Outing CIA Operatives
The magazine gained notoriety when CounterSpy founder and former Central Intelligence Agency agent Philip Agee advocated outing agents in their Winter 1975 issue. Agee urged the "neutralization of its people working abroad" by publicizing their names so that they could no longer operate clandestinely.
The station chief in Costa Rica, Joseph F. Fernandez, first appeared in CounterSpy in 1975. However, the 1975 murder of Richard S. Welch, the CIA Station Chief in Greece, by marxist terrorists was blamed by some on disclosures in magazines such as CounterSpy.
Though U.S. officials, including then-CIA Director George H.W. Bush, blamed CounterSpy for contributing to Welch's death, the magazine’s defenders noted that Welch was previously named as a CIA officer by a European publication, and that the CIA had assigned him a house previously used by CIA station chiefs. Congress cited the Welch assassination as the principal justification for passing a law in 1982 making the willful identification of a CIA officer a criminal offense.
The 1975 CounterSpy defense came back into the news when Valerie Plame was outed as a CIA officer in 2003.
Read more about this topic: Counter Spy
Famous quotes containing the words cia and/or operatives:
“And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”
—Bible: New Testament John 8:32.
These words of Jesus are inscribed on the wall of the main lobby at the CIA headquarters, Langley, Virginia.
“I cannot believe that our factory system is the best mode by which men may get clothing. The condition of the operatives is becoming every day more like that of the English; and it cannot be wondered at, since, as far as I have heard or observed, the principal object is, not that mankind may be well and honestly clad, but, unquestionably, that the corporations may be enriched.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)