Stansfield Turner Stansfield M . Turner ( born December 1 , 1923 ) is a retired United States Navy admiral and former Director of Central Intelligence and President of the Naval War College . He is currently a senior research scholar at the University of Maryland , College Park School of Public Policy . Career . Military . Following graduation from Highland Park High School , Turner attended Amherst College , entering it in 1941 , and graduated from the U . S . Naval Academy with the Class of 1947 and attained a commission in the United States Navy in June , 1946 ( during World War II classes were graduated in three years ) . He was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University while serving in the navy , earning a degree in Philosophy , Politics and Economics in 1950 . During his naval career he served as commanding officer of the Guided Missile Cruiser " USS Horne " ( DLG - 30 ) as well as commander in chief of NATO Southern Flank , headquartered in Naples . Central Intelligence Agency . Under Turner ' s direction , the CIA emphasized technical intelligence ( TECHINT ) and signal intelligence ( SIGINT ) more than Human intelligence ( HUMINT ) . In 1979 , Turner eliminated over 800 operational positions in what was called the Halloween Massacre . In a biography published in 2005 , Turner expressed regret for the dismissals stating , " In retrospect , I probably should not have effected the reductions of 820 positions at all , and certainly not the last 17 . ” Turner gave notable testimony to Congress revealing much of the extent of the MKULTRA program , which the CIA ran from the early 1950s to late 1960s . Reform and simplification of the intelligence community ' s multilayered secrecy system was one of Turner ' s significant initiatives , but produced no results by the time he left office . During Turner ' s term as head of the CIA , he became outraged when former agent Frank Snepp published a book called " Decent Interval " which exposed incompetence among senior U . S . government personnel during the fall of Saigon . Turner accused Snepp of breaking the secrecy agreement required of all CIA agents , and then later was forced to admit under cross - examination that he had never read the agreement signed by Snepp . Regardless , the CIA ultimately won its case against Snepp at the U . S . Supreme Court . The Court forced Snepp to turn over all his profits from " Decent Interval " and to seek preclearance of any future writings about intelligence work for the rest of his life . The ultimate irony was that the CIA would later rely on the " Snepp " legal precedent in forcing Turner to seek preclearance of his own memoirs , which were highly critical of President Ronald Reagan ' s policies . During his tenure as Director of Central Intelligence in the early 1980s when asked on an NPR interview program about ' domestic spying ' , he said , " Americans are not a source of much intelligence . " In the documentary " Secrets of the CIA " Turner commented on the MK ULTRA project , saying , " it came to my attention early in my tenure as director , and I felt it was a warning sign that if you ' re not alert , things can go wrong in this organization . " On March 12 , 1980 , President Jimmy Carter and Turner presented Antonio J . Mendez ( also known as Tony Mendez ) with the CIA ' s Intelligence Star for his role in the exfiltration of six U . S . State Department personnel from Iran on 28 January 1980 . Post - CIA activities . Upon leaving the agency , Turner became a lecturer , writer , and TV commentator , and served on the Board of Directors of several American corporations . Turner served as a member of the Graduate School of Oceanography at the University of Rhode Island ' s Marine Advisory Council . Turner has written several books , including " Secrecy and Democracy – The CIA in Transition " in 1985 , ' Terrorism and Democracy ' in 1991 , " Caging the Nuclear Genie – An American Challenge for Global Security " in 1997 ( a revised edition of which was published in 1999 ) , and 2005 ' s " Burn Before Reading : Presidents , CIA Directors , and Secret Intelligence " , in which he advocates fragmenting the CIA . Turner has been sharply critical of the Bush administration ' s handling of the 2003 Invasion of Iraq . In September 2003 he wrote that " most of the assumptions behind our invasion have been proven wrong : The intelligence did not support the imminence of a threat , the Iraqis have not broadly welcomed us as liberators , the idea that we could manage this action almost unilaterally is giving way to pleas for troops and money from other nations , the aversion to giving the U . N . a meaningful role is eroding daily , and the reluctance to get involved in nation building is being supplanted by just that . " In November 2005 , after Vice President Dick Cheney had lobbied against a provision to a defence Bill that Republican Senator John McCain had passed in the senate banning " cruel , inhuman or degrading treatment " of all U . S . detainees , Turner was quoted as saying " I am embarrassed that the USA has a vice president for torture . I think it is just reprehensible . He [ Dick Cheney ] advocates torture , what else is it ? I just don ' t understand how a man in that position can take such a stance . " Cheney countered the bill went well beyond banning torture and could be interpreted by courts to ban most forms of interrogation . Turner has served on the Military Advisors Committee for the Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities , whose mission is to reduce the amount of the discretionary budget going to the military by 15 % and reallocate that money to education , healthcare , renewable energies , job training , and humanitarian aid programs . Personal life . Turner currently resides in Great Falls , Virginia , and is a Christian Scientist