PRYING INTO MAIL, PLOTTING MURDER

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01314R000300170024-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 18, 2004
• Sequence Number: 24
• Publication Date: March 17, 1975
• Content Type: MAGAZINE

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Prying into ail,
"Let's get one thing clear right
away," declared the angry chairwoman,
flashing fiery eyes at the uncomfortable
witness. `"Opening the mail of a lawyer
representing a client is clearly illegal."
CIA Director William Colby
drummed his fingers on a table and fid-
geted. He avoided the legal issue, but
did not deny that CIA agents had fre-
quently opened the mail of his accuser,
New York's bellicose Congresswoman
Bella Abzug. Nor could he if he had
wanted to. Lawyer Abzug had demand-
ed that the CIA turn over its file on her,
and purged of what Colby considered
sensitive items, it now lay at her elbow
in a long, fat manila envelope.
Presiding over a House subcommit-
tee hearing, Congresswoman Abzug
drew admissions from Colby that the CIA
had begun compiling a file on her 22
years ago when she represented a client
before the House Un-American Activ-
ities Committee-long before her na-
tional prominence and election to Con-
gress in 1970. What she termed the
"rotten stuff' in the envelope also in-
cluded copies of letters she had written
to Soviet oilicials trying to locate heirs
to an estate, a report on an ~ anti-Viet
Nam War speech she had made in New
ottin muraer up no such evidence. But TIME has found
credible sources who insist that the CIA
York, details of her meeting with Viet-
namese Communists in Paris in 1972.
Colby conceded that some of this infor-
mation gathering "may not be appro-
priate today." He said obscurely that the
CIA would not keep a "continuing file"
on 'her but would still collect material
on U.S. citizens engaged in what he
termed "questionable" political activi-
ties. Snapped Bella: "You say you're not
going to do it any more, and yet you are
going to do it."
Routine Denials. On another front,
pressure on the CIA was accumulating.
At a press conference, President Ford
oobbli u~el confirmed published reports
that Colby had privately told him of CIA
support of assassination plots against
foreign political figures in the past. Al-
most any time an anti-U.S. leader any-
where is toppled or killed, of course, ru-
mors of CIA involvement arise. The CIA
routinely denies any connection with
any political assassination, and Ford
said that it would be "inappropriate" for
him to comment on the subject.
That only meant the speculation was
sure to continue. For example, one of
the most persistent suspicions is that the
CIA helped engineer the murder of South
Viet Nam's President Ngo Dinh Diem
when he was overthrown in a military
uprising in 1963. No solid evidence of
such a tie has been found, and indeed
Watergate Criminals Charles Colson
and E. Howard Hunt, a former CIA
BODY OF SOUTH VIET NAM'S SLAIN DIEM,
HAITI'S DUVALIER, CUBA'S CASTRO & DEATH
CAR OF DOMINICAN REPUBLIC'S TRUJILLO
was involved in assassination plots
against at.least three figures:
RAFAEL TRUJILLO. After 31 years of
harsh rule over the Dominican Repub-
lic, the dictator was gunned down by as-
sassins in May of 1961. His chauffeur
gamely fired back in a brief gun battle
that riddled Trujillo's car with bullet
holes. "No.body wanted another Cuba
in the Dominican Republic," said one
TIME source, who claims that the CIA I
thought that Trujillo was getting too i
friendly with the Communists. The CIA
thus backed the successful drive to over-
throw Trujillo. Several sources insist that
some of the guns used in the killing, ap-
parently fast-firing M-1 carbines. were
smuggled into the Caribbean island by'
CIA operatives.
FIDEL CASTRO. Largely confirming
earlier reports by Columnist Jack An-
derson, TIME sources contend that the
CIA enlisted the expert hired-gun help
of U.S. Mafia figures in several unsuc-
cessful attempts to kill Castro both be-
fore and shortly after the CIA-planned
Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 196 1.
The mobsters were cooperative, since
Castro had seized some of their lucra-
tive Havana gambling casinos. The CIA.
according to these accounts, worked
with Gangsters Sam Giancana and John
Roselli in futile attempts to poison or
shoot Castro or kill him with planted.
explosives. The FBI later inadvertently
learned of the plot in investigating a bur-
glary of Comedian Dan Rowan's Las
Vegas hotel room. Agents learned that
the arrested prowlers had been assigned
by the CIA as a favor to Giancana,
who sought information to break up a
budding romance between Rowan and
Giancana's girl friend, Singer Phyllis
McGuire.
FRANCQIS ("PAPA DOC") DUVALIER.
The CIA collaborated with Haitian lead-
ers of a group of at least 200 rebels, who
had trained in the Dominican Republic
in 1963; the rebels were stopped at the
border by troops of the D.R. when they
moved to attack Haiti. A lone pilot flew
on over Papa Doe's palace and dropped
a bomb that missed the building by 300
yards. "The guy got jittery and just
tossed the bomb out of the window," says
Approved For ReleaseiiOb14``"'GIA-RDP88-01314 ~d President Kert-
w^ + neat' w en fifese r disposal turned
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Approved For Release 2005/01/11 :CIA-RDP88-013148000300170024-9