UNDERCOVER STORIES, MYSTERIOUS MICHAEL TOWNLEY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP81M00980R002000090032-6
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 4, 2004
• Sequence Number: 32
• Publication Date: March 20, 1978
• Content Type: NSPR

NEWSWEEK
APPEAi D 20 March 1978
ACr.,A v d or Release 2004/10/12 : CIA-RDP81 M00980R002000090032-6
UNDERCOVER STORIES
As former CIA director William
Colby tells it, Nelson Rockefeller.
once asked him to stonewall the then
Vice President's own Rockefeller
Commission investigation of the
CIA's domestic spying. In his forth-
coming book "Honorable Men,"
Colby writes that Rockefeller took
h' 'd ft r a 1975 commission
a e
lm asl e
hearing "and said in his most charm- Former CIA men Colby and Angleton
ing manner, `Bill, do you really have
to present all this material to us? We realize that there
are secrets that you fellows need to keep ...' " Says
Colby: "I got the message quite unmistakably, and I
didn't like it." Colby also says he decided to fire CIA
counterintelligence chief James Angleton several days
before a 1974 New York Times domestic-spying expose
widely assumed to be the reason for Angleton's ouster.
"I did not suspect Angleton and his staff of engaging in
improper activities," writes Colby. "I just could not
figure out what they were doing at all.
MYSTERIOUS MICHAEL TOW LEY
The CIA acknowledges having had "contact"---but
nothing more-=with Michael Townley, an American
expatriate in Chile who may be the "Juan Williams
Rose" wanted by the U.S. for questioning in the car- ;
bomb murder of former Chilean diplomat Orlando
Letelier in Washington in 1976. Townley's parents,
who live in Florida, looked at a passport photo of
"Williams," an alleged Chilean secret agent, and told
the. FBI that the man in
the photo is theirson. As
for Townley's CIA con-
nection, a CIA source
says: "He had contact
with us. He volun-
teered things to us. We
did not seek him out.
We neverhired him. He
was a walk-in, one of
those guys that keeps
coming in and wants to
play with the big boys.
We listened, but we
didn't take him on."
Approved For Release 2004/10/12 : CIA-RDP81 M00980R002000090032-6