THE WHITE HOUSE

...It would be perfectly consistent with the thrust of what policy-makers were talking about doing...

...Former NSA officials contacted for comment on these reports said they were 'It's just good practice' to record calls, says Mary Lawton, the Reagan Administration's Counsel for Intelligence Policy...

...These conversations may date back further than the NSC computer files...

...New information from intelligence-community sources, however, indicates that various Federal agencies, including the Pentagon, the CIA, and the National Security Agency (NSA), are, in fact, in possession of numerous taped conversations conducted among senior officials over both open and secure telephones...

...Congressional investigators as well as many senior members of the national-security community are apparently unaware of the existence of the telephone tapes...

...The White House had and I believe still has a secure switch that's different from the Agency's [CIA's] and different from DOD's," Bass explains...

...Lawton, the Reagan Administration's intelligence counsel, says she is unfamiliar with current archival recording practices, but adds that "it's distinctly possible there would be an archival use if the President's authority is needed for something that is being sought by phone...

...The secure phone unit, which enabled McFarlane freely to discuss sensitive matters with the President and other officials with STUs, had been installed in McFarlane's home, with his approval, while he was on the NSC staff...

...There are too many people that talk over a telephone like this [a conventional open home line] and say too much...

...If so, many of the mysteries of the Iran-contra scandal could be cleared up by examining the tapes...

...It's more important than statute: It's business insurance.' not aware of any systematic monitoring of the home phones of senior officials but stated that conversations on office phones in sensitive security departments have in the past been routinely monitored and recorded...

...Mary Lawton says that though the various agency systems continue in use, there is no "rigid division" and all are linked to the White House Communications Center...

...The monitoring of top officials seems to have been done on a basis of express or implied consent, and would therefore not appear to violate Federal communications law...

...But the STU control panel remained on the closet wall, fully activated and attached to the junction box which controlled the household phones...

...Plans were afoot when he left the Government in 1981, he adds, to expand the secure phone system and the monitoring program as well...

...Last December, The Washington Post disclosed the existence of "a sophisticated White House communications system that can record some telephone calls and meetings and preserve messages and documents written on NSC [National Security Council] computer terminals...

...communications-intelligence operations, the McFarlane intercept grew out of a program that has produced a still-undisclosed archive of recorded conversations involving President Ronald Reagan, Vice President George Bush, Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, Admiral John Poindexter, Donald Regan, and other key figures in the Iran-contra arms scandal...

...Although the NSA devotes much of its attention to monitoring overseas traffic-including international long-distance calls to and from U.S...

...It's possible," she says, "particularly since home systems would be more vulnerable...

...The White House had a switching capacity which included an ability to interface between the different systems...

...Asked in late February whether the family had any indication that its lines had been monitored, the woman who answered the phone at the McFarlane residence consulted with Mrs...

...The White House response, issued by spokesman Daniel Howard, acknowledged the existence of two kinds of taping: occasional recording—for purposes of accurate translation—of calls between the President and foreign heads of state, and use for testing purposes of a video system linking the White House Situation Room and the Pentagon's National Military Command Center...

...It depends on the sensitivity of the work the individual is doing...

...Almost every communication line in the world is duplex...

...Not that we are, but you could be...

...McFarlane and said, "I'm sorry, I'm not able to give you any comment on that...

...Certain things require approval at certain levels," she explains...

...The calls are intercepted at the district offices of Chesapeake and Potomac, the Washington, D.C., area phone company, and sent back to Fort Meade by microwave...

...The McFarlane incident and accounts from sources familiar with current practice suggest that such recordings are, indeed, widespread...

...Since the expansion, however, middle-level staff at the White House, Pentagon, and CIA have been given home STUs...

...Kenneth Bass, who as Counsel for Intelligence Policy in the Carter Administration was responsible for preparing Federal wiretap requests for submission to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, says that monitoring of office phones took place within the Pentagon and CIA during his time in office...

...NSA headquarters at Fort Meade, Maryland, houses the largest and most advanced collection of computers ever assembled as well as a library of recorded signals and conversations stored on hundreds of thousands of computer discs and several million miles of magnetic tape...

...Donald Gregg of Vice President Bush's staff has acknowledged a long series of phone conversations with Felix Rodriguez—a key figure in the contra supply operation since early 1985—but claims that they did not discuss aid for the contras until August 1986...

...At Justice we had a green phone, and if I needed to talk to someone on a so-called gray phone—which was an Agency phone—and they didn't have a green phone, I could go through the White House to connect me to an Agency gray...

...Other current and former U.S...

...Bass says that in 1980 and 1981 he explicitly discussed provisions for monitoring and recording calls on this expanded secure system with representatives from the Pentagon and CIA...

...Following his departure, a Government security team arrived and removed the telephone handset...

...Mary Lawton, the Reagan Administration's current Counsel for Intelligence Policy, says she does not know whether home-secure phones are monitored...

...According to the intelligence sources, selected calls made over the open Federal Telephone System (FTS) as well as the Government's interlocking networks of Secure Telephone Units (STUs) have been recorded for archival purposes by the Pentagon and CIA and for communications-security purposes by the NSA...

...But apart from meeting legal requirements, Lawton says "it's just good practice" to record calls...

...The NSA has the legal authority to monitor home STUs, says Lawton, "primarily to check that the encipherment is working...

...The Senate Intelligence Committee was told that much of the contact between North and President Reagan took place over White House telephones...

...These one-way circuits are highly unusual," Watters says...

...General John E. Morrison Jr., former head of the NSA Office of Signals Intelligence Operations, notes that "on lines within the Government, if you make a call from within a classified area and you pick up a phone going outside, frequently there's a little sign that says, If you use this phone you understand that you could be monitored...

...The intelligence sources asked that they not be quoted by name...

...The budget went up significantly and there was a plan on the books when I left that they would be increasing the volume of the phones...

...White House officials, speaking to reporters on background, denied that they engaged in any kind of systematic taping...

...That month, a device used to facilitate the monitoring—a National Security Agency (NSA) secure-communications unit which the McFarlanes had been told had been deactivated—was discovered in the McFarlanes' sewing closet in a sweep of the house commissioned by his attorneys in the law firm of Dickstein, Shapiro, and Morin...

...Though security checks to determine whether an outside party is trying to listen in usually involve only brief interventions on a given conversation, intelligence sources say that lines carrying sensitive conversations, such as the secure and nonsecure home lines of top officials, are at times subject to sustained monitoring by the NSA...

...officials—speaking on the record—have confirmed various elements of the account...

...During the Carter Administration, home units were limited to agency heads and selected officials from the top two or three levels of the national-security hierarchy, Bass recalls...

...Recordings of these conversations could provide important information about the unfolding scandal...

...Since phones from the CIA and Pentagon systems are installed at many other agencies—including the White House—recordings made from those networks capture a broad cross section of the secret phone business transacted by the Reagan Administration's top officials...

...The purpose of monitoring and recording was twofold, Bass says: first, "to deter any improper communications," such as one official disclosing to another information they did not "need to know," and, second, "archival purposes, historic preservation, or operation preservation—similar to the retention system of the NSC computer at the White House...

...The STU phone sets and the computer and coding technology behind them are produced and regulated by the NSA, the largest and most secretive of the U.S...

...According to sources with first-hand knowledge of U.S...

...intelligence agencies...

...You want to be able to establish later on that you got the approval you needed...

...These secure phone systems have their hub in the White House Communications Center...

...Sources familiar with the program say that these individuals include such key figures in the Iran-contra investigation as Oliver North and Donald Gregg, the national-security adviser to Vice President Bush...

...Back when we were dealing with implementation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and when they started talking about this expanded home secure-phone system and when they started talking about monitoring, there was discussion about the parameters under which it would be done," he says...

...phones—it also watches domestic phones for the purpose of communications security...

...Last October, then-Director of Central Intelligence William Casey called North immediately after Nicaragua downed the Hasenfus contra supply plane...

...I wouldn't be surprised to find that all calls that go over the Agency-run or the White House-run secure switch are routinely recorded these days," says Bass...

...It's more important than statute...

...It's called CYA [Cover Your Ass...

...In the case of the McFarlanes, however, the monitoring continued after he had left Government service...

...THE White House Japes, Agin BY ALLAN NAIRN Until this January, the phones at the Bethesda, Maryland, residence of former National Security Adviser Robert C. McFarlane were being monitored by the U.S...

...Lawton notes that when the Justice Department contacts a court seeking emergency authorization by phone for a criminal warrant, "we or the magistrate both record, if at all possible"— a practice she says is mandated by law...

...There was a notice both in regulations and the phone book that DOD phones were subject to monitoring, and I think it was department wide," Bass said...

...The Government's various secure systems are wired in such a way that the White House serves as a hub for linking up the separate secure phone networks of the CIA and Pentagon, Bass notes...

...Staff and members of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees contacted for comment said they had not heard of the tapes...

...Allan Nairn is a free-lance writer...

...Though it is not neccessary to have such a unit on the premises to monitor phone traffic-Federal agencies can do that by tapping into the proper circuit at the telephone company's district office—individuals familiar with the McFarlane incident speculate that it would make continued monitoring more legally defensible, since he had consented to installation in the first place...

...The reach of the secure phone system has expanded dramatically in the past three years...

...David Watters, a telecommunications engineer formerly with AT&T and the CIA, says that AT&T maps of the Washington area microwave net show a series of links from the district offices running back to NSA headquarters...

...General George McFadden Jr., the former NSA Deputy Director for Operations who retired in 1983, confirms the plan to expand the secure phone system and says that the goal is to have the units "widely distributed...

...He notes that key authorities such as Attorney General Griffin Bell and Deputy National Security Adviser David Aaron worked without secure phones at home...

...According to James Bamford, author of The Puzzle Palace, a pioneering study of the little-known agency, the NSA helped lobby through a provision of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 which largely exempts Federal communications security operations from restrictions on domestic wiretaps and electronic surveillance...

...It made sense because the need for secure communications doesn't stop when they leave the office, and what they were finding was that people were trying to talk around security over clear lines at home—and that sends the NSA folks up the wall...

...Chartered by President Truman in a 1952 memorandum that has yet to be declassified, the NSA codes, decodes, and intercepts electronic communications worldwide with a secret budget estimated at $10 billion per year and a staff of 65,000...

...Accounts of the Iran-contra affair pieced together so far by Congressional investigators and the media include dozens of references to crucial telephone conversations over Federal office lines or the home phones of senior officials...

...Louis Tordella, NSA deputy director during the Nixon Administration, says, "I don't know any seniors that have ever been asked to give their consent to be monitored, but I wouldn't be surprised...

...The Agency [CIA] routinely monitors, if not continuously records, certain secure phone systems...

...it's business insurance...

...Government, according to U.S...

...The Justice Department announced last December that it was a phone call from Admiral Poindexter which caused Meese to try to delay a Miami Federal probe of purportedly illegal contra aid...

...intelligence sources familiar with the incident...

...It gives the potential for proving a case that could not otherwise be proved...

...Many of the people in the White House had two secure phones, one of which would be off the White House switch and one of which would be off the Agency switch...

...Oliver North and Attorney General Edwin Meese, for instance, are reported to have spoken by phone repeatedly after President Reagan urged establishment of a private contra-aid network in late 1984...

...Recordings made from the White House network would provide still broader coverage...

...In 1980, the General Accounting Office estimated that the NSA classifies "between fifty and 100 million documents a year," a quantity more "than the combined total activity of all components and agencies of the Government...

...Secure phones use a cornputerized encryption device that makes the call unintelligible to anyone trying to listen in on the line without the proper equipment and the authorized code...

...They certainly had the capability to do so...

...Bass recalls that there was widespread support throughout the national-security agencies for broadening the number of officials with access to the STUs and that, after 1981, home phones were monitored just like other secure lines...

...The circuits are oneway: They cannot transmit from the NSA but only receive from the phone company, which suggests to Watters that they are used for listening in on domestic calls...

...Research for this article was funded, in part, by contributions in memory of The Progressive's late Senior Editor, Sidney Lens...

...Sometimes you had to use one telephone to reach one particular department because they were on the Agency system, or to reach another department you'd have to use a different secure phone because they were on the DOD system...

...The NSA is part of the Pentagon system...

...Bass says he is uncertain whether secure calls were recorded at the Carter White House, "but I've always assumed that some of them were...

...It would be the equivalent of having the Nixon tapes," says Representative Robert Kastenmeier, Wisconsin Democrat, who sits on the House Intelligence Committee...