THE UNMENTIONABLE USES OF A CIA

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CIA-RDP75B00380R000600010006-3
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December 12, 2016
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March 25, 2002
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6
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September 14, 1973
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Approved For Release 2002/04/03 : C II1- @ 7 90380R000600010006-3 DIRTY TRICKS AND ALL Yes, Virginia, CIA has a Department of Dirty Tricks. If it didn't we should all be sleeping less soundly tonight. The author takes us beyond the scare headlines to where the action is, and should be The Unmentionable Uses of a CIA MILES COPELAND DEAR BILL: I did as I said I would: I went out to those intimidating headquarters buildings of the CIA in. Langley, Virginia, and got the party line from the public relations and-legal offices. Then I had "not for attribution"' interviews with a cross- section of the Agency's top officials, and ran down various old friends who are "intelligence community" insiders and who were willing to exchange con- fidences-sort of a "private opinion survey," you might say. Finally, pre- suming on my alumnus status and the fact that I still pass for an expert on several subjects of particular interest to the Agency, I got myself invited to lunch and an afternoon of briefing at the highly secret offices of "Mother," our old friend who now manages "mis- cellaneous projects," one of which is OCTOrus, the huge computer which builds profiles of you, me, Daniel Ellsbcrg, Senator Goldwater, Billy Gra- ham, Allen Ginsberg, John Wayne, Jane Fonda, B. F. Skinner, Vice President Agnew, and millions of other persons who are "in the.public eye," as I be-: lieve Mr. Haldeman put it. Mother's office is also the command post for worldwide counterterrorist ac- tivity, and for amassing data on "the people's war against imperialism and capitalism," which is behind that part of the terrorism directly endangering the security of the United States. Since Mother has managed to get the co- operation of non-Communist security agencies everywhere, including many "anti-American" ones, his office is un- Mr. Copeland, author of the u vrr,.u u+ ine uanie or IVatlons, Has those 1 ter 6A4 1 luncheon table there l~qon spent m arch Ap1prq b~,0',Fgont?cAe#,, a 29W104c(~ ~ 0060U~ o 6r, fitting at the end as host, s Middle East, in various capacities. "gentlemen's club" in the clays of Allen "the Kingfish," "Jojo," "Dandelion," questionably the world's central library for information on politically motivated terrorism. As you would expect, this makes it also the world's principal sup- ply base for the electronic gadgetry used by. these security agencies for making secret tape recordings, surrep- de mer, sauce verte, then truffled chick- titiously taking motion pictures of ter- en Kiev with braised endives, then rorists and supporters of terrorists, and grapefruit sorbet with Izarra for dessert "ringing" the especially important ones (the wine served throughout was a (i.e., installing in their anatomies cer- Ksara rose, part of a shipment Mother tain minute substances which emit had just received from the Lebanese traceable radio signals). It is truly a chef de Sfirete)-but there was a fine science-fiction establishment, cognac with the coffee, which relaxed In an odd way, Mother himself the guests and made them-well, you seems a science-fiction figure-lean, couldn't say "talkative" but at least deeply suntanned, grey-haired but age- communicative within the limits of the less (I think I heard somewhere that rules for "calculated indiscretion" that he is just sixty. but he could be forty- guide members of the CIA cabal when very con- or seventy), expensively tweeded (with they talk to outsiders. Dulles), and speaking the precise Eng- lish of a visitor from another planet who has been computer-programed to look, act, and speak as some inter- galactic intelligence would imagine of an officer in his position. His office matches: hunting-lodge motif, with a huge fireplace topped by a portrait of Lyman Kirkpatrick done by Nicholas Egon, leather chairs and sofas, trophies on the walls, and a beautifully beamed sloping ceiling at least twenty feet from the floor at the upper end. (I presume it's a penthouse, although there is no way of telling since the private elevator gives no indication of the floors it passes on the way up, and the large picture windows are fake, beyond which lies what appears to be real daylight until Mother presses a switch to throw a color slide on the far wall and it slowly dims to darkness.) A scrawny greyhound sits by Mother's armchair, chewing on a black fedora which, I was told, was left in Allen Dulles' office twenty years ago by Cardinal Spellman. The lunch was nothing to rave about -a baliottine of duck with an herbed orange jelly, followed by aspic of fruits Approved For Release 2002/04/03 : CIA-RDP75B0038OR000600010006-3 "Lady Windermere," "Wiz," "the Oz- zard of \Viz," and two faceless gentle- men who were not important enough or long enough in the service to have anything but ordinary proper names, which I missed. The nicknames show no signs of disappearing, by the way, despite persisting opposition from Per- sonnel, Management, and Security. They are indispensable, Mother says, 1) to dazzle the young officers, 2) to confuse the management experts who are constantly plugging for a more conventional organizational structure, and 3) to give a "low profile" to the real identities of cabal members. Num- ber three is especially important at the moment. It happens that, not one sin le member of the CIA's inner circle has -.been correctly id.eiitifacd_by Jack An- derson or anyone else in connection with his real functions in the Agency. Mother's colleagues at the table ere decidedly not suggestive of science fic- tion. Except for Jojo and Lady Winder- mere, who are obvious old-time Wash- ington socialites, the CIA's top "dirty tricks" specialists look exactly like the frustrated liberal intellectuals they in fact are. From innuendos sprinkled through their conversation, it is clear that they would like to be overturning Greek colonels, sabotaging the Portu- guese in Africa, and bribing Allende away from his Soviet backers instead of doing the opposite-as is dictated by the circumstances they know about from their secret information. They share the liberal view that the more things you are ashamed of the more respectable you are, but that is as far as it goes. Take Chile ... concealment of one aspect of the Wa- tergate case" and "a White House aide tried unsuccessfully to persuade the CIA to put up bail and salary money for the seven men arrested for the break-in and bugging of Democratic national headquarters." (The italics are mine, to reflect rises in the voice of Jojo as he read the article.) It then said, "a convicted conspirator has testi- fied that he was pressured to agree to a plan to blame the CIA for the Water- gate plot," but it gave no indication that the CIA fell in with the plan or even knew about it. The rest of the article could have been written y ingras Thuermer, the CIA's public-re- >a pficer, It was as lucid an exla- ?tion as it. is possible to write o tl CIA resist ed _pressuresfrom the Jjjjtq House and elsewhere. What seemed to bother my old friends more than anything else was the way the press had been attacking the Agency for the wrong things. "There are articles which fuss about our having done certain things, when they should be fussing about our not having done them," said Jojo. "Take Chile, for example." Everyone nodded sympathetically, feeling no need for elaboration. Agency people assume that it is the duty of the United States Government to back candidates who run against Soviet- backed candidates, in Chile or in any other country where we have legitimate and important interests, and that it shouldn't wait for some commercial concern to remind it of the fact. It happens, though, that the CIA did not back candidates in the Chilean elections as it was "accused" of doing, although the Soviets did-to the tune of some $8 million in "miscellaneous costs," as Whatever their political orientation, contrasted with the $2 million that ITT they are all appalled at the Watergate executives believed would be enough to affair-if anything, the few conserva- bring in a not-anti-American president. tives among them more than the others. The Soviet-backed presidential candi- "We can't even understand what the date won out and immediately launched press says about us," Jojo complained. a program of socialist "reforms," which "The headlines say we did horrible are having the same devastating results things; the articles that follow say we in Chile that they have had in all other didn't." countries that have tried them. I For example, U.S. News & World asked, "But didn't the CIA, as the press Report started an article by asking, says, have plans of its own for sabotag- "How was the Central Intelligence ing the economy so as to embarrass A!'cncy drawau into a web of domestic 1-1kii ,11 hill IL,ii. ctn.l Ili'.11 's, lil kill (n n!ai.c it lierteetly clear that the CIA was not drawn into anything. The Allende?" Silly question. "Our opera- tI1,11~," h,iiil Il,j,,, "[itl% idw,oi4 t111 111 W1111 squeezes and they never do real harm. If we were out to ruin Chile we The charges against the CIA arc that - it: 1) loaned a wig and other items, all of which could easily have been bought by anyone on Washington's New York Avenue-but did so on orders from the White House, and without knowing what the items were to be used for; 2) gave information to the Justice Department which was later passed on to CREEP for' internal pur- poses-but as a normal transaction with the Justice Department, and without any understanding of what the Justice Department intended to do with the information; 3) discussed with the FBI the White House's belief that it should call off investigation of the campaign funds which had been "laundered" through Mexico-but explicitly recom- mended that it do no such thing; 4) discussed the possible use of CIA funds to provide bail for the Watergate men -but refused: 5) provided the FBI with a "psychological profile" of Daniel Ellsberg-which is so trivial a matter as to be' beneath discussion, despite the fact that both Dick Helms and his ulti- mate successor, Bill Colby, later said that such an act was "ill advised." Mother and the others have been in- volved in intergovernment and intra- government intrigues all over the world, and they are" old-timers in the Battle of Washington, so you would think they were beyond shock and surprise. But I think they are honestly bewil- dered as to what all the fuss is about. Good-Will Activities Most..,bewildering-.isthe crescendo of complaiints over long-standing actions w, uch have been missed until now, but rich Watergate has caused to be dug up ,1rainingpolicemen, Ior_ chain le. Ti ,,,,,,CIA has more counterterrorist kauw how than. any_go.vernment agency iaL-..th.e.,: world-it can even be argued that it has more than all other agencies put together, since it pools experiences and information drawn from most of them-and it would seem to be in the public interest for this know-how to be made available to as wide a range of law-enforcement organizations, at least American ones, as can be reached. T(ue_.is _no suggestion that the CIA?is; Iryiiig to gain control over thr,:' organ- II',, jllltn, it, r Ill, Ilk ill 1111N, Nyiiy,, or to depart from the law that pruhah t_ the CIA- f Tom engaging in attempted to g p~ ,Rvpo e? t or~ljtSed~d,nv\v,tf~tout our ]''tie Wr[ObllllStfIIKUUV6,ousId~n gogues in Congress are Approved For Release 2002/04/03 : CIA-RDP75B0038OR000600010006-3 demanding that this good-will activity of the Agency be looked into-and ended. "1 realize we're living in an age when supposedly reputable people can object to the new Director of the FBI on the grounds that he is a law-and- order man," said Mother, ":but what can be the motives of a congressman vjlodoesn't want tilc police f. o getW the best counterterrorism training possible?" When it comes to the question of training foreign police and security of- ficials, the Agency is in a more serious dilemma. It is officially recognized that the CIA is to have an international espionage and counterespionage service, and there has been no serious sugges- tion that it be disbanded. Yet every time a report reaches the public that even remotely suggests that such a serv- ice is in existence, the outcry of the American press exceeds even that of the Soviets. For this reason, the Agency has slowly shifted to what any reason- able observer might regard as a totally liberal position: It now encourages free countries to look after their own se- curity affairs, and gives them the means to do so, without insisting that they run their governments our way. "It is a chameleon sort of policy," Mother confessed, "but no one can say it's imperialist-or rather, you wouldn't think anyone could say it's imperialist." The policy has only recently become a rather touchy subject. Formerly the CIA relied on cozy little deals with sec- tions of local security agencies-in Africa, Asia, and South America-to round out its international surveillance capability. The chiefs of the sections { were CIA agents; Members of the sec- tions carried out their duties thinking they were acting in the interest of their own governments. When the late Presi- dent Nasser of Egypt decided to seek out the CIA agents who had made it possible for the American ambassador to warn him of an assassination plot against him, he turned to the very sec- tion which was working for the CIA- said, "I suppose you know that my office will be unguarded from midnight tonight until 6 A.M. tomorrow; fascist pig that you are, you will undoubtedly send in your men to photocopy my files." Such arrangements were quite enough for CIA purposes until the airplane hijackings started, along with the in- crease in murders and kidnappings of diplomats. It now became advisable for the U.S. Government, through the CIA, to get a degree of admitted cooperation from the governments where terrorist organizations were based. Until this need arose, the CIA could conceal the fact that it was dealing with obnoxious military dictatorships, Arab govern- ments outspokenly hostile to our friend Israel, and nabobs farther east who habitually bought political time by pro- fessing anti-American sentiments. The new policy dictated that many of these odd friendships be surfaced. our losing access to essential materials is "almost a probability"-a CIA eval- uator's way of saying that it's nearing the level of a fifty-fifty chance. This is an aspect of the cold war that has been almost entirely hidden from the public. As you know, the U.S. Government still publishes lists of "strategic" and "critical" materials- metals, botanical products, and other substances on which our productive ca- pacities are totally dependent. But you .possibly do not know that the lists that are available to the public are by no means the ones that guide our national- security planners. Some of the sub- atanccs on them are so rare and of such specialized use that nobody but metallurgists and chemists ever heard of them; yet they are indispensable to the hardening of steel, to making ma- chinery resistant to high temperatures and acids, to the manufacture of elec- tronic products, and for other such purposes. Despite herculean efforts by our scientists to find home-grown sub- stitutes, many of them can be obtained only from abroad. It happens-arid it could hardly happen by chance-that those areas of the world where the substances are to be found are exactly those in which local anti-American ex- tremist groups enjoy the greatest mon- etary, logistical, and administrative sup- port and which comprise the front line of "the people's war against imperial- ism and capitalism." Since the list of substances for obvious reasons must be kept top secret, together with the facts on how critically dependent we are on them, there is no way the U.S. Govern- ment can convey an awareness of the problem to the American public. Those who have access to the information can only writhe in discomfort as un- informed politicians and editorialists state with pious confidence their con- viction that the U.S. Government should remain indifferent as countries Countering Terror Enough surfaced, that is, for fringe employees of the intelligence commu- nity to hear about them and to leak reports of them to crusading journalists. Yes, the U.S. Government, through the CIA, is secretly on friendly terms with the Greek colonels, the white govern- ments of Rhodesia and South Africa, and the Portuguese in Africa-and, at the same time, with various oppressive black regimes in Africa, with the Egyp- tians, and with "Greek colonels" in many countries of the Third World. Yes, in the security field the U.S. Gov- ernment is following a "chameleon pol- icy," similar to the one found so repre- hensible in ITT. The justification is simply that its planners can't figure any way it can afford not to be on friendly terms with these governments. It cannot do without their facilities. The terrorists of the world ueipg up as the most formidable enemy this containing the necessary substances country has ever had. The international turn hostile to American interests. and which solved the problem by fram- character. ofLL terrorist organizations is ing a number of Interior Department ,rnparing a stage whereihey. _wll._he__jble officials who had been inconveniencing to deny our access to certain materials CIA operations. Sometimes, by special `",YC..g..Rt to have for;rnaintenance not off-the-record agreements, local security nnly ofmilitar defenses but, Of Our officials simply turn their backs, as 1c ay tp_ lay eacetime. economy, M , in the case of the chief of security of Ancy_ friends say that this threat is ,in anti-American Arab government who casil~IJ.>~ahgst.sci~nuti one our country showed great indignation at a CIA rep- ? ? ever faced-far more serious, for The CIA's information on the inter- nationalization of terrorist organizations is alarming, not so much because of what this information shows these or- ganizations to be doing right now, as because of what it shows about the capabilities they are building to be kept in reserve for their D-Day. Radical activity inside the United States is resentative's suggestion that he should example, than the t hreat of nri af66iic largely "unstructured"; some of it re- cooperate offic:i Apps ied F+eupRelterasev2AO2h4/Q 1, G BQ'1d 8QROQuQfbODQ,1r09,0.Gn%e frustrations of un- imperialist enemy of the people," then have an atomic war, but the danger of organized or informally organized mi- nority groups, 4 1Rr@yq0iE5!tTtpgi Se t i@ tiN9 1-1%% rPa71gEA9 I PR00 P%1014b't6o ily had all "card-carry-- not-so-genuine frustrations of dissidents existence. ing" Communists in the U.S. identified who have ]earned that terrorism can be effective in a permissive society. Inside it all, however, there is unquestionably purposeful direction. The objective is clear: to be able to paralyze the na- tion's shipping, communications, and manufacture of military materiel in the event we find ourselves in a war with the Soviet Union or with any country, like North Vietnam, that is supported by the Soviet Union. Achievement of the objective is a long way off-or obviously the antiwar demonstrations of recent years would have been more effective--but friends of mine at the FBI with whom I discussed the subject assure me that the capability is growing and that, moreover, we should not take encouragement from the fact that it hasn't been particularly impressive dur- ing the past few years. There is reason to believe, they tell me, that the Soviets are happy enough with the outcome of the Vietnam war, that they therefore didn't need to use their subversive re- sources in the United States, that they are quietly building them for the "Viet- nams" of the future, into which they confidently expect to draw us. "Invasions" of Privacy Similarly, the CIA is concerned about the growth of "directed" terrorist ac- tivity, which is at the heart of all the random ad hoc terrorism that goes on all over the Third World, especially in those countries where strategic sub- stances are located. But it also has to concern itself with the "unstructured" activity, since so much of it, however random it may be, directly and critically affects American interests. Airplane hi- jackings, kidnapping and murder of American diplomats, sabotage of re- fineries and pipelines, and-assaults on foreigners who dare to be friendly to the U.S.-these must be taken seriously, not only because of the injury to spe- cific victims but because of their psy- chological effect on all other potential victims. Take the Palestinian Black Septembrists, for example, who have announced that "any person, office, air- line, factory, or place which is in any way related to the continued existence +'f ti,l.r T' III!I+' 1w N I!I1'1'f if' Ill it II:Ilirllt.rli. I Iu;t' 11.1to uunle II :Ii:al' Ilril American citizens, offices, airlines, fac- tories, and America's What do you do when you have that and "dataed," but had the Soviet intel- much of yourself to guard? If the enemy is about to charge your Alamo, or send troops through your Khyber Pass, you defend. But how do you de- fend a million or so possible targets? The single most significant, inescapable fact about modern-day counterterrorism is this: It requires offense, not defense. If you try to put guards around every conceivable target, you will have the most conspicuous police state in history and will play right into the hands of those who are launching "the people's war against imperialism and capital- ism." Instead, you must go on the offensive. You must find out who your would-be attackers are, then sneak into' their tents on the eve of their attacks and quietly deal with them. It's the only way. Unfortunately, this ligence services, the KG13 and the mili- tary GRU, so thoroughly penetrated that it could actually influence their di- rection. The CIA was similarly placed with respect to the Communist parties in other countries and to the non-Com- munist Soviet-controlled espionage net- works growing like weeds in the Third World. And all this involved a mini- mum invasion of privacy. Out of any ten "card-carrying Communists" only one was a link in the chain and worth watching, and he was easy to identify. The other nine, mere dupes, could be ignored. Today, however, the organiza- tions or informal groupings from which the terrorists emerge have a dupe-to- activist ratio of about a hundred to one, and the one is usually hard to spot. To spot him, the FBI-or the CIA if he is in a foreign country-must main- tain surveillance of a wide range of "subjects," most of them innocent. CIA: No KGB How wide a range' of subjects? I am sure you have not missed the flood of accusations against the government's security agencies, the "repressive sys- tem" they have built up and the "Ge- stapo mentality" which is behind them. In early 1971, a so-called "Citizen's Committee To Investigate the FBI" stole a thousand or so documents from an FBI office in Philadelphia and gleaned from them the hardly startling revela- tion that the FBI systematically keeps files on persons who pose "a definite threat to the nation's stability and se- curity," as J. Edgar Hoover had said in one of the documents. In the months that followed, it was revealed that the U.S. Army's counterintelligence office maintained files on "potentially sub- versive persons," that the Treasury De- partment's Secret Service had files "con- means all sorts taming names and aliases of five of invasions of privacy. In the good thousand black people," as Jack Ander- old days when "the enemy" was ordi- son put it, that flie CIA wad- niaintain- nary international Communism, with its ing- files?? on_Amcricans whq.,trav_c1.Qd clear-cut hierarchical arrangements and into countries of particular intelligence its systematic ties with the Soviet interest and ?1)_at these, files.,, conta>ned KGB, the work of our security and entries concerning anything they did intelligence agencies not. only was corn- in the course of their travels which 1+,ri!III' '11' I?f+r', 11111 ili'.i+1'. ?rl Iln? r?-Ill 'eslliailt Illa.l:.. tll!1171 '.11111!1:+I.1'. 1' 111.1'4' vdluuurll Lind nt peuetratiihls and SUi- jtt;Ill }Tres uloa," .VIII Illul fill Illls 1n- veillanccs at which they had become [rni Itpn was.. fed into computer dt_ta- places all fill the bill because expert. Penetrate a Communist cell and banks whey a_wQuld,- stay, forever- friend hipproved For Kefease 2b ~'~4/l'~3y i4 C~ l f0'3f~`~ (~@ @ ~fl~b-formation ..supplied - b Approved For Release 2002/04/03 : CIA-RDP75B0038OR000600010006-3 agencies, and the local police tapped "about 4,000 telephones," a total which seemed perfectly reasonable to the So- viet leader-until it dawned on those present that he had understood the figure to be 400,000. After that, great care was taken not to allow the sub- ject to come tip again, because no one wanted to admit the true figure, there- by revealing to the hardened old in- triguer that we were a lot of trusting fools with only an immature grasp of our security situation.) will probably turn it over to us-as, I am told, the British have already. The only satisfactory way to calm all the fears is to ensure that the information is entirely in the hands of incorruptible persons inside an incorruptible organ- ization-a suggestion at which you have hinted in one or two articles. If .... Watergate...,.prpye.s, anything, it 2rr9ves, that the_ CIA is incorruptible. To support this seemingly rash asser- tion, the whole story of the friction between the CIA and the "plumbers," police agencies (including records of parking tickets and other such mis- demeanors), credit investigation agen- cies, and banks. In 1971, another col- umnist published an "admission" of the Defense Department that it had computerized security files on 25 mil- lion Americans and that the files in- cluded information not only on per- sons regarded as threats to security but on such public figures as George C. Wallace and George S. McGovern. "True, all true," Mother told me, adding that the total number of files available to his office, thanks partly to his links with the Pentagon's computer but mostly to his own resources, is well over fifty million-a figure which is ten million over the total number of passports in existence in the whole world at any one time. The !Ci.f s..cQm- ,I~titcriz_ecl tliat.thc.y, fan.,spo.t_.a-suspect-terrorist..iriy bts,nan~e,_.passport number, or descrip- tion (by a newly devis_ed~ysten7 1ykl.h pinpoinis __perspj); rmincttt LialCac- tcristics as precisely as a fingerprint)- Qr anahas or_ forged. p3 apQC1 when t ese, do not?~>roperly match, A- card Qn _ an. y indiyidu~l__ can be_ retrieved~in less. than . a second._ Mother Proved his ta...me.,_by..,.raising ,._~,,,colorwsliclet,-of, as yc7ung,..1'aIestill att,...Xerz'.o?risk,.-J.hadin- guirc I ., aUQy~. I ~,res,sec) a__fcw but- tons giving theidentifying details: and iriless..t.han..,a. secgndthe he.-window lights had--dimmed, and- the young swan ie was-staring at me from'a color picture on thefar._vall. Until Watergate, no one at CIA felt any need to apologize. After all, sur- veillance of Martin Luther King had been okayed by three Presidents, two of them Democrats, and various liberals who were about to complain of "Ge- stapo tactics" cut themselves short when it was revealed that Vice Presi- dent Agnew's telephone had been tapped, After Watergate, however, there was all sorts of retroactive anger. It was even suggested that our record- keeping, our telephone-tapping, and our surveillance of ordinary citizens might horrify the Soviets and sour the bur- geoning detente. (You will remember that my in- quiries in Washington were made just after Brezhncv had left. A friend of mine in the Secret Service told nic that on the only occasion when the embar- subject of Watergate clone Speculation There is, of course, plenty of justi- fication for anyone's fears that an all- knowing computer bank could become a dangerous instrument of power in the hands of an unscrupulous dictator. Even though it is unlikely that our country will ever allow itself to be ruled by an unscrupulous dictator, it is understandable that such a mon- strous capability arouses the fears of all sorts of people. I. . don' .,,mi ,d? hav- .itl ,,_tlie~detailsrof my colorful life~re- ,~Qrded, ..in ihe,.,CZA's _ computers and _ I am sure you have the same feeling about yours, but it makes most people uneasy to feel that an unthinking and unforgetting computer has details of old childhood pranks, parking tickets, unpaid bills, and the like just sitting there waiting to be retrieved-maybe tomorrow, maybe twenty ? years from now. Ian Ball of the London Daily Telegram discovered that the comput- ers of the Bureau of Narcotics contain data on three babies of under three years of age for having been exposed to narcotics by parental neglect. In twenty years or so when one of them applies for a government job, a govern- ment loan, or simply a passport, the information will be coughed up. "Ob- viously," said a Labor MP with whom I discussed the item on a BBC tele- vision program, "the amassing of such information is an intolerable invasion of privacy, and the computers should be destroyed." But, obviously, they are not going to be destroyed-any more than our atomic know-how is going to be de- stroyed on some weird theory that other and the White House as a whole, needs to be told. Mind you, no single per- son at the Agency gave me a complete story, or showed any willingness to endorse the one I've put together here, and the bits and pieces I got from old friends were far from enough to free me from the necessity to do some speculating. I think, though, that the account I have nut together is as com- pletc as _anyone is likely to get until Dick Helms writes his memoirs. In any case, there is enough hardinforma- tion to support my rash assertion. Here goes. It seems that President Nixon's "pre- occupation" (a word used by John Dean in his testimony) with the subject of radical groups and their supposed foreign connections became intense in 1969 when, among other things, he ordered the FBI to prepare a special report on groups in the U.S. receiving support from abroad and the CIA to prepare a report on foreign govern- ments and groups supporting radical groups in America. The FBI complied; it supplied a preliminary report, to be followed a year later by a complete study, which alleged that there were indeed foreign influences at work in America, mainly among black extrem- ists, but which was weak on specifics. The CIA,.,-r however,,n.., submitted _a straight-faced report in which its ex- ports,idmittcd-their ignorance It sim- iy saicJ' that it` was.,following,,,certaip foreign ~graups intensively bttt as yet had no evidence of their ties in Amery ica The report did _ riot, _as,-.the.-.New work Times and other _,papers,.,have alleged, say that no such ties existed. lcfiothcr "assures me that ie....i as,-,gone roti very scrap of paper the nations will follow suit and the self-in- Agency ever issued on the subject, both ilicted ignorance will save. us from internally and externally, and that there World War III. We've now got the is not one that says that radical groups information, and we're going to keep in America were "homegrown, indig- someone remarked, to Bre incy- ?t aft it Moreoverthose governments under enous responses to perceived griev- the FBI, the " 25 s~i d at tL t~Sepr t LQ `ttCstt iWF APAQP+ AFO QP0OA' lems that had been Approved For Release 2002/04/03 : CIA-RDP75B0038OR000600010006-3 growing for years." All the same, the initial Agency report to the White }louse on the subject was pretty weak stuff-so much so as to cause Halde- man to remark that it was too much "maybe this maybe that." During the next two, years, the Agency furnished the White Houle O44DOOW will all blow. Any- the Agency's system of "fuses," which makes the Agency almost totally im- pervious to anyone's efforts to corrupt it. Here is the way the fuses work. Let us say, for the sake of exanlple, that the President orders the CIA Di- rector to send some of his boys out to follow Senator Ervin as he makes his usual rounds of Washington nightclubs. The Director, let us say for the sake of example, is a weak chap who prefers holding onto his job to being sent off to Teheran as ambassador, so he says, "Ycssir, Mr. President," and returns to his office to comply. Since he can hardly be expected to conduct the surveillance personally, he passes the order to the chief of some division most likely to have surveillance facilities inside the U.S. Like the DCI, the division chief cannot himself conduct the surveil- lance, so he has to call in some mem- bers of his staff to make plans for the surveillance, someone else to choose the personnel to carry it out. Moreover, since he can't move or equip personnel without the concurrence of the over-all operations officer who works directly for the "DDP," the head of the "dirty tricks department," he has to bring yet another four or five officers into the operation. If he' doesn't do all this (if, for example, the DCI has instructed him to bypass the usual procedures), the personnel who are to conduct the actual surveillance will refuse to move -since every one of them is working for the CIA as an organization and not for the Director personally, and knows full well that taking action without a "trip ticket," i.e., a written order en- dorsed by some four or five "controls," is a sure way of getting fired. Blowing a Fuse So what happens? The DCI, hot from the White House, calls in the Chief. of Division X and orders him to get crack- ing on a surveillance of Senator Ervin. The Chief of Division X, also a weak- ling who likes his job (let us say), calls in his plans officer and his operations officer and passes the word on to them. And so on and so on. Sooner or later, at least one officer down the line either says no, with adequate means at his disposal for making the no stick, or he "loses the papers," as the old-timers say. And since those in the act are certain that at least one of their number will act as the fuse and "blow," it is quite Approved For Release 2002/04/03 : CIA-RDP75B00380R000600010006-3 how, the word goes back to the DCI the appropriate officer gets a request for who gives the order. Many orders will either: 1) that the operation was material assistance from another re- be given by senior officials under pres- launched but ran into difficulties and sponsible agency-or, certainly, from sure who know they can count on some- had to be abandoned; 2) that it couldn't the White House-he carefully refrains one down the line to "lose the papers." be run except in a way that would in- from asking what the material is to be The officer down the line who fails to volve risks of disclosure that might enl- used for. In the case of Hunt, it would spot incidents where he is supposed to barrass the White I-louse; 3) that the have been silly to say to someone with lose the papers will, as before, be be- operation has been launched, when it White House credentials, "Just a min- yond explicit punishment, but he will in fact hasn't, but isn't producing any- utc, old man. Before we lend you this thereafter suffer "inconveniences." Since thing worthwhile; 4) that-well, any wig we want to know exactly what you there are no stupid people in the one of a dozen or more excuses, the are going to do with it. A fancy dress Agency, it will be assumed that he is more far-fetched the better, since the ball, maybe?" More important, who- being malicious, that he is practicing boys down the line don't want to run ever did the lending would quite rightly that bit of CIA operational mischief, the risk of causing the Director to be- fear some weird answer-and, having "the most subtle form of insubordina- lieve their excuses. Once he has caught got it, would then have the choice of tion is to take a stupid order and carry the point that they are only trying to turning down a request from the White it out to the letter." I well remember protect him, along with the Agency, I-Iouse or lending the material knowing Mother's once having to "inconveni- they can sit down with him to concoct what it was to be used for, thus asso- ence" a smart-ass young officer who, at an excuse plausible enough for the ciating himself with a lunatic project. the time of one of the numerous flaps White Ilouse. But they never, never At the same time, Agency officers over chemical-warfare stores, received explicitly refuse to carry out his com- are not averse to accepting information an order to "destroy all supplies of spe- mand, or tell him anything that would volunteered-especially information on cial drugs," and did exactly that, burn- "involve" him, as that ominous word is the doings of an organization that was ing up a million dollars or so worth of now being used around Washington. It endangering its mission. Hunt had never sodium pentothal, LSD, aphrodisiacs, is a sort of "turbulent priest" treatment been an "agent" during the time he was and other operational goodies, together in reverse. actually employed by the CIA, but he with their "balancers." This sort of non- I am told that the press has un- became one after he had retired, an sense is not likely to be repeated. covered only a fraction of the "re- agent inside the plumbers-an expend- quests" made of the CIA by the White . able one (unlike McCord), but none- No Need to Worry House. The Agency was asked to follow theless an agent. He was therefore up on investigations the FBI was sup- worth humoring. More important, the public can count posed to be making but was found out If you've ever had he experience of on the Agency not to use its operational not to be making; it was asked to have giving information to the CIA, you goodies-except, of course, in instances prominent Democrats followed when know how impassive its professionals where it is clearly in the interest of na- they made visits abroad; it was asked can be: They listen with friendly inter- tional security for it to do so. It has all to "cooperate" with the Internal Reve- est, making you feel that what you say sorts of weird and wonderful gadgets, nue Service in maintaining surveillance is of the greatest importance, but they, chemicals, and what-not, mainly be- of numbered Swiss bank accounts- are totally noncommittal. You have no cause the Soviets and the Chinese have presumably in the hope of spotting the no idea whether or not you are being them, and it cannot afford to be with- odd Democrat in the act of "launder- believed, or whether there is approval out complete knowledge of them. The ing" his funds. On one occasion, Jojo's or disapproval of what you are saying. same goes for the masses of personality office was asked for an LSD-type drug, I'doubt therefore that Hunt sensed the data which it has in its files, the mere developed by the Chinese and being fascinated horror with which his former existence of which could be "an inva- studied by CIA chemists, which could associates at the Agency listened to his sion of privacy." To Agency officers, to be slipped into the lemonade of Demo- stories of the plumbers. Because they destroy such information in deference cratic orators, thus causing them to say were all amateurs (what Ehrlichman to this notion would be comparable to sillier things than they would say any- said in his testimony about their being suppression of knowledge in the Middle how. To this day, some of my friends "experienced operatives" is far from Ages because it was somehow contrary at the Agency are convinced that the truth), and because they had wild to the religious beliefs of the time. Howard Hunt or Gordon Liddy or imaginations, the plumbers were ca- Thus, the CIA is going to hold on to somebody got hold of a variety of the pable of almost any kind of nonsense. its know-how, its special equipment, drug and slipped it into Senator At first, it seemed that their imagina- and its knowledge, and if Bill Colby Muskie's lemonade before his famous tions and bumbling would confine them gets orders to destroy them, someone weeping scene. After long harassment to "dirty tricks" to win the campaign- down the line can be counted on to by such requests, it is easy to imagine rather than lead them into the kind of "lose the papers." At the same time, no that when Howard Hunt asked for that mess they did in fact get into. one need worry that they will be mis- wig thr Deputy Director shrugged, said Until the day of (lie Ilaldc1nans and used--or even used. I'm not so sure the `~Iie,i ill, 11, 11", ntt,i Qi. it Is, 101n Ili.. lifnrnie 0- ;'~ itit'elil; ,r,t"'nn,.;. ''ill +le, nnttltii,t' ,ipi,l ill ill Irut there was another reason why had never been challenged, and peiltaps huuure; but my tesearchcs or iltc l,asi Agency officers could have felt it cm- the system was getting lax. From now few weeks convince me that it will tirely proper to lend equipment, pro- on, to fail to question a doubtful order never, never do anything wrong. vidcd it was notAp EKO CdtEolt1RcilWserr2O82,f 4dQaft]lliA-fPfi1I?75BOO-,@ROOO&aOOitOHm-3. . Bunt. According to CIA policy, when sibly, even, in the eyes of the person MILES p