MAN Cord Meyer nr is perhaps the most well known CIA station chief of our times -a distinction gained by nis particularly nasty role within a nasty trade. By now it is well known that before coming to London Meyer was assistant deputy director of the CIA's dirty tricks department - the Planning Department -(Guardian, 22/3/73). He was in charge among other things of covert financing of Encounter magazine and the International Student Congress.
Also well known is the demand he made on tne oubisners harber and now in the summer or 19/z to show the CIA proofs of a book since published called The Politics of Heroin in SouthEast Asia. The book linked the CIA with this drug trafficking.
Less well known is what would appear to be a commensurate nastiness in his 'personal' life. In its Fall issue of 1974, Counterspy magazine concluded a profile on Meyer as follows: Meyer's machismo ..... is also extreme. Meyer became notorious at the CIA's Langley complex for sexually assaulting his secretaries during office hours. At the first available excuse - the minworkers strike in Britain - todav s CIA leaders removed him from the decision-making process and sent him to be Station Chief in London.' Photo: WORKERS PRESS "Political liaison officer' William McGhee outside his Chester St home last year 2) COMMUNICATIONS Changes are proceeding even faster in the Area Telecommunications Office, which is also located on the Third Floor of the American Embassy and is the London Communications Centre of the CIA. No less than nine new officers have been brought into this department and five have disappeared equally back to the State Department in 1970 before resurfacing in Britain last year.
ing up with an old friend in Room 314. The only trace we could find on new boy Lucien R Bonnafe was from 1961 to 1963, when he was what was then termed a communications specialist' in Manila. Quite possibly he continued his stay under deeper cover, and met Batson there.
Office, things are changing as well. Robert W Hoepfl, previously the senior officer in the department, seems to have shifted previous chief John W Coffey out of office and home. Certainly he occupies Coffey's previous address and his telephone number in the Embassy.
Hoepfl is a key figure in the London communications set-up. Despite being listed as an 'attache" on the Diplomatic List, the only reference made to him in State Officer appointed to the London post in July 1974. However he's been around much longer. When It looks as if Batson will be link-Up top in the Communications Departinent records is as a Telecoms agencies, this sharing virtually guarantees that the CIA runs JRRU.
The fact that the JRRU people bar one have now disappeared from Embassy records confirms this, for extensive checking last, week revealed that the major JRRU people are still here - and presumably their secretaries are as well. Others have definitely transferred out.
Three people previously here but not exposed - John H Brown and Charles B Olnhausen in the Unit, and John A Brett in the JRRU Garage, are named for the first time. In addition to them, Malcolm B Bailey, Morris V Baxter, Harold W Griffith, Irvin H Jacobson, Dennis Klein, Robert Sinclair, Dick Balderson, F R Griffiths and Thommin J Price. No records are available on his activities as yet, but he is now heading the top secret SUSLO office earlier described by an Embassy spol esman as a Defence Department thing specialising in communications and communications facilities. It has now been confirmed that this is actually a unit of the super-scientific US National Security Agency.
The NSA is even more secret than the CIA, and was described as the CIA's "big brother' in the February issue of the French monthly Le Monde Diplomatique. One of its responsibilities is to trade information with British intelligence.
'In case you have any lingering doubts about the pervasiveness of the CIA influence overseas, consider the little noticed testimony of David Phillips, a recently retired CIA agent who is now president of the Association or netired Intelligence Officers (ARIO). Phillips, who retired during a wave of criticism of the CIA, was testifying before Senator Abraham Ribicoff's Government Operations Committee. What, asked a senator, was Phillips doing for the CIA at the time of his retirement? Replied Phillips, in what we hope was a slip, "l was running 20 countries of the world" (New Times, 5 March 1976).