And Why They Let Anyone Be An Informant
Burkholder, Steven
And Why They Let Anyone Be An Informant by Steven Burkholder You're young and energetic. You like to write. But your politics put you in deep right field. What do you do? Get your ideas...
...citizens "sympathetic to the anti-government forces in El Salvador...
...Oliver B. Revell, one of Sessions's top deputies, told the Senate Intelligence Committee last February that the dissemination of Boos's piece was an aberration...
...He co-authored "Congress's Red Army" for National Review, depicting Chris Dodd, Tom Harkin, and Pat Schroeder, among others, as Soviet dupes...
...But that was later...
...At the time, officials at FBI headquarters believed Boos's allegations merited being stamped "secret" and circulated to 33 field offices, according to a bureau memo that was released to CISPES and the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights under the Freedom of Information Act...
...Boos wrote up his findings in a three-page article intended for The American Sentinel, a journal that once did business under the name The Pink Sheet on the American Left...
...Given the FBI's apparent propensity to believe much of what it reads, it's no surprise that a dubious walk-in informant helped get the CISPES probe going in the first place...
...He thought he found some...
...That willingness to lend the FBI's imprimatur to unverified allegations probably didn't prompt any agent to go overboard...
...Had someone at FBI headquarters looked into their files they might have found a memo dated September 27, 1968, describing Rees as "an unscrupulous unethical individual" whose information "cannot be considered reliable...
...That article linked Farid Handal, the brother of El Salvador's communist party chief, with a number of U.S...
...This article was supported in part by a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism...
...Take Michael Boos, former program director of an outfit called Young America's Foundation...
...Yet despite this characterization, in 1982 the FBI again depended on Rees's writings—this time sending the State Department a book excerpt that its Office of Public Diplomacy relied on to officially label a women's peace group a "Soviet front organization ." The label later was withdrawn...
...Lost in the media backwash over the FBI's stakeout of the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES) were several incidents showing bureau officials ready and willing to photocopy and pass along unsolicited rightwing manuscripts...
...The bureau's probe, however, turned up no evidence that CISPES was acting as an unregistered foreign agent...
...The author of the article is John Rees, described in court documents and published accounts as an FBI informant...
...Better answers As suspect as all this may seem, it gets worse...
...In 1987, Waller told a reporter for San Francisco's KRON-TV that William Casey's brain seizure was caused by "harassment" from liberals in Congress and the media...
...for the Council for Inter-American Security...
...A former associate of Boos, the 26-year-old Waller also churned out material on CISPES that found its way into FBI files...
...Note the altered wording—a subtle marketing decision...
...I just con...
...For his part, Varelli—who is suing the FBI for back wages—and his former lawyer also charged that the agents in Dallas were supervising him to fill his reports with tidbits from far-right sources, steering him to particular writings if he ran dry...
...Court and other documents described in The Boston Globe and elsewhere seem to bolster views voiced by FBI critics that Varelli is a scapegoat for FBI mistakes...
...But when the FBI winks at even a little entrepreneurial spying, there may be cause for worry...
...Sessions did not quarrel with these revelations, adding, "The source of those materials should have been very clearly checked out...
...There is no easy formula for the FBI to use when deciding to accept information," read one response...
...He also sent a copy of his draft to Edward J. O'Malley, then the FBI's assistant director of intelligence...
...First rule: don't mince words...
...After several months, Sessions answered with a brief letter and 11 pages of FBI responses to questions from Edwards...
...Senator Boren was not alone in his concerns...
...Boos wrote that documents he'd obtained revealed that CISPES would be raising funds "to provide direct military assistance to the Sovietsupported Marxist terrorists seeking to overthrow the recently elected government of El Salvador?' In particular, he claimed that a shoe factory in El Salvador, slated for CISPES support, would be making combat boots for guerrillas...
...only one possible conclusion" he drew from the meeting...
...Boos slipped into a meeting of the Washington, D.C...
...Our concern is with the bureau receiving and filing such information if it does not pertain to criminal activity...
...At a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing in September, Chairman David Boren asked Sessions about reports that Varelli prepared memos for his FBI handlers by cribbing from Mexican magazine articles written by Roberto D'Aubisson, the suspected Salvadoran death squad conspirator...
...That was Steven Burkholder is a Connecticut writer...
...Another, pertaining to the Rees documents relayed to the State Department, stated: "The decision of the credibility of such a public document in most circumstances is left to the reader...
...Waller's worldview, incidentally, provides some tips for freelancers aspiring to hit the bureau's reading list...
...sider it to be good journalism, good investigative journalism," Boos explains...
...Another more serious episode involves Frank Varelli, whom the FBI called its key informant in the CISPES counterterrorism probe and on whom the bureau placed "undue reliance," as Sessions told Congress...
...Where did Varelli get his information...
...Get your ideas disseminated through the FBI's clip service...
...Waller did not return messages left by telephone...
...Rees said in an interview that he had never seen the memo...
...The Review of the News, until it went defunct a few years ago, was the official organ of the John Birch Society...
...Waller's work not only was kept in the CISPES file in Washington, two of the three documents were, according to a source, actually sent out to a dozen field offices as recommended reading...
...In November 1983, while director of research at the United States of America Foundation (housed, at least at one time, in the Heritage Foundation's building in Washington), Waller produced a 21-page report, "CISPES: A Guerrilla Propaganda Network" Months later, Waller penned the virtually identical "CISPES: A Terrorist Propaganda Network...
...Headlined "Group in Nation's Capital to Aid Left-Wing Terrorists," but printed without a byline for Boos, the piece made some strong charges...
...This group counts among its articles of faith the belief that World War III has already begun and that American determination is all that stands between our Latin neighbors and "communist conquest and . . . sterilization ." Though exactly how it happened is unclear, both these reports, along with a third brochure produced by Waller, "CISPES: Fiction and Fact," ended up in FBI files...
...Boos's report "should not have been circulated as an FBI document ?' But an unsigned, handwritten note at the bottom of the FBI's cover note that accompanied the Boos letter suggests that Revell had been in touch with Boos—even sending him a letter acknowledging his efforts...
...As a journalist," Boos says, "you like to believe your articles have some impact Casey's brain and Soviet dupes J. Michael Waller knows something about highimpact journalism...
...On the House side, Don Edwards, the California Democrat who chairs the judiciary subcommittee entrusted with oversight of the FBI was bothered by all this...
...After the CISPES debacle, the FBI knows it must come up with better answers...
...The problem is not in private groups or individuals lawfully collecting information on other groups or individuals," he wrote Sessions in November 1987...
...Boos acknowledges that Young America's Foundation sent the FBI copies of Campus Intelligence Brief, a publication that tracked left: wing political activity at universities...
...He's young, smart, and apparently likes life in the covert lane...
...William Sessions, in testimony this fall, disagreed, admitting that the bureau's suspicions about CISPES proved unfounded...
...The bureau stated in a report last February that it relied on an April 1981 story in a publication called The Review of the News to justify its first (and first abortive) five-month investigation of CISPES...
...Giving the FBI the benefit of his reporting is a "public service...
...chapter of CISPES in June 1984 looking for proof of terroristic criminal activity...
Vol. 20 • January 1989 • No. 12
