TAKING C.I.A. CRITICS TO COURT

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00806R000100200059-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 9, 2010
• Sequence Number: 59
• Publication Date: October 17, 1981
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/09/09: CIA-RDP90-00806R000100200059-4
ARTICLE APPEARED
ON PAGF,_-Slj--
Z-H SPOOKS': LIB
THE NATION
17 October 1981
Taking CIA.
Criticst~ Court
EVE PELL
"ordinary citizen" c
. , That aside, and
writings or Fonzi's a
danger to anyone w
committed by the
Challenge may have
or the Federal gover
is associated with tl
general counsel for
Lung by critical portrayals of the Central Intelligence board boasts such
N Agency in books and in the press, a group of retired
agents has.resolved to fight back in the courts. Last.
year, members of the Association of Former Intel-.`
ligence Officers received a fund-raising appeal from one of
the organization's directors, David Atlee Phillips. The letter
asked the members, estimated to number about 2,500, to-
contribute to Challenge, a legal-action fund that sponsors.
Director of Central
Senator from_New
for Security Assist:
Reagan Administral
In addition to its moves to limit the Freedom Qf Informa-
tion Act, the Reagan Administration has demonstrated, its
intention to-increase the freedom of the intelligence agencies
lawsuits against the authors of books and articles alleging and curtail the freedom of their-critics. By-upholding the
misdeeds by intelligence operatives. State Department's. authority to deprive former agent Philip
Phillips, a former superspy, rose through the ranks to Agee of his passport, the Supreme Court dealt another blow
become the chief of the agency's Western Hemisphere Divi- to the C.I.A's critics [see Stephen Gillers,,"Iteasoning Not
sion before retiring -in 1975. He recently filed a S90million the Need," The Nation, July.25-August 1]. In short,
'the
libel and slander suit against Donald Freed, author of Death. time seems ripe for a return to the bad old days,when "na-.
in Washington, and several researchers who worked on the tional security" justified covering up murder,, torture and
book, which accuses the C.I.A. and Phillips of complicity in covert actions against foreign governments..
the 1976 assassination of Orlando Letelier in Washington, But there is a' positive aspect to the libel suits filed by
D.C. Letelier, a minister in former Chilean President Salina- Phillips: they provide a golden, opportunity for a thorough
dor Allende's government and an opponent of Augusto probe of all facets of his twenty-five-year C.I.A. career, '?
Pinochet, was killed in the explosion of a bomb attached to which included service in eight countries. He will have 'to
his car. Ronni Moffitt, a passenger in the car, also died in answer detailed pretrial interrogatories prepared by Freed,
the blast. and his lawyers, Melvin Wulf and -former U.S. Attorney
Phillips has also filed a S70 million action for libel and in:- General Ramsey Clark. In order to establish the truth .of
vasion of privacy against Gaeton Fonzi and The Washingto=' Freed's charges, the defense counsels will seek to establish
nian for an article by Fonzi discussing possible links between what role, if any,-Phillips played in organizing the coup that
Phillips and the assassination of John F. Kennedy as well as' overthrew the Allende government, in recruiting anti-Castro
C.I.A. plots on:Fidel Castro's life. Cuban exiles for dirty-tricks and in planning clandestine
In his fund-raising letter, Phillips said that both non- operations throughout the Western Hemisphere.
fiction and fiction would be fair game for Challenge: Should Phillips refuse to answer because of the oath not
Ex-intelligence officers have been battered around in re-':::; to discuss C.I.A. operations that all its. employees must
cent years, and we've taken the beating.... I believe a test: take, he will be unable to proceed with his suit. Should he
case should be mounted against writers who defame cx- respond to. the interrogatories, his answers will provide
intelligence officers, dead and alive, by using their names in' students of intelligence operations with a mother lode of in-
egregious novels. formation. Conspiracy buffs like Freed will have their suspi-
Phillips had a particular novel in mind-Spymaster, also by cions confirmed or denied by a source with firsthand
Freed, a tale about a lusty operative who becomes Director knowledge of C.I.A. operations in Cuba, Chile, Guaten::tla
of Central Intelligence in which real. and fictional characters and many other places at home and abroad.
are intermingled: The tactics employed by the former superspy and his at- I
The efforts to unite former agents behind lawsuits torney, James Bierbower, are worthy of note. They did not
against the C.I.A.'s critics recall the recent wave of "blue ' name the publisher of Death in Washington as a defendant,
lib" suits filed by police officers against civilians who have . as is customary in libel actions. Clark speculates that by us-
lodged complaints- against the officers [see Pell, "Libel ing the precedent established by the Supreme Court in the
as a Political Weapon," The Nation, June 6]. Certainly, case of former C.I.A. agent Frank Snepp-that the earnings
the tone taken by Phillips resembles the line taken by the of an author who violates his secrecy oath may be im-
police: We are just ordinary citizens defending our rights. pounded-Phillips hopes to make writers and researchers
Yet both groups have extraordinary powers, including, 'bear 'the entire burden of defending themselves and to
under certain -- ~- ~' ` t',_ " 1`1 en f1kwir .I-C- s1....0..... 1.d~'f~......1.-:......t:.t._
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/09/09: CIA-RDP90-00806R000100200059-4