THE FOREIGN SERVICE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01070R000100170008-9
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 17, 2007
• Sequence Number: 8
• Publication Date: May 7, 1982
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Approved For Release 2007/05/18: CIA-RDP88-01070R000100170008-9
RADIO TV REPORTS, I NC.
4701 WILLARD AVENUE, CHEVY CHASE, MARYLAND 20015 656-4068
The John Irving Show STATION WRC Radio
DATE May 7, 1982 9:45 A.M.
The Foreign Service
Washington, D.C.
JOHN IRVING: Marguerite Michaels' book, "Showing the
Flag." It'll make you mad or may teach you a few things, too.
It's about our Foreign Service.
IRVING: One thing we've got to get at, because there
are inferences of it in your book, and certainly in "Missing" and
certainly in "Diplomatic Immunity," which I read during a recent
vacation and was profoundly upset by, and that is the almost
total independence, to a frightening degree, of the CIA on
station. The CIA officers, with the back-cable lines to
Washington that the ambassador need not see. In the novel by Tad
Szulc, the CIA officer actually operates against his country's
interest, totally in his own interest and the CIA's interest, he
says, and causes no end of upset. In "Missing," the CIA is
implicated in many of the details there, and it is suggested that
the CIA is highly involved in, in fact, the disappearance of the
young boy.
What was your view of the CIA and its role relative to
the embassy? And can the two coexist and both work for the
interests of the United States?
MARGUERITE MICHAELS: Yes, of course, they can coexist.
IRVING: Do they?
MICHAELS: They did in -- I think they did in Bogota.
But as the ambassador says in the book, it was such a defanged
operation. And Washington just -- their feeling for Latin
America was that the CIA agent -- and there were a handful in
OFFICES IN: WASHINGTON D.C. ? NEW YORK ? LOS ANGELES ? CHICAGO ? DETROIT ? AND OTHER PRINCIPAL CITIES
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Approved For Release 2007/05/18: CIA-RDP88-0107OR000100170008-9
 Approved For Release 2007/05/18: CIA-RDP88-0107OR000100170008-9
Bogota -- should be working and trying to infiltrate the Eastern
Bloc embassy. So that when it came time to check out things like
guerrilla rumors -- there were several rumors weeks before the
hostage-taking that this was going to happen. And there was no
one to check it out. There were not con -- I mean it was very
frustrating. Like I said before, mentioned before, the CIA
agents spent most of their time drinking with their counterparts
in the KGB, again feeling rather meaningless.
And you had the wonderful situation where, of course,
there was no CIA in Colombia.
MICHAELS: And everyone knew there was CIA in Colombia.
And the Colombian staffers in the embassy jokingly called them
the internos. And that was one name. The other name was
overaged cowboys.
And I don't think those people had a shot of competence.
Approved For Release 2007/05/18: CIA-RDP88-0107OR000100170008-9