CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY Washington, o. c. zosob
PU61IC AFFAIRS5
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Woodward THE WASHINGTONh.
Dear Boh:
the past few weeks the Directorave received phone calls from leading journalists asking if it were true, as stories circulating in Washington assert, that CIA has collaborated closely with you In writing your new book. Indeed, the February edition of THE WASHINGTONIANays that A "Mr. Casey is cooperating with Woodward's book on the Intelligence
Community." Substantiation for these stories seems to be some details, such as what you were served for breakfast by Mrs. Casey at your meeting with me and the dci at his home. Since neither the Director, Mrs. Caseyave talked about that breakfast or indeed about our other contacts with you, the information being spreadown could only have come from you.
To set the record straight, therranged for you with the Director and other senior Agency officials were at your request and for the express purpose of providing background Information; they were not for direct publication or attribution to the DCI or the Agency. These ground rules were made clear at the time the meetings were arranged and you agreed to them. In fact, In securing the dci's agreement to meet with you onhe Director stipulated that,gree to seeon't want to ever see anything in print from that session." Vou specifically agreed to that stipulation. Presumably the dribs and drabs of Information about your meetings that are circulating In journalistic circles are hype for your book, but we consideriolation of the ground rules you agreed to when the Interviews were arranged.
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As you also know, this office interacts daily with lots ofscholars, officials andseek to understand better the Agency and Intelligence Community. The initiativelways theirs, not ours; we do not solicit articles, studies or books. We do provide unclassified data about the Agency and Intelligence Community activities when we can. We did that with you, too, in response to your request for background for what you described to useries of articles you planned to write on national security under the Reagan administration. Additionally, we responded to your overtures to the KGBefensive briefing, but none of that makes us co-collaborators In your project or Indeed in whatever association you ultimately had with the KGB.
We know and you do, too, that at no time during our interaction with you did we Intend to be contributors to any book you might be writing. Such collaboration would, in fact,iolation of Presidential Executive. We scrupulously observe that directive. Thus, if you are saying or Implying that we are co-collahorators you are suggesting that we are In violation of the Executive Order. We do not take that kindly. We resent both the violations of the ground rules under which we agreed to talk to you and the Implication that your product has our approval. It doesn't.
Yours,
; /
V. tauder
Public Affairs
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