Victor Marchetti, "a former C.I.A. employee and co-author of the first book about the agency's inner workings that the federal government sought to censor before its publication," died October 19, the New York Times reported. He was 88. Marchetti worked for the CIA for 14 years, but became disillusioned "by what he saw as the agency's unchecked excesses and its increasing involvement in attempted assassinations, coups and cover-ups" and resigned in 1969.
With John D. Marks, a former State Department intelligence officer, Marchetti subsequently wrote a nonfiction book, The C.I.A. and the Cult of Intelligence (1974). A legal battle "erupted over its publication and would have far-reaching implications, establishing that government employees who have access to classified information can be enjoined for the rest of their lives from disclosing it or discussing it, even after they leave the government," the Times wrote.
"Marchetti was at the vanguard of what has been called the literature of disillusion," said Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists. "He was one of a number of C.I.A. officers who came to have second thoughts about the role of intelligence and about their own role in the agency, and they expressed those misgivings in memoirs that became best sellers."