COLBY DENIES LEAKING STORY ON CIA DOMESTIC SNOOPING

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-01208R000100150169-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 22, 2011
• Sequence Number: 169
• Publication Date: August 21, 1978
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/02/22 :CIA-RDP90-012088000100150169-1
THE WASHINGTON POST
ARTICLE APPi'-RED 21 August 1978
0;~ PyGE A-19
IInaed Preen raternstlonii [agent] within CLa ... he makes other
. Former director tiYilliam E. Colby equally farfetched assertions which
denied yesterday he leaked the explo- call for clear rebuttal,"'Colby said.
live 1974 story about the Central In? He ~ said his comments to Hersh
telligenc_ a Agency's illegal involve- - `had absolutely no connection with
went in domestic surveillance. my professional differences of opinion
~?? But Colby, who headed the CIA with James Angleton over. how coun-~
from 1973 to, 1976, conceded he con? terintelligence should be conducted in
-firmed the story to New York Times CIA" and denied assertions he used
.reporter Seymour Hersh before publi- the disclosure of the information to
cation 3'fs years ago. oust the counterintelligence chief and
?. The story led to four government three top deputies.
investigations of the CIA, opening Colby insisted his overhaul of the
,some of the agency's secret activities CIA's counterintelligence operation
to public scrutiny and leaving part of "strengthened rather than weakened
its staff demoralized. that effort over the way it Was con-
:. The CL's counterintelligence chief; ducted previously."
James Angleton, retired, within 48 Epstein said "it was Colby himself
hours after The Times story was pub- .who had engineered the leak" of the
lished. Colby and Angleton were old ?. "family jewels"=the details of two
bureaucratic enemies, and? the feud decades of questionable CIA'activi-
has continued, with Angleton's ex- ties.
treme partisans trying to leave the "I did not leak 'the so-called 'family
impression Colby acted contrary to jewels' to Seymour Hersh of The New
17.S. interests and might even be a . York Times;' Colby said in his letter.
Russian spy. He said Hersh came to him before
:,In a letter to the editor in Sunday's . publication of the story "with a much
gditioh of The Washington Star, Colby~~ exaggerated account .of those past,
gesponded to an article in Commen? events" '
fary magazine by writer~ritic Edward "It was clear to me that he was go- (
Jay Epstein that was reprinted in The ing to publish that story; so I tried to ~
Star three weeks ago. bring him down to a more accurate I
:'"While [Epstein] seems _ to have perspective, and I gave him no mate- {
abandoned his earlier hypothesis that rial he did not already have,"_ Colby--j
I'-might have been a Soviet `mole' said. J
111 Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/02/22 :CIA-RDP90-012088000100150169-1