EDITORS FEAR INTELLIGENCE BILL

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000605830023-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 20, 2010
• Sequence Number: 23
• Publication Date: October 7, 1980
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/20: CIA-RDP90-00552R000605830023-6
THE TEMPLE UNIVERSITY NEWS
7 October 1980
By Daniel Tsang
Special to the News
This is the second part of an inter-
view with Ellen Ray (R) and
William Schaap (S), ? two of the
three co-editors of CovertAction
Information Bulletin, -target- of
Congressional legislation aimed at
criminalizing the disclosure (when
revealed from public documents) of
the identities of CIA covert
operatives and officers.
Q: How would the law affect pro-
gressive groups abroad that uses
your information?
R: They won't get our information.
S: We wouldn't be able to publish
the information. Also the bill has
extraterritorial effect as far as
Americans living overseas. They I
wouldn't be able to do these kinds
of exposures even living overseas.
If they were in a country where
there was an extradition treaty,
they could be extradited.
Q: Was the CIA able to push this
bill through Congress because. of
what happened in Jamaica (where
the CIA' Station Chief's house
allegedly was shot at)?
S: Oh, absolutely. Nobody thought
it would even come up_ this year.
For three years in a row a couple of
the real rightwingers had introduc-
ed roughly similar legislation. And
it never got anywhere, it never
Wien got out of committee. It's one
6i the reasons we think. the
Jamaica incident was a phony,,
because it was used by the CIA to'
.whip up , 1iis hysteria to get this
thing moving-like crazy; to-such am
extent that the Congressional
committees aren't even
deliberating on these things --
they're having rushed meetings
with everybody standing and yell-
ing, 'Get somr;thing fast, we don't
care what it. iar', ending up with
what we think is one*of the most
unconstitutional laws.
Q: Why do you think the Jamaica
incident was a phony?
S: First of all the concept of his
(Richard Kinsman) having been
Q: Why do you focus on the CIA?
Exposing covert action is an
endless task. Do you see any end !
in sight?
R: We focus on the CIA because no
other ' single agency or operation
has killed as many people around
the world as the CIA has. When :
you add up all the deaths.. _ . over
half a million, I believe (the CIA
was) directly responsible.
S: Nobody else, no other American '
agency or any other agency is
responsible quantitatively or
qualitatively for the same amount,
of destruction as the CIA. When
you think about Indonesia, Iran,
Guatemala, and Chile, and endless
other cases. There certainly`j
doesn't seem to be an end-in sight,-,
because they're not going to stop;
the dirty tricks. They usually say,
when something gets exposed,
'We stopped doing that,' but you
then find out two or three years
later that always at the exact mo-
ment they were saving we stopped
doing it, they were still doing it.
They change their names
sometimes, or they move to
another country. but they keep on'
doing it everywhere.
Q: How effective do you,think you
have been against the CIA?
R: I think the very fact that the
CIA calls us their Number One'
Enemy - I don't think that's true
at all - but I believe we must, be
affecting them. Wq're three peo-
ple, .doing this ... if there were
three hundred doing this, even
though the CIA probably hash
30-50 thousand employees, and
many many more when you count
their agents, I think we could br- I
ing them to their knees. .
Q: Even though you haven't been
exposing CIA agents in "deep
cover," that still bothers the CIA?.
S: Rarely, when we get informa-
tion or a journalist has a story for
us, we would do that, but it's very,
very difficult. But it hurts them
precisely because their major mis'
sion is recruiting agents to, in ef- I
feet be traitors to their own coun-
tries, and to do their dirty tricks
for.them. And their major vehicle
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/20: CIA-RDP90-00552R000605830023-6
. named (as CIA Station Chief in j States. The stories were bizarre,
Jamaica) just a day or two before they Just laid it on so thick and
_%r a
b
t
is untrue. We had named him nine;
months. earlier in the magazine;
(issue number 6). Nothing happen-
ed to him. Second, his family was
not home. Third, there's a question:
whether he was. even home.'
Fourth, a maid sleeping in the
back said she heard nothing and
slept all night. Fifth, the story
about bullets whistling through
the child's bedroom, aside from
the fact that the child was
thousands of miles away on vaca-
tion - weren't even true. And
E there were some bullet marks in
,-.the wall of the garage adjoining
the house....
R: And the so-called grenade was a
little hole in' the ground... .
S: And this thing was supposed to
happen early in the morning and',
he never called the police.
Ultimately, later the following i
morning neighbors called the
police. -
R: He called the opposition
newspaper, the CIA newspaper,
the Gleaner - that's another in-
dication that he wasn't even at
home when it happened. One
would assume that if all this hap-
pened, that he would. have called
the police or someone, immediate-
ly. The incident. allegedly happen-
ed at 2:30 in the morning, and he'
didn't notify the Gleaner until 8:30
or 9:30 the following morning.
S: There's probably no way of
knowing for sure, but it just looks
funny.
R: Another interesting thing is
that the.U.S. press did not send .
anyone -at all down to investigate
the alleged attack. They just took
the word of the Gleaner.
S: The stories that came out had
several not just inaccuracies but
absolute lies in them because
nobody investigated. They all talk-
ed about the housing having been
bombed, whereas as we said there
was a little hole in the ground, 30
yards away from the house, and no-~
grenade fragments. There was a
story in an American paper saying
'miraculously his young daughter
escaped injury.' Well, she was
away on vacation in the' United