18 July 1999
Source: Hardcopy The New York Times Book Review, July 18, 1999. p.
12.
The C.I.A. was unforgiving in its treatment of Frank Snepp, who dared to write a book.
__________________________________IRREPARABLE HARM
A Firsthand Account of How One Agent
Took On the CIA in an Epic Battle
Over Secrecy and Free Speech.
By Frank Snepp.
391 pp. New York:
Random House. $26.95.__________________________________
James Bamford, the author of "The Puzzle Palace," about the National Security Agency, is completing a second book about the N.S.A.
IN the fall of 1977 two former officials of the Central Intelligence Agency stood accused of violating their oaths, one for saying too little and the other for saying too much. Like opposite poles of a magnet, they came to symbolize the battle between the right and the left for control of America's espionage empire. Richard Helms, a former Director of Central Intelligence, was charged by the Justice Department with deceiving Congress about the agency's role in the 1973 coup in Chile. To the far left, he became the C.I.A.'s Darth Vader, personally responsible for every evil deed since the agency's founding.
Frank Snepp, on the other hand, was sued by the Justice Department, on behalf of the C.I.A., for writing a book about the fall of Saigon, "Decent Interval," without the agency's permission. Although he included no classified or sensitive information, the far right accused him of exposing untold secrets and selling out the agency for money. The myths surrounding Helms and Snepp continue down to today. But after more than two decades of silence, both men are at last attempting to give their own versions of events. Helms is currently working on his memoirs; "Irreparable Harm" is Snepp's well-written, candid, modern version of Kafka's "Trial."
As he explains in this memoir, Snepp believed that as long as he left the C.I.A. and told the story of Saigon's final days based entirely on unclassified materials, he would have no legal problems. After all, other former operatives had done the same without facing any adverse reaction. Joseph Burkholder Smith had recently completed "Portrait of a Cold Warrior," and Miles Copeland had written "Without Cloak or Dagger" without getting clearance. The former agent William F. Buckley Jr. (that William F. Buckley Jr.) has written for years without submitting his writings to the C.I.A. But the timing was all wrong, and Snepp compounded his problem by poking his thumb in the C.I.A.'s eye.
At the time, the agency was reeling from multiple blows. Congressional investigations had hung out some of the C.I.A.'s dirtiest laundry for everyone to see. Philip Agee, a former agent turned author turned Marxist, exposed the names of scores of fellow agents in a book. Another former agent, Victor Marchetti, unburdened himself of scores of secrets in his own book.
Standing near such leaking gas pipes, Snepp lighted his match. "Decent Interval" didn't just appear, it exploded onto the scene. The New York Times gave the book page 1 coverage, and Snepp says that his appearance on "60 Minutes" was the longest interview it had ever broadcast. The indelible impression left in the public's mind was that Snepp had torpedoed the agency with its own secrets. In fact, as the C.I.A. would later admit in court, the book contained no secrets at all.
Unable to go after Snepp for unauthorized release of classified information, the C.I.A. and the Justice Department instead sued him for violating a clause in his original agency contract demanding prepublication review. The goal, Snepp says, was to reduce him to penury and seal his lips and fingers with legal superglue. In court, the Government argued that Snepp should be stripped of all earnings from the book -- virtually every penny he had made in the nearly two years it took to write it -- as well as all future profits. At the same time, the C.I.A. asked the court to impose a lifetime gag order on him, demanding that he submit all writings -- articles, scripts, novels, speeches, everything, true or fictional -- for prior censorship. The only exceptions were cookbooks and treatises on gardening. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, but Snepp ultimately lost, sending him into a financial and emotional tailspin from which he is only now recovering. (Even this memoir had to be vetted before he could give it to his editor.)
SADLY, while the C.I.A.'s attention was diverted to punishing a former agent for an unclassified history of an old war, it was allowing real secrets to disappear under its very nose. In other parts of the agency, Larry Wu-Tai Chin was busy selling documents to China and William P. Kampiles was handing over the operations manual for the agency's most secret spy satellite to the Soviets: all this and more, while the Government was sparing no expense to crush Snepp.
The C.I.A. may have won in court, but the public certainly lost. With valuable resources wasted on authors instead of spies, security was weakened rather than strengthened. And in "Decent Interval," Snepp performed an enormous public service. By exposing the failed exit from Saigon, which left so many loyal Vietnamese to be tortured, executed or imprisoned, he offered a cautious warning to all Government officials. Think twice about a cover-up: a budding author may be standing under the cloak next to you.