FORMER SPY KNOCKS CIA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP74B00415R000400160009-8
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 27, 2005
• Sequence Number: 9
• Publication Date: October 11, 1971
• Content Type: NSPR

TY NEWS
'' II OCtC1971
budgeting; as special assistant to the~ClA's-ex-
OAKTON, Va. (UPI) Victor Mare;ietti ecutive director; and as executive assistant to
embarked 16 years ago on a career that was the agency's deputy director, Vice Adm. Rufus
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But two years ago, 'after reaching the high- "This put me in a very rare position with-lev
Of the C het be acme disenchant dawith tellige what[llie Agenc rceiv- in the agency and within the intelligency coin-
ed to be amorality, overwhelming military in- munity in general, in that I was in. a place'
fluence, ' waste and duplicity in the spy buss- where it was being all pulled together," Mar?-
ness, Iie quit. c chetti said.
Fearing today that the CIA may already' "I could see how intelligence analysis was
have begun ? "going against the enemy within" done, and how it fitted into the scheme of
the United States as they may conceive it clandestine operations. It also gave me- an op-
that is, dissident student groups and civil rights portunity to get a good view of the intelligence
organizations -Marchetti has launched a cam- community, too. The National Security Agency.
paign for more presidential and congressional The DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency). The na-
control Dyer the entire U.S. intelligence corn- tional Reconnaissance Organization. The whole
munity. b bit.
"I think we need to do this because were "And I started to see the politics within the
getting into an awfully dangerous era when community and the politics between the corn-
. we have all this talent (for clandestine opera- munity and the outside. This change of p rspec-
tions) in the CIA -- and more being develop tive during those three years had a profound
ed in the military, which is getting into clan- effect on me, because I began to see things I
destine operations) --and there just aren't that didn't like."
many places anymore to display that talent," With many of his life-long views about the
Marchetti says. 'world shattered, Marchetti decided to abandon
."The cold war is fading. so is the war in his chosen career. One of the last things he
Southeast Asia, except for Laos. At the same did at the CIA was to explain to director Rich-
time, we're getting a. lot of domestic problems. and helms why lie was leaving.
And' there a. e People in the CIA who -if they "I told him I thought the intelligence com-
aren't right. now actually already running dom- munity and the intelligence, agency were too big
estic operations against student groups, black and too costly, that I thought there was too
movements and the like are certainly con- much military influence on intelligence - and
sidering it. very bad effects from that - and that I felt
"This is going to get to be very tempting," the need for more control and more direction.
Marchetti said in a recent interview at his corn- "The clandestine attitude, the amorality of
Portable home in Oakton; a Washington suburb it all, the cold war mentality - these kinds
where many CIA men live. of things made me feel the agency was really
"There'll be a great temptation for these out of step with the times," Marchetti said. people to suggest operations and for 'a presi_ "We parted friends. I cried all the way
dent to .approve them or to kind of look the home." ,
other way. You have the danger of intelligence Marchetti, 41, hardly looks the stereotype of
turning against the nation itself, going against a man who spent 14 years in the CIA.
`the enemy within."' His dark rimmed glasses, full face, slightly
Marchetti speaks of the CIA. from an insid- stout figure, soft voice, curly black hair and
er's point of view. bushy sideburns would seem more at home on
At Pennsylvania State University he delib- a college campus. Ile pronounces his name the
erately prepared himself for an intelligence Italian way - Nlarkett.i,
career, graduating in 1955 with a degree in Marchetti's 'first impulse after quitting the
Russian studies and history. CIA was to write a non-fiction account of what
Through a. professor secretly' on the CIA was wrong with the U.S. intelligence community.
payroll as a talent scout, Marchetti netted the But, lie said, he could not bring himself 'to do
prise all would-be spies dream of -an inime- it then.
.diate job offer from the CIA. The offer came Instead he wrote a spy novel, "a reaction
during a? secret meeting in a hotel room, set to the James Bond and British spy story stereo-
up by a stranger who telephoned and identi- types," which he says looks at the intelligence
fied himself only as "'a friend of your brother." business realistically from the . headquarters
Marchetti spent one year as a -CIA agent in point of view he knows so well.
the field and 10 more as an analyst of intel- The novel, "The Rope Dancer, was publish-
ligence relating to'. the Soviet Union, rising ed last month. It is a thinly disguised view of
through the ranks until he was helping prepare the inner struggle over Vietnam and Russian.
.the national intelligence estimates for the strategic advances as Marchetti saw them with-
White House. in the CIA, the Pentagon and the. White House
During this period, Marchetti says, "I was under Prpsident Johnson.
a hawk. I believed in what we were doing." Writing the novel took `a year. Then came
Then he was promoted to the executive two tries at non-fiction articles, one rejected as
.staff of the CIA, moving to an office on the tog dull and the other turned down as too
top floor of the agency's headquarters across chatty, and a start on a second novel.
the Potomac River from Washington. But Marchetti said the need for intelligence
For three years, he worked as special as-..reform continued to gnaw at him, and as his
first novel was about to come out he came into
contact with others who agreed with him, in-
cludin Rep. Herman Badillo D-N.Y.
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 Now., Marchetti said, the . seconu ilvvei liaa A Gt i r air- , 1 which
been laid aside so he a~pplv~vb?( JFbrt lefdsb ~ 4B (~ 0444Q009-8
campaign for reform, agree with those. of the generals.
Although now a dove, particularly on Viet- "ewith ver you're working on a problem
ham which he calls an unwinnable war to sup- that the military is deeply interested in-be-
port a croolted, election regime that can not cause it's affectig one of their programs or
even -run an election n that looks honest," Mar- their, war in Vietnam or something-and you re
f retti elli en still believes strongly in the.need not saying what they want you to say, the
for intelligence collection.
"It's a fact of life," he said. "For your own brow-beating starts, the delaying tactics, the
r essure to et the report to read more like
protection, you need to know -what other peo- they want igt to read," he said. "In other
.
ple are , t intelligence words, influencing intelligence for the bene-
i es in and ndig theence ss'just now a too $S big. billion a n b y ber fit of their own operation or activity.
done dois and perhaps done better can "Somehow, some way, you've got to keep
ne for or a lot less, ss
when you cut out the waste." your intelligence objective. It can't be a pri-
For instance, Marchetti said, the National vate tool of the military. Nor, for that matter,
Security Agency-charged in part with trying a private tool of the White House."
to decode intercepted messages of foreign gov- Marchetti said there is also waste in ?almost ernments- wastes about half its $1 billion year- every technical intelligence gathering program
ly bud get. such as spy satellites, special reconnaissance
aircraft, and over-the-horizon radars-because
"They have boxcars full of tapes up at Ft. when either the military or the CIA makes a
Meade that are 10 years old. Boxcars full! Be- new advance the rival agency follows suit with
cause in intercepting Soviet radio colnmunica- something almost the same but just different
tions, for instance, the Soviets are just as sophis- enough to justify its existence.
ticated as we are in scrambler systems. It is
almost a technical impossibility to break a
scrambled, coded message. -
"So they just keep collecting the, stuff and
putting; it in boxcars. They continue to listen
all over the world. They continue to spend for-
tunes trying to duplicate the Soviet scrambling
and encoding computers," he ? said.
"By the time someone can break it, a dec-
ade or two has gone by. So you find out what
they were thinking 20 years ago. So what?"
Marchetti said at one time a National Intelli-
gence Review Board tried to cut out an expen-
sive NSA program that analysts agreed was
useless. The CIA director, he said, wrote a mem-
orandunm recommending the program stop.
"But Paul Nitze, on his last day in office
(as Deputy Secretary of Defense), sent back a
'memo in which he said he had received the
recommendation and considered it, but had de-
cided to.continue the program," Marchetti said.
Ho said this was possible for Nitze because
although the director of the CIA is officially
in charge of all the nation's intelligence activi-
ties, 85 per cent of the money is hidden in the
Defense Department budget.
This, said Marchetti, gives the military con-
siderable power to shape intelligence estimates.
He gave as an example a conflict between
military and CIA estimates of the number of
North Vietnamese and. Viet tong in South Viet-
nam during the late 1060's. The military want-
ed a low figure "to show they were killing
the VC and North Vietnamese and were win-
ning the war." The CIA reported far too many
Communists in South Vietnam. to support this
military desir, he said.
('1'o be continued)
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 TI MEXICO CITY IEWS
12 Oct 1973.
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? (EDITOR'S NOTE: Victor Marchetti
embarked 16 years ago on a career
that was all any aspiring young spy
could ask.
But two years ago, after reaching,
the highest levels of the Central Intel-
ligence Agency, he became disenchant-
ed with what he perceived to be amor-
ality. overwhelming military influence,
(This is the second and last install- unmarked weapons."
By Edward N. DeLong
UPI Staff Writer
i J1
OAKTON, Va. -- The thing that troubles to a group in a place like Guatemala, Marchetti most about the CIA is its penchant ti said. "They even used to send weapons buy-
for the dark arts of clandestine paramilitary ers around to buy arms from the (Soviet) bloc
actions, an' area made doubly attractive to the countries." To fully understand why the CIA
agency because the military scarcely can op- conducts se-nil-legal operations around. the world,
crate in this field. why it might begin to conduct them in the
"One of the things the CIA clandestine peo- United States, and why more control needs to
ple can do is start up wars," he said. "They be exercised over the agency, Marchetti said;
it is necessary to understand the - men. of the
can start up a private war in a country, clan- CIA.
destinely, and make it look like it's just some. Most of them, he said, dot their start in
thing ehat the local yokels have decided to do the intelligence business during or shortly aft-
the
This, eaccording to, Marchetti is how. the . er World War II when the cold war was going
'
United States first began active fighting in strong.
"These people are super-patriots,? he said.
Vietnam. It is the type of activity now goui - "But you've got to remember, too, they're amor-
oil ill gtessiottalntbestimonyorevaos, were rent ealed hhe CIA is run- al. They're not inlinoral. They're amoral.
niug a 450-million-dollars-a-Year operation, he The director made a speech tothe Nation-
3 al Press Club where he said "you've just got
saki. to trust us. We are honorable men.' Well,
~/Iaengtiue ed said he
the is c 196 3' overthrow 3 ove d therthrow CIA not the they are honorable Wien-generally speaking:
"But the nature of the business is such that
D i only e in regime in Vietnam, which President nt
Nixon also has said was the case, but was also wrong, good or evil, moral. or immoral. The
responsible for the coup that ousted Prince nature of intelligence Is that you do things
Norodom Sihanouk in early 1970, making pos- because they have to be done, whether -it's
right or wrong.-If you murder..."
sible the U.S: South Vietnamese raid on coils. Marchetti did not complete the sentence.,
munist sanctuaries in that country several Because. the men of the agency are super-
we T later
o Southeast Asia clandestine* operations patriots, lie said, it- is only natural for them
The S Iy to to violent protest and dissidence as a ma-
years ago caused ~,he CIA to set up a phoney or threat to the nation. The inbred CIA reac-
airline company, Air America, which now has ton, he said, would be to launch a clandestine
as many employes as the 1#3,000-member work-
ing staff of the CIA itself, lie said. , operation to infiltrate dissident groups.
"Well the CIA is not only monkeying That, said Marchetti, may already have start,
l around in Vietnam and in Laos," Marchetti ed to happen.
said. "They're looking at other areas where "I don't have very much to go- on," he said. 'Just these sorts of opportunities may present them- intelligence community is already targetin Uon
selves.
"When they start setting up private' air groups in this country that they feel to be
companies and everything else that goes with subversive.
wer he
the wherewithal for supporting a government know Cthis was IA, and being there sse ein t
lot
or an anti-government movement, this is very, halls of the very dangerous. Because they can do it in a of people who felt this should be done."
clandestine fashion and snake it difficult for With the lack of control that exists now
the public to be aware of what is going on." over the agency, Marchetti said, an extremely
Marchetti said areas where the CIA might reactionary president could perhaps order the
launch future clandestine paramilitary activities CIA's clandestine activities to go beyond more
include South Ainorica India, Africa and the " infiltration.
Philippines - all places in the throes of social "I don't think the likelihood of this is very
upheaval. Upheaval, he said, is what prompts great," Marchetti said. "But one of the ways to
the CIA director t o begin planning possible prevent this is to let a little sunshine in, to
clandestine activities in a country. have some more controls by the Congress.
"That is so if the president says ,go in and ? "There's no reason for so much secrecy.
do something, he 's already got his fake airlines There's no reason the intelligence community
to fly in people. Ile may have a program going shouldn't have its budget examined. Just both.
with the police in this country or the military ers the hell out of hie to see this waste go-
ing oil and this hiding behind the skirts of.
in that," according to 1archetti? national s(Icurity. You can have your national
security, with controls, and you don' need 0
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In addition to Air America, Marchetti said,
the CIA has set up both Southern Air Trans,
port in Miami and Rocky Mountain Air in
Phoenix for possible use in paramilitary opera-
'ions in South America. Similar fake airlines
have been bought.and sold all over the world,
he said, including one in Nepal and another
in East Africa.
thing they can get their hands oil-alt over the
world-that is untraceable to prepare for the
contingency that they might want to ship arms