PART 1: THE CIA AND THE CULT OF INTELLIGENCE

The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence 

Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks

INTRODUCTION 

by Anthony Lewis 

Few books change national attitudes. This one did. When it was first published in 1974, the Central Intelligence Agency was regarded by most Americans who had heard of it as an unusually skillful, wise, and successful branch of the United States Government. The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence began a process of public reappraisal,a process that continued through newspaper reports, the work of a presidential commission , and congressional hearings. Over the years the tide of opinion ebbed and flowed; the CIA lost and then regained much of its political support . But there was a lasting change in attitudes, I think: bringing a degree of skepticism toward the agency. an unwillingness to let it continue enjoying a total exemption from the scrutiny to which the Constitution generally makes government subject. 

What Victor Marchetti and John Marks did was a classic vindication of the American constitutional theory that public knowledge is essential to both democratic and effective government. Not just the First Amendment but the whole system constructed at the Philadelphia convention in 1787 rests on the premise of an informed electorate , holding its rulers accountable and thus preventing the corruption of power. As Justice Brandeis put it a century and a half later: "Sunshine is the best of disinfectant's." Marchetti and Marks let light in on the work of the CIA. They supplied facts where there had been none. 

It is difficult, years later, to remember our state of permissive ignorance concerning the CIA. I do not exclude myself or most journalists. We thought of the agency as better informed than the State or Defense departments, and rather more on the liberal side in international affairs. We knew men who worked out in Langley; they were notably well-bred, articulate, perhaps a bit bookish--certainly not the sort of people to conspire against freely elected governments or plot the assassination of Left Wing leaders. That faith survived the Bay of Pigs intact. For the most part it even survived the Vietnam War, which shattered the general postwar love affair between the Washington press corps and the government, as the press learned that officials did not know more and could not be trusted to advance shared values. 

Marchetti and Marks showed us that the Central Intelligence Agency. too. had made mistakes: not just slips or human errors but grave errors of policy. They made us aware . dramatically. that the agency not only engaged in classic intelligence work-the collecting of information by one means or another-but also intervened in the political process of other countries by covert actions: subsidies to favored parties, dirty tricks, the supply of arms. They also corrected a general belief that the CIA concentrated its efforts on the Soviet Union. In fact, they said, "The agency works mainly in the Third World," in relatively small and weak countries-and there , "at least since 1961, the CIA has lost many more battles than it has won . even by its own standards." 

In that paragraph of their manuscript, Marchetti and Marks listed African, Asian, and Latin American countries that had been the targets of CIA coven intervention. But it is only now, years afterward, that we are able to read some of the names . The list was struck out by CIA censors in 1973, and the courts upheld the censorship. Further administrative ' appeals finally resulted in permission to publish these countries from the original list: Chile, the Congo, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, the Philippines. (See p. 320.) How fast the world moves: since the original censorship, the Congo has changed its name to Zaire, Chile has been taken over by a military junta, and Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam have all come under the control of what was in 1972 the Communist regime of North Vietnam. 

There is a great irony attached to The CIA and the Cult of intelligence. The book was censored, and the legal theory adopted by the courts to justify that censorship was in my judgment the most dangerous defeat in many years for Americans' freedom to speak and write and read without official approval. Yet despite the censorship, Marchetti and Marks reached the public with their facts and their criticism of governmental conduct, just as the Constitution intended. Indeed , in a fascinating way, the heavy hand of the CIA censors and of the courts actually helped them to get their message across: the CIA helped to destroy its own myth of wisdom and efficiency. 

The way it happened was this: CIA officials read the manuscript in 1973 and told Marchetti and Marks that they had to remove 339 passages. nearly a fifth of the book . The officials may have thought that the authors or the publisher. Alfred A. Knopf. would lose interest and drop the whole idea. They did not. First Marchetti and Marks and their lawyer-Melvin L. Wulf. then legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union-argued each of the deletions with the agency. Some of them were manifestly absurd: the fact, for example. that Richard Helms of the CIA. at a National Security Council meeting. had mispronounced the name of the Malagasy Republic. Many others were facts long since published: not secrets at all. After long negotiations the CIA yielded on 171 items, not out of kindness but because officials knew that every deletion was going to be contested in court and they did not want to look foolish . That left 168 censored passages. And then Knopf decided to go ahead and publish the book with blanks for those passages, and with the sections that the CIA had originally cut but then restored printed in boldface . 

The result was a dramatic demonstration of how censorship works: the arbitrariness, the design very often to prevent official embarrassment rather than protect real secrets. The book had special impact. And some people who mattered noticed how far the CIA had gone to stop disclosure of its blunders. abuses of power. and mistaken policies . I think it is fair to say that the doubts raised then led in time to the investigative reports by Seymour Hersh of The New York Times, the Rockefeller Commission, and the Senate Intelligence Committee under Senator Frank Church of Idaho. 

The legal device by which the CIA was able to see the manuscript in the first place , and censor it, was an ingenious one. Victor Marchetti had been an official of the agency and. like other employees, had signed a promise not to disclose secrets he had learned there, while on the job or later. These secrecy agreements had always been considered a way of alerting CIA employees to their responsibility and of putting moral pressure on them, and of course they could be fired for breaking the promise. But the agreements were not thought to be legally binding; in fact, William Colby, later Director of Central Intelligence , told a congressional committee that the agency had no way to get a court to stop leaks. Then  when the CIA officials learned that Marchetti was planning to write a book, they went into court and claimed that his agreement was a legally binding "contract," enforceable by an injunction against Marchetti . The courts so held. and they subjected Victor Marchetti to an order unique in American history. For the rest of his life, he was forbidden to disclose "in any manner"-writing, conversation , whatever-any classified information that he had learned while at the CIA. unless he got official clearance first.

As I write. eight years later, that order still stands. And over the years the CIA has enforced it with what could be called niggling rigor. Agency representatives have let Marchetti know they were in the audience at meetings he was to address, so he had better not say anything out of line. Once, on Canadian radio. he referred to a CIA experiment in wiring cats with mini microphones; the government complained that he had violated the injunction. 

What makes all this so extraordinary, legally , is that the First Amendment frowns on "prior restraints": orders, like the one against Marchetti, that prevent someone from writing or speaking except on terms approved by authorities. The First Amendment says that Congress shall make no law "abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." In the great case of Near v. Minnesota, in 1931, the Supreme Court said that the "chief purpose" of those words had been to make sure this country would not have a system of prior censorship like the one that had existed in seventeenth· century England , when nothing could be printed without an official license. How, then , can the courts have applied just such a system to Victor Marchetti (and , as co-author of this book, John Marks)? The answer is hard to find as one reads the opinions; judges have not faced the problem squarely. But their logic seems to be that Marchetti, and others who work for the CIA, waive their First Amendment rights when they take the job and sign the secrecy agreement. Even if it were that easy to give up one's constitutional rights--and the courts have usually said that it is not-there would still be another problem. It has been the rule in this country that officials cannot impose regulations unless Congress authorizes them, and especially not when constitutional rights are involved. Thus in 1959 the Supreme Court said the Defense Department could not use a security system that relied on anonymous accusers because Congress and the President had not clearly authorized such a system . Yet Congress had never considered, much less approved. the theory of censorship by "contract" imposed on Marchetti and Marks. 

Melvin L. Wulf. in his introduction to the original edition of this book. describes how the case developed--how the government advanced and the courts approved the sweeping theory of Secrecy by Contract. To that account I can add one or two observations from a different perspective . 

First , it is necessary to say a word about "secrets." Even in the United States. the most open of countries, the average citizen still tends to be impressed when a government official talks about "secrets" or ''classified information." And of course there are real secrets which deserve protection: codes, for instance  or the plans for nuclear retaliation to an enemy attack. But the overwhelming proportion of the millions of documents classified by federal officials are routine affairs of no real security interest. That fact  known to anyone who deals regularly with the Washington bureaucracy, is beautifully demonstrated by this book itself. Consider these items that the CIA originally tried to censor and then allowed to be published in the original edition : 

• "The Chilean election was scheduled for the following September. and Allende, a declared Marxist, was one of the principal candidates." (See p. 12.) 

• "Henry Kissinger, the single most powerful man at the forty-committee meeting on Chile." (See p. 15.) 

• "As incredible as it may seem in retrospect , some of the CIA's economic analysts (and many other officials in Washington) were in the early 1960's still inclined to accept much of Peking's propaganda as to the success of Mao's economic experiment." (See p. 103.) 

This new edition provides further evidence of the foolishness so often covered by claims that a disclosure would threaten the national security. It includes twenty-five passages censored when the book was originally published but released after years of further administrative proceedings. Looking at these supposed "secrets," the reader is bound to wonder about the good faith of the CIA censors, or their common sense. 

One of these newly published items is about a chemical that makes mud more slippery. The CIA thought of dropping it on the Ho Chi Minh Trail during the rainy season,hoping to interrupt the Vietnamese supply route. (See p. 107.) The idea didn't work. and it was all over before 1974, but the censors still kept it out. 

Another passage now published said that the Soviets had electronic bugs in the American embassy code room in Moscow-and were able to translate the sounds of typewriters into letters. (See p. 186.) The bugs had long since been found, the leak ended. The Russians knew what they had been doing. From whom was it being kept a secret? 

Most bewildering of all is a series of censored items about Africa. The book describes a meeting of the National Security Council under President Nixon in December 1969. After the first sentence the censors cut out a passage. Now restored (p. 248). it reads: "The purpose of this session was to decide what American policy should be toward the governments of southern Africa." 

A few lines down . the censors cut in mid sentence: "There was sharp disagreement within the government on how hard a line the United States should take with the ... " Restored, it goes on: " ... white-minority regimes of South Africa, Rhodesia, and the Portuguese colonies in Africa." 

Then two words were cut from this sentence: "Henry Kissinger talked about the kind of general posture the United States could maintain toward the ------ and outlined the specific policy options open to the President." The missing words turn out to be: "white regimes." 

Finally, the censors cut a reference to the fact that Kissinger had sent a National Security Study Memorandum (N.S.S.M 39) to departments interested in southern Africa. N.S.S.M 39 was in fact published and widely discussed in 1974. It took the view that the various movements for majority rule in southern Africa were unlikely to succeed soon. 

To the extent that those censored passages on Africa point anywhere, it is toward a discussion of policy. The Kissinger-Nixon policy was founded on the belief that the Portuguese would hold on to their African colonies indefinitely. Within a few years that premise was shattered, and the whole policy had to be reappraised. Is there any serious argument of security that the American public should not have been allowed, five years afterward, to reflect on the wisdom of the policy and the way it was made? What has it got to do with CIA "secrets"? 

Second, there is a misconception that the legal theory developed in the Marchetti case allows the CIA to suppress something by an ex-employee only if the agency can convince the courts of a genuine threat to security. This was the belief, amazingly, of a twenty-six-year CIA veteran, Cord Meyer, who wrote a book about his career. He had trouble clearing it through the agency censors, spending a lot of time and money to prove that material once classified had long since become public. Then Meyer wrote a newspaper column about his troubles, saying that the censors even tried to delete "whole sections of a chapter describing how a typical KGB station operates abroad," even though that could hardly be a secret to the KGB. But he concluded that what he called "peacetime censorship" was not too dangerous. for this reason: 

Fortunately. the Federal courts have held that it is not sufficient for the government to prove that information has been stamped "secret." The burden of proof is on the government to demonstrate that release of the information could cause damage to the national security. 

Unfortunately, Meyer's statement is the opposite of the truth. In the Marchetti case, the courts held precisely that they would not weigh the possible damage of any censored passage to the national security; it was enough if the CIA could show simply that something had been included in a document stamped SECRET while Marchetti was in the agency and had not been officially released since. 

That was the unhappy end of the judicial process that was still under way when Melvin L. Wulf wrote his introduction. He sounded a note of hope because , at that point, he had had a favorable decision from conservative Federal Judge Albert V. Bryan, Jr. , of Alexandria, Virginia. Judge Bryan heard the testimony of high CIA officials to the effect that the 168 passages they wanted to delete were classified-and in most cases did not believe what they said. He found that only 27 of the 168 contained material that had been specifically classified while Marchetti was in the agency. But on appeal the government swept all that away. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit held that Judge Bryan had imposed too high a standard on the CIA in demanding specific proof of classification. It was enough if the item in question had appeared in a classified document, even an entire book stamped SECRET; there was no need to show that the classifying officer had had the particular matter in mind . Nor was there any need for the agency to convince the court that the national security was at risk. CIA officials, the court said, were entitled to a "presumption of regularity."

In short, the courts simply should not second-guess or even examine the CIA's reasons for censoring an ex-employee's words: there will be no meaningful judicial review. And that leads to a third observation. Judges are evidently uneasy about mixing in the intelligence business. Only that can explain the extraordinary deference paid to the CIA in this and other cases. 

Five years after Victor Marchetti. John Marks. and their publisher were defeated in the courts, the Supreme Court took an even more radical and dangerous step toward official censorship. The case was that of Frank Snepp, who had been a CIA man in Vietnam and wrote a book, Decent Interval. about the last days of the American presence there. Snepp felt that high officials, notably Secretary of State Kissinger, had made craven and immoral decisions, worst of all in abandoning thousands of Vietnamese colleagues to their fate. He did not submit his manuscript for clearance, as he had promised to do in his secrecy agreement, but published the book before the agency was aware of his plans. Too late to get an injunction against Snepp, the Justice Department asked the courts to make some new and even more ingenious law, imposing a massive financial penalty on Snepp for violating his "contract." Summarily-without hearing argument or even allowing Snepp's lawyers to brief the issue,the Supreme Court imposed a "constructive trust" on Snepp. requiring him to give the government everything he earned from his book. That was $140,000, Snepp's sole income over a period of three years, with nothing deductible even for his living expenses. (The sum was less. incidentally, than he would have earned by staying in the CIA and keeping quiet about the wrongs he had observed.) 

In the Marchetti case the lower courts developed the idea of Secrecy by Contract-the theory that, without congressional authorization, the CIA could make its employees sign away their constitutional rights for the rest of their lives. In the Snepp case the Supreme Court seemed to remove even the requirement of a contract from this theory. It hinted that anyone in the government who had access to important secrets could be sued for violating his "trust" if he published something without clearance. whether or not he had signed a secrecy agreement. The Court put it: "Quite apart from the plain language of the secrecy agreement. the nature of Snepp's duties and his conceded access to confidential sources and materials could establish a trust relationship." That approach would in effect give the United States the equivalent of Britain's notorious Official Secrets Act, which makes it a crime to disclose any government information,however innocuous,without official approval.

There was a revealing indication of judicial attitudes in the Supreme Court's opinion in the Snepp case , a footnote that read as follows: 

Every major nation in the world has an intelligence service. Whatever fairly may be said about some of its past activities. the CIA (or its predecessor the O.S.S) is an agency thought by every President since Franklin D. Roosevelt to be essential to the security of the United States and-in a sense-the free world. It is impossible for a government wisely to make critical decisions about foreign policy and national defense without the benefit of dependable foreign intelligence. See generally T. Powers, The Man Who Kept the Secrets. 

The reverential tone of that footnote shows again that the courts give the CIA a discretion that they would not think of allowing any other agency of government-not even the President of the United States, to judge by the Nixon Tapes Case. The cult of intelligence thrives on the bench. It has only to be added that the justices evidently did not know what they were doing when they cited the Thomas Powers book. It contained large amounts of classified information, disclosed by various past and present CIA officials when interviewed by Powers. 

The political branches have responded more realistically than the courts to the problem of preventing the CIA abuses of power. The process that this book helped to start ended with permanent House and Senate Intelligence committees doing a continuing job of scrutiny, and with the Executive Branch keeping a much more formal check on the agency. 

But the legal precedent set by the treatment of The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence has not become any less dangerous with time. In that sense. the book is a classic piece of evidence in the endless war for freedom of speech and of the press. In the old days. in this country. the test of that freedom was the right of the soapbox orator or the radical editor to expound his theory of society. Today the issue is not freedom to propagate ideas but freedom to tell the facts about government-and freedom of the citizen to acquire the facts. As government becomes more powerful in our lives the ability to know what it is doing and hence to control its power becomes ever more important. We can still hope that some day a less deferential Supreme Court will apply that truth to the exercise of secret power, holding even the Central Intelligence Agency subject to the Constitution, and will vindicate The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence in law as it has long since been vindicated in the necessary truths it told.

⚞PUBLISHER'S NOTE⚟ 

The CIA and the Cult of lntelligence was first published in 1974. By Federal Court order, the authors were required to submit the manuscript of this book to the CIA for review prior to publication. Under the terms of the court ruling, the CIA ordered the deletion of 339 passages of varying length. Later, following demands to the CIA by legal counsel for the authors--and the commencement of litigation by the publisher and the authors against the CIA challenging the censorship involved-all but 168 of these deletions were reinstated. For a full account of these events, see the introduction by Melvin L. Wulf. Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union. 

In the past year-under the Freedom of Information Act in a suit brought by the Center for National Security Studies-­ some twenty-five previously deleted passages have been cleared for publication and appear for the first time in this edition. A special introduction by Anthony Lewis, noted columnist and political commentator, chronicles these most recent developments. As the book goes to press, additional passages are being declassified and may be included in future editions. 

As it presently exists, therefore, the manuscript of The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence demonstrates with remarkable clarity the actual workings of the CIA's "classification" system. In this edition , passages the CIA originally ordered excised and then reluctantly permitted to be reinstated-are printed in boldface type. Those passages included for the first time in the 1980 edition are printed in boldface italic type. Passages included in this edition for the first time are printed in italic type. Firm deletions are indicated by blank spaces with the word DELETED. The number of lines cut is indicated.

AUTHORS' PREFACES 

My introduction to the intelligence business came during the early years of the Cold War, while serving with the U.S. Army in Germany. There , in 1952. I was sent to the European Command's "special'· school at Oberammergau to study Russian and the rudiments of intelligence methods and techniques. Afterward I was assigned to duty on the East German border. The information we collected on the enemy's plans and activities was of little significance, but the duty was good, sometimes even exciting. We believed that we were keeping the world free for democracy, that we were in the first line of defense against the spread of communism. 

After leaving the military service , I returned to college at Penn State. where I majored in Soviet studies and history. Shortly before graduation , I was secretly recruited by the CIA, which I officially joined in September 1955; the struggle between democracy and communism seemed more important than ever, the CIA was in the forefront of that vital international battle. I wanted to contribute. 

Except for one year with the Clandestine Services. spent largely in training. most of my career with the CIA was devoted to analytical work. As a Soviet military specialist, I did research, then current intelligence. and finally national estimates-at the time, the highest form of intelligence production. I was at one point the CIA's--and probably the U.S. government's--leading expert on Soviet military aid to the countries of the Third World. I was involved in uncovering Moscow's furtive efforts that culminated in the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 and. later, in unraveling the enigma of the "Soviet ABM problem. " 

From 1966 to 1969 I served as a staff officer in the Office of the Director of the CIA. where I held such positions as special assistant to the Chief of Planning. Programming. and Budgeting. special assistant to the Executive Director. and executive assistant to the Deputy Director. It was during these years that I came to see how the highly compartmentalized organization performed as a whole, and what its full role in the U.S. intelligence community was. The view from the Office of the Director was both enlightening and discouraging. The CIA did not, as advertised to the public and the Congress, function primarily as a central clearinghouse and producer of national intelligence for the government. Its basic mission was that of clandestine operations, particularly covert action the secret intervention in the internal affairs of other nations. Nor was the Director of CIA a dominant--or much interested-figure in the direction and management of the intelligence community which he supposedly headed. Rather, his chief concern , like that of most of his predecessors and the agency's current Director, was in overseeing the CIA's clandestine activities.

Disenchanted and disagreeing with many of the agency's policies and practices, and, for that matter, with those of the intelligence community and the U.S. government, I resigned from the CIA in late 1969. But having been thoroughly indoctrinated with the theology of "national security" for so many years, I was unable at first to speak out publicly. And, I must admit. I was still imbued with the mystique of the agency and the intelligence business in general. even retaining a certain affection for both. I therefore sought to put forth my thoughts-perhaps more accurately. my feelings-in fictional form. I wrote a novel, The Rope-Dancer, in which I tried to describe for the reader what life was actually like in a secret agency such as the CIA, and what the differences were between myth and reality in this overly romanticized profession. 

The publication of the novel accomplished two things. It brought me in touch with numerous people outside the inbred, insulated world of intelligence who were concerned over the constantly increasing size and role of intelligence in our government. And this, in turn, convinced me to work toward bringing about an open review and, I hoped, some reform in the U.S. intelligence system. Realizing that the CIA and the intelligence community are incapable of reforming themselves, and that Presidents, who see the system as a private asset, have no desire to change it in any basic way, I hoped to win support for a comprehensive review in Congress. I soon learned, however, that those members of Congress who possessed the power to institute reforms had no interest in doing so. The others either lacked the wherewithal to accomplish any significant changes or were apathetic. I therefore decided to write a book-this book-expressing my views on the CIA and explaining the reasons why I believe the time has come for the U.S. intelligence community to be reviewed and reformed.

The CIA and the government have fought long and hard and not always ethically-first to discourage the writing of this book and then to prevent its publication. They have managed, through legal technicalities and by raising the specter of "national security" violations, to achieve an unprecedented abridgment of my constitutional right to free speech. They have secured an unwarranted and outrageous permanent injunction against me. requiring that anything I write or say, "factual, fictional or otherwise," on the subject of intelligence must first be censored by the CIA. Under risk of criminal contempt of court, I can speak only at my own peril and must allow the CIA thirty days to review, and excise, my writings-prior to submitting them to a publisher for consideration. 

It has been said that among the dangers faced by a democratic society in fighting totalitarian systems, such as fascism and communism, is that the democratic government runs the risk of imitating its enemies' methods and, thereby, destroying the very democracy that it is seeking to defend. I cannot help wondering if my government is more concerned with defending our democratic system or more intent upon imitating the methods of totalitarian regimes in order to maintain its already inordinate power over the American people. 

Oakton,Virginia 

February 1974  

VICTOR MARCHETTI 

II  

Unlike Victor Marchetti , I did not join the government to do intelligence work . Rather, fresh out of college in 1966, I entered the Foreign Service. My first assignment was to have been London , but with my draft board pressing for my services, the State Department advised me that the best way to stay out of uniform was to go to Vietnam as a civilian adviser in the so-called pacification program. reluctantly agreed and spent the next eighteen months there , returning to Washington just after the Tet offensive in February 1968. From personal observation . I knew that American policy in Vietnam was ineffective . but I had been one of those who thought that if only better tactics were used the United States could "win ." Once back in this country. I soon came to see that American involvement in Indochina was not only ineffective but totally wrong. 

The State Department had assigned me to the Bureau of Intelligence and Research. first as an analyst of French and Belgian affairs and then as staff assistant to State's intelligence director. Since this bureau carries on State's liaison with the rest of the intelligence community. I was for the first time introduced to the whole worldwide network of American spying-not so much as a participant but as a shuffler of top-secret paper.; and a note-taker at top-level intelligence meetings. Here I found the same kind of waste and inefficiency I had come to know in Vietnam and , even worse, the same sort of reasoning that had led the country into Vietnam in the fir.;t place. In the high councils of the intelligence community, there was no sense that intervention in the internal affairs of other countries was not the inherent right of the United States. "Don't be an idealist; you have to live in the 'real' world ." said the professionals. I found it increasingly difficult to agree. 

For me the last straw was the American invasion of Cambodia in April 1970. I felt personally concerned because only two months earlier. on temporary assignment to a White House study group. I had helped write a relatively pessimistic report about the situation in Vietnam. It seemed now that our honest conclusions about the tenuous position of the Thieu government had been used in some small way to justify the overt expansion of the war into a new country. 

I wish now that I had walked out of the State Department the day the troops went into Cambodia. Within a few months, however, I found a new job as executive assistant to Senator Clifford Case of New Jersey. Knowing of the Senator's opposition to the war, I looked at my new work as a chance to try to change what I knew was wrong in the way the United States conducts its foreign policy. 

During my three years with Senator Case, when we were concentrating our efforts on legislation to end the war, to limit the intelligence community, and to curb presidential abuses of executive agreements, I came to know Victor Marchetti. With our common experience and interest in intelligence, we talked frequently about how things could be improved. In the fall of 1972. obviously disturbed by the legal action the government had taken against the book he intended to write but which he had not yet started, he felt he needed someone to assist him in his work . Best of all would be a coauthor with the background to make a substantive contribution as well as to help in the actual writing. This book is the result of our joint effort. 

I entered the project in the hope that what we have to say will have some effect in influencing the public and the Congress to institute meaningful control over American intelligence and to end the type of intervention abroad which, in addition to being counterproductive , is inconsistent with the ideals by which our country is supposed to govern itself. Whether such a hope was misguided remains to be seen.

JOHN D. MARKS

Washington. D.C. 

February 1974 

Introduction 

by Melvin L. Wulf 

Legal Director 

American Civil Liberties Union 

On April 18, 1972, Victor Marchetti became the first American writer to be served with an official censorship order issued by a court of the United States. The order prohibited him from "disclosing in any manner (1) any information relating to intelligence activities, (2) any information concerning intelligence sources and methods, or (3) any intelligence information. 

To secure the order, government lawyers had appeared in the chambers of Judge Albert V. Bryan, Jr .. of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, in Alexandria, on the morning of April 18, without having notified Marchetti. The government's papers recited that Marchetti had worked at the CIA from 1955 to 1969. that he had signed several "secrecy agreements" in which he had agreed not to reveal any information learned during his employment, that after he left the CIA he had revealed forbidden information , that he was planning to write a nonfiction book about the agency, and that publication of the book would "result in grave and irreparable injury to the interests of the United States." 

Among the papers presented to the judge was an affidavit (classified "Secret") from Thomas H. Karamessines, Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, the head of the CIA's covert-activities branch. The affidavit said that a magazine article and an outline of a proposed book, both written by Marchetti, had been turned over to the CIA and that they contained information about the CIA's secret activities. The affidavit related several of the items and described how their disclosure would, in the CIA's opinion, be harmful to the United States. On the basis of that affidavit and others, including one by CIA Director Richard Helms, Judge Bryan signed a temporary restraining order forbidding Marchetti to disclose any information about the CIA and requiring him to submit any "manuscript, article or essay. or other writing, factual or otherwise," to the CIA before "releasing it to any person or corporation." It was that order which United States marshals served upon Marchetti . The next month was consumed by a hectic and unsuccessful effort to have the order set aside. 

Marchetti asked the ACLU for assistance the day after receiving the order, and was in New York the following day to meet his lawyers and prepare his defense . At the first court appearance , on Friday, April 21. we unsuccessfully urged Judge Bryan to dissolve the temporary restraining order. He also refused to order the government to allow Marchetti's lawyers to read the "secret" affidavit, because none of us had security clearance. The following Monday we were in Baltimore to arrange an appeal to the United States Court of Appeals to argue there that the temporary restraining order should be dissolved. The court agreed to hear argument two days later. During the Baltimore meeting the government lawyers announced that they had conferred security clearance upon me and that I would be able to read the secret affidavit but could not have a copy of it. They said they would clear the other defense lawyers during the next few days. We were also told that any witnesses we intended to present at trial, to be held that Friday. would also require security clearance before we could discuss the secret affidavit with them. That was a hell of a way to prepare for trial; we couldn't even talk to prospective witnesses unless they were approved by the government. 

We argued the appeal before the Court of Appeals on Wednesday, but that too was unsuccessful, and the temporary restraining order remained in effect. Our only satisfaction was an order by the court prohibiting both the CIA and the Department of Justice from trying to influence our witnesses in any way. 

On Friday we appeared before Judge Bryan and reluctantly asked for a two-week postponement because it had been impossible for us to secure witnesses who could testify that day. The need for security clearance had made it impossible for us to discuss the case with those witnesses who had at least tentatively agreed to testify for the defense. But, more depressing, we had had great difficulty finding people willing to testify at all. We had called a few dozen prospects, largely former members of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations who had reputations as liberals and even , in some cases. reputations as civil-libertarians. I'm still waiting for half of them to return my calls. Of the other half, most were simply frightened at the idea of being identified with the case, and some, including a few who had themselves revealed classified information in their published memoirs, agreed with the government that Marchetti's pen should be immobilized. In the end, our list of witnesses was short but notable : Professor Abram Chayes of Harvard Law School , and former Legal Advisor to the Department of State in the Kennedy administration; Professor Richard Falk, Milbank Professor of International Law at Princeton; Morton Halperin, fonner Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense and staff member of the National Security Council under Kissinger; and Professor Paul Blackstock, an intelligence expert from the University of South Carolina.

The next two weeks were consumed by the frustrating hunt for witnesses and by other pre-trial requirements, including examination of Karamessines and the CIA's Security Director. who were to be the government's chief witnesses. 

The trial started and ended on May 15. Essentially, it consisted of Karamessines repeating the contents of his secret affidavit . As interesting as it would be to describe the day in detail. I am forbidden to, for the public was excluded and the testimony of the government witnesses is classified. The result, however. is public. It was a clean sweep for the CIA, and Judge Bryan issued a permanent injunction against Marchetti. 

The results on appeal were not much better. The validity of the injunction was broadly affirmed. The only limitation imposed by the Court of Appeals was that only classified information could be deleted from the book by the CIA. The litigation finally came to an end in December 1972 when the Supreme Court refused to hear the case. It was a great defeat for Marchetti. for his lawyers-and for the First Amendment. 

American law has always recognized that injunctions against publication-"prior restraints," in legal jargon--threaten the root and branch of democratic society. Until 1971 , when the New York Times was enjoined from printing the Pentagon Papers. the federal government had never attempted to impose a prior restraint on publication, and the handful of such efforts by the states were uniformly denounced by the Supreme Court . As we learned from the Pentagon Papers Case, however. the Nixon administration was not going to be deterred by a mere two hundred years of history from becoming the first administration to try to suppress publication of a newspaper. They ultimately failed in their specific goal of suppressing publication of a newspaper-but , for fifteen days, a newspaper actually was restrained from publishing, the first such restraint in American history.

The Times' resumption of publication of the Pentagon Papers immediately after the Supreme Court decision would seem to mean that the case ended victoriously. Although it was a victory, it was not a sound victory . for only Justices Black and Douglas said that injunctions against publication were constitutionally forbidden under any circumstances. The other members of the court made it perfectly clear that they could imagine circumstances where such injunctions would be enforced, notwithstanding the First Amendment's guarantee of a free press. Nixon-administration lawyers could read the opinions as well as ACLU lawyers. and they too saw that the decision in the Pentagon Papers Case was not a knockout punch. So only ten months after being beaten off by the New York Times. they were back in court trying the same thing again with Victor Marchetti . 

Nine opinions were written in the Pentagon Papers Case. Out of all those opinions one standard emerge under which a majority of the Justices would have allowed information to be suppressed prior to publication : proof by the government that disclosure would "surely result in direct, immediate and irreparable injury to the Nation or its people." We were comfortable with that standard because we were confident that nothing Marchetti had disclosed or would disclose in the future would have that effect. But we were not permitted to put the government to its proof through the testimony of our four witnesses because Judge Bryan agreed with the government that Marchetti's case was different from the Pentagon Papers Case. "We are not enjoining the press in this case ,'' the government lawyers said. "We are merely enforcing a contract between Marchetti and the CIA. This is not a First Amendment case, it's just a contract action ." The contract to which they were referring was, of course, Marchetti's secrecy agreement. 

All  employees of the CIA are required to sign an agreement in which they promise not to reveal any information learned during their employment which relates to  "intelligence sources or methods" without first securing authorization from the agency. The standard form of the agreement includes threats of prosecution and promises to deliver the most awful consequences upon the slightest violation. The only trouble with the threats is that until now they have been unenforceable. Apart from disclosure of information classified by the Atomic Energy Commission, it is not a crime to disclose classified information unless it is done under circumstances which involve what is commonly understood as espionage--spying for a foreign nation. The government tried, in the prosecution of Daniel Ellsberg, to stretch the espionage statutes to punish his disclosure of the Pentagon Papers. even though he had had no intent to injure the United States, as required by the statute. Though that prosecution was aborted under the most dramatic circumstances, including a surreptitious attempt by President Nixon to influence the trial judge, it is unlikely that the appeals courts would have upheld such an expansive application of the espionage laws-assuming that the jury would even have brought in a guilty verdict.

In any case , being doubtful about how far the threat of prosecution under a dubious statute would deter Marchetti from publicly criticizing the CIA and inevitably disclosing some of its practices. the CIA fell upon the contract theory as a device for trying to suppress his book before it was put into print. The theory struck a harmonious note with· the federal judges who heard the CIA and proved more successful than the government probably ever dared to hope and certainly more than we had ever expected. But it cheapens the First Amendment to say that an agreement by an employee of the United States not to reveal some government activity is the same as an agreement to deliver a hundred bales of cotton. It ignores the compelling democratic principle that the public has a right to be well informed about its government's actions. 

Of course, some will be heard to say, .. But these are secrets," and indeed much of the information you will read in this book has been considered to be secret. But .. secrets" have been revealed before--there were literally thousands of them in the Pentagon Papers. Every high government official who writes his memoirs after leaving office reveals "secrets" he learned while in government service, and most had signed secrecy agreements too. "Secrets" are regularly leaked to the press by government officers, sometimes to serve official policy, sometimes only to serve a man's own ambitions. In fact, disclosure of so-called secrets-even CIA secrets-has a long and honorable history in our country, and the practice has proved to be valuable because it provides the public with important information that it must have in order to pass judgment on its elected officials. 

Furthermore, disclosure of "secret" information is rarely harmful because the decision inside government to classify information is notoriously frivolous. Experts have estimated that up to 99 percent of the millions of documents currently classified ought not be classified at all. But not only is disclosure of "secret" information generally harmless, it is a tonic that improves our nation's health. Government officers cried that disclosure of the Pentagon Papers would put the nation's security in immediate jeopardy. When they were finally published in their entirety. the only damage was to the reputation of officials in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations who were shown to have deceived the nation about the war in Vietnam. 

When you read this book , you will notice that, unlike any other book previously published in the United States, this one contains blanks. That is the remarkable effect of the government's success. You will also notice that the book has two authors, Victor Marchetti and John Marks. That is another remarkable effect of the government's success. After being enjoined, defeated in his attempts to win relief in the appellate courts, virtually ignored by the press, shunned by his former colleagues at the CIA, unable even to discuss the progress of his work with his editor at Knopf (because the very purpose of the injunction was to forbid the publisher to see the manuscript before the CIA had had the opportunity to censor it), there was serious question whether Marchetti would be able to write the book at all. His discouragement was profound and his bitterness sharp. If he had not written the book, the government's success would have been complete, for that was its real objective. Luckily, Marchetti and Marks came together, and with a shared perspective on the evils of clandestine activities, they were able to do together what the government hoped would not be done at all. 

When the manuscript was completed at the end of August 1973 , it was delivered to the CIA. Thirty days later, the time allowed by the injunction. we received a letter from the CIA which designated 339 portions of the book that were to be deleted. Some of the deletions were single words, some were several lines, some were portions of organizational charts, and many were whole pages. In all, 15 to 20 percent of the manuscript was ordered deleted. I won't soon forget that September evening when Marchetti, Marks, and I sat in the ACLU office for several hours literally cutting out the deleted parts of the manuscript so that we could deliver the remains to Knopf. It was the Devil's work we did that day. 

We filed suit in October, together with Knopf, challenging the CIA's censorship. By the time we went to trial on February 28. the agency had reduced the number of deletions from 339 to 168. Withdrawal of half their original objections should not be taken as a sign of the CIA's generosity. On the contrary, it was the result of our insistent demands over a period of four months, and the agency's recognition that we would go to the mat over the very last censored word. The authors gave up nothing. and rejected several invitations to re-write parts of the book so that it would be satisfactory to the CIA. 

There were three issues to be decided at the trial: did the censored portions of the book consist of classified information? Was that information learned by the authors during their government employment? And was any of it in the public domain? 

After a two-and-a-half-day trial, including testimony by the five highest-ranking officials of the CIA, Judge Bryan decided the case on March 29. It was a major victory for the authors and the publisher. Bryan held that the agency had failed, with a few exceptions, to prove that the deleted information was classified. 

The decision was probably more surprising to the CIA. Accustomed as they have become to having their way, it is unlikely to have occurred to them that a mere judge of the United States would contradict their declarations about classified information, for it was the government's theory throughout the case that material was classified if high-ranking officials said it was classified. Our view, presented through the expert testimony of Morton Halperin, was that concrete proof of classification was required. In the absence of documents declaring specific information to be classified, or testimony by the employee who had in fact classified specific information, Judge Bryan flatly rejected mere assertions by ranking CIA officers that such information was classified. 

Of the 168 disputed items, he found only 27 which he could say were classified. On the other hand, he found that only seven of the 168 had been learned by Marchetti and Marks outside their government employment, and that none of the information was in public domain. 

The decision is obviously important . It allows virtually the entire book to be published (though the present edition still lacks the deleted sections cleared by Judge Bryan , since he postponed enforcement of his decision to allow the government its right to appeal); it desanctifies the CIA; and it discards the magical authority that has always accompanied government incantation of "national security." Hopefully, the higher courts will agree. 

There will necessarily be differences of opinion on the subject of the disclosure of secret information. The reader of this book can decide whether the release of the information it contains serves the public's interest or injures the nation's security. For myself, I have no doubts. Both individual citizens and the nation as a whole will be far better off for the book's having been published. The only injury inflicted in the course of the struggle to publish the book is the damage sustained by the First Amendment.

PART 1

1 

THE CULT OF INTELLIGENCE 

But this secrecy . . . has become a god in this country, and those people who have secrets travel in a kind of fraternity ... and they will not speak to anyone else. 

-SENATOR J WILLIAM FULBRIGHT 

Chairman. Senate Foreign 

Relations Committee November 1971 

There exists in our nation today a powerful and dangerous secret cult,the cult of intelligence. 

Its holy men are the clandestine professionals of the Central Intelligence Agency. Its patrons and protectors are the highest officials of the federal government. Its membership extending far beyond government circles, reaches into the power centers of industry, commerce , finance , and labor. Its friends are many in the areas of important public influence-the academic world and the communications media. The cult of intelligence is a secret fraternity of the American political aristocracy. 

The purpose of the cult is to further the foreign policies of the U.S. government by covert and usually illegal means, while at the same time containing the spread of its avowed enemy, communism. Traditionally, the cult's hope has been to foster a world order in which America would reign supreme, the unchallenged international leader. Today, however, that dream stands tarnished by time and frequent failures. Thus, the cult's objectives are now less grandiose, but no less disturbing. It seeks largely to advance America's self-appointed role as the dominant arbiter of social, economic, and political change in the awakening regions of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. And its worldwide war against communism has to some extent been reduced to a covert struggle to maintain a self-serving stability in the Third World, using whatever clandestine methods are available. For the cult of intelligence , fostering "stability" may in one country mean reluctant and passive acquiescence to evolutionary change; in another country, the active maintenance of the status quo; in yet another, a determined effort to reverse popular trends toward independence and democracy. The cult attempts that which it believes it can accomplish and which-in the event of failure or exposure-the U.S. government can plausibly deny. 

The CIA is both the center and the primary instrument of the cult of intelligence . It engages in espionage and counterespionage, in propaganda and disinformation (the deliberate circulation of false information), in psychological warfare and paramilitary activities. It penetrates and manipulates private institutions, and creates its own organizations (called "proprietaries") when necessary. It recruits agents and mercenaries; it bribes and blackmails foreign officials to carry out its most unsavory tasks. It does whatever is required to achieve its goals, without any consideration of the ethics involved or the moral consequences of its actions. As the secret-action arm of American foreign policy, the CIA's most potent weapon is its covert intervention in the internal affairs of countries the U.S. government wishes to control or influence. 

Romanticized by myths, the operations of the CIA are also beclouded by false images and shielded by official deceptions. Its practices are hidden behind arcane and antiquated legalisms which prevent the public and even Congress from knowing what the mysterious agency is doing--or why. This the cult of intelligence justifies with dramatic assertions that the CIA's purpose is to preserve the "national security," that its actions are in response to the needs of the nation's defense. No one-in an age in which secrecy is the definitional operative of security-need know more than that. 

The cult is intent upon conducting the foreign affairs of the U.S. government without the awareness or participation of the people. It recognizes no role for a questioning legislature or an investigative press. Its adherents believe that only they have the right and the obligation to decide what is necessary to satisfy the national needs. Although it pursues outmoded international policies and unattainable ends, the cult of intelligence demands that it not be held accountable for its actions by the people it professes to serve . It is a privileged , as well as secret, charge. In their minds, those who belong to the cult of intelligence have been ordained, and their service is immune from public scrutiny. 

The "clandestine mentality" is a mind-set that thrives on secrecy and deception . It encourages professional amorality the belief that righteous goals can be achieved through the use of unprincipled and normally unacceptable means. Thus, the cult's leaders must tenaciously guard their official actions from public view. To do otherwise would restrict their ability to act independently; it would permit the American people to pass judgment on not only the utility of their policies, but the ethics of those policies as well. With the cooperation of an acquiescent. ill-informed Congress. and the encouragement and assistance of a series of Presidents. the cult has built a wall of laws and executive orders around the CIA and itself, a wall that has blocked effective public scrutiny. 

When necessary. the members of the cult of intelligence, including our Presidents (who are always aware of, generally approve of, and often actually initiate the CIA's major undertakings). have lied to protect the CIA and to hide their own responsibility for its operations. The Eisenhower administration lied to the American people about the CIA's involvement in the Guatemalan coup d'etat in 1954, about the agency's support of the unsuccessful rebellion in Indonesia in 1958, and about Francis Gary Powers' 1960 U-2 mission . The Kennedy administration lied about the CIA's role in the abortive invasion of Cuba in 1961, admitting its involvement only after the operation had failed disastrously. The Johnson administration lied about the extent of most U.S. government commitments in Vietnam and Laos, and all of the CIA's. And the Nixon administration publicly lied about the agency's attempt to fix the Chilean election in 1970. For adherents to the cult of intelligence, hypocrisy and deception, like secrecy, have become standard techniques for preventing public awareness of the CIA's clandestine operations, and governmental accountability for them. And these men who ask that they be regarded as honorable men, true patriots, will, when caught in their own webs of deceit, even assert that the government has an inherent right to lie to its people.

The justification for the "right to lie" is that secrecy in covert operations is necessary to prevent U.S. policies and actions from coming to the attention of the "enemy'',or in the parlance of the clandestine trade. the "opposition." If the opposition is oblivious to the CIA's operations, the argument runs, then it cannot respond and the CIA activities stand a good chance of succeeding. Nonetheless in many instances the opposition knows exactly what covert operations are being targeted against it, and it takes counteraction when possible. The U-2 overflights and later, those of the photographic satellites were, and are, as well known to the Soviets and the Chinese as Soviet overhead reconnaissance of the United States is to the CIA; there is no way, when engaging in operations of this magnitude , to keep them secret from the opposition . It, too, employs a professional intelligence service. In fact. from 1952 to 1964, at the height of the Cold War. the Soviet KGB electronically intercepted even the most secret messages routed through the code room of the U.S. embassy in Moscow. This breach in secrecy, however. apparently caused little damage to U.S. national security. nor did the Soviet government collapse because the CIA had for years secretly intercepted the private conversations of the top Russian leaders as they talked over their limousine radio-telephones. Both sides knew more than enough to cancel out the effect of any leaks. The fact is that in this country, secrecy and deception in intelligence operations are as much to keep the Congress and the public from learning what their government is doing as to shield these activities from the opposition. The intelligence establishment operates as it does to maintain freedom of action and avoid accountability. 

A good part of the CIA's power position is dependent upon its careful mythologizing and glorification of the exploits of the clandestine profession. Sometimes this even entails fostering a sort of perverse public admiration for the covert practices of the opposition intelligence services--to frighten the public and thereby justify the actions of the CIA. Whatever the method, the selling of the intelligence business is designed to have us admire it as some sort of mysterious, often magical profession capable of accomplishing terribly difficult. if not miraculous, deeds. Like most myths, the intrigues and successes of the CIA over the years have been  more imaginary than real. What is real . unfortunately. is the willingness of both the public and adherents of the cult to believe the fictions that permeate the intelligence business. 

The original mission of the CIA was to coordinate the intelligence-collection programs of the various governmental departments and agencies, and to produce the reports and studies required by the national leadership in conducting the affairs of U.S. foreign policy. This was President Truman's view when he requested that Congress establish the secret intelligence agency by passing the National Security Act of 1947. But General William "Wild Bill" Donovan. Allen Dulles, and other veterans of the wartime Office of Strategic Services,a virtually unregulated body, both romantic and daring, tailor-made to the fondest dreams of the covert operator-thought differently. 

They saw the emergency agency as the clandestine instrument by which Washington could achieve foreign-policy goals not attainable through diplomacy. They believed that the mantle of world leadership had been passed by the British to the Americans, and that their own secret service must take up where the British left off. Thus they lobbied Congress for the power to conduct covert operations. 

That Truman attempted to create an overt intelligence organization, one .which would emphasize the gathering and analysis of information rather than secret operations, was commendable. That he thought he could control the advocates of covert action was, in retrospect, a gross miscalculation. Congress, in an atmosphere of Cold War tension, allowed itself to be persuaded by the intelligence professionals. With the passage of the National Security Act of 1947 it allowed the new agency special exemptions from the normal congressional reviewing process. and these exemptions were expanded two years later by the Central Intelligence Agency Act of 1949. Of the greatest and most far-reaching consequence was the provision in the 1947 law that permitted the CIA to "perform such other functions and duties related to intelligence ... as the National Security Council may from time to time direct." From those few innocuous words the CIA has been able, over the years, to develop a secret charter based on NSC directives and presidential executive orders, a charter almost completely at variance with the apparent intent of the law that established the agency. This vague phrase has provided the CIA with freedom to engage in covert action, the right to intervene secretly in the internal affairs of other nations. It has done so usually with the express approval of the White House, but almost always without the consent of Congress, and virtually never with the knowledge of the American public. 

Knowing nothing has meant that the public does not even realize how frequently the CIA has failed. In the field of classical espionage, the CIA's Clandestine Services have been singularly unsuccessful in their attempts to penetrate or spy on the major targets. The Penkovsky case in the early 1960's, the only espionage operation against the Soviets that the agency can point to with pride, with a fortuitous windfall which British Intelligence made possible for the CIA. The loudly heralded Berlin tunnel operation of the mid-1950's, actually a huge telephone wiretap-produced literally tons of trivia and gossip, but provided little in the way of high grade secret information that could be used by the agency's intelligence analysts. The operation's true value was the embarrassment it caused the KGB and the favorable publicity it generated for the CIA. Against China, there have been no agent-related espionage successes whatever. 

Fortunately for the United States. however, the CIA's technical experts, working with their counterparts in the Pentagon and in the private sector, have been able over the years to develop a wide array of electronic methods for collecting much useful information on the U.S.S.R. and China. From these collection systems, supplemented by material accumulated through diplomatic channels and open sources (newspapers, magazines, and so on), the analysts in the CIA and elsewhere in the intelligence community have been able to keep abreast of developments within the communist powers. 

The CIA's Clandestine Services have fared better in the area of counterespionage than in classical espionage. But here, too, the gains have been largely fortuitous. Most of the successes were not scored by spies, but secured through the good offices of defectors who, in return for safety, provided whatever information they possessed. And one must subtract from even these limited achievements the misinformation passed on by "deceptions"-double agents sent out or "surfaced" by the opposition to defect to, and confuse, the CIA.

In its favorite field of operational endeavor, covert action, the agency has enjoyed its greatest degree of success, but its blunders and failures have caused much embarrassment to the United States. Clearly, the CIA played a key role in keeping Western Europe free of communism in the early Cold War period , although it sadly erred in its attempts to roll back the Iron and Bamboo curtains in the late 1940's and in the 1950's. And it did perform successfully. if questionably, in the effort to contain the spread of communism elsewhere in the world. Some of its "victories," however, have since come back to haunt the U.S. government. One cannot help but wonder now if it might not have been wiser for the CIA not to have intervened in Guatemala or Cuba or Chile, not to have played its clandestine role in Iran or elsewhere in the Middle East, not to have become so deeply involved in the affairs of Southeast Asia, particularly Indochina. But the agency did, and our nation will have to live with the consequences of those actions. 

When its clandestine activities are criticized, the CIA's leadership often points with disingenuous pride to the work of the intelligence analysts. But here, too, the agency's record is spotty. Its many errors in estimating Soviet and Chinese strategic military capabilities and intentions have been a constant source of aggravation to government officials. Often, however, it has accurately judged the dangers and consequences of U.S. involvement in the Third World, especially Southeast Asia and Latin America. Ironically, the clandestine operatives who control the agency rely little on the views of the analysts within their own organization, and the White House staff functionaries tend to be equally heedless of the analysts' warnings. And since the CIA's secret intelligence is largely retained within the executive branch, there is of course no opportunity for Congress or others to use these warnings to question the policies of the administration and the covert practices of the CIA. 

Occasionally, clandestine operations backfire spectacularly in public-the U-2 shoot down and the Bay of Pigs invasion, for example and further investigations by journalists and uncowed members of Congress have in these instances given the public some idea of what the CIA actually does. Most recently, investigation of the Watergate scandal has revealed some of the CIA's covert activities within the United States, providing a frightening view of the methods which the agency has employed for years overseas. The assistance given the White House "plumbers" by the CIA and the attempts to involve the agency in the cover-up have pointed up the dangers posed to American democracy by an inadequately controlled secret intelligence organization. As the opportunities for covert action abroad dwindle and are thwarted, those with careers based in clandestine methods are increasingly tempted to tum their talents inward against the citizens of the very nation they profess to serve. Nurtured in the adversary setting of the Cold War. shielded by secrecy, and spurred on by patriotism that views dissent as a threat to the national security, the clandestine operatives of the CIA have the capability, the resources, the experience-and the inclination-to ply their skills increasingly on the domestic scene. 

There can be no doubt that the gathering of intelligence is a necessary function of modern government. It makes a significant contribution to national security. and it is vital to the conduct of foreign affairs. Without an effective program to collect information and to analyze the capabilities and possible intentions of other major powers, the United States could neither have confidently negotiated nor could now abide by the S.A.L.T. agreements or achieve any measure of true detente with its international rivals. The proven benefits of intelligence are not in question. Rather, it is the illegal and unethical clandestine operations carried out under the guise of intelligence and the dubious purposes to which they are often put by our government that are questionable both on moral grounds and in terms of practical benefit to the nation . 

The issue at hand is a simple one of purpose. Should the CIA function in the way it was originally intended to,as a coordinating agency responsible for gathering, evaluating, and preparing foreign intelligence of use to governmental policy-makers--or should it be permitted to function as it has done over the years,as an operational arm, a secret instrument of the Presidency and a handful of powerful men, wholly independent of public accountability, whose chief purpose is interference in the domestic affairs of other nations (and perhaps our own) by means of penetration agents, propaganda, covert paramilitary interventions, and an array of other dirty tricks?

The aim of this book is to provide the American people with the inside information which they need-and to which they without question have the right-to understand the significance of this issue and the importance of dealing with it.

next
THE CLANDESTINE THEORY 40s