TRANSMITTAL AND DOCUMENT RECEIPT TO MR. LOCH JOHNSON FROM OFFICE OF LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP81M00980R003000040015-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 15, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 11, 2004
• Sequence Number: 15
• Publication Date: December 26, 1978
• Content Type: FORM

TRANSMITTAL AND DOCUMENT RECEIPT m 9 --~
qAopnn,z
TO:
FROM' Office of Legislative Counsel
Mr. Loc1',Johnson, House Permanent Select
Central Intelligence Agency
Committee on Intelligence
Room 7 D 35
H-405, The Capitol
Washington, D.C. 20505
Washington, D. C. 20515
THE DOCUMENTS LISTED HEREON ARE FORWARDED FOR;
INFORMATION
ACTION
XX
RETENTION
LOAN
CONTROL NUMBER
DOC. DATE
SUBJECT (Unclassified preferred)
CLASS.
undate
Four pages for Mr. Johnson of notes
Secret
undate
Article, "Intelligence Reform in the Mid-1970s" by
Timonthy S. Hardy, 15 pages
Unclas
HANDCARRIED BY 0LC/Liaison 12/26/78
STA
RECEIPT
SIGNATURE (acknowledging receipt of above documents).
ET D
R OFFICE OF LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL
CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
ROOM 7 D 35
DATE OF RECEIPT
WASHINGTON, D.C. 2005
F'D RM 3772B
10-76
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From the inside looking out:
INTELLIGENCE REFORM IN THE MID-1970s
Timothy S. Hardy
Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein are stars. They are reaping millions from their
investigative reporting. When Watergate rates a chapter in history books, they will no
doubt get more than a footnote. But another investigative reporter, whose role in the
story he broke was probably more integral and essential, is almost forgotten already.
Had Seymour Hersh not written his CIA domestic surveillance stories for the New York
Times in December 1974 (indeed, had not the Times seen fit to splash the first story
across five columns of page one headlined "Massive Surveillance"), there seems little
doubt that there never would have been a Rockefeller Commission, a Pike "Report," a
Church Committee, or an Executive Order 11905. `
Books by Victor Marchetti and Philip Agee or occasional columns by Jack
Anderson were not able, as the Hersh article was, to stampede the new Ford
Administration into appointing a presidential commission, the first step down an ever-
widening path of inquiry. Hersh, and Hersh alone, caused the President, and then
Congress-put in the position where it could not allow the Executive Branch alone to
be the investigator-to make intelligence a major issue of 1975. His stories, combined
with a presidential reaction that gave the stories great credibility, took a long-
smoldering collection of problems and put them on the nation's front burner. One
would have to be quite persuasive to make the case that Woodward and Bernstein were
nearly as crucial to the unfolding of their story.
On the other hand, had not Woodward and Bernstein set a favorable tone for
investigative reporting, by giving great credibility to the delvings of the press into
once-sacred institutions, the splash made by the Hersh article might never have been
possible. The public and Congress had become quite susceptible to claims that the
government was out of control, that bizarre stories about secret conspiracies might
indeed be true. And the whole Watergate scenario led, as Senator Baker had been
fascinated to learn and determined to probe as an adjunct to his Watergate committee
tasks, in a number of bizarre ways to the CIA gates in Langley.
Yet Hersh may not even merit a historical footnote, perhaps, because the ball he
started rolling never really knocked down all, or even any, of the pins. The ending of
the Post dynamic duo's story, after all, was the resignation of a reigning President. No
such result capped Hersh's story. The CIA is thriving in Langley, its constituent parts
all strung together, its basic mission unchanged. The Defense Department still spends
more than 80 percent of the billions of national intelligence dollars in ways only
vaguely known to the American public. The new FBI building is still named for
J. Edgar Hoover. And one of the nation's most expensive and most important
intelligence organizations remains to this day unacknowledged by the U.S.
Government. Nonetheless, the Hersh article did set in motion events that led to
trumpeted "reforms" of the foreign intelligence community.
What follows is one insider's attempt to reconstruct that train of events. First, as
an investigator (with the Rockefeller Commission), then as a staff assistant to the
decision process (in the White House), and, finally as an implementer (with the
Intelligence Oversight Board), I watched the intelligence issue wax and wane, both at
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