THE SELLING OF THE CIA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP74B00415R000400170052-9
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 6
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 29, 2005
• Sequence Number: 52
• Publication Date: March 1, 1972
• Content Type: MAGAZINE

Approved For Release 2005/07 yj f IA-RDP74B00415R000400170052-9
March 1972
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Text by Morton Kondracke
Photography by.Dennis Brack & Fred-Ward
Qofltan.ed
Approved For Release 2005/07/13 : CIA-RDP74B00415R000400170052-9
 ly -, .( /~1tlrFl~,(.V~ 1 VI I\ IG ,~/JG LVVJ/VII IJ VI/'1-Il/r IY/VVY IJIIVVVYVV I I VVJL-J
actor Marchetti does not look, act or talk like a
top spy. He looks like an overweight bureaucrat
and he speaks quietly
in a voice th
t
ll
,
a
reca
s, of
all people, Red Skelton. Yet in the basement of his split-
level Virginia ranch house hang autographed pictures of
CIA Director Richard Helms ("To Vic-with apprecia-
tion for his support . . .") and former CIA Deputy Di-
rector Vice Admiral Rufus L. Taylor, whom Marchetti
served as Executive Assistant. Marchetti says he has hung
the pictures "for fun." He has not framed Admiral Taylor's
recent letter to him, written since Marchetti began speak-
ing out about the CIA,, cautioning him not "to give help
to our enemies within'and without."
Taylor's letter refers to Marchetti's one-man campaign
to rehabilitate the CIA's public image. The CIA has been
trying to rehabilitate its own image, and thanks to the
press, has been brilliantly successful at it. But (Marchetti
disagrees with the CIA press office's version and with
most of the recent reportage on the agency.
Approved
Because of the Pentagon Papers, Marchetti told me,
the CIA comes out looking good in Vietnam because
in the last years it was trying to get the straight poop to
the White House. And it does look good by comparison
to the military. But, one, the CIA was hawkish in the
beginning and was pretty late to see the light on the
analysis side; and, two, ew&n nnw ;. ;&_bAWa nth
e
l.a4destine.Services-side, where the big mapey
is. After all, the CIA right now is conducting a $500,000 .
00-a-year secret war an Laos. The analysts can sayit's
M o'
cause, just like Vietnam, but in my view-the CPA
can't take credit for being so great when at the same time
they are carrying out policies like this."
Marchetti, 41, graduated from Penn State in 1955
with a degree in Russian studies and history and was
recruited for the CIA by a professor there who was
secretly on the CIA payroll as a talent scout. Marchetti
says that the CIA's job offer came during a secret meeting
in a hotel room, set up by a stran ~
dentifi
d hi
e
m-
For Release 2005/07/13: CIA-RDP74BU0415R000400T701 52-i
"~~tinuet
 Approved For Release 2005/07/13 : CIAJRCWQMQDrl Pxxi-
,
rotn_published sources the figure $6 bil116i a year, and
the estimate that some 200,060 persoiis-are employed
various facets of American intelligence. Of these, some
1,000 are with.the CIA,_ 6,000 of them Work' in
"Clandestine Services;" that is, espionage, counter-
espionage and covert actions ranging from_propaganda
to assassinations and paramilitary activity.
,
speak out about the Agency directly. After finishing the
novel, he began work on a nonfiction book about the
CIA, but a publishing agent declared it was too dull. He
has finished a second novel, and now is making another
stab at non-fiction. In interviews, h._ e~clo s el guards de-
t,ils_ on CIA operations or techniques that, might. Fe
.us efuM fg
> ..-h,pparently been more_generous, on a confiden-
tial basis,_with som e Senators and Congressmen, includ-
ing Senator Stuart Symington, who last month led a vain
of Q t,lo limit the budget of the intelligence communit -
the CIA atid_the Pe.ntagon's vast intelligence apparatus-
to $4 billion..a_year. Marchetti "does not say, if he knows,
what the actual intelligence budget is
but he has ado iced
from that-and that I felt the need for more control and
more direction.
."The clandestine attitude, the amorality of it all, the
Cold War mentality-these kinds of things made me feel
that the Agency was really out of step with the times,"
Marchetti told one interviewer.
"I just got fed up," he told another. His wife, he said,
"knew I was unhappy and becoming more and more just
a bureaucrat and said, 'Look, you're young enough to do
something else. I'll work.' " So she took a job as, a
hospital clerk and Marchetti set to work writing a just-
published novel, The Rope Dancer, placed in and around
the executive suite at the CIA.
Marchetti says he could not bring himself
at first to
break. He says he told Helms that "the intelligence com-
munity and the Central Intelligence Agency were just
too big and too costly, that I thought there was too much
military influence on intelligence-with very bad effects
JUKPJ e: -1_4Acadquarters in_Y, "-
,t:~ii Li ?- cc its noeasiires.
k"_s n fools_only..tie
bl jc. OVtK-I&OJ~ C-IA Hreadc ua,rte_rs,,
x .-,j jt&.? Marchetti figures that the way to get people excited"
lli
e
g
=. and its effects on tne' country is to
self over the phone as "a friend of your brother." start with its costs, always a concern to Congress and the
After spending one year as a CIA agent in the field, taxpayers. Once the Senate got into the subject of costs,
Marchetti came up through the "analysis side" of the Marchetti recalls, it became apparent "how much the
agency and ultimately was promoted to the executive Congress really doesn't know about intelligence activi-
staff working on the top floor of the agency's headquar- ties." Marchetti says that "even Symington doesn't
ters in Langley, Virginia. For three years he was Special know. He is on the Armed Se rvices o`mmt"" t'tee and-the
Assistant to the CIA Chief of Plans, Programs and A
ppropri os ommittee, yet he down t`pno_w_wlia't's
Budgeting, then to the Agency's Executive Director and going on. The CIA subcommittee hasn't even met this
finally to Taylor.
Through much of his career, Marchetti has said, "I tonenlace in th debate ot~t-kie, CIA budgel,_Sten s
was a hawk. I believed in what we were doing." That was w
g?" [Senator John Sten ennis of Mississippi, Chairman of Armed
not the case with Vietnam, however, "In 1965 or '66, I Services] said,,,y t hive to make: np your mi~nd_that you
came to the conclusion that this was the biggest.damn ire going to have an intelligence agency and protect it
blunder we'd ever made. I made a decision that I'd avoid as such, and shut your eyes and take what's coming.' " In_
V
Soviet ietnam like the plague. Fortunately, I was working on the same `debate, Allen Ellender of Louisiana, Chairman
matters and I didn't have to pay much othe Senate Appropriations Committee and one of the
attention to ity" . five Senators sup
ose t
--
p
o
p
ferenr intervievAdAdt4a i4ler~rr T1~A ' -IA A~d 67- to say that I do not
n v. vet as e , to begin wit,whether or n th
ot ere
Continued
 were any funds to ciq Rd~ Ra m/1tl 3
e `-S'i~'i awned on me to as about it. I did
ee it ublictzed in the newspapers some time ago._~
arc Tetu saidthat Symington "made agood begin-
ning" in his attempt to control the CIA budget, losing
56-31. Even Marchetti was apparently unaware that in
1956 an effort was made to create a joint House-Senate
committee to control the CIA, like the one which over.
sees atomic energy. That effort lost, 59-27. In 1966,
Senator J. William Fulbright, 'Chairman of the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee, sought to create a special
Senate panel on intelligence. That effort was defeated
61-28.
,aid rchetti: "It's one of my strong beliefs that the
~It _lq.,be more_t g thy overviewed by Congress.. As
AL.b,DpoAgency o eratf,1,4ost exclusively undsr
the authortt o t e residentt.Add the shroud of secrecy
that surrounds intellt ence, and all kinds of things can
0 oneyre arrogant in the intcl!