ESPIONAGE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01070R000301830003-2
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 11
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 11, 2010
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: August 13, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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RADIO TV REPORTS, INC.
4701 WILLARD AVENUE, CHEVY CHASE, MARYLAND 20815 [phone]
FOR
PUBLIC AFFAIRS STAFF
PROGRAM
ABC Nightline
STATION
WJLA-TV
ABC Network
DATE
August 13, 1985
11:30 P.M.
CITY
Washington, D.C.
SUBJECT
Espionage
TED KOPPEL: The list is impressive, former high-ranking
U.S. Government officials who have been registered as foreign
agents. It's legal, it's regulated. But does it serve the
national interest?
Good evening. I'm Ted Koppel. And this is Nightline.
When foreign governments and clients hire former U.S.
Government officials to represent them in Washington, what
services are being bought? What information is being sold? And
what ethical questions are being raised?
KOPPEL: Our subject tonight is one that's intrigued me
for more than eight years. It was back in 1977 that I first
heard of an American citizen working for the government of Saudi
Arabia as a consultant to their intelligence service, their
equivalent of the CIA. What was particularly fascinating was the
man's credentials. Until his retirement, he had served in Saudi
Arabia, in Riyadh, as chief of station for the CIA.
That, admittedly, was an extraordinary case. But in
further researching that story, I learned that many Americans who
have served in prominent roles within the U.S. Government hire
themselves out, upon retirement or change of Administrations, to
foreign governments or foreign industries.
Which brings us to the subject of registered foreign
agents, which is what these people are. And it's all absolutely
legal.
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Now, as Charles Gibson explains for us, there is a
difference between registered foreign agents and public relations
agents. It's largely a question of what the client is buying.
CHARLES GIBSON: Pomp and circumstance. President
Junius Jayewardene of Sri Lanka came calling at the White House
last year on a state visit with issues of state to discuss, but
some other issues, frankly, he'd just as soon not discuss.
LARRY COX: We had that same week, by coincidence,
issued a report on what we call extra-judicial killings, which
other people simply call political murder, being committed by the
troops of the government of Sri Lanka. That week, all that you
read about President Jayewardene's visit was his presentation of
an elephant to President Reagan.
Now, there is a public relations firm which obviously
gave him very good advice.
GIBSON: Good public relations? Indeed. But it
shouldn't come as any surprise.
Foreign governments and foreign businesses will spend
almost $200 million this year for representation in Washington.
Public relations representation? Sure. But there's a lot more
for sale in Washington. Also available to foreign governments
and companies is the inside knowledge of some of Washington's
biggest names, very big names.
You're looking at a form filed with the U.S. Government
by a registered foreign agent. It was filed by William Colby,
former head of the CIA. In this case, there's nothing sinister
about the term "registered foreign agent." By law, anyone
lobbying for a foreign government or company has to register that
fact with the U.S. Government.
DENIS NEIL: The more I've dealt with it, the more
comfortable I am with the concept of being a registered foreign
agent. It simply means that I have to identify my client and my
client's interests before I sit down with anyone and try to
influence public policy.
GIBSON: Neil was a former senior State Department
official. He now lobbies as a registered foreign agent for
Jordan and Egypt.
Others? Well, Alexander Haig came out of government as
Secretary of State and went into the business of representing
countries like Antigua, Barbados, and Japan.
William Colby came out of the CIA and into a company
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representing Singapore businessmen and Japanese business
interests.
Richard Allen came out of his role as National Security
Adviser and began representing Japanese business interests.
People who existed at the highest levels of government,
with the highest levels of security clearance, now working for
foreign companies or governments.
RICHARD ALLEN: I couldn't conceive of a situation in
which, speaking of Brzezinski, Henry Kissinger, Al Haig, Mel
Larid, or anyone else who happened to be -- happened to be
working or communing with a foreign principal of any type, would
pass information that was clearly classified. It's something
we live with all our lives.
GIBSON: But this is not an issue of material that is
clearly classified. This is not an issue like that presented in
the case of the Walkers, who are accused of passing secrets to an
enemy for money.
JOEL LISKER: It becomes less clear when you speak about
someone who may have occupied a position which put them in
possession of special information who then goes to work not for
an adversary in the ideological or military sense, but a
competitor in the economic sense.
GIBSON: Take some hypothetical situations, strictly
hypothetical.
A Japanese business firm is seeking to sell video
recorders in the U.S. market at a cheap price to drive out
competition from U.S. firms and establish a preeminent position
for Japan in the market. Might Japan hire a former government
official and ask him how far it could go before the U.S.
retaliated?
Or perhaps a foreign company might be considering heavy
investment in Central America. Might that company hire a former
State Department official and ask about U.S. military intentions
in Central America? How secure is the region?
The question is, can the person hired make sure his
answer does not involve classified information? Can he sort out
and hold back secure data?
NEIL: The conflict really becomes more one of how you
reconcile your own views of the national interest with your
client's interest. And I think we're pleased that in each
instance we've been able to do that.
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ALLEN: If the notion is to be conveyed that people who
work for foreign principals are somehow hired guns who take a fee
to do whatever that client demands, then you would severely
mislead the American public, and you'd mislead yourself.
GIBSON: But the critics say it is not at all that easy.
LISKER: While that person may not consciously ever do
anything that would work to the detriment of the country, I
believe that it is almost impossible for someone to make these
distinctions on a day-to-day basis while serving that foreign
client.
GIBSON: When at the Justice Department, Joel Lisker was
in charge of oversight of those who registered as foreign agents.
More than 800 are registered. Lisker figures another 2000 who do
the same work are not. Lisker went after some of those who
didn't register. The best known being Billy Carter, who received
$220,000 from Libya, but refused to register as an agent of the
Libyan government until there was a threat of contempt of court.
But prosecutions are rare, almost nonexistent. And when
registration is required, it is often in doubt.
Henry Kissinger, for example. The former Secretary of
State advises a number of foreign clients on political and
economic trends. He is a member of the President's Foreign
Intelligence Advisory Board, and as such still has access to
government intelligence. But Kissinger does not lobby for any
clients, therefore he is not registered.
But, registered or not, the question remains: What are
those foreign clients really buying?
ALLEN: There is a straightforward answer. What they
should be buying is advice and guidance on how to solve either
their problem or achieve their objective. And the presumption
is, in every case, that any of us who have been public officials
of any type work ultimately in the national interest.
GIBSON: This is not a new problem. The issue of how to
represent foreign concerns in the American government has been
around since the days of the Founding Fathers. George Washington
may have started the debate almost 200 years ago in his Farewell
Address. "History and experience," said Washington, "prove that
foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican
government." An admonition with which government officials still
contend.
KOPPEL: When we come back, a former Central Intelli-
gence Agency officer and a former State Department official with
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two sharply opposing views on what happens when individuals in
Washington get involved in foreign entanglements.
ANNOUNCER: Japan tops the list of countries carrying on
extensive lobbying efforts in the U.S., spending more than $14
million last year, followed by Canada, West Germany, the Soviet
Union, and Ireland.
KOPPEL: Joining us live now in our Washington Bureau is
Michael Ledeen, who has been a journalist, foreign policy
adviser, and, under former Secretary of State Alexander Haig,
government official. According to the Wall Street Journal, Mr.
Ledeen also owned a consulting firm that did work for the Italian
intelligence service in 1980 or '81.
With us in our Los Angeles Bureau, Frank Snepp, a former
CIA analyst, who lost a major lawsuit to the Federal Government
when he published an unauthorized book on the fall of Saigon. In
a recent article, Snepp raised the question, why can former
Pentagon and State Department officials use their experience when
they leave government, while CIA agents are forbidden from doing
so? And that is a question we will address in a moment.
But Mr. Ledeen, first of all, did you indeed own a
consulting firm that consulted -- or that gave advice to or
counsel to the Italian intelligence agency?
MICHAEL LEDEEN: I owned a consulting firm that did some
work for the Italian government. I never counseled the
intelligence agency.
LEDEEN: We did a risk assessment and we did a
simulation, a crisis management simulation.
KOPPEL: When you talk about risk assessments, you have
been in and out of government and in and out of the job of
advising people in the U.S. government for years, almost as long
as I've known you. Is it possible to draw a clear line between
what you know from your work for the U.S. government and what you
do in helping a foreign government?
LEDEEN: Well, in that case it as pretty simple.
Because as of the time I did the work, I had never served in the
U.S. government.
KOPPEL: But shortly thereafter you did.
LEDEEN: Yeah. But the issue is, was I sharing with
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them information that I had a result of government service? And
the answer is no, because I had had no government service.
KOPPEL: And you had done no consulting work for the
U.S. government before that?
LEDEEN: None at all. And I had had no access to
classified information.
KOPPEL: Now, if you had the opportunity to do such work
again now, would you turn it down?
LEDEEN: I probably would. Yes.
KOPPEL: I wish you could be a little firmer about that.
Would you?
LEDEEN: Well, I haven't had an offer. So it would
depend on what the specific question was. But I think the odds
are that I would turn it down.
KOPPEL: Do you have any general thoughts about the
subject of registered foreign agents? And it's unfortunate that
we have that particular phrase, because it sounds especially
ominous. But do you have any problems with people who have been
in high government office then selling their services, whatever
those services may be, to foreign governments or industries?
LEDEEN: Yes, I do. But again, it depends on specific
cases and it depends on whether what they're selling has to do
with specifically what they did in government. And then it also
depends on to whom they are selling it and what they're doing.
But I wanted to say that this problem is not going to be
solved by registering them or by putting certain periods of time
in between their government service and the time that they can do
this sort of thing, because it's a problem that has existed since
the dawn of time and will continue to exist, because the foreign
governments are always going to try to get effective influence in
Washington. And it seems to me that the real problem is getting
mature people in Washington who know how to deal with this
problem.
KOPPEL: Does it, Frank Snepp, have to do with maturity?
In your case, for example, you couldn't do it if you wanted to,
anymore, could you?
FRANK SNEPP: No, I can't. As a matter of fact, I have
to, even when I'm writing fictional material, make sure that the
CIA looks over it.
I think probably people in the intelligence business are
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best trained of any government officials to protect secrets. If
anybody's going to go into the consulting business and, I think,
protect secrets, it would be people like William Colby and
Richard Helms.
I'm troubled, though, by one of the remarks -- well, let
me put it this way. There was here a rather simplistic view of
the way secrecy works. In the course of my lawsuit, I discovered
that secrecy and the government's theories of secrecy are nothing
but Byzantine. The government, in my case, argued that it wasn't
so much the matter of secrecy that counted, it was the matter of
the appearance of confidentiality. What does that mean? It
means that if I were to do something which made it appear that
the government couldn't keep its secrets, that could have an
adverse effect on the government.
KOPPEL: All right. Let me stop you for a moment.
SNEPP: By alienating some of our allies.
KOPPEL: Let me stop you for a moment, Frank, because
what I'm more concerned about here is, why is it possible to stop
you -- and you were, after all, a relatively low-level operative
within the CIA. Why is it possible to stop you and not possible
to stop, for example, a former Secretary of State or a former
Assistant Secretary of Defense or, for that matter, a former
Director of the Central Intelligence Agency? How does that work?
SNEPP: It's because the laws and the regulations are
applied selectively.
But what I was driving is that we're all doing the same
thing. If I am releasing into the public domain information,
even unclassified, which might cause the government's security
policies to be brought into question, the government says I am
causing damage.
Well, any consultant who provides a foreign power or a
foreign company with information, even unclassified, which makes
it appear that this government can't control its secrets is
causing damage, at least according to this Administration.
And the reason I get slammed, if you will, and Henry
Kissinger doesn't, for committing this grievious sin of
imperiling the appearance of confidentiality, the appearance that
this government can't control its secrets, is, obviously, I'm way
down the totem pole.
KOPPEL: Gentlemen, we're going to take a break. When
we return we'll be talking with Joel Lisker, who headed the
Justice Department unit which oversees registered foreign agents
in the United States.
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KOPPEL: With us now live in our Washington Bureau, Joel
Lisker, an FBI veteran and former Chief of the Justice
Department's Foreign Agent Unit.
You probably know as much about this subject as anyone
in Washington, Joel. What does a foreign government think it is
buying, what does a foreign industry think it is buying when it
pays 50 grand, 100 grand a year to some former Assistant
Secretary of State or Assistant Secretary of Defense or CIA
operative of one kind or another?
LISKER: Well, Ted, like any entity that hires an
individual to perform services, it feels like it's buying the
inside track, special access, special information, experience,
hopefully at the senior government levels, which will ultimately
inure to the benefit of that foreign principal.
KOPPEL: So, are they all being taken, they're all being
suckered, none of them's getting what he thinks he is?
LISKER: Oh, I think, no. It's very difficult to assess
across the board. But I would say most foreign governments
bargain and get substantially more than what they pay for.
KOPPEL: Which would mean what, then? I mean let's say
it bluntly.
LISKER: Well, it doesn't necessarily mean anything
untoward. It may mean simply that the government is getting the
kind of inside experience and access which would not be
otherwise available to it, at a price which may seem ultimately
to be a bargain.
KOPPEL: Well, all right, let me say it bluntly, then.
Is that appropriate? I know it's not illegal, but is it
appropriate?
LISKER: Well, again, it would depend on the situation.
You know, Ted, every government is entitled to representation.
They have official channels for representation. But some
committees of the House and the Senate, most notably the Foreign
Relations Committee, for example, in the Senate, prohibit
foreigners from testifying before the committee. So they
sometimes have to pursue other avenues. In trying to find their
way around the bureaucracy in Washington, not only in matters
affecting policy, but in sometimes very routine matters, they
seek the best talent, the most able people that they can find who
are available for a price.
These people are hired guns, contrary -- I would have to
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disagree with Dick in the earlier segment. I believe they are
hired guns.
KOPPEL: Hired guns to do what?
LISKER: Basically, to carry out the wishes of the
foreign principal, and hopefully only so long as it's
appropriate.
KOPPEL: And usually those foreign principals are, if
not adversaries of the United States, at least in an economic
framework, they are competitors of the United States. Is that
right?
LISKER: Well, certainly in the introductory portion
that you had on this show, the fact that Japan has invested so
heavily in U.S. talent to deal in the economic sphere would be
indicative of that.
KOPPEL: Michael Ledeen, you have served at the State
Department. When you were at the State Department, if you were
ever doing that again and you were conscious of someone else who
was a former, previous Administration working in some manner,
perfectly legal, but in some manner that was contrary to the
policies that you were trying to pursue at that particular time,
wouldn't that bother the hell out of you?
LEDEEN: Not any more than it would bother the hell out
of me to find the same person in government advocating policies
that I disagreed with.
I'm baffled a little bit by the problem. I can see
perfectly clearly how one should and could worry about people
disclosing information to foreign governments. And I think that
Frank Snepp probably has a legitimate gripe, which is there is
favoritism. Some people get better breaks than others.
I'm certainly not concerned about foreign governments
and foreign companies using privileged channels, or what they
conceive to be privileged channels, for getting their point
across to the American government, or for learning how best to
talk to the key people in the American government. In one sense,
it saves us trouble. If they go to the right person, rather than
20 wrong people, first, they save our time as well as their own.
KOPPEL: Well, then, why don't we just have the State
Department establish some kind of a unit made up of Foreign
Service officers who are available to these foreign governments
and foreign industries to make sure that they get to the right
people?
LEDEEN: It's fine with me. If they want to form a
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consulting firm of that nature, I have no objection to it. Why
not, indeed?
KOPPEL: Well, let's ask about that.
Frank, why not?
SNEPP: Well, I don't think the State Department should
be in the business of advising -- providing business advice to
foreign governments.
KOPPEL: But remember now, we're talking, Frank, here
about something that purports to be in the best interests of the
United States anyway. No one's doing anything wrong here. These
governments are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars,
millions of dollars to get something that, we are hearing, the
U.S. government probably wants them to get anyway.
SNEPP: I don't think we should be in the business of
providing intelligence advice...
KOPPEL: Well, who says they're getting that?
SNEPP: Well, Mr. Ledeen, his particular consulting firm
apparently was involved with the Italian intelligence outfit.
But there have been instances in which CIA officers, or
former CIA officers have been involved in counseling foreign
governments. You mentioned one, Saudi Arabia. There are some
other examples on the record.
Larry Devlin (?), for instance, former CIA officer, has
been involved in consulting with various businesses in Zaire. He
was a station chief in Zaire, and he was at one point tied up
with the Zairian intelligence apparatus.
KOPPEL: Is that legal?
SNEPP: I think this is, if not illegal, it certainly
is ill-advised. Because what it does is to send a lot of very
confusing signals to the Zairian intelligence apparatus. Just as
an intelligence officer's involvement with, say, the Philippine,
a former intelligence officer's involvement with the Philippine
intelligence organization would confuse the signals that we are
sending to the Philippine government.
KOPPEL: Gentlemen, forgive me, but we're going to have
to take a break. When we come back I'm going to ask each of you
very quickly to tell me what you think ought to be doneif we're
going to change anything.
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KOPPEL: A quick final question to each of our guests.
Gentlemen, if you could change one aspect of this
process -- Michael Ledeen, you first -- what would it be?
LEDEEN: I would like to see a certain cooling-off
period between the time a guy's in government and the time that
he can take the particular knowledge that he has in government
and apply it at the service of foreign governments. And I think
this is particularly acute in the intelligence area.
But I think that the basic responsibility lies with
government officials, because the government officials' doors are
always going to be open and people are going to always walk
through them. And the official is going to have to decide who to
listen to and how long and what weight to give to them.
KOPPEL: Frank Snepp.
SNEPP: I would agree with that. I think probably
intelligence officers ought not to be operating with a government
with which they have been operating before when they leave the
intelligence service, at least not for four years should they
involve themselves in some kind of consultancy arrangement with
that government.
Also, I would make sure that Congress is brought into
the oversight process a little more actively. I don't think it
is right now.
KOPPEL: All right.
LISKER: Well, insofar as oversight is concerned,
Senator Denton last year amended the Foreign Agents Act to bring
congressmen within the purview of the conflict-of-interest
statute. Moreover, he transferred from the State Department to
the Justice Department the Neutrality Act, which had been
ignored, basically, by the State Department since 1917.
Now, I think the problem, Ted, is more with the
unregistered agent than with the agent. I mean it's clear that
people like Bill Colby and others that you have mentioned, whose
files are available and who are subject to the inspection
requirements of the act, have a great deal to lose by not playing
fairly with the Justice Department. So I think that, more often
than not, they will. They will honor their commitment.
KOPPEL: Joel, I'm afraid we're fresh out of time....
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