THE CIA AND THE MAFIA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01315R000300510129-4
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 20, 2004
• Sequence Number: 129
• Publication Date: May 30, 1975
• Content Type: NSPR

NEW TIMES
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By Robert Sam Anson
There is an almost obscene glee in
Washington these days; the kind of blood
lust that sweeps over . abullring the mo-
ment before the big. black animal.
wounded. and wild-eyed, receives the
final sword thrust to the brain. You don't
want to look. and yet you can't help it.
Despite, maybe because of, the gore. the
spectacle that is about to be played out is
deeply satisfying. After three decades of
spying. lying, destabilizing governments
and terminating with extreme prejudice.
the CIA is about to get it in the neck. .
The disclosures now are coming in
torrents. CIA opening mail. CIA spying
on Americans. CIA plotting murder.
Even the Rockefeller Commission, in its
rush to absolve the Agency of the worst
of the charges that have been laid against
it. has been obliged to dispatch investi-
gators to Dallas. Texas. to clear up persis,
tent questions about the Agency's pos-
sible involvement in the Kennedy assass-
ination. The Church committee's
investigation of the Agency is still weeks
away. and yet the rumor mill is already
gri nding. One report has it that Sy Hersh.
whose disclosures started it all and who
has been ominously silent the last few
weeks, is working on a story involving the ?. the evidence rolling in, the image of the
killing of an unnamed American in this CIA as an aggregation of international
country by the CIA. Another rumor has it gangsters is a difficult one to accept,
that lames Angleton. the ousted director Gentlemen, as Henry Stimson so memor-
of domestic operations for the CIA, is tin- ably put it, do not open each others mail,
burdening his soul to Hersh. his former much less slit each other's throats, and,.in
tormentor. Unlikely as' both stories are, the public imagination. CIA, has always.
they are indicative of the mind set in seemed a gentlemanly calling, a vocation
for the thin-lipped and well turned-out..
~# was inevitable: the products of good families and the
It right schools., Who wished to serve their
entIe n wishing , country and: fight communism without
Wntlemen getting their hands dirty. They -were
to be killers tweedy. civilized sorts. in the best tra-
ditions of the "Oh So Social" OSS, thes t
g;.aVitat to killers
agents of the imagination. And certainly?
wishing to ide there were many who fit that mold. The
*~~ ~ quiet men of Langley's seventh floor ex-
(gen1 eeutive suite.-tire analysts. the OSS
veterans who went into business and pub-
lishing and wrote their memoirs of der
Washington and Langley. There s some- ring-do with the French .filaquis-tlicy
thing pathetic about it and disgusting,' were like that. But they were never th-e-
says an old State Department hand from men on whom CIA relied. Those were a
Laos. "All the guys in the Agency are trip-. different sort. "I remember the first time
ping over one another to be the first to I ran into them." says a former senior of-
fink on a friend. The thing is coming ficial of the New York Police Depart-
apart. They're panicked. Everyone wants ment. "And I remember the jolt I got. I
to save his ass." expected Yale blue bloods. And you
The storm breaking over Langley know what they were? Animals. .lust
has been years in coming. Even now, with animals'
Approved For Release 2005/01/11: CIA-RDP88-01315R00030051012Iptl'22ued