THROWN BACK INTO THE COLD

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000505080017-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 10, 2010
• Sequence Number: 17
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/10: CIA-RDP90-00552R000505080017-7
ARTICLE ,YPEAREP
O N PAG ~'_ ~O
Reporter delves
into clandestine
CIA o rations
By David L. Preston
Journal associate editor
THE IRE JOURNAL
WINTER 1980 STAT
If Paisley's final mission was to 'deft
mine what the Russians 'knew abo
U.S. satellite secrets, then the CIA u
derstandably would want to keep site
about it. The agency alternately h
lied, withheld information and r
to cooperate with the Senate Intel
gence Committee, whose ongoing invt
Ligation into the Paisley case was a c
rect result of the- News-Journal disc]
Trento never took that other job.
dozens of News Journal stories over t
last 15 months, he and reporter Richa L
Sandza disclosed that John Paisley he....
the highest of national security clear-
ances, was still on the agency payroll I
four years after his supposed retirement,
had debriefed important Soviet defec-
tors, had been CIA contact man for the
Watergate "plumbers" and worked with
Henry Kissinger on the first Strategic
Arms Limitation agreement before it
was signed in.1972. -
The stories, resulting` from a com-
bination of'established sources and in-
Joe Trento,- a;-reporter for the Wil-
mington, Del:; News-Journal papers,
was drinking?his:ntorning cup of coffee
in the newsroor ' one Tuesday in Sep-
tember 1978 when Phil Milford, the
police reporter, strolled by and handed
him a 2-inch -AP :clipping from the
morning paper.
"This might interest you," said Mil-
ford. "-It's just a little CIA story; a CIA
,
guy drowned on Chesapeake Bay." identified by the FBI as Paisley's and of
"
ventive investigative reporting, raised
the possibility that the'body pulled from
the Chesapeake Bay on-Oct. 1
1978
ews ournal=stories
- Trento; whose -N
J facially ruled a suicide in fact may not
had been the first in the-nation on cru--- have been his. Further; .two ,weeks be-
cial aspects of the CIA and ITT in fore the New York Times ,reported it,
volvement in Chile and a justice Depart- the' News Journal reporters'-wrote .in a
ment investigation into perjury by Rich- copyrighted story that the CIA hid from
.and Helms; barely was -awake,-let alone. the White House and Congress-the fact
interested. His mind was on a 'job offer -that Soviet agents had'obtained copies
he was about to acceppt on another news- =
paper. = r.:!;.: ;~.;.:..
He glanced ai'tfie clip half-7reartedly-.
John Paisley;'a'"rttired CIA- analyst, was
missing in Chesapeake Bay after having
gone out sailing'Sept.'24. OK, thought
Trento, the name rings a bell, but so
what? Hundreds of names had popped
up during two years of covering CIA-re-
lated stories for the Wilmington papers,
But then he made some phone calls.
Those early calls began an investigation
that continues to this day, an investiga-
tion into the bizarre disappearance-of 7
man who was'-not a low-level analyst--'
as the CIA ardently' had insisted fore
months - but who may ,in fact have
been directing a secret CIA operation to
track down the theft of American spy
satellite secrets in the final -days before
he disappeared.
tion that would encourage more covert
CIA activities and keep them secret
from Congress and public.
The bill, called the "Intelligence Re-
form Act of 1980." would exempt the
CIA from complying with requests for l
information made under the Freedom
of Information Act, except for requests,
by individuals for data about thcrn-!
selves.
Much of the language of the bill was
drafted at the CIA. The bill was intro-
duced a day after President Carter, in
his State of the Union address, called for
removal of "unwarranted restraints" on
the intelligence community.
If signed into law, the bill would
make it a crime for any official or for-
mer official to use classified information
in making public the names of any intel-
ligence agent, informant or source. The'
penalty would be a prison sentence of
up to 10 years and a fine up to $50,000.
It would be a crime for someone outside
the government to disclose such names
"with the intent to impair or impede the
foreign intelligence activities of the
United- States,"- with a penalty of one l
year in jail and a $5,000 fine.` ' - 1
This legislation would deal a serious i
blow to the efforts of investigative re-
porters to ferret out facts' about- what
the CIA does in the name of the Ameri
can people. Significantly; Trento and
Sandza found no official or former offi-
cial willing -to disclose classified in-
formation anyway. so a bill. of-this'sort
would serve only to encourage further
CIA secrecy:
Some of the most important stories-of
the last 30 years have involved the CIA'
yet those stories remain almost exclu-?f
sively in the hands of the journalistic
Powers that Be and a,liandful of free-
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/10: CIA-RDP90-00552R000505080017-7