“13-00000 SECRET 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 po”
“13-00000 SECRET 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 me”
“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. An”
“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.”
“13-00000 SECRET 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”
“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”
“13-00000 SECRET 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 diffe”
“13-00000 • SECRET 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 assassin”
“13-00000 SECRET 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'”
“13-00000 SECRET And as I 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 ser”
“13-00000 SECRET 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 ”
“13-00000 SECRET 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”
“13-00000 SECRET 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, Ri”
“13-00000 SECRET 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”
“13-00000 SECRET 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 ”
“13-00000 SECRET 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 somebod”
“13-00000 SECRET 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 m”
“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 ”
“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. 129”
“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”
“13-00000 SECRET 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 w”
“13-00000. SECRET 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 t”
“13-00000 SECRET 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 al”
“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 t”
“13-00000 SECRET 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 ”
“13-00000 SECRET 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 ”
“13-00000 SECRET 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 ha”
“13-00000• SECRET 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”
“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. Manag”
“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 g”
“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 an”
“13-00000 SECRET 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 ge”
“13-00000 SECRET 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 auditor”
“13-00000 SECRET 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.”
“13-00000 SECRET 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 w”
“13-00000 SECRET INTERVIEWER: Tenacious? ' MR. HALPERN: Oh, 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. Bisse”
“13-00000 SECRET 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 ob”
“13-00000 SECRET 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 k”
“13-00000 SECRET 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 dif”
“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, bec”
“13-00000 SECRET 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”
“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. 43 SECRET”
“13-00000 SECRET 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 ti”
“13-00000 SECRET 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 Ac”
“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’ qu”
“13-00000 SECRET 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 ”
“13-00000 SECRET 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, t”
“13-00000 SECRET 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 tim”
“13-00000 SECRET on that number. I'm not going to give it to you now. You'll read it. And when people up on the H111 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.”
“13-00000 . SECRET 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 g”