UNDERCOVER SLANDER

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00001R000400190011-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: November 17, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 28, 2000
• Sequence Number: 11
• Publication Date: May 14, 1966
• Content Type: MAGAZINE

THE NEW REPUBLIC
14 may 1966 STATINTL
THEN WREPUBLIC A Journal of O
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Published weekly (except July and August when It is biweekly) and distributed by The New Republic, 1244 19th St., N.W.,
Washington, D. C. 20036. Phone FEderal 8-3494. Single copy 95c. Yearly subscription, $8; Foreign, $g; Armed Forces per-
sonnel or students, $6.5o. Send all remittances and correspondence about subscriptions, undelivered copies, and changes of
addresses to Subscription Department, The New Republic, 381 West Center Street, Marion, Ohio 43301. Copyright 01966
by Harrison-Blaine of New Jersey, Inc, Item S. Second Class Postage Paid at Washington, b. C. Indexed In Readers' Guide.
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The LSD Trigger - Tom' Buckley
What Is the Clinical Evidence?
- Lcszek Ochota' 21
Rhodesia - A Taste"of Clover-,
- Russell Warren Howe q
Spying for Industry
- James Ridgeway 10
Vietnam's Twelve Elections
- Bernard B. Fall 11
Wanted: Housing for NATO Headquarter.
Wallace-ism Is What Alabama
(White) Wants - Pat Wafters 7
Undercover Slander, Safety Standards ?
COMMENT-5-6
Booxs - essays, poems and reviews
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Undercover Slande,
Does, legal precedent or common decency give any government of-
ficial the right to set out deliberately to destroy a man's reputation,
and to do so with absolute impunity and absolute immunity? Joseph
McCarthy thought there was such a right, and he exercised it. But at
least he, as a senator, was not immune to political retaliation. His al-
legations could be challenged and were. He could be put on the
defensive and was. What, however, if the slanderer is hidden and
insists he is privileged not to disclose the evidence for his slanderous
attack? That, at bottom, is -the question that is being tried in Balti-
The case involves a paid secret agent, working in Washington, D.C.,
who had been ordered to spread certain stories about an Estonian
emigre whom the Central Intelligence Agency wished to discredit. In
Ronald Steel, Leonard E. Nathan, John Wain,'
Stanley Kauffman", Gerald Jonas,
by David Dempsey, Reed Whittemore,,
r Clive Barnes, Walter Thabit 33
victor Lange, William McPherson,
Michael Alderman, Remington Rose,
CORRESPONDENCE, 45
THE STAFF
Books and Arts Editor-Robert Evett
Associate Editors - James Ridgeway,
Andrew Kopkind
Managing Editor - Alex Campbell
if Ajsistant to the EditoiI.
Copy Editor- Lucille Davis
Christopher Jencks, Gerald W. Johnson,'
Joseph Featherstone, Helen Fuller,
Frank Getlein, B. H. Haggin,
Morton H. Halperin, Irving Howe,
Contributing Editors: Alexander M. Bickel,.:
Murray Kempton, Helen Hill Miller
Publisher - Robert B. Luce
Circulation Manager - Bertha Lehman
i Business Manager - Glenon Malthiesen
New York Advertising Representative -
E. Laurence White Jr., Good-Laidley-White'
fo East 42nd Street, New York, N. Y.,20027
November, 1964, Eerik Heine, a resident of Rexdale, Ontario, and a
naturalized Canadian citizen, filed a $1-1o,ooo slander suit against
Juri Raus, a fellow Estonian emigre employed by the US Bureau of
Public Roads. Heine asserted that on three occasions Raus had accused
him publicly of being a Communist and an agent of the Soviet Secret
Police. Raus answered on January 3, -1965 that he had had "respon-
sible information" from "an official agency of the United States gov-
' ernment" that Heine was "a Soviet agent or collaborator." Last Janu-
ary, Raus' lawyer filed an affidavit signed by Richard Helms, Deputy
Director of CIA, stating that the information had come from the CIA
and claiming for him the absolute privilege of remaining silent, since
he was an official of the US government. '
Three months later, the CIA entered the suit directly. "For a number
of reasons," read the CIA statement, "including his past history and
his position as National Commander of the Legion of Estonian Libera-
tion, [Raus] has been a source to this Agency of foreign intelligence
information pertaining inter alia to Soviet Estonian and to Estonian
emigre activities in foreign countries as well as in the United States
[italics added]. The Central Intelligence Agency has employed the de-
fendant from time to time - concurrently with his duties on behalf of
the Bureau of Public Roads - to carry out specific assignments on be-
' 'half of the Agency.-. :. On these occasions . . the defendant was
furnished information concerning the plaintiff by. the Central Intelli-
gence Agency and was instructed to disseminate, such information to
members of the Legion so as to protect the Integrity of the Agency's
foreign intelligence sources. It,would be contrary to the security
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 Approved For Release 2000/08/26 : CIA-RDP75-00001 R000400190011-2
interests of the United States for any further informa-
tion pertaining to the use and employment of Juri Raus
by the Agency in connection with Eerik Heine to be
disclosed." That, so CIA presumably hoped, would
close the case. The judge, however, has been described
as not wholly persuaded.
Perhaps the CIA does have confidential information
highly damaging to a Canadian citizen. If so, by what
authority does it disclose this to an American citizen
and instruct him to circulate it in the United States?
The CIA is not empowered to propagandize , in. this.,.
midable agency of the federal government should be
permitted to wage an underground vendetta against a
man and then remain silent when the victim protests in
court. In the Raus case, the plaintiff faces a dumb ac-
cuser, who cannot inspect the evidence against him. He
has no opportunity to vindicate himself. He cannot go'
"free," for his "innocence" is forever in doubt.
The Central Intelligence Agency Act of '1949 exempts
the ~-gency-From ~discrosing anything about its func-
tions, organization and personnel. Moreover, Agent
Raus "was" required to sign a 'secret agreement at the
time of his hire in which he promised never to divulge
tions - whether of emigres. or not. The. National. Se information obtained in his work without CIA permis-
curity Act of, 1947, which created the CIA, states sion. The Agency says that its position in the Raus
specifically that the Agency "shall have no police, sub-_ case is supported by two :L959 Supreme Court decisions
poena;aw enforcement powers, or' internal securi which extended immunity to government officials. The
functions." Moreover, if the CIA was convinced that a conclusion we are thus asked to reach is that behind
"Canadian` citizen was a "Soviet agent or collaborator,". .an impenetrable screen of official silence, any man's
was that not a matter to be handled by Canadian of- reputation, indeed perhaps his life, may be wrecked,
ficials, who surely would not be indifferent to such in-
formation supplied them by the CIA.
The history of this country has shown the wisdom
of allowing responsible government officials a wide
berth in what they may say openly without fear of
prosecution for slander. Nevertheless, does an individ-
ual who believes he has been maliciously and falsely
and the only answer to which he is entitled is, pos-
sibly, "Sorry about that."
This is a monstrous interpretation of justice and a
monstrous abuse of a federal power that is neither
openly accountable to public opinion nor effectively
supervised by the Congress.. _
I_.
? accused by another individual have no redress, simply
because it is belatedly disclosed that his accuser is em-
ployed part-time by the CIA, which has supplied him
with the slanderous information and told him to peddle
it? If this is so, the government has almost unlimited
power to hound at will, and in secret, and with no
possibility of its being required to disclose its motives
or its evidence of wrong-doing. This may be the Soviet
way; it was certainly the Nazi way. But it has not been
customary in the United States to allow a character
assassin to do his work and to get away with it unchal-
lenged and unanswered on the grounds that he was
merely "following orders."
Certainly the security of the United States ought not
to be compromised. But it does not follow that. a fof-'
MAY 14 1966
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