HUSH, HUSH

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP99-00498R000100150144-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 20, 2007
• Sequence Number: 144
• Publication Date: July 3, 1978
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Approved For Release 2007/06/22 : CIA-RDP99-00498R000100150144-9
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3 July 1978
Hush, Hush
The spy who came in and told
A issue in an Alexandria. Va., court-
room last week was whether top CIA
officials could hold an ex-spy to his writ-
ten agreement to let them censor anything
that he wrote about his undercover expe-
riences. Testified CIA Director Stansfield
Turner. "If he is able to get away with this,
it will prove to other people that we have
no control." In other words, the agency
wanted to chill into silence other potential
telltale spooks.
The case involved Frank Snepp, who
spent eight years with the CIA, 4% of them
in Viet Nam. Last November he pub-
lished a minutely detailed, 580-page book.
Decent Interval, in which he charged the
CIA with "a failure of judgment at the
highest levels" for not trying to evacuate
all of its Vietnamese agents before Saigon
fell to the Communists. Snepp disclosed
no secrets in his book. But by not letting it
be reviewed before publication, the CIA
claimed, he broke the contract he had
signed when he was hired by the agency.
During the two-day trial, crusty Fed-
eral Judge Oren Lewis sided with the CIA.
He denied a defense motion for a jury tri-
al. saying there were no facts to settle. He
lectured Snepp about his having no right
to reveal classified material. When re-
minded that the case involved no classi-
fied material, the judge accused the de-
fense of "dealing in semantics." Lewis'
judgment. which Snepp intends to appeal:
"I think it was a willful. deliberate and
surreptitious breach of contract and the
highest public trust. He never said he was i
doing it, a la the Pentagon papers, to save
the country. He did it for the money."
Lewis suggested that the proper penalty.
which he will announce as part of his writ-
ten verdict this week. "might be to relieve
him of all his ill-gotten gains." e
STAT
Approved For Release 2007/06/22 : CIA-RDP99-00498R000100150144-9