Is There a CIA in Your Future?

Dear Bill: I did my best. But after this last attempt to “get at the truth about the CIA,” to use the popular phrase, I’m not even sure of my sanity, much less of my facts. My sanity later; first an observation or two on the way “facts” (quotes being necessary here because where the CIA is the issue, facts and fiction are so hopelessly antangled these days) are flooding Washington.

Apart from the Agency’s official spokesmen, just about everybody in or around the CIA seems anxious to spill all he knows. There are a disgruntled few who are inspired to loquaciousness by whatever it was that made them disgruntled, and who feel that in the public-has-a-right-to-know atmosphere pervading Washington at the moment they can say what they like without fear of punishment. There is a larger number, the normally silent majority, who feel compelled to set aside their secrecy oath in order to defend the Agency, and who no doubt figure, what the hell, everyone else is talking so why shouldn’t they.

BC

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Bill Colby

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Dear Bill: I did my best. But after this last attempt to “get at the truth about the CIA,” to use the popular phrase, I’m not even sure of my sanity, much less of my facts. My sanity later; first an observation or two on the way “facts” (quotes being necessary here because where the CIA is the issue, facts and fiction are so hopelessly antangled these days) are flooding Washington.

Apart from the Agency’s official spokesmen, just about everybody in or around the CIA seems anxious to spill all he knows. There are a disgruntled few who are inspired to loquaciousness by whatever it was that made them disgruntled, and who feel that in the public-has-a-right-to-know atmosphere pervading Washington at the moment they can say what they like without fear of punishment. There is a larger number, the normally silent majority, who feel compelled to set aside their secrecy oath in order to defend the Agency, and who no doubt figure, what the hell, everyone else is talking so why shouldn’t they.