“13-00000 SECRET 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 se”
“13-00000 SECRET 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”
“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”
“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 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 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”
“13-00000 SECRET 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 lik”
“MR. HALPERN: There were several routing precedences, basically. And we got to cal1 them Op M simply because you didn't want to say Operational media all 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”
“1'3-00000 SECRET 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 ”
“13-00000 SECRET overruling Seymour most of the time or some of the time. I 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”
“13-00000 SECRET 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, ”
“13-00000 SECRET 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 ”
“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”
“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 ”
“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”
“13-00000 SECRET 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 o”
“13-00000 SECRET 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. ”
“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”
“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: 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 t”
“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 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”
“13-00000 SECRET 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”
“13-00000 SECRET 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 tal”
“13-00000 SECRET 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 listening to some of their speeches, or”
“13-00000 SECRET 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”
“13-00000 SECRET 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 ”
“13-00000 SECRET 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.”
“13-00000 SECRET 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 t”
“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 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 an”
“13-00000 SECRET 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”
“13-00000 SECRET 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 ”
“13-00000 SECRET INTERVIEWER: Yes. MR. HALPERN: 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 t”
“13-00000 SECRET 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 ter”
“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 ”
“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”
“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 ”
“13-00000 SECRET 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 prepare”
“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. HALPERN: Agency officers. Serving officers at the time. 149”
“13-00000 SECRET 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 MHCHAOS. INTERVIEWER: Yes. MR. HALPERN: But until then the consensus was, you know, w”
“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 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 ”
“13-00000 SECRET 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 immuni”
“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”
“13-00000 SECRET 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”
“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”
“13-00000 SECRET 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 th”
“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.. IN”
“13-00000 SECRET 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.”