PHILIP AGEE AND SPY BULLETIN DRAW BEAD ON TIMES, ITS EDITOR

Document Type: 
Collection: 
Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 
CIA-RDP90-00845R000100120001-3
Release Decision: 
RIPPUB
Original Classification: 
K
Document Page Count: 
1
Document Creation Date: 
December 22, 2016
Document Release Date: 
December 23, 2010
Sequence Number: 
1
Case Number: 
Publication Date: 
June 18, 1985
Content Type: 
OPEN SOURCE
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PDF icon CIA-RDP90-00845R000100120001-3.pdf112.48 KB
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Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/12/23: CIA-RDP90-00845R000100120001-3 ON m WASHINGTON TIM 18 June 1985 Philip Agee and `spy bulletin draw bead on Times, its editor Last week, Covert Action Informa- tion Bulletin (CAIB), which special- izes in exposing CIA agents, called the publicity department at The Washington Times and asked for a photograph of the new editor-in- chief. The caller said that he needed it then, being on deadline. This was the first anyone at The Times had heard of the CAIB story. CAIB reporters never called the editor. The following is the story behind the story of the CAIB and its activities, which this newspaper's new editor has been tracking for several years. The CIAs best known ideological defector, Philip Agee, is the "godfa- ther" of an international network of researchers and writers who spe- cialize in disruptive exposes of U.S. and other Western intelligence agen- cies. Their stories, undermining the secret intelligence activities of the Central Intelligence Agency, mili- tary and electronic intelligence endeavors, are picked up by mag- azines, newspapers and television in the United States and abroad. The U.S. television networks appear to regard the material merely as "news" as do certain well-known reporters for some of the largest cir- culation newspapers. Even that bastion of business and finance, The Wall Street Journal, has run Agee network materials on its front page on several occasions in recent years. In one of these, reporter Jonathan Kwitny used material from an Agee network group in Washington to suggest that compromising documents captured from guerrillas in El Salvador and released by the U.S. State Depart- ment, were forgeries. Curiously, the Agee groups have themselves been documented as circulating a noted KGB forgery of a faked U.S. Army manual. Yet they have acknowledged that they have a "hidden agenda" - the destruction of the CIA and other ele- ments of America's intelligence col- lection and covert action capabilities. When Philip Burnett Franklin Agee (born Jan. 19, 1935), then a 10-year veteran of the CIA's Latin American operations, quit while serving in Mexico city in 1969, he embarked on a new profession - that of full-time saboteur of American intelligence activities around the world. He later described himself as a convert to "revolution- ary socialism:' In his first expose book, "Inside the Company: CIA Diary," which appeared 10 years ago, Mr. Agee acknowledged the assistance of members of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party, agencies of the Cuban government, and a variety of pro-Castro "researchers" associated with the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) and other groups. While Mr. Agee has acknowledged "visiting" Cuba, he has never described what "research" documents regarding the CIA the Cuban government pro- vided. Neither has Mr. Agee acknowledged that his 1971 "research" visit lasted about six months, during which time it is inconceivable that he was not debriefed at length to establish the sincerity of his disaffection. After his first book was pub- lished, he visited Moscow - a trip Mr. Agee explained as aimed at arranging details for a Russian edi- tion of "Inside the Company." Mr. Agee has not discussed the financial arrangements he made for "royal- ties" with the Soviets. But in an interview with Peter Studer, published in the Zurich Thges-Anzeiger, Mr. Agee said: "The CIA is plainly on the wrong side, that is, the capitalistic side. I approve KGB activities, communist activi- ties in general, when they are to the advantage of the oppressed. In fact, the KGB is not doing enough in this regard, because the U.S.S.R. depends upon the people to free themselves. Between the activities that the CIA initiates and the more modest activities of the KGB, there is absolutely no comparison." Mr. Agee began to travel to var- ious countries conducting highly publicized exposes of alleged CIA activities and, in a number of areas, helping set up and instruct networks of "new left" researchers and writ- ers to carry out a sustained series of exposes and attacks on intelligence operations. His networks in Eng- land, the U.S. and West Germany have been among the most active. In the United States, among the organizations supporting Agee exposes have been NACLA, the Insti- tute for Policy Studies (IPS), several so-called investigative journalism groups, such as the Center for Inves- tigative Reporting, the Pacific News Service, a news service sponsored by IPS (with more than 200 newspa- per clients), and most especially CounterSpy magazine and the Covert Action Information Bulletin. CounterSpy is the oldest. It was founded in the early 1970s by Tim Butz and Perry Fellwock, alias Wins- low Peck, members of Vietnam Vet- erans Against the War (VVAW) who had served in military intelligence and the National Security Agency (NSA). The CounterSpy expose concept attracted support not only from Mr. Agee, but from members of the National Lawyers Guild. The guild is the American section of a Soviet- controlled "active measures" front, the International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL). TWO laywers, William Schaap and Ellen Ray, had worked on the NLG's Mili- tary Law Project in Southeast Asia. The CounterSpy legal counsel was Alan Dranitske, an NLG member whose partners, now dead, were vet- eran members of the Communist Party, U.S.A. (CPUSA), and had become paid agents of the Cuban government once Castro took power. Mr. Agee's English group cen- tered around Time Out magazine. Among Agee's London-based friends were Duncan Campbell, __1 - STAT Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/12/23: CIA-RDP90-00845R000100120001-3