THE MAN WHO SELLS BRO[ ]

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01314R000100190006-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 2, 2004
• Sequence Number: 6
• Publication Date: October 8, 1978
• Content Type: MAGAZINE

STAT
Approved For Release 2004/09/28 : CIA-RDP88-0131
ARTICLE APPEARED
ON PAGE 4
THE PARADE MAGAZINE
Washington Post
8 October 1978
n December 1976, a man in a shape
by Joseph_ E. Persico
less gray suit entered a suburban
j building within sight of the nation's
capital. In an office on the ninth
floor he peeled $2000 from a thick roll
of bills and left carrying a cardboard.
box. In it were thousands of micro
filmed documents marked "Secret!'and "Top Secret." The man was an
official of the Soviet embassy. -The
ninth-floor office belonged to the Car-..
rollton Press, Inc. And the transaction
was completely legitimate.
The Soviet Union was merely-one
among hundreds of subscribers to a
highly unusual publishing venture ;
an enterprise possible only in a society.,
as open as the United States's. Carroll-
ton's Declassified Documents- Refer-
ence System sells recently unveiled
official secrets from the' files of the
CIA, FBI, Pentagon, State Department
and other federal agencies. The idea
was born in the fertile imagination of
William Walter Buchanan,- a former
CIA officer and Carrollton's founder.
Buchanan, 50, left the CIA in 1957.
After several years as. a management
consultant and publishing executive,
he formed the Carrollton Press in 1967.
Initially, the firm published indexes. tor
scholarly journals and innocuous gov-.
ernment documents of interest" pri
manly to libraries.'
Then, in 1974, Congress overhauled.
the Freedom of Information Act. Sud
denly; -thousands.;--of , officiall._secrets.
were being, declassified. '1- .knew;; ,
Buchanan says, "that there was no way.
for scholars, libraries or ordinary citi-
zens to find out. which documents
were available. Nobody in the govern-
menteven knew."
In time-honored American entre-
preneurial tradition, Buchanan. saw an
unmet need and filled it. He hired
Annadel Wile, a former information
processing expert with the CIA, and-1
the Carrollton Press began purchasing
copies of declassified. documents.
These were summarized, indexed, re-'
produced on microfilm and--,offered
initially to those libraries able to meet
the stiff subscription ratApl wggr
documents declassified in a particular
year, $3950 for the 16,000 documents
Today,-the Declassified Documents!
Reference System regularly scoops the
major news and publishing media. Inj
September 1977, for example, news-
papers, wire services and magazines-
carried a story-gleaned from a new
book, Marina and Lee--reporting that.
Lee Harvey Oswald had planned 'to
kill Richard Nixon in Dallas months
before Oswald assassinated President
Kennedy. Subscribers to the Carrollton
service knew about the Nixon threat a
full year before it came out in the pop-,
uiar press, The story appeared among
325 Oswald-related documents which
the Carrollton. Press had legally ob
tained from government files.
-In the spring of 1978, Legend: The
Secret Life of Lee Harvey Oswald, a:
heavily promoted book by Edward Jay
Epstein, shed new light on Oswald's
life in the Soviet Urijon. Theinforma-
tion was not'news,'however, to- Car.
rollton subscribers 'who- had read
about Oswald's Russian sojourn 181
months before the. book came out.
The Carrollton- report included Pd
verbatim transcript of the diary- Os
wald kept, poor spelling and all. Arti
Oct. 21,1959, entry, for example; gives
Oswald's reaction upon being denied=j
Soviet citizenship: "I decided to end
it. Soak'ristin cold water to: numb the
pain. Than slash my left wrist.-"Than
plang wrist into. bathtub of hot water.
Somewhere, a.violin -plays, as I?
watch my life whirl away." Soviet offi-
cials found Oswald bleeding.ta death:.
.and rushed him_to a hospital in time. to
save him: One can. only speculate on.
the course bf history had =they-; arrived
an hour later.. c .
Subscribers to the Declassified Doc-
uments Reference System can, also l
read of Oswald's bitterness when his
proposal of marriage was rejected by
Ella, a beautiful Russian Jew.: "I realize
she was never serious with me, but
only exploited my being an American
to get the envy of the other girls who
consider me different from the Russian I
Boys.-1 am miserable,'. ..
~~. GtaS
iTq I 45-- I.
Qt c "''-e'v~cf
a, c. v yeti e,,.ls
would have on a meeting or a confer
ence_" ' ..`
The report stated that I'a_very small.
dose.' of LSD was placed in a bottle of
Cointreau. One. man who drank un-
wittingly franc' the bottle- was-.- Dr.:
Frank Olson,.. an Amrr? civilian em
ployee -who- thereafter- went. into a.
state of depression. and, 10 days after
the drug experiment; plunged. to his
death from a New York.City: hotel-
room.
Another...Carrotlton document re-
veals some-.CIA thinking at the time
regarding the - potentiaf - of drug`:..`
"Some of the individuals in 'the
agency had to know, tremendous
amounts of information and if away
could be found to produce amnesiac
... after the individual left the agency
-it would be a remarkable thing."
The Declassified. Documents Refer-
ence System also scooped The, New {
York Times- as well as a number of
other major dailies and television7tews-
departments on these former-secre":..
that U-5 -forcesstood ready in 1964: to.
back up a military coup against Brazil's
civilian govemment;: that the Soviet)
Union probably suffered several au-1
clear power plant accidents in the late.
1950's and. early 1960's; and that- the:
U.S. Army Chemical Corps. had had+
studies done to leans how synthetic:
marijuana might be mass-produced as]
a. chemical warfare agent.
Some newspapers, to make sure"that
no potential news from the Declassi-
fied Documents- Reference System
slips past them, have become sub-
scribers- These include such distant
journalistic cousins as The New York
Times and the National Enquirer.
Numerous foreign governments be-?
In Jul .1977 the Washington Post' sides the Soviet Union are interested .'
or 14R0QP1QAMG06lQolete.-secrets._in a
Secret Experiments ori- Behavior Con-1 letter postmarked "Peking," a Mr- 1
trol_" Subscribers to the Carrollton } Huang Fu-sheng..book buyer for the