Wiretaps: the Fear Is Real

...Most people I know with some political clout feel there is a danger of indiscriminate tapping by a variety of agencies, and it isn't new...

...Not everybody thinks his phone is definitely tapped, or even that it is probable, but rather that it is possible...

...Javits believes it is "very important to make it clear that this is all very unacceptable...

...Such legislation should provide severe penalties for violations of the lawful limits of surveillance...

...This is the background against which House Majority Leader Hale Boggs made his recent charge that his telephone and those of other Representatives and Senators have been tapped by the Federal Bureau of Investigation...

...The first witness to testify at Ervin's hearings into Government invasions of citizen privacy, Miller said: "1984 is a state of mind...

...When Bayh was spearheading opposition to President Nixon's Supreme Court nominee, G. Harrold Carswell, the Senator's staff went around his office one day beating on the floor with a poker to kill a suspected "bug...

...Dunphy employs a special electronics expert to make the checks, with the assistance of telephone company personnel...

...It was put another way by Arthur Miller, University of Michigan law professor and author of the recently published book, The Assault on Privacy...

...We don't use code, but certain sensitive matters, anything sensitive really, is not discussed on the telephone, only in person...

...This must be the most paranoid city in the country," one Senate aide told me, "but Government surveillance seems so widespread these days that you're really foolish if you're not careful...

...Peter Edelman, formerly Kennedy's legislative assistant, relates an incident which occurred while he was accompanying the Senator to a hearing in the New Senate Office Building...

...Another Senate aide told a reporter that before he makes a telephone call which he wants to keep confidential, he first dials a special telephone number which produces an ear-shattering screech in his receiver...

...Wiretaps: the Fear Is Real by MILES BENSON Tn the current tempest over the ex-tent of government spying on dissident political figures and segments of the population, Federal authorities and their defenders tend to dismiss cavalierly, or miss entirely, one rather critical point...

...He identified it as the special line that is part of a national network of circuits reserved for the use of Federal offices...

...It is not an exaggeration to say that distrust of the telephone to communicate anything confidential has become a condition of life in official Washington...

...In 1969 and 1970 combined, there were 253 Federal court-authorized taps in the entire nation...

...House members probably will keep him busy...

...What confidence can be placed in the candor of a Government that long ago ruptured its credibility as it pursued the war in Southeast Asia...

...Some others who, like Boggs, are convinced their telephones are tapped, or who admit they operate on the assumption that they are, include Senator George S. McGovern, South Dakota Democrat...

...They are engaging in reconnaissance to see how far they could go if they wanted to...

...There are no windows on the ground floor, but the double doors contain double peepholes...

...Certainly my telephone is tapped," says attorney Joseph Rauh...

...It is called the Federal Telecommunications System...

...These requests come not just from the Senate's civil libertarians, who tend to suspect the worst...

...It is harder to rebuild than to destroy faith in the Government, a faith steadily eroded by years of deceit and duplicity at the highest levels of that Government...

...The administrative assistant to one prominent Republican Senator insists: "There is one telephone in our office that we know is bugged...

...it's been that way for a number of years...

...The official explanation is that the building houses the Bureau's cryptographic and translation center...

...This seems to mean that the Justice Department operates on the opinion that there are no legal limits at all on the Government's power to gather and store information of even the most personal nature on any person, for any reason, as long as it does not attempt to prosecute him in a court of law...

...Representative Abner Mikva, Illinois Democrat, has taken a straw poll of his colleagues and finds that out of twenty-five Congressmen he queried, all but one believe their lines are tapped...

...Clarence Mitchell, the NAACP legislation director in Washington...

...The Justice Department's position is that no wiretapping is permitted by any agency of the Federal Government—including the military—without the Attorney General's "explicit personal approval...

...I don't think they are actually committed to go that far, but I think they believe it may be necessary for national security to have that power...

...attorney Joseph Rauh, the former chairman of Americans for Democratic Action...

...But the Justice Department has taken the position that it needs no court authorization to wiretap in the name of national security, and that it need not report taps it makes under this asserted power, which is now being tested in several lawsuits...

...Newsmen, concerned with preserving confidential sources and greatly dependent on the telephone in their work, are especially sensitive to intrusions on their privacy...

...It is flanked by a liquor store and a dress shop...

...The guy got a reading from his meter and it seemed to be coming from under the floor," recalls William Wise, Bayh's press aide...

...The late Senator Robert F. Kennedy was certain, according to former aides, that President Johnson was tapping his telephone...

...He said he received a warning in 1969 from a friend in the White House that tapping had reached "a new high," and to be careful what he said on the telephone...

...The noise, he believes, throws wiretapping out of whack long enough for him to make a quick, safe call...

...In reply to inquiries, an FBI spokesman readily confirmed that the building was a Bureau "annex," but he denied that any wiretapping or eavesdropping went on there...

...In testimomy before the Ervin subcommittee, Assistant Attorney General William H. Rehnquist said he knew of no authoritative court decision that held the collection of information about an individual to be a violation of his constitutional rights—"even when it is not legitimately related to the statutory or constitutional authority of the Executive branch to enforce the law...

...Federal law now requires the Attorney General to obtain court authorization for taps in the investigation of certain crimes, and to report the number of such court-ordered taps (although in emergency situations forty-eight-hour taps can be installed without court approval...

...Ultimately, however, the fear and distrust of the Federal Government that are so obviously growing will not be reversed by the passage of one new law, or ten...

...And it will not matter whether surveillance exists or not...

...Bayh had called in an electronics expert to examine his office...

...Tapped telephones clearly were the most frequent worry, although former Justice Department officials confide that other forms of eavesdropping, such as hidden microphones, are used more widely in Government surveillance...

...Senator Birch Bayh, Indiana Democrat, is another who has had doubts about the privacy of his Senate office...

...Columnist Frank Mankiewicz expresses his own concern this way: "I've been hostile enough to the FBI so that I'm sure the thought has crossed their minds to tap me...

...Senator Harold Hughes, Iowa Democrat...

...Justice Department and FBI officials continue to react with a mixture of anger and ridicule to allegations of unwarranted prying...

...I think they are doing what a military force does," Javits said in an interview...

...A reporter who knocked on the doors was greeted by a crew-cut young man who would only say that it was a "Federal Government building...

...We know they monitor that line," the assistant said...

...The actual number of telephone taps the Justice Department makes or authorizes is not known...

...The Senator demanded to know what they were doing...

...In the past month, an unmarked building on Capitol Hill drew a flurry of excited press and political attention as a result of rumors that it was the headquarters of a Congressional wiretap and bugging system, supposedly run by the FBI...

...The history of semantic evasions and public deceptions stretching back over the years speaks far more persuasively than the quick assurances of Federal agencies that they do not engage in promiscuous tapping and bugging...

...Fear of government spying is not a recent adjunct of Washington life...

...One way of making that clear, and making it stick, would be new legislation spelling out precisely what Federal authorities can do in the way of surveillance and what they cannot do, in any case, including national security matters...

...FBI director J. Edgar Hoover is reported to have assured Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania that he has never tapped a Congressman's telephone in all the years he has been director...

...Hope Eastman, acting director of the Washington office of the American Civil Liberties Union, says she believes her telephones may be tapped^ "but we just ignore it...

...This allegation is heatedly denied by officials of the General Services Administration, who say the FTS was specially designed to make monitoring impossible, even for operators on the switchboard...

...Attorney General John N. Mitchell has said that he has not, and will not, authorize taps on the telephone of any Congressman...

...Several reporters who regularly work in the Senate press gallery shy away from a particular telephone booth in the belief that it is "unsafe...

...Even before the Louisiana Democrat made his accusation, interviews with members of Congress, journalists, and labor and civil rights leaders revealed that while some joked about it, many shared a pervasive suspicion that they no longer can take their privacy for granted...

...and it is shouted or stage whispered into the telephone after a confidence is exchanged or an irreverent remark is made...

...But there are jittery people on Capitol Hill who remain unconvinced...

...Intensifying the current climate of suspicion are the recent disclosures of large scale military spying on civilians and politicians, and the FBI surveillance practices and policies brought to light through the purloined and published files of the Bureau's office at Media, Pennsylvania...

...This kind of legislation by Congress is needed not only to halt the abuses of power already demonstrated, but it may be the only way to begin to dispel the deepening sense of distrust bothering so many people who are not the least paranoid, but are simply aware of an obvious menace to liberty...

...Dodds admits he himself "leans in the direction that it is probable...

...The FBI main office was more responsive...

...No tap has ever been discovered, Dunphy reports...

...That point is made by Senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina, chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights: "When people fear surveillance, whether it exists or not, when they grow afraid to speak their minds and hearts freely to their Government or to anyone else, then we shall cease to be a free society...

...The building, a well-kept, yellow and white former theater, is on a commercial block a few hundred feet from the Capitol complex...

...Wiretaps are considered an occupational hazard of most labor leaders headquartered in Washington, according to the UAW's Dodds...

...I think the courts have been reluctant, and properly so," Rehnquist declared, "to enter upon the supervision of the Executive [branch's] information gathering activities so long as such information is not made the basis of a proceeding against a particular individual or individuals...

...Representative Phillip Burton of California, chairman of the House Democratic Study Group, and William Dodds, the United Auto Workers political chief...

...Once, during the Johnson Administration, he received a call from a White House aide who wanted to give him the Administration's side of a story which they could not have known he was working on except by tapping his telephone...

...But if the effort is not made, if the dark forebodings abroad in this land are not dispelled, then Americans will "grow afraid to speak their minds and hearts freely to their Government, or anybody else...

...It is not surprising that the official denials of wholesale wiretapping are not believed, or are considered, at best, unreliable, no matter how high the source of the disclaimers or how seemingly sincere...

...Nevertheless, Democratic Representative Wayne Hays of Ohio, chairman of the House Administration Committee, now wants to hire a full time tap finder to police telephone lines on his side of the capitol...

...It is, of course, revealing that Scott thought it necessary to check with Hoover, despite the prior assurance of the Attorney General...

...They couldn't explain themselves, and he ordered them out...

...So we banged on the floor until we didn't get a reading anymore...

...The extent to which that state of mind is present today in America's capital is astonishing...

...the threat of it will have been sufficient to destroy a free society...

...A joke nobody laughs at has become a common part of telephone conversations in Washington, D.C...

...MILES BENSON is a senior Washington correspondent for the Newhouse News Service...

...national columnist Frank Mankiewicz...

...But the distressed assistant sincerely believes the FTS telephone in his office is monitored...

...One Republican Senator who is dismayed by the Rehnquist statement and by Attorney General Mitchell's view that wiretapping in national security cases requires no judicial preview is Senator Jacob K. Javits of New York...

...They are trying to discover the outer parameters of actions the public will tolerate...

...All of these men believe that because of the positions they hold and the times they live in that they are targets for spying...

...These Department claims, plus the recent statements of one of its high officials, seem to expand vastly the Government's assumed authority to keep watch on its citizens...

...Hoover regards anyone who criticizes him as an enemy of the republic and he likes to tap the phones of the enemies of the republic" Another journalist, one of the nation's most widely read political reporters, who does not want to be quoted by name, told me, "Everyone I talk to operates on the assumption that somebody may be listening...

...It is a simple one-liner, "Did you hear that, J. Edgar...

...He refused to say what agency occupied it, and he said nobody else inside could provide any further information...

...One telephone security check recently was ordered by Senate Majority Whip Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, a conservative establishment type...

...That is why, on an average of once a month, Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Robert C. Dunphy is summoned to the offices of suspicious Senators to check telephone lines for taps...

...By accident," Edelman recalls, "we went through the wrong door into a small room adjacent to the hearing room and discovered two guys in army uniforms with elaborate electronic equipment clandestinely recording what was going on in the hearing...

...With the kind of controversies I've been in, lots of people have probably tapped my telephone...