RISING CRITICISM OF THE LEAKS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00561R000100090038-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 24, 2012
• Sequence Number: 38
• Publication Date: February 9, 1976
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/24: CIA-RDP91-00561 R000100090038-1
S1/HI TIPS
9 February 1976
Rising Criticism
Of the Leaks
Wisconsin Republican Robert Kas-
ten could take no more. Before his col-
leagues on the House Intelligence Com-
mittee last week, he angrily addressed
Chairman Otis Pike, a Democrat from
New York. "Do something," he de-
manded, to stanch the leaks that were
discrediting the committee with its
friends in Congress as well as its foes in
the Administration. With an irate glare,
Pike shot back: "What do you recom-
mend? Lie detector tests? I do not know
where the leaks have come from."
Pike's testy confession of helpless-
ness only served to intensify the grow-
ing backlash in Congress against his
committee's six-month investigation of
the CIA, FBI and other U.S. intelligence
agencies. Week after week, confidential
formation gathered by the commit-
i
n
tee's investigators had wound up on the
front pages of U.S. newspapers. Last
week the leaks turned into what out-
going CIA Director William Colby an-
grily called "the bursting of the dam."
The committee's entire final report was
given to newsmen. The leaked report
contained little that had not been dis-
closed, and the revelations tended to be
relatively minor. Among them:
- In the late 1950s, at the CIA's re-
quest, Robert Maheu, a former top aide
to Billionaire Howard Hughes, supplied
King Hussein of Jordan and other for-
eign leaders with female companions.
Maheu was also the go-between the CIA
ed to recruit two high-ranking Mafia
us
members in an attempt to assassinate
Cuban Dictator Fidel Castro.
COLBY AT PRESS CONFERENCE
The dam burst.
- Despite CIA Objections, Graham
It-
A. Martin, then $800,000 Ambassador
to
aly, secretly paid
Vito Miceli, a right-wing general who
headed Italy's military intelligence
agency. The money was to demonstrate
U.S. support of Italian anti-Commu-
nists. According to a story in Turin's La
Stampa, the $800,000 for Miceli was
small potatoes: the paper claimed that
one of its reporters had obtained secret
documents from Pike's committee show-
ing that the CIA had given Italian
political parties S74 million from
1948 to 1972.
- In a futile effort to keep the
U.S. from cutting off secret arms
aid, Kurdish General Mustafa
Barzani gave three valuable Ori-
ental rugs and a gold and pearl
necklace to Secretary of State
Henry Kissinger and 'l'ife Nancy
when they were married in 1974.
Brent Scowcroft, the President's
national security adviser, said that
actually one rug and one necklace
had been received and both had
been promptly turned over to the
White House. as required by law.
10. Although he w as a member
of a Senate subcommittee that was
to monitor CIA activities, Demo-
cratic Senator Henry Jackson of
Washington advised the agency in
1973 on how to handle another ,
Senate subcommittee's probe of
CIA ties in Chile with ITT Corp.
Jackson retorted that he was
asked only for procedural advice.
The committee concluded
that the CIA has been operating so se-
cretly as to be beyond the control of Con-
gress and the Executive. Colby held a
press conference-the day before the
Senate confirmed former G.O.P. Na-
tional Chairman George Bush as his suc-
cessor by a 64-to-27 vote. Colby de-
nounced the charge of excessive secrecy
as an "outrageous calumny. "The report,
he said, was "a disservice to our nation,
of
giving a thoroughlywrongo impression
American intelligence."
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/24: CIA-RDP91-00561 R000100090038-1
 I I II II'1!llllll I I III LII I
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/24: CIA-RDP91-00561 R000100090038-1
\Vhat -most outraged the Adminis- i
tration, however, was that they hmPmit'
Pres-
tee had violated an agreement
ident Ford. In exchange for secret
documents about covert CIA activities in
Italy, Angola and Iraq, as well as the
"Hollystone" project. (involving U.S.
subs edging close'?to Soviet shores to
monitor missile launchings), the com-
mittee had promised. it would not dis-
close any details if Ford decided that l
their release would jeopardize national
security. Then the committee voted 9
to 4 to renege on the promise, reason
ing that no one in the Executive Branch
had the right to censor a report from a
congressional committee
. As Ford made- one last attempt to
get the committee to stick to its original
pledge, the report was leaked. Although
insisted
Pike
was nownn, , committee investigators
not known,
was _ ___-?
told TIME that mean
had been doublecrossed. In the House,
a down Republicans roec to protest the
committee's bad faith. North Carolina's
James Martin was so furious he sp t-
tered: "Holy mackerel, Mr. Spec
The senior Republican on the Pike com-
mittee, Robert McClory of Illinois, pro-
tested: "What agency do you think will
provide us information if it thinks we
cannot be trusted?"
Many Democrats found that argu-
ment persuasive, and the House voted
246 to 124 to require the Pike commit-
tee to delete the disputed material be-
fore formally issuing its report. The re-
buke came too late, since the sensitive
information has already been disclosed.
The dispute will probably prompt Con-
gress to adopt tougher standards on se
crecy than might otherwise have been
the case. For example, Tennessee Re-
publican Senator William Brock has
sponsored legislation that would punish
congressional staff members with fines
of up to S100,000 and jail terms of up to
20 years for leaking secret information.
Meanwhile the much criticized Pres-
ident received some strong support from
ident Ford, who spoke at the ceremo-
nies installing Bush as new director of
the agency. While saying that the CIA i
must be prevented from exceeding its
authority, Ford declared: "We cannot
improve this agency by destroying it. Let
me assure you I have no intention of see-
ing this intelligence community disman-
tied and its operations paralyzed or ef-
fectively undermined."
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/24: CIA-RDP91-00561 R000100090038-1