In the one instance where physical harm might have been an issue, the taking of hostages in Iran, we have consistently, and against considerable pressure from the media, refused to comment on the identification of anyone involved.

The second myth is that we and others doing similar work have some special access to secret classified information; that it comes from some inside source. This is simply not true. None of us ever worked for the government. The deductions we draw, the journalistic conclusions we come to, that certain persons are in fact intelligence officers, come from dozens of public sources, from research methods well known and well publicized.<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[iv]<!--[endif]--> Similar deductions and conclusions are made every day by investigative journalists in this country and around the world. The identities of people we and others have exposed are usually quite well known to the host country governments, and we are sure they are already known to the other major intelligence services. Indeed, as this week's Newsweek points out, CIA officials admit "the names aren't news to hostile governments."<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[v]<!--[endif]--> These undercover people are usually not known, however, to the people of the host country, and to the people of this country, even though their conduct is generally totally, completely illegal in the host country, and often at home.

Finally, we would like to outline our specific arguments regarding H.R. 5615. We believe that the entire bill represents a serious threat to the backbone of our democracy — particularly freedom of the press. The bill is not, in reality, aimed merely at our publication or others like it; it is aimed at journalists generally, and at their sources — at outside investigators and inside whistleblowers. For one thing, the bill is not even limited to exclude exposures of patently illegal activity. Nor is it limited to the exposure of identities learned because of access to classified information, or even to identities at all. The bill censors "any information that identifies" an undercover officer or agent. Yet it is virtually impossible to expose an improper or unlawful or immoral operation or activity in government without disclosing information from which one might ascertain the identity of the persons responsible for such an activity. Whistleblowers have traditionally been this country's greatest weapon against official corruption and immorality. This bill would wipe out whistle blowing in the intelligence field, where it may be most necessary.

Critically, from a constitutional point of view, the bill is not limited to information which is in fact secret and classified. This appears to be the first time that something really approaching an Official Secrets Act has been so seriously proposed in the United States. We believe that if truly secret and classified information is exposed, and if it is truly damaging to the national security, then the existing espionage laws are sufficient to protect the interests of the country.

Lastly, the idea of specific intent required in the second part of the bill presents another great difficulty. The bill only criminalizes journalism, it appears, if the writer's intent is "to impair or impede the foreign intelligence activities of the United States." But what if the intent is to expose illegality or to engender greater morality in government? The specific intent requirement does not minimize the unconstitutionality of the section. What one person sees as reform another will see as impairment. Indeed, as we said before, we believe that the best thing for the security and well being of the United States would be to limit severely, if not to abolish, the CIA. Our intent both in exposing the abuses of the intelligence agencies and in exposing the people responsible for those abuses is to increase the moral force in this nation, not to lessen it. That many people would disagree with us is clear. That the CIA would assume our intent is simply to impair or impede their foreign intelligence activities also seems likely. Patriotism is to some extent in the eye of the beholder. But it is very distressing that such disagreements could become the substance of criminal prosecutions under a bill such as this.

Our society is supposedly dedicated to openness, to accountability, to continuing reform. Investigative journalists and their sources represent one of the key elements of that tradition. The danger that the hysteria of the moment could subvert that tradition is great. The current move to "unleash" the CIA, of which this bill is just one part, would be, we believe, completely counterproductive. Efforts to exempt the CIA from the Freedom of Information Act and to repeal the Hughes‑Ryan Amendment are equally dangerous.

To conclude, we hope that you understand our motivations; we hope even more that you recognize the effect this bill would have, not on us, but on freedom of the press in this country, and on government morality.

Following the presentation of the CAIB statement, there was an extensive period of questioning by  the Committee members. Excerpts of that interchange .follow:

Mr. Mazzoli (D., Ky.): Thank you very much. We appreciate your being here, and your statement is certainly quite thought provoking. I have to confess, to be candid with you, that I can see where you might be motivated to disclose the outrages or overreachings of an intelligence agency, but I just really can't quite handle the approach that you take. I recognize that it is important to have a dialogue in America; the beauty of this nation is that we can have people who so very diametrically disagree with one another and still be in the same room together without polemics going back and forth. But I have to say in candor that your view, while carefully reached and zealously held, is, I am sure, that of a very, very small minority throughout the country, and I think legitimately a small part. I would ask you a question. You say that you believe the nation's intelligence activity should be restricted to the gathering of intelligence in the strictest sense. Accepting that that should be its mission, and that anything beyond that is wrong, does not your activity exactly impede and in many cases interrupt and destroy that intelligence gathering mission?

CAIB: The answer depends upon understanding our philosophy about the CIA. We have no delusions that we have come here to change the minds of the members of the Committee. We have come here to try to explain where we are coming from, and to make clear that we do not use secret documents and do not have any inside line to the CIA, that we work from public research. But our philosophy is that the CIA is in fact an evil instrumentality which is beyond reform because of a tradition which has built up over many years, doing those activities which have been exposed in the press over the past number of years. It is our belief that those activities continue to this very moment. There are members of this Committee who would quite seriously take the position that it is a good thing that they do; we sincerely take the position that it is a very bad thing that they do. We think that one has to start over again, either with a completely revamped agency, or with a new agency.

Mazzoli: I appreciate that, but of course that is not to happen. I wonder if your effort at exposing the wrongdoing doesn't really destroy the mission as you see it, which is to gather intelligence? It certainly doesn't make it any easier.

CAIB: No, we don't think it makes it any easier. Our problem is that the manipulation that we see, the dirty tricks as they're called, are so intertwined. It is our understanding that the vast majority of intelligence gathering, up to 95% of it at least, is done through microwave interception by the National Security Agency, through electronic surveillance, and through the clipping of newspapers. There are we don't know how many thousands of employees at the CIA headquarters in Virginia, analyzing documents, reading books, clipping newspapers. We have no problem with that kind of intelligence analysis.

Mazzoli: Don't you think that you could accomplish your mission, which you have reached very thoughtfully, to reform the intelligence agency, without naming names?

CAIB: Possibly, but our feeling at this point, after working in this area for several years, is that we cannot, partly because of the value it has in many instances in explaining operations. Consider yesterday's comments about the King Hussein story. An editor wouldn't even have put it in the paper, much less on page one, if you didn't say who it was. Also, we feel strongly that you cannot separate the responsibility for the actions from the individual responsibility of the people who do them. If you accept our premise that the CIA station in a foreign country is manipulating, is paying off politicians, is buying elections, is doing whatever else, even putting aside assassinations and the like ‑ if you accept that the manipulation is taking place, the individuals involved are responsible. They certainly know what they are doing.

Mr. Boland (D., Mass.): It's nice to get both sides of the argument, and you presented it very well. As a matter of fact, you even present your Covert Action Information Bulletin very well. It's a slick publication; I mean the format is, and the paper you use is slick, and the information in the Bulletin is slick information too.

CAIB: We appreciate the compliment. We might point out that the CIA, as well as Congress, were among our earliest subscribers.

Boland: Well, I would think they would be. Now just a moment ago you referred to the CIA as an evil instrumentality. Is that the description you want to apply to it today?

CAIB: To the extent that the manipulation that we are talking about still takes place, yes.

Boland: Give me one example of some manipulation that is taking place right now that makes it an evil instrumentality.

CAIB: If we knew something that was taking place right now it would be in this issue of the Bulletin. We can only tell you about what was taking place. There is no past experience to give us reason to believe the Agency when it makes the comment, in whatever words, that "We don't do that any more." We say that because over the years, every time that has been said, and on several occasions to this Congress, by officials of the Agency, under oath, it has turned out to be untrue. We don't mean that everything that is going on rises to the level of the intervention in Chile, or the overthrow of Mossadegh in Iran, or Guatemala, and so on. We simply feel to a moral certainty that it is going on right now. We are sure that politicians are being paid off right now by our government through the CIA; we are sure there are elections being bought right now by the CIA. We will find out about them a year from now.

Mr. McClory (R., III.): You say that one of the aims of the Covert Action Information Bulletin and those who are associated with it is to stop illegal or immoral activity. Is that a fair statement of what you believe?

CAIB: Yes.

McClory: Is the issuance of fake passports illegal in your opinion?

CAIB: We would imagine in every country in the world it is illegal, yes.

McClory: Would you be critical of the government of Canada for issuing fake passports to the Americans who were secreted out of Iran? If the Canadian government did that would you be critical of them for engaging in illegal activity?

CAIB: Not that illegal activity, no. We are not critical that they assisted in helping these people to escape, nor are we critical that, according to the newspapers the CIA assisted in forging some visa stamps on the passports in order to assist them to escape. We are somewhat critical of the mass media for having published the fact.

Boland: Now you also say that your intent is to expose abuses and that H. R. 5615 would criminalize whistle‑blowing. What abuses does your Naming Names section reveal? What abuses come to the surface as a result of your naming names and your books?

CAIB: That information, in particular instances, especially instances of diplomatic cover officials in embassies, would only come to light thereafter, and would be recognized by the citizens of the host country. In most cases where we are simply reporting on a case officer in a country, we don't know precisely what he is doing. As we have said, you have to understand our philosophy which posits that a large part of what he is doing is wrong, and that it is bad for this country that he is doing it. It generally only comes out afterwards what the specific thing might be.

McClory: My principal observation is that, while your testimony and the activity of this publication appear to be directed at the abuses of the CIA and other intelligence agencies, what we are dealing with ourselves are what we regard as abuses of First Amendment rights, which we feel threaten the destruction and loss of these First Amendment privileges which we have. I've made mention several times of the change in direction the liberal community appears to be taking as a result of the tremendous threats of the KGB and other covert operations of adversary nations. What if anything have you done to try to expose any of the covert operations of any persons that I would regard as our enemies, those that are trying to destroy these First Amendment rights that you purport to be championing?

CAIB: We don't know very much about the KGB. But you should understand that if they are doing the same things that we say we don't like the CIA doing, we don't like their doing it either. The point we are trying to make is that we are Americans, and we know about our government. We are trying very hard to make it, in our opinion, a better government. We certainly hope that there are citizens of the Soviet Union trying hard to make their government a better government. We hope there are people like that everywhere.

McClory: To justify your publication and your position, you suggest that people in all nations should have the right to choose the government they want. Yet it seems to me that what you are contributing to is denying the opportunity to people to have the kind of government they want.

CAIB: We think that it is important to remember that for the United States to stand as a beacon before the world, it must demonstrate and carry out its principles.

McClory: You don't think we are?

CAIB: Well, we think the CIA stands for quite the opposite of what we are talking about.

McClory: Do you think that if the CIA or any agencies, covert or overt, support the opportunity for people to vote in free elections, that that is contrary to our interests, and can you tell me of any instance where any of our intelligence agencies have tried to suppress that opportunity?

CAIB: The most obvious example is that they pumped many millions of dollars into the Christian Democratic Party in Italy, for example.

McClory: Do you think western free Europe is anti-American?

CAIB: We have a profound difference of opinion. All we're saying is that it is wrong for this country secretly to pump millions of dollars into the coffers of a particular political party in another country. We think it is wrong for anyone to do that.

McClory: I can only observe that you are not answering the question.

Mazzoli: Let me ask you this. You seek to disabuse the Committee of any thought that you use clandestine means to get your information, that you work with public records and what have you. You say here that you don't have some special access. Now this special access is important, because the staff has handed me a copy of your April‑May 1979 issue, in which there is a very long secret document, Department of State, dealing with something that occurred in Europe. This is the first time I've seen your publication, so apparently you do use classified information also. Perhaps the use of that document can be squared with your statement, but it seems like you're leading the Committee to believe that classified information doesn't play a part.

CAIB: That particular example can be explained very easily. This document appeared, prior to our publication, in an Italian newspaper called La Repubblica, in full, and one of the reporters for La Repubblica sent us a copy in the mail, and additionally we received two other copies in the mail anonymously. In fact, it had appeared in full in an Italian newspaper and was not secret.

Mazzoli: Maybe I'm wrong, because I really don't want to read anything especially into this, but in your statement you say that despite the entreaties of your colleagues in the fourth estate, you have not succumbed, and you haven't given out the names of the CIA people, if any, in Tehran, and you take some small issue with the papers for having published the fact that allegedly the CIA helped doctor the visas.

CAIB: For having published it while there are hostages being held. We wouldn't mind it being published after there was a different situation.

Mazzoli: It seems to me that you are trying to have it both ways. You are trying to indicate that you have a certain honor, if you will, or righteousness in how you approach this, and at the same time, you, without any backward looks, publish names, some of which are not even correct. If they're correct possibly your righteousness has been displayed and demonstrated concretely, but sometimes there are wrong names. Sometimes you finger the wrong people.

CAIB: Nobody has ever proved that to our satisfaction, we might add. No one has ever sued us for being named, no one has ever threatened us for being named, no one has ever pointed out a mistake.

Mazzoli: Well, I would hardly think that people would ever sue you, for obvious reasons, because if they are an agent or not, the very fact that suit is brought, demonstrates that the cover is blown. The matter has been confirmed in that action. I wonder why you would argue with what the papers have done. I mean why would that concern you, give you trouble?

CAIB: It gives us trouble because we are very sensitive to this aspect of putting people's lives in danger. Ever since the Welch assassination there has been an assumption on the part of many people that it was caused by his having been named in CounterSpy, when in fact that wasn't true. The real problem is that in March of this year Admiral Turner admitted in a speech at Johns Hopkins that perhaps it was true that the naming of Welch in CounterSpy had nothing to do with his being killed, but that that was irrelevant to the issue then being discussed. We have had to live with that for a number of years. We are not in favor of putting anyone's life in danger, and we don't believe that we do. The situation in Iran is sui generis and that is why we feel so concerned. It is not a principle that relates to naming names.

Mazzoli: Well, let me thank you again. As I say, there is a profound disagreement between the two of us, but I think that you do serve a very useful purpose to this Committee in explaining your position and the perspective which you use in doing your work.

Boland: Where do you draw the line at exposing secrets? Is it okay to name names of agents, but not the details of reconnaissance satellites, for instance?

CAIB: Well, we don't know very much about reconnaissance satellites.

Boland: Have you ever published anything with respect to reconnaissance satellites?

CAIB: To our knowledge we have not published anything with respect to reconnaissance satellites.

Boland: If you had information with respect to highly secret reconnaissance satellites, I presume that you would print it?

CAIB: We are not so sure, unless we had a situation where it related to manipulation of events or dirty tricks. As we said, as we have stated publicly many times, we are not against intelligence in that sense.

Boland: All right. Where do you draw the line at exposing secrets? You're in the business of exposing secrets, are you not?

CAIB: In part. Let us point out that we publish a 32 or 36 page magazine, one or two pages of which may be devoted to naming names and unfortunately we must live with the fact that nobody talks about the rest of it. We do publish investigative pieces and political analyses and reports which don't name names but discuss politics around the world.

Boland: I suppose one of the reasons why people center on naming names is because to a lot of people that is very serious. What do you know about the one thousand individuals that you have exposed that leads you to believe that they are performing individually illegal acts, and what makes you so confident that no harm has come to those whose names have been exposed, or disclosed, or harassment to their families? You really don't have that knowledge, do you?

CAIB: We feel fairly certain that if any serious harm had occurred to anybody we had named, the Press Office of the CIA would have called a press conference and had it on the wire services instantly. The Welch assassination ‑they had a press conference called before he was in his coffin.

Boland: Well, I'm not sure they would do that. The CIA can respond to that when we interview them. I'm not sure they would respond in the way that you have indicated, because I think that may well lead to harm to others. I presume you would agree that harm can be done to families, they have to move, they have to pull up their roots in a particular country when the name of an agent is disclosed, and harassment can easily occur and has occurred, many, many times to the homes and the families of those who are connected with the intelligence community in various countries whose names have been disclosed. Now, would you consider that to be harmful?

CAIB: We are not sure what you mean by harassment, but we have no knowledge of any that has occurred. We are against physical harm, and have no knowledge that any has occurred. But frankly, within the ambit of our philosophy, which is that we think the Agency is beyond reform and ought to be revamped, our aim is to try to stop it from continuing to do what it is doing. If it were proved to our satisfaction that it didn't do those things, we would feel completely differently.

Boland: Let me ask you again. What abuse are you stopping by naming names? You mention the abuses of the intelligence community, the abuses of the CIA, and naming names to me doesn't stop whatever abuses you are concerned about.

CAIB: Well, it stops a large area, we think, or we hope, which has to do with the undercover officers obtaining the confidence of persons in various positions in other countries by pretending to be something other than what they are. The only way they can really get to meet, let's say an opposition politician or a labor union leader in circumstances where they can hope to corrupt that person and cause that person to become an operative for them would be by having this cover, pretending to be something else.

Boland: But how do you obtain intelligence in foreign countries without cover?

CAIB: Again, you must understand our philosophy about the CIA as an institution and the abuses which it has committed. If there were a fresh start and it were simply intelligence gathering, if there were a different esprit de corps, if there was not what we sense, a veneer which has built up over many years of allowing an agency to think it can do virtually anything it wants throughout the world, including killing, murdering, bombing, and everything under the sun, if it weren't for that, we would feel differently.

Boland: I don't think a lot of people would disagree with that. The abuses have been extensive in the past, but the question is whether they are present now, and I am convinced they are not. In any event, is your bottom line that the United States should not be engaged in any covert activities? Is that a fair assessment of one of your positions?

CAIB: No. Any  covert manipulation.

Boland: What's the difference between covert manipulation and covert activity?

CAIB: If someone undercover is quietly attending political rallies and making notes of what the political temper in the area is, and so on, that's one thing. If on the other hand the United States, through the CIA, is paying money to certain political parties so that they can have more election propaganda and win the election, that is something else.

McClory: Reading from one of your advertising letters you sent with complimentary copies of your Covert Action Information Bulletin, inviting the person to subscribe, you mention not only Naming Names, but you say, "We also commence with this issue a column entitled Sources and Methods, dealing with some of the more unusual techniques, technical accomplishments of the intelligence complex." It seems to me that it is inherent in the intelligence community, as we develop techniques and methods and sources for gathering information‑which is the principal activity of intelligence work, not to expose them to persons who would utilize them in a way that would be adverse to our national security interests. How do you justify publicizing that kind of activity?

CAIB: If you had read the column in question, you would discover that it does not deal with secret information, that it deals with public information reported in books and scholarly journals. The particular article in question‑which was covered all over the world‑dealt with using essence of cockroach to track people, and how powerful it was as opposed to almost any other substance. It was quite humorous, was picked up by many wire services, but it came from a public book which many people know about.

McClory: You make the pretense that you identify CIA officers by reading publications, but both your magazine and the book Dirty Work by your contributing editor Philip Agee and Mr. Wolf list as sources "Paris Embassy sources, Athens Embassy sources, Department of State sources." So you have these people who apparently spy for you and on other Americans, do you not?

CAIB: Well, that is a bit of an overstatement.

McClory: Are these covert agents for the Covert Action publication?

CAIB: No. By and large, those are people simply confirming that CIA case officer Joe Smith is in fact at the Paris Embassy. It is very often done by picking up the telephone, calling the Embassy, and asking for Joe Smith. Joe Smith gets on the phone. As many witnesses testified yesterday, it is very simple, from a number of books and magazines, to discover that a certain supposed State Department employee is in fact a CIA case officer. If the diplomatic list published by the government of France lists him as being in Paris as of a certain date, you have a friend in Paris who can pick up the phone, call the Embassy, and ask for him. If he answers the phone, then we have ascertained, through our "source in Paris," that he is there.

McClory: Do you think that if we publish your testimony here, it would kill the circulation of your magazine?

CAIB: We doubt it.

McClory: Now you mention the book, Who's Who in the CIA, by Julius Mader. That's a book that did what you do now, back in 1968.

CAIB: Far less accurately, we might add.

McClory: What you neglected to mention was that the book was a product of the East German government, and that the false identification in the book of a man by the name of Dan Mitrione resulted in his murder by terrorists. What do you know about Mader and his activities?

CAIR: We don't know him; we know of him. We have a copy of the book, and there are a number of inaccuracies in it. We would take issue with the description of Mr. Mitrione, though. He received his paycheck, we understand, from AID and not from the CIA, and in that sense was not a CIA employee. But former Agency employees have mentioned in books, other people have written books, that in fact he was doing a CIA case officer's job. We really don't know much about it; we have read books ascribing rather terrible things to Mr. Mitrione.

McClory: You justify your publication and that naming names is harmless because nobody's been killed or murdered. This should suggest to you that this is very, very dangerous business, and very, very dangerous to the individuals and the families of those persons whose names you name.

CAIB: If it were true, it would, but we don't believe it is true. At least from what we have read, vast numbers of people in Uruguay knew who Mr. Mitrione was, and knew that he worked with the secret police and knew that he was involved in the securing of implements of torture and so on.

McClory: What's your rate of accuracy in the Naming Names column?

CAIB: As we said, we think it is 100%. We try very hard to err on the side of caution, and have rejected hundreds of names.

McClory: I think there will be considerable dispute over whether or not it is 100%, and if it is not, then those who've been named have been falsely accused, haven't they?

CAIB: If we ever found out we had done that, we would print a retraction and an apology, but we really don't think that we have.

McClory: Well I'm glad you say that. I think you have some duty to those who have been falsely named in the Naming Names column. Thank you.

Mazzoli: Thank you, Mr. Schaap, Mr. Wolf, and Ms. Ray.