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4 June 2000
Source: Intelligence Forum (http://www.intelforum.org)

From: "Michael Fosdal" <mfosdal@hotmail.com>
To: intelforum@his.com
Subject: Re:Unclassified: Colby
Date: Sat, 03 Jun 2000 02:01:02 GMT

. . .

On a quite different issue. Here in the UK there is major political and bureaucratic battle underway over the desire of the former head of MI5, Stella Rimmington, to publish her memoirs. Do members of the Forum have a view on the rectitude of retired intelligence agency leaders publishing their memoirs? Stella Rimmington fought many turf wars within the governmental machinery as MI5 moved from the Cold War into new areas, including countering crime.

Mike Fosdal

From: Jerry Ennis <jde1@att.net>
To: intelforum@his.com
Subject: Publishing memoirs (was: Unclassified: Colby)
Date: Sat, 03 Jun 2000 06:18:31 -0400

On Sat, 03 Jun 2000 02:01:02 GMT, Mike Fosdal asked:

[Snip]

There are 17 former Directors of Central Intelligence and at least six of them have written books about their experiences as have scores of other retired or former US intelligence officers from senior levels down to working case officers.

There is a requirement that they submit manuscripts for security review and, especially in recent years, the information to which there has been no objection has been remarkable. You might find an article written by the then-chief of the CIA's Publication Review Board interesting. It may be found at

http://www.odci.gov/csi/studies/spring98/Secret.html

Over the years, there have been some serious disagreements between authors and reviewers. One of the earliest involved  a book titled The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, which was published in 1974 after a legal battle. The book was published with blank spaces showing the location and length of the 168 deletions they were required to make. Legal battles continued and a later edition of the book was published with much, but not all, of the previously deleted material included.

I can only recall one author who was prosecuted for failure to submit a manuscript for review, although it seems to me there may have been one other. The one who was prosecuted was Frank Snepp for his 1977 book about Vietnam, called Decent Interval. Snepp wrote a second book titled Irreparable Harm last year and submitted it for CIA review. A commentary on the book, its review by CIA, and the pre-publication review process in general is contained in the International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, Vol 13, No 1 (Spring 2000), pp. 94-98.

The bottom line is that there is no claim in the US that former intelligence officers, at any level, are or should be categorically prohibited from publishing their memoirs. This contrasts sharply with the position being taken in the UK regarding Stella Rimmington.

From: Jerry Ennis (jde1@att.net)

From: Lehelfer@aol.com
Received: from Lehelfer@aol.com
Date: Sat, 3 Jun 2000 13:49:06 EDT
Subject: Re: Publishing memoirs (was: Unclassified: Colby)

I am quite surprised that there has been virtually no traffic re: "The Private Life of Kim Philby",which I recommended a few weeks ago. The book is certainly available from the on-line booksellers. If you collect in this area (as I do),  Mr. Peake's section: The Philby Literature" is indispensible. Philby's unpublished material should generate a month of postings. How he was treated by the KGB and his low level standard of living in the USSR are worth the comments of this list, even assuming the book was vetted.

For Philby to almost make it to the top of MI-6, to withstand numerous interrogations successfully, and to outdo Angelton must be worth the professional respect of all persons interested in intelligence and espionage matters  notwithstanding our hatered of his politics. I do not know Mr. Peake and most certainly am not pushing the book in his behalf.

Paul Helfer

Date: Sat, 03 Jun 2000 12:19:05 -0400
From: Reg Whitaker <regwhit@yorku.ca>
To: intelforum@his.com
Subject: Re: Publishing memoirs (was: Unclassified: Colby)

On Sat, 03 Jun 2000 02:01:02 GMT, Mike Fosdal asked:

[Snip]

It has been pointed out that Sir Percy Sillitoe published his memoir of his unhappy postwar stint at MI5, but that his manuscript was gutted by Whitehall censors.

There is also a pecedent of sorts in Canada. John Starnes, who was the first civilian director of the RCMP security service, the predecessor to CSIS, and who presided during the October 1970 Crisis when the Quebec minister of Labour was kidnapped and murdered by the Front du Liberation du Quebec, published his memoirs Closely Guarded: a Life in Canadian Security and Intelligence (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998).

A number of critics have suggested that Mr Starnes took his title rather too seriously, and there are no startling revelations. On the other hand, I do not believe there was any pre-censorship of his manuscript. In fact, he relied on Access to Information requests to release documents he was able to quote, and in some cases attach as appendices.

Reg Whitaker

--

Reg Whitaker
Political Science, York University
Toronto ON CANADA M3J 1P3
tel: [416] 484-7366 / [416] 736-2100 x. 88833
fax: [416] 484-8198 / [416] 736-5686
E-Mail: regwhit@yorku.ca

Date: Sun, 04 Jun 2000 13:28:54 +0200
To: intelforum@his.com
From: "B. de Jong" <b.de.jong@hum.uva.nl>
Subject: Publishing memoirs (was: Unclassified: Colby)

On Sat, 03 Jun 2000 02:01:02 GMT, Mike Fosdal asked:

>On a quite different issue. Here in the UK there is major political and
>bureaucratic battle underway over the desire of the former head of MI5,
>Stella Rimmington, to publish her memoirs. Do members of the Forum have a
>view on the rectitude of retired intelligence agency leaders publishing
>their memoirs?

I think there is a very important reason to expect from retired intelligence leaders to publish their memoirs. It has to do with public accountability. We all know how oversight in many western democracies is lacking or in many instances not functioning properly. It is clear from the Cold War period that even in the US, which maybe has the best functioning system of oversight, this process at times has not functioned well enough. Writing memoirs by intelligence officials could be seen of course as a way for them to at least give an account of their doings 'before history', where oversight in many ways has been unsatisfactory. After all these people are at the head of organizations which tap phones, read other people's emails etc., in other words they infringe upon the basic rights of individuals for a 'higher good' called national security. In the foreign intelligence sphere they have relations with or even often ally themselves (out of necessity, one hopes) with all kinds of distasteful regimes which practice human rights violations on a systematic basis. So when in those fields many things which such officials undertook during their careers cannot be brought into the open while they are in office, there is even more reason to do this after their careers have ended and the need for security for operational reasons hopefully has disappeared. The need for memoirs by retired intelligence and security officials is therefore for obvious reasons, in my view,  more urgent than for people who worked, say, with the ministry of Fisheries and Agriculture.

Ben de Jong
University of Amsterdam