LETTER TO MR. WILLIE MORRIS FROM(Sanitized)

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP79-00498A000600080016-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 7
• Document Creation Date: December 9, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 28, 2001
• Sequence Number: 16
• Publication Date: February 20, 1976
• Content Type: LETTER

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CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
WASHI N GTON, D.C. 20505
DD/A Registry
~t!o '
DDIA Registry
OGC 76-0801 File _
20 February 1976
Mr. Willie Morris
c/o Washington Star-News
225 Virginia Avenue, S . E .
Washington, D.C. 20003
Dear Mr. Morris:
On January 25, 1976 an article appeared in the Washington
Star-News attributed to your authorship in which you indicated
that you had in your possession classified documents given to you
by former Director of Central Intelligence, Allen W. Dulles. Since
those classified documents are the property of the U.S. Government
I would very much appreciate hearing from you as to the appropriate
means for us to recover the classified documents you so identified in
your article. After we review the documents, perhaps many could be
declassified. I may be reached by telephone number 351-7531.
Sincerely,
cc: DD/A
A0 111T10
1T7e-1c1 '
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?: ,,tea
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Director of Security
Rm. 4E-60 Hqs.
Att: DD/A 76-0555
The attached is for your information.
Mr. Blake is interested in knowing when
a lawyer is contacted. As indicated in
his note to the Director, lie would like
to be kept posted on this matter.
D-DDA 7D-26 2/11/76 STATINTL
Distribution:
Orig RS -
Adse
w/orig att
1
DDA
Subject w/cy of att
1 -
RFZ
Chrono w/o att
EO-DDA :nh (11 Feb 76) STATINTL
Att: Memo to DCI fr John F. Blake, DDA, dtd 4 Feb 76, subject re:
background of Willie Morris (w/att news article from The
Washington Star of 25 Jan 76 re Allen Dulles)
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 Ap roved For R ease 2001
JUL
CYRGHT
in
Willie Morris. is the Star's current
writer in residence. His column appears
Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays in
Portfolio.
I can thank the CIA, moiling now in the
revelations we.are given of it, for my
first the introduction to this town, to the
responsibility and thrall of its theatrics. I
hold the CIA culpable also for my first -
glimpse of your precinct of Georgetown,
which claimed me, as it does many of us,
in a nearly trance-like vise, until. some
moment along the line when I must have
Brown uo.
This was 1965, and Arthur Schlesinger.,
and Ted Sorensen had just published, in'
two reputable mass-circulation.maga
zines which are no longer with us, the
chapters on the Bay of Pigs from their
forthcoming books on John Kennedy. I
had not yet turned 30, a very junior editor'
on Harper's magazine,. hoping most. of
all, as I recall, to find my way in the tan-
gle of Manhattan literary politics, from
which Capitol Hill _.;. if it ever acknowl-
edges a master in its own game - might
one day acquire valuable insights into
logrolling and the hegemony of mayhem..
Allen Dulles,. the former director of the -
CIA who had been out of power since late
1961, had told:-my-.boss at Harper's, John
Fischer; thati.he wished'to write a rebut-.
tal to Schlesinger and Sorensen, a de-
fense-.of, the CIA-An-the Bay of Pigs.: r
Fischer sent.me down,to Washington to
help Dulles put his piece together...
afternoon, one of those' elusive late-Sep-
tember days when the white facades of.
the official town seen to swim in the sad-
ness of its transcience and memories.
The old man who greeted me at the door
of his mansion on Q Street in Georgetown
was legendary long before, surely not at
all an ordinary mortal. "It's hard to oper-;
ate with legendary figures." Kennedy!
had said of him, when the consequences !
of the Bay of Pigs were finally in. and I
was fearful that he might be as cold and i
rigorous as his brother John Foster had
been - a Calvinistic specter to me when-
1,,e was secretary-of State, with his un-
.4111 YYi">YJ1 i.t.irv."' ++?-
25 January 1976
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tory01--
bending rhetoric: on maser
sive retalitation and brink--
of-war--or as forbidding as
his own occassional photo-
graphs on the front page of
the Times.,., But from .the:.
moment we sat down to our-%
12-hour work days in a
study overlooking a sedate
walled-in terrace I. knew I
:was in the company of a
courtly and civilized man,
a-little precious at first on,...
the arcane calling .which' '
had obsessed him since his
OSS days in Bern,, but still ,
an easy man to be with,:
curious-and feeling: about.:
his -fellow'-creatures, .a.__
casual and entertaining
host, and - best of all an engrossing raconteur,
especially with stories
about spies. .. I, 7
We worked hard, lie
with his sleeves rolled. up
at the table where we met
each morning; I with a
jtrall pile of notes gleaned
from much of what had
been published up to.then,
on the Bay of .Pigs. 'He'l
relied on me to pose the.
might questions for-his an-
swers to Schlesinger and.,
Sorensen. I came across a
few of those questions, riot'.'.:,
too long ago in a yellowed .`
notepad..Why`did he,and
the other planners overes-'
timate the strength of, the'
Cuban resistance organi-
zations' Why did they
believe a successful beach-
head could be estab-
lished so easily?, Why did '
they not see the impossi
bility of an escape into the
-Escambray! Were they -
wise in envisioning a con-
tinuous enlargement of the
perimeter 'around the
beachhead for a long peri-
od? And there were many
more.
IN THIS HEADY exer-
cise, my attention was
drawn to a sizeable collec-
tion of bound JCS (Joint..i
Chiefs of Staff) and CIA
documents which he had'
brought with him when he
left office, all stamped in .:
red: "Top Secret -For -
Eyes Only." He referred-.-
to them constantly; keep
ing them in front of him on,
the table as if they reas-
sured him by merely being
there, quoting and para-
phrasing them as I took
:notes, mulling over them
in long silences. His mind
wandered as the day
waned.
,. His family was at the
Dulles compound - in
Watertown, N.Y., on Lake..
Ontario, and in the sum-,
th er twilights, after my j
questions and his solilo-
quy. the two of us took
walks around Georgetown.
The-first lamps flickered
above the rusty brick side-
walks and I looked into the
enormous lower rooms of
those mysterious dwell-
ings and saw the book-
cases lined with books and
the impeccable furnish-
ings; I never saw real
people stirring around in-
side, although I felt there:,
had to be people. about
somewhere: We must have
been a most unlikely pair -
iu these aimless walks, the
old gray eminence and the "
ambitious 'young editor,
chatteringi-_> about the
Cuban-Brigade ,or. those
early ? meetings with
Kennedy and his new men.
in the Cabinet Room. Then
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? back to,the'terrace behind
his .house for two or three
scotches before our lonely
dinner, where I asked him
what Europe was like dur-
ing the War.
Suddenly,one afternoon
he said: ..
"WELL,. MORRIS, I've
been telling you my se-
crets, but I don't know
anything about-you. For
all I know. you've been
sent here by the Soviets"
-- the last word said crisp-
!y; bitten off at the end.
Emboldened by the
',scotch, or -.-the strange
camaraderie I felt we had
established. Ii,remember
replying: "Mr.' Dulles, I
,was your man in.Budapest
A widening of'.eyes, a
gesture of the brows:
"'Yes, I can imagine."
His rebuttal was going
11
badly; and we arranged to world of Kenneays and went by Kennedy.
meet a few days: later in Washington ' politicians "Yes." He turned to his"
Watertown. This time -I Wand other dissemblers just documents, paused for an
flew in from New York as John Foster had. Work-: instant, gazed into the-
with a highly'unsatisfacto- ing in the cottage in the woods touched now with:
ry draft of what. we had :woods; on his dictation, I. the nip of early winter.-
discussed, along with a .twould hear the rustlings of "Miss Matasia. Take this'
dexterous young secretary . leaves from outside the, down! "'Momentarily he
named Millie Matasia who window; and-then have a' spoke of four or five Navy
had scored the-best' in- "quick glimpse of. Allen: :jets, no more than that
shorthand among the en- Dulles' tall daughter peer number, and then gradual-
tire publishing corporation ing in suspiciously at Miss ..ly of other things, until out
of Harper & Row. Our Matasia and me, her hand.. of his. memory he was
deadline was approaching, over her eyes to shield sun dwelling on something else
but the difficulties now be- from shadow; or overhear' entirely.
came insurmountable:.. the' muted whisperings of.
Dulles' daughter and, his ' sister and daughter in the --,I SAW IIIN! AGAIN'the
sister, the latter, a. living ..big house; or catch the. .next morning, for the last
image of their-'brother. swift wisp of a warning to time, out in. the cabin. I
:John Foster, gave every him to be very careful.. _. looked again at the docu--
=indication that they sus-..-... ,ments marked."TopSe-.
IN THE END none of cret - For Eyes Only."
pected me of. having been "this distrust, understand- "Mr. Dulles, it certainly
h
i
d
e
to comprom
dispatc
se able as it might have been,
him, to damage his most, would help if I could take.,
mattered at all. I knew up these back to the city and,
esoteric defenses, and to the ,h G t L
k ?
re on a re
h
embarrass him before the
judgment of history.
IN THAT SYLVAN mi-
leau -- a large house on
the water and a cottage
hidden in -pines' where
Allen Dulles and Millie
Matasia and I went- about
our Iabors - I.was re-
.The Aspern Papers, in realize he' was old and , That was almost 12.
which an impecunious . weary, that something had years ago. The client is,
Englishman comes pere- been lost to. him forever. dead, and the junior editor
grinating around the villa' from those....- days- of is not so junior anymore.
.in Venice where the aging derring-do and adventure'
mistress of a long-deceas- with Nazis and Italians
ed' heroic poet; presum- that could never now be
ably . Lord Byron, is 'retrieved, that men other
ensconced, the English- than he had really planned
man plotting to make off the Bay of Pigs, and that
with the poet's dog-eared somehow this had less to
'
love letters-to-the old do with a failure of honor :
crone, to offer to such as an inability to perceive
The Bay of Pigs, for all
the regrets, and acrimony,
has receded into a footnote
to the Kennedy years, to
be replaced by a new and
infinitely- more ominous
accumulation of knowl-
But what I remem
edge.
ber most from those days -.
literary fences as to this true dimensions. Or was; is not the nuances of ade-
day do commerce in the
melancholias of tormented
artists.
Not that any-of this bore nerve in his back, from
the faintest resemblance.., leaning down to pull in a :
to my own innocent mo- boat, and he walked about
tives. My ".'Mission, was- -bent over.and in pain.'
much that~ of the ? young' "Well now," he said to us,
lawyer sent to assist ;an' ', `"what haven't we address-
the 1940s, and Georgetown
unfolding sensually for me
a September sunset.. {
And the top-secret docu-
i.. ments ' in the shopping
bag?. ,They ' are: there
today, somewhere, in
mistrust among ?'? the I suggested that he had some boxes -I have in an
client's blood-kin was yet to confront what would I attic, in a house on the far-
tangible;"as'if:the two of - have been the minimum most littoral of eastern
them, daughter and sister, adequate air cover on the 1 ;.. Long Island, among the
feared the alien world of day of the landings - the-' old debris and parapher-.
a
d es work. wit
them. !. ,, : f
that my magazine would ? "Well ' ...." It was
never get his. rebuttal, only a whisper. Then,
much as I would still work from a closet in the cabin;
hard with his words, not ' he brought -out a large
because those dearest to shopping bag. The two of -1
him were wary he might us packed the documents I
be hurt, or that in their so- inside. "But don't on your{
licitude of him they knew : life get caught with
that the whole of it? quate air cover, but the ?~
Near the end of our last tales over scotch whiskey ,.l
day he had a pinched ; of spying against Hitler in..
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 n
UNCLASSIFIE INTERNAL
[
D d CONFIDENTIAL
a g Pc s~ l ~]Y7/16 CID-RI~P79-M _ O(1f1R(1(1ngnn1R_(1
ROUTING AND RECORD SHEET
SUBJECT: (Optional) Willie orris
(Author of article which appeared in
The Washington Star on 25 January 1976)
FROM: Robert W. Gambino
Director of Security
EXTENSION
6777
NO.
DATE
26 JAN 1976
TO: (Officer designation, room number, and
building)
DATE
OFFICER'S
COMMENTS (Number each comment to show from whom
RECEIVED
FORWARDED
INITIALS
to whom. Draw a line across column after each comment.)
~.
DDA 7D-26
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FORM ~~ O USE PREVIOUS SECRET CONFIDENTIAL INTERNAL UNCLASSIFIED
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