CIA VET RIPS AGENCY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00587R000200780025-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 11, 2010
• Sequence Number: 25
• Publication Date: April 22, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/11 :CIA-RDP91-005878000200780025-0
*1ADISON WISCOfi51i~ 5'1'A~~t. ~u~xivaL
22 April 1985
CIA vet
rips agency
By Peter Annie
Of The State Journal .
A ~5-year veteran of the Central
Intelligence Agency spoke against.
the CIA and its covert actions to
about 50 people Sunday at the Pres
House, 731 State St.
', Ralph McGehee's appearance was
sponsored by the Women's Interna-
tional League for Peace and Free-
dom and was the first event of Peace
Week which started Sunday and will
continue through next Sunday.-
McGehee said, "The CIA has
i never been a central intelligence
~ agency. Its intelligence in all cases is
skewed to support whatever the ad-
'I ministration wants." .
'Misinformation'
i
"Misinformation ? is a major re-
sponsibility of the CIA and the Amer-
ican.public is the major focus for this
j misinformation."? .~. ~ -
~ ~" He dted a number of experiences
he had while working with the CIA
I where the intelligence information he
gathered was changed or distorted.
On a CIA assignment in Thailand
', during the Vietnam War years, he
said, his job was to document the
number of Communists in a particu-
far region of Thailand. He said he .
eventually turned in a report listing
about 2,000 members of the Commu-
nist Party of Thailand in the region.
He said the CIA then began to
claim that there were only 2500 Com-
munists in the entire country, even
though he had shown that there were
at least 2,000 in just one of its prov-
feces.
I McGehee said the CIA purpose-
fully underestimated the number of
Communist Party members in Thai-
' land and particularly u1 Vietnam dur-
ing the war because the U.S. troops
~ were supposed to be protecting the
i South Vietnamese from a Communist
minority and, "If we had admitted
I .that we were fighting against more
than 50 percent of the population we
would be in trouble." .
Finally comploined
He said that when he became "so
furious and so fed up that I had to let
out my anger" he complained to his
superior -who put him on probation
- and he was given an office job back
in the United States.
"I left the agency in 1977 after find-
. ! ing it futile to protest from within."
McGehee charged the CIA has
~ been involved in a number of Latin
j American countries.
Nicaragua: He said, "You have to
understand what's going on now in
the CIA. It's killing people in Nicara-
gua."
El Salvador: He said that CIA per-
I sonnel compile lists of Communist
Party members in El Salvador, simi-
far to the work he was doing in Thai-
land. Ile said these lists eventually
!, get into the -hands of El Salvador's
right-wing death squads. -
The elections in El Salvador -of
~ Jose Napoleon Duarte were "manipu-
j fated lL1' the CIA," he said. "If there is
one thing that the CIA can do, ibis rig
an election." '-'.
Grenada: He said' that weapons
the U.S. troops found stockpiled in
'. Grenada after the invasion were
'.' planted there by the CIA."to justify
our intervention." --
McGehee, who is the author of a
book titled "Deadly Deceits"= which
he said contains documentation of his
claims about the CIA, told the audi-
ence he is frequently the subject of in-
' timidation tactics by the CIA.
"My phone has been tapped. My
hotel rooms are routinely entered.
' They're doing all sorts of things and
they're doing it not-so-sophisticatedly
? and I think for the sole purpose of in-
timidation."
He said that once he was talking
on the telephone and a person moni-
toring the phone call began yelling at
him. '
"I have been the subject of seven
different sting operations to get me to
do something illegal"
Today's Peace Week events u--
clude aprogram from ? to 9 p.m.
called "What would a peaceful soci-
ety look like and how can we get
there?" at the University of Wiscon- .
sin-Madison Memorial Union.
And at ?:30 p.m., at the Pres
House,- "The Indian human rights
struggle and non-violent social
change: A shared progressive agen-
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/11 :CIA-RDP91-005878000200780025-0