SNOOPING ON THE SPOOKS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00845R000100160004-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 14, 2010
• Sequence Number: 4
• Publication Date: June 8, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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J ARTICLE APFF.ARID
ON PAGE 21
LOS ANGELES WEEKLY (CA)
8 June 1984
SNOOPI
ONTH
SPOOK
Covert Action
Information Bulletin
by Marc Cooper
The Covert Action Information
Bulletin is perhaps one of the
most important little magazines in
the country. It comes out only two or
three, sometimes four times a year. It's
well laid-out but has no color and virtually
no advertising. Its circulation is well under
10,000. Its name is rarely mentioned on
the news, and other reporters make a
point of not attributing it as their source.
But it has so frightened the CIA that the
agency persuaded Congres o virtually
outlaw the magazine. The new law had the
opposite effect. Today, Covert Action In-
formation Bulletin's circulation is larger
than ever before, in spite of the Agent
Identities Protection Act, which was in-
tended to knock the publication out of
existence.
The goal of the magazine is simple: to
relentlessly expose the activities of the
CIA, its affiliated organizations and its
operatives. Started just five years ago in
the apartment of its editors, The Bulletin
now occupies modest offices in
Washington D.C.'s National Press
Building. Not a day goes by in which one
or more major news organizations doesn't
call The Bulletin to get the "real story" on
this or that suspected operation or in-
dividual. And hardly ever does the
magazine get its due credit for helping out
the megabuck-backed Big Media that so
often relies on its help.
Two of the magazine's three editors, at-
torney WiUiam Schaap and writer Ellen
Ray, were recently in Los Angeles. They
spoke with the Weekly's Marc Cooper.
Weekly: The most recent issue of your
magazine disputes the Reagan administra-
tion claim that the U.S. had no in-
telligence operatives in Grenada before
the time of the invasion. Do you continue
to stand by that claim ?
Schaap: Absolutely. It's enough to just
look at some of the statements from the
new interim government. We know for a
fact that there were many CIA agents on
Grenada for a long time prior to the inva-
sion. Newsweek reported that one of the
agents worked at the medical school. The
New York Times ran a piece on a secret
meeting between CIA Director William
Casey and a group of senators, in which
Casey confirmed that a large number of
the CIA agents on the island were re-
moved during the flights that returned the
medical students to the United States.
Not only had the administration always
advertised its desire to get rid of the
Grenadian government, but in addition it
is a country that is very easy to infiltrate.
There were a number of retired Americans
living there. There were a thousand
students at the medical school.
Weekly: Do you think there may have
been some agents among the students?
Ray: We know so! In the Newsweek arti-
cle we mentioned one agent is named -
Jim Pfeister. And older medical students
told the other students that he had been a
U.S. consul in Laos during the Vietnam
War but had tired of the State Department
and wanted to learn a new profession. But
when the invasion happened the students
saw Pfeister using a walkie-talkie to ac-
tually direct the American troops.
Weekly: Is there any information to in-
dicate CIA involvement in the events prior
STAT
to the coup in Grenada, or can we assume
that the fall of the Bishop government was
strictly an internal division?
Ray: No, it's more complicated. In fact,
we have so far determined that Vice Presi-
dent George Bush was in the Barbados the
day after Bishop was killed. He was
meeting personally with Prime Minister
Tom Adams. It may be Bush was there
before, but we cannot yet document that.
But at that time Adams was already telling
reporters that Bush had proposed a so-
called rescue mission for Bishop, who had
been under house arrest.
Schaap: It seems very clear that the U.S.
and the CIA wanted Bishop killed. One of
the things we learned by studying Grenada
is that the four years of U.S. destabiliza-
tion attempts had not worked. From
Carter through Reagan they had tried
everything: economic pressure, media
campaigns, violent attacks, bombings -
but nothing had worked. It is clear that in
the early days of the Reagan administra-
tion it was decided to work toward the
direct overthrow of the government. They
had to invent an excuse that would justify
an invasion, and, of course, it also meant
that Bishop would have to be killed. We
know that the CIA had agents infiltrated
into the upper levels of the Grenadian Ar-
my and the ruling New Jewel Movement.
Weekly: How can you be certain of that?
Ray: I think a reading of the New Jewel
Central Committee documents seized by
the Pentagon will show that. Of course, of
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the two tons of papers captured, they have
only released about five pounds. And
some of those look forged! But the Cen-
tral Committee documents look real. And
for those who know all of the principals
personally, it comes as quite a shock to see
how Bishop was pushed and confronted.
But the performance of some of the other
Central Committee members was strange.
One of them, for example, was never ar-
rested or brought to the USS Guam as the
rest were. And later he was even broad-
casting from a U.S. helicopter, telling the
Grenadian Army to lay down their arms.
There are also some heretofore unre-
vealed aspects of Bishop's killing. We
reported in the last issue of our magazine
that the majority of the crowd that came
to free Bishop from house arrest were ac-
tually right-wingers. We know that the
Coca-Cola bottling company let its
workers off the job to go participate in the
demonstration. Some of Bishop's people,
like Einstein Lewison, warned him not to
go with the group that had freed him. But
Bishop reportedly said he believed he
could keep the group in control and that
all he wanted to do was to get to the town
square. He went in a car that was waiting
for him because he was told he was going
to be taken to the hospital. But instead it
drove him right to the military base at
Fort Rupert. It seems that Bishop and his
people were at the fort for an hour or two.
Then there were two huge explosions.
What we deduce is that from the crowd of
supposed Bishop supporters two grenades
were thrown at some of the army's ar-
mored cars, which in turn provoked the
killings, including the death of Bishop.
Schaap: There were concrete preparations
underway for the invasion even before
Bishop was killed. The Army Rangers had
been practicing airport takeovers for a full
two weeks before the takeover occurred.
We know that from interviews with GI's
from Fort Lewis, interviews that appeared
in Washington state newspapers. This is
separate from the 1981 military exercises
conducted around Vieques Island in Puer-
to Rico. During this invasion practice the
target was called Amber, and it was
allegedly threatening the Amberines. Not
too different from Grenada and the
Grenadines! The supposition was that a
hostile Communist government was
holding hostages and that its airport and
capital had to be seized by U.S. and allied
troops.
Weekly: In general terms, has the Reagan
administration "unleashed" the in-
telligence agencies to the degree that some
feared when it took office?
Schaap: The changes made by the current
administration have been more than
significant, quantitatively and qualitative-
ly. There is a big difference between the
emotional and ideological emphasis given
by Reagan and that of the preceding ad-
ministration. Reagan has gone for and ob-
tamed things that even Nixon never
dreamed of getting. They got the Agent
Identities Intelligence Act passed. They
got the executive order on Intelligence Ac-
tivities allowing domestic CIA operations
and infiltration.
Weekly: What is so different about this
executive order?
Schaap: This order, number 12333, is sup-
posed to be an overall guideline for in-
telligence activities. But more than
anything it authorizes a new range of
covert operations and has the effect of
altering the CIA's charter. That charter
says the agency is not allowed to engage in
any internal police or security functions.
But this new order allows the CIA to infil-
trate and manipulate domestic organiza-
tions if it is supposedly helpful for foreign
intelligence-gathering activities. It also
allows the FBI and the CIA to increasingly
ignore the -Fourth Amendment and its
provisions requiring warrants.
Ray: The interpretation of what con-
stitutes foreign intelligence-gathering is so
broad that this order makes vulnerable
nearly anyone who is merely interested in
or involved in issues of foreign affairs. A
number of groups have challenged this
order in the courts, including the United
Presbyterian Church, which has in the
past been a target of infiltration.
Weekly: Wouldn't the use of the Freedom
of Information Act make it possible to
discover where the CIA is engaged in
domestic spying?
F Schaap: Not really. Right now the CIA is
proposing a rule that would exempt its
"operational files" from the FOIA. What
civil libertarians fear is that again, the in-
terpretation of what those files are will be
so broad that it will act as a blanket ex-
emption for the CIA. This is a proposal
that stands before Congress as an amend-
ment to the FOIA. And it looks like it will
pass, thanks in part to the ACLU.
Weekly: That sounds strange. Why would
the ACLU support a restriction on civil
liberties?
Ray: Well, it's the lesser-of-two-evils
strategy. The national ACLU did the same
with the Agent Identities Act. They sup-
ported one version of it, arguing that if
they didn't, the even more restrictive ver-
sion would pass. They now say the same
about the amendments to the FOIA.
Weekly: Certainly, the Agent Identities
Act is the most important accomplishment
of the Reagan administration's in-
telligence agenda. Many people say the act
was designed specifically to put your
magazine out of business. Is that the case?
Ray: Certainly. But it really all started
under the Carter administration. One day
we got a call from an NBC television pro-
ducer. He said he had just been to CIA
headquarters and there he was told that
the agency's biggest enemy was not the
Soviet Union or the KGB, but was rather
the Covert Action Information Bulletin!
NBC decided to do a segment on us. And
when we saw the finished product, we saw
they also interviewed then-CIA director
Stansfield Turner and his deputy, Frank
Carlucci. In that segment. Admiral
Turner called us traitors, and Carlucci, for
the first time, made public the proposed
Agent Identities Act. More significantly.
Carlucci even said he knew there would he
some problems with the First Amend-
ment. But the next day the press was dead
silent on the issue.
Schaap: There are three sections to the
act, and one of those is what I call the tru-
ly outrageous part. It prohibits the iden-
tification of undercover operatives of any
kind by former government employees
who have access to the information, by
former government employees who may
not have had specific access to the infor-
mation but because of their expertise
learned how to identify the agents, and by
anybody else, no matter what their source
of information. This in fact criminalizes
the publication of information that has
been gotten from the public domain. So,
for example, if a French paper publishes a
story saying that Mr. X is an agent, and if
The New York Time, then reports that the
French paper said that X was an
operative, the Times has committed a
felony.
Weekly: This act is really designed, very,
specifically, to stop the naming of names.
Schaap: Yes. But it goes further. It also
applies to you, as an individual, telling
another individual what you have found
out about an agent. And not just CIA
agents. It also applies to officers,
employees, informants and sources of
operational assistance. That means that if
you are in a group that is infiltrated by the
CI An if one day you see the CIA agent
si '- car giving his information to a
it means that you have just
his identity. Under this act it
egal for you tp go back to your
group and tell of what you have learned.
You will have committed a felony by
divulging a source of operational
assistance to unauthorized persons.
Weekly: Did the act hurt you like the
government intended?
Schaap: Not really. All it has meant is that
we discontinued one column that we used
to call "Naming Names." Otherwise our
subscriptions and sales went up, probably
because of the publicity that came from
hearing that Congress had passed a law
against our magazine.
Weekly: Why do you think it is so impor-
tant to expose the identities and activities
of CIA agents?
Schaap: It's mostly important to those
foreign individuals and groups that have
been targeted for subversion by the CIA.
Look, the agency's main job around the
world is to turn the citizens of a given
country into simple traitors. The CIA calls
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it recruiting agents. We call it asking peo-
ple to become informers against their own
government. The way the CIA gets its foot
in the door is by appearing to be some-
thing it isn't. By working through labor
advisers, diplomatic attaches, students,
businessmen and so on.
Weekly: Are you bothered by charges that
your work plays into the hands of, say,
the KGB?
Schaap: Even the CIA admits that the
other intelligence services all know who
these agents are. The CIA knows the KGB
and the KGB knows all the company peo-
ple. Not to mention the British, the
French and the Israelis. They all know
who each other are. In fact, most of them
are part of an Old Boys network and prob-
ably all go out to lunch together. But it's
the people, the civilians, who have no idea
what's going on behind their backs.
Ray: And in this country it is our First
Amendment right to know what is hap-
pening and who the agents are.
Weekly: Isn't it necessary for a country
like the United States to maintain an ef-
fective CIA?
Schaap: Only if you are talking about real
intelligence-gathering. We have never had
any problem with that idea. But what the
CIA does is interfere with the affairs of
other countries. It's one thing to want to
`know what a certain country is doing. It's
another to directly interfere with it and try
to change it and shape it to your needs.
Take a simple case like Italy. Every
government in that country since World
War II has been dominated by the pro-
Washington Christian Democrats. And it
turns out that the CIA has been funding
that party's electoral campaigns on an on-
going basis since 1947. The CIA was try-
ing to guarantee that Italy would have the
government we wanted, not the ones the
Italians necessarily wanted. Maybe the
Italians would have voted for the Chris-
tian Democrats anyway. But we'll never
know.
Why should the U.S. take it upon itself
to decide which governments stand and
which fall? And this argument about na-
tional security doesn't hold up. Only a
chimpanzee would argue that Grenada -
with a population of 100,000 - posed a
threat to our national security. ^
The CoNert Action Information Bulletin can be
contacted at P.O. Boa 502"2, It ashington D.C.
20004. Subscriptions are $15 a rear, and it is pub
lished quarterli. Telephone [phone].
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