FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Author William Blum to speak at Bates Oct. 7

LEWISTON, Maine -- William Blum, author of "The CIA: A Forgotten History" and "Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II," will discuss "U.S. Foreign Policy: A Study in Hypocrisy" at Bates College Wednesday, Oct. 7, at 7:30 p.m. in the Edmund S. Muskie Archives. The public is invited to attend the Muskie Series lecture free of charge.

Blum, abandoning a promising foreign-service career, quit the U.S. State Department in 1967 because of his opposition to the Vietnam War. He then became a founding editor of the Washington Free Press, the first alternative newspaper in the capital, and in 1969 wrote "The CIA: A Forgotten History," an exposé that revealed the names and addresses of more than 200 employees of the agency. As a free-lance journalist in Chile in 1972, Blum wrote about the Allende government's socialist experiment and its overthrow in a CIA designed coup.

Blum now lives in Washington, D.C., doing research at the National Archives and other Washington institutions, working on the staff of Covert Action Quarterly magazine and maintaining the U.S. foreign policy watch on Z magazine's Web site.