BLUE-RIBBON TREATMENT FOR THE CIA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-01208R000100250057-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 22, 2011
• Sequence Number: 57
• Publication Date: January 13, 1975
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/02/22 : CIA-RDP90-01208R000100250057-4
Sue-Ribbon
Treatment
for the CIA
The simmering scandal in the Central
Intelligence Agency boiled hotter
last week. As new stories of domestic
snooping came to light, there were more
resignations under fire at the CIA's
Langley, Va., headquarters-along with
stiff questions from Gerald Ford and a
growing determination in Congress to
give the whole affair a thorough airing.
There was still no clearcut documenta-
tion that the CIA's excesses were as
massive and illegal as first charged
by The New York Times, but each new
trickle of detail seemed to confirm that
there was substance to the charges. More
light than ever before was being focused
on the supersecret agency, and the re-
sults suggested that it might have still
more improprieties to hide.
To root out the scandal, the President
announced at the weekend that he
would soon name his own "blue ribbon"
panel to scrutinize the CIA, determine
whether it has exceeded its legal pow-
ers and decide whether "existing safe-
guards are.. adequate" to keep the agen-
cy in line. The members, said White
House aides, would be "distinguished
Americans" who had no prior contact
with the CIA or the Watergate scandal
and hadili ver served in Congress. The
panel, Ford said, should report in three
months-and he added that the Depart-
ment of justice had started up an in-
quiry of its own.
Report: For openers, the panel would
have the report on CIA domestic acti-
vities written for the President by CIA
director William E. Colby. But this might
not be much help; according to one
source familiar with its contents, it in-
cludes only ten pages of summary and
twenty of supplemental attachments.
Press secretary Ron Nessen said flatly
that after reading the report and con-
sulting with Secretary ofState Henry
Kissinger and Defense Secretary James
R. Schlesinger, Colby's immediate pre-
decessor, Ford still felt the need for
an outside inquiry. Congress was getting
the same message: Michigan Rep. Lu-
cien Nedzi, Sen. John Sparkman of Ala-
bama and Maine's Sen. Edmund Muskie
were promoting thi it own hearings on
the scandal. And Tennessee Sen. How-
ard H. Baker called for a renewed in-
quiry into CIA involvement in Watergate.
Meanwhile, the disclosures continued.
New York Times reporter Seymour M.
Hersh, who broke the first story of the
CIA's domestic intrusions, turned up one
January 13, 1975
VV `1-1\
Directorate. of Operatlons
(clandestine services)
Ih Ohlrwn
Spookmanship: An inside critic's view of the CIA's clandestine arm
of the agency's former undercover
agents in New York who claimed to have
followed and photographed student an-
tiwar demonstrators and to have taken
part in break-his and wiretaps to keep
tabs on them. Then Hersh recycled a
1973 story: Senate testimony by Water-
gate conspirator E. Howard Hunt, who
claimed that his covert assignments for
the CIA's Domestic Operations Division
(from 1962 to 1966) seemed "to violate
the intent of the agency's charter."
Like the original Times allegations,
these stories did little to substantiate a
truly massive, illegal CIA domestic op-
eration. But, NEWSWEEK learned last
week, agency officials were worried that
further investigation might unveil the
size and range of the CIA's network of
"agency proprietaries," cover organiza-
tions and active CIA alumni through
which much of its domestic surveillance
against antiwar dissidents was actually
carried out, at one remove from the
agency itself. Senate investigators said
the), had evidence that the CIA used
such "outside entities," including ap-
parently unrelated commercial compa-
nies and an old-boy network of former
agents in key positions, for precisely that
purpose. "That gave them maximum pro-
tection and maximum 'deniability'-if I
may use that word," one Senate staffer
explained. "They're very goosy about
this domestic question."
'Cover': As explained by CIA sources
and outside investigators, many agency
proprietaries were developed over the
years to provide "cover" for agents on
foreign assignments. They included air-
lines, public-relations firms, private se-
curity services, even travel publications
such-at one time-as the Fodor guide-
books, it was reported last week. Agents
also infiltrated existing U.S. organiza-
tions such as labor unions and the Na-
tional Student Association. While that
practice was supposedly terminated af-
ter the revelations of the mid-'60s, some
sources said the agency had withdrawn
only from groups that had been com-
promised. Beyond that, the CIA regu-
larly lends agents to other arms of gov-
ernment-the Secret Service and Drug
Enforcement Administration, for example
-arid it generally enjoys the sympathy
of agency alumni (some perhaps still on
the payroll) working in other critical
positions. For example, NEWSWEEK
learned, the Assistant Postmaster Cen-
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/02/22 : CIA-RDP90-01208R000100250057-4