INTERVIEW WITH VICTOR MARCHETTI

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01070R000200850005-0
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 21, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 27, 2008
• Sequence Number: 5
• Publication Date: August 23, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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RADIO TV REPORTS, INC.
4701 \MLLARD AVENUE, CHEVY CHASE, MARYLAND 20815 656-4068
PROGRAM The Merv Griffin Show STATION WTTG-TV
Syndicated
DATE August 23, 1983 9:00 P.M.
Washington, D.C.
MERV GRIFFIN: Right now we're going to continue our
series on international espionage with a look into our own
intelligence arm, the CIA, whose covert activities are not always
as successful or as wholesome as many of us would like to
believe. Perhaps the most damning evidence of that is in this
book, which has just gone paperback with new information in it,
called "The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence." This latest
edition represents a decade of legal struggle with CIA censorship
of its contents. And now we're going to hear why from the
coauthor, former Executive Assistant to the Deputy Director of
the CIA, Victor Marchetti.
Welcome, Victor.
[Applause]
GRIFFIN: How did the CIA attempt to stifle the publish-
ing of this book?
VICTOR MARCHETTI: Well, the first thing they tried to
do was bribe the publisher not to publish it. That was Alfred
Knopf.
GRIFFIN: With an offer of money?
MARCHETTI: Yes. But an indirect sort of offer.
They'll buy up all the copies. And Knopf said, "Well, we'll just
keep producing them, then."
So after they couldn't talk Knopf out of that, they got
an injunction against me saying that I could not show -- I had
not yet written the book. I had only agreed to write. And they
Material supplied by Radio N Reports, Inc. may be used for file and reference purposes only. It may not be reproduced, sold or publicly demonstrated or exhibited,
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got an injunction against me saying that I had to show it to them
first, which I thought that was fine. But then they began to
censor it and they began cutting out all kinds of simple things
which they later admitted to. They were doin't it just simply to
give me a bad time and to prevent the book from being written.
GRIFFIN: Is our CIA too dependent on covert actions?
MARCHETTI: Yes, in the Third World area. In Africa,
Latin America and Asia, we depend too much on secret activities
in order to manipulate events in those countries. When we should
rely, really, on our real strength, which is promoting America.
I mean we can do more good in these countries with Kentucky fried
chicken, hamburgers, jeans, rock music, and that, than we can
with all the spies in there trying to manipulate the government.
GRIFFIN: But we've done that for a long time. That's
hardly a counteraction to infiltration by Cuba's forces and Libya
and everybody else who's sending in -- the Soviets are sending in
guns and bombs to the terrorists. We can't send down Kentucky
fried chicken.
MARCHETTI: No. Okay. The point is this, is that we
wouldn't be in these situations, say, in a country like El
Salvador, if in addition to all that good stuff we were doing,
that we would take the advice of our Catholic and Protestant
missionaries who've been down there and said do something about
the plight of the people. Don't let the big industries make them
work for just a few pesos a day. Give them a decent standard of
living. Give them an opportunity for free elections, and that.
In other words, export real Americanism.
MARCHETTI: Oh, yes. We're in trouble down there, in El
Salvador. We're in trouble in Guatemala, throughout all of
Central America. And the basic reason is that we're constantly
supporting dictatorships which are really fascist dictatorships
that want to keep the lid on, want to maintain the status quo,
cheap labor. I mean that's why United Fruit gets so concerned
about these things. The computer companies have chips made in
these countries. The drug companies have cheap labor to produce
pharmaceuticals.
It's easy, then, for the KGB to get in there and stir
these people up and they get angry. But the first chance they
get, these people would come back to the American way if we gave
them half a chance.
GRIFFIN: Talk about some of those little devices that
we have our spies using, the ones that don't work. What have you
seen?
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MARCHETTI: Well, they get a little carried away with
themselves. And one time they wanted to make an airplane that
would fit into two suitcases. Now, can you imagine this, a guy
going into Russia with two great big suitcases? Assuming he gets
past Customs, he's saying, "A-1 goes onto A-2," he puts this
airplane together. You're going to fly over a missile site and
the Russians aren't going to do anything about it, and he's going
to fly out?
GRIFFIN: What kind of bugs do they have?
MARCHETTI: Here's another one. They came up with a bug
one time. They decided that they would this bug in a cat.
MARCHETTI: In the cat. And this cat would wander in
here by us, see, and it would overhear our conversation, and the
message would be relayed back to a van somewhere.
Well, the cat came on -- well, they cut him open, they
put a battery in him and wired him all up. His tail was the
antenna, and everything.
[Laughter]
MARCHETTI: He comes wandering along and he gets hungry,
so he walks off the job. So now they had to put another wire on
him so they knew when he was hungry, and still another one to
override the hunger tantrum.
Now they find out, in the next test, that he's a male.
GRIFFIN: Uh-oh.
MARCHETTI: Because another one went by of a different
sex and he wanted off the job again.
GRIFFIN: They must have been hearing extraordinary
things.
MARCHETTI: Oh, they were. The dials kept going like
They put on two more wires, and the finally had this
poor thing all shaved and wired and taped together, all these
wires on. The big test comes. Two guys sitting on a park bench
across the street from the van, go over there and listen to their
conversation. He walks across the street, a cab comes down and
runs over him.
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[Laughter]
MARCHETTI: Two hundred thousand dollars down the drain.
GRIFFIN: It sounds a little "Mission Impossible" to me.
MARCHETTI: Well, actually, they used to do that. I
have a friend of mine who was involved in making these devices.
And he told me, he said, "Every Tuesday morning they'd come in
with all these crazy notions. They want a drill made out of
plastic that'll go through steel." And he said, "I don't know
where they get these ideas."
Well, one night he watched "Mission Impossible" on
Monday night...
GRIFFIN: On Monday night.
MARCHETTI: And Tuesday morning he knew what they were
going to ask.
[Laughter]
GRIFFIN: The book is called "The CIA," and it is by
Victor Marchetti.
And thank you, Victor, very much.
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