At 11:36 PM 2/22/96, John Young wrote:
2-22-96. TWP:
"CIA Can Waive Prohibition Against Using U.S. Clergy Abroad for Covert Work."
A controversial loophole permitting the CIA to recruit American journalists as agents also allows the agency to waive a similar 19-year-old ban on employing clerics or missionaries. An official also disclosed that CIA regulations prohibit recruiting employees of members of Congress or congressional committees "without the approval of the member" for whom they work.
I watched CIA Director John Deutch (or is it Deutsch?) explain today just how the rules are being relaxed on having journalists as CIA operatives, and I could practically hear a collective "Oh, Shit!" echo from the journalistic capitals of the Second and Third Worlds. Even when journalists were reporting to the intelligence agencies, they like the convenient fiction that such practices were forbidden. Even so, a couple of journalists were tagged by the governments they were spying on and disposed of. Expect this to increase. Except now it will likely be Russian Mafiosos garrotting the "Washington Post" economics reporter in the back alleys off the Arbat. --Tim May Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software! We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 - 1 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."