MAILER HEADLINES COUNTER-SPY PITCH

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01315R000200180005-2
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 15, 2004
• Sequence Number: 5
• Publication Date: March 25, 1974
• Content Type: NSPR

WASI1INGTON STAR
Approved For Release 2004/i0i J &-RDP88-01315R000 O 8?W
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By Louise Lague
Star-News Staff W. iter
Norman Mailer didn't look much like a
media heavy, slipping in the front door that
way, in a baggy pin-striped suit. With his
pale gray quasi-afro and watery eyes,. he
could have been just anyone from around
the neighborhood in Cleveland Park, a place.
where free schools flourish in rumpus roods
and cars still bear raggy remnants of Me-
Govern stickers.
But it was Mailer and he had conic to
make his announcement again. A year ago,
Mailer threw himself a 50th birthday party
at the Four Seasons and charged his friends
$50 to get in. At the end of the glittery, liquid
and boisterous evening, a swaying, blood-
shot-eyed Mailer announced he was starting
the Fifthstate - a people's counterespion-
age organization designed to spy right back.
at the CIA and the FBI to keep the nation
,.from "sliding towards totalitarianism."
TIHEEAI,Tlldidn'tshakeveryrtruchand
people v,'ent home. The next day, a soberer
Mailer said he wa:; quite serious. But with
~r.. ' the fuss over "Marilyn," nothing much
came of Mailer's Fifth Estate in 1973. Here
and there, he slipped it cautiously into his
speeches at colleges, and came up with a
.more or less solid I50 volunteers.
Meanwhile, some former-agents, former-
journalists and Vietnam Veterans had form-
ed in Washington something called CARIC
-- the Committee for Action/Research on
the Intelligence Community - with an eye
to ending clandestine foreign intervention
and domestic repression and staving off Or-
well's Big Brother from 1984.
. CARIC already has two programs under
way. The Intelligence Documentation Cen-
ter is a library of information on "U.S. intel-
ligence and secret government operations
available to journalists, researchers,
scholars and concerned citizens."
THE COUNTER-SPY campaign is an at-
tempt to organize groups of the local level
to gather the information.
-Mailer read about CARIC in the Village
Voice, fot together with CARIC coordina-
tors Tim Butz,, and Winslow Peck, and a
natural merger was horn. CARIC was work-
ing hard but wasn't famous, Mailer was fa-
mous but not working hard.
mt.,. .,...,. ....11111 rl'r.n (lrrrn nivii9rr
haired ladies with nametags. "We're all
part of the central cause. 'I'lie central cause
still exists, in spite of what you read in the
papers."
MAILER MOVED about, surrounded by
circles of people, most of whom just an d
to stare at him. He was very placid, not at
all the legendary Mailer who was once de-
scribed as a fight looking for a place to hap-
pen. A man from the Committee to Investi-
gate Assassinations pressed an old-fashion-
ed copybook into his hands. Inside, the
pages were filled with blue ball point long-
hand. "My daughter wants you to read it,"
he said, "she's 24."
P,c1, WiNIsldtu
Mailer said he never woman in the hallway.
reads manuscripts but a very bored radical right
would give it to a good read- now, and I'd love to leave,.
er he knows. but the person who brought
Finally lie mounted a me wants to ask Mailer
stair landing to speak. With something.
one hand on the balustrade New York television
and the other gesticulating director Paul Jacobs, in a
from the elbow, he spoke at .: "Trotskyite red" shirt and
great length about himself . -;a shaven head, took the
and his cause. ';floor. Ile first complained
"This idea came to me that he didn't trust men
through the aegis of an with "two last names and
angel," lie said. "This angel tasseled Bass Weejuns
said: 'You are the dauphin. without socks," then he
You must ride forth and analyzed what was wrong
bring this idea. You must with the evening.
save France.' The angel "People are starting
was a drunk and he meant other conversations. People
America. are dying to leave. Mailer
So I said `Okay, anything . talked too long. This is the
to relieve my illimitable t: wrong audience. There's no
boredom."' social status to be gained
sources is a fine idea," he
said. "The people from
CARIC have brains, pluck,
energy and dedication. I
I am just Phincas T.
Dauphin. If this remains my
plaything, nothing will hap-
pen to it. I just want to be
remembered as old Uncle
Norman who had something
to do with it."
Committee for a Fifth Estate, was an- A,11 A A~V:raa /x~a+ ...,,_.? .a
nounced Saturday night at a $10-a-head joke later and gave the
wine and cheese party in the Newark Street landing to Winslow Peck.
,home of Sam Smith, editor of the D.C. Ga- Peck talked more, people
zctte. asked questions at greatr
"I got into this because I'm in the D.C. length.
Statehood Party," Smith said. "A lot of . "1 don't have a husband.
1 " i -A rr rid n t Ire ? now', but I'll) living .in the'
c
"Ithink this pooling of re- ? here." }
Ile started pitching for
funds like a tent preacher,
and girls circulated with sib
ver Revere bowls, for the
checks. Mailer put down his
drink and wrote out a SS00
check right there on the
newel post.
lie never told his joke.
The earth didn't shake very
much, and people started to
go home. Mailer was last
seen cornered by a vocifer-
ous (;ray-haired woman
with a name tag.
these poop V. ac.
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houseful of anonym i A 1A,
confid
necks, girls in black, and vociferous gray- confided a itiiddle aged'