Remarks to Top Personnel at the Central Intelligence Agency.

Mr. Director, and ladies and gentlemen:

As I stand before you today, this is the first visit I have made to one of the departments that is not represented officially in the Cabinet.

But I must say that after the very warm welcome I received outside and the opportunity, too, to see this really beautiful facility, I am very glad that I came. I want to use the opportunity to express just a few thoughts about this organization, about its Director, and about the people who work in it.

It has been truly said that the CIA is a professional organization. That is one of the reasons that when the new administration came in and many changes were made, as they should be made in our American political system after an election, and a change of parties, as far as the executive branch is concerned, I did not make a change.

I surveyed the field. I checked the qualifications of all of the men, or, for that matter, any women who might possibly be Director of the CIA. That could happen.

I saw the number of women outside of this organization. You have plenty of competition.

But I concluded that Dick Helms was the best man in the country to be Director of the CIA and that is why we have him here.

Now, I am sure that all of you must get a little tired of the jokes about the CIA being an undercover organization, its building being difficult to find, and all that. But I simply can't resist making an allusion to stories that I checked with the Director as we rode in from the helicopter and which I understand have some degree of truth to them.

The first time President Eisenhower came out here to lay the cornerstone, he couldn't find the CIA or the building. So he ordered that a sign be put up, "The Central Intelligence Agency."

Then when President Kennedy came out in 1961 he saw the sign and he ordered it taken down, because, after all, if it is the CIA, the intelligence agency, it should not be so well advertised.

So that leaves me with somewhat of a dilemma to choose.

I usually have said as I have gone to the Department of State, the Department of Defense, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Agriculture, and all the others of the 12, "It is a pleasure to be here."

But the CIA is not supposed to be here. So I suppose that what I am supposed to say now is, it is a pleasure not to be here.

In any event, in speaking of you and your mission, I have perhaps more familiarity with it than some of you might realize. Going back during the 8 years I was Vice President, I sat on the National Security Council and there learned to respect the organization, its Director, and its reports that were made to the Council, and through the Council to the President of the United States.

I know how vitally important the work of this organization is. I also know that this organization has a mission that, by necessity, runs counter to some of the very deeply held traditions in this country and feelings, high idealistic feelings, about what a free society ought to be.

Americans don't like war, of course. Americans also do not like secrecy. They don't like cold war and consequently, whenever it is necessary in the conduct of our foreign policy, whether in a cold war or whether, as is the situation now, in a hot war, or whether in international tensions, call it a cold war or simply a period of confrontation or even of negotiation, whatever you want to call it, that whenever it becomes necessary to obtain intelligence information by an intelligence organization, many Americans are deeply concerned about this. And they express their concerns. They express them quite violently sometimes, quite directly, as you all know from the experience that this organization has had over the years.

This is a dilemma. It is one that I wish did not exist. But in the society in which we live, as I am sure you, all of you, are so completely aware, it is necessary that those who make decisions at the highest level have the very best possible intelligence with regard to what the facts really are, so that the margin of error will be, to that extent, reduced.

And in a sense, then, I look upon this organization as not one that is necessary for the conduct of conflict or war, or call it what you may, but in the final analysis is one of the great instruments of our Government for the preservation of peace, for the avoidance of war, and for the development of a society in which this kind of activity would not be as necessary, if necessary at all.

It is that that I think the American people need to understand--that this is a necessary adjunct to the conduct of the Presidency. And I am keenly aware of that. I am keenly aware of the fact that many of you at times must have had doubts, perhaps you have not, but perhaps there may have been times when you have had doubts about your mission, the popularity of what you do in the country, and I want to reassure you on that score.

Let me put it another way: This morning I had the greatest honor which has come to me since assuming the Presidency. That honor was to present three Congressional Medals of Honor to three young men who had served in Vietnam.

They had, of course, rendered service far beyond the call of duty. As the citations were read, I realized how fortunate this country was to have produced young men of the idealism--idealism which we saw in their actions in Vietnam.

I realize that in this organization the great majority of you are not in the kind of covert activities which involve great danger, but I also know that some of your colleagues have been involved in such activities and are involved in such activities.

I know, too, that there will be no Purple Hearts, there will be no medals, there will be no recognition of those who have served far beyond the call of duty because by definition where the CIA is concerned your successes must never be publicized and your failures will always be publicized.

So that makes your mission a particularly difficult one. It makes it difficult from the standpoint of those who must render service beyond the call of duty. And I recognize that and I am deeply grateful for those who are willing to make that kind of sacrifice.

In another sense, too, I want to pay proper recognition to great numbers of people that I see in this room and that I saw outside who do not get down to the Cabinet Room to brief me, as does Mr. Helms and his colleagues, who are not in the positions where even private recognition comes too often, but whose work is so absolutely essential to the quality of those little morning briefing papers that I get every morning and read so carefully and that are so important because the decisions I make will be based subconsciously sometimes, other times consciously, on the accuracy of those reports and their findings from around the world.

I think sometimes that all of us know that one of the ironies of life is that it takes more heroism to render outstanding service in positions that are not heroic in character than it does the other way around. What I mean to say is that in an organization like this, gathering facts and information and intelligence, there are literally hundreds and thousands of positions here and around the world that must at times be very boring and certainly frustrating and sometimes without recognition.

I do want you to know that I appreciate that work. I know how essential it is and I would ask that you as the leaders, you who necessarily and very properly do get more recognition than those down the ranks, that you would convey to them my appreciation for their heroism, heroism in the sense that they have done an outstanding job and are doing an outstanding job to make it possible that the Director is able to do a better job than he otherwise could do in briefing the President of the United States and his colleagues in the National Security Council.

So finally, I would simply say that I understand that when President Truman in 1967 sent a message to the CIA, he put an inscription on it which, as I recall, went something like this: To the CIA, an organization which is an absolute necessity to any President of the United States. From one who knows.

I know. And I appreciate what you do. Thank you.