DISCUSSES RESOLUTION ON CIA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP74-00297R000900070012-6
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 23, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 31, 2013
• Sequence Number: 12
• Publication Date: April 9, 1956
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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Declassified and Approved For Release @50-Yr2013/10/31:CIA-RDP74-00297R000900070012-6
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- Mutual Broadcasting System
DISCUSSES RESOLUTION ON CIA
Fulton Lewis, Jr., at 7:00 P.M.
"The Senate went to work today on a resolution to set up a so-called
watchdog committee of the House and Senate to check on the operations of the
CENTRAL INTF11IGENCE AGENCY, otherwise known as the CIA, which has been under
increasing suspicion for some time past. You probably don't know too much
about the CIA, which is the way the CIA prefers it.
"The origin of the agency was at the end of World War II when it was
felt that there was a need for a combination of the various intelligence
operations which the government conducted during the war in order to keep the
government abreast of what was going on throughout the world. Supposedly this
was to consolidate all of the foreign intelligence functions of the various
branches of government and to bring them all under one unified head to serve
in the international field in the same sort of fashion as the FBI serves in
the domestic field. The FBI does not function outside of the United States,
its territories and possessions, and there are those who contend that the CIA
doesn't function at all, and that's what this resolution and stir-up is all
about.
"Basically the CIA picture is completely incongruous with all traditional
operations of the United States government and, without making any accusations
on my own responsibility--after all, I don't know how you'd make any accusa-
tions because it's impossible to get any information as to what goes on inside
of the Central Intelligence Agency--the fundamental operational pattern of the
organization, however, is dangerous in the extreme. It may be entirely all
right in its practical operations; it could, however, be one of the most
viciously graft- and sedition-ridden poison spots in the entire government
for all anybody could know about it or do about it.
"The present director is Mr. Allen Dulles, brother of the Secretary of
State, a personable enough individual as an individual. He is a very tweedy
sort of an individual with a ragged walrus mustache, who affects eccentric-
shaped pipes and leans to extremely aromatic tobacco and never seems to be
able to keep his pipe lighted. He was in Switzerland on special intelligence
work during the war and this seems to be his chief basis of claim for this
job of CIA Director. He explains that he is remaining in Washington at con-
siderable personal sacrifice, which I'm sure is true, and when he came here
never had the slightest idea that he would remain so long.
"The key to the complaint about the CIA is not particularly what the
CIA has done, because nobody knows or is able to find out what it has done
or is doing. Some of the things one stumbles into as one goes brousing
around in foreign countries on world travels, and they are surprising. For
example, it is common information that the CIA puts up a major portion of
the financing for the activities of so-called Radio Free Europe, which parades
as a private contribution enterprise and which I permitted to use sustaining
space advertising over the network as a public service on this program until
recently.
Declassified and Approved For Release @50-Yr 2013/10/31 : CIA-RDP74-00297R000900070012-6
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Declassified and Approved For Release @50-Yr 2013/10/31 : CIA-RDP74-00297R000900070012-6
"It was reported to me from various authentic European sources, however,
that Radio Free Europe broadcasts beamed to Czechoslovakia were so sympathetic
to the Communist Party line that Radio Prague recorded a number of the programs
from the airwaves from Radio Free Europe and later played them back for their
own Communist propaganda purposes. One of the best informed, most responsible
political observers in Europe, in this country on a recent visit, told me that
he had been driving through Austria just before he came here. He tuned in a
broadcast in the Czech language, which he assumed all the way through from the
tenor of it was from Radio Moscow. At the sign-off, however, it turned out to
be Radio Free Europe.
"In the Far East, I found the CIA was reportedly involved in all sorts of
commercial operations, businesses and blinds, through which it supposedly was
conducting intelligence operations and that it had a very heavy stake in a
commercial airline flying between Formosa and Japan. All of this may be
entirely all right; I have no way of knowing. But the point of it all and the
reason for this resolution that went under debate today is that the organization,
with virtually unlimited funds at its disposal from the United States Treasury,
is a complete law unto itself.
"It is not subject to any audits by the Comptroller General, no audit by
anybody of its books, its funds, or its expenditures. It is not accountable
to Congress for anything. Mr. Dulles reports directly and only to the Presi-
dent of the United States who, after all, is hardly able to conduct his own
personal detailed check on what Mr. Allen Dulles tells him is going on in CIA.
I don't mean to question for a single moment the personal integrity of Mr.
Allen Dulles or any of his aides, for that matter, but Mr. Allen Dulles did not
staff this organization; rather he inherited the organization and its staffing
from predecessors, including one General Walter Bedell Smith.
"And, with the untold hundreds of millions of dollars which the organiza-
tion has to spend every year, the sponsors of this organization in Congress say,
or this resolution in Congress say, that it is an extremely unhealthy thing for
this operation to continue on a blank check basis with no information at all
by Congress or the public as to what's going on.
"What the resolution proposes to do is to have this watchdog committee
operate in much the same manner as the existing Joint Atomic Energy Committee,
which keeps a watchful eye on the functioning of the necessarily confidential
atomic energy program, and to keep that eye on a strictly confidential basis.
It would not control the operations of the CIA; it would not even interfere
with the CIA program, but at least, the Congress would know what is going on,
or an agency of the Congress would, and whether the agency is functioning
effectively, which is more than anybody knows at the present time. Even the
personnel lists of the CIA are strictly confidential and Congress is unable to
get any information about who is employed, or how many people arOmployed or why,
and what their jobs are."
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Declassified and Approved For Release @50-Yr 2013/10/31 : CIA-RDP74-00297R000900070012-6