WASHINGTON REPORT: How Not To Ask questions:
Sisyphus
WASHINGTON REPORT HOW NOT TO ASK QUESTIONS The inquiry into CIA domestic operations shows signs of growing stale. It is lacking the punch that generates successful investigations such as the...
...Once, when asked about CIA's black-arts Domestic Operations Division, Helms replied in terms of a different unit of CIA, the Domestic Contact Service, which among its other responsibilities, interviews Americans after they return from traveling in Communist countries...
...Deprived of espionage operations, CIA would not be deprived of its principal valuable missions -gathering of intelligence and its analysis to be used by Presidents...
...As the public reasons, "they" have spies and so should we...
...The germane question not asked was whether the CIA had attempted to prevent Allende from being elected President by the Chilean Congress by such means as persuading American business interests to refuse to sell materials and to refuse credit to Chile...
...Such refusals would presumably create sufficient economic unrest that would cause the military to intervene to prevent Allende from becoming President...
...SISYPHUS...
...For example, they enjoyed editorial support from their own paper, which Hersh does not...
...At this writing, the transcript of the hearing, held in executive session, has not been "sanitized" and the remnants published...
...No one claimed the CIA had...
...Now Secretary of State, Kissinger may still be chairman...
...Yet when Helms, now Ambassador to Iran, appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee late last month to explain his stewardship of the CIA, as a result of the Hersh articles, the Huston memo was not discussed...
...level established to clear these operations (Helms testified) and that does not include the President, and obviously- one of the reasons for this is that under our system of government, which is not like the parliamentary system where a Prime Minister comes out on a moment's notice, there has to be some kind of a circuit breaker for the President in a whole series of matters, and this Committee was devised for that purpose...
...And, so, by design or dull-wittedness of the congressional committee members, the wool is pulled further and further down over congressional eyes-and the public's...
...The argument that should be advanced is that the CIA establishes general policy through its Plans Division because it is able to conduct such operations without restrictions from the highest political offices of the federal government...
...A "Committee of Forty," consisting of representatives from CIA, State, Justice and Defense departments and others, was established to supervise CIA's high-risk operations...
...There are legitimate intelligence-gathering functions for it to assume...
...Service on the new committee will be politically unrewarding to individual members...
...Helms was asked, "Did you try in the Central Intelligence Agency to overthrow the Government of Chile...
...But this looks unlikely...
...Hopefully, the new select committee will do better than the existing permanent committees who have had reasons to ask the CIA what it's up to...
...Bernstein and Woodward also had the benefit of "Deep Throat," an unidentified source who attained an allegorical cast...
...There are grey areas within which it's a judgment call as to whether the task belongs to the CIA, or the FBI, or both...
...Henry Kissinger, as presidential foreign policy adviser, was most recently the chairman of the Committee of Forty...
...Bernstein and Woodward benefited in ways essential to expose wrongdoing in Washington...
...It was the Plans Division that supervised the overthrow of Premier Mossadegh of Iran and Arbenz in Guatemala...
...Senator Case expressed again his long-standing discontent about the domestic side of CIA...
...Senator Ervin picked up the scent...
...It is lacking the punch that generates successful investigations such as the Watergate exposures that sent a President into exile and some of his scurvy crew to jail...
...The memo further states that officials of intelligence agencies of the government, including the CIA, met to discuss the project...
...He, too, like Hersh, should sue his paper for editorial non-support...
...Take the matter of a memo from Tom Huston, a member of the White House staff during the Nixon presidency...
...Undeterred, Mansfield appointed six Democrats after the Senate authorized the committee by a bipartisan vote of eighty-two to four...
...They haven't been doing the job...
...Still another element is missing that was present in the Watergate scandals...
...Helms was not asked to explain the contradiction between those two statements of his...
...It seems that CIA is organized into four divisions...
...But, from all accounts, the questioning was comparable to the caliber of the questioning before the same Committee when Helms appeared in early 1973 before it for confirmation as Ambassador to Iran...
...The Helms nomination hearing is typical...
...For these reasons, Hersh, the prize-winning Times reporter who exposed the cover-up of the Mylai massacre, is running short of new material for his newest effort...
...Nevertheless, it's encouraging that the Senate has agreed to establish a select committee to look into all intelligence operations of the federal government, including the CIA and FBI...
...Otherwise, zilch...
...During his confirmation hearing, Helms discussed the clandestine Committee...
...And, the affair showed signs late last month of being overshadowed by articles in the Washington Post that will eventually allege that Presidents, including Lyndon Johnson, misused the FBI for purposes of throttling political opponents in their own party...
...Whether Deep Throat consisted of a single person or more than one, "it" provided a feed of clues for the two Post reporters...
...Several days before the 11-member committee was established by the Senate, Senator Scott of Pennsylvania, Minority Leader, identified the names of the five Republicans he planned to appoint...
...The federal court played a more vital role...
...However, four pages later in the public hearing record, this statement of Helms is found: "As you well know, sir, the American companies have access to us, as they do to other people in the U.S...
...The Committee, as a whole, took a dive...
...But they're fewer in numbers and the climate has changed somewhat by the fresh air brought through the revolving doors by newly elected Senators during the last six years...
...The cooperation of the Executive Branch, particularly the President's, will be vital in order to conduct a thorough congressional inquiry...
...A few years ago, the old-timers in the Senate wouldn't have permitted an investigation...
...Basically, the CIA affair is a complex and slippery one to handle...
...That was not the relevant question...
...The civil libertarian community took up the chant -"We Want Nixon...
...The assignment reasonably should take two years...
...Whether the new select committee will do its full duty is uncertain...
...Bad staffing can make well-meaning Senators ineffective and good staffing can force the hand of balky or ineffective Senators...
...Government in those days and they didn't like the trends that were going on down there (Chile) and were consulting with a host of people, including the Agency-a lot of this came out in the (Jack) Anderson papers-but there was no exchange of money between us...
...It thrill as it watches the CIA-spy movie, Scorpio...
...The Committee did not inquire about that...
...The Post, usually quick to point a reproving finger, is keeping its hands at its side on this one and it's fair enough to point out that Philip Geyelin, editor of the Post's editorial page, is a former CIA employe...
...The Washington Post has reportorially tried to catch up with the grey, soggy newspaper giant...
...In addition, the first few Post articles made it clear that the burglary at the Democratic National Committee offices at the Watergate office building was not just the doings of a couple of miscreants trying to keep busy, but actually was, in the cliche of the newsroom, an affair that reached "into high places...
...At another point in his confirmation hearing, Helms said: "We don't go around giving them (American companies) extended briefings about the condition of the world or anything of this kind...
...He made it clear that a President is not kept informed of risky business...
...The two reporters for the Washington Post, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, could not have hacked it alone, just as Seymour Hersh, the New York Times reporter currently writing about purported domestic misdeeds of the CIA, cannot...
...National politicians of diverse political outlooks ultimately recognized the mess Nixon had responsibility for and responded like all good cops chasing robbers...
...Two of these are operational divisions-intelligence and plans...
...Other responses of Helms were fudged as to domestic surveillance by the CIA...
...There has been a committee (of 40) at a high political (sic...
...In contrast, the CIA affair has no Deep Throat, only a reflexive action on the part of major sections of government to put the matter in the Deep Freeze on the elusive, imprecisely defined grounds of "national security...
...The new select committee on the CIA has an opportunity to rehabilitate the congressional reputation for often playing patsy for witnesses...
...And the task of the committee as a whole will be difficult...
...In fact, Dick Helms was most cooperative and helpful...
...The Watergate investigation was successful because it was a beneficiary of cooperative elements in Washington political life...
...The new Senate committee might suggest that paramilitary operations of CIA be reassigned to the Defense Department...
...It also put together the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba and the development of the high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft, the U-2...
...Senator Church asked a few penetrating questions...
...We didn't collaborate with ITT except to exchange this information back and forth about the course of events...
...Maximum" John Sirica, a federal judge known for his stiff sentencing, held one Watergate conspirator's head under water until he squealed on the others...
...Howard Hunt testified that as a CIA employe in 1964 he was assigned to monitor the Republican presidential candidate's activities and to carry this information to the CIA liaison officer at the White House where President Johnson waited...
...There is no instant villain to focus on-no Nixon, only shadowy agents provocateurs directed by a modern Napoleonic Fouche, and a former CIA Director, Richard Helms, very "preppie" and protected by his old school-tie Cold War warrior chums in Congress and in the press...
...Government, and ITT was talking to a lot of people in the U.S...
...It has been assigned only eight months in which to make its study and recommendations...
...Huston's memo states that in 1970 Nixon had approved domestic surveillance of Americans...
...The future for the new committee is uncertain...
...Informed spectators at hearings are consistently depressed at the ineptness and superficiality of most questions asked witnesses by members of Congress...
...Knowledgeable witnesses who could help us understand both the needs and misdeeds of the CIA and other intelligence agencies will be more likely one with Goethe who believed, in panic over political unrest in Europe, that is it better to support a lie than admit political confusion in the States...
...But its assigned reporter, Laurence Stern, is suffering from the same lack of nourishment...
...He replied, "No, sir...
...Regardless of the views of and competence of investigating Senators, good staffing on a committee can produce effective results...
...This was an effort to force Senator Mansfield, the Majority Leader, to name his wild-and-woolies, outspoken critics of the CIA to the committee in hopes of discrediting its labors in advance...
...So all in all, for reporters nosey about the CIA, it's like shoveling sand against the tide...
...Among them were Senators Gold-water and Tower, who support almost any atrocity as long as it's wrapped in the American flag...
...Unlike corruption, the public is fascinated, not repelled, by spies and spying...
...Nor was he asked to explain the possibility that William Broe, a top CIA clandestine operator, may have been the "visitor" referred to in an ITT internal office memo, dated September 29, 1970, who tried to persuade ITT officials to upset the Chilean economy...
...The Post has always been willing to believe the worst about Nixon, but not about the CIA...
...Consequently, there was played out a repetitive drama in American political life, good guys against bad guys, and no in-betweens...
...The latter is today a troublesome one, whatever its accomplishments during the Cold War...
...But the game is not yet won...
...Consequently, politicians, press and laymen recognized the familiar strands of political corruption and responded predictably...
...The literature on the CIA is incomplete and sometimes deliberately misleading...
...The President, it should be understood, is quarantined from knowledge of such operations...
...Huston then writes: "I went into this exercise fearful that CIA would refuse to cooperate...
Vol. 101 • February 1975 • No. 14
