The Subversion Factor
Part II
The Open Gates of Troy
OPENING MONTAGE SCENES
Mark Felt: "What they were doing there was making bombs. They were making anti‑personnel bombs. They were taking four or five sticks of dynamite, hundreds of heavy nails, and taping the nails on the outside of the dynamite so that when it exploded, it would send those nails in every direction and, of course, any one like a bullet. So they would have killed hundreds of people had they been successful."
Larry Grathwohl: "But because of my activities and other people's activities, the Weathermen had to spend a lot of time trying to determine who the informants were, who the police agents were, and this distracted them from their goals."
Ladislav Bittman: "The two disinformation departments‑‑again under the supervision of the Soviets‑‑decided to start a long‑term operation against the CIA, making life as hard as possible for CIA, that is to label many American diplomats, politicians, cultural representatives abroad as CIA agents and paralyze their positions."
Philip Agee: "I believe in the naming of the names of CIA people working abroad."
Morton Halperin: "I think anybody who thinks that the Communist Party in the United States is a serious threat to the security of the United States in any way has not studied the political situation in the United States."
Richard Nixon: "I shall resign the Presidency effective at noon tomorrow. Vice President Ford will be sworn in as President at that hour in this office."
MUSIC TO CLIMAX
Griffin: In the First Century, B.C., it was the Roman poet Virgil who immortalized the story of the Trojan Horse. After 10 years of warfare, the Greeks hadn't been able to breach the impenetrable walls around the Trojan city of Troy. Finally, they devised a scheme for accomplishing through trickery what they could not achieve by military might. They built a large wooden statue of a horse and placed it outside the city gates, supposedly as an offering to the Gods and a tribute to the Trojans who were led to believe that the Greeks at last had abandoned the battlefield. But, when the structure was brought into the city, it carried a small contingent of Greek soldiers hidden within its wooden belly. That night, while the Trojans slept with pleasant dreams of peace the soldiers crept from their hiding place, overpowered the few sentries who remained on guard, and, from the inside, opened the gates of Troy. Legions of warriors waiting on the outside rushed into the defenseless city and, roaming through the streets at will, massacred the population. When they left, it is said that every building had been destroyed, and no living thing remained behind.
Now there is much in common between the ancient city of Troy and the United States of America. In the past, our walls have been impenetrable against the armies of all hostile foreign powers. But now we are told that there no longer is any danger, because our enemy has "mellowed" and gone. Is it possible that we too have been lulled into pleasant dreams of peace while there are those who, even now, overpower our sentries and pull open our gates from the inside?
The answer to that question is the subject of this program.
(Voice over) In Part I, entitled Moles in High Places, we posed the proposition that America's retreat from victory since the end of World War II was the result, not of a confusion factor, but of the subversion factor. We reviewed the official Soviet strategy for utilizing subversion as a method of conquest from within. We took a look at the record of early Communist success in penetrating into the highest levels of our government. We saw how these disclosures were met with indifference or hostility from the Executive Branch, the courts, and Congress itself. We saw men who were blatant security risks continue to rise in federal employment. And, finally, we documented the process by which the Soviet underground in the 1960s launched a successful campaign to disrupt and discredit the investigative committees of Congress. By the 1970s, the drive against internal security was ready for the next stage of development.
In June of 1971, Daniel Ellsberg and Anthony Russo of the Rand Corporation were charged with espionage and theft of government property when they delivered for publication certain highly classified documents which became known as the Pentagon Papers. The publishing of these documents provided the Soviets with an effective anti‑American propaganda weapon in Southeast Asia and also gave them the key to our secret diplomatic code, a key they could use to decipher hundreds of older messages recorded and stored for just such a breakthrough. Ellsberg and Russo claimed that freedom of the press gave them the right to obtain and publish these documents.1
A team of National Lawyers Guild attorneys was assembled for their defense, and the head of this team was Leonard Boudin of the law firm Rabinowitz, Boudin and Standard, a registered agent of Cuba.
Also active in the defense was an organization called the Institute for Policy Studies. Sometimes described as a think‑tank for the Left, the Institute for Policy Studies is headquartered in Washington, D.C. It has served as a clearinghouse for disgruntled or disloyal government employees to leak information to the press that will damage our diplomatic or military operations in other countries.2
One of the founders of the Institute for Policy Studies was Richard Barnet.
In his book, Intervention and Revolution, Barnet describes Communist movements and terrorist campaigns around the world as being merely local struggles for power with no connection to the Soviet Union.3 It is Barnet's position that the Soviet KGB is not aggressive in these activities and that local Communist leaders are independent of Moscow.
In his book entitled The Economy of Death, he wrote: "If a country in Asia, Africa, or Latin America ‘goes Communist,’ the Soviet Union or China does not necessarily benefit....Revolutionary regimes, even communist ones, do not make the United States any weaker militarily or the communist powers any stronger....”4
One of the goals of the Institute for Policy Studies has been to weaken and neutralize the CIA. This is also a goal of the KGB. In spite of the fact that the CIA already may have been compromised by Communist agents within its ranks, and in spite of the fact that, in many countries, it has supported the worst possible non‑Communist leaders among the contenders, still, in some countries, the CIA has done much to slow down Communist progress, and, as long as it remains in operation, there is always a chance that it could do great future damage to Soviet plans.
Agee: "I believe in the naming of the names of CIA people working abroad, or in the United States for that matter, because I think that people around the world ought to know as a matter of principle, with whom they are dealing."
The name of Philip Agee has become synonymous with the drive against the CIA. Agee had been a CIA Operations Officer in Latin America. He resigned in 1969 and began work on his book entitled Inside The Company: CIA Diary, which became an international best seller in 1975. The theme of this book was simple. The CIA is on the side of evil, engaged in a senseless and cruel campaign against an imaginary threat of Communism. Agee frankly supports the activities of the KGB and even complains that the Soviets are not doing enough in the area of secret operations.
In the conclusion of his book, Agee revealed his personal ideology. He said: "Reforms of the FBI and the CIA, even removal of the President from office, cannot remove the problem .... The argument is with capitalism, and it is capitalism that must be opposed."5
In the June 1975 issue of Esquire magazine, Agee was even more blunt when he said: "I aspire to be a communist and a revolutionary."6
In 1977 Agee was deported from Britain for his activities on behalf of the KGB. One of the persons who came to his legal defense was Ramsey Clark, former Attorney General of the United States.7
As early as 1974, Philip Agee had become associated with a periodical called Counter‑Spy which published the names and addresses of CIA officers stationed in other countries. One of the names published by Counter‑Spy was Richard Welch, attached to the U.S. Embassy in Athens, Greece. Shortly after his name was revealed, Welch was ambushed and killed by local terrorists. Similar assassination attempts have been made on U.S. officials in other countries immediately following the public disclosure of their names.8
In July of 1978, Philip Agee traveled to Cuba to participate in the Eleventh Communist World Youth Festival. While there, he announced the formation of a new publication called the Covert Action Information Bulletin. An editorial in the first issue stated: "We will never stop exposing CIA personnel and operations whenever and wherever we find them."9
It's likely that some of the names released by the Covert Action Information Bulletin were CIA officers working under cover of other occupations, but many were not. In fact, one source for acquiring these names was the Soviet Disinformation Departments of East Germany and Czechoslovakia.
LADISLAV BITTMAN INTERVIEW
Griffin: One of the men responsible for compiling this list, before seeking political asylum in the West, was Ladislav Bittman, the officer in charge of the Department of Disinformation in Czechoslovakia.10
Bittman: The two disinformation departments‑‑again, under the supervision of the Soviets‑‑decided to start a long‑term operation against the CIA, making life as hard as possible for the CIA, that is to label many American diplomats, politicians, cultural representatives abroad as CIA agents and paralyze their positions.
Specifically, in 1966, the first major operation was to prepare a book which is called Who Is Who in CIA. Shortly after coming to the United States, I found this book in many bookstores. I have it at home. For example, it was quoted by the Covert Action Information Bulletin.
Griffin: Is this Agee's group?
Bittman: Yes, that's right. It's one of the major sources of information about CIA. Man, that's ironic, of course, because it is a Communist disinformation.11
Griffin: (Voice over) Another anti‑security organization headquartered in Washington, D.C. is called the Center for National Security Studies. It is directed by Morton Halperin, who traveled to England with Ramsey Clark to assist in the legal defense of Philip Agee.12 Halperin previously had been employed in the National Security Council as the Senior Assistant to Henry Kissinger. Halperin, in fact, was the man who personally prepared the Pentagon Papers for the government before they were illegally transmitted to the press. Later, he spent five months working with Leonard Boudin and other members of the National Lawyers Guild as a special consultant in the defense of Ellsberg and Russo.
MORTON HALPERIN INTERVIEW
Griffin: Mr. Halperin has become another prominent spokesman for the point of view that there is no threat of Communism, that we can best combat the secret operations of the KGB by ourselves doing everything in the open, and that there is no need for us to be concerned over Marxist‑Leninist movements in any country.
Halperin: The notion that there is a Marxist‑Leninist conspiracy in the world, in light of the very, very substantial differences between various countries who call themselves Marxist‑Leninist, is absurd. I think the only people left who take Marxism‑Leninism seriously are American right‑wingers who have a need for seeing a conspiracy opposed to them.
Griffin: (Voice over) During our interview, Mr. Halperin remained soft‑spoken and composed while discussing questions of civil liberties and constitutional rights. But when we asked him about the Communist Party connections of his associate, Leonard Boudin, this was his reply.
Halperin: That's absolute nonsense and you know that's absolute nonsense. Mr. Boudin can speak for himself about his past affiliations, but I think that's, first of all, totally irrelevant to the question of the defense of Daniel Ellsberg, and also absolute nonsense.
JOHN REES INTERVIEW
Rees: Leonard Boudin has been a member of the National Lawyers Guild probably for the last 30 to 35 years. He's been remarkably visible defending people such as Judith Coplin, who was giving Justice Department documents to a KGB agent in New York.
Griffin: (Voice over) Mr. John Rees is editor and publisher of Information Digest, an internationally recognized bi‑weekly report specializing in matters of Soviet covert operations against the United States and the free world.
Rees: It's very interesting to note that, in the trial of William Miller and Mark Felt, who were two senior officers of the FBI, harassed in the courts under the Carter Administration for their efforts to stop terrorism, a stipulated document was entered into the court record which said that Leonard Boudin had been a secret member of the Communist Party, U.S.A. Now, I think this is important, Mr. Griffin, that it was a stipulated document and that, in legal terms I understand, is one that was agreed upon by both the attorneys for the defense and for the prosecution.
Griffin: (Voice over) Mr. Halperin denies that the Communist Party is an arm of international conquest. He portrays it as merely another political party interested only in sharing power, not capturing it.
MORTON HALPERIN INTERVIEW
Halperin: I think the Communist Party is like the Republican Party, a political party. I think there may have been people in it, as there may have been people in other political groups, who took orders from foreign powers and who may have violated some laws of the United States. And, if they did, the government has a right to investigate them.