WHY THE CIA SPIED ON BELLA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-01208R000100250041-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 22, 2011
• Sequence Number: 41
• Publication Date: March 15, 1975
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

. . Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/02/22: CIA-RDP90-01208R000100250041-1
Why the CIA 15 MCI 19T5
In 1948, for instance, she was an official NLG
Spied on Bella representative in Prague at the Third Congress of
the International Association of Democratic Law-
Rep. Bella Abzug (D.-N.Y.) made all- three net- yers, also a Communist front. At that gathering.
-works and the front pages of the New York Times, Mrs. Abzug co-sponsored a resolution denouncing
he Washington Post and the Baltimore Sun last persecutions directed against the leaders of the
week as she castigated CIA Director William Colby American Communist party by the government of
for the agency's collection of information on her the U.S.A."
activities. At the same time, Mrs. Abzug was active in other
"Super-snoops," fumed Mrs. Abzug, who hopes to party-controlled operations. including the National I
side the publicity into the U.S. Senate next year.. Council of the Arts, Sciences and Professions and
`Rotten... clearly illegal ... outrageous and repug- the Civil Rights Congress.
lane-" What fueled Bella's ire was Colby's admission She remained a Lawyers Guild leader, then played
.bat she was one of four. members of Congress to a key role in Women Strike for Peace. the anti-war
appear in CIA files. One of the others is dead and the group that has been heavily infiltrated by Com-
munists: As a Washington lobbyist,. she represented
Colby turned over to Mrs. Abzug a copy of her file WSP before Congress, and was promptly bitten her-
-actually a collection of several references about : self by the political bug.
her that had been scattered throughout the agency's In the spring of 1970, she upset liberal Rep. Leonard ( STAT
departments. The file disclosed that on two occasions, Farbstein for re-nomination, then went on to
in 1953 and 1962, the agency opened mail dispatched November victory in a solidly Democratic district.
by Mrs. Abzug to the Soviet Union in her capacity Her margin was considerably slimmer than expected,
as an attorney representing a client seeking !'family however, as many liberals and even Socialists de-
tree" information for an estate case. Colby said that sorted her candidacy.
during the 1950s and 1960s, mail to Soviet represent- Thus, even the New York Socialist party disowned
atives was routinely monitored, a practice that he her for her "general unwillingness to be outspokenly
ordered ended in 1973. I critical of Communist actions threatening peace and
Also in the CIA files was a reference to Mrs. freedom in the world."
Abzug's representation of a hostile witness before They noted that during a convention of the New
the House Committee on Un-American Activities Democratic Coalition she had opposed offering
in 1953; her participation in a New York anti-war U.S. sanctuary to anti-Communists in the event of a
rally; the names of American lawyers on the mailing Red victory in Vietnam. Such people, she said, de-
list of the Soviet-controlled World Peace Council; serve the "punishment that awaits them." She
the minutes of a meeting of the Vietnam Mobilization angered the party by her support at the
Committee, a group shown to have been Trotskyite- had also 1967 New Politics Conference in Chicago of the
dominated. Black Caucus resolutions which, among other things,
A CIA counterintelligence file also disclosed details condemned Israel as an "imperialist aggressor."
on Mrs. Abzug's meeting in 1972 with Vietcong rep-
resentatives in Paris. Colby said it was "perfectly In her three terms in Washington. Mrs. Abzug
proper" for the agency to carry out surveillance of has been perhaps Congress' most radical member.
individuals working with such foreign groups as the Throughout the "Mayday" disruptions of 1971,
Vietcong. Mrs. Abzug was aiding and abetting the self-
styled revolutionaries who had announced plans
Unfortunately, the press reports centered on to paralyze the Nation's Capital.
Bella's tirade against CIA "snooping"-and
not at all on the reasons her activities were de- When Washington police arrested thousands for
scribed in CIA files. The fact of the matter is that stopping traffic, hurling rocks and engaging in hit-
Bella is no starry-eyed liberal who happened to and-run attacks, Mrs. Abzug was up in arms. She ig-
endorse "unpopular" causes. She has been a con- noted the violence of the demonstrators, paid no heed
sistent, pro-Communist radical since her days in to their chanted obscenities and saw nothing wrong
college. with the Vietcong flags that flew in the Capitol breeze.
As far back as 1939-during the popular-front Instead, she lauded the assembled radicals as "peace-
days of the Hitler-Stalin pact-she was urging the loving" victims of government repression.
U.S. to stay out of the war in Europe. a position In 1973, she introduced amnesty legislation that
which chan~:d following Hitler's invasion of Russia. went far beyond forgiving the ordinary draft-dodger.
On March l . 1941, the liberal New York Post v rote The Abzu, bill called for complete and automatic
that Mrs. Abzug. then Miss Bella Savitsky, had amnesty for anyone refusing "registration, evading
"generally foilo?ed the Communist party line." contlnuel
Following graduation from Columbia law school,i
Mrs. Abzug became a wheelhorse in the National
Lawyers Guild, cited by a congressional committee
as "the foremost legal bulwark of the Communist
party. . Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/02/22 : CIA-RDP90-01208R000100250041-1