BEHIND THE SCENES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP11M01338R000400350084-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 9
• Document Creation Date: December 27, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 19, 2013
• Sequence Number: 84
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2013/08/19: CIA-RDP11M01338R000400350084-0
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Publisher
George A. Hirsch
Editor
Jonathan Z. Larsen
Art Director
Steve Phillips
Associate Editors
Thomas Moore
Frank Rich
Harry Stein
Robert Sherrill
Nina Totenberg (Wash.)
Assistant Editors
Wendy Hecht
Leslie Laird
Ellen Rosenbush
Assistant Art Director
Carolyn Buckley
Art Assistant
Carol Throgmorton
Photo Researcher
Donna Nicholson
Editorial Assistant
Cynthia Wilson ? ?
General Manager
Louis B. Dotti Jr.
Business Manager
Rose Strohmenger
Administrative Assistants
Phyllis Cohen
Blaine Macatuso
Circulation Director
Richard LaMonica
Circulation Assistant
Martha Pierson
Production Manager
Anne R. Brokaw
Production Assistant
Janet Gold
Promotion Manager
Bernard Stolar
Assistant to the Publisher
Vicki Meyer
? Design Consultant
Allen Hurlburt
Advertising Director ?
Ernest M. Walker Jr.
Associate Advertising
Director
David B. Metz
Advertising Assistant
Terry Ellen Ladin
Advertising "
Representatives
Pamela Pietri
Margaret A. Doyle
Advertising Representatives
?
Chicago Los Angeles
Warden, Kelley & Allen, Inc. Parts-Schindler Inc.
Detroit Philadelphia
Richard Hartle Associates Coveney Associates
Contributing Editors
Joan Barthel, Jimmy Breslin, Brock Brower,
F. Reid Buckley, Sara Davidson, Pete Hamill,
Marshall Frady, Donald Jackson, Murray Kempton,
Larry L. King,.J. Anthony Lukas, Joe McGinniss,
Mike Royko, Nora Sayre, Dick Schaap,
Marcia Seligson, Studs Terkel,
Thomas Thompson, Nicholas von Hoffman
Contributing Photographers
Harry Benson, Jill Freedman, Benno Friedman,
Mary Ellen Mark, Dick Swanson
Special Contributors
Richard Aurelio, Arthur Hadley,
Gregg Kilday, Richard Kluger, Lucy Komisar,
John Leo, Janet Maslin, Anne Schneider,
Marion Steinmann, Stuart Werbin, Geoffrey Wolff
Correspondents ?
Washington D.C.: Charlie McCollum, Wallace Roberts:
Alaska: Howard C. Weaver (Anchorage); Arizona: Bruce
Taylor (Phoenix); Arkansas: Max F. Brantley (Little Rock);
Calitomia: Connie Bruck (San Diego). Roger Rapoport (San
Francisco). Carol Sternheil (Palo Alto); Colorado: William
Gallo, Elaine Nathanson (Denver); Connecticut: Fred Mann
(Mystic); Delaware: Curtis Wilkie (Wilmington); Florida:
James Savage (Miami); Georgia: Gregory Jaynes (Atlanta);
Hawaii: Gerald F. Burris (Honolulu); Idaho: Michael Parfit
(Mackay); Illinois:Scott W. Jacobs (Chicago), Tim Meidroth
(Morris); Indiana: John Brady (Terre Haute), Tom Cochrun
(Indianapolis); Iowa: Chuck Offenburger (Des Moines); Ken-
tucky: John Filiatreau (Louisville). Stephen Ford (Hazard);
Maine: John N. Cole (Brunswick), John Lovell (Portland);
Maryland: Joseph Nawrozki (Baltimore); Massachusetts: Bo
Burlingham (Boston): Michigan: Mike Maze (Detroit), Tony
Schwartz (Ann Arbor); Minnesota: Conrad de Fiebre (Min-
neapolis); Mississippi: Ed Kohn (Greenville); Missouri: Har-
per Barnes (St. Louis), Harry Jones Jr. (Kansas City); Mon-
tana: Cortlandt Freeman (Bozeman); Nebraska: Robert L.
Guenther (Lincoln); New Hampshire: Stewart Powell (Derry),
Christopher Tilghman (Cornish Flat); New Jersey: John Mer-
ritt. Ill (Cape May Court House); New Mexico: John Neary
(Tesuque); New York: Fritz Koch (Buffalo), Ellen Perlmutter
(Binghamton); North Carolina: Johnny Greene (Charlotte).
Richard Edmonds (Winston-Salem); North Dakota: Nancy
Edmonds (Fargo); Ohio: Thomas Andrzejewski, Terence
Sheridan (Cleveland). Frank Denton (Cincinnati), E.E. "Chip"
Elliott (Columbus); Oklahoma: Mike Shannon (Oklahoma
City); Pennsylvania: Alfonso X. Donalson (Pittsburgh), James
Lieber (Philadelphia); Rhode Island: William Kutik (Newport).
Lee Dykas (Providence); South Carolina: Jon Buchan (Co-
lumbia); Tennessee: Thomas BeVier (Memphis), Steve Nick-
eson (Nashville); Texas: Susan L. Butler (Houston), Molly
sins (Austin); West Virginia: Richard Stanley (Huntington);
Wisconsin: Nina Bernstein (Milwaukee). Dennis Moore (Be-
loit); Wyoming: Michael Sellett (Jackson): Canada: Robert
Ramsey (Toronto); England: Annalyn Swan (Oxford); India:
Dina Vakil (Bombay)
Ron Ridenhour, who wrote this issue's
story about the CIA base in Arizona, first
Commanded attention not by covering news
but by making it. In 1969, ten months out of
Vietnam and a student at Claremont in
California, Ron became an instant celebrity
when the story, of the My Lai massacre made
headlines around the world. As the soldier
who had brought the story out, Ron was the
one legitimate hero to emerge from that
horrifying episode in American history.
Exposing My Lai was no mean task.
Ron had not been a party to the massacre
itself?he'd heard about it from several.
.friends who had been there?and it took him
seven or eight months to track down all the
,
e'
information he felt he needed. "It was," he
says, "a standard job of investigative
reporting, except that the circumstances
were rather unusual. I was a combat soldier
in a war. I had other things to do."
Once he had developed all the facts,
Ron had another problem?what to do with
them. "I knew I had to do something but I
didn't know exactly what. Finally, I decided to
flood the world with letters." He sent out
scores of them, to the House, Senate and
Pentagon, and after months of agonizing
delays?and panic in the highest circles of
government?the story finally hit the papers.
The rest is, quite literally, history.
Ron; for his part, has very mixed
feelings about the whole thing. "Obviously,"
he says, "in the final analysis there was a
whitewash. But it is important that the story
got out and that Calley was convicted. It's just
that to place all the blame on this one guy is
ludicrous. Now, I think he should be
released."
After he finished school, Ron returned
to Vietnam as a free-lance.reporter and
ended up doing a lot of work for Time. His
technique was simple?he hung around the
troops and listened carefully to what they had.
to say. As an ex-soldier, he was thus able to
get hold of a lot more news than reporters
who attended official briefing sessions in
Saigon. "Also," he adds, "I was a little More
familiar with the system and had a better idea
when people were bullshitting or outright
lying."
After a year of reporting the war, Ron
returned to Arizona, where he'd grown d'p,
and enrolled in Arizona State University. Ron
stumbled upon the existence of the CIA base
in typical Ridenhour fashion. About three
months ago, while traveling on a train
between Washington, D.C., and Virginia, he
overheard a commuter, speaking in hushed
tones, alluding to it. When he returned to
Arizona, he got on the case.
"The people at Intermountain were
suspicious," he says, "but because they
were posing as a legitimate corporation, they
had to let me in. From there it was easy. I just
went in and played it straight. By the time they
found out I was onto them, it was too tate."
Of course, the Intermountain people
were interested in knowing just how much he
had on them. "Yeah," says Ron, "they
pestered me a little. At one point Polly, the
public relations woman, called and said,
'Golly, gosh, I'm really interested in what
you're writing about.' Well, she'll just have to
read it in the magazine."
Not that Ron believes that exposing
the base will have much effect on CIA policy.
"They might conceivably move to another
base," he says, "if there's so much publicity
about them that it impinges on their
operation. But they'll probably just deny it.
That's the way they operate."
?
George A. Hirsch
4 NEW TIMES
t Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2013/08/19: CIA-RDP11M01338R000400350084-0
ri I
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2013/08/19: CIA-RDP11M01338R000400350084-0
NEWI1MES
TOP OF THE NEWS
By Ronald Ridenhour
On August 11, 1970, a small private
plane was spotted on the outskirts of Tuc-
son, Arizona, flying at an extremely low
altitude over the city's National Golf
Course. After two passes at 500 feet, the
plane crashed and exploded, killing both
men inside. A tragic though hardly unique
incident, or so the citizens of Tucson
thought at first.
But- the crash turned out to be any-
thing but ordinary. The FAA, instead of
sending local investigators, dispatched a
man from Washington, who refused to
comment on the crash to any of the local
papers. It was discovered that the plane,
an experimental model of a Beechcraft
S-32, had been on special lease to the
Univac division of Sperry Rand Corpora-
tion, yet Sperry Rand would say nothing,
either to the press or the police. The plane
had flown out of Marana Air Park, a
facility of Intermountain Aviation Inc. of
Tucson, yet Intermountain also refused to
comment. As a result, the interest of Tuc-
son's news media began to quicken. There
was talk of a "secret military mission for
the federal government," and even some
speculation that Intermountain Aviation's
Marana Air Park was actually a CIA base.
Officials in Washington, however,
quickly passed the word to the local
sleuths, both public and private: no more
questions about the crash?the security of
the nation was at stake. The resulting
cover-up was the only window, and a very
small one at that, onto the real activities of
Intermountain Aviation Inc. since its in-
18 NEW TIMES
ception in the fall of 1961, for Inter-
mountain happens to be one of the CIA's
major stateside bases; it, and "proprietary
corporations" like it, provide support for
the Agency's paramilitary operations, op-
erations which have, in the wake of the
Indochina War and the Chilean coup,
`o
From the ashes of
the Bay of Pigs
disaster rose a
splendid new CIA
base outside of
Tucson. The men
who run it say they
train forest fire-
fighters, but they
stand ready to put
out?or start?brush
fires of a far
different order
come under intense criticism. Though os-
tensibly private institutions and busi-
nesses, these "proprietaries" are financed
and controlled by the CIA and use their
commercial and sometimes non profit
covers to carry out clandestine activities.
"Intermountain," one former staff
officer told me, "is no bush league oper-
ation, and you won't find bush league
mistakes in its cover story." That is why
the story has worked so well. As far as the
outside world is concerned, Inter-
mountain exists primarily to help train,
supply and deliver the Forest Service's
"smokejumpers," firefighting parachutists
whose specialty is leaping into rough
country from -low?alfitudes- to- establish
field camps from which remote operations
can be carried out. The firefighting cover is
vigorously promoted, Intermountain even
going so far as to produce splendid motion
pictures documenting the firemen in-ac-
tion.
But, as a quick study of Inter-
mountain's annual corporate financial re-
ports reveals, the cover does have holes, if
you look for them. Beginning with June
30, 1971, and continuing for three report-
ing periods over two and a half years, the
reports list exactly the same figures for all
categories under assets and liabilities.
This, to be charitable, is highly implau-
sible. Taken at face value, what the reports
say is that Intermountain did the same
amount of business, down to the number
of washers used, for three periods. Beyond
that, according to the reports, the corpora-
tion paid no taxes of any kind to anyone
during that time.
There are inevitably such slips in
trying to sustain the cover story for such a
massive enterprise as Intermountain, but
to the CIA the benefits far outweigh the
risks. If the U.S. insists on the capability
for covert and guerrilla warfare, bases,
both domestic and foreign, are essential.
Intermountain itself can be considered the
bastard progeny of one such operation?
the Bay of Pigs. It was precisely to correct
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2013/08/19: CIA-RDP11M01338R000400350084-0
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Declassified in Part- Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2013/08/19 : CIA-RDP11M01'338R0004- 00350. 084-0 411
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