WHO'S TO BLAME-CIA CHIEFS OR INDIANS?

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01314R000100360030-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 15, 2004
• Sequence Number: 30
• Publication Date: January 19, 1976
• Content Type: NSPR

Approved For Relep?S W?h4 %M81 -RDP88-0131
19 JANUARY 1976
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BY GEORGIE ANNEGEYE L terly criticized Phoenix prop am'in Vietnam.`-to'take a straight Nuremberg pure position
WASHINGTON-The nowv-notorious rene- It didn't exactly make me Joan of Are., on 'this, but I wonder whether, in today's
= gade .CIA ,agent Philip _ Agee' and his' .'col- F But ',vhen I. talked ? to Harvey Kahn of complex world, that would really be honest.
leagues in the anti-CIA magazine Counterspy .:; Counterspy here, about "reform" of the CIA, Covert operations, after all, are only a sinalI.
"'.have been promising to release the names of he said, "I don't"know If that's our purpose:"-,part of the agency's work. Historical record3
more CIA agents .. mstationed this time, in Mad- He called his group, made up of peace move like the Pentagon papers show that the regu-
- rid: Zaire, Sweden; Paris ;and; Angola. CIA ment activists and ex-intelligence agents, "re- Jar CIA men in Vietnam were the most op-
station chief Richard Welci-z's assassitlation in searchers" who want to "prove to the Ameri- posed of any group of American officials to
Athens is not stopping them can people that there are CIA people around the war (those of us who were there soon obe
And so the strange little saga rots on;. at . the world... served this), and the most unwilling of all the
most as if driven now by some dark motive Philip Agee, who writes often for the mag agencies to falsify information for us.
rower of its otivn. azine and identifies himself as a Marxist who 1 asked a high CIA operative I knew in LA_
:,:.,.'Are Agee and his friends responsible, as the admires the KGB, goes further, however. In a-. in America about this whole question of indi--
'CIA argues, for Welch's death because they. .'recent article he said the lists were published 'vidual .vs. collective responsibility, and he
published his name along with scores'of other so the' countries themselves might "neutral- said, "There is no question the individual as
CIA operatives all over the world? Or are the ize" the agents. individual has responsibility. Yet you are -
CIA spokesmen simply-trying to put ? the ,,;:' ' Now, this seems to:-herald not the much- 'over faced with the question of what your role is
;. blame for his death on some hitherto-ibseure:.';_ 'needed reform of the agency but the, destruct the long haul. As long as I was reason-
:peace-movement amateurs, despite the agen tion of the intelligence system itself and per-'ably convinced my system had good poten-
cy's own long-time rightist involvement in haps of-its men, including intellectual moder- tial, I felt I could do more of a.service by.:,
Greek politics' ates like Welch; who could very well be the staying inside and working from there. if all.
The issue is an important one because'no ones to reform. the agency. the moral people working in secret organiz-
~? where else in the world could the names of ai `- - Maybe I am -unnecessarily finicky, but . I tions drop out, soon you'll have a grotto like:
-ti national intelligence' agency's men be re- can't help but notice that terrorists who oper- the plumbers in charge."
vealed en masse like this. (Two Swedes went -: ate in the area of symbolic assassination (the What worries me in this entire discussion
to jail two years ago for just mentioning the person IS the institution) always seem to get. and the discussion is important not so much
Swedish intelligence agency.) And',since we the wrong person. Dan Mitrione, a State De- '.because these- names were released in the.,
don't know yet who actually killed. Welch, 'partment public-safety. officer, murdered An`. United States as because they were systemat-?
we can do little more than examine the moti Uruguay `nn 1970 by the Tupamaro guerrillas,' ically given to chosen groups abroad-is that
='vations of Agee, et al:. ; ?, .-=.turned out to.be a man who had strbngly the blame and responsibility for all of our' c
First of all, virtually everybody today ;:`protested : the' Uruguayans' use of torture mistakes in foreign policy lie. not with the. ?;
wants to see the reform of the CIA as a against the Tupas CIA or the military, but squarely with the
,.tem: I stand on unassailable ground myself on !E But then perhaps we have to ask ourselves , White House and the political leaders. The ='.
this Issue, because I was the first journalist, in -'`.whether; ' regardless, the individual in ari Church committee's findings show this clear-`i? _-,
196$, to write' about "our" assassins in the' agency like the CIA doesn't carry responsibel- , ly, yet the obsession is not with changing the,
-.CIA's formerly unmentionable and now )lit- ' ity for its collective actions. It would be easy chiefs but with punishing the Indians.
Approved For Release 2004/10/28 : CIA-RDP88-01314R000100366030-3