VVAW and the Anti-intelligence Lobby

Covert Cadre: Inside the Institute for Policy Studies (publisher: Green Hill Publishers, Inc.) | 1987 | S. Stephen Powell

[Fedora]

From S. Stephen Powell, Covert Cadre: Inside the Institute for Policy Studies, 1987, 65-66:

Organizing Committee for a Fifth Estate, and Counterspy

Philip Agee and Victor Marchetti, along with members of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, launched the journal CounterSpy, under the aegis of the Organizing Committee for a Fifth Estate (OC-5). OC-5 stated that its purpose was to develop an "alternative intelligence community. . .with the flexibility of employing both revolutionary and reformist methods. In an early CounterSpy article, "Exposing the CIA", Agree spelled out the OC-5 program:

"The most effective and important systematic efforts to combat the CIA that can be undertaken right now are, I think, the identification, exposure, and neutralization of its people working abroad. . .we know enough about what the CIA does to resolve to oppose it. . .

OC-5's Annual Report, published in the winter of 1975 edition of CounterSpy, describes its connections with other members of the antiintelligence lobby, all of them working within the system:

". . .Among the many conferences attended by the Fifth Estate were: the National Committee Against Repressive Legislation (NCARL) conference [NCARL was originally formed as a communist front to oppose congressional investigation of subversive organizations]; the National Lawyers Guild Conference (with whome we work closely);. . .and. . .the Center for National Security Studies."

In its first few years IPS played an important if quiet role in helping OC-5. . .On the OC-5 CounterSpy advisory board were Marcus Raskin, Victor Marchetti, Dave Dellinger of Chicago Seven fame, and several others, like Frank Donner and Sylvia Crane, both former members of the Communist party. CounterSpy's attorney was Alan Dranitzke, who was a leader of the Cuba Subcommittee of the National Lawyers Guild International Committee, and whose senior law partners include David Rein, a Communist party member, and Joseph Forer, a counsel for the Communist party, USA.

[Fedora]

I was doing some crossreferencing and noticed this interesting piece of information on the VVAW's links to the anti-intelligence lobby of the Church Committee era. Those familiar with Agee, etc. may remember that CounterSpy played a role in blowing the cover of CIA operative Richard Welch, which led to Welch's assassination. Powell's book describes numerous contacts between Agee and Soviet and Cuban intelligence.

[Bahbah]

Kerry is really beginning to creep me out. All that gutting of budgets for intel and defense.

[PRND21]

He remembers clearly Philip Agee, the onetime CIA agent who vowed "to expose CIA agents" and drive them out of the countries where they were operating. He still remembers vividly the Covert Action Information Bulletin, which listed hundreds of names, including that of Richard Kinsman. Kinsman, who worked in Jamaica, would be killed in 1980 when his home was attacked with a submachine gun and an explosive device.

Link

[Fedora]

ABC Gives Philip Agee, in Cuba, a Platform to Denounce Bush Team (Thursday October 2, 2003)

[See link for more details.]