THE WORD FROM WASHINGTON

...Eventually, his life will become a nightmare...

...But such power will be of little use if its reputation is squandered again and again as it has been in the Carter bugging affair, which first surfaced in a gossip column, for God's sake...

...THE WORD FROM WASHINGTON Jeff Stein NAMING NAMES have here in my hand a name...

...No matter where you end up of a Saturday night—in a crowded Adams-Morgan apartment, sharing a screwtop jug of wine, or below the salt at a Georgetown dinner table, watching through the candlelight as the fat congeals on what's left of a leg of lamb—the conversation is bound to drift at least to one of three topics that have transfixed the locals for too long: the extortionate price of real estate, the Government, or The Washington Post...

...Until recently The Post was a different matter altogether...

...Her spy career will be finished...

...Like an obsessively close friend, there it is out on the doorstep every morning, even when it drives you to obscenities for some failing or other and should have the presence of mind to go away...

...And when that newspaper goes with the story, it should have the power and character to hold firm against the inevitable White House counterattack...

...It may tap a telephone, or unfairly destroy an opponent here or abroad...

...So it was distressing to learn from a friend inside the paper that one recent night a call from the executive offices upstairs down to the composing room led to the killing of two-and-a-half columns of letters from the public upbraiding the paper for giving vent to rumors that Jimmy Carter had bugged Ronald and Nancy Reagan's transition digs in Blair House—rumors that The Post later and reluctantly admitted were unfounded...

...Synfuels Corporation to find out whether there is a way to block a grant request by Santa Fe International Corporation for help in a project to turn tar sands into liquid fuel, a proposal that could cost millions...

...The Post's grubby performance in this affair follows too closely on the heels of the Janet Cooke fabrication that was nominated for—and won—a Pulitzer Prize...

...The Post is the flagship of a far-flung and powerful corporation...

...officials want to back away from Pol Pot and open discussions with Hanoi aimed at reducing Soviet inftoence in Southeast Asia in exchange for U.S...

...she works for the State Department...

...She has done well for herself in the employ of the elite U.S...

...I suppose some of her colleagues know she really is with the Company, and I suppose it bothers some of them...

...Meanwhile, in quiet, rural Emmitsburg, Maryland, FEMA officials have taken steps to turn the National Firefighters Academy into a new "Emergency Training Center...

...And I will ask her to meet me for a cappuccino and tell me her side of the story...

...Carter has complained to intimates that neither Ronald Reagan nor Alexander Haig answered his letters summarizing his talks with Chinese leaders in Beijing...

...Gunslingers Ambitious officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency have been trying to make an end run around FBI director William Webster and establish their own terrorism-fighting department...

...Sometimes a newspaper can learn...

...That is how it works...

...She can't...

...Lately, with the death of The Washington Star, people have put a lot of pressure on their "relationship" with The Post, and like an overburdened friend, it has been letting them down...

...And she will be ready with the crates of weapons when the time comes...

...It is here that the relationship ends—and the metaphor must be abandoned—because, of course, The Post can't really be a friend...

...It belongs to a bright, attractive young woman...

...Shifting Sands Should the U.S...

...authorities to Santana's presence in Chile...

...For better or worse, Washington's stuck with it...

...She is a fascinating conversationalist, endowed with all of the social graces—a pleasant, serene person who has remarkable insights about the world around her...

...The Post's power will be of little use if its reputation is squandered One way a newspaper lets readers blow off steam is by printing letters to the editor...

...Now comes word that high State Department officials are exploring the option of giving outright military aid to forces led by ousted Sihanouk minister Son Sann to tie down the Vietnamese in a protracted conflict...

...There's little you can do about the first two, when you get right down to it...

...I doubt that she spends any time meeting with spies attached to the foreign embassies here in Washington, Not yet, anyway...

...The Chamber of Commerce will not tell you about it...

...But more than a newspaper, it also happens to be the city's preeminent liberal institution...

...Heading it will be Fred J. Villella, a specialist in social unrest from the California Specialized Training Institute, San Luis Obispo...

...But The Post's increasing arrogance is distressing—except, for sure, at the White House...

...Her job now is to build her "cover," so that when she goes overseas people will think she is, in fact, a foreign service officer, a "political analyst...

...policy toward Indochina remains in a precarious balance, with one camp favoring continued punishment of Vietnam and another exploring.a diplomatic solution to the instability that comes from Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia and the simmering civil war there...

...She went to good schools...

...recognition of the PLO and isolation of Muammar Qaddafi...

...It will be to a strong and credible Washington newspaper that the duty will fall...

...government underwrite Arab petroleum development in this country...

...There's a big difference...

...She will get a promotion...

...Sources speculate Santana was trying to set up a clandestine league of right-wing terrorists in Latin America to be called "Black International...

...She is a credit to the feminist pressure that opened doors for women in the Government's most secretive offices...

...She is popular with her friends, many of whom live, as she does, in the tony Dupont Circle area of Washington...

...its reportage is nationally syndicated...

...Money is expensive and the Government doesn't change very much in the end, no matter who gets to sleep in the Lincoln bed...

...II) Jimmy Carter's airborne grandstanding with reporters during the return flight from Anwar el Sadat's funeral has been panned here as a shallow effort to make headlines by calling for diplomatic initiatives he refused to take as President, notably U.S...

...Most of her friends—maybe even some who are close— think she works for the State Department, not the CIA, They would be disappointed to learn she had lied to them, Until now I could find no reason to tell anyone that she really is a spy...

...Officially, she has nothing to do with the CIA...

...I'm thinking hard about it...

...In the past year, Santana, accompanied by a so-far unidentified arms dealer, visited Uruguay, Paraguay, Argentina, Costa Rica, Panama, and Chile...

...Representative Toby Moffett, Connecticut Democrat, has asked the U.S...

...spy agency...

...The reasons for his travels...

...A story cannot merely stand on its own merits...

...The League of Women Voters will not get out a special newsletter, not that many would pay attention if it did...

...Reagan's people must be falling all over one another with glee, with an eye to the future...

...This woman is earmarked for success...

...The End for Omega 7? Law-enforcement officials believe they made a major dent in the Cuban exile terrorist organization Omega 7 when they arrested Armando Santana Alvarez in New Jersey on October 9. Santana, head of the Cuban Nationalist Movement, whose members were indicated in the Orlando Letelier assassination plot, was long thought to be the covert chief of Omega 7. Though he was picked up on charges of using a false U.S...

...Her bosses back at Langley will pay her a bonus of $10,000 or more if she manages to enlist a spy from the other side...

...So I'm thinking of disclosing it soon, before it's too late, before she leaves, before she hurts someone...

...By the time you read this, the Government may have made it illegal to reveal this woman's name...

...December Briefing jimmy Who...

...Webster argues that terrorism is not a problem in the United States, but FEMA officials have received a White House go-ahead to establish a new "Disorder Consequences Division," whose exact function remains unclear...

...POSTMORTEM People say Washington is a boring town, and not for nothing...

...Then she will get to meet those beleaguered colonels...

...She will have to stay home...

...More likely, she will recruit a lonely and underpaid young man of cafe au lait good looks from, say, the Mozambique embassy...

...We are all in a tight spot now...

...They must wonder whether she is spying on them, and I suspect there are times when she does, When there is talk of CIA agents, people think of trenchcoats and of pistols fitted with silencers and of codes and secret crates of weapons destined for beleaguered colonels in Latin America, They would be disappointed if they met the woman whose name I have in my hand...

...We could maybe drop The Post in protest...

...Alarums from, say, the Socialist Workers Party will go unheeded...

...Like most of its predecessors, it will find out it has taken aboard a crook or two or three—someone will get his hand caught in the public till...

...The Soviet KGB will know who she is, and its agents will watch her closely, She will know who the KGB officers are, too, and she may even invite one for a cappuccino in a local cafe, hoping to begin the dance of spy versus spy which sometimes culminates in a successful recruitment...

...This is the way things work here...

...Maybe next month...

...But this is supposed to be about Washington, and not about newspapers...

...Already Washingtonians are talking of The Post as a pretty good paper with some great reporters rather than just igreat paper, as it was once routinely called...

...But I may change my mind...

...But before I do it, I will call her up and tell her what I'm doing...

...The policy debate seems far from resolution...

...If there were another newspaper in town, its counterpoint coverage of the incident would surely shame The Post back to its senses...

...Her job seemed so innocuous in the two years I've known her, When I've seen her walking home from work after a day of lies, I've usually just waved and wondered if it bothered her...

...passport, FBI agents also confiscated ninety-two pounds of marijuana and three handguns in his apartment...

...She will be upset, I'm sure...

...it's a newspaper...

...It is this: As surely as the trees in Rock Creek Park shed their last leaves come mid-November, and the Redskins start giving the lower rungs of their National Football League division a lived-in look, the Reagan Administration will soon reach farther than it can grasp...

...recognition and trade...

...But she will not fool many people...

...According to a well-informed source, other senior U.S...

...Too bad...

...According to well-placed sources, it was the Chilean secret police, eager to win points with the Reagan Administration, that tipped off U.S...

...Back to the Golden Triangle U.S...

...So what's the big deal...

...After a couple of years, she will move on to another country...

...She will soon be leaving Washington for her first foreign assignment, taking CIA boodle and lavish promises for anyone who will become her spy, who will turn against his or her own government, become a traitor, and work for my friend...

...A Kuwaiti government-owned company has agreed to pay Santa Fe $12.5 billion in a takeover bid...

...She does not talk much about her work...

...Then she will start doing her real work...