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DO,CID: 4245881 FOR OFFICli\L USE ONLY

Oral History Interview NSA OH-15-88 with

LGEN Marshall S. CARTER 3 October 1988

Colorado Springs, Colorado by

Robert D. Farley

INTRO:

Today is 3 October 1988. Our interviewee, Lieutenant

General Marshall S. Carter, United States Army, Retired.

General Carter, a former Director of the National Security

Agency from 1965 to 1969, joined the Agency after

serving as Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence

Agency. His 42 year military career included special

assignments to high level positions in the diplomatic and

intelligence services. He spent three tour-$ as special .~. ?r~ .

assistant for the Director of the Executive Offfe under

-~en General Marshall in the late 1940s, when

era I

Marshall was in China, was Secretary of State and was

Secretary of Defense. As DIRNSA, General Carter, among

his many achievements, General Carter established the

National Cryptologic School and the Cryptologic Career

Professionalization program. General Carter discusses his

military career in these tapes with special emphasis on his

?OK Oli"it'ICI..4.b U~~ ONLY

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time as DIRNSA. This interview is taking place in General Carter's mountain retreat in the Pike National Forest area, Colorado Springs, Colorado. Interviewer is Bob Farley. General Carter desires that the classification of these eight tapes be FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY, and this is NSA Oral History Number 15-88. Stafford or somebody. Is Maggie still around? As far as I know she is. She's not working at the Agency anymore. No. She's retired. But I thought you might like to read that. Yeah. Well you brought this to me to read then. Yes, at your leisure, Sir. Do you want it back when you leave? No, no, no. Throw it away. Okay. I guess we're plugged in and the needles look good and everything's fine. Do you want it played back to see how it sounds or don't you need to. No, I don't need it, Sir. You have faith in the instrument. Yes, Sir. It's a good instrument. Are the wheels going around? That's the way I check it. The lights are blinking. (chuckles) General Carter, you don't know how long it's been that we've tried to get you

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on tape. I think I wrote you two or three letters through Vince Wilson and I don't know whether he ever mailed them or not. You probably never even received them. So I'm delighted that things worked out. lncidently, the little

girl who changed the format of the Newsletter has been

fired. Oh, really? Not fired literally, but transferred to another element in the Agency. J...._ _ _ _ _....11 think her name was. i========lyes. So don't be surprised if they go back to the old format. I owe her a letter, because I got excited, maybe she told you. Yes. I got excited because I missed the seal there and I wrote her a letter. I got a very nice letter from her. Oh, did you. She's a nice young lady. I'll show it to you when I get some time. But she mentioned in the last sentence, she said that you had been trying to or would possibly get in touch with me, and this is the first I have heard that NSA had any interest

whatsoever in my experiences at NSA.

Is that right? I have told them to other people, but not in any detail. And I suppose Bamford was the only one who really zeroed in on anything and that was an unfortunate thing

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which I can give you the background on anytime you want it. It was. We'll talk about that, yes. I told you before that Colonel Kullback experienced the same difficulties with Bamford. He didn't even talk to the fellow except on the phone. But in the book he quoted Kullback, after researching at the Archives and reading some committee reports and then saying that they were a result of an interview. So Kull back was flaming mad. I don't blame him. So this guy is weird. General, we can talk at any level you want. Any sensitive area. If you think it's too sensitive clean it up or talk about it. I have all the clearances and you have all the clearances and it would be a shame that something that you think should be on the record is ignored. So talk at any level you want. Well, before we get too deeply into it, what happens to this? All right, Sir. It goes into the archives and it will be used as a basis for an NSA classified history. We're doing a history of the Agency, 1952 forward. And we have two people working on this. It will be transcribed. It will be kept in the archives available to nobody unless you say they can. I have a dispensation form, I have an accessibility form that says II Anybody who's interested can hear this, n and the other end of the spread is, "only those people who I give permission to, legitimate researchers, legitimate

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historians, military troops," so the spread is your decision. Well, sooner or later I'll be out of the picture. Yes. I hope all of us will. We're going to protect that though, Sir. Are you? Well, again, I say that. I'll be gone, too, and we have some of these eager young people who say everything should be privy to the public. And I dislike that. I've been fighting the declassification, but that's neither here nor there. We're overwhelmed. Jimmy Carter started it and... I think I mentioned casually, in that tape I gave you yesterday, my distaste for the total access, what do they call it? Freedom of Information Act. Right, and we have a lot of problems with that. I'm sure you do and I think we didn't handle it right at the time it happened. Bamford was the fellow who requested all the NSA Newsletters since the beginning of time and we had to review and excise some of the names and some of the offices. And we sent him a bale of that material which he incorporated into his book. Some of it, yes, he did. Of course, the fallacy in that whole argument was in distributing the Newsletter with the caveat down there that since this will be going to families who may have access to them, or something like that,

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