Not an Epic Battle
MILLER, MARK
Not an Epic Battle How the CIA and the Supreme Court left Frank Snepp out in the cold. BY MARK MILLER The First Amendment's free speech clause is more than dry constitutional doctrine. It's also...
...As the CIA admitted, Decent Interval contained no classified information...
...It was in this atmosphere that the CIA decided to move against Snepp, on the hybrid theory that he had breached his signed agreement not to publish "any information or material relating to the Agency, its activities or intelligence activities generally, either during or after the term of [his] employment . . . without specific prior approval by the Agency...
...The Larry Flynts of the world may have made it into the First Amendment pantheon, but the Supreme Court left the spy Frank Snepp out in the cold...
...I was effectively reduced to nonperson status," he tells us...
...Snepp also dwells on the government's case, his encounter with the federal courts, and the shambles it made of his life...
...Where Snepp once fearlessly interrogated Viet Cong turncoats, he now cringes when Barney Fife rings the doorbell...
...In the 1960s, the cases involved civil rights, obscenity, and resistance to the draft...
...He couldn't have been more terrifying if he'd had swastikas on his epaulets...
...Snepp's failure to submit his manuscript for prepublication review," the Court noted, "had inflicted 'irreparable harm' on intelligence activities vital to our national security...
...The late 1970s were a boom time for CIA malcontents and their publishers...
...He's a crusader, and he writes with a heavy hand and the unrepentant solipsism of the incurably arrogant...
...In its terse, unsigned opinion, the court never seriously considered that Snepp's case should be decided on First Amendment grounds...
...Snepp wants his readers to know that he is a man of powerful emotions: "I stood listening to the man and wondering at the precise definition of justifiable homicide," he explains...
...And now, with the publication of Irreparable Harm, a former CIA agent named Frank Snepp claims the mantle for himself...
...Snepp served two tours of duty in Vietnam, and he came to believe that the CIA's abanMark Miller is a writer in Washington, D.C...
...Larry Flynt is the most conspicuous recent example...
...He initially urged the agency to produce an in-house report but, unsuccessful, he resigned and told the story in a book of his own, Decent Interval, published in 1977...
...Indeed, Irreparable Harm seems a self-conscious bid for a place in the free speech heroes' pantheon...
...Nor, in his portrayal of the machinery of government, does Snepp ever miss a chance at self-dramatization...
...It's also a gauge on American society: In any given decade, the most significant free speech cases reflect our deepest cultural concerns...
...Snepp was an agent during the late 1960s and early 1970s, and he triggered a Supreme Court case by publishing a book on his experiences...
...The "sheriff's deputy showed up on my doorstep...
...Nevertheless, his retelling does accomplish one thing: Snepp actually manages to become more sympathetic as the case against him heats up...
...The Supreme Court ultimately deprived Snepp not only of his profits from Decent Interval, but also of true free speech hero status...
...With its important public events, espionage, and courtroom drama, the book has the makings of a great story—given the right sort of author...
...But the CIA seemed to want to control the flow of all information to the public, classified or not, and the precedent it obtained from the case against Snepp was made all the broader by the fact that his book contained no classified material...
...Congressional investigations turned up evidence of botched assassination attempts and other embarrassments...
...And in the 1980s, the cases were about flag burning and abortion protests...
...Snepp is the maverick, the man who sacrificed his career rather than allow the Establishment to get away with its crimes...
...Through the 1920s and 1930s, they concerned the threat of communism...
...The CIA prevailed at every level— at trial, on appeal, and in the Supreme Court...
...The Kremlin couldn't have done any better...
...Unfortunately, Snepp isn't that sort of author...
...And he wants his readers to understand that even a man of international intrigue and high principle takes his pleasures where he can: "I fastened onto [a CIA confidante] with the same singular intensity, extorting so many favors—from fact checking to proofreading to occasional if passionate sex—that her Agency chums soon came to suspect her loyalties...
...The star-packed 1996 film The People vs...
...Indeed, the justices considered the case so easy to decide that they ruled against Snepp without granting his lawyers an opportunity to argue before them...
...Next to the disclosures of Philip Agee, Snepp's book was anodyne, and Decent Interval arguably made a poor test case for secrecy regulations...
...The likes of Philip Agee, Victor Marchetti, and John Stockwell were blowing secrets and naming names...
...The tension was thick enough to cut, and I quickly ordered a stiff drink...
...Like the rulings in the lower courts, the justices' opinion relied on a simple argument about contracts: Snepp had agreed to submit any manuscript for review, and didn't...
...But the 1990s are a celebrity-saturated decade, and our current encounters with free speech law have become a kind of meta-phenomenon, an opportunity for the media-hungry to engage in a new form of moral grandstanding: the First Amendment hero narrative...
...A free speech hero, however, needs an adversary, and Snepp's is the federal government—as imagined in a Hollywood conspiracy scenario...
...During World War I, the major cases involved criticism of the war...
...donment of thousands of Vietnamese collaborators after 1975 was a colossal breach of faith...
...In Irreparable Harm, Snepp describes the turmoil that led him to write the Vietnam book and the sacrifices he made to complete it, and he recounts the secret arrangements he made to publish the book without the CIA's knowledge (made possible by his knowledge of spy tradecraft...
...Finally, there is Snepp's narrative of his courtroom drama...
...His understanding of legal procedure and law is hardly that of an expert, and his version is unabashedly one-sided...
...And if any doubts remained about the character Frank Snepp would like you to think he is, the book's dustjacket shows him in a trench coat...
Vol. 5 • September 1999 • No. 2
