THE UNMENTIONABLE USES OF A CIA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75B00380R000600010006-3
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 8
• Document Creation Date: December 12, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 25, 2002
• Sequence Number: 6
• Publication Date: September 14, 1973
• Content Type: MAGAZINE

Approved For Release 2002/04/03 : C II1- @ 7 90380R000600010006-3
DIRTY TRICKS AND ALL
Yes, Virginia, CIA has a Department of Dirty Tricks.
If it didn't we should all be sleeping less
soundly tonight. The author takes us beyond the scare
headlines to where the action is, and should be
The Unmentionable Uses of a CIA
MILES COPELAND
DEAR BILL: I did as I said I
would: I went out to those
intimidating headquarters buildings of
the CIA in. Langley, Virginia, and got
the party line from the public relations
and-legal offices. Then I had "not for
attribution"' interviews with a cross-
section of the Agency's top officials,
and ran down various old friends who
are "intelligence community" insiders
and who were willing to exchange con-
fidences-sort of a "private opinion
survey," you might say. Finally, pre-
suming on my alumnus status and the
fact that I still pass for an expert on
several subjects of particular interest to
the Agency, I got myself invited to
lunch and an afternoon of briefing at
the highly secret offices of "Mother,"
our old friend who now manages "mis-
cellaneous projects," one of which is
OCTOrus, the huge computer which
builds profiles of you, me, Daniel
Ellsbcrg, Senator Goldwater, Billy Gra-
ham, Allen Ginsberg, John Wayne, Jane
Fonda, B. F. Skinner, Vice President
Agnew, and millions of other persons
who are "in the.public eye," as I be-:
lieve Mr. Haldeman put it.
Mother's office is also the command
post for worldwide counterterrorist ac-
tivity, and for amassing data on "the
people's war against imperialism and
capitalism," which is behind that part
of the terrorism directly endangering
the security of the United States. Since
Mother has managed to get the co-
operation of non-Communist security
agencies everywhere, including many
"anti-American" ones, his office is un-
Mr. Copeland, author of the
u vrr,.u u+ ine uanie or IVatlons, Has those 1 ter 6A4
1 luncheon table there
l~qon
spent m arch Ap1prq b~,0',Fgont?cAe#,, a 29W104c(~ ~ 0060U~ o 6r, fitting at the end as host,
s
Middle East, in various capacities. "gentlemen's club" in the clays of Allen "the Kingfish,"
"Jojo," "Dandelion,"
questionably the world's central library
for information on politically motivated
terrorism. As you would expect, this
makes it also the world's principal sup-
ply base for the electronic gadgetry
used by. these security agencies for
making secret tape recordings, surrep- de mer, sauce verte, then truffled chick-
titiously taking motion pictures of ter- en Kiev with braised endives, then
rorists and supporters of terrorists, and grapefruit sorbet with Izarra for dessert
"ringing" the especially important ones (the wine served throughout was a
(i.e., installing in their anatomies cer- Ksara rose, part of a shipment Mother
tain minute substances which emit had just received from the Lebanese
traceable radio signals). It is truly a chef de Sfirete)-but there was a fine
science-fiction establishment, cognac with the coffee, which relaxed
In an odd way, Mother himself the guests and made them-well, you
seems a science-fiction figure-lean, couldn't say "talkative" but at least
deeply suntanned, grey-haired but age- communicative within the limits of the
less (I think I heard somewhere that rules for "calculated indiscretion" that
he is just sixty. but he could be forty- guide members of the CIA cabal when
very con- or seventy), expensively tweeded (with they talk to outsiders.
Dulles), and speaking the precise Eng-
lish of a visitor from another planet
who has been computer-programed to
look, act, and speak as some inter-
galactic intelligence would imagine of
an officer in his position. His office
matches: hunting-lodge motif, with a
huge fireplace topped by a portrait of
Lyman Kirkpatrick done by Nicholas
Egon, leather chairs and sofas, trophies
on the walls, and a beautifully beamed
sloping ceiling at least twenty feet from
the floor at the upper end. (I presume
it's a penthouse, although there is no
way of telling since the private elevator
gives no indication of the floors it
passes on the way up, and the large
picture windows are fake, beyond which
lies what appears to be real daylight
until Mother presses a switch to throw
a color slide on the far wall and it
slowly dims to darkness.) A scrawny
greyhound sits by Mother's armchair,
chewing on a black fedora which, I was
told, was left in Allen Dulles' office
twenty years ago by Cardinal Spellman.
The lunch was nothing to rave about
-a baliottine of duck with an herbed
orange jelly, followed by aspic of fruits
 Approved For Release 2002/04/03 : CIA-RDP75B0038OR000600010006-3
"Lady Windermere," "Wiz," "the Oz-
zard of \Viz," and two faceless gentle-
men who were not important enough
or long enough in the service to have
anything but ordinary proper names,
which I missed. The nicknames show
no signs of disappearing, by the way,
despite persisting opposition from Per-
sonnel, Management, and Security.
They are indispensable, Mother says,
1) to dazzle the young officers, 2) to
confuse the management experts who
are constantly plugging for a more
conventional organizational structure,
and 3) to give a "low profile" to the
real identities of cabal members. Num-
ber three is especially important at the
moment. It happens that, not one sin le
member of the CIA's inner circle has
-.been correctly id.eiitifacd_by Jack An-
derson or anyone else in connection
with his real functions in the Agency.
Mother's colleagues at the table ere
decidedly not suggestive of science fic-
tion. Except for Jojo and Lady Winder-
mere, who are obvious old-time Wash-
ington socialites, the CIA's top "dirty
tricks" specialists look exactly like the
frustrated liberal intellectuals they in
fact are. From innuendos sprinkled
through their conversation, it is clear
that they would like to be overturning
Greek colonels, sabotaging the Portu-
guese in Africa, and bribing Allende
away from his Soviet backers instead
of doing the opposite-as is dictated
by the circumstances they know about
from their secret information. They
share the liberal view that the more
things you are ashamed of the more
respectable you are, but that is as far
as it goes.
Take Chile ...
concealment of one aspect of the Wa-
tergate case" and "a White House aide
tried unsuccessfully to persuade the
CIA to put up bail and salary money
for the seven men arrested for the
break-in and bugging of Democratic
national headquarters." (The italics are
mine, to reflect rises in the voice of
Jojo as he read the article.) It then
said, "a convicted conspirator has testi-
fied that he was pressured to agree to
a plan to blame the CIA for the Water-
gate plot," but it gave no indication
that the CIA fell in with the plan or
even knew about it. The rest of the
article could have been written y
ingras Thuermer, the CIA's public-re-
>a pficer, It was as lucid an exla-
?tion as it. is possible to write o
tl CIA resist ed _pressuresfrom the
Jjjjtq House and elsewhere.
What seemed to bother my old
friends more than anything else was
the way the press had been attacking
the Agency for the wrong things. "There
are articles which fuss about our having
done certain things, when they should
be fussing about our not having done
them," said Jojo. "Take Chile, for
example."
Everyone nodded sympathetically,
feeling no need for elaboration. Agency
people assume that it is the duty of
the United States Government to back
candidates who run against Soviet-
backed candidates, in Chile or in any
other country where we have legitimate
and important interests, and that it
shouldn't wait for some commercial
concern to remind it of the fact. It
happens, though, that the CIA did not
back candidates in the Chilean elections
as it was "accused" of doing, although
the Soviets did-to the tune of some
$8 million in "miscellaneous costs," as
Whatever their political orientation, contrasted with the $2 million that ITT
they are all appalled at the Watergate executives believed would be enough to
affair-if anything, the few conserva- bring in a not-anti-American president.
tives among them more than the others. The Soviet-backed presidential candi-
"We can't even understand what the date won out and immediately launched
press says about us," Jojo complained. a program of socialist "reforms," which
"The headlines say we did horrible are having the same devastating results
things; the articles that follow say we in Chile that they have had in all other
didn't." countries that have tried them. I
For example, U.S. News & World asked, "But didn't the CIA, as the press
Report started an article by asking, says, have plans of its own for sabotag-
"How was the Central Intelligence ing the economy so as to embarrass
A!'cncy drawau into a web of domestic
1-1kii ,11 hill IL,ii. ctn.l Ili'.11 's, lil kill (n
n!ai.c it lierteetly clear that the CIA
was not drawn into anything. The
Allende?" Silly question. "Our opera-
tI1,11~," h,iiil Il,j,,, "[itl% idw,oi4 t111 111 W1111
squeezes and they never do real harm.
If we were out to ruin Chile we
The charges against the CIA arc that -
it: 1) loaned a wig and other items,
all of which could easily have been
bought by anyone on Washington's
New York Avenue-but did so on
orders from the White House, and
without knowing what the items were
to be used for; 2) gave information to
the Justice Department which was later
passed on to CREEP for' internal pur-
poses-but as a normal transaction with
the Justice Department, and without
any understanding of what the Justice
Department intended to do with the
information; 3) discussed with the FBI
the White House's belief that it should
call off investigation of the campaign
funds which had been "laundered"
through Mexico-but explicitly recom-
mended that it do no such thing; 4)
discussed the possible use of CIA funds
to provide bail for the Watergate men
-but refused: 5) provided the FBI
with a "psychological profile" of Daniel
Ellsberg-which is so trivial a matter
as to be' beneath discussion, despite the
fact that both Dick Helms and his ulti-
mate successor, Bill Colby, later said
that such an act was "ill advised."
Mother and the others have been in-
volved in intergovernment and intra-
government intrigues all over the world,
and they are" old-timers in the Battle
of Washington, so you would think
they were beyond shock and surprise.
But I think they are honestly bewil-
dered as to what all the fuss is about.
Good-Will Activities
Most..,bewildering-.isthe crescendo of
complaiints over long-standing actions
w, uch have been missed until now, but
rich Watergate has caused to be dug
up ,1rainingpolicemen, Ior_ chain le.
Ti ,,,,,,CIA has more counterterrorist
kauw how than. any_go.vernment agency
iaL-..th.e.,: world-it can even be argued
that it has more than all other agencies
put together, since it pools experiences
and information drawn from most of
them-and it would seem to be in the
public interest for this know-how to be
made available to as wide a range of
law-enforcement organizations, at least
American ones, as can be reached.
T(ue_.is _no suggestion that the CIA?is;
Iryiiig to gain control over thr,:' organ-
II',, jllltn, it, r Ill, Ilk ill 1111N,
Nyiiy,, or to depart from the law that
pruhah t_ the CIA- f
Tom engaging in
attempted to g p~ ,Rvpo e? t or~ljtSed~d,nv\v,tf~tout our ]''tie Wr[ObllllStfIIKUUV6,ousId~n gogues in Congress are
 Approved For Release 2002/04/03 : CIA-RDP75B0038OR000600010006-3
demanding that this good-will activity
of the Agency be looked into-and
ended. "1 realize we're living in an age
when supposedly reputable people can
object to the new Director of the FBI
on the grounds that he is a law-and-
order man," said Mother, ":but what
can be the motives of a congressman
vjlodoesn't want tilc police f. o getW the
best counterterrorism training possible?"
When it comes to the question of
training foreign police and security of-
ficials, the Agency is in a more serious
dilemma. It is officially recognized that
the CIA is to have an international
espionage and counterespionage service,
and there has been no serious sugges-
tion that it be disbanded. Yet every
time a report reaches the public that
even remotely suggests that such a serv-
ice is in existence, the outcry of the
American press exceeds even that of
the Soviets. For this reason, the Agency
has slowly shifted to what any reason-
able observer might regard as a totally
liberal position: It now encourages free
countries to look after their own se-
curity affairs, and gives them the means
to do so, without insisting that they
run their governments our way. "It is
a chameleon sort of policy," Mother
confessed, "but no one can say it's
imperialist-or rather, you wouldn't
think anyone could say it's imperialist."
The policy has only recently become
a rather touchy subject. Formerly the
CIA relied on cozy little deals with sec-
tions of local security agencies-in
Africa, Asia, and South America-to
round out its international surveillance
capability. The chiefs of the sections
{ were CIA agents; Members of the sec-
tions carried out their duties thinking
they were acting in the interest of their
own governments. When the late Presi-
dent Nasser of Egypt decided to seek
out the CIA agents who had made it
possible for the American ambassador
to warn him of an assassination plot
against him, he turned to the very sec-
tion which was working for the CIA-
said, "I suppose you know that my
office will be unguarded from midnight
tonight until 6 A.M. tomorrow; fascist
pig that you are, you will undoubtedly
send in your men to photocopy my
files."
Such arrangements were quite enough
for CIA purposes until the airplane
hijackings started, along with the in-
crease in murders and kidnappings of
diplomats. It now became advisable for
the U.S. Government, through the CIA,
to get a degree of admitted cooperation
from the governments where terrorist
organizations were based. Until this
need arose, the CIA could conceal the
fact that it was dealing with obnoxious
military dictatorships, Arab govern-
ments outspokenly hostile to our friend
Israel, and nabobs farther east who
habitually bought political time by pro-
fessing anti-American sentiments. The
new policy dictated that many of these
odd friendships be surfaced.
our losing access to essential materials
is "almost a probability"-a CIA eval-
uator's way of saying that it's nearing
the level of a fifty-fifty chance.
This is an aspect of the cold war
that has been almost entirely hidden
from the public. As you know, the U.S.
Government still publishes lists of
"strategic" and "critical" materials-
metals, botanical products, and other
substances on which our productive ca-
pacities are totally dependent. But you
.possibly do not know that the lists that
are available to the public are by no
means the ones that guide our national-
security planners. Some of the sub-
atanccs on them are so rare and of
such specialized use that nobody but
metallurgists and chemists ever heard
of them; yet they are indispensable to
the hardening of steel, to making ma-
chinery resistant to high temperatures
and acids, to the manufacture of elec-
tronic products, and for other such
purposes. Despite herculean efforts by
our scientists to find home-grown sub-
stitutes, many of them can be obtained
only from abroad. It happens-arid it
could hardly happen by chance-that
those areas of the world where the
substances are to be found are exactly
those in which local anti-American ex-
tremist groups enjoy the greatest mon-
etary, logistical, and administrative sup-
port and which comprise the front line
of "the people's war against imperial-
ism and capitalism." Since the list of
substances for obvious reasons must be
kept top secret, together with the facts
on how critically dependent we are on
them, there is no way the U.S. Govern-
ment can convey an awareness of the
problem to the American public. Those
who have access to the information
can only writhe in discomfort as un-
informed politicians and editorialists
state with pious confidence their con-
viction that the U.S. Government
should remain indifferent as countries
Countering Terror
Enough surfaced, that is, for fringe
employees of the intelligence commu-
nity to hear about them and to leak
reports of them to crusading journalists.
Yes, the U.S. Government, through the
CIA, is secretly on friendly terms with
the Greek colonels, the white govern-
ments of Rhodesia and South Africa,
and the Portuguese in Africa-and, at
the same time, with various oppressive
black regimes in Africa, with the Egyp-
tians, and with "Greek colonels" in
many countries of the Third World.
Yes, in the security field the U.S. Gov-
ernment is following a "chameleon pol-
icy," similar to the one found so repre-
hensible in ITT. The justification is
simply that its planners can't figure
any way it can afford not to be on
friendly terms with these governments.
It cannot do without their facilities.
The terrorists of the world ueipg
up as the most formidable enemy this containing the necessary substances
country has ever had. The international turn hostile to American interests.
and which solved the problem by fram- character. ofLL terrorist organizations is
ing a number of Interior Department ,rnparing a stage whereihey. _wll._he__jble
officials who had been inconveniencing to deny our access to certain materials
CIA operations. Sometimes, by special `",YC..g..Rt to have for;rnaintenance not
off-the-record agreements, local security nnly ofmilitar defenses but, Of Our
officials simply turn their backs, as 1c ay tp_ lay eacetime. economy, M ,
in the case of the chief of security of Ancy_ friends say that this threat is
,in anti-American Arab government who casil~IJ.>~ahgst.sci~nuti one our country
showed great indignation at a CIA rep- ? ? ever faced-far more serious, for
The CIA's information on the inter-
nationalization of terrorist organizations
is alarming, not so much because of
what this information shows these or-
ganizations to be doing right now, as
because of what it shows about the
capabilities they are building to be kept
in reserve for their D-Day. Radical
activity inside the United States is
resentative's suggestion that he should example, than the t hreat of nri af66iic largely "unstructured"; some of it re-
cooperate offic:i Apps ied F+eupRelterasev2AO2h4/Q 1, G BQ'1d 8QROQuQfbODQ,1r09,0.Gn%e frustrations of un-
imperialist enemy of the people," then have an atomic war, but the danger of organized or informally organized mi-
 nority groups, 4 1Rr@yq0iE5!tTtpgi Se t i@ tiN9 1-1%% rPa71gEA9 I PR00 P%1014b't6o ily had all "card-carry--
not-so-genuine frustrations of dissidents existence. ing" Communists in the U.S. identified
who have ]earned that terrorism can be
effective in a permissive society. Inside
it all, however, there is unquestionably
purposeful direction. The objective is
clear: to be able to paralyze the na-
tion's shipping, communications, and
manufacture of military materiel in the
event we find ourselves in a war with
the Soviet Union or with any country,
like North Vietnam, that is supported
by the Soviet Union. Achievement of
the objective is a long way off-or
obviously the antiwar demonstrations
of recent years would have been more
effective--but friends of mine at the
FBI with whom I discussed the subject
assure me that the capability is growing
and that, moreover, we should not take
encouragement from the fact that it
hasn't been particularly impressive dur-
ing the past few years. There is reason
to believe, they tell me, that the Soviets
are happy enough with the outcome
of the Vietnam war, that they therefore
didn't need to use their subversive re-
sources in the United States, that they
are quietly building them for the "Viet-
nams" of the future, into which they
confidently expect to draw us.
"Invasions" of Privacy
Similarly, the CIA is concerned about
the growth of "directed" terrorist ac-
tivity, which is at the heart of all the
random ad hoc terrorism that goes on
all over the Third World, especially in
those countries where strategic sub-
stances are located. But it also has to
concern itself with the "unstructured"
activity, since so much of it, however
random it may be, directly and critically
affects American interests. Airplane hi-
jackings, kidnapping and murder of
American diplomats, sabotage of re-
fineries and pipelines, and-assaults on
foreigners who dare to be friendly to
the U.S.-these must be taken seriously,
not only because of the injury to spe-
cific victims but because of their psy-
chological effect on all other potential
victims. Take the Palestinian Black
Septembrists, for example, who have
announced that "any person, office, air-
line, factory, or place which is in any
way related to the continued existence
+'f ti,l.r T' III!I+' 1w N I!I1'1'f if' Ill it
II:Ilirllt.rli. I Iu;t' 11.1to uunle II :Ii:al' Ilril
American citizens, offices, airlines, fac-
tories, and
America's
What do you do when you have that and "dataed," but had the Soviet intel-
much of yourself to guard? If the
enemy is about to charge your Alamo,
or send troops through your Khyber
Pass, you defend. But how do you de-
fend a million or so possible targets?
The single most significant, inescapable
fact about modern-day counterterrorism
is this: It requires offense, not defense.
If you try to put guards around every
conceivable target, you will have the
most conspicuous police state in history
and will play right into the hands of
those who are launching "the people's
war against imperialism and capital-
ism." Instead, you must go on the
offensive. You must find out who your
would-be attackers are, then sneak into'
their tents on the eve of their attacks
and quietly deal with them. It's the
only way.
Unfortunately, this
ligence services, the KG13 and the mili-
tary GRU, so thoroughly penetrated
that it could actually influence their di-
rection. The CIA was similarly placed
with respect to the Communist parties
in other countries and to the non-Com-
munist Soviet-controlled espionage net-
works growing like weeds in the Third
World. And all this involved a mini-
mum invasion of privacy. Out of any
ten "card-carrying Communists" only
one was a link in the chain and worth
watching, and he was easy to identify.
The other nine, mere dupes, could be
ignored. Today, however, the organiza-
tions or informal groupings from which
the terrorists emerge have a dupe-to-
activist ratio of about a hundred to one,
and the one is usually hard to spot.
To spot him, the FBI-or the CIA if
he is in a foreign country-must main-
tain surveillance of a wide range of
"subjects," most of them innocent.
CIA: No KGB
How wide a range' of subjects? I am
sure you have not missed the flood of
accusations against the government's
security agencies, the "repressive sys-
tem" they have built up and the "Ge-
stapo mentality" which is behind them.
In early 1971, a so-called "Citizen's
Committee To Investigate the FBI" stole
a thousand or so documents from an
FBI office in Philadelphia and gleaned
from them the hardly startling revela-
tion that the FBI systematically keeps
files on persons who pose "a definite
threat to the nation's stability and se-
curity," as J. Edgar Hoover had said
in one of the documents. In the months
that followed, it was revealed that the
U.S. Army's counterintelligence office
maintained files on "potentially sub-
versive persons," that the Treasury De-
partment's Secret Service had files "con-
means all sorts taming names and aliases of five
of invasions of privacy. In the good thousand black people," as Jack Ander-
old days when "the enemy" was ordi- son put it, that flie CIA wad- niaintain-
nary international Communism, with its ing- files?? on_Amcricans whq.,trav_c1.Qd
clear-cut hierarchical arrangements and into countries of particular intelligence
its systematic ties with the Soviet interest and ?1)_at these, files.,, conta>ned
KGB, the work of our security and entries concerning anything they did
intelligence agencies not. only was corn- in the course of their travels which
1+,ri!III' '11' I?f+r', 11111 ili'.i+1'. ?rl Iln? r?-Ill 'eslliailt Illa.l:.. tll!1171 '.11111!1:+I.1'. 1' 111.1'4'
vdluuurll Lind nt peuetratiihls and SUi- jtt;Ill }Tres uloa," .VIII Illul fill Illls 1n-
veillanccs at which they had become [rni Itpn was.. fed into computer dt_ta-
places all fill the bill because expert. Penetrate a Communist cell and banks whey a_wQuld,- stay, forever-
friend hipproved For Kefease 2b ~'~4/l'~3y i4 C~ l f0'3f~`~ (~@ @ ~fl~b-formation ..supplied - b
 Approved For Release 2002/04/03 : CIA-RDP75B0038OR000600010006-3
agencies, and the local police tapped
"about 4,000 telephones," a total which
seemed perfectly reasonable to the So-
viet leader-until it dawned on those
present that he had understood the
figure to be 400,000. After that, great
care was taken not to allow the sub-
ject to come tip again, because no one
wanted to admit the true figure, there-
by revealing to the hardened old in-
triguer that we were a lot of trusting
fools with only an immature grasp of
our security situation.)
will probably turn it over to us-as, I
am told, the British have already. The
only satisfactory way to calm all the
fears is to ensure that the information
is entirely in the hands of incorruptible
persons inside an incorruptible organ-
ization-a suggestion at which you
have hinted in one or two articles.
If .... Watergate...,.prpye.s, anything, it
2rr9ves, that the_ CIA is incorruptible.
To support this seemingly rash asser-
tion, the whole story of the friction
between the CIA and the "plumbers,"
police agencies (including records of
parking tickets and other such mis-
demeanors), credit investigation agen-
cies, and banks. In 1971, another col-
umnist published an "admission" of
the Defense Department that it had
computerized security files on 25 mil-
lion Americans and that the files in-
cluded information not only on per-
sons regarded as threats to security
but on such public figures as George
C. Wallace and George S. McGovern.
"True, all true," Mother told me,
adding that the total number of files
available to his office, thanks partly to
his links with the Pentagon's computer
but mostly to his own resources, is well
over fifty million-a figure which is
ten million over the total number of
passports in existence in the whole
world at any one time. The !Ci.f s..cQm-
,I~titcriz_ecl
tliat.thc.y, fan.,spo.t_.a-suspect-terrorist..iriy
bts,nan~e,_.passport number, or descrip-
tion (by a newly devis_ed~ysten7 1ykl.h
pinpoinis __perspj); rmincttt LialCac-
tcristics as precisely as a fingerprint)-
Qr anahas or_ forged. p3 apQC1 when
t ese, do not?~>roperly match, A- card
Qn _ an. y indiyidu~l__ can be_ retrieved~in
less. than . a second._ Mother Proved his
ta...me.,_by..,.raising ,._~,,,colorwsliclet,-of, as
yc7ung,..1'aIestill att,...Xerz'.o?risk,.-J.hadin-
guirc I ., aUQy~. I ~,res,sec) a__fcw but-
tons giving theidentifying details: and
iriless..t.han..,a. secgndthe he.-window lights
had--dimmed, and- the young swan ie
was-staring at me from'a color picture
on thefar._vall.
Until Watergate, no one at CIA felt
any need to apologize. After all, sur-
veillance of Martin Luther King had
been okayed by three Presidents, two
of them Democrats, and various liberals
who were about to complain of "Ge-
stapo tactics" cut themselves short
when it was revealed that Vice Presi-
dent Agnew's telephone had been
tapped, After Watergate, however,
there was all sorts of retroactive anger.
It was even suggested that our record-
keeping, our telephone-tapping, and our
surveillance of ordinary citizens might
horrify the Soviets and sour the bur-
geoning detente.
(You will remember that my in-
quiries in Washington were made just
after Brezhncv had left. A friend of
mine in the Secret Service told nic that
on the only occasion when the embar-
subject of Watergate clone
Speculation
There is, of course, plenty of justi-
fication for anyone's fears that an all-
knowing computer bank could become
a dangerous instrument of power in
the hands of an unscrupulous dictator.
Even though it is unlikely that our
country will ever allow itself to be
ruled by an unscrupulous dictator, it
is understandable that such a mon-
strous capability arouses the fears of
all sorts of people. I. . don' .,,mi ,d? hav-
.itl ,,_tlie~detailsrof my colorful life~re-
,~Qrded, ..in ihe,.,CZA's _ computers and _ I
am sure you have the same feeling
about yours, but it makes most people
uneasy to feel that an unthinking and
unforgetting computer has details of
old childhood pranks, parking tickets,
unpaid bills, and the like just sitting
there waiting to be retrieved-maybe
tomorrow, maybe twenty ? years from
now. Ian Ball of the London Daily
Telegram discovered that the comput-
ers of the Bureau of Narcotics contain
data on three babies of under three
years of age for having been exposed
to narcotics by parental neglect. In
twenty years or so when one of them
applies for a government job, a govern-
ment loan, or simply a passport, the
information will be coughed up. "Ob-
viously," said a Labor MP with whom
I discussed the item on a BBC tele-
vision program, "the amassing of such
information is an intolerable invasion
of privacy, and the computers should
be destroyed."
But, obviously, they are not going
to be destroyed-any more than our
atomic know-how is going to be de-
stroyed on some weird theory that other
and the White House as a whole, needs
to be told. Mind you, no single per-
son at the Agency gave me a complete
story, or showed any willingness to
endorse the one I've put together here,
and the bits and pieces I got from old
friends were far from enough to free
me from the necessity to do some
speculating. I think, though, that the
account I have nut together is as com-
pletc as _anyone is likely to get until
Dick Helms writes his memoirs. In
any case, there is enough hardinforma-
tion to support my rash assertion. Here
goes.
It seems that President Nixon's "pre-
occupation" (a word used by John
Dean in his testimony) with the subject
of radical groups and their supposed
foreign connections became intense in
1969 when, among other things, he
ordered the FBI to prepare a special
report on groups in the U.S. receiving
support from abroad and the CIA to
prepare a report on foreign govern-
ments and groups supporting radical
groups in America. The FBI complied;
it supplied a preliminary report, to be
followed a year later by a complete
study, which alleged that there were
indeed foreign influences at work in
America, mainly among black extrem-
ists, but which was weak on specifics.
The CIA,.,-r however,,n.., submitted _a
straight-faced report in which its ex-
ports,idmittcd-their ignorance It sim-
iy saicJ' that it` was.,following,,,certaip
foreign ~graups intensively bttt as yet
had no evidence of their ties in Amery
ica The report did _ riot, _as,-.the.-.New
work Times and other _,papers,.,have
alleged, say that no such ties existed.
lcfiothcr "assures me that ie....i as,-,gone
roti very scrap of paper the
nations will follow suit and the self-in- Agency ever issued on the subject, both
ilicted ignorance will save. us from internally and externally, and that there
World War III. We've now got the is not one that says that radical groups
information, and we're going to keep in America were "homegrown, indig-
someone remarked, to Bre incy- ?t aft it Moreoverthose governments under enous responses to perceived griev-
the FBI, the " 25 s~i d at tL t~Sepr t LQ `ttCstt iWF APAQP+ AFO QP0OA' lems that had been
 Approved For Release 2002/04/03 : CIA-RDP75B0038OR000600010006-3
growing for years." All the same, the
initial Agency report to the White
}louse on the subject was pretty weak
stuff-so much so as to cause Halde-
man to remark that it was too much
"maybe this maybe that."
During the next two, years, the
Agency furnished the White Houle
O44DOOW will all blow. Any-
the Agency's system of "fuses," which
makes the Agency almost totally im-
pervious to anyone's efforts to corrupt
it. Here is the way the fuses work.
Let us say, for the sake of exanlple,
that the President orders the CIA Di-
rector to send some of his boys out to
follow Senator Ervin as he makes his
usual rounds of Washington nightclubs.
The Director, let us say for the sake of
example, is a weak chap who prefers
holding onto his job to being sent off
to Teheran as ambassador, so he says,
"Ycssir, Mr. President," and returns to
his office to comply. Since he can hardly
be expected to conduct the surveillance
personally, he passes the order to the
chief of some division most likely to
have surveillance facilities inside the
U.S. Like the DCI, the division chief
cannot himself conduct the surveil-
lance, so he has to call in some mem-
bers of his staff to make plans for the
surveillance, someone else to choose the
personnel to carry it out. Moreover,
since he can't move or equip personnel
without the concurrence of the over-all
operations officer who works directly
for the "DDP," the head of the "dirty
tricks department," he has to bring yet
another four or five officers into the
operation. If he' doesn't do all this (if,
for example, the DCI has instructed
him to bypass the usual procedures),
the personnel who are to conduct the
actual surveillance will refuse to move
-since every one of them is working
for the CIA as an organization and not
for the Director personally, and knows
full well that taking action without a
"trip ticket," i.e., a written order en-
dorsed by some four or five "controls,"
is a sure way of getting fired.
Blowing a Fuse
So what happens? The DCI, hot from
the White House, calls in the Chief. of
Division X and orders him to get crack-
ing on a surveillance of Senator Ervin.
The Chief of Division X, also a weak-
ling who likes his job (let us say), calls
in his plans officer and his operations
officer and passes the word on to them.
And so on and so on. Sooner or later,
at least one officer down the line either
says no, with adequate means at his
disposal for making the no stick, or he
"loses the papers," as the old-timers say.
And since those in the act are certain
that at least one of their number will
act as the fuse and "blow," it is quite
 Approved For Release 2002/04/03 : CIA-RDP75B00380R000600010006-3
how, the word goes back to the DCI the appropriate officer gets a request for who gives the order. Many orders will
either: 1) that the operation was material assistance from another re- be given by senior officials under pres-
launched but ran into difficulties and sponsible agency-or, certainly, from sure who know they can count on some-
had to be abandoned; 2) that it couldn't the White House-he carefully refrains one down the line to "lose the papers."
be run except in a way that would in- from asking what the material is to be The officer down the line who fails to
volve risks of disclosure that might enl- used for. In the case of Hunt, it would spot incidents where he is supposed to
barrass the White I-louse; 3) that the have been silly to say to someone with lose the papers will, as before, be be-
operation has been launched, when it White House credentials, "Just a min- yond explicit punishment, but he will
in fact hasn't, but isn't producing any- utc, old man. Before we lend you this thereafter suffer "inconveniences." Since
thing worthwhile; 4) that-well, any wig we want to know exactly what you there are no stupid people in the
one of a dozen or more excuses, the are going to do with it. A fancy dress Agency, it will be assumed that he is
more far-fetched the better, since the ball, maybe?" More important, who- being malicious, that he is practicing
boys down the line don't want to run ever did the lending would quite rightly that bit of CIA operational mischief,
the risk of causing the Director to be- fear some weird answer-and, having "the most subtle form of insubordina-
lieve their excuses. Once he has caught got it, would then have the choice of tion is to take a stupid order and carry
the point that they are only trying to turning down a request from the White it out to the letter." I well remember
protect him, along with the Agency, I-Iouse or lending the material knowing Mother's once having to "inconveni-
they can sit down with him to concoct what it was to be used for, thus asso- ence" a smart-ass young officer who, at
an excuse plausible enough for the ciating himself with a lunatic project. the time of one of the numerous flaps
White Ilouse. But they never, never At the same time, Agency officers over chemical-warfare stores, received
explicitly refuse to carry out his com- are not averse to accepting information an order to "destroy all supplies of spe-
mand, or tell him anything that would volunteered-especially information on cial drugs," and did exactly that, burn-
"involve" him, as that ominous word is the doings of an organization that was ing up a million dollars or so worth of
now being used around Washington. It endangering its mission. Hunt had never sodium pentothal, LSD, aphrodisiacs,
is a sort of "turbulent priest" treatment been an "agent" during the time he was and other operational goodies, together
in reverse. actually employed by the CIA, but he with their "balancers." This sort of non-
I am told that the press has un- became one after he had retired, an sense is not likely to be repeated.
covered only a fraction of the "re- agent inside the plumbers-an expend-
quests" made of the CIA by the White . able one (unlike McCord), but none- No Need to Worry
House. The Agency was asked to follow theless an agent. He was therefore
up on investigations the FBI was sup- worth humoring. More important, the public can count
posed to be making but was found out If you've ever had he experience of on the Agency not to use its operational
not to be making; it was asked to have giving information to the CIA, you goodies-except, of course, in instances
prominent Democrats followed when know how impassive its professionals where it is clearly in the interest of na-
they made visits abroad; it was asked can be: They listen with friendly inter- tional security for it to do so. It has all
to "cooperate" with the Internal Reve- est, making you feel that what you say sorts of weird and wonderful gadgets,
nue Service in maintaining surveillance is of the greatest importance, but they, chemicals, and what-not, mainly be-
of numbered Swiss bank accounts- are totally noncommittal. You have no cause the Soviets and the Chinese have
presumably in the hope of spotting the no idea whether or not you are being them, and it cannot afford to be with-
odd Democrat in the act of "launder- believed, or whether there is approval out complete knowledge of them. The
ing" his funds. On one occasion, Jojo's or disapproval of what you are saying. same goes for the masses of personality
office was asked for an LSD-type drug, I'doubt therefore that Hunt sensed the data which it has in its files, the mere
developed by the Chinese and being fascinated horror with which his former existence of which could be "an inva-
studied by CIA chemists, which could associates at the Agency listened to his sion of privacy." To Agency officers, to
be slipped into the lemonade of Demo- stories of the plumbers. Because they destroy such information in deference
cratic orators, thus causing them to say were all amateurs (what Ehrlichman to this notion would be comparable to
sillier things than they would say any- said in his testimony about their being suppression of knowledge in the Middle
how. To this day, some of my friends "experienced operatives" is far from Ages because it was somehow contrary
at the Agency are convinced that the truth), and because they had wild to the religious beliefs of the time.
Howard Hunt or Gordon Liddy or imaginations, the plumbers were ca- Thus, the CIA is going to hold on to
somebody got hold of a variety of the pable of almost any kind of nonsense. its know-how, its special equipment,
drug and slipped it into Senator At first, it seemed that their imagina- and its knowledge, and if Bill Colby
Muskie's lemonade before his famous tions and bumbling would confine them gets orders to destroy them, someone
weeping scene. After long harassment to "dirty tricks" to win the campaign- down the line can be counted on to
by such requests, it is easy to imagine rather than lead them into the kind of "lose the papers." At the same time, no
that when Howard Hunt asked for that mess they did in fact get into. one need worry that they will be mis-
wig thr Deputy Director shrugged, said Until the day of (lie Ilaldc1nans and used--or even used. I'm not so sure the
`~Iie,i ill, 11, 11", ntt,i Qi. it Is, 101n Ili.. lifnrnie 0- ;'~ itit'elil; ,r,t"'nn,.;. ''ill +le, nnttltii,t' ,ipi,l ill ill
Irut there was another reason why had never been challenged, and peiltaps huuure; but my tesearchcs or iltc l,asi
Agency officers could have felt it cm- the system was getting lax. From now few weeks convince me that it will
tirely proper to lend equipment, pro- on, to fail to question a doubtful order never, never do anything wrong.
vidcd it was notAp EKO CdtEolt1RcilWserr2O82,f 4dQaft]lliA-fPfi1I?75BOO-,@ROOO&aOOitOHm-3. .
Bunt. According to CIA policy, when sibly, even, in the eyes of the person MILES p