CounterSpy was an American magazine that published articles on covert operations, especially those undertaken by the American government.[1] It was the official Bulletin of the Committee for Action/Research on the Intelligence Community (CARIC). CounterSpy published 32 issues between 1973 and 1984 from its headquarters in Washington DC.[2][3]
It was continued by The National Reporter starting in 1985.[4]
By April 1979, Philip Agee was no longer associated with CounterSpy in any capacity, his only institutional relationship at that point being with CovertAction Information Bulletin.[6]
The magazine gained attention when CounterSpy founder and former Central Intelligence Agency agent Philip Agee advocated outing agents in their Winter 1975 issue. Agee urged the "neutralization of its [CIA] people working abroad" by publicizing their names so that they could no longer operate clandestinely.[8]
Though U.S. officials, including then-CIA Director George H. W. Bush, blamed CounterSpy for contributing to Welch's death, Welch was previously named as a CIA officer by several European publications, and the CIA had assigned him a house previously used by CIA station chiefs.[citation needed] Congress cited the Welch assassination as the principal justification for passing the Intelligence Identities Protection Act in 1982 making the willful identification of a CIA officer a criminal offense.[12]
↑Olmsted, Kathryn S. (2000). Challenging the Secret Government: The Post-Watergate Investigations of the CIA and FBI. University of North Carolina Press. p.151. ISBN9780807863701.
↑Goldman, Jan, ed. (2015). The Central Intelligence Agency: an encyclopedia of covert ops, intelligence gathering, and spies. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, an imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC. p.391. ISBN978-1-61069-091-1.