Victor Marchetti's introduction to the intelligence business came during the early years of the Cold War, while serving with the US Army in Germany. There in 1952, he was sent to the European Command's "special" school at Oberammergau to study Russian and intelligence methods and techniques.

After leaving military service he returned to college at Penn State, where he majored in Soviet studies and history. Shortly before graduation he was secretly recruited by the CIA which he officially joined in 1955.

Except for one year with Clandestine Services, most of his career with the CIA was devoted to analytical work. As a Soviet military specialist, he prepared national intelligence estimates -- the highest form of intelligence production. He was at one point the CIA's ---and probably the US governments --- leading expert on Soviet military aid to the countries of the Third World. He was involved in uncovering Moscow's furtive efforts that culminated in the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.

Victor Marchetti's book, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, was a landmark work being the first critical treatment of the CIA to be published by a top officer of the agency. Marchetti explains why scandals such as the IRAN-CONTRA affair were the rule and not the exception, why RUSSIA was not the target of the CIA's activities but rather weak Third World nations. He discloses the shocking figures about the multi-billion dollar yearly costs of running CIA and how the CIA is not defending our national security but jeopardizing it.

The Cult was the first book (after two years of legal battles) censored by the US government. Several passages are to this day still deleted from the book on orders from the CIA.

Marchetti speaks candidly about the CIA's secret wars which were funded outside the channels of congressional appropriation. Few Americans are aware that there was a war in Laos every bit as intensive as that in Vietnam or that only $34 million of the $340 million annual cost was funded by the CIA. The other 90% was generated through the opium trade.

Victor Marchetti is currently the editor of New American View, a newsletter monitoring US relations with Israel and the Middle East.

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