HOUSE PROBING CIA 'BABYSITTER' WHO RIFLED FILES ON JFK

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00587R000100160005-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 23, 2011
• Sequence Number: 5
• Publication Date: June 28, 1979
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/02/23: CIA-RDP91-00587R000100160005-1
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LEVEL 1 - 4 OF 8 STORIES'
Copyright o 1979 The Washington Post
June 28, 1979, Thursday, Final Edition
SECTION: First Section; A6
LENGTH: 730 words
HEADLINE: House Probing CIA 'Babysitter' Who Rifled Files on JFK
BYLINE: By George Lardner Jr., Washington Post Staff Writer
BODY:
The House Intelligence Committee has started an investigation of a CIA
officer's snooping last year in the offices of another congressional committee.
Members of the Intelligence Committee, which was oversight authority over the
CIA, were informed of the inquiry last week by Chairman Edward Boland (D-Mass.).
Committee staffers had already interviewed the CIA's director of security,
Robert Gambino, about the incident following a report in The Washington Post.
The Post, quoting informed sources, reported that the most sensitive files of
the House Assassinations Committee had been rifled last summer and fingerprints
on them traced to a CIA liason officer assigned to the committee.
The assignment, it has since been learned, was made under a CIA program
code-named "MH/Child," which sources described as encompassing a variety of
so-called "babysitting" chores.
The agency dismissed the liaison oofficer in question, Regis T. Blahut,
last August and then dropped the matter. In a memo to all CIA employes last
week, CIA Director Stansfield Turner took the position that Blahut had "acted
alone and out of curiosity."
Since then, the CIA has also been insisting that Blahut, who had been
employed by the agency's Office of Security, did not rifle the Assassinations
Committee's files and did not even enter the safe where the files were kept.
However, the agency has refused to say what it thinks did happen, beyond
describing it as - in the words of CIA spokesman Herbert'Hetu "something
dumb."
According to informed sources, the incident took place one afternoon last
July after an Assassinations Committee staffer had started inspecting some of
the materials in a combination safe reserved for physical evidence of the 1963
assassination of President Kennedy.
Sources said he took what he wanted and left the room. According to one
version, he left the safe door closed but unlocked; according to another, the
safe door might have been left slightly ajar. In any case, sources said, when
he returned, he found a book of Kennedy autopsy photos inside the safe in
obvious disarray.
Blahut's fingerprints were found on the inside door or the safe. They were
also found on one of the gruesome authopsy photos, which had been taken out of
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 Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/02/23: CIA-RDP91-00587R000100160005-1
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0 1979 The Washington Post, June 28, 1979
its plastic case, sources said. The plastic case itself had been torn from its
notebook binder.
The CIA's Hetu, however, declares that Blahut "did not enter the safe to get
the notebook."
Asked how it was then that Blahut's fingerprints were found on the inside of
the safe door, Hetu said this must have happened when Blahut was "putting it
[the book of photos] back in the safe."
Asked why Blahut would do that if he hadn't taken the book from the safe to
begin with, the CIA spokesman said, "I don't know. Ask Blahut."
Hetu also declined to give the CIA's version of what happened, insisting that
it would serve "no purpose."
Blahut, who reportedly failed CIA polygraph tests in several important
respects concerning the incident, declines to comment. He has said there is an
innocent explanation, but he has refused to say what that is.
Sources said there were at least three personnel shifts and changes within
the CIA's Office of Security following the incident last summer and the recent
publicity over it, affecting, among others, Blahut's immediate supervisor. Hetu
said there was no connection.
"We're satisfied that what he [Blahut] did, he did on his own," the CIA
spokesman told a reporter. "None of the things [personnel shifts and
resignations] you've described had anything to do with that. . . We're satisfied
the guy did something dumb. He looked at a book he wasn't supposed to look at.
And we fired his after we assured ourselves that he wasn't tasked [to do with
did] by anyone either inside or outside the agency."
Sources close to the committee maintained that the CIA's investigation was
aimed primarily at getting the agency off the hook and was not thorough enough
to eliminate suspicions that more than "curiosity" might have been involved.
Blahut had been assigned to help the Assassinations Committee with the CIA
files it needed in its inquiries. Sources described the MH/Child project, under
which the assignment came, as a sort of "babysitting" function that also
includes escorting visitors to the CIA headquarters building at Langley.
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