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few weeks ago I was lucky enough to get
a good connection with the late James Jesus Angleton, long-time
head of CIA counterintelligence, on the Chandra Levy/Gary Condit
matter. Angleton pointed out that since Condit was a member of the
House Select Committee on Intelligence, he would be a prime target
for recruitment by hostile intelligence services operating in Washington,
which in turn might explain the disappearance of Chandra Levy.
Since the living have not made noticeable progress, I revved up
my ancestral ouija board and tried again. After bit, the words started
to arrive.
“Nothing’s happening is it? Just what you’d expect.”
Why do you say that? I mean, it’s the biggest story in the country,
you’d think they’d go all out to find something.
“Maybe they have. If they know what they’re doing-that would be
the FBI, mind you, the D.C. police are not likely to be counterintelligence
experts--they certainly wouldn’t let on. Two reasons for that. First,
they wouldn’t want Condit to know, because he might run (he might
have been promised safe haven by his handlers). And above all, because
they wouldn’t want the others to know (the Bureau would want to
watch them as long as possible).”
Excuse me, but if I were the FBI, and I knew, or suspected, that
a member of the Intel Committee was actually a foreign agent, I’d
get him the hell away from classified material, wouldn’t you?
“Oh, no. I’d make sure he got some bad intelligence to pass to his
handlers. Throwing him off the committee would set off all the alarms.
The interesting thing is not so much the silence of the investigators
as the passivity of his colleagues. If the poling data are right,
and the Democratic party is suffering terribly from the scandal,
you would expect Gephardt and Daschle to try to get him quarantined.
But they haven’t, and that interests me for another reason.”
Namely?
“Namely they don’t want the investigators and the press to look
too hard at other colleagues, who might have “intern” problems of
their own. By now, Condit’s cannon fodder. They’d just as soon leave
it that way, and not force their enemies to look for other targets.”
I see. Kinda like the Baskerville hound that didn’t bark?
“Counterintelligence is not a Sherlock Holmes story. But inaction
is often as significant as action, as the Chinese have long insisted.”
So you’d feel better if other members of Congress were demanding
Condit be fired from the Intel Committee?
“Sure I would. Anyone would. It would be at least one little step
toward reinstituting a minimal respect for security in government.
We haven’t had any real security for a generation in America.”
And what about the Republicans?
“The current crop of Republicans is very far removed from these
questions, although I rather like Shelby, who was in the Agency
for a while. But what can you expect from a Congress with more than
75% of its members having never served in the military? For that
matter, what can you expect from journalists, virtually none of
whom served?
So it’s all up to the FBI?
“Probably. And the more I hear about Louis Freeh, the more it seems
he thought he was running the Department of State, rather than an
intelligence agency. One of his top aides was a Soviet mole, and
it’s clear that the FBI didn’t pay much attention to such a possibility.
Maybe they will be more aggressive toward Congress.”
At which point everything got garbled, and I lost contact. I had
meant to ask him where he thought the body was buried, but that
will have to wait for the next contact.
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