FEDERAL COURT SUPPORTS CIA ON 1974 KNOPF BOOK

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00806R000100250009-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 9, 2010
• Sequence Number: 9
• Publication Date: May 22, 1981
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/09/09: CIA-RDP90-00806R0
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
22 May 1981
Federal Court Supports CIA
On 1974 Knopf Book
A federal court has ruled against an
organization that sought to force the
Central Intelligence Agency to reveal
material it had deleted from the 1974
bestseller, "The CIA and the Cult of
Intelligence" (Knopf). The book, by
John Marks and Victor Marchetti, was
the first in a series on the CIA that
brought the agency into contention
with authors over disclosure of alleged
CIA secrets.
The Center for National Security
Studies had sought the information in a
move under the 1978 Freedom of Infor-
mation Act, but the CIA refused and
the CNSS filed suit. The CNSS con-
tended that many of the 168 excised
items that were represented by blank
spaces in the book already were public,
and that the CIA had failed to show
why the rest of them should not be.
U.S. District Court Judge Oliver
Gasch said in his April 28 ruling that to
force the CIA to "show that the infor-
mation classified when the manuscript
was first presented to the CIA has not
been the subject of subsequent public
disclosures ... would put on the CIA
the impossible burden of proving a neg-
ative."
At the beginning of the dispute, the
CIA originally had wanted 339 dele-
tions, but negotiations with the authors
reduced that to 168, and the CIA subse-
quently declassified 27. The court rul-
ing, itself disclosed one of the items that
had been removed but had not been
declassified even though the informa-
tion had long been in the public do-
main.
In his written opinion in favor of the
CIA, Gasch said, "Deletion number
171 concerns the alleged location in a
friendly country of a NSA [National
Security Agency] facility used to inter-
cept communications from the Middle
East and Africa."
Gasch then addressed CNSS
publicly available before the book was
published. The 23-page court ruling
cited CNSS references to congressio-
nal hearings and news articles that
placed the facility at Sidi Yahia in Mo-
rocco. Gasch then said, "Aside from
the fact that most of these disclosures
antedated the Marchetti and Marks
book, these and plantiffs' other exam-
pies of public disclosures simply do not
rise to the level of declassification by
official disclosure."
Morton Halperin, an American Civil
Liberties Union Lawyer who also is
director of the CNSS, was an employee
of the National Security Council when
Knopf and the authors sued to get
release of the 168 deletions. At that
time Halperin appeared for the govern-
ment as an expert witness on national
security matters.
. .Halperin had offered a sealed affida-
vit in the CNSS case to present his
.views on the justifiability of the 1974
deletions. Gasch refused to accept the
affidavit. He said there was no sugges-
tion in the case that the government
officials who reviewed the deletions
"were unqualified to do so or were
careless in their assessments."
CNSS attorneys indicated they'
would appeal the decision. H.F.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/09/09: CIA-RDP90-00806R000100250009-4