PUTTING THE LID ON CIA SCANDALS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-01208R000100210014-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: April 29, 2011
• Sequence Number: 14
• Publication Date: March 21, 1977
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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STAT
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/04/29: CIA-RDP90-01208R000100210014-5
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WASHINGTON POST
21 March 1977
,pack Anderson andLes Whitten
1
P n ' the V-1 I of
There has been a quiet but powerful
effort to shut the lid on CIA scandals.
Three days after Acim. Stansfield
Turner was sworn in as the new CIA
chief, he spoke to Attorney General
Griffin B. Bell about plugging leaks.
Turner would like to impose criminal
sanctions against government officials
who disclose CIA secrets.
On Capitol Hill, Senate Intelligence
Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye
(D-Hawaii) told colleagues that he had
no inclination to investigate past scan-
dals. His committee had enough to do,
he said, just keeping up with current
Intelligence operations.
The committee unanimously agreed
at a secret meeting not to dwell on the
CIA's past. "The committee feels it is
not possible with the resources availa-
ble to investigate all past wrongdo-
ings," a spokesman told us.
There is one curious exception to In-
ouye's disinterest in old CIA skeletons.
He directed his staff to proceed cau-
tiously with an investigation of the
John F. Kennedy assassination. This
was a promise, Inouye explained, that
he had made to the Senate.
But competent sources claim Inouye
has fallen under the influence of the
CIA, which has quietly encouraged
him to shut off inquiries into past scan-
dals but to go ahead with a discreet in-
vestigation of the Kennedy murder.
The CIA's. strategy, according to
these sources, is to stymie the House
assassination probe. Too close scrutiny
of the tragedy might embarrass the
CIA, which withheld crucial facts from
the Warren Commission. The CIA,
therefore, would prefer to shift the in-
vestigation to theSenate back burner.
This is merely one manifestation of
_ - _the CIA's grim, new determination to
keep out of the headlines in the fu-
ture. For the CIA is largely behind the
drive to tighten security in Washing-
ton.
As a result of this backstage push.
both houses of Congress are preparing
to take a new look at the secrecy ques-
tion. There is growing sentiment on
Capitol Hill, led by Rep. Charles Ben-
nett (D-Fla.), to give the federal govern-
ment the power to jail news leakers.
President Carter, meanwhile, is trying
to limit the number of people who
have access to secret documents.
There are legitimate secrets, of
course, which the government should
protect. But invariably, the classifica-
tion power is used to protect govern-
ment officials, not to protect the coun-
try. It is perilous to empower those
who direct the people's business to de-
cide which facts cannot be divulged,
under pain of a prison sentence.
We have broken our share of CIA se-
crets. It might be useful to review a
few of them as examples of the secrets
that the CIA has sought to hide from
? Back in January, 1971, we revealed
that the CIA had recruited Mafia
mobsters to knock off Cuba's Fidel
Castro. We named the mobsters and
their CIA contacts.
? We reported in March. 1972, that
the CIA.had plotted to block leftist
leader Salvador Allende from taking
power after he was elected president
of Chile.
? We broke the story in November,
1972, that the CIA, together with the
FBI and Secret Service, had been
spying on prominent Americans. We
quoted from a secret CIA report on
singer Ertha Kitt as evidence that the
CIA had a strange interest in her sex
life.
? In April, 1973, we uncovered the
fact that the CIA had attempted to ob-
struct the FBI investigation of- the
Watergate scandal. We divulged the
following month that White House
staff chief H. R. Haldeman had asked
the CIA to hamper the investigation.
? We told in May, 1974. of the CIA
payoffs to world leaders. We followed
with a report that the CIA had also
provided visiting leaders with wom-
en. Among the recipients of CIA fa-
vors, whom we identified, was Jor-
dan's King Hussein.
? In February, 1975, we told of love
traps which the CIA operated in New
York City and San Francisco to black.
mail foreign diplomats. Through hid-
den one-way mirrors, CIA agents
filmed the sexual adventures of the
diplomats.
? Not long afterward, we broke the
story that the CIA had paid the How-
ard Hughes organization a fantastic
$400 million to recover an obsolete So-
viet submarine from the bottom of the
Pacific.
We have also written that the CIA
has been penetrated by the Soviet
KGB and that some CIA station chiefs
have taken emoluments from foreign
nationals
These revelations, in our opinion,
have never violated security. True, we
have embarrassed the CIA. We have
caught the CIA playing the same dirty
games as the Soviet KGB. The purpose
presumably was to enhance U.S. influ-
ence around the globe, but the result
has been precisely the opposite. It was
a mistake, we believe, for the CIA to
operate at the KGB level.
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