[104-10305-10005.pdf — page 31]
# OVERSEAS FAMILY articleconfirm each and every assertion made by its author, Thomas C. Lucey. Mr. Lucey, despite his citing a substantial number of inaccuracies, has nonetheless depicted a vast area of what may be termed the fundamental truth. With this in mind, I have tried to set the record straight only insofar as it pertains to those inaccuracies - and omissions - which in my opinion reflect adversely on the whole.In order to view Mr. Lucey's account in a somewhat different perspective, I shall begin by advising that I first went to work for the Central Intelligence Agency much earlier than August 1962. It was during the winter of 1955-56, while assigned as a Case Review Officer with the Counter Intelligence Corps at Los Angeles, that I was initially recruited into the CIA's farflung network of informants and agents, one of a number I suppose, within the Defense Department's intelligence community who helped the Agency keep an eye on its not always tame competitor. My recruitment was, handled by a Herbert Leibacher, an agent of the CIA's Los Angeles office, and a Joe Davanon, later identified to me through photographs as an official from CIA headquarters, then located on "E" street in Washington, D.C. Motivated by a degree of naivete and the Agency's subtle reminders that I owed a greater duty to my country than to the military establishment, I served as a non-paid, confidential informant off and on until my resignation from the Army in October 1959. A complete description of the information I supplied to the Agency during my military career would only add to what must perforce become a lengthy addendum; may it suffice to say that it did not always seem germane to intelligence affairs, but when it did it consisted mainly of an assortment of data that for so-called discretionary reasons was seldom passed on to the Agency (or for that matter, to our own higher echelons) through regular channels.Mr. Lucey's statement, "Being married to a foreign national meant an automatic removal from intelligence work so Nagell decided to leave the Army," is misleading and incorrect in its entirety. The only military intelligence organization from which an individual is normally removed subsequent to marrying a foreign national is the CIC - primarily a security type organ - and this rule does not necessarily apply when the agent is an enlisted man or warrant officer. As a commissioned officer, I was declared ineligible for further duty with the CIC effective 14 April 1959, a full year after my marriage to a foreign national. I was not barred from assignment to other, even more sensitive, MI organizations such as Field Operations Intelligence, then the clandestine espionage department of military intelligence. As for the reasons I left the Army, they were clearly if euphemistically explained in my second letter of resignation, dated 31 August 1959, namely: "I desire to tender my resignation because I wish to further my civilian education. It is not possible for me to pursue the curriculum of which I am desirous while on active duty. Also, compassionate reasons of a personal nature exist for desiring to tender my resignation at this time."My patronage under the CIA did not end with my discharge from the Army and ensuing employment in December 1959 as an investigator for the State of California; in fact, henceforth I was offered remuneration for my services, however nominal it sometimes was. What my new tasks comprised is of no real pertinence to this addendum or to later developments, except perhaps to mention that one of my contacts said he worked out of "Domestic Intelligence," possibly the forerunner of the present-day Domestic Operations Division, which illegally keeps tabs on a wide range of American civilian organizations and activities. I should also point out that I did not quit my position with the State of California "to work for the CIA," as implied by Mr. Lucey. I was dismissed, in June 1962, at my own option and in my opinion for doing my job. (The following month I was shot through the right chest during an altercation with a person whose identity I have never disclosed . . . not through the left chest by myself, my wife, an Alcoholic Beverage Control inspector then under investigation or by a Los Angeles police officer "because of communistic implications," as has been reported at various times by various sources).For the next year, from approximately the middle of August 1962 until my arrest in