COURT AGREES TO DECIDE WHETHER CIA CAN BE FORCED TO REVEAL SOURCES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00901R000600420037-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 25, 2006
• Sequence Number: 37
• Publication Date: March 5, 1984
• Content Type: PREL

STAT
Approved For Release 200Rf76~JA'l`-P1-00901 RO
5 March 1984
WASHINGTON
COURT AGREES TO DECIDE WHETHER CIA CAN BE FORCED TO REVEAL
BY JAMES H. RUBIN
The Supreme Court today agreed to decide whether the Cen ra ntelligence
Agency may be forced in some cases to reveal Its intelligence sources.
The justices will hear the government's appeal from a ruling that could force
the CIA to disclose the names of researchers who took part in a program
involving brainwashing and experimental drugs.
The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals here ruled last June 10 that the CIA may
not refuse automatically to disclose the names of researchers involved in
MKULTRA _ the code name for the program.
Some individuals were unwittingly administered LSD and other drugs in the
research program during the 1950s and 1960s, and at least two people died
because of the experiments.
A congressional committee and a presidential commission investigated MKULTRA
in the mid-1970s, shedding light on numerous alleged abuses.
In the case acted on today, the Ralph Nader group Public Citizen sought under
the Freedom of Information Act the names of individual researchers and
institutions used by the CIA to conduct the experiments.
The CIA contends that it promised confidentiality to the researchers,--and
that forcing the agency to reveal their names may threaten other intelligence
sources.
"The possibiity of such a disclosure alone can have extremely damaging
effects,. because it gives rise to the perception that the CIA cannot be
trusted to keep a source's identity secret," Justice Department lawyers said.
They added: "A foreign government that learned the sources that the agency
was consulting would have been able to infer both the general nature of the
CIA's project and the directions that its research was taking."
The appeals court.here ruled that in most operations the CIA will not be
forced to reveal 'the names of intelligence sources.
But, the appeals court said, the CIA may not withhold the names
automatically "in cases like (MKULTRA) where a great deal of the information is
not self-evidently sensitive, where the reasons why its sources would desire
confidentiality are not obvious, and where the agency's desire for secrecy seems
to derive principally from fear of a public outcry resulting from revelation of
the details of its past conduct."
A great deal of the CIA's records of MKULTRA were destroyed in 1973 on.
orders from then- CIA Director Richard Helms.
But in 1977 the agency located about 8,000 pages of previously undisclosed
material. At the direction of Stansfield Turner, then CIA. director,. the
documents were turned over to a Senate subcommittee but the names of
participating researchers and institutions were not made public.
CONTINUO
MORI/CDF
Approved For Release 2006/07/25: CIA-RDP91-00901 R000600420037-9