LETTER TO MR. WILLIE MORRIS FROM(Sanitized)

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Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 
CIA-RDP79-00498A000600080016-0
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RIPPUB
Original Classification: 
K
Document Page Count: 
7
Document Creation Date: 
December 9, 2016
Document Release Date: 
March 28, 2001
Sequence Number: 
16
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Publication Date: 
February 20, 1976
Content Type: 
LETTER
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-Approved For.Release 2001/07/16 : CIA-RDP79-00498A000600080016-0 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 ' % v-, z ?: ,,tea Approved For Release 2001/07/16 : CIA-RDP79-00498A000600080016-0 Approved For Release 2001/07/16 : CIA-RDP79-00498A00060008Q01 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) Approved For Release 2001/07/16 : CIA-RDP79-00498A000600080016-0 25X1A Approved For Release 2001/07/16 : CIA-RDP79-00498A000600080016-0 Next 2 Page(s) In Document Exempt Approved For Release 2001/07/16 : CIA-RDP79-00498A000600080016-0 Approved For Release 2001/07/16 : CIA-RDP79-00498A000600080016-0 Approved For Release 2001/07/16 : CIA-RDP79-00498A000600080016-0 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 ~ 9-00498A000,60 0 T~ ~~ 0 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 Approved For Release 2001/07/16 : CIA-RDP79-00498A000600080016-0 Approved For Release 2001/07/16 : CIA-RDP79-00498A000600080016-0 ? 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.. Approved For Release 2001/07/16 : CIA-RDP79-00498A000600080016-0 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 rt 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. FORM ~~ O USE PREVIOUS SECRET CONFIDENTIAL INTERNAL UNCLASSIFIED 3-62 EDITIONS [:1 ^ ^ USE ONLY ^ ] SECRET Approved For Release 2001/07/16 : CIA-RDP79-00498A000600080016-0