'I NEVER FINGERED RICHARD WELCH . . .'

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP99-00498R000100040087-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Sequence Number: 87
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

U
STAT
Approved For Release 2007/06/21: CIA-RDP99-00498R000100040087-5
1 March 19'76
Letters to the editor I
never Fingered
"C.I A- Diary.'
. CIA.:employe, is the author of
(NOTE,~ lllr. Agee, a former
Cambridge, En an
Philip Agee
.Richard ,Y ele
The comment accompanying your
front-page photograph of me on
Jan. 16 was in error. I never "fin-
gered" Richard Welch to Counter-
-spy, the-.Athens .'Yews or to any
other publication or person. How-
ever, I continue to help other jour-
-nalists, and would have helped the
Athens News in identifying the CIA
people if asked...:
Welch was identified imprint as a
CIA officer as early as 1968, and
several-times thereafter. The view
thatI am behind the rash of identi-
fications is inaccurate. Increasing
ly, journalists and others opposed to
the CIA's promotion of repression
are determined that CIA people ac-
cept. personal responsibility for
their acts and those of the institu-
tion to which they belong.
Exposirig:CIA people will force
untimely and continual personnel
change-overs, wit: no danger of vio-
lence if'exposed people return to
Langley, Va. Thus, the policy'
underlying the CIA's work _ which
shows no possibility for change until
fundamental internal charges occur
. - can be blunted, to some degree at
least, by weakening the instrument
through which the policy is applied.
COTnmeimqiy
Hugh Sidey (WTOP TV and Radio): ?` The
problems of--Vietnam, Watergate, CIA. FBI grew out
of secrecy, out of the arrogance and ignorance of men
who felt safe in their bureaucratic closets, behind the
facades of national -security. The trouble we have
today in all this did not begin by people giving away
classified material, it began by people making their
"We're living in a touch world. We're not living in one-
where everybody's operating in an opened society like
Approved For Release 2007/06/21: CIA-RDP99-00498R000100040087-5