CIA opens the book on a shady past

Soviet defector jailed for two years
The papers also flesh out details of the detention of a Soviet defector, Yuri Nosenko, who was held in a cell from August 1965 to September 1967 because the CIA feared he might be a plant.

Nosenko, deputy chief of the Seventh Department of the KGB, was responsible for recruiting foreign spies. He claimed to have been the KGB handler of the case of Lee Harvey Oswald, who he said was rejected as not having been intelligent enough to work as a KGB agent.

After more than two years confined in a cell with only a cot, Nosenko was released and given a false identity. He became an adviser to the CIA and the FBI for $35,000 a year and a lump sum payment of $150,000 for his trouble.

The papers indicate that the CIA regularly confined defectors for interrogation, but only outside the United States, and the agency was concerned that the detention of the Soviet defector might violate kidnapping laws. “The possibility exists that the press could cause undesirable publicity if it were to uncover the story,” David H. Blee, chief of the Soviet Bloc Division, wrote in a memo.

Other disclosures:

• The CIA conducted surveillance on numerous journalists, including Brit Hume, now an anchor for Fox News. Hume was working for investigative columnist Jack Anderson when he, Anderson and other Anderson associates were put under surveillance in 1972 after Anderson published a column, considered inside the agency as highly damaging, reporting that the CIA was “tilting” toward Pakistan in its Middle East operations.

Another journalist who was placed under surveillance was Michael Getler, then the intelligence reporter for The Washington Post. There was no indication that the CIA conducted any illegal wiretaps or other unlawful operations against Getler.

• From 1963 to 1973, the CIA authorized and funded “behavioral modification” research on Americans without their consent. The research primarily involved observation of their reactions in public, but some of it involved reactions to undisclosed drugs, the documents report.
• In fiscal 1971 and 1972, “Agency funds were made available to the FBI.” No further details are given on what this account was for.
• The CIA investigated plans to disrupt the 1972 national political conventions and provided operational support — inside the United States, where such activities are the purview of the FBI — for Secret Service operations.

For the Republican convention in Miami, the agency ran name checks on foreign nationals and set up a safe house for the Secret Service. For Nixon’s renomination in San Diego, it ran name checks on all hotel and convention employees, noting, “We anticipate there will be several thousand names to be checked.”

• In May 1973, Angleton reported that the CIA had looked into the operations of the Investors Overseas Service for White House counsel John Dean. The company employed President Richard Nixon’s nephew, and Dean was concerned that the connection could generate “adverse publicity,” Angleton wrote.

Six reports were eventually generated, which the CIA channeled to Dean, now a prominent critic of the Bush administration, through Fred Fielding, who serves President Bush in Dean’s old job of White House counsel. The nature of the reports is not disclosed.

CIA director’s unusual literary pursuits
The papers also include some disclosures that can only be described as odd.

In 1972, Colby submitted an article for publication in the Sunday newspaper supplement Parade, titled “Should Lesbians Be Allowed to Play Professional Football?” Parade Editor Lloyd Shearer replied in a letter in April that he found the article “intriguing” and planned to publish it “in a future issue.”

And we learn that some in the agency were also exasperated by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who made frequent demands on the CIA, the papers reveal. One memo, dated May 7, 1973, complains about the “inordinate amount of time” and “fairly sizeable amount of money that has been expended in support of these measures.”

The 693 pages of CIA disclosures were turned over in 1975 to three investigative panels — special House and Senate committees and a commission headed by then-Vice President Nelson Rockefeller. Much of the material has since seen the light of day, but Tuesday marked the first time the CIA had publicized its clandestine past.

In his address last week, to a conference of historians, Hayden acknowledged that the papers “provide a glimpse of a very different time and a very different agency.”

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