BLIND MEMO:POSSIBLE DOWNSTREAM PROBLEMS WITH HSCA.
Originator: CIA
From: BRECKINRIDGE, SCOTT D., OLC
To: ADMIRAL TURNER
Document date: 06/19/1978
Document type: PAPER - TEXTUAL DOCUMENT

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2022 RELEASE UNDER THE PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY ASSASSINATION RECORDS ACT OF 1992

1 9 JUN 1978

Possible Downstream Problems With HSCA

1. To date the problems with HSCA have not been major, but

some of the difficulties to date may assume increased importance in

the remaining period of the investigation. This memorandum under-

takes to consider some of them.

2. HSCA Requests and CIA Response. HSCA appears to be follow-

ing a

leave-no-stone-unturned approach to the investigation.

Just about

every name or reference of the files reviewed becomes the subject of

a request.

Frequently the names are incomplete and identifying material

so limited that research becomes tremendously time-consuming.

If HSCA

has additional information it has appeared on occasion reluctant to

provide it, possibly because it will reveal the direction of the in-

vestigation. Two things characterize the present status of HSCA and

CIA responses. There are a number of requests that have not yet been

answered, and the larger portion of material made available for review

has not yet been reviewed by HSCA investigators.

CIA recently has made

arrangements to improve its responses to requests, but the basic problem

will remain.

We feel HSCA is falling behind and that it will be critical

of the Agency for its own failures in this respect.

Access. The FBI reportedly has provided no direct access

to its files for HSCA investigators.

CIA is providing direct access

to its files with very limited sanitization. The result is the in-

vestigators have had access to a lot of sources-and-methods material.

The criticism that HSCA investigators can make is not in our restrictions,

but the effectiveness of our responses. As noted above, steps have been

taken to remedy this.

4.

Access to Agents. In contrast to very full access ta Agency

files and documents the line has been drawn on access to agents. One

agent was interviewed over CIA objections, following the failure to

notify ClA of the intention to interview him as provided for in the

working agreements.

In one other case of which we are aware we have

objected to an agent being interviewed and, in the absence of CIA

assistance, he was not contacted. nor interviewed.

This is the subject

of a formal protest by the HSCA chairman. The DDCI has offered a

method, alternative to direct access to the agent, for obtaining the

answers desired.

Defectors. As a result of the dramatic presentations in the

Epstein

Book Legend the HSCA has focussed on this issue.

Staff members

have stated recently that they consider this to be one of the two most

SECRET

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important issues that they have, so far as the Agency and the Kennedy

assassination are concerned. After considerable exchange we have been

advised that the staff no longer is interested in the question of

Nosenko's bona fides, per se.

The interest is now focussed on what

Nosenko knew about Lee Harvey Oswald; questioning on this point

apparently is intended to be detailed and intensive. If Nosenko's

bona fides are not an issue the need to address the sensitive aspects

of his knowledge, and the operational use made of it, may not become

a security problem. That information, however, is revealed in varying

degrees in some of the material reviewed by the HSCA. While we may

have some reservations about how the Nosenko problem is handled by the

HSCA, and personally how he is handled, the earlier concerns of security

consideration currently are somewhat reduced.

6. Mexico City. The HSCA staffers have stated that ClA coverage

in Mexico City is one of the two important issues on which they currently

are focussing. The subject matter is classically one of intelligence

sources and methods. Additionally, it involves the relationships of

the Agency with instruments of a foreign government in a way that would

lastingly harmful to Agency operations in this important post.

7. Final Report. The Committee is faced with the problem of

credibility. It functions under the generally reserved atmosphere

in Congress towards CIA which creates pressure to write a tough report

that shows the independence of the investigators.

While a report of

Agency coverage in Mexico can be written using euphemisms for how the

coverage existed, the pressures will be to spell it out in detail.

We foresee some difficulties when the time comes for CIA's review of

the report for security considerations.

8. Performance of the Agency. The HSCA charter includes per-

formance of the intelligence agencies. Part of the vulnerability of

the Agency to criticism today is that different perceptions have

evolved than existed at the time of the Warren Commission investi-

gation.

Schweiker) in a badly drafted critique.

While the Schweiker draft is

flawed, the Agency is subject to criticism in some respects, and an

internal CIA study so

meet insted wetextent thered mention of the meteo

HSCA investigators.

City Station although critical observations have been elicited from

Agency employees about management there during the Warren Commission

investigation.

HSCA staffers have indicated that they will be critical

of the CIA handling of Nosenko (despite there own readiness to give

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him a hard time when the question is no longer real). They are aware

that the Rockfeller Commission has already reported on this but will

probably indulge themselves in a reprise.

9. Style. A number of the HSCA investigators have experience

as criminal prosecutors.

They are accustomed to dealing with criminals

that they intend to convict. In the present instance the testimony

that they take is not tested by the usual cross examination; as we do

not know some of the lines they have taken, we do not know what re-

search to conduct that may balance the perspectives they may be

developing.

Some of those who have testified have gained the opinion

that HSCA investigators are trying to prove theories, sometime critical

of the Agency, as distinguished from gathering all the facts in a

balanced picture.

Because of the HSCA approach our views on

this are

for the large part visceral, but are sufficiently firm to give us some

concern for the kinds of conclusions that we eventually will encounter

and not have time to check out.

10.

Security. Due note should be taken at this time that the

ASCA, in its reorganized form under Mr. Blakey, has an unusual record

security.

We are aware of no leaks.

Nevertheless, we are antic-

ipating difficulties at the time of the final report.

Beyond that,

we are concerned that when Mr. Blakey's discipline is gone some of his

staff members--whom he has described as strongly anti-CIA-may feel free

to give their own version of things. This of course remains for the

future.

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