ABOVE THE LAW

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00001R000400180019-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: November 11, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 22, 1999
• Sequence Number: 19
• Publication Date: December 13, 1966
• Content Type: NSPR

DEL , 3 1966
Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-0
STATINTL
Above the
Lu v
CPYRGHT
The Ceiuti?al Intelligence Agency, it appears,
can slander anyone with perfect impunity. In a
country which likes to boast that it lives under a
government of laws, the CIA stands outside the
law, intractable, despotic, sovereign. It has only
to invoke a magic phrase--national security-to
get away, figuratively, at least, with murder. It
has just succeeded in getting away with a shabby
piece of character assassination.
Juri Raus, an Estonian emigre employed by the
CIA, was instructed by that agency to destroy the
reputation of another Estonian emigre, Eerik
Heinv, by calling him a Commurist and Soviet
undefcover agent. Pau8 pursued his instructions.
successfully. Heine brought a suit against him two
years ago for slander. But the CIA forbade Raus
to testify, asserting that his statements would ;
Imperil agency sources. And on Thursday, Federal
Judge Rozel C. Thomsen put an end to the slander,
suit 'by ruling that the CIA enjoys a privileged,
position under existing law and can be just as
high-handed as it pleases when it thinks national
security may be involved.
This may. be good law; but it is very bad
-justice. Without venturing any opinion as to the
merits pf the name-calling controversy between
Messrs. Raus and Heine, we think the latter is .;
entitled to his day in court; and if the CIA
chooses to deny him this right, it ought at the very
least to pony up and indemnify him for the
injury it has done him.
There is, moreover, the lar er consideration that
,so privileged-and essentially lawless-a position
ernment that eavesdrops, slanders and shadows -';
citizens at its own whim is more a menace than a` -
safeguard. If the CIA is to be allowed to call '
Americans ugly names whenever it wants to,'.a
Americans ought to feel free in turn to call the
CIA anything they please.
sents to individual security, An arm of the Gov
as the CIA's is incongruous in a free society. We
can think of no protection it affords to national
security commensurate with the dangers it pre-
Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00001 R000400180019-5