Posted on 11/01/2018 7:52:41 AM PDT by Borges
Victor Marchetti, a former C.I.A. employee and co-author of the first book, about the agency’s inner workings, that the federal government sought to censor before its publication, died on Oct. 19 at his home in Ashburn, Va. He was 88.
The cause was complications of dementia, his son Christian said.
Mr. Marchetti worked for the Central Intelligence Agency for 14 years as a Soviet-military specialist and executive assistant to the deputy director, Rufus L. Taylor. Disillusioned by what he saw as the agency’s unchecked excesses and its increasing involvement in attempted assassinations, coups and cover-ups, he resigned in 1969.
He and John D. Marks, a former State Department intelligence officer, then wrote a nonfiction book, “The C.I.A. and the Cult of Intelligence,” which was ultimately published in 1974.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I remember that book. It was a big deal in the news for quite awhile as the legal proceedings dragged on.
Used by the Church committee to reign in the CIA after Watergate. Back when progressives were anti-CIA.
Bkmrk
Yep. Interesting reading, especially because where the CIA got stuff censored, he didn’t just cut it out of the book, he left in a blank space to tell you exactly what the CIA had removed. In some cases it wasn’t very hard to speculate, seeing it in context, as to what they had probably objected to.
Apparently progressive leaders were the ones who originally got the cia started in its dirty anti-American deeds, meanwhile deceptively promoting the agency as pro-American. This promotion probably explains why average citizen progressives were anti-cia.
“co-author of the first book,”
I clicked on the NYT source and yes, that misleading comma is actually there.
Great editing, NYT!!
Yes, that’s right. I remember the blank spaces now.
Blue badges ..... crazy stuff.
RIP.
Victor figured out who Oswald’s cutout was & how the CIA engineered the hit-job in 63.
Ping.
Marchetti played around with some pretty far-left characters (communists, druggies, etc) in his association with OC5 (The Organizing Committee for the Fifth Estate), significantly founded and funded by author Norman Mailer.
The Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, Sen. Judiciary Committee, held a hearing/report on OC5 (a number of whose key leaders/members I knew personally).
The organization had a leadership that ran from Communist Party USA members/supporters/unidentified members, to left-liberals, and a couple of crazies (drugs, mental issues, etc).
The only time I saw Norman Mailer in person was about 1974 with a symposium/conference on the JFK assassination, held in DC. Mailer was so drunk he slurred his words to the point of being almost intelligible and kept slipping off of his chair.
There should be a page on OC5 and one on its successor in purpose, Covert Action Information Bulletin (Philip Agee and his red friends, some of whom were associated with OC5), at www.DiscoverTheNetwork.org and possibly at www.keywiki.org. Both sites should have pages on the key individual leaders of these organizations.
Marchetti and Marks didn’t fit in with the communist crowd so much as with the Left/Liberal anti-CIA, anti-FBI groups but they still did a lot of damage to those organizations and helped far-left Sen. Frank Church severally cripple both. However, I would recommend that people interested in the subject of “intelligence” read their book.
If I recall correctly, Marchetti had some association with the old commie Lillian Hellman’s creation, the Committee for Public Justice.
[We are still reaping Church’s treasonous actions today, witness the Mueller/Comey/Strzok/Ohrs,BRENNAN and Clapper fiascos.]
Liberal or red, Marchetti and Marks did a lot of damage to the ability of the US to defend itself against Soviet/Cuban and Red Chinese subversion, so his legacy is not one of honor. Only he knew if he was a “reformer” or a “destroyer”, on purpose.
What was the result of the lawsuit?
Mark Lane. Insane even when I debated him on TV in 1970, plus a liar/hoaxster about his book “Conservations with Americans” about so-called Viet vets who talk him about “war crimes” they committed (even when they weren’t in VN or even in the military). Totally destroyed by Neil Sheehan in an article about this book and Lane.
Lane’s communist background has never really been exposed so when he dies, a real fast FOIA to the FBI and Congress for his files is in order.
Oh, he was Jim Jones attorney (along with longtime id. CPUSA member Charles R. Gary) and both almost got killed (MISSED IT BY THAT MUCH) at the Jonestown Massacre.
Gary was a mentor of Hillary Clinton re the Black Panther/New Haven - Alex Rackley torture-murder trial.
See how nicely reds and their friends fit together.
On November 3, 1978, Hunt gave a security-classified deposition for the House Select Committee on Assassinations. He denied knowledge of any conspiracy to kill Kennedy. (The Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) released the deposition in February 1996.)[56] Two newspaper articles published a few months before the deposition stated that a 1966 CIA memo linking Hunt to the assassination of President Kennedy had recently been provided to the HSCA. The first article, by Victor Marchetti – author of the book The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence (1974) – appeared in the Liberty Lobby newspaper The Spotlight on August 14, 1978. According to Marchetti, the memo said in essence, "Some day we will have to explain Hunt's presence in Dallas on November 22, 1963."[57] He also wrote that Hunt, Frank Sturgis, and Gerry Patrick Hemming would soon be implicated in a conspiracy to kill John F. Kennedy.
The second article, by Joseph J. Trento and Jacquie Powers, appeared six days later in the Sunday edition of The News Journal, Wilmington, Delaware.[58] It alleged that the purported memo was initialed by Richard Helms and James Angleton and showed that, shortly after Helms and Angleton were elevated to their highest positions in the CIA, they discussed the fact that Hunt had been in Dallas on the day of the assassination and that his presence there had to be kept secret. However, nobody has been able to produce this supposed memo, and the United States President's Commission on CIA Activities within the United States determined that Hunt had been in Washington, D.C. on the day of the assassination.[59]
Hunt sued Liberty Lobby – but not the Sunday News Journal – for libel. Liberty Lobby stipulated, in this first trial, that the question of Hunt's alleged involvement in the assassination would not be contested.[60] Hunt prevailed and was awarded $650,000 damages. In 1983, however, the case was overturned on appeal because of error in jury instructions.[61] In a second trial, held in 1985, Mark Lane made an issue of Hunt's location on the day of the Kennedy assassination.[62] Lane successfully defended Liberty Lobby by producing evidence suggesting that Hunt had been in Dallas. He used depositions from David Atlee Phillips, Richard Helms, G. Gordon Liddy, Stansfield Turner, and Marita Lorenz, plus a cross-examination of Hunt. On retrial, the jury rendered a verdict for Liberty Lobby.[63] Lane claimed he convinced the jury that Hunt was a JFK assassination conspirator, but some of the jurors who were interviewed by the media said they disregarded the conspiracy theory and judged the case (according to the judge's jury instructions) on whether the article was published with "reckless disregard for the truth."[64] Lane outlined his theory about Hunt's and the CIA's role in Kennedy's murder in a 1991 book, Plausible Denial.[65]"
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.