A CIA TALE OF BL AND INTRIGUE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00806R000100210056-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 2, 2010
• Sequence Number: 56
• Publication Date: September 20, 1981
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/09/02 : CIA-RDP90-00806R000100210056-6
?
By Daniel Burstein' }. . .
constitution Sped* Correspondent'
WASHINGTON ;. It was a.sun-swept.
afternoon,- September.-24,, *1978 Ai:lone
sailor --- middleaged,::tanned, with a
scraggly - beard" -., allowed .':his-,31-foot
sloop, the Brillig. to drift across the shim
mering waters..-of. Chesapeake Bay-r He
studied some documents from his brief-
case. He switched on. and off his very spe-.
c ial radio. ? He: munched on. a. pickle loaf
sandwich. y'l? . 1..N _ x.' . " .4
Then something extraordinary hap.
pened. Something, violent. Something..that
shook. American. aationai_?sernrity_
foundations and' is, still. reverberating
around the . world in. financial scandals,
r; rnurd rs and the nuclear brinksmanship of
,.the superpowers.
Exactly what happened to J-obn Ar-
thur Paisley three years ago is not known
for certain by anyone who will talk about
it. The Central Intelligence Agency; for
which be worked n w c h o f his life as an em.
Pert on Soviet nuclear capabilities, the.'
Federal Bureau of investigation, and, the
mate' intelligence Committee may, know.-,
But their reports remain clamped under a.
tight lid of secrecy: ..:.~.,.
Paisley, 55, never finished his sand-..
with and never-- returned from that-.day' at
sea. A. bloated, blood-b-ait*d corpse with a.
9= ballet lodged" in the brain was drag-
ged.out of the bay a week after the empty
Erillig ran aground..
Soon thereafter. the Maryland..State-
Police, identified the body as Paisley's and.
? the cause of death as suicide. Official ac-
counts from the police, FBI and.ClA,.pic:
:tuned Paisleyr?asa "low4evel analyst".re-
tired from the CIA, who committed suicide
in - despondency 'over ' his estrangement.
from his wife'Naryana.
It took only a few weely, however, for
investigativie repoctws iu:?citiee that ,dot
. the. Chesapeake an* to tear _througb, all.
free'' noinh in%& oMcial stoew with: _a-
mgmt -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release
ATLANTA JOURNAL
20 September 1981
" Newspaper
that Paisley was
as Stansfield
tor, had conten&
important,
community.. In .f
prominently in
Soviet ?'mole"
upper echelons
'some suspect,
Investigators.
body, 0M discrepancies
this day, there are serio
Paisley's and whether th
'suicide..-
Paisley's disappearance and possible death rocked
Washington in the.fall of 1978. One CIA source remarked
at the time that "this thing is so big it touches every vital
nerve in Langley," the CIA's headquarters. A senator con-.
fided more than a year later that the Carter adminiitra.
tion's failure to win Senate ratification of the SALT agree- .
ment had "a very great deal" to do with concerns that
Paisley's disappearance had somehow compromised U.S
satellite verification abilities - the field in which Paisley
was most expert. .
? Three years later, the demand for-answers about
1Palsley has, not abated.-The mystery has grown only more
knotted and troublesome as a continuing tale of blood and
intrigue is associated with Paisley's name:
? In-mid-1980, the Nugan-Hand Merchant's Bank In
Australia collapsed with Francis J. Nugan having been",
found murdered earlier in the year -and. his American
partner, Jon Michael Hand, having disappeared;Scandal-
ous revelations poured out about the CIA's use of the bank
to launder funds for international covert action. It was an
important enough institution for former CIA director Wil-1
liam Colby to have been Nugan's personal, lawyer in I
America, and it has recently come to light that Paisleyi
was particularly preoccupied with Nugan-Hand's opera-
tions in August and September 1978, only days, before his
disappearance. He bad specifically asked a former con e
sultant to the bank to join him at Coopers and Lybrand, an
accounting firm intimately involved In the CIA's financial.
affairs where Paisley was employed after his formal re- I
tirement as deputy. director of the Office of Strategic
Research at the CIA in 1974.... ,?-:, : r_'.o ' .'~.:.:.ae'y
2010/09/02: CIA-RDP90-00806R000100210056-6