3 ON THE CIA--THE GOOD SOLDIER VS. THE OTHERS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01350R000200690002-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 20, 2004
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: July 23, 1978
• Content Type: NSPR

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Approved For Release 2005/08/22 : CIA-RDP88-01
DETROIT FREE PRESS
23 July 1978
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IN SEARCH OF ENEMIES: A CIA Story, John Stockwell
(W.W. Norton & Co., l12.95)
HONORABLE MEN: My Life in the CIA, William Colby and
Peter Forgath (Simon and Schuster, $12.95)
UNCLOAKING THE CIA, Howard Frazier, ed., (The Free
It Is hardly possible- to have a neutral opinion about the
'Central Intelligence Agency these days. The nation's chief
intelligence-gathering arm has been In the news on amore-or-
less regular basis for the past ten years, and most of it has not
been of the type to gladden the?heartsof Agency supporters.
Asassination attempts against Patrice Lumumba, Fidel
Castro, Salvador Allende and Rafael Trujillo, escapades with
right-wing insurgents all over the globe, domestic. surveil-
lance, letter-opening campaigns, .brush-fire wars, alliances
with Howard Hughes and the Mafia -? this is the stuff that
news of the CIA is made of. Reports of successful operations to,
help freedom fighters, save American lives or produce useful
intelligence operation --- these have a more difficult time
reaching our ears.
The three books at hand aren't likely to help anyone make
up his or her mind. "Uncloaking the CIA" is, according to the
publisher's notes a "collection of twenty-five electrifying
accounts of CIA wrongdoing" that were presented at Yale
University in 1975. The list of contributors gives an indication
that this makes no attempt at a balanced presentation; it
Includes Allende's widow and a Communist Party official.
One essay, by writer Kirkpatrick Sale, Is valuable. By its
very nature, Sale notes, the CIA has been involved In domestic
surveillance during every day of its existence. Part of its.
I unction is contacting foreign travellers coming to the U.S. and
Sale says the. Agency maintains 36 field offices around the.
country. Sale- examines the CIA- in terms of its bureaucratic
function, determines that it can hardly be anything other than
It is, and urges its abolition.
THERE IS MORE MEAT, and more credibility, to be found
in "Honorable Men" and "In Search of Enemies:' Reading the!
two as companion works, however,.is distressing -? they give
diametrically opposing views of similar events.. For. reasons-
that will be explained, Stockwell's account is more convincing.
William-Colby. is the quintessential civil servant, spending
most of his working years-in the CIA. He was appointed
director during the height of Watergate in. 1973, receiving the
news from Gen. Alexander Haig, and was summarily fired by
Gerald Ford in 1975.. .
He appears to be a genuinely brave man, having parachuted ?
Into occupied France and Norway during World War II. He
feels his term at the head of the CIA was marked by courage,
too. Colby made almost daily trips to Capitol Hill to talk about
the agency's activities, acts denounced by his opponents but.
that Colby felt were his constitutional duty.
His memoirs read like th se of a career civil servant. -
drained of life. One problem may be Colby's preoccupationk
with arcane internal politics; a greater problem lies in the f act
that the CIA received the text of this book before It was
published, through a long-standing agreement with its em-
ployes.
Like the good soldier he is, Colby writes, "I do not agree
with all the excisions the Agency required, but I have con-1
formed to them because I thought them reasonable, even if C
mistaken. I believe them. well within the proper limits of
concern for the legitimate secrecy of our intelligence sources;
and for the avoidance of diplomatic conflict over intelligence
sources."
Hisstory reads like the official account that it Is, one would
like to see what he left out. And although Colby continually I
speaks of his duties under the U.S. Constitution, the feeling is
left that his real loyalty is to the Agency. Assassinations are
banned because they are impractical as well as Immoral,
although the Phoenix program which Colby ran in Vietnam'
identified Viet Cong, he: accepts no responsibility- for their
subsequent execution bye the South Vietnamese.
THE STORY of John ' Stockwell, 'a 12-year CIA officer who I
ran the Angola Task Force and later quit- In disgust, by,
comparison, reads like a good guy vs. bad guy shoot-em-up.
Unlike Colby, Stockwell left the -blood in his tale; it was,
published without the usual advance copies to prevent the CIA!
from blocking its publication.
By his account, the Agency's case officers (the ones who runi
operations) are stupid, venal, occasionally crooked and bureau-4
crats through and through, as concerned about their own.
futures in the Agency as they are with the success of any
operation.
In a three-way fight in Angola, Stockwell says they-
supported the wrong side, spent millions of dollars on arma-
ments'the Africans didn't know how to use or maintain, and let:
millions more slip through the cracks. :.. - .
Its hired mercenaries drew world attention with psycho-
pathic killings and CIA officials consistently lied to Congress,
about the entire operation.
Stockwell is not a zealot. He admits he liked working for the
Agency and had a difficult time giving it up. But after.
observing its operations first-hand, he reaches the same!
conclusion as the 25 authors of "Uncloaking the CIA." !
"Our survival as a free people has obviously not bee
dependent on the fumbling activities of the clandestine service
the competitive energies of our people." -ALEX TAYLO
Approved For Release 2005/08/22 : CIA-RDP88-0135OR000200690002-7