This program, featuring former CIA official John Stockwell and Louis Wolf, co-editor of Covert Action Information Bulletin, begins with an overview of the general nature and activities of the CIA. The two then discussed how the “Intelligence Identities Protection Act” and the Reagan executive order on intelligence agencies would promote media self-censorship and thus repress public scrutiny and criticism of intelligence (including FBI) activities - including assassination plots, destabilization of foreign governments, and assorted “dirty tricks.” 

John Stockwell explained how this legislation in effect amends the First Amendment by abridging freedoms of speech and press - without having gone through the constitutional amendment process. The focus is on specific covert and overt activities of U.S. intelligence agencies and their surrogates: the instruction in torture techniques to Salvadoran army troops by U.S. Green Berets; the attempted coup in the Seychelles Islands; the Argentine torture squads; the South African wars in Angola and Namibia; the attempted Klan coup in Dominica; and attempts to destabilize the Mozambique government – all of which are reported in Louis Wolf’s Covert Action Information Bulletin, which the U.S. government wanted to put out of business. 

The guests also discussed how CIA “disinformation” tactics manipulate public opinion by planting stories in the press and by financing and supporting right-wing newspapers. In the concluding segment the guests discussed CIA operations in Central America, including covert operations and “disinformation” campaigns directed against the government of Nicaragua.