and say, "Okay aboard

operations, collect me the intelligence on what the hell the

Saudi's are going to do about oil prices tomorrow." It won't

work. It just won't work. You've got to have a feel for what

the hell is going on. They've got people on the desk now, I'm

told, who've never been in the country that they are assigned

to. 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. MALPERN: Yeah. And take over contacts from somebody else

and be able to prove to the foreigner you are dealing with that

you are as good as the guy who recruited you. Things like

that. You see I make one of those points in that book review I

gave you on Turner's book. You can't do it overnight.. It won't

work. And it didn't work. So when you are talking about seven

years for an officer, that's a minimum -- seven years before he

is even ready to really do something and become a decent all

around officer, both Headquarters and field. You've got a long

way to go before you rebuild when you suddenly lose 200 people

at one pop. Or with Turner, 800 slots get wiped out like

that. 820 as a matter of fact.

INTERVIEWER: Was that the number that left?

MR. HALPERN: Yeah, you'll see why —- I've got to maké a note

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on that number.. I'm not going to give it to you now. You'll

read it. And when people up on the Hill or other people say,

you know, "What's so tough about going out and collecting

intelligence?" Try it. It just doesn't work the way it is

done in the movies.

INTERVIEWER: It takes a lot of experience.

MR. HALPERN: You need experience, you need to have somebody

you can talk to, somebody who has been around before.

INTERVIEWER: Judgment.

MR. HALPERN: Yeah. And initiative. Lots of initiative. And

that's where you get people who say, because of that

initiative, "Look at that idiot. He spent six months and

nothing has come out of it." Yeah, it's wasteful. You've got

to try. But I would rather have a guy go out on his own trying

things, than me having to sit at a desk or using a bull whip to

push him out, or dragging him out by the ears. He's got to

have enough initiative to go out and do it on his own. This is

what all these things that have happened. And are still

happening. And all the attacks on

the Intelligence Community

people and what have you. I don't care whether it is CIA or

FBI or what have you. It's all the same problem. You know,

the officer who has got to start saying, "you know, why should

I stick my neck out? You know, if I could just do it the

careful way I'll get my promotion. I'll move ahead slowly.

I'll push the paper." But collecting intelligence is not a

paper job. You've got to go out and talk to people. It's

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talking to human sources. It's working with humans. It's

different than sitting in the laboratory coming up with a black

box. And some of the black boxes, at least, we used to have to

have humans put the black boxes in the right places. Some of

the operations that we had where we were trying to drop them in

the right places from overhead -- as a matter of fact, to give

you some idea of the problem, one of the operations was called

JAVELIN. You know what a javelin

is?

INTERVIEWER: Yes, sure.

MR. HALPERN: And that's what we were trying to do at one point

for our operation with black boxes. To get the black box in

the precise point where the black box had to be. Technical

stuff is very good when it works. But it's got to be so damn

precise many of the times that it is almost impossible. It

works in the laboratory. Fine. Beautiful. And you can set up

experimental conditions and demonstration conditions. Easy

when 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 the

problem of training an officer and experience of an officer and

getting people back into the business and making your contacts

and 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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people. 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 in

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the 1920's. They don't mention it.

MR. HALPERN: It wasn't mentioned. It wasn't thought of. It's

impact on the Washington Naval Conference. We knew what the

hell the outside was going to do. And the fact that, for

example, we had some good operations in terms of -- and not all

intelligence is strictly politics or military. Economics is a

big one. We had some good, but I won't even tell you which one

it is, even though it's on a classified tape. But you can find

it later. We had a good penetration of a foreign government's

economic delegation through a conference of ours on trade. And

we had dead to rights, we had the text of their negotiating

positions, what they could say, how far they could go.

Everything. The whole "shmear." The State Department

Ambassador and the Deputy Chief of Mission from that particular

country, our Ambassador from DCM, refused to believe the

information we gave them. Literally, said, "That's

impossible. You couldn't possibly have gotten this. Somebody

is making it up for you. And you are paying them good money."

and all that kind of stuff. But we weren't paying him any

money. The guy didn't know and we weren't about to tell him.

This was one of those things where the agent, it was done

simply on friendship and loyality of the case officer which had

developed over a long period of time - family relations,

family friends. and all that kind of stuff. Anyhow, the State

Department said this is nonsense. The US Trade Representative

said this is nonsense. "If the Ambassador wouldn't believe it,

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why 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 Üs

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

backstages . . .

MR. 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

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of Mount Sinai. You know. And he said, "Most of these things

are done by people like you and me." He said, "I don't know

what you had for breakfast.

Whether you had a fight with your

wife.

Whether you had a cold and a headache that day." And a

lot of these decisions are done this way. And they are made at

the spur of the moment. They are human decisions by human

beings. And I remember very clearly, I was still wet behind

the ears, this is 1948 or '49, '49 I guess it was. I happened

to be the desk officer in Indonesia (Clandestine Services).

And we had very good operations. This was, on yes, the Dutch

police action, I guess, in '49. And we had a very good agent

in Indonesia who was able to follow and keep us very current,.

almost minute by minute, actually hour by hour the location of

where the Dutch were taking the Indonesian political leader

that they had captured in Jakarta. And where they were moving

him, from city to city to city to city or town to town to town

to town and where they finally put him. And I was going over

regularly because I didn't want to trust the telephone. And I

was going over from the old building around the well known

Reflecting Pool. I was grabbing the intelligence and it was in

raw form. We didn't even bother going through the Reports

Board in those days which had to clear everything go out, be

sure the commas and the semicolons were in the right places and

what have you. And I had some hot intelligence that i got

permission from my boss just take it over to my opposite--well,

he was more than my opposite number, he was the Chief of the

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South East Asia desk -- all the Southeast Asian countries --

William S.B. Lacey, W.S.B. Lacey.

Nice guy. Nice big

moustache.

INTERVIEWER: L-A-C-E-Y?

MR. HALPERN: L-A-C-E-Y I think. Yeah, Bill Lacey. And I was

all of 26 or 27 at that time. And I kept bringing this stuff

over to him. Piece by piece. As we got it. I was wearing a

path between us and the State Department and the Reflecting

Pool where we were. And I saw how US policy toward the Dutch

and hanging onto Indonesia, how that changed like that. Bill

Lacey said to me, he said, "The Dutch should have told me --

not the US -- should have told me that they were going to do

this and what they were going to do with the political

leaders. They should not have surprised me." Sure, Bill. I

said, "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 free

country. And we are not going to stop the Indonesians. We are

not going to help the Dutch anymore. They didn't tell me that

they 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 sit

around with a lot of people, a lot of staff. I'm sure he went

and got whatever he needed to do to get the thing approved and

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nobody knew the difference.

INTERVIEWER: Good point.

MR. HALPERN: So. You know. And the academics in this country

have never caught on. Maybe they are catching on slowly now.

INTERVIEWER: Slow.

MR. HALPERN: Yeah, very slow. That there is an impact on this

stuff. You got humans and humans and humans. And that's all

there is. And I think, for example, Roy Godson, started in

1978, at Georgetown on the National Strategy Information

Center. And he has a number of academics come. almost every

year 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 the

colleges and universities. But he is just barely scratching

the surface. And it has taken him 10 years.

INTERVIEWER: He ran the first one up at Bowdoin in '81. I was

up there.

MR. HALPERN: Okay. There is one. I was one of the guys -- he

asked me to come to tell them about the intelligence of '78

which I did. And unfortunately Angelo Codevilla got a hold of

him too and so changed Roy Godson's views, but at least we got

started on this thing. And I attended a lot of those seminars

that he started in '78 and '79 and so.

INTERVIEWER: Were they local?

MR. HALPERN: They were all here, but he brought in people from

all over and they had a good foundation.

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Godson 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, 1

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 Il 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

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intelligence 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

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aren't. And you can go back, like you did in your book, you

can go back, it's there in the record book. Go find it. It's

a hell of a job. It's a lot of work. A tremendous amount of

work. 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 the

Agency is part of the President's bag of tools, and my question

is: Do you see the Agency as also part of Congress' bag of

tools?

MR. HALPERN: No, it is the President's pretorian guard and

everything that means. It's an executive tool of the

government. Well, it's a tool of the executive branch of the

government. It is not a tool, in my opinion, of the

legislative branch of the government anymore than it is the

judiciary branch of government. You've got three branches in

this system. And I know a lot of my friends do not agree with

me. And a lot of my close chums have testified on the Hill

about, if the Congress should be in with the President on

directing: a. foreign policy, b. intelligence, c. the

military, etc., etc. I don't think you can work that way. Our

system can't operate that way. You've got to have an executive

on top who is answerable to the people and to the Congress for

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his actions. But you can't have 535 so-called elected

representatives plus 18,000 staffers second-guessing what the

President and his entire government bureaucracy is doing day by

day, hour by hour, minute by minute, second by second. It

won't work, it just can't work. The Executive has to take the

responsibility in my opinion. For what it does, the good, the

bad, and the indifferent. Not everything the Executive does is

right in my opinion. For example, I think that the mining of

the harbors in Nicaragua was the silliest goddamn thing those

guys ever did. And I was involved in operations similar to

that -- deliberately and directly. But you target. If you

want to go for ships target the bloody ships. We did. We made

some successes, we had a lot of failures. A lot of waste

motion. No question. And I remember some of my buddies who

had been retired were called back - a few of them had been in

Latin American affairs, and also covert action, paramilitary

affairs, and covert action affairs and political action, also

covert action - were called back for a session with the guys

running the Nicaraguan activities. And among the things they

were beating the bull about was, what about mining the

harbors. And without exception, I am told every single guy

they called back for consultation in this meeting -- 4, 5,

maybe a half dozen -- every single guy said, "Oh Christ, don't

go anywhere near that. That's silly." At the end of the

conference they were told the mining of the harbors had already

started. And as one of my friends said, "What the hell did you

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call 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 Gadhaffi, 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, un uh. That's

the President's responsibility. And whether it's covert action

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or whether it's collecting intelligence, that's his job. It

was up to Ike Eisenhower, for example, to tell them, "Okay, fly

the U-2. I know I'm going to see Khrushchev in Paris. Go fly

that U-2." And he did. Can you imagine trying to ask? Who do

you talk to in Congress? Which committee do you go to? In the

old days, at least, you had maybe a handful of guys in each

House who had some kind of control over the House or the

Senate. And you could work with them. Who do you go to

today? Look at what happened yesterday. Jim Wright couldn't

even get a bill through. And he had to muck around with the

clock -- literally change the clock of the calendar day on the

business of the tax bill. So one minute they have to announce

that the vote is, I think, 206 to 205 against, and Jim Wright

stops 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, and

the next thing you know there is another vote.

And the vote is

now 206 to 205 and the bill is passed.

INTERVIEWER: In favor.

MR. HALPERN:. You know. But who the hell do you go and talk to

in congress when you say, should the Agency be part of the

Congressional team? No, it can't be.

INTERVIEWER: Then how about this statement, this is a

statement someone made: "Since the mid-1970's, some say, the

CIA is poised nearly equidistant between the Executive and the

Legislative branches and Congress may actually have more

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influence today on CIA priorities and how much money is spent

rather than the Executive Branch."

MR. HALPERN: I've seen that statement. I know who made it and

I don't agree with it. It may be the truth. He may be

absolutely right in what the situation is today. I think

that's wrong. I realize CIA and every other member of the

Community has to go to Congress to get his money, his men, and

his material.. I understand that. And you've got to play

favorites and you've got to butter-up people and all that kind

of stuff. But as far as being in between the Congress and an

Executive in terms of running an intelligence organization,

it's dead wrong.' It belongs to the Executive. It's a part of

the Executive. And it is in every other country that I know

of. It's not the congress that runs the business. It's the

President that runs the business. You can't be in physically,

and literally, and actually they may be in between. He is

absolutely right. But that's a wrong system. And if that's

the way it is going to continue, you are not going to have an

intelligence organization.

INTERVIEWER: Really in trouble.

MR. HALPERN: I think so. Who is your boss? If Congress tells

you to do something and the President says don't do it, what do

you do?

INTERVIEWER: Your're equidistant like the old story of ancient

times that if you put a mule midway between two stacks of hay,

the mule would starve to death.

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MR. 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 Tistening 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

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President 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.

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INTERVIEWER: 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.

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

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House 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."

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INTERVIEWER: Do you feel the Congress is more involved in the

last 10 years?

MR. HALPERN: Oh, they've been pushing harder and harder and

harder and harder. Now again, let's change the system if you

don't like it. It's been a rough one starting out, you know,

200 years. They have been battling the same fight. Nothing

has changed. If you haven't seen it, you ought to take a look

at three volumes done by Professor Goldsmith called The Growth

of 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 it

starts out with this business of the Jay Treaty and goes right

on through. It doesn't cover every minute of the government's

history.

INTERVIEWER: The tensions between.

→..

MR. HALPERN: This book is dated 1974 so it stops with the

Huston Plan. But I don't see Congress, at least the way I

understand the system and the way it operates. Congress has a

chance to do more than they have been doing. I think it's

wrong for them to get into the act. They always have the power

of the purse.

That is very clear. And they can stop what they

don't want to see happen. They haven't got the guts most of

the time to do that. This is what happened, you know, in

Vietnam. Nobody declared war. You know, Vietnam conflict, I

suppose, is a fancy word for it, or the Korean police action or

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Or whatever you want to call it. Ask the poor guys who were on

the other end of the line who are dead. But whatever you call

it, Congress didn't have the balls to cut it off when they

wanted to cut it off. It took them until '75, '73 first, to do

it. Well, by jingo, you can't run governments this way. You

know, you've got the power of the purse, use it. If you want

to get into the act of being an executive, goddammit, stop

paying the President of the United States. Don't send him any

checks.

INTERVIEWER: I bring this

up in class.

MR. HALPERN: Sure. Close his bank account. Take away his

credit card.. Don't give him any money. Close down the White

House. Paint it black. You know, make up your mind what you

want to do. If you want to follow this system, there's going

to be tension between the two branches of government forever.

And the judiciary sits on the side, and look at the tension

that was there initially before you had the great decisions

about whether or not the Supreme Court is going to declare

something unconstitutional or not. Nobody was sure how that

was going to work. And that always hasn't worked smoothly

either.

Now we've come to accept it more and more and more and

more. And everybody has calmed down about it. In terms of the

role of the Supreme. Court, it wasn't written into the

Constitution.

It developed. Now as far as executive and

legislative, nobody has come up with a simple way of handling

that one.

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INTERVIEWER: Do think that more intelligence data and so on

has been going to Congress in the last decade? Is it your

impression?

MR. HALPERN: My impression is that it has. Just by reading

the newspapers you can tell that the stuff has been going up

there by, not by the bushel basket loads, it has been going up

by the truckload. And I wouldn't be surprised if their

computers are hooked up so the stuff goes instantaneously. So

I'm sure. First of all they are on distribution for the NID,

The National Intelligence Daily, as I am told, I mean, I read

in the paper. Even that shouldn't be available to me and the

press. Why the hell should I know about it? It doesn't do me

any good as a citizen to know that my Congressman can read the

National Intelligence Daily along with another 1,000 or 1,500

people in the Executive Branch. What the hell good is that

goịng to do? And I don't know how many people on the Hill have

access to it. And I shouldn't know. I hope they don't get the

PDB. At least in my day we used to use the PDB as a vehicle

for providing the President and a handful of other people, like

the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense, with

intelligence which didn't normally get into the normal

distribution channels. It was a very simple, convenient method

for doing that. And we did it specifically with President

Nixon. From the very first, well, he was inaugurated on the

20th. The 2lst there was a meeting in his office, and it was

agreed right then and there that we would put certain sensitive

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information in the PDB. only and he would be able to tell by a

certain phrase we used. And nobody else except those several

people in the room knew it. So that even the other people that

got copies of the PDB didn't know exactly what the hell that

phrase meant. And it was good hot intelligence from a good

source. You can't, you know. If they give that kind of stuff

to the Congressional people, including the committee,

specifically just the intelligence committees, I don't see

why. There is no reason for it. They are not involved with

the day to day running of the government as much as they'd like

to be. In which case leave the Senate and become President.

INTERVIEWER: Maybe more of them are trying to play a larger

role in making foreign policy.

MR. HALPERN: Yeah, okay. They've got a perfect right to give

their advice to the President of the United States. He,

theoretically, makes the policy, whoever he may be. His staff

doesn't, the Secretary of State isn't supposed to do it, and

nobody else is. According to the way I read the rule book the

President of the United States makes foreign policy.

INTERVIEWER: What about this statement, Sam, an officer said,

"Congressional investigations in 1975 especially were like

being pillaged by a foreign. power only we had been occupied by

the Congress with our files rifled, our officials humiliated,

and our agents exposed." •

MR. HALPERN: Right on. Absolutely correct.

INTERVIEWER: You feel that is an accurate appraisal?

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MR. HALPERN: It was exactly the same way as when the Soviets

got into the Tsarist's files and exposed all the secret

treaties and everything else. It's exactly the same thing. I

have no objection to their coming in and looking at the stuff.

I have great objection to their taking a bunch of stuff and

splattering it all over the television tube and the front pages

of all the newspapers. There is a big difference. I see no

reason why you can't clear the necessary people on the Hill to

do whatever is necessary in terms of the oversight. But that

doesn't mean they're coming into camp, but then damn it, handle

the information exactly the same way the rest of us have always

handled the information.

INTERVIEWER: How about the Church Committee Report?

MR. HALPERN: I thought that was awful. And if you read the

Congressional Record, and if you haven't you should take a look

at it, but the Congressional Record of the executive session --

it was first an executive session of the Senate -- to discuss

whether the committee Report should be released. And as one. of

the Senators, I forget who he was now, maybe I can dig it up.

said that

when you've got a hundred copies of your Report

(printed Report) already on each one of our desks, there is no

way that this Report is going to stay secret even if we vote to

keep it secret. And it was that kind of discussion that went

on all morning.. To show you what they finally did, they

finally released the Congressional Record right away, after

they made their vote. .

And they pointed out, this is silly, you

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can't stop this thing. It should have never been printed.

The point was made that this thing should never have been

printed until we had voted. And we should have read this thing

kind of in draft, in typescript form. Not even everybody

having a copy. I mean, some of the Senators had some sense.

If you've got this kind of decision to make, whether a

Congressional document is to be published, don't publish it. I

mean, don't print the damn thing first and then ask us. Ask us

first. And Church's view was, "As a committee chairman, I had

a right to do it." Well, under the rules of the Senate that's

true. You know, judgment. Well, obviously, this stuff came

out and it shouldn't have come out. I use a very simple:

example. There is no reason under God's green earth why they

had to talk about Black Leaf-40 being the chemical to be used

by AMLASH. Why couldn't they just say some commercially

available insecticide or pesticide, whatever it was? Why

specifically name that thing? I don't know how many people

even read the thing.. But, you know, some idiot could pick up

Black Leaf-40 and decide, "Hey, this is a good way to kill

somebody." It's got nothing to do with intelligence. And

that's why I think that it was irresponsible, and I think that

statement is an absolutely good statement and is absolutely

correct. And particularly as far as the Pike Committee is

concerned. That thing was a shambles. And those kids were

running around in their bare feet, not even their stocking

feet, in their bare feet having a ball. Throwing the stuff up

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in the air.

INTERVIEWER: How about a couple of the Senators, Church and

Mondale, have emphasized that accountability to the President

and to the Congress was needed. And they were referring to the

Agency.

MR. HALPERN: Yeah, I think you have to have accountability.

And we always thought we had accountability. We went and got

our money from Congress to do all the convert action that

everybody is objecting to now. They didn't object then. I

mean, those handful of guys didn't. I mean, the so-called Laos

Secret War. They provided every penny. We don't make our own

money. We don't print our own money. We might print somebody

else's counterfeit money but that is another story. But the

Congressional leadership knew. Again, under the ground rules

that the Congress laid down we always had oversight. Four

oversight committees. We reported to those four oversight

committees. If they didn't want to listen, if they didn't want

to ask questions and if they didn't want to know more, that's

their problem, not ours. We've got a war to fight, kind of.

But we keep on going. When they stop us, we stop. And yeah,

you've got to have Congressional Oversight. The system we've

got, fine. But oversight is oversight. Oversight does not

mean management. Not in my opinion anyway. Oversight does not

mean daily running of the office. And I am told that there are

guys on the Hill, and they've got badges just like the next

guy. They've got all the clearances. They've got badges and

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they go in. They run around. They have access to

everything. And I think that's crazy. That is micro

managing. And there is no reason for that. None at all. I

just don't believe in mucking up the system. If you want to

change systems, say so. All the way around. If you want to

run the government, get rid of the President and have it.

We

always didn't have a President running things. There was

something in the old days, the Continental Congress. They ran

everything. The President of the Continental Congress was in

effect the President. And you had Congressional Committees

that ran things. But even they operated in secret when it came

to intelligence. Look at the record. And they didn't tell

everybody everything in Congress. The Congressional people

knew in the Continental Congress that the small committees that

they created to handle the confidential and secret stuff were

their surrogates. And hell, I think

I mentioned to you the

other day, Huddleston finally, on a committee, the Senate

Intelligence Committee, turned to his Congressional colleagues

and said, "You have to accept us on your Committee

(Intelligence Committee) as your surrogates and you can't know

all the things that we know." Well, that's what we have been

saying all along. Not everybody can know everything. And you

can't have it that way, that's all. And I must say, the Senate

Committee, I think which is better even than the House

Committee in some things, does not allow its staffers equal

access to all papers, even now. They've learned. It's

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compartmented. This is the way it should be. Yeah, so talking

about Congressional Oversight, yes, if it's oversight.

Not

management.

INTERVIEWER: Bob Woodward in his last book, Veil says the

Church investigation plus the Carter Administration crushed the

spirit of the CIA.

MR. HALPERN: Well, not having been inside during the period,

it's hard to talk. In terms of being on the outside looking in

with some vague idea of what the hell it is like inside, I

would say yes. There is no question about that.

INTERVIEWER:

Did you see it, did you witness any crushing in

' 75?

MR. MALPERN: Well, I was on the outside.

INTERVIEWER: Yeah, that's right. You went back.

MR. HALPERN: This has to be impressions and gut feelings and

that kind of stuff in talking to people. Yeah, it was a bad

time, no question about that. Very bad. Including guys who

were retired like me who were under the gun for the kinds of

things we did. And also I have been talking to people inside

who felt that if it wasn't for guys like us, the new guys

inside wouldn't be under the gun now. And therefore they

turned their venom on us. And I was specifically attacked by a

couple of guys, I mean, verbally attacked, for some of the

things, in terms of, you know, if you guys hadn't done all

those nasty things, we wouldn't be under fire now.

INTERVIEWER: And these were Agency officers?

MR. MALPERN: Agency officers. Serving officers at the time.

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And that's quite clear. Read Harris Greene's book, Inference

of Guilt. And if you read that you get a feeling for what some

of the

insiders felt about us former insiders. I think his

last job was Deputy IG before he retired. He'd been around for

a long time. He's written a lot of books. All fiction so

far. All except for one, he hasn't published it yet. He is

trying to find a publisher. But this gave you, this Inference

of Guilt gives one a very good feeling, I think, of how the

insiders, serving officers, male and female, felt about us

old-timers who were now out. "And it was a very strong feeling

that, you know, if they hadn't done it we would be all right.

So there wasn't any great love lost between . . .

INTERVIEWER: That must have been a miserable time.

MR. HALPERN: Yeah, it was pretty rough. And I think for both

sides. And a lot of the officers, even the retired guys, as

well as the serving guys, who didn't know a lot of the

activities. And I didn't know of the activities either. Hell,

I didn't know about the MULTRA, the drug thing at all, even

where I sat. We used to have compartmentation in those days

because even

as the Exec to the DDP, there's lots of things I

didn't know about until I read about them in the Church

Committee and other places. I just had a better way of putting

them into context. But anyway, yeah, there were lots of things

that were going on that I didn't particularly like when I read

about them. I have a better feeling for why the people had to

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do what they were doing at the time. What they did and why

some of these things took place. Where that's not true of many

of my colleagues and friends who even in a kidding way would

say to me things like, "What the hell did you do that for,

Sam?" And I pointed out, "Number one, I didn't do it; number

two, I didn't even know it was going on; but number three,

yeah, I approve now and I know what happened." And I gave

them a defense for it. That didn't wash at all. So it's kind

of rough even among . . .

INTERVIEWER: Was this in the period '75, '76?

MR. HALPERN: '75, '76, '77.

INTERVIEWER: There is practically none of that feeling now?

MR. HALPERN: I don't know what it is now. I know Harris

Greene stayed on until the late '70's, I think, maybe even the

early '80"S:" And so Harris' book, Inference of Guilt, wasn't

even published then. Could you cut that off for a second...

Inference of Guilt came out in '82, so he probably stayed on

until at least '80, something like that.

INTERVIEWER: Okay. Good, I'll look at the book.

MR. HALPERN: It will give you some idea.

I wrote a brief

review of that somewhere, I think it appeared in Periscope or

something. But, you'll get, I think, a feeling for this

relationship of the serving officers versus the old hands.

INTERVIEWER: All right, the

Church Committee believed the

overall intelligence budget should be published. Was that

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viewed as a serious issue in the Agency? By those

...

MR. HALPERN: Who were then serving?

From what I gather it

was. And the Agency even under Turner objected to it. The

Carter Administration even objected to it. And even going back

into that period, Colby objected to it when he testified. All

the Directors have objected to it. You can't do it even with

an overall figure. The only budget figure that I know of that

is actually published every year is

the budget figure for the

Intelligence Community Staff. And that doesn't matter whether

they have a hundred people or a thousand people. What the

hell. That's simple enough because they don't get engaged in

any activities. You can't split the CIA budget up into this

much for ddI, this much for s&t and this much for so on and so

forth. The minute you start mucking around with that, you take

the next year and the year after that and the year after that,

people start asking. lots of questions. And foreign governments

try to figure out, why is it going up, why is it going down?

And pretty soon there is going to be demands for more and more

more and more breakout. And you can't have that kind of stuff

if you're going to run an intelligence organization. I

remember many years ago the British Parliament use to pass a

one penny, a one penny, budget for confidential matters.

Period. And the British penny, not our penny. But anyway, one

penny. That's the best way to do it. The country wants a

budget figure, we'll give them a budget figure.

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INTERVIEWER: That was their solution.

MR. HALPERN: Yeah, give them a one cent figure. I don't

care. Or a dollar figure. One dollar.

No more. But you

can't start putting out a bunch of figures like that.

INTERVIEWER: I don't know if we touched on it last time or not

- the murder and funeral of Richard Welch and it's impact on

the Congressional Committee's work. Some say this lessened the.

Committee pressure and won public opinion over to the side of

the Agency. Did you?

MR. HALPERN: Well, being on the outside and having been at

Dick's arrival at Andrews field that night when his plane came

in, I don't know whether it lessened pressure from Congress. I

think it did have an impact on public opinion, and I think that

can be checked by looking at the old tapes in the old news

broadcasts and looking at the headlines and the stories in the

responsible newspapers -- The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago

Tribune, The New York Times, The Washington Post, etc. -- and

ordinary papers across the country and Walter Cronkite's

broadcast and things like that. And I think you will find

overall, there was a pulling back from the constant drumbeat of

CIA being evil, CIA evil, CIA evil. I'm not sure if it had too

much of an impact on Congressional Hill. Particularly the

Church Committee and the Pike Committee.

Particularly the Pike

Committee more than the Church Committee. It had some, but 1

don't think it really stopped them.

They kept going.

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INTERVIEWER: All right, what about your impressions of Mr.

Colby's cooperation with the Church and Pike Committee.

MR. HALPERN: I knew you were going to ask that sooner or

later. I think Bill was wrong. Dead wrong.. Obviously he

thinks he was right. Two different approaches, two different

men looking at the same problem. I don't think Bill had to go

out of his way to, in effect, open up everything without by

your leave from the President. It was his way of doing it from

the very beginning from January even before the Church

Committee began, from January 15th with Stennis. He did it.

He carried on that way. Why he did, I don't know. I never

asked him. He probably feels if he hadn't, things would have

been worse rather than better. But I don't think so. Henry

Kissinger held the line on the Pike Committee getting access to

a lot of State Department stuff. He gave in some. But there

was a big fight about it. And I would have preferred to see a

big fight made by Colby on getting access to all the stuff on

the Agency rather than just give it away. First of all I would

rather have seen a President. take this to the Supreme Court.

The whole business. And maybe he would have lost.

Who

knows? Again, we are at a "What if ..." question. But I

think Colby was dead wrong to go as far as he went. Absolutely.

dead wrong. To this day there are a lot of people who think he

was wrong. A lot of peoplé defend him. And I have friends on

both sides. And everybody knows where I stand. And I still

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see Bill from time to time. We are still friends and all that

kind of stuff. We say hello, sit at the same table, and

everyting else. We just have a different view on how to run

the show, in other words.

INTERVIEWER: And it never did go to court, did it?

MR. HALPERN:. No. No President had the guts. Well, talking

about congress not having the guts to use the power of the

purse. The other side, the Presidents don't like to go to the

Supreme Court for this kind of stuff. Particularly after Nixon.

lost on the tapes. It's a tough one. They went to the Court

the Pentagon Papers and they lost that one. And they might

have lost the next one. I don't know. But that is the only

way you find out in this system. And we've got to find out.

Otherwise we are just going to keep on this ballet we were

involved in forever. And you know, I can ballet with the next

guy. But sooner or later you're going to have to . ..

INTERVIEWER: The ballet is still on?

MR. HALPERN: Oh sure, it's still on. But somewhere, somehow,

you're going to have to make a decision someday. And I'm

afraid we're going to make a decision only after some great

catastrophe. And that's not the way to do it, I don't think.

If we have to wait for a catastrophe every time we are going to

be really down the tubes.. I'll give you another simple one.

Lincoln suspened habeas corpus. The Constitution says you

can't do this. He did it. And he said, you know, "Sooner or

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later, if we lose the war, there won't be any country to worry

about anyway. And I'll take my chances with Congress

afterwards." He had the guts, the fortitude to be President

and make a decision. Nobody stopped him during the war. And

after the war it was approved. Don't give a damn and all that

kind of stuff, but anyway, it's the same thing here.

Somebody

has got to decide. You've got to go and find out, otherwise

you are going to have this ballet all the time. And I can't

see Judge Webster standing up better than Bill Colby on

something like this. Maybe I'm wrong. I hope I'm wrong.

First of all, I hope we never get to that again. But it's a

possibility. You've got to fight it. I'm glad to see, for

example, that the Administration and Judge Webster has come

forth and objected to the Glenn Bill on putting the GAO, in all

of its glory and majesty, right in the middle of CIA's

finances. I don't know where that bill is going to go but it

is somewhere in committee now. But at least initially the

Administration said, "No way." But we'll see what happens.

INTERVIEWER: As far as the cooperation by Colby at the time it

was going on, in other words, it was going to the committees,

you were surprised?

MR. HALPERN: I am never surprised at anything that Bill Colby

does. Never. I've been around Bill long enough and close

enough not to be surprised: I objected to it. I mean, I

couldn't go ahead and grab him by the scruff of the neck or

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anything. I was in no position to do that. But I was loud and

vociferous in my statements

to the people who were willing to

listen among my colleagues. Some of them said, "Bill had no

choice. He had to do that." And I kept saying, "Not that

way." He may have had to reluctantly and over a period of time

give up a piece of paper and another piece of paper and another

piece of paper. But you don't suddenly open the door to the

safe and say, "Go in, fellas, and enjoy yourselves." He took

stuff up there by the bushel barrel full. It was crazy.

INTERVIEWER: Now some of the records had been gathered for the

Rockefeller Commission and then were moved over to the Senate

Commission wholesale.

MR. HALPERN: That's true. That was by Presidential Order.

The President runs the show. It's perfectly okay. It's like I

said in early '75 when I was trying to collect stuff for Bill

Colby, the DCI, information in answer to all the charges that

were coming up in the press in those days. I didn't know what

he was going to do with them.. And I had the same qualms that

my buddies had, in terms of, if we give it to Bill, God knows

what the hell he will do with the stuff. My answer was simply,

"He's the boss. You've got to give it to him. And if you

don't, you might ruin your job. Okay the stuff, just give it

to the Rockefeller Commission." There was a Presidential

Commission reporting to the President. The documents belong to

the President. It's up to him if he wants to put them on a

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bulletin board out in front of the White House.

That's up to

him. That's his job. He's got the legal power to declassify

every piece of paper in the government. Fine, go ahead and do

it. You are the boss. I think you are crazy, but go ahead and

do it. And the same difference between the Congressional

Committee, Presidential Commission.

I'm sorry. Maybe I'm

simplistic in my approach to the legalisms involved or the

operation of an organization. Somebody has got to make rules

and regulations and procedures. And somebody has got to follow

them. Not everybody.can be all things to all men at all times.

INTERVIEWER: What about the suggestion by someone that Mr.

Colby was responsible for exposing the CIA to the public?

MR. HALPERN: Well, that's just the consequence of what he

did. That's all. It's easy. He did that, as I say,.. from

January 15th, '75, when for the first time the entire

organization of the Agency was laid out for public view.

INTERVIEWER: Do you think he was hopeful that the material he

was supplying would not be publicized, would not be given out

by the Committee?

MR. HALPERN: He was in an open session. He knew it.

INTERVIEWER: Well, that one.

MR. HALPERN: The Stennis Committee.

He knew exactly where he

was. Open session. And that's why it dawned on him as he

left, as he says in his.

book, "On the way back from the Hill it

dawned on me, that's probably on the ticker tapes now, on the

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wire services now. I better go stop by and tell somebody what

I have just done."

INTERVIEWER: Did you see any signs of that sort of attitude

earlier on with Bill?

MR. HALPERN: With Bill? No, not to that extent. Not in the

sense of kind of freewheeling. No, that never came through.

But I wouldn't have been surprised at whatever Bill did on that

kind of stuff. It always surprised the hell out of me.

mean, it never surprised the hell out of me, what he did. It

was strange in many cases, but he was a strange man. Probably

still is.

INTERVIEWER: Okay, how about relationships between Colby and

Angleton. Strained?

MR. HALPERN: Oh yeah.. Very strained. Very strained. I don't

know how far back it goes as far as the Italian business is

concerned, because Italy was one of Jim's early bailiwicks.

INTERVIEWER: I mentioned before lunch; Angleton-Colby

relations. Angleton-Helms relations?

MR. HALPERN: Very, very good.

INTERVIEWER: Very, very good?

MR. HALPERN: Always have been.

INTERVIEWER: Good working relationship between the two of

them.

MR. HALPERN:

Oh sure, they had their differences in views on

lots of subjects including the Nosenko case and a lot of

others, but by and large it was excellent.

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INTERVIEWER: Other than Mr. Colby, who was the most

influential person from the Agency in dealing with these

Committees?

MR. HALPERN: I have no personal knowledge of that so I am not

sure. I would guess that the three guys who were set up to be

the liaison.

Breckinridge, Bolton and Elder I presume were the

most influential. guys because they were in daily touch with the

staff as well as the Senators and Representatives. I forget

who was technically the boss. I think it was probably Scott.

The boss of the office on the paper. And Seymour was a

consultant or contractor or rehiree or whatever it was because

he had retired.

INTERVIEWER: Oh, he had? I didn't know that.

MR. HALPERN: Yeah, he had retired with me and 250 other guys

from the DDP on December the 31st, 1974.

INTERVIEWER: Oh, he had too.

MR. HALPERN: And then he got called back and rehired on

January the ist or January the 2nd, whatever it turned out. to

be, for this kind of stuff even before the Church Committee was

created. So I guess of all of those in terms of staff

officers, I guess those three were the guys who were more

intimately involved than anybody else. But I may be, you know,

dead wrong on that.

INTERVIEWER: And that was 200 plus that left at the end of

December?

MR. HALPERN: Yeah, regular retirement. I mean, the retirement

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computations as a result of the cost of living allowances that

were then growing along every six months or so made it so that

it was economically crazy not to retire. You were better off

to do what Seymour did, which was retire one day and come back

on contract the next day because it worked out that way much

better.

Better financially, that is. So a lot of guys just

took advantage of it long before the business of the Church

Committee came into existence. And you had to have your papers

in quite a while before the December 31st retirement date so

that they could do all the processing and everything, get the

approvals and processing and what have you because it wasn't

automatic. You had to go through the usual bureaucratic chain

of command to get approval to retire.

so most of these people

had been thinking about retirement for some time. It had

nothing to do with the Schlesinger cleaning up in '73, this was

a year later in '74. So a lot of guys were planning it and

just kept on looking at the financial statistics from the

retirement branch to see when the best time was to go. And so

it suddenly ended up with about 200 or 250 from the DDO alone.

And we all went out at the same time.

INTERVIEWER: You served Tom Karamessines until February of '73?

MR. HALPERN: That's right. And then Bill Colby after that.

INTERVIEWER: Then Colby after that?

MR. HALPERN: Until about May of '73.

INTERVIEWER: Until May of '73. And then what Sam?

MR. HALPERN: Then my next assignment was as the Senior

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Personnel Officer.. Mainly, my job was worrying about

assignments for senior personnel. That means the super grades,

GS-15s and above for the DDO. I prepared all the necessary

paperwork and make recommendations to the DDO as to next

assignments and what have you. I did that for, well, sorry,

correction. I first was given a job by Colby and Bill Nelson

who was then the DDO while Bill was in limbo waiting to get

sworn in. I mean, Colby was in limbo. My next assignment,

actually, was to do a study of DCS which Colby had just

incorporated into the DDO. It had been under the DDI for

years. And the DDO, that is, the Directorate suddenly had

another component, totally new component. They didn't know

what to do with it. For years they had been trying to get

their hands on it, we had béen, even under Tom K. And no

decision had been made. And Colby, one of the first things he

did was to just transfer. The same time he transferred TSD,

the technical people into the DDS&T, he transferred the DCS

into the DDO. And so I was asked to look into it and come up

with a paper saying, you know, what's this animal we now own?

What do we have here? And so I did it and I think it took me

two or three months to do a study. And I visited quite a

number of the field bases, field offices throughout the

country. Talked to a lot of people and talked to a lot of

people in Washington and wrote a paper. And then it was after

that that I was made the Senior Personnel Officer -- or officer

for senior officers - in the DDO. And one of the conditions

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that I had made in doing the study on DCS, that come what may

with my report, whether it was a good report or a lousy report,

I didn't want people to assume that once I made the report that

I would move in and take over DCS, you know. Being charged

with having doctored the report, I said, "I want it clearly

understood I am not going to be assigned to the DCs when this

is over." And everybody agreed. Scouts honor, cross my heart

and hope to die, all that kind of nonsense. Hand on the Bible

and what have you. And after I did my personnel job, which I

am not a personnel officer and I didn't like it but I did it

as long as I was told to do it. And so and behold, when I was

stirring around saying, you know, "This isn't my job. There

must be something else you guys have for me to do." And

behold, when Jim Murphy retired in '73 and Jack Horton was

moved up from Deputy Chief of DCS to Chief of DCS, I was

detailed as the Deputy to Jack Horton. And so in early '74,

late '73, early '74, I was made Deputy Chief of DCS and then

made another trip to the stations for other reasons, because I

was looking at them from two different points of view. And

that's what I was doing. And then when I retired, I retired as

Deputy Chief of DCS.

INTERVIEWER: Good, I didn't have that gap. As you look to the

past, how was counterintelligence affected by the Hearings?

MR. HALPERN: I think that were affected, I'm just guessing

again, because on was on the outside, but my guess is it was

probably affected even more drastically than the rest of the

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shop largely because of the MHCHAOS program, the mail opening.

program, and because of Jim Angleton being charged with being

the gray eminence and spook and God knows what else. I think

it was probably badly hurt. Much more so than the others.

INTERVIEWER: Badly damaged?

MR. HALPERN: Badly damaged. And particularly with Colby

saying that he never got anything out of counterintelligence.

Jim Angleton could never convince him about

counterintelligence, Bill just didn't understand it, that's

all.

INTERVIEWER: Okay. How about Mitch Rogovin? Any notions as

to how he influenced the . . .

MR. MALPERN: I have no idea. No personal knowledge whatever.

What I would be giving you is hearsay.

INTERVIENER: Okay, how about Director Schlesinger's relations

with Congress?

MR. HALPERN: Well, as far as I know Jim was only in the job

from February '73 to June '73. I have no idea what those

relations were. First of all, I was bouncing around mostly as

Colby's Exec and we had enough troubles worrying about what to

do with Jim. Colby knew pretty well because it was mostly

Colby's ideas that Jim was signing-off on as it affected the

DDo. I just don't know what his relationships were really. I

wasn't close enough to get near. I can give you a gut

feeling. But that's no help.

INTERVIEWER: And how about during that time, Colby's relation

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with Congress?

MR. HALPERN: I don't know. I don't think there were very

many. I think everything was handled through Jim. Because in

those days, officers below the rank of the Deputy Director and

Executive Director, very few officers as such ever had any

• direct relations with the Congress. Bill Broe as the IG, under

Schlesinger, was the first guy, first officer below that top

level who was directed to testify in Congress on the Chile

affair because Bill had been Chief of the WH Division when it

all took place. And so, Bill's contacts with Geneene of ITT,

for the substantive of issue, I believe Bill was the first guy

who ...

Schlesinger changed the ground rules right away.

And I think he was the first guy. Other Directors had taken

officers up there with them

to testify in executive session,

classified hearings and briefings. Dick Helms took. Ted

Shackley, for example, to testify about a number of things. I

think one of them was. the Laos war and another one on Vietnam

and so on. But aside from that kind of, the Director doing the

briefings with a staff officer to assist him,

in effect, I

think Bill Broe was the first, I believe he was the first,

officer to testify in his own right under oath, etc. And then

his testimony was declassified almost immediately and published.

INTERVIEWER: And the Director was present?

MR. HALPERN: I don't remember whether he was present or not.

INTERVIEWER: So this was a. . .

MR. HALPERN: It was a change.

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INTERVIEWER: Big departure?

MR. HALPERN: Vast change. I believe Bill in '73 was under

Schlesinger, the first guy. I'm almost certain of that.

INTERVIEWER: Do you happen to know who was Congressional

liaison at that time?

MR. HALPERN: It would have to be . . .

I don't know who the

heck -- I don't know offhand. I don't remember. John Warner

would know. Give John a buzz and ask him. Or the record would

show in the Agency who the heck was on what job. I'm trying to

think and I don't remember offhand. It may be in the public

hearings for that matter. I just don't know. I've got them in

there somewhere. But I think it would be easier for you just

to check. Because

that was a wide thing and it was an

unclassified officer.

INTERVIEWER: Okay how about, some suggest, I approached it a

little bit differently a little bit ago, that Mr. Colby's

cooperation saved the Agency from very serious harm.

MR. HALPERN: Run that by me again.

INTERVIEWER: Some suggest that Mr. Colby's cooperation saved

the Agency from very serious harm. Some going so far as to say

it might have been dismantled. Is that a common view?

MR. HALPERN: Well; I'll tell you, if it is it's a new one on

me. I know it's a view, but all I can say to those who hold

that view is, what the hell do they regard as damaging to the

Agency? If Bill didn't do the damage to the Agency, what the

hell did? I don't think the Congress would have dismantled the

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Agency under any circumstances. If, by dismantling, basically

you say get rid of the clandestine side, because I think even

the silliest guy on the Hill always said you've got to have

analysis, research and analysis. That's DDI. And I think they

are all pretty smart enough to say, "Well, we've got to have

those bloody things up in

the sky. And we've got to have

technical stuff." You know everybody is for technical stuff.

And the DDA simply provides the the money and the office space

and the paper clips. So the only thing that would be

dismantled would be to wipe out clandestine activities. And I

don't think anybody on the Hill seriously considered wiping it

out completely. Controlling it, reducing it, putting it under

some kind of further Congressional constraints, yeah, that was

going to happen. Moving it out of CIA and making it a brand

new agency by itself, yeah, there was talk about that kind of

thing. But where the hell would they put it? In the White

House? Well, that's possible. Look at the nice mess with got

with North and you can imagine that in spades. So those people

who hold the view that Colby's frankness, if that's the word to

use, or cooperation with the Congress, saved the Agency from

real damage, I don't know what the hell damage is then. Sorry

Ralph, you asked. :

INTERVIEWER: I asked, you bet.

MR. HALPERN: I think people like that have got rocks in their

head. I don't know what the hell

they are imagining.

INTERVIEWER: Tell me, on a scale from 1 to 15, with 15 tops,

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how would you rate Mr. Colby's work in the investigation?

MR. HALPERN: In the investigation?

INTERVIEWER: In the investigation -- Congressional, Pike,

Church.

MR. HALPERN: In relation to what? I am not trying to hold.

back. In relation to what? In relation to harm to the Agency,

harm to the community? Helping in Congress? Hurting the

President?

I'm not sure.

INTERVIEWER: In relation to the Agency, and if you will the

health of the Agency, the strength of the Agency.

MR. HALPERN: Oh, I'd give him no more than a 5. No more. My

Lord. I think he did a lot of damage. I think he aided and

abetted the kinds of anti-intelligence activities, and

anti-intelligence feelings on the Hill. And I forget whether

it was Kissinger or Rockefeller who made that, maybe it's a

apocryphal remark, to Colby about, you know, do you have to go

to Confession all the time? That's my attitude as far as Colby

is concerned.

INTERVIEWER: I'd like to read a statement and see what you

think of it. This is a statement that was made to Mr. Colby in

December of 1975. And I am quoting, "It has been my experience

and judgement that if you, Mr. Colby, are asked precisely the

right questions, you will give an honest answer. You do not

lead us into those areas which would help us know what the

right question was to ask. You do not make it easy for us to

ask the right question." This is a Congressman, Sam.

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MR. HALPERN: I know.

INTERVIEWER: "Anyone who thinks you have been running back and

forth to Capital Hill with briefcases bulging with secrets

which you are eager to bestow upon us hasn't sat on my side of

the desk."

MR. HALPERN: Do you want me to comment?

INTERVIEWER: Yes.

MR. HALPERN: I think the person who made that comment didn't

realize how much he was getting. He may have been ignorant of

what the intelligence business was all about, what the

profession was all about, what the Community was all about.

And he may have thought that Colby wasn't giving him the keys

to the guardhouse. But in fact I think he was. Again, I

wasn't there at the time so I am only guessing. But I think he

did give them keys. I think the Congressman who made that

comment thought that there should have been a hell of a lot

more. I think he was living in a dream world. He didn't

realize how much he was getting from Bill. As I said before, I

would have preferred if the Congressmen really had to dig and.

burrow and argue for every piece of paper.. That's a personal

view and I think that I would, if I had been there I would have

tried to see what we could do to keep it that way. I must say

I can image Seymour Bolton trying to convince Bill Colby about

not pushing things forward and not rushing things. And maybe

he succeeded in holding

back some stuff or at least delaying

production of some stuff. But I can imagine Colby totally

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overruling Seymour most of the time or some of the time.

don't know. But I can't imagine Bolton, knowing Seymour very

well indeed, that Seymour would want to go rushing foward with

this thing because if nothing else, Bolton was a political

animal.

He had the best political sense of many guys there.

INTERVIEWER: He did?

MR. HALPERN: Oh, he was terrific on this. He was basically a

political action officer and always was. And particularly in

Germany, he knew the German scene very well indeed. And the

German leaders very well indeed, some of whom were on his

payroll. But that is another story. Or had been on his

payroll, let me put it that way. Years ago. Anyway, I can see

Colby saying, "Oh I know better than that, Seymour. I know how

to handle those guys. Let me handle it my way. And I'11

handle it my way." But Seymour would be a good staff officer

and provide Colby with all the information that Colby should

have. And it would be up to Bill then to make the decision on

what to do. That Congressman, I think, thought there was much

more and thought that probably Bill was holding out on him. My

own gut feeling, and it is purely that, was that Bill did not

hold out. And he wasn't trying to hold anything back. I think

he really believed, probably to this day, that he did the right

thing by making things easier by showing a cooperative spirit,

by putting things forward, and I think the other apocryphal

statement I made, you know, about, do you have to go to

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confession everyday is the other side to that same question.

And the Congressman, I think, was just full of delusions.

That's about all I can say.

INTERVIEWER: How about your reflections on media coverage of

the Congressional investigations? Do you feel they were

objective?

MR. HALPERN: Well, obviously not. They were not objective.

They were all hype. Nothing but hype. If you looked at some

of the stories that appeared in the print media and the radio

and television media, the headline always had to have those

three nasty letters, CIA. I don't care what it was. They

always dug up a CIA headline. You take a look at the obituary

pages of The Post and New York Times and invariably if somebody

died -- God knows where and God knows how long they'd been

sick, with cancer or had an accident, got killed in a car crash

-- and if they happened to have been in CIA even as a logistics

officer or a finance clerk or a courier, and if they could dig

out the word CIA, that would be in the headline. "CIA Courier

Dead" or "CIA Officer Killed" or so and so. It was always the

CIA. It use to make me sick to my stomach to watch these

things on television. To this day I can't watch Tom Brokow

without remembering some of his absolute awful, asinine.

statements that he made as a great pontificator on all of this

stuff. Dan Rather was bad enough but he wasn't on top then.

It was Walter Cronkite. But Dan was always covering

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this thing. He was bad, but he wasn't quite that bad. I think

Brokaw was the worst.'

INTERVIEWER: Daniel schorr, was he . . .

MR. HALPERN: Schorr was a bad one all the way through. They

were always looking for that CIA headline. It could have

something to do with some other Agency but if it was

intelligence, CIA always got the hook. Let me give you a

perfect example of what I am talking about. You remember, I'm

sure, the famous picture of that so-called assassination gun?

The dart gun -

INTERVIEWER: Right.

MR. HALPERN: --that Church was holding up and Tower was

looking over the side and what have you. And first of all,

Bill Colby should never have brought that up on the Hill. He

i shouldn't have taken it up there. But it was labeled to this

day, and it's even in the John Ranelagh book, and I tried to

get him to correct it in the paperback but he couldn't because,

I think, because of the fact that there was a caption under a

photograph and to change a plate like that is very expensive

for a publisher. John tried to make some changes in the text,

not the caption under the photograph, but in

the text itself to

indicate what I was trying to tell them, that by dammit, it was

not the CIA gun. The gun happened to have been found in one of

the safes at CIA when these young kids were running around in

the safes in their bare feet. And in the testimony on the Hill

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before the Church Committee, it appears in the bloody same book

that the testimony of Colby's in, two days later, two or three

days later, Dr. Senseney of the Special Operations Division of

the Department of the Army at Fort Dietrich, Maryland, Dr.

Senseney testified. And in high dudgeon practically when he

said, "That's not a CIA gun. I'm the guy who developed the

gun. I developed it and not for CIA. I developed it for the

entire US Government and it had nothing to do with Operation

MONGOOSE or Cuba. It wasn't even developed then. I developed

it for the Special Forces in Vietnam in 1965. It's my gun. We

did it. It's an Army gun." But no, you'll never find it in

history today. It's always a CIA gun. It's going to be a CIA

gun until you and I are dead and long after. They can't

correct the history books. And it's all in the same bloody,

green covered set of hearings where Dr. Senseney says, "It's my

gun. "

INTERVIEWER: How does Senseney spell his name? You know?

MR. HALPERN: I'1l give it to you. Hold on.

INTERVIEWER: The machine is back on.

MR. HALPERN: I'm not making this up. This is Volume I of the

Church Committee Hearings and oddly enough the title of the

•Volume is "Unauthorized Storage of Toxic Agents." And that

subject has got nothing to do with the dart gun. Anyway, Bill

testified with that dart gun nonsense and he had with him at

the time Sayre Stevens and Mitch Rogovin on September the 16th,

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1975. On September the 18th, 1975, two days later, Dr. Charles

A. Senseney, spelled S-E-N-S-E-N-E-Y. He was Department of

Defense employee formerly in a Special Operations Division at

Fort Dietrich, Maryland. And if you'll wait a minute I'll give

you the actual page number of that. I've been trying to get

this damn thing. People won't listen to me and nobody will.

INTERVIEWER: Well I am and the machine is and we'll get it out

to the public.

MR. HALPERN: If you'll hang on one minute -- here it is. This

is what I wrote to John Ranelagh and I sent it to him in this

form. He took 80 percent of these 38 pages when he put out his

paperback. Anyway, I'm saying this, "Re the photo of Senator

Church holding a dart gun. The gun was not a CIA gun. It was

not developed in the early 60's. It was not developed as part

of Operation MONGOOSE. See Church Committee Hearings, Volume

I, Testimony of Charles A. Senseney, Department of Defense,

Special Operations Division, September 18, 1975, Pages 159 to

177. . . The gun was developed long after MONGOOSE which was

run from October 1961 to October 1962. It was developed in

1965 for Special Forces in Vietnam and was available for all

interested government agencies." Quote unquote. And there's

the text. But the media two days later never mentioned a word

about, "Two days ago we gave you a report

about that dart gun.

We called it a CIA gun. Oops, we made a mistake. It's not a

CIA dart gun." You think Colby as DCI even tried to put out a

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correction to the press, a notice saying, "Hey fellas, please

put even a little half-inch box in somewhere on page 55." CIA

didn't do a thing. And I hold Bill responsible for that and

I'm sorry to be so strong about it. But that is Bill's fault.

He brought that bloody gun up there.

He knew what they were

doing. He saw the headlines as well as you and me, and the

print media and the television media, the electronic media and

the radio. He never did anything at all to try to correct the

record. At the time it might, big might, big question mark,

might have had some impact on some of the media to say, "OOPS,

it wasn't a CIA gun, it was a Department of Defense gun."

Never. Never! I tried to do it in my own little way. I

didn't have a chance to even start. I've told everybody that I

could think of including Bill Colby the same story I am telling

you. I said, "I am not making it up. It's all in the same

green document. "

INTERVIEWER: Does he mention that in his book? I don't

remember that. Does he mention that in his book? Does Bill

Colby mention this? I don't think so.

MR. HALPERN: He never made any attempt to correct the record.

Sure the gun was there. I'm not denying that. But it wasn't a

CIA dart gun or the CIA assassination gun.

Nobody in the media

tried to correct the record. Church didn't, obviously.

Never.

But the guy who should have done something is Bill

Colby. And I hold Bill personally responsible for not doing

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anything about it.

INTERVIEWER: I'm glad to get it on the record.

MR. HALPERN: It's on the record. I've had it on the record so

many times with people. I've told this to Seymour Hersh. But

he didn't believe me until he did his own homework. He didn't

even believe in looking at my copy.

It wasn't here in this

house. I was out with him. I do my homework. And when I've

got, you know, I said, "I'm not saying this. Here, you read

it." He had to do his own homework and he finally told me at

another subsequent session, he said, "Yes, you were right,

Sam." I said, "I didn't make it up.". And I don't know

Senseney from a hole in the wall. You got me at the wrong

moment.

INTERVIEWER: I'm glad to get it.

MR. HALPERN: I'm getting hot under the collar.

INTERVIEWER: That's fine. That's fine.

MR. HALPERN: I don't mind, you know, taking blame for

something we did. And there is no blame in having a dart gun,

by dammit. I think Senseney was right to have perfected one.

The fact that we didn't use it and nobody else used it, that's

another one of those wasted things, wasted efforts maybe. But

if suddenly somebody needed -- well, we did use it, I'm

sorry. But not as

an assassination weapon.

We used it against

dogs.

INTERVIEWER: Right, guard dogs.

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MR. HALPERN: The guard dogs were put to sleep in at least one

operation.

INTERVIEWER: You know in Spy Catcher there is mention of a

dart gun. And I wondered when I read that whether the British

had worked on it and then we did? I wasn't sure.

MR. HALPERN: According to Senseney, he did this on his own..

He and his laboratory types. I don't know Senseney. It's all

in here. Read the written report.

INTERVIEWER: All right. I'm going to.

MR. HALPERN: You know, it's like this business I told you

about my being out in Boulder, Colorado at the World Affairs

Conference. Perfect example. It's okay for somebody to use

the Church Committee Reports to damn CIA, but I can't use the

same bloody report to defend CIA. So where the hell do you go?

INTERVIEWER: In one hell of a circle, that's for sure.

MR. HALPERN: That's for sure. Round and round and round.

Anyway, you caught me at a wrong moment.

INTERVIEWER: No, it's fine. Tell me, why do you think the

press was playing all CIA up and playing CIA. ..?

MR. HALPERN: I think part of the

same business of being

anti-establishment, anti-government. Remember, this is after

Vietnam, after Watergate. It all adds up. Attack, attack,

attack, attack, attack.

INTERVIEWER: Anti-secrecy?

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MR. HALPERN: Well, partly. Sure. Remember, the Freedom of

Information Act was just beginning

to be used. And it's part

of the whole business, it's against the establishment. And one

of the guys who was. on the Church Committee staff, one of the

staffers, Rick Inderfurth, I think is his name.

INTERVIEWER: Yeah.

MR. HALPERN: Okay, you know that name?

INTERVIEWER: Yes, I do.

MR. HALPERN: Well, after the Church Committee business, his

next job was in the media on television as a correspondent.

INTERVIEWER: Oh, I didn't know that.

MR. HALPERN: Guys were looking for other jobs. So, you know

looking out for their future. I don't object to that but I

hate for

them to have gotten ahead over the dead bodies of the

Intelligence Community. I mean, it's a little bit beyond the

pale as far as I'm concerned.

INTERVIEWER: Okay, how about the writings of seymour Hersh.

Significant factor?

MR. HALPERN: Yes. If nothing else The New York Times -- and

The New York Times still has an impact - and when you have two

big front page stories like that, it's going to make an

impact. And it did make an impact. And particularly when he

had the help, and he admits it, and Colby admits it, he had the

help of the DCI, Colby, who confirmed to him a lot of the stuff

he had about some of the activities in New York, some of which

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were wrong. And Colby didn't even know they were wrong. But

Colby went ahead. This is part of Colby's problem again -

giving away more than he has to give away. Why the hell he

talked to Hersh beats the hell out of me.

INTERVIEWER: Okay. How about certain newspapers. Were they

especially harsh in their treatment of CIA during the time?

MR. HALPERN: Yeah. I don't know of any that wasn't. There

may have been some around the country.

INTERVIEWER: Christain Science Monitor, maybe?

MR. HALPERN: Nope. Oh no, no, no, no. The Monitor was along

with everybody else. They were a part of the pack. And I've

got all the clippings. The Monitor was part of the pack.

INTERVIEWER: Wall Street Journal?

MR. HALPERN: That I don't know. I don't read the Wall Street

Journal religiously. I used to read The Monitor, The Post, and

The New York Times very religiously. I found that I: a.

couldn't afford them all, and b. my clippings were overflowing

the room anyway, and I just read The Monitor and The Washington.

Post and, of course, Time magazine.

INTERVIEWER: Washington Star? Was that. .

MR. HALPERN: The Washington Star was going but they were all

on the attack. Nobody wanted to be left out. Everyone, they

all wanted to be part of the show. And that's why you had the

television and the radio, all the different channels. I don't

care what, all the news broadcast. It was almost as if

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everybody said, "This is the time fellas and we are all going

to make headlines." And they were all looking for headlines no

matter what it was. Good, bad, or indifferent. They didn't

care about the facts. This was one of the reasons that AFIO

was created - we called it ARIO when we first began under Dave

Phillips -- to try to put some kind of moderation and some kind

of factual sense into some of these guys who had absolutely no

concept of what the hell they were doing, what they were

talking about. It was just like the Representatives and the

Senators who didn't have any idea except that they all thought

this was James Bond fun and games stuff. And there was no

leavening of any kind of criticism. And what we were trying to

do, at least in the AFIO side or the ARIO side, was to have a

place where the media could come and talk to us. And we

weren't going to give away any secrets. And we didn't. But to

put things in perspective, put things in context. Try to

explain to them what the hell that terminology was, what the

definitions were, what covert action

was. You know, nobody

Knew.

INTERVIEWER: AFIO or ARIO ran a questionnaire with its

membership. Do you know whatever happened to the questionnaire?

MR. HALPERN: The questionnaire was put out at the request of

one of the members who was doing some kind of a study -- a

Ph.D. or a Masters or something. He was doing a paper. And

this was a part of his paper. And I don't know what the

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results were... I never saw the finished product. But you can

check with the office and see if they have it.

INTERVIEWER: I saw some mention in one of the Congressional

documents, Dave Phillips in testimony, maybe for government

operations.

MR. HALPERN: Well, it may have been. But again, Dave wasn't

running the questionnaire. That was an individual member's

effort and using AFIO as a means of getting it out to the

membership in kind of one fell swoop.

He didn't have any way

of getting - I don't know what the membership was, maybe a

thousand or fifteen-hundred something like that -- he wouldn't

have any way of reaching that many people as a private

individual. So we sent out the questionnaire that he

prepared. And as a matter of fact I don't think I even

responded to it because I thought some of the questions were

silly. And I didn't see any point in answering silly

questions.

INTERVIEWER: You didn't save it?

MR. HALPERN: No, I didn't. I'm sorry:

INTERVIEWER: I'm just curious because from the testimony there

are some percentages.

MR. HALPERN: Dave may have. You might ask Dave. Dave may

have saved it. I don't know if the office itself saved it.

They weren't very history-minded in the office.

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INTERVIEWER: How about your impressions regarding support from

the White House during the Congressional investigations?

MR. HALPERN: Again, from the outside looking in

INTERVIEWER: Right.

MR. HALPERN: I don't think the White House was very

supportive, or at least as supportive as they might have been.

But I think I've always thought that they might have been more

supportive if Colby had been more honest with the White House

in the very beginning. And the beginning to me is January 15,

1975, before the Church Committee. And read Colby's book about

that. I mean, he himself says, you know, says he was out of

step, basically. And if I were sitting in the White House, why

would I suddenly think that this guy was going to work with

me. You know, he cut my feet off at the stumps, at the hips,

the first time around. And there is no way I can pull him back

now. I think the White House was concerned, I think Henry

Kissinger was concerned about the fact of the loss of emphasis

and the loss of capability in the Intelligence Community and

how to stem that particular problem. And if you remember, Ford

came out with his own plan of reorganizing the Community and

took a bit of the wind out of the sails of the Church

Committee, which I thought was a smart thing to do. It may

have been cosmetic and it may have been simply a deal. But by

that time he was dealing with Bush in '76, a different kind of

a guy. And well, an Executive Order came out under Ford in

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February of '76 and it's called the Bush paper. It wasn't. I

mean, Bush couldn't

possibly, even with his staff, have written

a new Executive Order in the couple of weeks that he was in the

office. It had to be the one that was prepared by Colby and

his staff or his staff officers. So that was basically the

order that came out in '76 with a Bill Colby related order, an

attempt to do something. But again, why should the White House

and all of it's parts gone out of its way to work with a guy

they weren't sure of? Now when Bush took over in '76 it's a

different story. But by that time the damage had been done.

It was '75 when the damage was done, not '76, because by '76

the Hearings had died down, the coverage had died down, and it

was only starting to come up again when they started to show

these green books. and the reports and the Hearings and by that

time it was the middle of '76. But it doesn't take long to

destroy an Intelligence.Community. You know, boom.

INTERVIEWER: Did you ever hear anything of the role of Mr.

Haig?

MR. HALPERN: Not much.

Not much. At least I don't remember.

I think by that time Al was out of town.

Wasn't he in Europe

at that time? By '76?

INTERVIEWER: By '76, he would have been.

MR. HALPERN: Yes, he would have been in Europe by that time.

So I don't remember hearing of Al very much.

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INTERVIEWER: That's right. He went off to Europe. How about

this: A number of observers believe the Congressional Hearings

in this year of investigation were a real watershed in CIA

history.

MR. HALPERN: Oh sure. Before the deluge and after the

deluge. No question. No question. We thought we had a

problem in '67. That's about nine years earlier, eight years

earlier when we had the Ramparts flap. And that was a

tremendous flap. And I think we discussed that last time and

I'm on tape on that. But that was the first big real problem

we had, big war issue. I mean, the Bay of Pigs was bad enough,

but that was limited, by comparison, to the Ramparts flap which

was worldwide in its significance; and covered a whole variety

of subjects, in terms of the different covers we had used and

in terms of the different things we had done. Even though it

was all covert action. But by '75 we weren't just talking

covert action. The Bay of Pigs was also covert action. It

just happened to be paramilitary activity of covert action, but

it was covert action. But by '75 you are getting into

intelligence, you are getting into counterintelligence, you're

getting the whole "shmear," let alone the CA stuff, the covert

action stuff. So '75 was the first time there was across the

board from A to Zed and back again. And it was the kitchen

sink, soup, apples, nuts, everything. And it wasn't just CIA,

it was the entire Community, which even hurt worse than that.

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It included things like NSA, which up until then had been

really sacrosanct.. And they blew stuff in NSA like, I wish I

knew the detail. But all you've got to do is read the stuff

and can have a feel for what the hell went wrong there. They

blew more than they should have.

INTERVIEWER: There was a comment by Bob Woodward in Veil that

Bill Colby in the Hearings, his real success was that he

protected NSA.

MR. HALPERN: Oh, I've got hearings in there about NSA and NSA.

being on the firing line, and I know the staff officer who

helped prepare most of the testimony by the Director of NSA at

the time, General something or other. I forget his name right

now. The guy who did most of the work had been a college

classmate of mine at the National War College, Jack Harding.

And it hurt very badly all the way around. And Colby couldn't

have possibly protected them.

INTERVIEWER: Woodward overstated it.

MR. MALPERN: And as a matter of fact, I think part of the

problem, again sitting on the outside, was that each of the

agencies in turn had to protect their own domain and their own

activities. And no DCI, I don't care who he was, could have

been able to coordinate and alter the extent of trying to come

up with a solid front. I think if he did there might have been

some law which said you are in collusion. So you can't, you

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know, you are not allowed to defend yourself together. I don't

know, I'm just guessing.

INTERVIEWER: Okay. How about the Congressional investigations

- affect Agency morale a lot or .

MR. HALPERN: Well, I can only assume again from the outside

that they had to. I know people talked to me about it from

people who were inside, talking to me on the outside, in terms

of what its done in terms of morale. I think as I said before,

the feelings of, if you guys who had been here before hadn't

done those nasty things, we wouldn't be under the gun. We are

back to square one on that.

INTERVIEWER: Sure. Okay. The issue of oversight. Do you

believe that oversight by two select committees is preferable

to the earlier oversight by six to eight committees?

MR. HALPERN: We never had six to eight as such. There

were

four committees of Congress which had oversight, two in the

House and two in the Senate. There was under the Hughes-Ryan

Amendment six to eight committees we reported to. I wasn't

involved anymore. But anyway, the Agency had to report on

covert action. It was a separate subject.

INTERVIEWER: Right, good distinction.

MR. HALPERN: So that there never were more than four oversight

committees as such. And now we are down to two. And I have

been on public record and in print favoring one committee. As

long as you are going to have committees, have one.. But people

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forget that even when you have only two now, we still have to

- remember the Agency still reports to Foreign Affairs, briefs

them on foreign affairs. The House Armed Services Committee

still gets special reporting. The Appropriations Committees in

both the House and the Senate are always involved with

everything. So you've got four committees right now anyway.

Minimum. In practical daily life. You've got to go to

Appropriations and nobody in Congress is ever going to keep

Appropriations out of anything. And on top of that, then there

is Government Operations. I could go on forever. So boiling

it down to even one joint committee, it'll help some, but it

won't solve the problem. But it is better than having two,

with two separate staffs.

INTERVIEWER: Okay how about, do you think it is practical for

the Congress to be informed of the covert activities of the

Agency?

MR. HALPERN: Yes, within limits, within reason. They are not,

as I said before, they are not part of the Executive and they

are not going to be - I hope they are not going to be - in

charge of or as part of making the decision whether you are

going to do something or not. And whether that is cover action

or whether that is sending the Marines in, you can't have them

sitting there telling you you can do it or you can't do it.

Not if you are going to be à President.

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INTERVIEWER: Okay, what about this one, sam, and you've really

been very, very patient. I really appreciate it. What are the

lessons that you think are to be learned from the Church and

Pike investigations? Either institutional lessons, that is the

Agency or...

MR. HALPERN: I think first of all you need one, I think if you

are going to have an oversight it should be one joint

committee, a small oversight committee, not very many numbers

either in staff or in Representatives and Senators. The

Director has to be honest with these guys. He has got to tell

them lots of things that he normally wouldn't tell them, I

think. And what he tells them has to be cleared with the

President before he tells them, except for the normal mundane

things like normal budget stuff and normal personnel figures.

No President should get involved in that. It's silly. But in

terms of specific activities, whether intelligence collection

or counterintelligence or covert action, don't dummy up with

Congress. On the other hand, you've got to build a rapport

where there are certain things they are not going to ask you

about - they shouldn't ask you about :-- such as identities of

agents; and that kind of thing. Such as the kind of liaison

arrangements you make with foreign governments. Yeah, they

might consider it as a treaty and, therefore, it comes under

the treaty making power. It's advise and consent powers of the

Senate. But I think they've got to bite the bullet themselves

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and realize that certain things are not for discussion even at

that level. I think a DCI has to glad-hand the people on the

Hill -- not all 100 of them

in the Senate or 435 in the House,

obviously. But the House and the Senate have got to have some

delegation of their responsibilities, their authority and what

have you to a handful of people And that can't change every

six months or every two years. There are going to be some guys

who are going to stay there for a while. And that's why the

arguments against the joint committee because the House of

Representatives has an election every two years. But a lot of

guys are in there for life, basically. They come from safe,

what the British would call safe boroughs, you know, safe

districts. It's only the rare thing that's going to change

it. So there has got to be some kind of give and take on

this. And they've got to grow into this real world, on the

Hill, that certain things you just don't ask about particularly

in the intelligence and the counterintelligence field. You

know, if a Congressman says, "Tell me who the Soviet spies, who

the Soviets have recruited on my staff." Uh uh. You don't

tell them that if you've got any good hard information, not

until you are absolutely certain and not until you've got some

kind of an operation running to control the damn thing and play

them back or whatever the situation is, because these guys, the

first thing they do is fire the guy. That's the last thing in

the world you want to do if you are running a

counterintelligence operation. So you've got to have give and

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take on this kind of stuff. You've got to play games with

these guys on the Hill. You've got to wine them and dine them

and breakfast them, or whatever the phrase is. I think the

DCI, whoever he is, has got to be able to work with a select

group of people on the Hill who have got to have the confidence

of the rest of their colleagues, whom they can trust and who

can understand, like Huddleston says, that not everybody in

Congress is going to know everything that these guys are going

to know. These guys in turn are going to have to understand

that they can't know everything either. There are some things

that you just don't talk about. And I'm not talking about

these big covert action operations and what have you. They'll

hear about those when it comes to passing the money for a

particular political action operation or a paramilitary.

operation. Those things take lots of dough. It's like in the

old days the Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty took lots of

money to run those radios. And Congress knew what the hell was

going on. And Congress knew that RFE and RL were advertising

in this country from the very beginning for American donations

by American citizens to fight Communism via the radio

airwaves. And I don't know if that was legal or not to this

day, but I guess nobody objected. And they didn't object in

the Church Committee to this thing. Except that now that it is

run by another part of the US Government, that makes it okay.

It's the same thing.

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INTERVIEWER: Same government.

MR. HALPERN: Same government. Same people involved. Same

appropriations and all that kind of stuff. I don't understand,

honestly, as a citizen, what the hell the big difference is.

So, but in terms of the future, there has got to be some kind

of better rapport than developed as a result of the Church and

Pike Committee which was strictly adversarial. And you can't

have that and run intelligence. I don't care whether it's NSA,

DIA, CIA, the FBI, the Secret Service, Drug Enforcement

Agency. Any of them.. And what is it, there are 11 or 12

components in the Community at the moment and all of them have,

you've got to understand, what in the hell the world is all

about. And you can't have all of this stuff going up on media

coverage. And you can't have it be used to help somebody's

election prospects.

INTERVIEWER: Both in the Executive and in the Congress:

MR. HALPERN: And the Congress. And the leaks, I am sorry to

say, most of the leaks come from the Executive side. I'm sure

of that. And I've been writing on that, too. And at least

from sitting on the outside, and I don't know whether I am

right or wrong, but my own gut feeling is that the leaks as

they appear in the press -- and I don't know for the last 10

years what, you know, what really is classified. I've got a

feeling for it, that's all. After 32 years in the business you

kind of understand some of this stuff. But most of the stuff

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is coming off of the Executive Branch. Somebody is trying to

get some kind of yea or nea. Or some pluses. And you can't

run it that way. I'm sorry. I'm not looking for an Official

Secrets Act, but something that has a better control over who

says what, how, where and when. So Church and Pike Committees,

if there is going to be any pluses out of those two circuses --

and they were nothing but circuses - it's got to be along

those lines. A greater confidence, greater working together,

and a better understanding between the two branches of

government that this is a serious life and death business,

particularly these days. And if you've got some decent

intelligence, I don't care whether it's technical or human -

intelligence is intelligence -- it might save us all in the

long run if we know in advance and then can use it in advance.

Lots of times Presidents have misused good intelligence. Or

wouldn't believe good intelligence. I gave you one example,

not a President, but senior officials at the State Department

refused to believe intelligence. And I can give you plenty of

examples within CIA, the DDI wouldn't believe human source

intelligence because it wasn't a picture and it wasn't SIGINT.

And chapter and verse, over and over again. And plenty of

times the human source reporting was wrong. I'm not saying

it's right every time. But there are lots of examples where it

was and it wasn't accepted. But there has got to be a better

acceptance that this is a profession, not just in CIA. I'm

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talking about the Community. Around the world there are

thousands of people involved and they are all not out to butter

their own sides on this thing. And they are trying to help.

And you've got to give them a chance. And you've got to work

with them and you've got to trust them. As I said many years

ago to somebody, I forget, and he put it in the newspaper and

he shouldn't have, but he did, I used the phrase something

about, "Someday somebody has got to trust somebody sometime" or

something like that. And that may come out of all these damn

hearings. Take a look at the Iran-Contra Hearings which really

just blew you away on the kinds of things that were going on.

And partly because the people involved in

1 the White House staff

had no concept of what the hell it was all about, what the

intelligence business was all about, what covert action was all

about. And when you had Senator, oh, who the hell was it,

Senator Nunn, I think it was Senator

Nunn, try to explain to

Admiral Poindexter what the principle of plausible deniability

was all about, so help me, Poindexter didn't have a

cotton-pickin' clue! I sat here watching this thing and got

sick. Watching it. He had no concept of what he was talking

about. Senator Nunn knew a hell of a lot more than he did.

And he was trying gently to lead him to the correct conclusion

of what the definition is. And these guys were from hunger.

Neither North nor Poindexter had ever had any experience in

intelligence work at all. And here they were running this

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country's separate intelligence network. And it was

unbelievable and frightening. Very frightening.

INTERVIEWER: You think also, in these lessons to be learned

that the relationships between the Agency and the press -- of

course, the Agency can only offer, I suppose offer -- and what

I am suggesting here is how one develops trust between the

Agency and the press.

MR. HALPERN: And the press?

INTERVIEWER: Yeah, and the same thing maybe with the public.

MR. HALPERN: It's hard. It's hard. I think it's easier for

something like AFIO to do that kind of creation of trust

because AFIO has got no ax to grind. It's true, we know less

and less about what's actually going on inside specific

operations. And that is as it should be. Even though a guy

might retire one day and come into AFIO the next day and start

talking to the press, he has got enough sense not to get

involved in specifics. And it took AFIO a long time to develop

a spirit of cooperation and integrity with the media that are

the, more or less, solid media, the honest media - not the

kooks - to accept an AFIO statement about something in terms

of, you know, good, bad, or indifferent. At first they

didn't. It took us several years to develop this rapport and I

give Dave Phillips a lot of credit for this - whereby you talk

to these guys and try to prove, you know, we've got no axes to

grind. We're not trying to hide anything. We've got nothing

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to hide. And try to help them understand why some of these

activities go on the way they do.

INTERVIEWER: And the same thing with the universities and

colleges?

MR. HALPERN: You try. You try wherever you can.

But that's a

tough job. Particularly if you get universities and colleges

that don't want to have anything to do with intelligence.

That's a dirty thing. And there a lot of them like that.

Well, you heard Bob Simmons at the AFIO convention talking

about the use of academics and intelligence work and all that

kind of stuff as if they are a separate breed of cat. Well,

they are not, not in my opinion anyway, even though they might

think they are. You know, dirty their linen and tar one

academic, and no academic can go abroad anymore because

everybody will assume that they are all intelligence agents.

Nonsense. Nonsense. If you are going to Russia or you're

going to Africa or wherever you go, if you start asking the

wrong questions even if you are an honest-to-goodness, nothing

more than a political scientist trying to do a research job in

the middle of Wagadodo, you ask the wrong question there,

you're going to get your head handed to you. You don't have to

be in any way even near

the United States Government. Or any

other government. Sure, the easiest way the Russians have it

is if they charge that everybody in the Peace Corps is a CIA

agent, which they did at one time. And a lot of people

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believed them. Or everybody in the Red Cross is a CIA agent or

everybody who is an academic from wherever is a CIA agent. And

pretty soon, you know, everybody is a CIA agent. One of the

problems I think Casey had with the Congressional Hill, and

again this is sitting from the outside, is he kind of gave them

the back of his hand, which automatically creates an

adversarial situation. I don't know how much time he spent

wining and dining them. I mean, having them out to breakfast.

I remember Directors like Allen Dulles or Dick Helms or McCone

and others used to have members of Congress up there on the

Agency top floor at the dining room where they had lunch, or

breakfast in the Director's dining room. And, you know, tried

to talk to them

man to man. And tell them a thing or two that

they'd want to know and ask them questions. And try to work

out some kind of dual relationship without having them become

co-equal managers. That's the big problem. I've got no

objection to telling a guy who is an elected Representative of

the United States, if he is one of a handful of people picked

by his colleagues to be privy to all the secrets they need to

know to help run the place, within limits, without

micro-managing the thing. Yeah, bring them into the thing.

Tell them a thing or two. Try to teach them what it is all

about and why it is important that they keep their bloody

mouths shut.

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INTERVIEWER: Do you think, again from the outside, in the last

10-12 years, in other words, since the investigation, do you

think the Agency has changed much, has learned much?

MR. HALPERN: Well, if Casey is the example, no. I don't know

what has happened since, but I would hope that somebody is

trying to work out some kind of better relationship.

INTERVIEWER: Do you think Turner?

MR. HALPERN: Oh, I don't think Turner had any real, maybe he

did, but I can't see it.

INTERVIEWER: It wasn't evident.

MR. HALPERN: I think Turner is such a blow-hard that I don't

see how in the hell he could have done it, really. I watched

and listened. I was up there several times when he was up

there testifying on a number of bills, on charter legislation

and things like that, which is a tough time to be around. I

think that AFIO, with all due modesty, AFIO people like Walter

Pforzheimer and Larry Houston and John Warner

and others who

had good connections on the Hill going back to the year one on

the subject and who were believed up on the Hill and accepted

on the Hill -- even some of the staffs couldn't dent that

particular characteristic. of these three guys - I think they

had a very good chance and they did influence some people

because they were listened to. They didn't have

to be accepted

all the way through, obviously, but at least when these guys

talked, people on the Hill, most of the staffers -

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particularly on the Senate side, not the House side, which was

a mess -- and the Senators themselves understood that these

were three men of integrity and honesty. And who were trying

to explain things to them. And who literally had no axes to

grind. They weren't going to get a promotion out of this.

INTERVIEWER: And they trusted them.

MR. HALPERN: And they trusted them. And they were honest.

And my own feeling is, you know, you don't lie to the

Congress. Literally, you don't tell them a bald-faced lie. I

would never have done what North did or what Abrams did. I

mean, it was absolute nonsense. It's not only heresy, it's

suicide. If you can't tell them, you say, "I can't tell you."

Pure and simple.

"I cannot tell you. And if you want to know,

please talk to my boss. Ask my boss that question." -Well, I

know the law says that I am supposed to tell you. I've got to

tell you. Well, okay sometime along the way you have to take a

chance and say, "I can't tell you. And if I go to jail, I go

to jail." But that is not easy to do, obviously. But you

don't deliberately lie to these people. That's all. And the

system is, if you've got to tell them and then they blow it,

well, okay, it's on their head and you've blown it. This is

one of the things about it is hard to be an intelligence

officer in terms of, these days, trying to be sure you can

convince the guy you are trying to recruit or the person you

are trying to recruit, male or female, that you can protect

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their identity. And I'm not so sure that's possible these

days. Maybe it is. I hope it is. I knew it was possible in

the old days. But I'm not so sure after what I read so much

these days whether it is or isn't.

INTERVIEWER: Which is again an important observation relative

to the last 10-12 years..

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