WORLDWATCH: Is America Going Mad? - Gene H Hogberg - February 1976

Gene H Hogberg

"Is America Going Mad?" To friends and enemies alike, the United States is taking on the image of a shackled giant. In this case, the Lilliputians tying down Gulliver arc not foreigners, but Americans themselves - especially key figures in Congress along with members of the press who, in their post-Watergate quest for a totally open society, no longer feel there is any such thing as a legitimate stale secret. The issue came to a head with the assassination in Greece of Richard Welch, a CIA agent attached to the U.S. embassy in Athens. Angry U.S. intelligence chiefs blamed the lethal blowing of Welch's cover on a variety of sources - continued Congressional probing of CIA operations, a recent flurry of spy-ferreting books by ex-CIA agents, and a quarterly expose magazine called Counterspy, which had identified the whereabouts of Welch and over 200 other agents in recent issues. No one - not even former CIA directors - denies the agency has, on occasion, overstepped its chartered responsibilities. - Information Supplied By: Herbert W Armstrong Library