Covert Action Quarterly 47
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Well, Lou came to Washington; we thought tbe manu· script (which was to become Dirty Work: Tire CIA in \\esrern Fifteen Years of CovertAction Europe) was great, and we set to work helping him gather up the articles be and Phil had tentatively selected. getting reprint permissions, and hunting for someone who would be Ellen Ray and Bill Schaap willing to print this book like none other before it. Using public sources, Lou had prepared an appendix to Dirty Work that exposed hundreds of undercover CIA ofh· It hns been fifteen years since the first issue of Covert· cers, with complete biographies indicating when they had Action appeared-and more since political activists world· joined the CIA, where they had been posted undercover tn wide began directly confronting the U.S. espionage complex. the past, and where they were now. We tried a few main· Probably no one is more suiprised than Louis Wolf and stream agents who were, at first, enthusiastic-if a bit para· ourselves over the survival and growth of this confrontation noid. One of them kept the manuscript locked in his safe each and of the magazine. It is unusual, to say the least, for a night. However, he, like the others. came back and assured p rogressive publication to have lasted so long. So many of us this book could never be published in the U.S. Ultimately. our contemporaries have, sadly. folded. But on the other we showed it to Lyle Stuart, who had a backlist of books at hand, the foe we set ourselves against has not exactly "with· least as controversial as thi~specially The Anarchist ered away." In the first issue of CoveriAction, we described Cookbook, a lighthearted tome which had various recipes for the magazine as a "permanent weapon in the fight against the Molotov cocktails and bomb> and various efficient house· CIA, the FBI, military intelligence, and all the o ther instru· hold hints, like how to derail a train. ments of U.S. imperialist oppression throughout the world." Lyle was more than into it. He not only opted to do Dirty It has never wavered from that mission. Work, he came up with the title and the idea of printing the CoveriAction did not arise in a vacuum, of course. We appendix on yellow pages, like a classified telephone direc· were both working with CounterSpy magazine after moving to ry. As the manuscript was being painstakingly converted to Washington in But was in its death 1976. CounterSpy into a book, Lou labored 111 the National Archives over the throes, having been falsely blamed by President Gerald minutiae of the appendix; Bill hunted down the articles and Ford-remember him?- for the assassination of CIA Station permissions; and Ellen, who was hospitalized during this Chief Richard Welch in Athens in December 1975. period fighting a difficult, but successful, battle with cancer, In the last months of its existence, CounterSpy sent Ellen revived to help edit from her bed. Ray to Jamaica to meet Philip Agee and to investigate the In the meantime, CottmerSpy had folded By the time extent to which the CIA was interfering in Michael Manley"s Dirty Work was ready to go to press, there had been no reelection campaign. That was the beginning of several long magazine devoted to exposing the crimes of the CIA and and enduring friendships. other intelligence agencies for more than a year. This was a situation we all determined should not continue. "I Have a Friend I Want You to Meet" Among o ther information Phil passed o n, he told Ellen he A Modest Beginning had a friend in London, Louis Wolf, who had been spending Phil agreed, and we gath ered forces to get a magazine out months in th e British Museum researching a book that would again. We were joined in our efforts by Jim and Elsie Wilcott, be a major exposure of the CIA. He asked if we would meet two former CIA employees who had contacted and shared with Wo lf, who was coming to the States, to see if we could war stories with Phil after his 1975 book Inside tire Company help edit and find a publisher for this book. had burst the myth of CIA impermeability. We enlisted the typesetters and printers who had produced CounterSpy. and the distributors who had carried it; we had the remnants of a Publishers: Ellen Ray. William Schaap, Louis Wolf small mailing list; and we had a tiny spare bedroom in our apartment, which became the first CoveriAction office. Director of Research: Louis Wolf The only way to become well-known, we decided was to Staff: Hilary Dirlam, Margaret Hanzimanolls, make the first issue a free one and to distribute it as widely Faith Holsaert. Bill Montross, Barbara Neuwirth, as possible, hoping to generate enough subscribers to keep it Joseph Reilly. Sharon Reilly, Jane Teller afloat. None o f us was to take a salary from the magazine; we would continue to do other, paying, work. Photography consultant: Dolores Neuman Dirty Work was published just as the first issue of Covert· Action was going to th~ printer. Coincidentally, that summer, Editors: Terry Allen, Phillip Smith the World Youth Festival was held in Havana. To promote CovertActlon Quarterly, 1500 Massachusetts Ave .. NW. n32. bo th the magazine and the book, we took several thousand Washington, DC 20005. (202) 331 ·9763. 331 ·9751( fax). copies and leatlets for the delegates and journalists from CovertActlon Quarterly, Number 47, Winter 1993·94. Published quarterly. by Covert Action Publications. Inc .. a District of Cotum· around the world. bia Nonprofit Corporation. copyright ©1993. Indexed by Alter· We discovered there that the youth from o ther countries native Prass Index., University Micromms. ISSN 0275-309X. AD knew far more about the CIA and its destabilization programs rights reserved. Printed in U.S.A. (continued on p. 65) 2 CoverlAction Numhcr47 CovertAction Q U A R T E R L Y The FBI Targets Judi Bari CIA Dope Calypso Ward Churchill 4 Allen Ginsberg 37 Old the FBI put a bomb In Earth First! activists' CIA involvement in drug trafficking makes bet car and then try to frame them for the crime? ter poetry than policy. Reoent revelations that The evidence points to Bureau guilt and fits a the Agency smuggled a ton of coke into the U.S. historical pattern set by COINTELPRO in the'60s. suggest we may soon need more verses. Russia in the Winter of Democracy Cold War Anti-Communism Redux Fred Weir 10 William Blum 38 Boris Yeltsin, savior of Russian democracy? Has propaganda disseminated by the evil em There Is much more behind the October coup pire warped your mind? And just what makes the ' than our smug pundits and gloating leaders U.S. so darn evil anyway? Take this test of red ll..l,!;iloi:W want us to think. (pardon the expression)-blooded patriotism. Rocky Flats: The Jury That Wouldn't Shut Up 42 When prison censors render portions of the BrianAbas 16 Bill of Rights inoperative, even the founding When a grand jury heard the Rocky Flats horror fathers can seem subversive. A U.S . political show of nuclear pollution, they voted to Indict prisoner looks for the First Amendment. the corporate and government officials respon sible. They didn't know the fix was in. IMF/World Bank: Devastation by Design Walden Bello, Shea Cunningham Trilateral Spin on NAFTA & Bill Rau 44 Joyce Nelson 22 If they have failed to help the Third World. why are they still around? Find the answer by When Clinton, Ford, Carter, and Bush posed in asking another question: "Who benefits?" the Rose Garden to push NAFTA. they were the tip of the ioeberg based in a powerful organiza '----L--' tlon of government and corporate elites. The UN, the CIA, and Evergreen Air Jan Williams 48 When CIAproprietariesdemand favors. they find The Federal Bureau of Intimidation friends In the oddest plaoes -such as in the UN Howard Ztnn 27 where diplomats cut deals with the devil. The FBI Is supposed to fight theft, murder, and clvil rights violations. But for decades, the sup Bag of Dirty Tricks posed enforoer has often been the perpetrator. Louis Wolf 53 The long legacy of Agency crimes ranges Optimism for the '90s from petty harassment to mass murder. Dave Dellinger 32 Challenging the conventional wisdom that the Letters to the Editor 65 movement for social change died with the '60s. a veteran activist sees widespread re I Fron1Cove r pholoo · R•tk Rclnhald. Gay/Je:sbian man:b on Wa<luftgl<ln.l 993 Back Cover: Mau Wuerltcr sistance and discontent waiting to explode. Winter 1993-94 CovertAction 3 ver the years we have been warned about the danger of subversive organizations, organizations that would threaten our liberties, subvert our system, would encourage its members to take further illegal action to advance their views, organizations that would incite and promote violence, pitting one American group against another ... [l]here is an organization that does fit those descriptions, and it is the organization, the leadership of which has been most constant in its warning to us to be on guard against such harm. The [FBI] did all of those things. -sen. Phiip A Hart, Select Committee on Intelligence Adivities and the Rigtrts of Americans. 1975 The FBI Targets Judi Bari A Case Study in Domestic Counterinsurgency Ward Churchill Shortly before noon on After ambulances had left, May 24, 1990, a white Subaru but before the Alameda sher station wagon blew up as it iff's bomb squad arrived at ap· moved along Park Boulevard proximately 1:05 p.m., Gribi in Oakland, California.