SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2002, Issue No. 73
August 7, 2002

SUPPRESSED VOLUME ON GREECE TO BE PUBLISHED

An official State Department history of U.S. relations with Greece that was printed more than two years ago and then suppressed at the insistence of the Central Intelligence Agency will finally be published next week, Secrecy News has learned.

The publication of "Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1964-1968, vol. XVI: Cyprus; Greece; Turkey" was repeatedly deferred under pressure from the CIA, which reportedly contended that the volume's four decade-old revelations about CIA covert actions could trigger a violent response in Greece.

State Department officials and scholars on the State Department Historical Advisory Committee viewed that claim as improbable and considered it a self-serving effort to evade historical accountability.

Officials were reluctant to discuss how or why the dispute over publication was resolved, but the decision to permit publication may reflect the recent arrests of numerous members of the November 17 urban guerrilla group in Greece.

"Obviously, recent events have made release a little more comfortable for some," said one informed source.

"But the whole screw-up really caused the HO [State Department Office of the Historian] huge problems with the CIA. I think those problems are resolved, but confidence-building remains to be done," the source said.

The suppressed FRUS volume is currently scheduled to be released on August 15. "Watch for it on the web late that afternoon," another source said.

The web site for FRUS volumes from the Johnson Administration is here:

The CIA's efforts to prevent publication of the forthcoming FRUS volume were reported last year in "History of U.S.-Greek Ties Blocked; CIA Opposes Disclosure of Proposed Covert Actions in '60s," by George Lardner Jr. in the August 17, 2001, Washington Post:

INTELLIGENCE STUDIES IN COSTA RICA, CANADA

"Se conoce poco o nada sobre los servicios de inteligencia de Costa Rica," according to Paul Chaves C. of the Universidad de Costa Rica. Little or nothing is known about the intelligence services of Costa Rica.

But actually, what is known is much closer to "poco" than to "nada," as Chaves himself demonstrated in a monograph last year.

See his May 2001 paper "Los Espías no Bastan," a study of Costa Rican intelligence, newly available here:

Costa Rica is hardly a hotbed of intelligence activity, but Chaves' work reflects the growing "normalization" of intelligence studies in democratic societies around the world, as well as the mounting expectation that scholars and citizens should have a say in the policies and procedures governing intelligence.

The Canadian Association for Security and Intelligence Studies (CASIS) will hold an international conference on "The New Intelligence Order: Knowledge for Security and International Relations" on September 26-28 in Ottawa, Ontario. See the CASIS web site for more information:

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY IN A VULNERABLE WORLD

The impacts of September 11 on universities and particularly on scientific research were addressed by several prominent scientists and academics at an April 2002 colloquium sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Their presentations, which generally offer more questions than answers, have recently been published under the title "Science and Technology in a Vulnerable World" and are available here:

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Secrecy News is written by Steven Aftergood and published by the Federation of American Scientists.

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