Series
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr.
Episode Number
S1182
Episode
Is There A Role for the Cia?
Producing Organization
Southern Educational Communications Association
South Carolina Educational Television Network
Contributing Organization
Hoover Institution Library & Archives, Stanford University (Stanford, California)
AAPB ID
cpb-aacip/514-5717m04q7r
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Description
Episode Description
The CIA had taken a beating from the press and Congress in the Seventies; it had been plagued by double agents, including, spectacularly, Aldrich Ames. Was there still a point to it? Mr. Schlesinger calmly and convincingly tells us why there is, and how some people got the idea that there wasn't. JRS: "Everything that the agency has done over the years has been authorized by the political authorities. A lot of people don't like what the political authorities have authorized, [but]... they criticized the agent rather than those who did it. When the Kennedy brothers were interested in disposing of Mr. Castro, for example, when these issues surfaced, they surfaced less as a criticism of President Kennedy or his brother the Attorney General than it was a criticism of the agency--for doing what the President of the United States through the National Security Council had authorized." WFB: "So, in other words, the idea that a headstrong agency simply went to Chile or Guatemala and said, 'It would be fun to throw the government over'--that's just anti-CIA cant? ..." JRS: "It's not necessarily anti-CIA cant, it's simply ignorance." Currently there is only a digitized transcript available for this episode.
Series Description
The television series Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. was a venue for debate and discussion on political, social, and philosophical issues with experts of the day. Firing Line broadcasts from 1966 through March 1971 were produced and syndicated by WOR-TV, a commercial station in New York, but some of them were also broadcast on noncommercial television stations. Starting in April 1971, Firing Line broadcasts were produced by the Southern Educational Communications Association, an arm of South Carolina Educational Television. Hoover Institution Library & Archives' Firing Line collection guide can be found at: https://www.hoover.org/library-archives/collections/firing-line.
Date
1998-10-13
Asset type
Episode
Genres
Talk Show
Topics
Public Affairs
Subjects
United States. Central Intelligence Agency
Rights
Copyright held by Stanford University. This copy is provided for educational and research purposes only. No publication, further reproduction, or reuse of copies, beyond fair use, may be made without the express written permission of the Hoover Institution Library & Archives on behalf of Stanford University.
Media type
Moving Image
Embed Code
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Credits
Guest: Schlesinger, James R.
Host: Buckley, William F., Jr.
Producing Organization: Southern Educational Communications Association
Producing Organization: South Carolina Educational Television Network
AAPB Contributor Holdings
Stanford University
Identifier: 80040.1465 (Hoover Institution)
Generation: Proxy
Duration: 0:30:00
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Citations
Chicago: “Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr.; S1182; Is There A Role for the Cia?,” 1998-10-13, Hoover Institution Library & Archives, Stanford University, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed June 5, 2025, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-514-5717m04q7r.
MLA: “Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr.; S1182; Is There A Role for the Cia?.” 1998-10-13. Hoover Institution Library & Archives, Stanford University, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. June 5, 2025. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-514-5717m04q7r>.
APA: Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr.; S1182; Is There A Role for the Cia?. Boston, MA: Hoover Institution Library & Archives, Stanford University, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-514-5717m04q7r