Should We Believe Victor Marchetti?, Part Three
- Fred Litwin
- Sep 18
- 12 min read
I strongly recommend that everybody buy a copy and read James Kirchick's magisterial book, Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington.
Here is a short excerpt: (pages 536 -537)
Summer is "silly season in Washington, a time of frivolous political initiatives and trivial journalistic pursuits. But for the denizens of the secret city, the summer of 1982 was anything but amusing.
A taste of the trouble to come was betokened by the boisterous, twelve-page tabloid that appeared on newsstand kiosks across the city on May 14, 1982. "It is the Deep Backgrounder's purpose in this first edition to expose one of the most politically sensitive and potentially explosive issues in Washington today," the new publication declared. "This is the issue of homosexuality within the federal government and its effects on how our government operates in both the domestic and international arenas."
Not much was known about Martin Price, the fifty-two-year-old publisher, president, and executive editor of the Deep Backgrounder, except that he had formerly served as the chief investigative reporter for Spotlight, the weekly newspaper of the extreme right-wing, anti-Semitic Liberty Lobby. Price's sidekick was more of a known quantity, ironic given his fourteen-year career at the CIA. Not long after Victor Marchetti quit his position as executive assistance to the deputy director in 1969, a former colleague suggested he be assassinated for starting work on a roman á clef about the agency, a proposal that its then-director, Richard Helms, vetoed. Or, at least that's what Marchetti believed had happened. He also believed that NSA cryptographers William Martin and Bernon Mitchell were "secret lovers" and that E. Howard Hunt had helped orchestrate the Kennedy assassination, a theory whose baroque particulars he expounded on in an article for Spotlight (based, he would later admit, almost entirely upon rumors retailed to him by a columnist for Penthouse). Sustained by copious amounts of alcohol, and lunging between bouts of literary inspiration and paranoid delusion, Marchetti spent his days in the basement recreation room of his Virginia home obsessing over the many enemies out to get him and hammering away at his typewriter. He kept a locked and loaded .45 pistol on his desk, not only for the inevitable moment when the boys at the Company tried to kill him again, but also for more mundane nuisances, like the plumber who improperly installed a water heater. "I'll blow your belly all over the floor if you don't do what I told you and do it right," Marchetti ordered as he pointed his weapon at the poor sap's stomach.
Here are some excerpts from the Premier issue of The Deep Backgrounder:
The Deep Backgrounder, according to James Kirchick, was part of a "frenzy" to out homosexuals in the early 1980s:
Equipped with little more than some well-placed sources, a flair for bombastic prose, and a total lack of journalistic scruple, this cantankerous and conspiratorial duo helped spark a media frenzy involving callboys, congressmen, congressional pages, foreign spies, and lists of high-class homosexuals that made the summer of 1982 a miasma of fear and suspicion not seen since the Lavender Scare.
Of course the Lavender Scare was when the U. S. government fired thousands of homosexuals from its ranks. To get a full feel for what happened, you must read Kirchick's incredible book.
Here is an article in the first issue by Victor Marchetti:
Here are some excerpts from the second edition of The Deep Backgrounder, including the front page in which they "name names":
And The Deep Backgrounder outed Bob Gray, who worked for Ronald Reagan:
Here are some excerpts from the first edition:
Here is an article about The Deep Backgrounder from the gay newspaper, Bay Area Reporter:
Here is an article from the Washington Blade of May 28, 1982:
Victor Marchetti, former CIA spy turned agency critic, lies on his back in the semidark. Visions of retribution dance in his brain. His eyes are closed; one arm rests on his forehead. On a desk beyond the sofa where he lies is a typewriter with a piece of paper cranked into it and spotlighted by a lone lamp.
"I'm a very violent man. . . ." His voice is soft, breathy with alcohol in the prelunch noon. He is talking about a plumber. The plumber came to his house recently to put in a water heater, but he was doing it wrong.
So, Marchetti says, he pointed a loaded .45 pistol at the plumber's beer belly and said, "'I'll blow your belly all over the floor if you don't do what I told you to do and do it right.'. . . He did it right and got out of here. . . . When you make a threat, you've gotta be able to deliver."
The whistle blower, 11 years out. More than a decade unplugged from the engines of society and the bureaucracy that keeps so many people going from day to day. You've got to be strong to survive.
...
In a five-hour interview in the basement recreation room of his house, where he writes, and at a Chinese restaurant, Marchetti presented himself in various guises -- as the Brando-style godfather, the gentle family man, the man of violence and death, idealistic reformer, literary artist. Truth and fantasy merged, indistinguishable.
His wife, he said, has a nice way of describing him. "She says, 'If you'd lived in another time, you'd have been a crusader. You'd have gone in against the Saracens in the Middle East and fought 'em. If you were in another time and another place, you'd have been a gunslinger. And if you hadn't gone straight and worked for the agency, you'd have been a Mafioso.' And I think she knows me for what I am."
His voice softens. Feeling and affection seem to come into it for the first time in five hours. He is thinking of his wife, and he quotes her again: "'From the day I met you, you were always spoiling for a fight. The only question was could you get on the right side or not? . . .'"
From time to time, Marchetti, 50, a short, brown-haired man with watery eyes and gold-rimmed glasses, got up from the sofa, walked to the rec room bar and poured himself a drink.
"One of the things you want to understand about the [spy] business is almost everybody's a drunk. I'm not really an alcoholic, but borderline. I like to get a snootful. I think I'd be diagnosed as a functional alcoholic."
...
There were problems with the agency mentioned in the Cult book, the social problem of his being, in his words, the "token dago" in the elitist, WASPish CIA, his inherent tough-guy combativeness. Who knows exactly why he left? He's not entirely sure himself.
"Well, it doesn't matter. I don't [care] any more about anything. All I'm interested in is providing for my family, taking care of my kids. . . ."
"Here you sit. A spy, a traitor to your country. Yet, you can laugh about it, make jokes. Why? That is the fascination."
"Sandor, I often wonder about it myself. I can only guess that somewhere along the line, I lost touch with reality. Or perhaps I discovered reality. Maybe I simply invented my own version of it . . ." -- Victor Marchetti, "The Rope-Dancer."
After he left, he said, they soon realized he was writing a book. He said that one top official was convinced he was a Soviet spy and wanted to have him assassinated, but, he said, Director Richard Helms drew the line at that.
"When I decided to buck the system, decided to go public, they panicked. They got the [Nixon] White House involved, and they were vindictive. Their main goal was to get me some way, somehow. . . . They put me under surveillance and mail cover. . . . I got caught up in a scheme of things where people were so paranoid, so frightened. This happened right after [Pentagon Papers whistle blower Daniel] Ellsberg and the plumbers [burglars who broke into Ellsberg's office] . . . We already had early word that Philip Agee was about to [reveal CIA secrets]. They just went bonkers. . . . The long and the short of it is, they clobbered me. . . . The main thing they do to you is they ostracize you. You no longer have any friends, or very few friends. . . . Let me tell you something, buddy. My friends in the Mafia are clean compared with these guys."
...
Survival for Marchetti, he says, depends mainly on his family.
"This is what they don't understand. They can pull all their dirty little tricks, all their sneaky little gambits, but you still got a family. And your family sticks by you. I don't mean just your kids or your wife. I mean your family -- la famiglia. Brother, aunts and uncles. . . . That's one thing the CIA has never learned -- they can't beat famiglia! They may have a lot of power when it comes to the Establishment, . . . but they can't beat the entire famiglia. Blood!"
Marchetti lies on the sofa, eyes closed again. Lies there in his blue checked pants, soft shoes and raggedy sweater. His voice drags and slurs, slower and slower:
"If I had it to do all over again, I'd never done it. I lost everything I had. I managed to hold onto the house and a few other things, but basically I lost. . . . If I had it to do all over again, I'd have kept my mouth shut. I'd have played the game, I'd be a super-grade, have a good salary, nice fringe benefits and so on. But. . . ."
Kirchick concludes his chapter on the 1982 panic and The Deep Backgrounder: (page 552)
Price would not live to witness his adversaries adopt the tactics he had deployed to such chilling effect, dying unexpectedly in October 1983. The Deep Backgrounder expired soon thereafter. His erstwhile associate Marchetti remained a prominent figure within the conspiracy theorist subculture, writing for Holocaust denial journals until the more prosaic form of dementia overtook him a few years prior to his death in 2018. The Deep Backgrounder may have faded from Washington's collective memory almost as suddenly as it appeared. But the fear it instilled among the citizens of "Sodom-on-the-Potomac" remained potent as a force of nature beyond anyone's imagination threatened to push their secrets out into the open.
Previous Relevant Blog Posts on Victor Marchetti
An examination of the hoax that implicated E. Howard Hunt in the JFK assassination.
Marchetti said that Clay Shaw was a domestic contact of the CIA.
Nagle and Storper use Marchetti as a source on Clay Shaw.
Marchetti wrote about a fake defector program, but actually knew nothing about it.
Wecht uses Marchetti as a source about an ONI program.
Previous Relevant Blog Posts on Jefferson Morley's Congressional Testimony
An analysis of Congresswoman Luna's Congressional Hearings
An FBI memo that quoted James Angleton is used by Morley to reach an unwarranted conclusion.
Morley misreads Angleton's testimony before the HSCA.
Morley believes a document proves the CIA did not believe that a lone gunman killed JFK.
Additional documents relevant to Part Three.
Morley claims that there is some connection between the suicides of Gary Underhill, Charles Thomas, George de Mohrenschildt, and the overdose death of Dorothy Kilgallen.
Morley believes that Agustin Guitart was spying on pro-Castro forces in New Orleans
Previous Relevant Blog Posts on Jefferson Morley
Right after his Substack article that went after Ruth Paine, Jefferson Morley's Substack provided a platform to Max Good, producer of a tendentious documentary on Ruth
My response to Peter Voskamp, author of the article on Morley's Substack.
I don't even have law degree!
A new CIA file on Herminio Diaz does not sustain allegations that he was a grassy knoll gunman.
Richard Russell always believed that Oswald was the lone gunman.
An article by Chad Nagle, on Morley's Substack, gets it wrong on Hoover's testimony.
My latest article for Quillette.com
The recent segment on CBS about Morley and JFK documents was not journalism.
Morley's list of six CIA operations do not prove that Oswald was under surveillance.
Morley claims the SpyTalk authors are working as pro bono lawyers for the CIA.
The CIA was just quoting from a State Department memo.
SpyTalks replies to Jefferson Morley.
Gerald Posner on the Joannides' file.
Fact Checking Morley's Fact Check
Morley's Fact Check on SpyTalk needs a fact check.
Gus Russo and Michael Isikoff on the Joannides' personnel file.
Now that the entire personnel file of George Joannides has been released, Jefferson Morley has now published his unified theory of nothingness.
More Morley Nothingburgers on the way
Morley is requesting more documents -- they will reveal nothing about the assassination.
Morley got the headlines he wanted to a complete non-story.
Joannides did not come out of retirement to work with the HSCA.
There is no mention of an "Oswald Operation" in the Joannides' personnel file.
Morley believes that Dr. Robert McClelland's recollections provides proof of a shot from the front. Here is the truth about McClelland.
A reply by Nicholas Nalli to Jefferson Morley.
Morley suspected a redacted file would reveal major secrets. It didn't.
Several months ago, I posted an article, in association with several researchers, that showed what was contained in the redacted section of Schlesinger's memo.
Morley somehow knows what is in the supposed 2,400 recently-discovered FBI files.
Morley discusses Israel with Tucker Carlson.
Morley believes that the United States can never be great unless it solves the JFK assassination.
An analysis of the 13 documents Morley wants to see.
Morley claims I am a CIA apologist and then misquotes me.
It would be worthwhile for the CIA to release the Joannides file just to stop the incessant posts from Jefferson Morley.
Actually, Oswald stayed at two budget-priced hotels in Helsinki.
He keeps asking the same questions, and we keep posting the same answers.
Conspiracy authors are playing fast and loose with the facts.
There is no evidence that Diaz was involved in the JFK assassination.
There are clues as to what is in a redacted section of Schlesinger's memo.
Chad Nagle and Dan Storper's article on New Orleans gets everything wrong.
Believing Michael Kurtz is problematic.
Morley wrote that there are two redacted memos on CIA reorganization, but there is only one. He wrote about Goodwin's copy as if it was a different memo, rather than a copy of the Schlesinger memo.
The phrase 'who shot John' does not refer to the JFK assassination.
Only one word is redacted in Harvey's deposition.
There are no redactions in the Operation Northwoods document.
Kilgallen had nothing to tell.
An underwhelming interview of Marina Oswald.
Morley often repeats stories and changes their meanings.
Chad Nagle claims there was an assassination plot against JFK in Chicago in November 1963. One problem: There is no evidence of such a plot.
A response to Morley's Substack post alleging that I am a CIA apologist.
A rebuttal to Morley's response to my post Was Bill Harvey in Dallas in November of 1963?
There is no credible evidence Harvey was in Dallas in November of 1963.
Morley repeats the claim that Dulles was at a CIA training center during the weekend of the JFK assassination. He wasn't.
Morley's claims about Efron are all wrong.
Morley responded to my article "The Truth about Operation Northwoods." Here is my reply.
W. Tracy Parnell on Jefferson Morley
W. Tracy Parnell is one of the best JFK assassination researchers out there. Here is his look at Jefferson Morley with several important articles.
Operation Northwoods can only be understood as part of the Kennedys' war against Cuba and Operation Mongoose.
And a response from me.
There is no evidence that Dr. West petitioned the court to examine Jack Ruby before his trial.
There is absolutely no evidence that Dr. Louis Jolyon West interfered with Jack Ruby's case.
Jefferson Morley used a fake Oswald handbill in his press conference for the Mary Ferrell Foundation.
An examination of redactions in the JFK collection of documents.
Morley doesn't understand Alecia Long's arguments about homophobia and Jim Garrison.
Jefferson Morley asks why "what the CIA knew about Herminio Diaz is still off limits."
Morley misses that a lot of redactions are actually available.
Jefferson Morley's press conference presents evidence that belief in a conspiracy has dropped.
