THE TRENCHCOATS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00845R000100160051-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 14, 2010
• Sequence Number: 51
• Publication Date: March 1, 1981
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/14: CIA-RDP90-00845R000100160051-4
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PAG3-.-
ON
MOTHER JONES
Feb./March 1981
. $ '- THE FEDS Byleff Sreir
The 'Tre~cl~co~~s 4
T he morning after the Re-
publican election victory,
Louis. Wolf went to work as
usual in the National Press
Building, a few blocks from
the White House. Bleary-eyed
from the long election night,
Wolf bought coffee at the take-
out counter in the lobby and,'
with an armload of newspa-
pers, slipped into the elevator
crowded with reporters for the
five-floor ride to his office.
By four o'clock `that after-
noon, the- slim 40-year-old
man began pasting strips of
copy on layout sheets for his
publication. On the strips were
names-names of Central In-
telligence Agency undercover
officers in American embas-
sies around the world.
Lou Wolf has been exposing
the identities of CIA agents for
about five years now. He and
his associates-Washington,
D.C., attorney- William
Schaap and filmmaker Ellen M---
Ray-have, with the help of renegade for-.
mer CIA agent Philip Agee, ripped the
cover off more than 2,00.0 officers in the
"pages of their journal, Covert Action In-
formation Bulletin, and ire two books: Dir-
ty Work 1: the CIA in Western Europe and
Dirty Work 11. the CIA in Africa.
The CIA,.and now the Congress, has
labeled these four people everything from
traitors to Russian agents. But for the past
five years, legislation to put them out of
business has been stymied by a wobbly
congressional concern for. the First'
Amendment and by revelations during
the -'70s of CIA misdeeds-dossiers on
American citizens, assassination at-
tempts, the set-up of the coup in Chile.
But now, times have changed. On the
congressional, docket is the Intelligence
Identities Protection Act,. which would
make it a crime punishable by three years
in jail and a $10,000 fine to publish the
names of CIA personnel, even if the infor-
mation has been gathered from public
sources.
Prospects for the bill's passage were
favorable even in last year's Democrat-
controlled Congress. They have been ad-
vanced immeasurably by the November
defeat of half a dozen key liberals and by
the rantings of groups like the Heritage
Foundation, demanding that Congress act
on "domestic terrorists." The bill's prob-
able passage this year will set the stage for
a classic First Amendment showdown
with unpredictable results. In the months
ahead, the Intelligence Identities Protec-
tion Act and the constitutional issues
raised by it-just what can journalists re-
veal about the CIA-may prove an impor-
tant indicator of the Reagan administra-
tion's real interest in restricting free
speech and progressive political debate.
Bill Schaap put it succinctly: "For more
than a year now, we've been saying to the
press that there's no such thing as a bill
against us and not against you." And as
Schaap has pointed out again and again,
there are clearly unconstituti onal aspects
to the act. Under the legislation, it would
be illegal not only to publish the names of
CIA personnel gathered from public
"Yeah," responded Ted
Kennedy, his eyes fixed on the
text of the legislation. The bill
stalled after passing the com-
mittee and will have to be rein-
troduced in the current session
of Congress.
When "getting Agee" or
"getting" Covert Action Infor-
mation Bulletin becomes the
task, when it is paramount to
pass legislation aimed not at
restricting government infor-
mation but at restricting publi-
cation of information about
uncomfortable realities, then
we are faced with a constitutional threat
on a new scale.
T he CIA has been gritting its teeth'
over Covert Action Information Bul-
letin (and its predecessor, Counterspy, a
publication which continues under differ-
ent management) for years, trying unsuc-
cessfully through a series of propaganda
maneuvers to rustle up widespread sup-
port for jailing its editors. The problems
for the journal began with the murder of
. -
Richard Welch. -
In December 1975, official Washington,
and especially the intelligence commun-
ity, was in a tumult. Nixon had been top-
pled. The Church Committee, the Rock-
efeller Commission and the press were
dragging CIA skeletons out of the closet
one by one: Cuba; the Cgngo; Chile; Bra-
zil; Guatemala; and Operations Phoenix,
MK-ULTRA and CHAOS. Assassina-
tion attempts, drug testing, mail openings,
break-ins. CIA efforts to move covertly
into Angola were thwarted by intelligence
agency critics.
STAT
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/14: CIA-RDP90-00845R000100160051-4