Double Exposure
AIAN, RAY
Euro vista BY RAY ALAN Double Exposure Say what you like about the CIA, it has a fabulous public-relations setup. Not even ITT gets more free publicity. During the last few weeks, real and...
...I personally would be more impressed by such public services if Liberation and the other papers also published lists of KGB agents and their local contacts...
...But—tactlessly, to say the least—routine SIS mail continued to be franked with the charity's postage-meter logo...
...tax dollars squandered on such contemptible trash...
...Giscard has ordered it to pay more attention to Russia and the Eastern bloc than to Western countries, while retaining its special interest in Africa...
...and their role is known even to junior police officers—who may pass the information on to local newsmen and politicians...
...Under General de Gaulle, the SDECE was given an anti-American role...
...regular diplomats sniff at them rather openly...
...And too many of its actions seem expressly designed to discredit it...
...Atlantic-minded" Alexandre de Marenches, authorized his senior officers to exchange information with the CIA...
...A colleague in Washington informs me that Representative Otis Pike's committee has obtained from the CIA confirmation that the agency did indeed receive ample information indicating Egyptian and Syrian military preparations, but drew the wrong conclusions from it...
...If James Bond were still around he'd be on relief...
...The charity's head office was, by chance, next door to an SIS administrative office, but the Africans didn't know that...
...Space permitting, I will return to this subject next time...
...It was, and still is, so immense that pro-American democrats over here suspect, and would probably be relieved to learn, that it was planned by a pro-Soviet "mole" in the Lang-ley labyrinth...
...That would not be difficult...
...Israel's D-bomb" may be one of the factors that have propelled Egypt's leaders toward moderation...
...Vicious,' say Americans...
...But several names could have been supplied by disgruntled Gaullists eased out of the SDECE, the French equivalent of the CIA, since Valery Giscard d'Estaing became President...
...but many Europeans disagree...
...Why relieved...
...This column, NL, March 4, 1974...
...The damage the CIA's Chilean outrage inflicted on America—and on the whole democratic cause that nato was founded to defend—was 10 times greater than any harm Chile's Leftist President Salvador Allende might have done...
...That's what they are paid—and given a lot of privileges—for...
...None of this amounts to an argument for handing the CIA back to the Indians...
...On the Record • "Another fascinating American mystery is the CIA's supposed ignorance of Egyptian and Syrian preparations to attack Israel last fall...
...Between the devil and the deep blue CIA, most sane people would choose the CIA if only it could be placed under intelligent, responsible political control...
...They argue that secret agents know what they are getting themselves into when they sign on...
...Too many American—and, for that matter, British—agents in "safe" cities affect something like contempt for basic security precautions...
...The French daily Liberation...
...Time Out (London) and the other papers that have leapt aboard the exposure wagon are consciously opening the men and women named in their lists to physical attack, even murder...
...Another Western agent I knew in a town with a Communist administration had a quite childish faith in the security of the local registered-mail service...
...The SDECE's new director, the cultured...
...It is sad to see U.S...
...I won't add to the CIA's miseries by telling similar stories about it, though there is no lack of them...
...Like firemen and cops, they expect to run obvious professional risks...
...The agency has suddenly become more accident-prone than even the British SIS was in Philby's heyday...
...and assistance provided by a politically puerile, strictly mercenary London organization the CIA controls to Fuerza Nueva, a Spanish Fascist weekly with few readers and little influence...
...One replies that Paris is Europe's major intercontinental crossroads, and that Rome and Madrid At this point someone mentions Chile...
...Consequently, when war came, it lasted longer than it need have done, costing both sides unnecessarily heavy casualties and heightening the West's economic problems—for it was Egypt's initial military success that persuaded the Arab Gulf states to join Anwar el-Sadat's victory parade and brandish their oil weapon...
...Liberation, Cambio (Madrid...
...About six years ago, officials in an African state uncovered evidence suggesting that a well-known British charity was being used by the British Secret Intelligence Service...
...Comfort for the CIA: The KGB has dissatisfied clients, too...
...During the last few weeks, real and alleged CIA men have received massive press exposure in France, Spain, England, Italy and other countries...
...The missiles can be fitted with nuclear warheads, and Israel possesses nuclear capacity...
...Intelligence headquarters staffs are often just as careless...
...of course, announced on television, but it reached Gaullist ears and the SDECE is now being sniped at from the Right as well as the Left...
...A few well-placed bombs on the finished dam would devastate more of the Nile valley—with less loss of life—than an atomic bomb...
...alert embassy employes can identify them by telltale administrative details and perquisites...
...Some Arab officials complain that their Russian friends have misled them by underestimating Israel's technological capacity and providing inaccurate assessments of Israeli military units and tactics...
...which published the most names, is Left-wing without being tied to any party...
...There is something in this...
...Barely 5 per cent is acquired by skullduggery and seduction...
...Intelligence analysts informed the White House that a deliberate resort to war by the Arabs was unlikely...
...According to moderate estimates, at least 30 per cent of Soviet diplomats and journalists are Intelligence men...
...The subsidization of antidemocratic Portuguese movements, for example...
...Some American officials blame the former CIA officer Philip Agee...
...Because it is disturbing to think that "straight" American officials might be capable of behaving with such total political and moral irresponsibility...
...The United States needs Intelligence agencies, but they must be intelligent agencies...
...You will hardly believe this, but it's true: A British agent 1 happened to meet one day in a Mediterranean port, where he was pretending to be a journalist of sorts (1 learned of his real business from a common triend), was carrying a Whitehall-style briefcase marked with a small, inconspicuous but unmistakeable government seal...
...Work is well advanced on Israel's [new weapon], the Aswan high dam...
...When their covers are blown they should blame their own, or their bosses', bad security, not the press...
...It seems inconceivable that the CIA was left out in the cold or that it failed to tell the White House what European services, if not its own agents, were anticipating...
...Leftwingers and Gaullists alike have applauded the paper's "public service...
...Some Europeans who defend Liberation's initiative observe that intelligence is gathered nowadays by satellites, aircraft and electronic monitoring of various kinds, and from technical journals...
...The Allies] resorted to terror-bombing in their fight against Hitler's Germany (the British Royal Air Force was particularly proud of its dam-busting techniques) and cannot, without indecency, protest if the Israelis dangle Aswan over the head of any Egyptian ruler who again proclaims his intention of annihilating them...
...Are they not engaged in political intrigue against the democratic Left as well as the Communists...
...In fact, its relations with the orthodox pro-Soviet Communists are often rather frosty...
...His decision was not...
...Official quarters in London denied the African allegation, of course, and that was that...
...The mole suspicion is strengthened by the CIA's other recent mishaps...
...Why, then, they ask, are so many CIA men needed in cities like Paris, Rome and Madrid...
...Israel, relying on American advice, took no countermeasures...
...They move in the same circles as their predecessors and even, in some cases, occupy the same apartments...
...author of Inside the Company, for the leaks...
...According to a Western intelligence source, Israeli Jericho missiles were targeted on the Aswan dam until a relatively short time before the recent disengagement between Cairo and Jerusalem...
...This writer, NL, August 14, 1967...
...The aim on this occasion, its editors say, was to uncover some dangerous political gangsters and oblige the French government to expel them...
Vol. 59 • February 1976 • No. 4
