OLD SPIES AND COLD PEAS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00806R000100140081-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 2, 2010
• Sequence Number: 81
• Publication Date: December 29, 1980
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/09/08: CIA-RDP90-00806R000100140081-6
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29 December 1980
Old Spies an Colo Peas
ByJEFF STEIN
HUTCH OF R:IBBITS WItS ,t1USTE'RED FOR SECURITY
duty in the kitchen of the Holiday Inn in McLean, Virginia, in early
October, pretesting samples of fried chicken, roast beef, and cold peas
as the Association ofFormer Intelligence Officers sat down fora luncheon at its
fifth annual convention- It wouldn't do to have America's finest ex-spies
knocked off in one fell swoop by a F GB chef.
The association, founded in 1975 by senior CIA covert operator David
Phillips (Cuba, 1960; Brazil, 1964; Chile, 1973), appears to be having a vintage
year after five years of sour grapes. Membership has increased tenfold from an
original 250 to 2600 former CIA, FBI, and military intelligence agents and
officers, and this year, for the first time, corporate membership has been
solicited and enthusiastically received (5600 a year gets a company three free
memberships). Lockheed was first in line.
A marked departure from earlier years, when the more prominent brethren
were busy ducking subpoenas or television network crews, the mood at this
year's convention was both joyous and combative, apparently thanks to the
bracing Cold War tingle in the air and the solid prospects for new laws making
it a crime to disclose the name of a CIA officer learned from publicly available
sources.
This year's convention of spies found cause for joy in every corner. Key
"anti-Ct.-1" liberals Frank Church, George McGovern, Birch Bayh, and John
Culver were in deep trouble in their reelection bids (and went on to lose). The
Supreme Court had grabbed Frank Snepp's "ill-gotten gains" from Decent
Interval hack for thegovernment. The Congress had repealed the Clark Amend-
ment prohibiting covert intervention in Africa on the side ofapartheid and had
retreated from its early promise to write a strong CIA and FBI charter. As former
CIA intelligence chief and present Reagan adviser Ray Clint crowed to the
assembled CIA, FBI, and military men, "We are on the upgrade at last."
Or are they' A few clays of milling around at the conference, clipping into
panel discussions and chatting with a number of intelligence o ricers in the
lobby or bar, suggests that the U.S. intelligence community remains mired in
delusions about itselfand the world about it. Its chronic and crippling problem
remains its inability to distinguish between intervention and intelligence,
security and repression. In the real world, moreover, its solution to these
problems is not as harmless as hiring rabbits to pretest food for a convention
banquet.
A series of sharp exchanges at the conference is instructive. On Friday,
October 3, a panel on Soviet Bloc intelligence operations unveiled its star
performer, the former chief of "disinformation" for Czech intelligence, Ladis-
lav Bittman. Chaired by Ray Cline, the panel sought to draw out of Bittman a
pattern ofomnipotent KGB and Eastern Bloc efforts to recruit \`estern joumaI-
ists and plant false information in the press.
The issue is important. In recent months, the devil theory of international I
relations has made a big comeback. The Soviet Union is said to be not merely
throwing its weight around and protecting its vital interests, like any other
great power; it is evil unto itself. A corollary to this grand design is the
apparently fashionable view that Russian "moles" have burrowed into the
loose fabric of American life, poking, climbing, and chewing their way into the
highest echelons of the U.S. press and the intelligence community itself. Thus,
an editorialist's support for human rights cannot merely be a sensitive response
to much of the world's state-organized cruelty; it has to be "proof' ofseduction
by Soviet intelligence's "false flag" technique of wooing liberals to communist
aims.
Czech defector Bittman, with Leninesque goatee and speaking in "Mission:
Impossible" Eastern European accents, played the role assigned to him in the
panel discussion. He titillated this special audience, producing chuckles when
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Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/09/08: CIA-RDP90-00806R000100140081-6