CHRONOLOGY OF MR. JOHN D. EHRLICHMAN (W/ATTACHMENTS)

• Document Type: FOIA
• Collection: FOIA Collection
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 01482405
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 7
• Document Creation Date: December 28, 2022
• Document Release Date: August 7, 2017
• Case Number: F-2007-00094
• Publication Date: June 1, 1973

IExecutive Registry
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1 June 1973
MEMORANDUM FOR THE DIRECTOR
SUBJECT: Chronology of Mr. John D. Ehrlichman
Mr. Ehrlichmant s t!chronologyfl includes two new items:
a. September 22, 1971, Helms/Ehrlichman meeting at
CIA re Presidential review of documents for declassification.
We are looking for any MemCon that might have resulted from
this.
b. November 16, 1971, Colby/Ehrlichm.an meeting.
Attached is a MemCon and a resulting letter to Ehrlichman.
These were obviously on a totally separate subject, although
today they might be somehow related.
W. E. Colby
Attachments
cc: DDCI
General Counsel
Director of Security
Inspector General
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17 November 1971
MEMORANDUM FOR Tfl_RECORD
SUBJECT: Conversation with Mr. John D. Ehrlichman, Assistant
to the President for Domestic Affairs
1. On 16 November 1971 1 lunched with John, Ehrlichman at
the White House. The bulk of our conversation was devoted to a re-
view of our experience in Vietnam, with special focus on the fall of
Diem and the problems of organizing the United States Government
to fight the revolutionary war with which it was faced in Vietnam.
Z. The main point of the lunch came in our discussion of Mr.
Ehrlichman's charge from the President to examine the problem of
declassifying Government documents. He reiteiated the President's
resolve to do nothing which would cause problems to CIA and its in-
ternal documents. At the same time, he pointed out the real problem
of how to handle major events, such as the Dominican Republic, the
Lebanon landings, the Bay of Pigs, and the fall of Diem, from the
point of view of history and the academic insistence upon the declassi-
fication of raw information. I suggested two possible vehicles for
approaching the problem and promised to submit some follow-up
material on them:
a. Development of an internal classified history of
the event during its general time frame, with an effort to be
as objective as possible. This history would be accompanied
by the key documents and could be declassified as a whole in
order to place the event in full perspective and not take the
chance of individual documents leaking and possibly being
considered out of context.
b. There are different levels of sensitivity of intelli-
c
gencl documents. For instance, finished intelligence is
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frequently not terribly sensitive after some time has passed.
The same can be said of a number of intelligence reports
which are disseminated to customers but which conceal the
sources, even during this dissemination. In the last extreme,
however, there are internal intelligence documents which
almost literally cataot be declassified, since they involve
cryptonyrna and are in enormous volume, the declassification
of which would probably be prohibitive from a point of view of
manhours.
3. We left it that I shall send him a few thoughts along the above
lines which he might use during his further consideration of the basic
problem.
W. E. Colby
a
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CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
WASHINGTON, D.C. 20505
OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR
7 December 1971.
MEMORANDUM FORt The Honorable John D. Ehrlicbman
Assistant to the President
(Domestic Affairs)
SUBJECT:
Declassification
1. Bill Colby told .me of his lunch with you and
your discussion of declassification. We have produced
the attached outline summary of the proble% and a pos-
sible solution for your consideration. It obviously
would require further detail if it were to be adopted.
The important things however, is the degree to which it
, fits your general thinking.
2. If there is anything else we can do to help on
problem, please let ne know. ,* . �
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SUBJECT: Declassification
1. From the parochial perspective of an intelligence officer,
the major problem inherent in declassification relates to the risk of
compromising operational- sources and methods. A report several
years old whose substantive content is no longer politically delicate,
for example, could nonetheless compromise a still producing source
who, indeed, might now be even better or more strategically placed
than he was when he provided the report in question. What an intelli-
gence service needs" (and strives) to protect are the techniques it
employs in going about its business and the human assets, especially
foreign nationals, it uses or has used in the past. From an intelligence
officer's standpoint, therefore, a document's sensitivity is a direct
function of the extent to which that document could compromise sources
or methods if it were to fall into unauthorized hands or pass into the
public domain.
Z. When we address the issue of declassifying the intelligence
contribution to major policy decisions or historical events, we are
talking about at least three separate types of documents.
(a) Finished Intelligence. This appears in the form of
National Intelligence Estimates or special memoranda, drawn
from all sources, recounting the facts and assessing a situation.
In most cases, declassification of such documents would not
jeopardize sources and methods, since the sources of the facts
and assessments are usually not stated or are obscured so that
they are not apt to be disclosed by declassification of the
document. The documents may occasionally refer to the original
source of material contained therein, but such references could
be edited out or generalized so that the original source remains
protected. This would require of course careful review of any
such material prior to declassification with this thought in mind,
(b) Disseminated Intelligence. Some disseminated
intelligence, such as technical or communications intelligence,
reflects its origins in very specific terms so that declassifi-
cation would almost inevitably result in the disclosure of the
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source. In other cases, such as clandestinely acquired
intelligence, generalized source descriptions are used in
the disseminations, so that the exact identity of the source
remains concealed. In all these categories, the passage of
time may to some extent alleviate the damage caused by a
disclosure of the scdice, e. g., the fact that we were reading
Japanese codes during World War II is hardly a sensitive
matter any more. On the other hand, with respect to some
of these sources, the passage of time may not relieve the
sensitivity of the matter, particularly on material provided
to us by a friendly foreign intelligence service which expects
us to keep their relationship with us a permanent secret. Thus
in the category of disseminated intelligence, a considerably
greater job of editing might be necessary to separate items
which could be declassified from those which should not be.
(c) Intelligence Operational Traffic. There is a great
deal of this material which in almost all cases should net and
can not be declassified without a highly inappropriate disclosure
of intelligence sources and methods. The material itself is
frequently written with special code names.which may be
valuable in the future. Also the methodology revealed may
show things about our service which could be of advantage to
an unfriendly power. The true names of our agents and the
precise techniques of our operations should in no event be
disclosed even after many years.
3. Cutting across the specific problems of declassifying intelli-
gence material is the way our government does business in these
times. Thanks to the enormous improvements in communications
technology, the government utilizes a flood of separate papers and
documents in the course of doing its business. In order to make
these manageable at the key decision levels, these raw documents
must be collated, summarized and analyzed in the form of over-all
reports. This of course is what happens to raw intelligence material
through the National Intelligence Estimates and similar documents.
Decision-making on major national events is almost always based on
the refined product rather than the raw. As noted above, the refined
product raises considerably fewer problems of declassification than
the raw. For the few cases in which raw documents are used in
decision-making, edited versions might be provided.
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4. Another factor to be considered is the inter-agency nature
of most such major events today. Thus no single department or
agency could give an over-all view of a major national event on the
basis only of material available to it. The Pentagon Papers display
this weakness.
:0
5. A possible solution to the problem might lie in centralizing
the production of official histories of selected major events. An
historian might be added to the White House staff or the Archivist of
the 'United States might be assigned this responsibility. This officer
could serve as a point of coordination and tasking of the various
departments and agencies to contribute to, a national account of a major
event. Department or agency contributions could thus be consolidated
into a single over-all account. From the point of view of the intelligence
community, this would permit summarization of material considered
significant to the event to protect intelligence sources and methods,
rather than declassifying raw material. It would also put the focus
of the account on the key documents actually used at the national level
rather than seeking the impractical aim of declassifying all raw
rnateriah Lastly, it would provide an over-all conteit in which
individual raw documents would find a proper place, rather than
causing sensational misunderstanding, if and-when they came to
public notice.
6. Such studies would not satisfy the history purists, of course,
but they could inset the legitimate needs of the general public.�
Criticism could be made that an administration was writing its own
histories. The proof of this pudding would be in the eating,
whether the resulting studies were truly objective. The Pentigon
Papers have not been subjected to this accusation nor are the Foreign
Relations series produced by the Department of State or the studies
produced by the Office of Military History.
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