EVEN HARDBALL HAS RULES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000504160035-1
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 9, 2012
• Sequence Number: 35
• Publication Date: November 24, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/02/09: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504160035-1
Ah'T;C E AP N-W YORK TIMES
0-'4 PAGE PLARM 24 November 1986
The Editorial Notebook
Even Hardball Has Rules
American views about espionage
have changed considerably since that
age of innocence when a code-break-
ing unit was shut down in 1929 by Sec-
retary of State Stimson because
"Gentlemen do not read each other's
mail." In the age of cold war, most
people acknowledge the need to play
hardball. Small countries may have
the luxury of virtue; great powers
are locked in a clandestine combat in
which no mercy is expected.
But what if the great power is a
democracy and what if it plays hard-
ball by giving an execution list of
Soviet agents to a hostile tyranny like
Iran?
That's what the C.I.A. is supposed
to have done, according to unnamed
officials in a Washington Post ac-
count. The agency reportedly pro-
vided Ayatollah Khomeini in 1982
with a list of as many as 200 names of
Soviet agents, most of whom were
swiftly executed. If it happened, the
ostensible purpose was to curry favor
with Iran and to cripple K.G.B. opera-
tions in a vital country. For the sake
of the C.I.A. and America's honor, one
hopes this terrible transaction never
took piare.
Iran's Police
Need No Help From
The C.I.A. .
All dossiers are fallible. In Viet-
nam, Americans found to their dis-
may that Operation Phoenix, a secret
program of "neutralizing" spies,
claimed innumerable innocents. As
one officer recalled: "I found exam-
ples in my own nets of Vietnamese re-
porting people to whom they owed
money qc longstanding family fights
or had 'personal arguments." It's
hard to believe that American agents
have any surer knowledge of Iran, or
are better placed to evaluate what a
Soviet detector might say.
In Iran, mere suspicion can be
fatal, with "proof" extracted under
torture. If the C.I.A. gratuitously fur-
nished a list of spies to Khomeini's
brutal police, the K.G.B. could well
compete in this deadly game by pur-
porting to unmask Western agents. At
the crudest level, this blood trade
wins no favor since Iran knows that
the C.I.A. is also covertly helping
exiled Iranians. In the end, that kind
of hardball only confirms Teheran's
belief in the Great Satan's perfidy.
Bitter experience has persuaded
Americans that espionage needs
rules and limits. The Church Commit-
tee exposed botched attempts to kill
foreign leaders like Fidel Castro and
to destabilize unfriendly regimes.
Then came disturbing revelations
about past recruitment of Nazi war
criminals like Klaus Barbie as. anti-
Communist intelligence "assets." Bit
by bit, another dreadful story has
been emerging: The cynical Western
betrayal in 1945 of perhaps a million
Russian exiles and war prisoners, in-
discriminately returned to certain
death in the Soviet Union.
There's no colder phrase in diplo-
macy than "raison-d'6tat," the justi-
fication that enables decent people to
do the indecent for flag and country.
But enly extreme circumstance can
excuse a democracy's secret-conniv-
ance with evil to combat evil. Turning
over names of alleged traitors to Iran
is the kind of hardball that Americans
ought not play, and cannot win.
KARL E.. MEYER JT
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/02/09: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504160035-1