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Dead Constitution See other Dead Constitution Articles Title: General Hayden's Remarks at SHAFR Conference https://www.cia.gov/news-information/speeches-testimony/general-hayden-remarks-at-shafr-conference.html General Hayden's Remarks at SHAFR Conference Remarks of Central Intelligence Agency Director Gen. Michael V. Hayden at the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations Conference (as prepared for delivery) 21 June 2007 Thank you very much. As a lifelong student of history, I not only respect the work you do, I enjoy it. So I was especially pleased to accept the invitation to meet with this distinguished group. .......(blah,blah,blah) As a secret organization serving an open and free society, CIA has been granted an enormous public trust. That’s what secrecy is in a democracy. Not a grant of power, but a grant of trust. Each day, we have to earn that trust—as our democratic system demands—by acting as our fellow citizens expect us to: Skillfully, boldly, and always in keeping with the laws and values of our Republic. That’s our social contract. Here’s an informal yardstick I use: If I could tell my brother back in Pittsburgh or my sister in Steubenville what CIA has done and why, would it make sense to them? Would they accept it as reasonable? Of course, we cannot tell the American people everything we do to protect them without damaging our ability to protect them. When it comes to secret intelligence, public sovereignty and oversight reside in the Congress. But there is another window into our activities that’s available to the 300 million Americans we serve. It can be found in the documents we release and the work that you and your colleagues do to place that material in a fair and accurate context. That’s why declassification is so important to us. The Agency officers who do that work wrestle constantly with the twin imperatives of essential openness and essential secrecy. They carry a huge responsibility. Simply put, they must decide when a secret is no longer a secret. You can imagine the tension involved in making that determination. We must balance our responsibility to the public, and to history, to explain our actions and their impact, with our obligation to protect sources, methods, and ongoing intelligence relationships. These are not simple, cut-and-dried issues. They spark vigorous internal debates that ultimately require informed, yet subjective, judgments. We have those debates and make those judgments knowing that mistakes can jeopardize American security, and, in some cases, place lives at risk. An intelligence organization that fails to protect those who work with it—foreign intel services and individuals—will eventually see sources dry up and cooperation diminish. So, as you can see, this is an existential question for us. Despite these complexities, CIA recognizes the real benefits that flow from greater public understanding of our work and mission. That is not a boast: No other intelligence agency in the world rivals our record on declassification. From the millions of pages of OSS documents released in the 1980s, to extensive documentation of America’s early imagery satellites, the Cuban missile crisis, the U-2 program, and large collections of National Estimates on the Soviet Union, China, Vietnam and Yugoslavia, CIA declassification has contributed greatly to the historical record. Just last year we added to that record with the declassification of volumes on the famous Berlin Tunnel operation and CIA’s role in the rural pacification program in South Vietnam. These projects even have impact beyond our shores. The collection of China estimates, Tracking the Dragon, is on the shelves of a number of Chinese scholars, and the Yugoslavia collection is used in at least one graduate course in Serbia. Our FOIA program is also very successful. In each of the last nine years, CIA has reduced its backlog—even as we receive about 3,000 new requests annually. This record is unsurpassed in the federal government, and we are making a concerted effort to close old cases, most of which are very complex and involve large numbers of documents. In that context, we have completed our declassification review and are preparing to release most of the so-called “Family Jewels,” a very famous set of documents written over three decades ago, when Director Schlesinger asked employees to report activities they thought might be inconsistent with the Agency’s charter. Much of it has been in the press before, and most of it is unflattering, but it is CIA’s history. The documents provide a glimpse of a very different time and a very different Agency. When we release these declassified documents, we will put them on our public Web site, just as we have with many others, ensuring easy access. Under the program that reviews records 25 or more years old, CIA has reviewed and released 31 million pages of previously classified records. One third of those can be full-text searched at the National Archives’ College Park facility using CREST, our records search tool. ....(blah,blah,blah) The experts who put this collection together point out that many of the papers rely heavily on clandestine collection and other sensitive intelligence methods, information not usually available to researchers outside the Intelligence Community. The judgments in the papers are supported by a great deal of information from diverse sources. Finally, we believe the documents will be of interest to academics, and ultimately, to the public, because they reflect the views of seasoned analysts who followed closely their special areas of research and whose views were shaped in the often-heated internal debates of the Cold War. Before too long, the collection will be available on the CIA web site—in our FOIA Electronic Reading Room. But for now, this conference is the only place you can get it. So take a copy with you, and after you’ve had a chance to look at it, let us know what you think. I mentioned earlier that CIA recognizes the very real benefits that flow from greater public understanding of our work. I want to expand on that, because it really is crucial to our success as an organization. Greater openness does several things for us. First, it helps the public, Congress, and the executive branch appreciate the courage and integrity of CIA officers. I’ve known the Agency over the years through my other assignments, but the last year has taught me a lot about the men and women who serve there. They are among the most dedicated, talented people I have ever had the good fortune of working with. Also, releasing records that no longer need to be protected helps people understand the limits of our craft. Americans realize the vital importance of intelligence, especially since 9/11. That’s a good thing. But it’s equally important for people to understand the inherent uncertainties of intelligence work. CIA officers deal in unknowns and unpredictables. The problems we face are complex and, more often than not, influenced by human behavior, which itself is complex and difficult to predict. We endeavor to reveal what others want to keep hidden, which adds another layer of difficulty to our mission. So even when we are at the top of our game, it’s very, very rare that we can give certitude to policymakers. Openness, particularly declassification of historical records, also exposes the public to one of the challenges CIA faces every day. Our Agency, and particularly our analysts, are at the nexus between the world as it is, and the world as we wish it to be. Our job is to understand and explain the world as it is. The policymaker, though, has to make decisions or take action. We are expected to inform those decisions and actions by providing warning and signaling opportunity. That ties us closely to policymakers. They demand that we be relevant, and our craft demands that we be objective. Sitting in that nexus between reality and aspiration is never easy, and I think historical studies of foreign policy and the role of intelligence in shaping it, makes that point clear. A final reason why declassification, when possible, is in CIA’s interest: We want our history and our role in key decisions to be written accurately and fairly. ....(blah,blah,blah) Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
#1. To: robin (#0)
The above is the only part that makes sense as the truth! ....(blah,blah,blah) indeed! WE WANT OUR SECRETS KNOWN...... to you morons!
The Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.
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