OLD SPIES AND COLD PEAS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91B00134R000400130011-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 4, 2009
• Sequence Number: 11
• Publication Date: December 29, 1980
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

~~ ~ae~ a~~ ~~~~ ~'~~~
By~EFF STEIti~
HUTCH OF R:IBBITS GL'AS' ,MUSTERED FOR SFCi!IRITY
duty in the kitchen of the Holiday Inn in i1rleLean, Virginia, in early
October, pretesting samples of fried chicken, roast beef, and cold.peas
as the Association ofForsner lntelli~ence Ulficers sat down for a luncheon ai its
fifth annual convention. It wouldn't do to have America's finest ex-spies
knocked off in one fell swoop by a iCCB chef.
T'he association, founded in 1975 by senior ct:~ covert operator David STAT
Phillips (Cuba, 1960; $razi{,196~; Chile, 1973), appears tobehavinga vintage
year after five years of sour grapes. Membership has increased tenfold from an
original 250 to 2600 former CI,~; Fsr, and military intelligence agents and
officers, and this year, for the first time, corporate membership has been
solicited and enthusiastically.received (S500 a year.gets a company three frer
memberships). Lockheed was ferst in line. ..
A marked departure from earlier years, whrn the more prominent brethren ~ ' STAT
were busy ducking subpoenas or tele?sion network crews, the mood at. this
year's convention wa_. both joyous and combative, apparently thanks to the _ .
bracing Cold ~Var tingle in the air and the solid prospects for new laws making
it a crime to disclose the name ofa CIa officer learned-from publicly available
.sources.
This year's convention of spies found cause for joy in every corner. Fiey
"anti-c[.~" libera{s Frank Church, George ItlcGovern, 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
IntercaCback for thegovernment: The Congress hac! repealed the C1arkAmend- ~.
ment prohibiting covert intervention in Africa on the side ofapartheid and had
retreated from its early promise to.write a strong Ct a and FRt charter. As former
Ct~ intelligence chief and present Reagan adviser Ray Cline crowed to the '
assembled Ct:~, is st, and militan-men, "~1e are on the upgrade at last."
Or are they? :1 few days of milling around at the conference, dipping into
panel discussions and chatting ti~ith a number of intelligence offtcers in the
lobby or bar, suggests that the U.S. intelligence community remains mired iti ~ .
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.pretesi food for a com~ention
banquet. .
A series of sharp exchanges at the conference is instn-cti~~e. On Friday, '
October 3, a panel on Soviet Bloc intelligence operations un~ei!ed its star ?
ormer, the former chief of "disinformation" for Czech intelligence; Ladis-
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... ~ '_ III,.J1.11~i.Y ~ V
lav Bittman. Chaired by Ray Cline, the panel sought to draw outofBittman a
pattern of omnipotent t;GS and Eastern Bloc efforts to recruit Western joternal- -,
fists 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 erz{ unto itself. A corollary to this grand design. is the ~ ?
apparently. fashionable view that. Russian "moles" have. burrowed into the .
loose fabric ofAmerican lift, poking, climbing, and chewing thruway into the
highest echelons of the U:5. press,and the intelligence community itself_ hhus; ` - ~' ' ' ~ ?
an ediforialist'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 community - ~ ? ?
,aims. :. ?
Czech defector. Bittman, with Leninesque goatee and speaking in "Mission:
Impossible'_',.1astern European accents, played the role assigned to him in the
panel discussion. He.ttillated this speciaf.,audience, producing chi~c:kles when
JEt'fSTEI.~it F~nthiRplo~ teletoro~T be Pt+oeressiva 1
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he said he was "delighted to be here among all ~?~~, cniac " i T..rlo....r.,,-1.7:.,.~
?? ? ? x-ny ~.~~?, ,.~,?rnan narrates a stung of _~loscow-and Prague-controlled
propaganda operations: One would have thought the Western world. had
sun-ived the past three?decades only through some sort of magic potion.
But ctn oldtimer Harry Rositzke braced the pane[ and the audience with a
few short questions, bringing the fantasy bacI; do~:n to earth
I^irst
h
k
d
.
,
e as
e
,
.could. Wittman pinpoint one singie.deception Ghat resulted in a change of U.S.
of a $'
ic
p
rp~n~ on sue
blacl: propaganda operatioiis~-ours. or theirs-obscures the fact that interna-
tional problems can have realsocial~and