REPORT ON RICHARD WELCH WITH WINSLOW PECK AND DOUG PORTER - MEMBERS OF COUNTERSPY STAFF

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01314R000100370007-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 30, 2004
• Sequence Number: 7
• Publication Date: December 29, 1975
• Content Type: TRANS

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PUBLIC AFFAIRS STAFF
All Things Considered.....
WETA Radio
NPR Network
December 29, 1975 5:00 PM CITY Washington, D.C.
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SUBJECT Report. on Richard Welch
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SUSAN STAMBERG: Last week in Athens, CIA section chief
Richard Welch was shot to death outside his home. The assassin
has not yet been caught. But over the weekend, the Director of
the CIA pointed an accusing finger not at extremists abroad, but
at a group here in Washington which devotes itself fulltime to
muckraking the U.S. intelligence community. The group calls itself
the Fifth Estate and had uncovered Welch's identity and home address
in Counter--Spy, its quarterly magazine. Now the Fifth Estate is
getting death threats.
WINSLOW PECK: I don't look upon Congress as saving us.
What is going to save us is everyone in this country just saying
no. So I would say with the CIA, certainly we have to abolish it.
It has become just a -- perhaps one of the most heinous gangs of
cutthroats and murderers that the world has ever seen.
At this particular time, I think our goal is certainly
to disorganize it, destabilize it, through whatever means are
necessary.
JEFF STEIN: That was last September. Winslow Peck, a
member of the Fifth Estate laying out his group's plans to desta-
bilize the Central Intelligence Agency. Also that month, in its
magazine Counter-Spy, the Fifth Estate had named Richard S. Welch
as a spy for the CIA. Eight days ago, Welch was gunned down out-
side his home on his way to work in Athens. Nine days ago, the
Fifth Estate was an unknown group of radical ex-intelligence
officers. Over the weekend, the Director of the Central Intelli-
gence Agency, William Colby, denounced the group for what he
called irresponsible and paranoid attacks on employees of his
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agency. But Fifth Estate spokesman Doug Porter says today that
they are not to blame for Welch's death, that Welch was known all
around the world as a CIA agent.
DOUG PORTER: He was originally exposed in 1967 in an
East German publication called Who's Who in the CIA. He was ex-
posed when he was in British Guiana in 1969. He was exposed while
he was in Peru. He was exposed oac. a;;a in where he weent to Gre Ce.
And we were not connected with any of those disclosures.
The fact is that he was the type of CIA agent who does
function under what's known as light cover. They don't give them
much cover at all because they want people to know that they can
go to the CIA. There has to be an obvious connection for them to
be able to function in a politically powerful way. And Welch was
one of those people.
STEIN: Porter says his group only publishes the name
of CIA agents when those names have popped up in print overseas.
PORTER: We reveal the names of agents who have already
been revealed in the countries. We get newspaper reports from
those countries and then we reprint those names.
So, if a. deep-cover agent was exposed in, let's say,
Germany and it appeared in the German newspapers, then we would
reprint it for the people of the United States.
STEIN: Porter maintains his group supports the collection
of information by the CIA. What lie's against are the so-called
dirty tricks, the assassinations and overthrowing of governments.
Even critics of the intelligence agencies themselves
have had a hard time deciding how to separate information collec-
tion and dirty tricks. I asked him if the Fifth Estate could be
expected to do that.
PORTER: At this point, no. I think it's a very muddled
question; it's one that really does need to be sorted out. The
National Security Agency certainly collects more information than
CIA does. CIA agents over the years, their role as clandestine
enforcers of U.S. foreign policy has grown rather than shrunk.
And there's no clear guidelines for what they're supposed to be
doing, so it's no wonder that they get confused. I'd be confused
too if I was in their situation.
STEIN: Breaking into the limelight can have its price.
While I was there, the telephone rang. The caller was not polite.
He said he would kill everyone there. There have been other threats.
PORTER: Well, we have received several death threats over
the phone. One was some individuals living in Silver Spring, Mary-
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land that said at two o'clock on Friday that we'd be killed. The
other thing is that on December 26th, late in the evening, a man
walked into a TV station in Houston and announced the creation
of a new organization called Veterans Against Communist Sympathi-
zers . They announced that they were going to kill members of
the Fifth Estate, Frank Church, Fred Harris, and Ronald Dellusis.
And the FBI is supposedly investigating it. They haven't talked
to us, but they have talked to the congressional people involved,
and that's how we found out.
STEIN: Porter says the Fifth Estate will continue to
publish names of CIA agents abroad., as well as expand its targets
here at home.
PORTER: We have an issue of Counter-Spy coming out in
February. We're going to publish the names of agents in Sweden,
France, and Angola. They're agents whose names have been revealed
in the press in those countries, and we intend to continue our
activities, not only directed towards the CIA, but also towards
other institutions which threaten the basic principles on which
this country was founded.
PORTER: The military, the FBI, drug enforcement, etcetera.
The next issue of Counter-Spy is going to focus primarily on the
military.
STEIN: All sides on the question of the CIA admit the
screws are tightening; the whiff of court actions are in the wind
as much as the gunpowder of spies killing spies.
Richard S. Welch will be buried with full military honors
at Arlighton Cemetery this week.
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