Adm. Stansfield Turner, director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), said yesterday that public scrutiny of the activities of the CIA could endanger the nation's foreign intelligence capability.

"If we're going to have as good intelligence as in the past we're going to have to have at least as much secrecy as in the past," Turner told an audience of about 500 people at the ARCO Public Forum for Public Affairs of the Kennedy School of Government last night.

Turner said the CIA now aims at a balance between accountability to government executives, legislators and the public on the one hand, and an intelligence-gathering group's basic need for secrecy on the other.

"The CIA is and should be our most secretive public agency," Turner said.

Turner admitted that secrecy can lead to the abuse of ill-defined powers, but said that the CIA is more open and accountable today than any other intelligence agency in history.

Although the CIA still conducts covert operations aimed at influencing events in foreign countries, the president must authorize all such actions, and Congressional oversight committees must be informed of them, he said.

Turner said that he foresees no change in the CIA's position on the guidelines the University issued in the spring of 1977 regarding professors' dealings with the CIA.

The guidelines say that Harvard employees, particularly faculty, should not recommend other members of the Harvard community to intelligence agencies as possible operatives without first telling them.

"Harvard is certainly privileged to make its own rules for Harvard people," Turner said. "But if a Harvard employee doesn't intend to follow them then it's not my job to enforce them," he said.

Turner said that relations with the press pose a special problem for the CIA, because information the press makes public becomes available to potential enemies.

Turner's manner appealed to the generally sympathetic audience, which ignored one heckler's interruptions.