Ex-CIA Director Colby Defends Agency at Forum

William E. Colby, ex-director of the Central Intelligence Agency, defended the CIA's involvement in Chile and Vietnam last night before a crowd of over 300 at the Harvard Law School Forum and defined the current role of the CIA as intelligence-gathering rather than "spy and adventure."

Today, the gathering and interpreting of information "has become the key element in intelligence," he said.

Colby said technological advances and the threat of nuclear war have made the gathering of information more essential. He said directors of intelligence are now responsible for the management of technological systems including new photographic, radar and computer techniques.

CIA Under Control

Colby said although secrecy and spies are still a part of the intelligence system, "we have brought intelligence under American law."

He said that in 1973 improper acts by the CIA during the previous 28 years were reviewed and directives issued ending those practices and defining proper actions.

The CIA is now responsible for its actions to a special Senate oversight committee, he added.

The CIA's second role, in addition to gathering intelligence, was assisting friends of America abroad, Colby said. This role had diminished in the past two to three years, he said, now accounting for 5 per cent of the CIA's budget as opposed to 23 per cent in the early 1970s.

Demonstrators

Colby was greeted at Austin Hall by a group of about 25 protesters who denounced CIA activities during his tenure and the CIA in general.

Questions on the Phoenix program, directed by Colby beginning in 1968 to gain support of the Vietnamese population for the war effort, he said, and involving the distribution of guns to Vietnamese civilians, drew the strongest reaction from the audience.

As a result of the program 20,000 Viet Cong were killed, Colby said, 85 per cent of them in military operations.

Colby also said it was not the policy of the CIA to support the military coup which ousted Allende but rather to support center democratic groups.

The system of international relations is in a transitional period now, Colby said. "We have not yet developed an international order to replace the sovereign state system," he said.

By acquiring nuclear weapons some of the smaller countries can end the "monopoly of the great power" held by the United States and the Soviet Union, Colby said.

It is during this period that the U.S. must rely on knowledge of the world around it gained from intelligence operations, he said.

Ultimately, the CIA operations should work to "eliminate misunderstanding, suspicion and paranoia of different nations," Colby said.