BOOK SHEDS NEW LIGHT ON 1975 PROBE OF CIA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000403090011-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 17, 2012
• Sequence Number: 11
• Publication Date: September 15, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/17: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403090011-7
ATLANTA JOURNAL(GA)
15 September 1985
gook sheds new light on 1975 prpbe of CIA
UGA professor draws-,
on experience as aide -
in 'Season of Inquiry'
By Kent Hannon
Staff writer
ATHENS - Ten years ago this
month, the Senate Select Committee
on Intelligence Activities began pub-
lic hearings on abuses of power
within the Central Intelligence
Agency, the Federal Bureau of In-
vestigation and other agencies in
the U.S. intelligence community.
Those abuses, euphemistically
known as "the family jewels" within
the CIA, included assassination plots
against foreign leaders, surveillance
of American citizens, experimenting
with chemical warfare and tamper-
ing with the U.S. mail.
Coming on the heels of the Wa-
tergate scandal, the 1975 Senate in-
telligence hearings turned up so
many instances of foreign and do-
mestic skulduggery, particularly on
the part of the CIA, that both
houses of Congress now have per-
manent watchdog committees which
monitor the day-to-day activities of
the CIA, the FBI and other U.S. in-
telligence agencies.
One of the men who played an
important behind-the-scenes role in
the hearings was Dr. Loch Johnson,
a University of Georgia political
science professor who was then an
aide to committee chairman Sen.
Frank Church of Idaho.
Johnson has drawn on that expe-
rience to produce a book entitled,
"A Season of Inquiry," which is the
,most comprehensive account of the
Senate intelligence hearings ever
written.
Published in July by the Univer-
sity of Kentucky Press, "A Season
of Inquiry" traces the history of the
Senate intelligence hearings - from
December 1974, when someone
within the CIA leaked a portion of
"the family jewels" to New York
Times reporter Seymour Hersh, to
May 1976, when a permanent Sen?
ate committee with legislative and
budgetary control over the CIA was
established.
Johnson's principal assignment
during the hearings was to help
Church prepare for each day's pro-
ceedings by interviewing major fig-
ures in the investigation - men like
CIA Director William Colby, former
CIA Director Richard Helms, for-
mer U.S. Attorney General John
Mitchell and former White House
aide John Dean - before they testi-
fied before the full 11-man Senate
committee.
"Here was the CIA concealed
from the public eye for all these
years, and suddenly its leaders and
even its middle-level bureaucrats
are being sent up to Capitol Hill to
answer questions about the agency
under the harsh lights of public tele-
vision," says Johnson, 43, who has
brought several CIA officers to the
UGA campus in recent years to help
students in his American govern-
ment class understand how the
agency works.
Johnson says the enormity of
the problem within the CIA was
made clear to him while he inter-
viewed James Jesus Angleton, chief
of counterintelligence for the CIA,
about the practice of opening and
copying American citizens' mail.
"I asked Angleton why the CIA
had allowed itself to get involved in
- these illegal activities," says John-
son. "He told me, 'The laws don't
apply to the CIA because it's a
tough world, there's a Cold War go-
ing on and you have to adopt cer-
tain hard tactics. It would be unre-
alistic to hold the CIA to the
conventions of normal domestic
law."'
Among those whose mail was
tampered with between 1953 and
1973 were author John Steinbeck,
Nobel Prize-winning physicist Linus
Pauling and, ironically, Congress-
man Richard Nixon. Nixon's mail
was of interest because he received
correspondence from communist
countries, Johnson says.
At one point in the hearings,
Church suggested that the "CIA
may have been behaving like a
rogue elephant on a rampage." But
not everyone on Capitol Hill was in
favor of holding the intelligence
hearings or of making public some
of the startling facts which came
out of them.
Sen. Herman Talmadge of Geor-
gia was one of four Southern con-
servatives who opposed establishing
the committee in the first place.
Sen. John Tower of Texas, vice
chairman of the committee, argued
against Church's proposal that the
permanent intelligence committees
in the Senate and House of Repre-
sentatives be advised of the CIA's
plans for covert action ahead of
time.
Even more controversial was
the committee's decision to release
its assassination report, which had
been formulated during private
hearings which began in May 1975.
"The report revealed that the
U.S. had plotted to kill five major
foreign leaders - Fidel Castro of
Cuba, Patrice Lumumba of the Con-
go, Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican
Republic, Ngo Dinh Diem of South
Vietnam and Gen. Rene Schneider
of Chile," says Johnson.
Castro is still living, Lumumba
was killed by Congolese rivals be-
fore the CIA plot was carried out
and Trujillo, Diem and Schneider all
died in local coups over which the
CIA had little or no control, accord-
ing to Johnson.
Johnson's account of the various
plots against Castro, which included
poisoning his cigars, hiring Ameri-
can gangsters to kill him and even
a plan to discredit the Cuban leader
by making his beard fall out, is both
humorous and ghastly.
"It doesn't remind you of
George Washington, does it?" says
Johnson.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/17: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403090011-7