OUTLAWING THE IDENTIFICATION OF U.S. INTELLIGENCE AGENTS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000403710013-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 16, 2010
• Sequence Number: 13
• Publication Date: April 9, 1981
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/16: CIA-RDP90-00552R000403710013-4
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Good Morning. America
WJLA TV
ABC Network
April 9, 1981 7:00 AM
Washington, DC
Outlawing the Identification of U.S. Intelligence Agents
DAVID HARTMAN: Some years ago, G. Gordon Liddy, con-
victed Watergate conspirator, suggested that Jack Anderson should
be killed for printing information that exposed a United States
agent abroad. Jack Anderson denied the charge.
Right now, Congress is considering two bills that would
make it a felony to reveal the names of U.S. intelligence agents
in the press. Well, this morning we have a Face-off on the ques-
tion: Should journalists who identify U.S. intelligence agents
be prosecuted?
G. Gordon Liddy is with us this morning. He says yes,
they should. Morton Halperin is the Executive Director of the
Center for National Security Studies. He says no.
Mr. Casey, Director of the CIA, Mr. Halperin, says the
publication of names of agents, in his judgment, led -- could
have led to the murder of an agent in Greece, and also to attacks
on agents in both Jamaica and Mozambique. Why are you opposed to
a law that would attempt to stop the publication of agents' names?
MORTON HALPERIN: Well, I don't believe, in any of those
cases, there is any evidence that the publication of names In the
United States is what caused those attacks.
But more fundamentally, what this law would try to do
is make it a crime for journalists to read public sources of in-
formation, including information published by the government and
put-out by the government, and deduce from that who CIA agents
may be. There are a number of cases in the past where that infor-
mation has been very important to the public, exposing corruption,
exposing illegal activities, exposing activities of the CIA that
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