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Assassination Records Review Board

Final Determination Notification

...•.n

AGENCY : HPSCI

RECORD NUMBER

: 135-10001-10297

RECORD SERIES :

AGENCY FILE NUMBER :

September 25, 1998

Status of Document: Postponed in Part

Number of Postponements: 8

The redactions in this document have been postponed under the provisions set forth in The John F.

Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992.

The number within the brackets is provided to represent the appropriate substitute language from the list

below.

Board Review Completed: 08/25/98

2025 Release under thei

John F. Kennedy

Assassination Records

Collection Actof 1992

01 Crypt

02 Digraph

03 CIA Employee

04 Asset

6 Sume of Perso

7 Pseudony

08 Identifying Information

09 Date

10 Location

11 Country

15 CIA Installation in Western Europe*

16 CIA Installation in Western Hemisphere*

17 Cable Prefix for CIA Installation in Africa/ Near East*

18 Cable Prefix for CIA Installation in East Asia/ Pacific*

19 Cable Prefix for CIA Installation in Northern Europe*

20 Cable Prefix for CIA Installation in Western Europe*

21 Cable Prefix for CIA Installation in Western Hemisphere*

* The number after the hyphen tracks of individual locations.

22 Dispatch Prefix

23 File Number

24 Operational Details

25 None

26 Scelso (The information is the true name of the

individual whose pseudonym is John Scelso.)

27 CIA Job Title

28 CIA

29 Name of Organization

30 Social Security Number

31 Alias Documentation

32 Official Cover (Details of Official Cover)

98 Information not believed relevant to JFK assassination

99 See the special substitute language above.

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Date: 09/28/94

Page: 1

JFK ASSASSINATION SYSTEM

8119/18

IDENTIFICATION FORM

AGENCY INFORMATION

5p12apr99

AGENCY : HPSCI

RECORD NUMBER: 135-10001-10297

RECORDS SERIES :

AGENCY FILE NUMBER

GHA HAS NI

MISCHONA

DECLASSINE

RELEASE OF

ANTON

8/1198

IN THIS DOCUMENT AS SANTIZED-

See pages 2370, 2373,23,76, 2377,

-2385-4-2390

DOCUMENT INFORMATION

ORIGINATOR

FROM

TO :

ROCK

TITLE :

DATE : 04/21/75

PAGES : 210

SUBJECTS :

TRANSCRIPT: VOL. 17. PRESIDENT'S COMMISSION ON CIA ACTIVITIES. 1 OF

2.

TESTIMONY OF DEAN RUSK, GORDON GRAY, RICHARD M. BISSELL, JR.,

PAUL

O'NEILL, ARNOLD E. DONOHUE.

DOCUMENT TYPE : PAPER, TEXTUAL DOCUMENT

CLASSIFICATION : T

RESTRICTIONS : OPEN IN FULE

CURRENT STATUS

DATE OF LAST REVIEW : 09728/94

OPEN In put Perperat

OPENING CRITERIA :

COMMENTS :

Contained in file entitled, "April 21, 1995.

3.

11

2025 Release under the John F. Kennedy

Assassination Records Collection Act of 1993

[R]

- ITEM IS RESTRICTED

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NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL

WASHINGTON, D.C. 20506

September 12, 1994

Dear Mr. Sheehy:

This is in response to your request, pursuant to the JFK

Assassination Records Collection Act, for NSC staff review of the

transcript of testimony given April 21, 1975, to the President's

Commission on CIA Activities by Dean Rusk, Gordon Gray, Richard

Bissell, Paul O'Neill, and Arnold Donohue.

The NSC staff has no

objection to declassification and release of the document subject

to the determinations of the Central Intelligence Agency and the

Department of State.

Sincerely,

David S. Van Tassel

Director

Access Management

Mike Sheehy

House Permanent Select Committee on

Room H405

The Capitol

Washington, D.C.

Intelligence

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The Department of Tate

has no rejection to the

release ar declassification

of this document from

page 290 through page 2262,

Reared on Gugust 11,1994

Dept of state

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002802

1114

Vol. 17

ORIGINAL

PROSIDENT'S COMMISSION ON

CIA ACTIVIIIES

1

OF

Washingion, D. C.

Monday, April 21, 1975

WARD &PAUL

Verla

Spoken

valant.

wards fly-

seripta

written

manent

wards endure

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FAIRFAX, VIRGINIA

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TESTIMONY OF:

Dean Rusk

Gordon Gray

Richard M. Bissell Jr..

Paul O'Neill

Arnold E. Donohue

AFTERNOON

SESSION • 2295)

PAGE

2190

2263

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CIA HAS NO OBJECTION TO

DECLASSIFICATION AND/OR

RELEASE OF THIS DOCUMENT,

the testim

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врое

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1

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VOLUME 17

PRESIDENT'S COMMISSION

ON CIA ACTIVITIES

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Washington, D.C.

Monday, April 21, 1975

The President's Commission met, pursuant to recess,

at

10:07 o'clock

a.m., in Room 272, Old

Executive Office

Building, 17th and Pennsylvania Avenues, N.W., Washington, D.C.

Vice President Nelson A. Rockefeller, Chairman of the Commission,

presiding.

PRESENT:

NELSON A. ROCKEFELLER, Chairman

JOHN T. CONNOR, Member

JOSEPH LANE KIRKLAND, Member

LYMAN L. LEMNITZER, Member

EDWIN N. GRISWOLD, Member

EDWARD H. SHANNON, JR., Member

STAFF:

DAVID W. BELIN, Executive Director

ROBERT WALLISON, Staff Member

MARVIN GRAY, Staff Member

SOL CORBIN, Special Assistant to the Vice President

--

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PROCEEDINGS

MR. BELIN: Secretary Rusk, if you would stand and

raise your right hand and be sworn, this is Ruth Johnson who is

a Notary Public for the District of Columbia.

MRS. JOHNSON: Do you swear to tell the truth; the

whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?

MR. RUSK: I do.

TESTIMONY OF DEAN RUSK

MR. BELIN: Could you please state your name for

the record?

MR. RUSK: Dean Rusk.

MR. BELIN: And you served as Secretary of State, sir,

in the Administrations

of John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, is

that correct?

MR. RUSK: Yes.

Secretary Udall, Secretary Freeman and I were the

only three who served throughout the terms of both Presidents.

MR. BELIN: Secretary Rusk, what is your present

occupation?

MR. RUSK: I am Professor of International Law in the

School of Law in the University of Georgia.

MR. BELIN: And prior to your service as Secretary of

State with the Kennedy Administration, could you give us a little

bit of a summary of your background?

MR. RUSK: Well, I was President of the Rockefeller

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Foundation and General Education Board for about eight years

during the 1950's. During the Truman Administration, with the

exception of a few months when I was Special Assistant to the

Secretary of War, Robert Patterson, I was

in the State Department

under Secretaries Marshall and Acheson, first in charge of

United Nations Affairs, then Deputy Under Secretary for

Political Affairs, and then Assistant Secretary for Far Eastern

Affairs.

Prior to that, I had over five years of active duty

during World War II, and prior to that, teaching at Mills

College in California while studying law at Berkeley.

And I can go back even further, if you wish.

MR. BELIN: During World War II, you were involved

somewhat with intelligence, is that correct?

MR. RUSK: Yes, I was. I was in G-2 from October in

1941 until the summer of '43 when I went out to the China,

Burma, India theatre. There I was Chief of War Plans, and had

a relation with the operations of OSS of the China, Burma, India

theatre.

MR. BELIN: Could you briefly give us an overview from

your personal exparience

as to what kind of intelligence the

United States government had during World War II?

MR. RUSK: Well, I think it is important for us to

realize that in the background of CIA was

a shocking ignoranca

of world affairs and situations in other parts of the world at

EGRET

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the outbreak of World War II. As a Captain in the Army, I was

called back to G-2 in October, 1941, two months before Pearl

Harbor, to organize a new section of G-2 to cover everything

from Afghanistan through the India Subcontinent, Burma, Ceylon,

Malaya, Australia, New Zealand and the British Pacific Islands.

They had no section in G-2 interested in that part of the worl

up to that point.

When I got there I asked to see what materials we

had on hand as

a start, and I was shown one file drawer by an

old lady

named

Mrs. North. In that file drawer was one copy of

Murphy's Tourist Handbook to India and Ceylon which had been

stamped Confidential because it was the only copy in town, and

they

wanted to keep track of it; one 1925 military attache

report from London on the British Army in India; and then a

considerable number of clippings from the New York Times that

this old lady, Mrs. North, had been clipping since World War I,

and that was it.

Well, I passed my first test, because on the second

day that I was there, a Colonel from

the great War Plans Division

of the General Staff called down and said, Rusk, I can't remember,

is Indochina in South China or North China, and when I located

Indochina for him he hung up in great satisfaction and feeling

that he had great intelligence support from G-2.

Now, there is no way to describe how deficient we were

and

we had to scramble around and try to find a missionary here

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2193

or a businessman there, or anybody who knew anything about some

of these vast areas and, of course, we could get a good deal of

information from the British, but you couldn't overload those

lines all of the time, because we were starting from scratch.

We flew the hump with maps that were supposed to be

on a scale of 1 to 1 million, but much of the material on those

maps was purely honorary. I mean, I didn't even have maps that

would show us the scale of l to l million the terrain in which

we were operating. We tried to organize a Burmese language

program in our Army and we looked around the United States for

a native Burman. We asked the Census Bureau for a list of the

people living here who had been born in Burma and they, came up

with about twelve names, but most of them were McDougall or

McLanahan, the children of British soldiers who were born in

Burma.

We finally found one and we looked him up and he was in

an insane asylumn.

Well, we fished him out of the insane asylum and made

a Burmese language instructor out of him.

The impact of this on the need for information after

World War II cannot be exaggerated, because we just ran all the

time, we were running into this factor of ignorance, and so I

think it is important to bear that in mind. And I hope we will

never get caught in that situation again.

MR. BELIN: Subsequent to World War II, with the

build-up of the CIA and other intelligence agencies, of course,

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the information gathering facilities of the U.S. government

became much greater. And I wonder if you have

any opinion as

to whether or not we might have at times gone to the other

extreme so far as the storage of information?

MR. RUSK:

I think partly because of this absence of

information earlier that we tended to let intelligence become

a thing in itself. I had the impression, for example, that in

the intelligence community, and I don't point the finger at any

particular agency, there developed a kind of a catalogue of

desirable information, almost as a Sears, Roebuck catalogue, and

it was the duty of the intelligence community to fill in all of

discration?

the blanks. I hope the Commission will use disgression in what

it does with some of the examples I might give here today,

because I don't want to cause difficulty, but for example,

Ambassador David Bruce in London told me that a member of the

British Government had come to him and said, David, don't have

your military attache planes flying over our factories at low

level taking pictures. If you want pictures of our plants, we

will give them to you, but all of this kind of business makes

our workers nervous, and people don't know what's going on.

All they were doing was filling in the blanks, and we tended to

go at it without a direct relationship to what might be called

policy needs. And I think this was one of the inherent senses

of one's ignorance of pre-World War II times.

MR. BELIN: I think you also mentioned during our

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interview last night that you thought the syndrome of avoiding

another Pearl Harbor might have contributed to trying to collect

a tremendous amount of information, and you gave as an example

the attack on South Korea by North Korea.

MR. RUSK: Yes.

Our intelligence did not predict Pearl Harbor, but

they certainly predicted the Roberts Commission. And I think

that that experience has infected to some extent the intelligence

community.

Now, I once wrote Mr. Schlesinger a little note about

this and one or two other matters when he became Director of

CIA. One of the nightmares of people in the intelligence

community is to have something serious happen which they have

not predicted, and so one of the results of that is that

policy offices get a continual flow of possibilities, 90 or 95

percent of which never happen at all, and the policy officer

has the problem then of trying to sort out which is for real

and

which is not. And that is, sometimes, very difficult.

In the case of Korea, after the North Korean attack

was launched, people went back through thousands of bits of

information.

They came out with a handful, six or eight pieces

on the basis of which

some of them said oh, yes, you see, we

knew this was coming. Well, no one picked up the phone and

called me. I was Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern

Affairs at that time, and no one picked up the phone and called

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me and

said the North Koreans are going to attack. On that

evening, I was having dinner with Judge Alsop and Mr. Pace and

Justice Frankfurter, and I certainly would not have been out

having dinner if I knew that an attack was imminent.

Indeed, Mr. John Foster Dulles, who was in Tokyo at

the time, said it was not until the Tuesday after the Sunday

of the attack that the MacArthur Headquarters

accepted that it

was anything more than a border incident, and so I think we tend

to multiply alleged predictions, partly to cover your trail in

case something happens, and I think this is something that

policy officers have to get used to, and on which they have to

make some discriminating judgments.

And it emphasizes the importance of multiple sources

of information.

Now, when I was a Special Assistant to Judge Patterson,

the Secretary of War, I personally supported his afforts to

combine all of the intelligence agencies into a single agency

and put them altogether in one organization. I since have

changed my mind radically on that because I think it is very

important that you have not competitive sources of information

but diverse sources of information. One of the several

reasons

for the tragic mistake in the Bay of Pigs was that those who

proposing the operation were the same people who were furnishing

the information on which judgments were to be made. And I had

specific directive from the President not to consult my own

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Bureau of Intelligence and Research in the Department of State

to get their judgment on the situation inside Cuba.

So I think it is very important that we maintain

diverse sources of information as

a kind of check against each

other, among other things, and also because that way you get

some insights and soma guesses that might not come through a

single channel.

MR. BELIN: And so what you are saying is that some

duplication, perhaps, so far as the sources on

a particular

problem, might not be adverse to the best interests

of the

country?

MR. RUSK:

Well, I think there should be a very full

exchange of

information among the different

elements of the

intelligence community. But I think we ought to, that we

ought to have diverse sources of juagment, of

analysis, and

matters of that sort.

MR. BELIN: Now, to go back to your previous comment

concerning the Pearl Harbor syndrome and to cover all bases,

is

it a fair statement that perhaps the inundation of thousands

of piaces of information to cover all possibilities does not

necessarily lead to the best kinds of intelligence?

MR. RUSK:

Well, we are faced, the intelligence

community is faced, with an inherently difficult problem because

of the blizzard of information that has fallen in on the world.

Now, a very large part of the CIA's information

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gathering has to do with getting materials that are in the

public sector, publications from all over the world including

the Soviet Union

and the People's Republic of China, and the

sheer management

analysis

of the information that is available

in the public sector is a massive problem.

Now, the processes by which that mass

is reduced to

some

estimates or judgments are very important. To some extent,

policy officers are the prisoners of the information they have

available to them, and policy officers should be in a pretty

sceptical frame of mind about decisions. I mean about judgments

of that sort.

Very often we try to get information that

is not

present in the real world, and we ought to, I think, be a little

more candid in saying to ourselves that we don't know, but if

you want our guess, here's our guess.

Fox example, on a certain Tuesday evenining in August,

1968, Russian forces went into Czechoslovakia. We thought later

that we had learned that the Russians had

made that decision on

the preceding Saturday night, three days earlier, Sunday,

Monday, Tuesday•

Now, if we had asked our intelligence community before

that Saturday night whether or not the Russians were going into

Czechoslovakia, there is no way they could know, because the

Russians didn't know. I mean, I used to smile occasionally at

the enormous effort made by foreign people, foreign governments,

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to ascertain our intentions when I knew we didn't have any

intentions, and so I think we ought to distinguish more clearly

between information that is real and information or estimates

that are rather speculative in character.

MR. BELIN: I am going to change the subject now to

the statutes which were adopted by the Congress and which

formed the charter of the CIA.

Last night, you had some comments concerning your

observation of these statutes on the relationship to what has

actually happened since the enactment

of the statutes.

MR. RUSK: Well, I think one must bear in mind that

these statutes are the public expressions

of the will of the

Congress, and there

are some things that you don't say publicly.

You don't lay out in the statute a capability, say, for political

observations in a particular situation. You don't lay out in

the statute, a public statute, the complete functions of the

National Security Agency, for example.

Now, I don't think there was any doubt in the minds of

the Congress over these past twenty-eight years that CIA had

certain capabilities in the political action field as well as in

the espionage, counter-espionage field, or any doubt about the

real purposes and functions of the National Security Agency.

And so although as

matter of law this may

raisa some curious

questions, I don't think that one can

honestly say that the

Congress was in any way misled about what kind of an organization

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CIA was, or what kind of an organization NSA is.

There was a kind of a common law of the matter behind!

the written word, or there was whatever you want to call it, I

will leave that to the distinguished members of your commission.

But some of these things that have been criticized lately as a

part of the attack on the CIA I do not think can be measured by

reading the exact wording of the public aspects of the CIA

charter.

MR. BELIN: Is it your understanding that at least

the Oversight Committee leaders of Congress did basically know

major areas of policy determination by the CIA?

MR. RUSK:

Yes.

To what

extent, I don't know. I do know that the

Director of CIA consulted frequently with Senator Russell, for

example. Ha was the one who had basically handled CIA's budget

since he was chairman of the Armed Services Committee and

practically chairman of the Appropriations Committee because of

the chairman's age, and I know that there were pretty frequent

discussions between the two of them.

I never sat in on any of those, so I can't testify

directly as to what was

said. But I had a good many discussions

myself with Senator Russell on a good many foreign policy

matters, and I never heard him complain about feeling that he

needed to be better informed.

MR. BELIN: Now, we also discussed the practical fact

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of how CIA in your phrase was drawn into things that other

agencies might not, or might have done if they had had the

money available overtly, but they did not have, and the CIA was

drawn in because CIA had the money.

Is that a fair summary of our discussion?

MR. RUSK: Yes.

A good many things that CIA has done over the years

could have been done directly, and overtly by the Department of

State if the Department of State could have gotten the

appropriations.

For example, support to the National Student Associ-

ation to send delegations to international conferences and

things of that sort, activities similar to the activities of

the British Council in Great Britain. But the chairman of our

Appropriations Subcommittee in the House, Mr. John Rooney,

didn't care very much about things cultural and scientific

exchanges and U.S.I.D. and the Bureau of Cultural Affairs, and

things of that sort, and now here was CIA who was able to come

up with the money and so I think soma activities sort of

gravitated towards CIA because Dick Russell got their money

which could have just as well or better been done overtly.

I don't know whether the situation can significantly

change in that respect, but support of things like Radio Liberty

and Radio Free Europe could just as well have been done overtly

by the Department of State as they were attempted on a covert

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basis by CIA. A good many things of that sort happened because

they had the money.

MR. BELIN:

Secretary Rusk, we also talked about

internal executive oversight about CIA and the role of the

Director of Central

Intelligence, the DCI, as the head of the

intelligence community.

Do you have any observations concerning the question

of executive oversight of the Agency, or any suggestions in that

area?

MR. RUSK:

Well, as I look back on it, I do have

one specific and potentially important suggestion. CIA by

statute reports to the National Security Council. Of course,

the President is the Chairman, and his decisions in the National

Security Council are the decisions.

There is no voting pro-

cedure there. But the statutory members of the National

Security Council, in my recollection, never once sat down and

looked at the major tables and the budget of the CIA. We were

sort of in the intelligence and operational chain of command

in a sense, but not in the administration chain of command.

I would assume that what happened

was that the CIA

would take their budget to maybe two or three members of the

Bureau of the Budget, and then it would be discussed briefly

with the President, and then it wauld be taken down and

discussed with Senator Russell, and that was about the end of

it.

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In retrospect, I think it would have been helpful if

the statutory members of the National Security Council had at

least once a year taken

a look at the organizational structure

and the manning tables and the budget of CIA in order to have

a little bit better feel of not only what was going on but what

might be going on that they would not normally bump into.

So I think that that would be a step, that would be

an improvement that would be desirable.

MR. BELIN: Now, I want to turn to the area of

possible CIA involvement in coup d'etats abroad. Perhaps it is

not within our charter specifically, but you made

a comment

last night concerning your eight years as Secretary of State.

MR. RUSK: Well, "I have stated publicly, and I have

been continuing to scratch my mind for exceptions, I have

stated

publicly that there was some 82 or so in the worla

somewhere during the eight years in which I was Secretary of

State. That is unconstitutional changes of government.

There were substantially larger changes through

elections and things of that sort. I don't remembar a single one

of those that was triggered by or caused by the CIA.

MR. BELIN: And by those, you mean coup d'etats?

MR. RUSK: Coup d'etat. The coup d'etat.

Now, I think one thing

that requires a rather careful

look, and some rather careful distinctions, the CIA people

consider that one of their jobs is to keep in touch with

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different elements within a population, and they do have

contacts with dissident groups here and there.

Sometimes

people in our embassies, mostly CIA people, but sometimes on

the diplomatic side, get inquiries from dissident groups and

various countries as to what the attitude towards the United

States would be in the event

of a coup

d'etat.

I tried to get the word established that we would

not

respond to any such inquiries, partly as a practical matter,

because I suspected that many of these were from provacateurs

of the governments involved and they were trying to find out

what our answer would be to such a question.. But I had

no

doubts the CIA was in touch with dissident groups, and may have

at times been buying information from them. But that does not

translate in my mind to their calling the shots of it or

becoming the boss or directing a coup d'etat.

MR. BELIN: In your experience as Secretary of State,

were you aware of the practices of other

governments and their

intelligence, both in this country and abroad?

MR. RUSK: Yes. To a very considerable extent.

Of course, you always suspect there are practices that you

haven't caught up with, but there is a mean, dirty, unsavory,

back alley struggle going on in the world in which a good many

governments particpate, some of them close friends of ours,

and most of them, including targets in the United States, because

the position of the United States in world affairs is such that

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influencing American policy is a major effort on the part of

almost every foreign office in the world. Wherever a dispute

develops, the parties will each come in to try and get the

United States to take their side, and so we are the target of

a great deal of effort to find out what we are thinking, to

influence our decisions and judgments, and a struggle to

undermina some of the things that we are trying to accomplish

in the world.

MR. BELIN: Were you ever aware, for instance, of

forged documents being used to try and put the blame on the

CIA for things?

MR. RUSK: Well, I think there were two or three

instances that I recall. The exact timing

and countries I

don't recall at this point. It is somewhere in the records

where forged documents were planted on African leaders to try

to persuade them that CIA was trying to ovarthrow them.

Fortunately, these forgeries were so crude that it was very

easy to demonstrate that they were, in fact, forgeries, and I

think we were able to satisfy the local chiefs of

state that

CIA was not trying to overthrow them.

But there were all sorts of things. If I could

go off the record for a moment?

(Discussion off the record.)

MR. RUSK: I must confess

I am worried about a kind

of

euphoric and unilateral repeal of the Cold war in this countr

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these days, because there are those who are out to bring the

United States down, and they are working away at it, not only

in this country, but in other parts of the world. Whether or

not we ought to make that more public, that information public,

I think is a major policy question that you gentlemen and those

who are carrying present responsibility might want to think

about, because there is no quastion about the fact that these

people are conducting such operations, both here and abroad.

We did make a decision during the Vietnam affair not

to make public what we knew about the activities of certain

governments in this country because we knew that there were a

lot of opponents to Vietnam, most of them who had no connection

with outside governments, who were opposing

it for perfectly

reasonable, valid considerations, and we did not wish to start

another wave of

McCarthyism in this country.

But anyone who thinks that the Communits were not

making every effort to influence American public opinion is just

out of his head.

MR. GRAY: Sir, did you receive any specific informa-

tion of such attempts to influence the young people that were

demonstrating against the war, and so on?

MR. RUSK:

There were bits and pieces occasionally,

but at the moment I can't cite one of them in terms of chapter

and verse.

MR. GRAY:

Do you recall whether the CIA had an

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estimate as to the extent of any

such involvement?

MR. RUSK:

NO.

Before we left office in 1969 there had been put

together a world, a study of youth movements worldwide, and

one of the interesting conclusions of the study was about the

only thing these various youth movements had in common

was

technique, that their objectives varied widaly.

For example, the young people in Eastern Europe

appeared to be reaching out for what could be called the

establishment values in the United States. But that study

might throw some light on your question, if you can get ahold

of it.

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MR. BELIN: You also mentioned that you thought that

attacking the CIA is a built-in process that certain groups

including even the Russian intelligence agency might be

involved in. Is that an accurate summary of your conversation

last night?

MR. RUSK: Yes.

I think there is a substantial variety of motivations

behind attacks on the CIA. I would say first that there have

been some failures, and there have been

some mistakes on the

part of the CIA. Those things will happen among frail human

beings. And I cite the Bay of Pigs as one notable and public

example, and that has exposed the CIA to some criticism. I

think there are interests who are hostile to the United States

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that are at work in this field.

Anti-CIA propoganda is good propoganda in many parts

of the world, and among sections of this country.

And then I think there are some personal motivations

that I don't care much about, such things as desire to win a

Pulitzer Prize or money or a sense of revenge.

But I think

more broadly, I think this is partly a reaction coming from a

swing towards isolationism in this country, which I think is

real, as I travel around this country in small and large cities,

and again, this is sort of decisions on the part of a lot of

people here that somehow the Cold War is over, despite the

fact when you look through the world from Southeast Asia through

Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece, Turkey, the Middle East, the

Cold War is

very much alive, at least from the point of view

of the other side.

MR. BELIN: In this connection, do you have any

specific recommendations as to whether or not this government

should make available to the public more information about what

other governments are doing, both in this country and abroad,

to influence world affairs?

MR. RUSK: I think we probably ought to find some way

to alert people to the fact that detent does not mean that a

new Heaven and earth

has been

accomplished here on earth, and

for example, I objact to the use of the term domino theory,

and I never used it myself, although President Kennedy seemed

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to embrace it on two or three occasions

in Press conferences,

and originally I believe it was President Eisenhower.

To me, the domino theory is a euphenism for something

else. The theoretical basis

for it is the Marxist doctrine of

the world revolution, and we at least ought to talk

about it

in those terms. Is it there, what are they doing about it, is

this still a real

matter in the real world, and not obscure it

by talking about a power game?

And I think that we could do more in that direction.

We could be more frank and candid about the differences that

still separate us

even though it remains important that we try

to find points of agreement between ourselves and those who

might become our adversaries. I think the process of trying

to find points of agreement like the Test Ban Treaty and the

Nonproliferation Treaty, the Arms Limitation, the SALT talks

and things of that sort, those are absolutely essential, but

we ought not to be under an illusion about

it, and I am afraid

there has been so much illusion around what we are up against,

and this is why I feel that the CIA and its capabilities are

absolutely vital to the safety of the United States.

And I think one of our problems now is how to

maintain some capabilities in the present atmosphere and

discuss these, and in the face of the various investigations

which we anticipate, and the investigative reporting and all

of the rest that goes along with it.

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MR. BELIN: Secretary Rusk, I want to turn to another

now concerning

the allegations of assasination of foreign

area

leaders.

Were you ever aware of any plans or proposals to

assassinate any foreign leaders?

MR. RUSK: No proposal ever came to me seeking my

approval for a plan to kill anybody. Now, those are not chosen

words. I mean, no proposal ever came before me, period,

involving the assassination of a foreign leader, pariod. Excuse

me.

MR. BELIN: Go ahead.

MR. RUSK: On one occasion, the late great Ambassador

Llewellyn Thompson, who was then, I believe our representative

on the 303 Committee, I think it was named during that period,

came in and more or less in a jocular frame of mind said that

he had heard that somebody down the line, and he had not

identified the person or the agency, was talking about the

possible assassination effort, and I made it absolutely clear

to him, and he fully agreed, that political assassination was

contrary to the most elementary notions of American foreign

policy, and that if we go down that trail, we are in the law

of the jungle, and it would be out of control. That was my

personal attitude throughout the period.

On one other occasion the matter came up in an

indirect form which could ba, I think, coverted by gossip into

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meaning somathing else. I had heard that Trujillo had been

assassinated before the Dominicans had announced it. President

Kennedy was then in Paris.

I called and got Pierre Salinger on the scene, and

he tells about this in his book, by the way.

MR. BELIN: He was President Kennedy's Press

Secretary?

MR. RUSK: He was President Kennedy's Press

Secretary, and I told him Trujillo had been

assassinated and

to keep his mouth shut, because it had not been, it had

not

been announced.

Well, he stubbed his toe and announced it, or

referred to it in one of those glancing remarks at a Press

conference. My concern was that Trujillo's son was in Paris,

that if Trunillo's son heard this announcement first from an

American source that he would think that we had something to

do with the assassination of Trujillo and might take it out

on President Kennedy personally in Paris, and

I was concerned

about Kennedy's personal safety under those circumstances.

But those were the only two things that I remember

in the assassination field.

MR. BELIN: When Mr. Thompson talk to you about it,

did he indicate what potential foreign leader was involvad?.

MR. RUSK:

If he did, I just don't remember it.

I don't remember it.

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MR. BELIN: With particular reference to the Trujillo

assassination, do you know of any approval that was aver given

by the State Department for American participation with any

group that might be involved in overthrowing the government and

assassinating Trujillo in the process?

MR. RUSK: Well, I knew that our intelligence people

were in touch with a variety of Dominican groups, both in the

Dominican Republic and abroad, and any one of them would have

been glad, I think, to assassinate Trujillo. But I was not

aware of any operational involvement of the United States

government in his assassination.

MR. BELIN: If records were to show any cables going

from the State Department under your name to any Ambassador in

the Dominican Republic, would you state that those indicated

personal knowledge on your part?

MR. RUSK: Well -

MR. BELIN: And I don't know, by the way, whether or

not such cables existed. I am using it as a hypothetical

example.

MR. RUSK: During my years, over 2,100,000 cables

went out of the Department of State with my name signed to them,

and I had seen only a tiny fraction of 1 percent of them before

they went out. Now, I am responsible, I mean

I cannot avoid

the responsibility for what was done in a Department of which

I

was Chief.

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2213

In terms of my personal involvement, in the first

place I don't recall such cables, but if you could get ahold

of the green copies, the original greens of the outgoing

cables, if I had seen and approved any of those, they would

carry my initials. I always put my initials, small dr, on

the cables that I personally approved, and it may be for

cryptographic reasons that the State Department doesn't maintain

the green copies, I just don't know. But if they have them

then you can find out whether I was, in fact, aware of any of

those cables.

MR. BELIN: Did you have any knowledge concerning the

death of President Diem in Vietnam, or did you give any

directions?

MR. RUSK: No, no directions at all. There was

cable that went out in August, 1963, sent out at a time when

President Kennedy, Secretary McNamara, and I, all three, were

out of town, and this cable was "cleared" with us on an open

telephone. And

when George Ball called me, he spoke in very

guarded terms and told me that President Kennedy had already

approved it.

Well, this was on an open telephone and with that

kind of information I said use your own judgment, go ahead as

far

as I am concerned.

When the three of us got back to town, we looked at

the cable in detail and felt that it went further than we

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wanted to go in the direction of Diem must go kind of thinking,

and we pulled back on it. Now, we did make an effort in the

months immediately following that, to try to persuade President

Diem to get his brother Nhu, and Madame Nhu, out of the country.

We told the President to send him as Ambassador to Washington, of

Paris, or give him any kind of a job that would get him out of

the country, because it was his brother, we felt, who was the

principal motivator and executor of policies which were rapidly

alienating the Buddhists, the military, and the students, and

we felt that Brother Nhu was going to bring President Diem down.

I do recall vary specifically that Ambassador Henry

Cabot Lodge had instructions that if a coup

should develop,

that he should do his best to insure President Diem's personal

safety, and, indeed, I understand that on the morning of the day

that it was clear that the military we moving, he called up

Diem and suggested some arrangements to Diem that would insure

his personal safety. Diem refused those suggestions and tried

to get off into another part of the country where he thought he

had some forces that might be loyal to him, and on the way was

captured and killed.

MR. BELIN: Is it your testimony, then, that you don't

know of any action by this government, or any agency of the

government

which contributed, directly contributed to the death

of Diem?

MR. RUSK: It was not the policy of the United States

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Governmant to see that President Diem was assassinated. We

had put some

pressure on him trying to bring about

some changes

in his policy, and to separate

him from

his brother, Nhu.

For

example, we had made some adjustments in our aid program.

We

cut back on our aid program. I think you will remember that,

General Lemnitzer. And some of that was interpreted by the press.

some of whom, by the way, were among the Diem must go group,

by the prass and by some of the paople in South Vietnam, undoubtedly

as being indeed, as it was pressure on President Diem, but

maybe even they might have read it as a signal that we would

be in favor of a coup.

MR. BELIN: Secretary Rusk, during your service with

the Government, did you ever hear any discussion of the phrase

known or called Executive Action Capability, which was defined

as a built-in capability to be able to assassinate foreign

leaders if it bacame a policy of this government to do so?

MR. RUSK: I don't recall it, no.

MR. BELIN: Is there any remembrance on your part of

any plan or direction to have a plan to assassinate any Cuban

leaders which might include, among others, Fidel Castro?

MR. RUSK: I assume that there were a good many Cubans

who would have been glad

to assassinate Castro, and I also am

aware of the fact that the State Department and CIA both were

in touch with various dissident Cuban groups.

We had been since

the Eisenhower administration. But, the specific point of the

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assassination of Castro, to my recollection, did not come to ma

for my attention. I cannot testify that down the line there might

not have been some talk of this, but it never came to an action,

a policy action judgment or a decision.

MR. BELIN: By that you mean the decision to go ahead

with the plan?

MR. RUSK: That's right.

MR. BELIN: There are some documents which the Commission

staff has seen which indicate that at a meeting at the State

Department on August 10, 1962, which memoranda say that you were

present, a meeting of a group known as the Special Operations

Group, or the MONGOOSE group, that there was some discussion

about the development of a possible plan to assassinate Castro.

Do you have any recollection of such a meeting or such

discussion?

MR. RUSK: I don't, but that doesn't prove very much

at this point. I do have an 11:00 o'clock telephone date with

my appointment books at the LBJ library to determine whether, in

fact, I was at that meating, and I will report back to you as

soon

as I can find that out. It is entirely possible. You know,

my own personal practice was to do a lot of listening in such

groups, but not to get into the decision phase until the President

and Secratary McNamara and I were ready to face a decision

on

the

matter, because otherwise you would discourage the considerations

of the widest range of possibilities or options that might be

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2217

available.

Mr. Arthur Schlesinger in his book, Thousand Days, once

referred to the fact that I used to sit there in the Cabinet

room silent like an old Buddha. Well, that's right, quite

right, because in most of those meetings with 30 or 40 people

around the room, I did remain silent, and I would see the

President either before the meeting or after the meeting and

have my talk with him on the subject matter, because I had the

feeling that if I sounded off and debated my President in front

of these 30 or 35 people, that we would read about it in the

New York Times or the Washington Post the next morning. So

typically I would sit in a good many meetings without saying

very much, but when we got to the point of decision, that was

a different matter.

MR. BELIN: We also discussed the question of - well,

let me strike that and go back with one other question in this

area. As I understand your statement, you have no specific

recollection of any such discussions at any meetings..

What you

do say though is that they might have occurred so

far as discussing

the possibility, but they did not occur so far as an operational

plan approval is concerned?

MR. RUSK:

Yes. Yes. I am genuinely not trying

• in

any

way to be evasive. I do want to say that when I left the

Department of State, I took no papers, files, records or memoranda

of any sort. I took away my appointments books, which are available

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to anyone who wants to see them at the LBJ library, and copies

of my income: tax returns, and that's it. Everything else was

left there. I have had many interviews and discussions with

people writing articles, dissertations, books on things, in which

was

involvad, and I have long since learned, because of the

mass of things that happened during those eight years, that my

recollection on matters of detail: simply isn't all that reliable

The record is there, and as far as I'm concerned, you are welcome

to it now over in the State Department or wherever it might be.

But, it just means that I just cannot remember every

detail of everything that happened.

I averaged seeing 25 to 30

people for every day for eight years, and that is a good way to

help you not to remember a lot of details that you are trying to

recapture.

MR. BELIN: And I want to now turn to the area of

possible oversight of the Agency. One of the concerns of this

Commission is recommendations that it might make, and I would like

to know whether or not you have any specific recommendations

concerning the oversight of the Agency to make it a more responsive

and

a more effective agency?

MR. RUSK: Well, I think the National

Security Council

could giva

it more oversight along the lines that I have talked

about. I'm not now talking about oversight of "operations,"

because I think that that on the whole worked pretty well through

the

303 Committee, and the discussions that each of the principals

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hađ

with his representative on the 303 Committee.

I almost

always had a talk, sometimes short, sometimes longer, with my

representative on the 303 Committee before a meeting, to take

a look at what was on the agenda and to express views on it.

But I think that the statutory members of the NSC might take a

little closer look at the total operations, the structure, the

budget of the CIA, than they have done in the past.

MR. GRAY: Sir, for the record, could you state who

the statutory members ars that you are referring to?

MR. RUSK: Well, the President, the Vice President,

the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the Director

of the CIA, and then such other officials, such as Cabinet

officers who might be called in ad hoc because of the subject

matter being discussed. The Secretary of the Treasury was

frequently there during my day, and the Attorney General was

frequently there during my day.

MR. GRAY: During your tenure, how many people beyond

the statutory members were normally at NSC meetings, approximately?

MR. RUSK: I would think at an NSC meeting there might

be as many as 20 to 25 people in the Cabinet room.

• MR. GRAY: Do you think it would be preferable to

cut

it down to something more closely approximating the statutory

membership as a general matter?

MR. RUSK: Not necessarily, provided those 20 or 25

people in the room are people who know how to keep their mouth

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shut. Now, that is some doing in our kind of government, because

I do think that there is danger in considering problems of this

sort

in too small a group. I mentioned one of the reasons for

the mistake of the Bay of Pigs. Another reason was that it was

held in such

a small circle that the talents and resources of

the government were not brought to bear upon the problem, and I

am a little concerned about holding these things too closely.

For example, in the famous Tuesday luncheon

sessions

that President Johnson had on Vietnam, there were usually five

or six people, the Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, the

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the Director of the CIA, a note-

taker, plus the President. Occasionally there would be

one or tw

others there.

Now, however, each one of us knew what the agenda was

going to be, and I would take over with me notes and suggestions

from my Department that had been worked on ahead of time for

those Tuesday luncheon sessions, and there we did not close off

other input. And

the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs undoubtedly

had talked to the Joint Chiefs, for example, about the items

that were coming up, you see.

MR. BELIN: General Lemnitzer is nodding his head in

agreement, I see, for the record.

With regard to this oversight, I think one of the things

we talked about last night was the fact that because of the busy

job that each of these members of the NSC had, and their own work,

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that the oversight should be done perhaps chiefly through deputies.

Was that

an accurate

summary?

MR. RUSK: Well, I think a week by week oversight should

be exercised by the kind of interdepartmental committee in which

senior and trusted deputies would normally be those who would

attend meetings, and in the State Department such

people as

Alexis Johnson and Llewallyn Thompson, peopla of that seniority

and integrity, but I do think the statutory members themselves

ought to take a pariodic look at the total intelligence community

situation, including CIA as well.

I am concerned about Congressional oversight. If

this isn't handled carefully, it could destroy the CIA and its

capabilities. Members of Congress operate under a Constitutional

immunity provided by the First Amendment. What they say in

Congress is not subject to question in any other placa, so

basically they are subject only to the possibility of being

expelled by the necessary what is it, two thirds vote of their

particular houses.

Now, that is a most unlikely sanction. There is a

precedent in the Congrass which I think has worked very well, if

the Congress would agree that that is the way they should do it,

and that is the Joint Atomic Energy Committee.

That Committee

is carefully selected, it has facilities and staff which are

highly secure, and they do receive the most sensitive kind of

information in the nuclear field. I think there are very few

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nuclear

secrets which that Joint Committee has not had discussed

with them. And I do not recall at the moment any significant

leak that ever came out of that Committee.

Now, if the Congress itself would approach this matter

of oversight of the CIA in that mood and

spirit, and recognize

that you cannot have a CIA involved in espionage and counter-

espionage and an occasional political operation

somewhere, and

have it

shouted from the rooftops, then I think some Congressional

oversight could be useful.

I personally, but I am biased because I am

an Executive

Branch man, I personally would prefer ex post facto assessment

rather than pre-consultation with regard to whether or not a

particular thing should be done, because that could raise the

question of who makes the decision. You might get, you might

get a steady stream of allaged confrontations between a President

and some group in the Congress that could cause great difficulty

Could I go off the record just a second?

(Discussion off the record.)

MR. RUSK: The Congress

is the representative branch

of the government only for those functions given to the Congress

under the Constitution. The President is the representative

branch of the government with respect to the duties assigned

, to

the President, and so I see no particular reason why we have to

say that the Congress has to participate in everything, nor: is

the Congress particularly willing to do it. For example, on

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the question of amnesty, vitally affected one of the most important

powers of the Congress, the power to raise armies, and in a period

when the Congress was asserting its desire to re-establish its

authority under the Constitution, did anyone in the Congress say

that they ought to have participated in the amnesty decision?

Not at all because it was a no win situation. Whatever the

decision was, you were going to come out behind.

So I don't know whether the Congress -- on one occasior

I invited a subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee to come

down to the State Department on a very private basis to take a

look at some of the technology of the espionage and counter-

espionage, and we showed them

a good many gadgets, and how

various things operate, and it was pretty startling to, them. And

afterwards, at least two of them said to me, we appreciate your

motivation in inviting us down here, but I'm sorry you did it

because we don't want to know.

Now, how much of this kind of thing does the Congress

really want to know when you start to peel the pealing off the

banana? My guess is most of them would prefer not to know some of

these things and have

a chance to quarrel about it later if they

want to.

MR. CONNOR: May I ask one question in this connection?

Even though

generally speaking you think that a joint Congressional

committee with oversight functions with respect to the CIA should

have only a post-audit responsibility, are there some situations,

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such

as the covert operations in the United States and elsewhere,

that preceded the Bay of Pigs actions, where because of the

magnitude and

because of the foreign policy implications, and

because of the possible direct war involvement, that there should

be a preclearance?

MR. RUSK:

Yes. I think there would be situations where

prior consultation would be important. My guess is that had there

been prior consultation on the Bay of Pigs, that that might have

helped us avoid a very serious mistake. President Kennedy did

talk to Senator Fulbright about it, and also talked to the

Vice President Lyndon Johnson about it, both of whom were opposed

to the Bay of Pigs. And so I think there are some, there would

be some things where preconsultation would be very, very much

in point. I was concerned about the notion that somehow you could

not do anything without prior consultation and the consent of

representatives of the Congress, because very often you just

don't have time.

MR. GRAY: It's 11:00 o'clock, sir.

MR. RUSK: I wonder if we could pause for two minutes

while I try to establish the point of where I was on August 10th.

(A brief recess was taken.)

MR. RUSK: I can confirm that there was a meeting in

my conference room on the afternoon of August 10th, 1962, at which

I was

present. There were about a dozen people there, and my

appointment book shows names of those who were there. I have

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asked them to photostat that page, and I will get it to you as

quickly as possible. It does not show that General Lansdale

was there, but he might have been. The list might have been

incomplete.

MR. BELIN: Your appointment book will show the members

present on that?

MR. RUSK: McNamara, McCone, George Ball, and there

were about ten or twelve there.

MR. BELIN:

Secretary Rusk, we

were talking about

oversight, and I would like to ask you to discuss with the

Commission a summary of what we talked about last night concerning

your observations of the kind of a person that should be the

Director of Central Intelligence, with a particular reference

to internal oversight.

MR. RUSK: Well, I do believe that any agency which

is involved with what I would call raw power must be a highly

disciplined agency and from the President on down. I think the

quality and character of the persons who are directors of CIA

and directors of FBI are very important indeed. However, I would

not rely entirely on that. I would myself urge that they be

put on terms

of office of not more than say eight years, but,

of course, subject to the pleasure of the President for periods

shorter than that, because I think it is very

important that

there not be individuals who are in a position to develop power

that somehow is not subject to the normal controls of the people

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who

are slected, the President and the Congress.

I don't want to speak unduly badly of the dead, but

I think we allowed Mr. J. Edgar Hoover to develop just too much

power, and we ought to rotate those offices, and that that would

have a wholesome influence on the way they conduct their offices

I don't

see any way in which one can through organizational

structure or mechanics get complete protection against an

occasional incident of pure indiscipline down the line. That

is present in every large organization in our society, public

and private, and so occasionally things like that will happen.

But I think the quality is of great importance, and I think that

during the period that I was there, I felt myself very fortunate

in the men that were

serving as Director of CIA.

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MR. BELIN: You mentioned that among the restrictions

you would include, in addition to a maximum number of years

that a person sould serve in a position of this kind was the

question of whether or not the DCI should be the brother of

the Secretary of State, or for that matter, the Attorney

General should be the brother of the President.

Do you have any observations along those lines?

MR. RUSK: Yes, I have, for what they are worth.

I may be wrong, but I am clear. I think that the members of

the National Security Council ought, in personal terms, to be

at arms length with the Director of the CIA and the Director

of the FBI. I don't think that it was a particularly good

idea to have the Director of CIA and the Secretary of State

as brothers. This is something George Marshall taught most

of those who worked with him, to keep a kind of an arm's

length from

people above you and below you, because you don't

want personal relationships to interfere with public duty.

And he is very special on that particular point.

I am sorry I didn't

MR. BELIN:

The other aspect was with regard to the

Department of Justice, the Attorney General and the President.

MR. RUSK: Oh, yes.

You know, it is kind of

traditional in this post-War period that the Secretary of

State, the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Treasury

remove themselves from party politics because the issues they

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deal with are supposed to be and expected to be largely

nonpartisan in character. I think our recent experience has

indicated that it would be a good idea

for the Attorney

General to be added to that group, and that the Attorney

General

not be someone who is actively involved in party

politics as the principal law officer of this government.

MR. CONNOR: Or a member of the family of the

President, say?

MR. RUSK: I would think almost any other Cabinet

job would be more appropriate for a member of the family of

the President than the Attorney General or the Secretary of

State and Secretary of Defense.

MR. KIRKLAND: How do you feel, Mr. Secretary, about

the question of whether the DCI should be a career intelligence

officer, perhaps?

MR. RUSK: My feeling on that is a little bit like

my attitude to what extent Ambassadors should be drawn from

career members of the foreign service, that you ought to try

and find the best man that you can. There may be

times when

that person would be a career man, there may be other times

when he would come from the outside, and I would a little bit

rather not try to generalize on that particular point, because

you really ought to find the best man

you can get for the

job.

MR. KIRKLAND: If one of the problems confronting

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the Director

is substantial White House pressure to do things

that might not be prudent, do you think someone who had

an

independent reputation or means of livelihood might be in a

better position to protect the Agency?

MR. RUSK: I doubt that it would turn on money. At

one period --I don't know whether they still do it - but at

the moment anyone enters the Dutch Cabinet, from that moment

on they are guaranteed a full year's

salary when they leave

the Cabinet, and one of my Dutch friends referred to this as

the Go to Hell fund, and one reason was to try to increase the

sense of independence. of

the Cabinet members.

I doubt that would make all that much difference in

the face of the Director of the CIA. I do believe that it is

very important that we distinguish betveen the White House and

the President. During my period, I tried to get my colleagues

into the frame of mind so that if some staff person from the

White House called over there and said that the White House

would like for you to do this, then they were supposed to go

back and say who at the White House. It is one thing if they

were literally conveying a message from the President and quite

another thing if they were not, because I was old-fashioned

enough to believe that if it was not a President speaking on

foreign policy that I was the spokesman for foreign policy.

And so I think we ought to be careful about people

in the White House junior to the President asserting any kind

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2230

of command role, or supervisory role, or directive role, with

regard to either the CIA or the FBI.

Now, I do not think we should try to remove a

President from that role, but my guess is that office has been

immunized for at least another century against abuse of that

command.

MR. CONNOR: Mr. Secretary, along those lines, do

you think that it is wise for the same person to hold the

position of Secretary of State and Assistant to the President

for International or for National Security matters?

MR. RUSK :

Well, that woudd not be my choice. I have

taken the liberty of reminding Mr. Kissinger that he had

learned while he was at the White House that a Secretary of

State must not permit a Henry Kissinger to be in the White

House, and I suspect that that has something to do with his

present arrangements. We had a very good personal working

relationship in that three-corned arrangement, the President,

McGeorge Bundy and myself as far as foreign policy matters

was concerned, and later with President Johnson and Walt

Rostow.

Well, it is important. Dean Acheson once said in the

relations with the President and the Secretary of State, that

it was of the utmost importance that both of them understand

at all times which one of them is President. If that adviser

on National Security Affairs, in the White House, and the

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2231

Secretary of State and the President, all three, have an

adequate and

an honorable working relationship on

a basis of

integrity in dealing with each other, there should not be any

problems developing.

MR. CONNOR: Going back

to a related question of the

role of the Attorney General, was Attorney General Robert

Kennedy present at that meeting in your office to which you

referred?

MR. RUSK: I don't think he was. I don't recall him

as being on the list, but I will have the list, and I will get

it to the Commission.

MR. CONNOR: Was he personally involved in many of

these policy questions having to do with the Cuban situation?

MR. RUSK: He would sit from time to time with the

303 Committee, and occasionally would make suggestions, some

of them good, and some of them that I vetoed. But he was

sort of interested in, you know, counterinsurgency and that

kind of thing, and President. Kennedy asked me to let him

serve

on the 303 Committee. But I always felt free to take up any

problems if I needed to with President Kennedy himself.

MR. KIRKLAND: Are you

aware

of any independent

contacts or relationships that he had with the CIA?

MR. RUSK: No, and it is very hard for me to dig into

that particular point, because the three key people who would

know about that are dead, President Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and

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Allen Dulles. But I would be surprised and disappointed if

President Kennedy, for example, had any kind of understanding

with Mr. Dulles that very much affected our foreign policy

without the knowledge of the Secretary of State. I can't

swear that that was not so, obviously, because we are talking

about a negative here. But I didn't get the impression that

such a channel was operating.

MR. BELIN: Were there some meetings that Allen

Dulles might have had with President Kennedy that you did not

know about?

MR. RUSK: Oh, I am sure he dropped in on him

occasionally for some additional briefings on different

situations, and I am sure, I know that J. Edgar Hoover

used to

go into see the President, or the two Presidents that I served,

occasionally on his own to report on various things. So the

answer to that is yes.

MR. BELIN: To follow up with J. Edgar Hoover,

one

comment

you made concerning a maximum term of service, I

believe in our discussions last night you said that one of the

major concerns you had was the possibility that if an agency

like the FBI or CIA would be able to terrorize others,

including possibly members of Congress:

MR. RUSK: Well, again I am not sure I am right on

this, but I have developed over the years

strong

aversion to

monopoly of sources of information on important matters.

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am a little concerned to have all information in the Federal

government on internal security matters come through one agency

and one head of that agency. I am

just

a little worried about

the need for a little more diversity.

I don't quite know how

to work this out, but I would be reluctant to have one man

play a decisive role in making judgments about internal

security problems in this country.

Now, one answer to that might be, and I defer to a

member of your Commission, might be closer and more effective

supervision by the Attorney General of the FBI and closer and

more effective supervision by the CIA by the statutory members

of the National Security Council.

MR. BELIN: Secretary Rusk, last night we talked

about your concern that the intelligence community must be

urged to have priorities in its job to reflect the regional

trends of American

foreign policy

so that they don't always

develop an insatiable appetite for information on everything

that

might not be relevant to American foreign policy.

MR. RUSK: Well, I am aware of the fact that there

has been discussion of priorities from time to time, and we do,

in fact, use the concept of priorities in terms of the

expenditures of resources both in people and money. But I

think we might, we might press that further and be somewhat

more restrictive.. in the types of activities that

are conducted

in particular countries. I mean, it doesn't make much

difference

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to the United States, for example, as to what happens in

Burundi. I do not know how much effort they are putting

into

Burundi, but they shouldn't be doing it because it's there and

we need

a book full

of information on Burundi. We ought to do

it as a direct instrument of foreign policy rather than some

momentum of the intelligence community working on its own.

(Discussion off the record.)

MR. RUSK: I think there is a need for supervision of

intelligence activities by policy officers who themselves ought

to make some policy judgments about the kinds of intelligence

that are useful rather than leave this question to the

insatiability of an intelligence community for whom no amount

of information is superfluous.

So I think every year or so there ought to be careful

thought to priorities and directions, and maybe types of

activities.

MR. BELIN: Now, Secretary Rusk, one comment you made

last night concerned your observations about the very fact that

in our country people write books about the CIA.

MR. RUSK: Well, I would not wish to be pressed to

name individual countries, but I think one of the tributes to

the constitutionality of our system is that people can work in

these agencies and then go out and write books about them and

survive. In most countries I know if that happened they would

be struck down by a truck, run over in the countryside, and

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that would be the end of it.

But they do that here, they write best sellers. Well,

it

is

a very troublesome thing when you get into this kind of

kiss and tell writing in this particular field, and it is a

danger to which the intelligence community, I suppose, is

inevitably exposed to.

MR. BELIN: Do you feel there should be greater

restrictions on the contractual enforcement of Agency contracts

with employees not to divulge such information?

MR. RUSK: Well, I have suggested that you get ahold

of the departure statement which

I signed with the Department

of State. It is very far-reaching in terms of my pledge with

respect to the kinds of information that I in the first place

would not take away with me, and secondly would not reveal,

and it cites about twenty sections of the U.S. Code which

purport to provide the statutory back-up for the requirements

that they cited in that statement.

Whether they still use it

after the Freedom of Information Act, I just don't know.

But I do thihk there is a very important problem here about

whose

information it is when people come in and work in

sensitive jobs in government. There is still confusion, as I

understand it, about whose it is. I mean, what about people

who squirrel away in their attics classified material, take

them off with them, and I gather now when they die those papers

become the properties of their families.

I think my own feeling

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is that if it is not clear, if it is clear in the statutes

they ought to be forced, and if it is not clear, then it ought

to be clarified by statute as to whose

information it is when

one

is working in a government department, particularly in

sensitive departments, and obtain such material. This is one

of the messy fringes on our situation which I think we haven't

straightened out carefully enough.

MP. BELIN: Another comment you had from

an overall

basis about the CIA was that because of its origin with the

oss, that might have affected the type: of activities to which

the Agency addressed itself in peacetime. Do you have any

comments on that?

MR. RUSK: Well, this has a bearing, I think, not

only on what people thought at the time that the National

Security Act of 1947, as enacted, was, but also a good many of

the personnel in CIA were brought over from OsS, and it may

well be that some of the activities that they conducted during

war time appeared to be entirely appropriate in a Cold War

situation. But I think also that they were even more influenced

by the events of the immediate post-war period.

We had reduced our armed forces to a point where the

Joint Chiefs of Staff told me in 1946 that we did not have a

division in our Army, not a group in our Air Force, that could

be rated ready for combat. Our ships were being put in moth-

balls as

fast as we could find berths for them, and those that

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remained afloat were manned by skeleton crews. Our Defense

Budget in '47, '48 was coming down, came down to almost $11

billion, $11.3 billion, on its way down to a target of $10

billion. During that period, Joseph Stalin, looking out across

the West, and not seeing any divisions, tried to keep the

northwest province of Iran, demanded the two eastern provinces

of Turkey, he ignored the peace treaty with the countries of

Eastern Europe with

respect to free elections and their political

future, and he gave support to the guerrilas going to Greece,

he pulled the coup d'etat in Czechoslovakia, he barricaded

Berlin, and he gave the principal go ahead light for the North

Koreans to go after South Koreans.

Now, that was the origin of the Cold War, but all of

the revisions of historians are to the contrary, but that's

another story. But in that kind of an atmosphere it is

understandable that the United States government

and the CIA

consider that we were in a pretty embattled situation. It was

not until about 1950 under the leadership of the Secretary of

State, and against the opposition of the then-secretary of

Defense that we began to build up our armed forces again.

Now, this still is a pretty rough world situation and

if there

are ways in which we can do things by covert means

that

would hold off the time when we might have to consider whether

you use major military : means, I think we ought to maintain

that

capability. And I can never generalize against CIA-type

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activities, because

I was

student in Germany and watched the

storm troopers take the public platforms and the streets away

from the

democratic parties of Germany. And I would have

been'delighted in those days if there haa been CIA's in

Britain and France and the United States that could have come

in there and

found

ways to help the democratic parties of

Germany, and the failure to do so resulted

in 50 million

people being killed.

So I feel very strongly that although we ought to,

that

a President, Secretary of State, and Secretary of Defense

must keep this sort of thing very much under control and take

responsibility for it, that we must have this capability.

MR. BELIN: Do you have any observations concerning

the

effectiveness or any possible changes in the President's

Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board as an oversight vehicle or

a related vehicle to CIA?

MR. RUSK: Well, I don't want to do a disservice to

people who have rendered dedicated service. I have had the

impression over the years the Foreign Intelligence Advisory

Board gets to be more gung-ho than anybody else, and that

sometimes

some of these things are urged by the Foreign

Intelligence Advisory Board which operationally may not make

much sense.

So I think that it is all right to have then

advise, but they

should not be permitted to make the decisions

or to influence the decisions unduly.

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MR. BELIN: In your opinion, are they an effective

oversight agency at the present time?

MR. RUSK: Oh, I don't think they are effective,

at least in my experience they have not been effective in the

kind of oversight that is really needed. And I think the

oversight should be given by those who are in positions

established by our Constitution and

statutes, the President,

and the Secretary of State, and the Secretary of Defense.

MR. BELIN: Secretary Rusk, there have been recent

allegations that the CIA was

in some way involved with

Lee

Harvey Oswald. There have been also allegations that perhaps

the State Department did not send over to the Warren Commission

all of

its files concerning Oswald

and

particularly about his

trips abroad.

Do you have any comments concerning either of these

allegations?

MR. RUSK: Well I never heard of Lee Harvey Oswald

until the assassination, and we went through what I thought

was a very intensive and thorough examination of the question

as to whether any foreign government might have been involved

with Lee Harvey Oswald, because that could have been an issue

of war and peace.

Now, I personally was convinced that there was no

indication that any foreign government was involved, and so

testified to the Warren Commission, and my testimony is

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available

to you.

I have never had any, the slightest reason to believe,

that Lee Harvey Oswald

was working for or pursuant to anything

that came out of CIA whatever, and I must say, I really believe

that anyone who charges that anyone in the United States

government was involved in the assassination of Kennedy without

hard proof is guilty of just sheer evil.

MR. BELIN: Did you ever come across

any information

in any manner whatsoever that indicated that Oswald

was in

any way connected with the FBI?

MR. RUSK:

NO.

Let me say that we did know of his travels and things

of that sort. I am a little shocked to hear that there were

materials in the State Department that were not turned over

to the Warren Commission, because the order was to turn them

all over.

MR. BELIN: When you say you were shocked to hear,

you mean shocked that the allegation is that?

MR. RUSK: Shocked by the allegations, yes.

MR. BELIN: To your knowledge, was there any

materials that were ever in the State Department files or any

other government files that you know of that were not turned

over?

MR. RUSK: Not to my knowledge, but sometimes when

you are desperately looking for a piece of paper, it is often

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very hard to find it, and it is entirely possible that whatever

the instructions might have been that there might have been

something lying around and somebody didn't transmit it.

Whether this was simply through bureaucratic clumsiness or

whether it was through indiscipline, I just can't say.

MR. GRAY: Mr. Secretary, one point that came up last

night was the question of oversight of CIA collection efforts.

Now, the covert action is supervised by what was

then the 303

Committee, and you testified that some sensitive or potentially

risky types of collections were

presented to you and other

members of the Administration.

What about the day to day overseas collection by

clandestine techniques, is there any supervision outside of the

CIA of that?

MR. RUSK: I don't believe that it is necessary for

the President and Cabinet officers to get into the details of

collection, unless they involve methods and techniques which

could raise major issues of policy.

In other words, I don't think we need to know who are

the agents and things of that sort. I do think that the

Director of the CIA ought to be in charge of his own shop, and

I ought to think that each one of our Ambassadors abroad ought

to have complete access to whatever is being done in the country

to which they are assigned by any representative of the United

States government.

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President Kennedy wrote a letter to all Ambassadors

on that particular subject. Now, as I checked around among

different Ambassadors, a good

many of them exercised that

right under that letter. There were others who simply didn't

because they didn't think it was worthwhile or necessary, or

things of that sort.

(Discussion off the record.)

MR. GRAY :

Now, when the CIA has agents or sources

of information in this country, whether because they are, let

us say foreign diplomats, or in situations such as you had in

the Miami area with the Cuban emigre community, is there

anyone in a position comparable to that of the Ambassador

overseas who is outside of CIA and can monitor this day to day

activity, to your knowledge?

MR. RUSK: I think not in detail.

MR. GRAY: Would you think that there should be?

MR. RUSK :

No more than anyone outside of the

Department monitored these thousands of cables a day that go

out of the Department of State.

MR. GRAY: Would you think that there should be some

need for supervision of that kind of activity?

MR. RUSK: Well, it would require - one man couldn't

do it. It would require substantial staff and, well, who is

that staff? To whom is he going to report? I just don't

think that is too much of a problem, actually.

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MR. BELIN: With regards to the question of staff,

do you think a Joint Committee of Congress might have too

powerful a staff so far as the effective operation of the

Agency is concerned if we were to adopt that approach of

Congressional oversight?

MR. RUSK: Well, if they approach it on the same

basis as they approached the Joint Atomic Energy Committee,

think that would. not be all that much

of a problem.

MR. BELIN: You mentioned the Miami area. To your

knowledge, did Castro had any penetration of what went on in

the Cuban exile community in Miami?

MR. RUSK:

I forget the detailed

evidence, but I

always assumed that he did have them penetrated.

MR. BELIN: Are there any questions by any members

of the commission?

MR. GRISWOLD: One of the things that has come to us

is the explanation for

some of the things

which the CIA did

from 1966 to 1973 domestically which had caused

concern with

a result of pressures from the President.

Now, how can the CIA be guarded against pressures

from the President?

I recognize this is an extraordinarily

difficult question.

MR. RUSK: It is a difficult question, and in trying

to find the right answer to that question you don't want to

create a situation where CIA is independent of the President.

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MR. GRISWOLD: Right.

MR. RUSK: So you have to start with the kind of man

you have as President.

However, I think that --

MR. GRISWOLD: And I took the time period in to

indicate both Presidents so that it is not a political question.

MR. RUSK:

Right.

I would think that the key to that would be that

such questions should be discussed by the statutory

members

of the National Security Council. It would be very difficult

for a President to abuse his powers with people sitting there

who have a sense of the tradition of their office

and

who

can pull a President up by the coattails and say, now, wait

a minute, now this is out of bounds, let's don't go down that

trail.

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MR. GRISWOLD: What about the Bay of Pigs operation?

MR. RUSK: Well, some of us did not serve President

Kennedy did not serve President Kennedy very well on

that,

because of just that factor. For example -- well, we were all

new in our relations with each other, but in retrospect I should

have insisted that

a crucial question be asked of the Joint

Chiefs of Staff and that is, if you were going to do this

operation with American forces, what would you consider your

requirements to be? And that is, ask the Joint Chiefs to come

up with

a plan to do this same operation with American forces.

And I can guarantee you that what they would say would have

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been necessary for the job would have been in such

sharp

contrast to the capabilities of this brigade that that itself

might well have

squashed the whole thing.

since this

was a

CIA operation, I think the Joint Chiefs were perhaps a little

timid - well, no, let's put it the other way. They were not

asked for the kind of professional military

judgment

to which

the President should have been exposed. They did comment on

it but in a rather, I thought at the time a somewhat casual

way, because it was not strictly their business, you

see.

Now, I

think we learn a lot of mistakes in a very

hard way with the Bay of Pigs, and I think that some of those,

some of the reasons

for that mistake ought to be impressed

upon people's minds just as the mistakes made under the general

situation called Watergate.

MR. BELIN:

DO yOu

mean to imply that the military

•should have taken over the operation?

MR. RUSK: No, no.. No, no. But a

seasoned,

professional military judgment on the point as to whether such

a brigade had the chance of a snowflake in hell.

MR. KIRKLAND: Do you think there is a built-in

tendency in the CIA, with the background of the way this was

evolved, toward a degree of adventurism which needs

fairly

severe checking?

MR. RUSK: It is possible that at different periods

there might have been those who were too much the eager

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beavers, but my concern now is that they have had the

daylights scared out of them and they will crawl

off under

their shells and will be too timid.

MR. BELIN: DI. Shannon, I believe you had a

question?

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DR. SHANNON: Yes.

I wondered, you said that this is on covert activities,

and again, this is only partially a responsibility of this

Committee, but it does affect our concerns, because the

back-up for the covert activities very often has domestic

implications. So I wonder, you say we should keep this

capability, yet apparently originally it resided, right after

the Second World War, in the State Department, and the

suggastion has been made that perhaps

small, covert capability

could be in the State Department, and that this would

perhaps

help the CIA if it were rid of covert business to concentrate

on intelligence.

Do you have any views on this?

MR. RUSK: Well, it is very hard for us to lose an

organization in our governmertal structure, to tuck it away

where nobody hears about it and it doesn't come before

parliamentary review and things of that sort. And maybe we

should have tried that at the beginning, because so much of

CIA's activities are for all practical purposes overt, and

maybe we might have had something called a Central Information

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Agency, and then tucked

something away somewhere that would

be as secret as some of those agencies in other governments

that operate in this field. But I just don't know whether

that would work in our particular, complicated, Constitutional

system where the powers of Congress are always involved, and

it is difficult for us to hide things away.

MR. SHANNON: I have a couple of more questions, if

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I may.

MR. BELIN: Go ahead, and then General Lemnitzer has

some.

WARD & PAUL

MR. SHANNON: Do you have any views as to the general,

without going into spscifics, the general aspect of domestic

activities of the CIA? And clearly, one of the problems with

this Commission is the clear and conflicting, well, clear, clear

necessity of intelligence and secrecy on the one hand, but

conflicting claims of constitutional rights and civil rights

for individual citizens of the United States.

MR. RUSK:: It seems to

me, sir, that they

are two

different questions. One is the bureaucratic question as to

whether one agency is intruding onto the proper responsibilities

of another agency. To me, that is not all that

much of a big

deal, and that occurs all of the time all

over government, and

I am sure that the FBI has stepped outside of its assignment

occasionally.

But the other question you have mentioned, the

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question of the Constitutional rights of American citizens,

from whatever source, I think is very important. Last year I

testified before Senator Muskie's Committee in which I

expressed some doubt about subjecting all surveillance type

activities of the unusual type to the supervision of the

courts in this country

on the ground that I was a little troubled

about the idea of getting the judges into this kind of

business, because it is a mean and dirty business.

Since then, I hava rather changed my mind, and I

am inclined to think that where the government feels that there

must be the types of surveillance which could intrude on

constitutional rights, that for whatever it might be, foreign

policy, national security or otherwise for American citizens

and resident aliens, that that should ba done under the

supervision of a court.

Now, it is going to be difficult to state that in

such a way as to exclude the diplomatic community, and I do

not think we want to extend constitutional rights to the

diplomatic community, because they do not have the duties of

citizenship to go along with it.

MR. SHANNON: One other quick one here. I don't

want to pre-empt the General, who has something, but you

mentioned the CIA sometimes, you balieve, got into some

activities that were questionable because

thay had the money.

They are exempted, essentially, from a number of the accounting

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responsibilities of other Federal

agencies.

Is this essential to their functions, or do you

believe that some regular appropriation control over them

similar to the State Department and other would be possible

without destroying their role?

MR. RUSK: I am inclined to think that at least part

of the CIA budget ought not to be on the public record. It

mas be that there is a part of it that can be, but I think there

ought to be some covert money that is available to the CIA

handled by people in the Congress who understand what is being

done and the need for this for covert funds.

I parsonally would not like to see this handled in

the normal budgetary processes of the government. And for

example, we give away an enormous amount of

information every

year in these large budget presentations of the Department of

Defense to the Congress, and I think certainly in the

sensitive agencies we overdo public knowledge to some extent.

MR. LEMNITZER: We have had a suggestion that if the

government continues to support covert operations that the

covert operations should be removed from the CIA and put in a

central intelligence group, which was the arrangement in the

early days between the transition from OSS to CIA.

Do you think such an arrangement would solve any of

the problems that are involved in carrying out effective covert

operations?

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MR. RUSK: I can imagine there could be some

advantage to a reorganization that would change the names all

around, because CIA has gotten to be a kind

of a slogan for

propoganda, both overseas and at home. And

sometimes a fresh

start might help in that regard.

But I don't believe that you would divert energetic

and opposition Congressmen or investigative reporters or any

people of that sort from trying to locate whatever it is we

are talking about, and I am sure

they would discover it. The

simple fact is that we are a government that just doesn't know

how to keep our mouths shut, and so I don't think you are going

to succeed in hiding some such agency. But I can see that

it

might be desirable at some point to start over and change the

names.

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As you recall, in the foreign aid business we have

changed the name about every four or five years, when it runs

out of gas and needs a fresh start. And so

I think we could

do it again.

MR. BELIN: Secretary Connor, do you have any other

question?

Do you have more, General?

MR. LEMNITZER: NO.

MR. CONNOR: Mr. Secretary, we have received

evidence

about a feud that developed between the FBI and the CIA when

J. Edgar Hoover was the FBI Director.

And the testimony

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indicates that under his instructions there was a lack of

effective cooperation between the FBI and the CIA, at least

in certain respects during a period of time, and, therefore,

there was pressure on the CIA to do some things in the domestic

field that otherwise would have been done by the FBI or by

joint action.

I wonder if in light of that experience, of which I

am sure you are aware, you would have

any recommendations for

a clear delineation of responsibilities as between the FBI

and

the CIA, and particularly with respect to what is done in the

United States?

MR. RUSK: Well, I can understand why some confusion

might have arisen because the Director of Central Intelligence

is also the Director of Central Intelligence for the community

as a whole, and we used to get daily reports

from the CIA which

were all source reports. I mean, I could recogniza a good many

of these reports as coming out of State Department cables, for

example, and I knew others probably came

from the FBI.

Now, it may well be that that coordinating function of

DCI led to some staff support in his own agency on some of

these, what some people might call

internal

security questions.

But I think a more important point is if you try to assign

functions, it is very hard to do it in terms of geography,

because espionage and counterespionage is

problem that exists

in the United States as well as abroad. It is very hard to say

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that as soon as you hit the boundary of the United States you

transfer the whole business from one operation to another,

because I think you run into a good deal of trouble that way.

It is true that there was some lack of effective

cooperation between the CIA and the FBI at times, and this is

partly a matter of personality, and is one

of the reasons that

I feel that these people ought to be on terms not to exceed

eight years. I testified to Senator Muskie's Subcommittee that

talking to J. Edgar Hoover was about like talking to President

DeGaulle, and, you know, there is only one DeGaulle and there

is only one J. Edgar Hoover, so I anticipate this problem is

not going to be repeated any time soon.

But, I do think that there ought

to be a close

working relationship.

Now bear in mind, gentlemen, that there is a very

lively and active

exchange of information between different

elements of the intelligence community, and I have no doubt

that other agencies have built up files which include a lot of

raw data from the FBI, even though it was not in that agency's

principal charter to have, or to collect, that kind of

information. For example, in the State Department

where 95

percent of our jobs, at least, are rated as sensitive, there

is investigation of applicants, many of whom

are

not hired.

There is investigation of officers on the job. That is

renewed, I think, every five years to bring their sacurity

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clearances up to date. Every time you move

from one sacurity

clearance to another, you get another investigation. There

must be tens of thousands of files on individuals in the State

Department, but

a lot of that material is

from

the

FBI.

So I think, if we could - I think we have an

opportunity now to develop a more

cooperative working relation-

ship within the intelligence community, and make it clear that

CIA is not responsible for what would normally be interpreted

to be internal security, but I would not exclude CIA from a

lively interest in the operations of

foreign governments in this

country, because you cannot separate those from their activities

abroad.

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MR. BELIN: Dean Griswold?

MR. GRISWOLD: Were you familiar with the fact that

mail between the Soviet Union and the United States was being

intercepted and opened during all of the time you were

Secretary of State?

MR. RUSK: I think I was of the fact.

I didn't know

to

what extent, and I think we did

make

some adjustments there

to relax on a good many publications and things of that sort

where there was no particular, seemed to be no particular,

problem. I was curious the other day to read

a manuscript that

came the other day to the University of Georgia Press that at

the beginning of the Republic there

was

a rigorous scrutiny

of the mails for quite a long time before people began to move

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in to institute some privacy in the mails.

I will try and get

some

citations

on that for the staff to look at. But this is

not new in our history.

MR. GRISWOLD: I was not thinking of publications,

but

of letters. Did copies of such letters ever

come to you in

intelligence reports?

MR. RUSK: No. It wouldn't come to me in that form,

sir. Normally it would come to me as a piece of information,

and it would normally have some introductory phrase, and this

was for the purpose, I suppose, of protecting

sources,

some

introductory phrase saying usually reliable sources, or something

of that sort.

Then if I wanted to prick up my ears and ask about

the source for a particular item, I could do so and

I would be

told. I don't recall any instance, any information that came

out of this mail that ever caused me to ask

for

a source,

and

it turned out to be opening mail.

MR. BELIN: Mr. Kirkland, do you have any questions?

MR. KIRKLAND: I have a couple, Mr. Secretary.

Do you recall any constant, repeated concern by

President Johnson to find out foreign sources of support for

the domestic dissident groups, that this was

an issue that he

was continually concerned with?

MR. RUSK: Well, we were interested in that point.

think that we were inclined to assume that

it was occurring,

I

TO

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because it would be a perfectly normal and natural thing to

occur under the circumstances of that period.

I didn't have any real doubt in my mind, although I

don't have in my mind a list of citations I can give you for

hard proof, but I am sure it occurred, and there

were in

terms

of movement of money and movament of

people and

things of that

sort.

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Off the record.

(Discussion off the record.)

MR. RUSK: There were black operations going on

all

of the time in this country.

MR. KIRKLAND: Do you see any apparent reason why

the CIA should not properly attempt to try to find out what

those

sourcas were?

MR. RUSK: No, I think somebody has got to. •

MR. KIRKLAND:

Do you have any doubts about that

being

proper operation of the CIA?

MR. RUSK: I don't think so. I think that in terms

of action that it should not be CIA's action in the sense of

breaking and entering and things of that sort. I think that

the FBI ought to be the action responsive

agency in this

country, as I have said.

MR. KIRKLAND: Domestic in terms of working overseas?

MR. RUSK: Oh, overseas, I think it is essential for

CIA to try to run down that kind of thing because we are the

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targets of a good many political

systems.

MR. BELIN: Secretary Rusk, as a general

overview,

you might relate to the Commission

the comment

YOU

had

last

night concerning the fact that there is no real substitute for

the getting of people of character and quality on the job, and

sometimes mistakes are made by the frailties

of human nature.

MR. RUSK: Well, now that I am permanently a private

citizen and think back on the years during and since World War

II, I just don't believe that

there is any way

in which you

can guarantee through organizational devices or arrangements

that you escape the frailties of human nature. There are going

to be mistakes, mistakes of judgment. Any of us who have

served in government have had our share of them. I have had

mine. And therefore, the greatest importance has to be assigned

to the character

of those who are

carrying the responsibility

as well as insistence upon adherence through all ranks of the

policies established by the President and through his delegated

deputies. I happen to balieve that in the Executive Branch

of

the government that those in civilaan clothes are as responsible

to the President as are people in uniform, and that otherwise

our system of democracy would break down, because

nobody

elected these people in civilian clothes to make policy or

appeal to a higher law and defy the President.

They elected the President and the Congress to

determine the policies of the government, and so

I think we

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ought to look for people of the highest competence and the

strongest characters to take these jobs of responsibility,

and then we will have to rely upon them. I do not see any way

in which you can guarantee that there would not be mistakes

and

failures and occasional stepping across the bounds.

MR. CONNOR: Mr. Secretary, would you comment on the

obedience of a Cabinet official or highly placed Federal

official who was ordered by the President to do

something

that

violates the law clearly or is unconstitutional?

MR. RUSK: No, no. I was once instructed by

President Kennedy to make an expenditure which my lawyers told

me was unlawful, that the money was not

for that kind of

purpose, and I spoke to the Attorney General about it and

said

what do I do. And I think his reply was well, if you go to

prison, your salary will continue while you are in prison.

Well, that was not very helpful. But anyhow, I

refused to make the expenditure and told the President why, and

he did not pursua it.

No, I think that there can come a time when if a

President persisted then the Cabinet officer would have to

resign, if that is what the President wanted to do.

MR. CONNOR: I agree with that interpretation.

MR. BELIN: I also think you commented that things

sometimes don't go right anywhere else either, including the

law as well as business and labor, and

so we can't always expect

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to go right in government. Is that a fair summary?

MR. RUSK:

Any institution is going to have its

problems, because we

are all people with feet of clay, and

those feet of clay are going to show once in awhile.

MR. BELIN: Do you have any other comments you want

to

make to the Commission in closing?

MR. RUSK: I think my strongest concern, gentlemen,

is that during this present period of nervousness and

sensa-

tinalism and investigation and reassessment that we not come

out of this period with a serious crippling of our intelligence

community and of our capability to engage in certain operations

which

are in lieu of war.

Now, at the present time there is a strong

mood of

withdrawal from world affairs among

the American people.

You

can look at a lot of polls and investigations and get impres-

sions around the country, and one gets the feeling

at the

present time that the American people would not support the

use of American armed forces anywhere in the world unless

there were a direct attack upon a territory

of the United

States itself.

Now, that could mean that there could be

steady

inroads on what we would think of was the

Free World by those

who were committed to impose something else on

the Free World.

And we can find ourselves in a situation where littla by

little a situation builds up where we are in such a desparate

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situation then that we have to face the agony of a

nuclear

decision, and

then we are all dead.

And I would hope that we

would maintain a capability

of trying to deal with some of these situations

at an early

stage through careful and sophisticated

political

activity that

would help us avoid the horrendous decisions that might lie

at the end of the trail if the present trends continue too far

into the future.

MR. BELIN: Are there any other questions by the

members of the Commission?

MR. SCHWARZER: Dave, do you

have a minute for a

question?

MR. BELIN: Yes.

MR. SCHWARZER: I wanted to ask you, Secretary Rusk,

whether you thought in line with your suggestion that we should

attract the best possible men for the job of DCI, whether it

would help to assign Cabinet level status to that position and

whether that would perhaps make him a more effective

person

in the efforts to coordinate the activities of the intelligence

community and how that would work?

MR. RUSK: I am not sure that

that is very important,

quite frankly, because the Cabinet is not that important as a

corporate body. In our system, the Cabinet really is not

policymaking group. The chain of command goes from individual

Cabinet officer to the President, and the Cabinet is usually

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an

information exchanging body.

And secondly, I just don't believe we improve things

very much by the continual inflation of titles.

When I became

Assistant Secretary of State, there were three. • I think : now

there must be eighteen people in the State Department that

either carry the title or have the equivalent rank.

I remember

once one of our experienced former

Ambassadors was cautioning

on this and he

said, bear in mind

that the term Madam started as the

address

for

a Queer. Now,

so I really don't beliave that changes in title make any

difference, and I don't believe adding him to the Cabinet

will. I think it is much more important that he be closely

with and always present at the meetings of the National Security

Council, because that is where the real decisions have to be

made.

MR. KIRKLAND: Mr. Secretary, I have the impression

that in the Foreign Service, the Office of the Inspector

General is a fairly critical one and has

substantial amount

of authority and an important role in the administration.

DO

you feel that a strengthening of that operation inside of the

CIA would be desirable to help?

MR. RUSK: Of an Inspector General type operation

inside of the CIA?

MR. KIRKLAND: Yes.

MR. RUSK: I think that would be very useful. I also

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think it might be well --

2

MR. KIRKLAND: It is true that it is a very important

operation.

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MR. RUSK: It is, and I tried to strengthen it in

some respects when I was there.

I think also the Inspector

General of it or the Inspectors of the State Department ought

to check when they make their visits to Embassies, check with

the Ambassadors on the extent to which he is fully in charge

of all activities by all officials of the American government,

whatever their agency or department in his own Embassy in the

country to which he is assigned, and that this letter of

President Kennedy's, which is a matter of public record, should

ba emphasized

so that if anything does

go wrong, it is the

Ambassador who

is held responsible in the first

instance.

MR. BELIN: That assumes the Ambassador will be

tight-lipped on all occasions, I assume?

MR. RUSK:

would be what?

MR. BELIN: Tight-lippad at all times?

MR. RUSK: Yes, but I think on matters of this

sort he is likely to be, because of the consaquences of his

not baing, at least in the country where he is assigned.

MR. BELIN: Any other comments, that you would like

to make for the Commission, sir?

MR. RUSK: I don't think so.

MR. BELIN: Thank you very much for coming up here

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and bearing with us last night. Thank you, very much.

Now we have one more witness this morning.

If you would raise your right hand to be sworn, please,

this is Mrs. Sammie Newman, a Notary Public for the District

of Columbia.

MRS. NEWMAN: Do you swear to tell the truth, the

whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?

MR. GRAY: I do.

MR. BELIN: Thank you very much.

TESTIMONY OF GORDON GRAY

MR. BELIN: I wonder if you would state your name

for the record, sir.

MR. GRAY: My name is Gordon Gray, no middle

initial.

MR. BELIN: MI. Gray, you have had quite extensive

servica with the government of this country, and I wonder if

you could briefly summarize that for the Commission?

MR. GRAY: It would be easier, sir, if I use a few

notes. I think we can do it more quickly.

Well, I served in the United States Army from 1942

to 1945, first as a private, being released as a Captain.

This was near the close of the war.

I came back, I cama to Washington, I served overseas

I might say in General Bradley's Advanced Headquarters while

I was overseas as a juniormost officer in his Advanced

SECR

CIA HAS NO OBJECTION TO

DECLASSIFICATION AND/OR

RELEASE OF THIS DOCUMENT,

the testin sag

pins

social Asst.

Preside.A

Gordos frog,

bifore the Rockefells

Commissisa,

21 AFR 75

(16 2262-2294)

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2263

Headquarters. I came back out of the Army in 1947 and became

an Assistant Secretary

of the Army in 1949, and became Under

Secretary of the Army and then Secretary of the Army, which

post I held until some time before the Korean

War broke out.

I then became a Special Assistant for

President

truman

for the purpose of writing a report on foreign economic

policy which was published in November, I guess, of that year.

After the election, in 1951, I came back to Washington at

President Truman's request to organize an organizatior which

was somewhat abortive, known as the Psychological Strategy

Board, but which put me in very close contact, in contact.

with

the intelligence matters, obviously.

MR. BELIN:

Where physically did that Board meet?

MR. GRAY:

That Board physically met in 712 Jackson

Place. As a matter of fact, that is where it was organized

and created.

MR. BELIN:

Pardon me. Go ahead.

When you and I met this morning at 712 Jackson Place

at our Headquarters, it was like going home to you in a

sense,

wasn't it?

MR. GRAY: It was,

and that's not the and of it, as

you will see in a moment.

. In 1953 I was a member of the so-called Jackson

Committee, and I think it was called the

President's Committee

on International Information Activities headed up by William

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Harding

Jackson, and C.D. Jackson was

a member of the Committee,

and one of the principal staff members was Wayne Jackson, and

so it got to be known as the Jackson Committee, but it was a

Committee set up to study the Cold

War, and what we should do

about it by President Eisenhower..

In 1955 -- well, in the meantime, in 1950, I had gone

to the University of North Carolina to preside there.

back here in 1955 as Assistant Secretary of Defense for

I came

International Security Affairs. In 1956, I became a Director

of the Office of Defense Mobilization. In 1958, I became

Special Assistant to the President for National Security

Affairs.

WARD & PAUL

And I may say that when this was done, this was my

office.

MR. BELIN: This was in 1956 as Director

of ODM

0r 1958-593

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MR. GRAY: In 1958, my office, I had to go down to

the corner of tha building, and I have

forgotten which floor,

and I have been into this building so many times.

MR. BELIN: So the Vice President's Conference Room

is where you once sat?

MR. GRAY: That's right.

• And then in 1961 I became

a member of the President's

Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, appointed by President

Kennedy and reappointed by successive Presidents, although I

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think it is fair to say that the present President has taken

no action with

respect to this Board.

MR. BELIN: Basically you have been a

member of the

PFIA: since 1961, is that correct?

MR. GRAY: Yes, since May. I looked it up this

morning and I thought it was earlier, but it turns out to have

been May 6, 1961.

MR. BELIN: "And you were

a member of the National

Security

--

MR. GRAY:

16 May, excuse me.

MR. BELIN: And you were

a member of the National

Security Council until the 1949 amendments

to the. Act, I

believe.

Is that accurate?

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MR. GRAY:

That is right, and the first act which

created -- well, it was in the national military establishment,

not the Defense Department and the Service Secretaries were

all

members of the National Security Council. And I briefly

served when I became Secretary. Then in '49 the Act was changed,

and the Defense Department

was created, and various other changes

were made, and the Service Secretaries were dropped, and I often

say that Stuart Symington and I are the only two.

people who

have ever been kicked off of the National Security Council and

are still alive.

Later, of course, as Assistant Secretary of Defense,

ISA, I was the backup to the Secretary

of Defense, and

attended

the National Security Council meetings with him, briefed him

on the meetings, and my next assignment, ODM, I was

a member,

statutory member of the Council, and then beginning in

'58 until the end of the Administration, I helped the President

run the Council.

MR. BELIN: Did you in your work, either on the National

Security Council or as backup representative, did you ever feel

the National Security Council undertook very much oversight of

the CIA?

MR. GRAY: Well, I would know more clearly in the years

from '58 to early '61, because I was really a part of the machinery

of the Council. There was not much continuing oversight in the

sense of the Council members examining what the various intelligence

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agencies were doing.

There was an annual review of the activities

of the Central Intelligence Agency, and of course, every meeting

of the NSC began with a briefing by the DCI, which necessarily

kept the members informed about certain or many aspects of

intelligence. But I think it fair to say that the Council

itself did not specifically spend much time reviewing intelligence

activities.

The Council did, of course, in a paper -- this

is parhaps known to the members, and I don't want to cover a

lot of ground which you have covered -- the Council had as the

Chairman well remembers, adopted a paper called NSC 54/12, which

really authorized the covert, the baginning of the covert

activities of the Agency. That Committee, I think the Chairman

of this Commission

served

as the President's representative on

it for awhile, and of course, I did later when I was a special

assistant.

But it underwent several changes in name. I changed

it from 54/12 to the Special Committee, because the press by

that time had gotten wind of it, and my own theory, and this is

aside, gentlemen, but in your recommendations, if you want to

change some things that will gat some things less visibility,

one way to do it I believe is to change the

name of things.

It

takes the press a little longer to catch

on after you have given

it a brand new name. Call it the Cavinaugh club or anything you

like.

an

MR. BELIN: Now, you have served on

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Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board since 1961?

MR. GRAY:

161.

MR. BELIN: Do you have any opinion as to the viability

of that board in general and also with specific reference to

any oversight functions it might have performed with the CIA?

MR. GRAY:

Yes, I do. My own strong feeling is that

if the President does not have this board, he must have something

like it. It is the only agency in government that I know of which

on

behalf of the President can oversee and interpret and

understand the intelligence activities of all. of the agencies

of the government engaged in intelligence, which includes not

only the CIA, but the DIA, and to some

extent the AEC, to some

extent the FBI, and other government agencies from time to time

who find themselves involved purposefully or not in

foreign

intelligence activities. This board, I feel, should have the

confidence of the President. He should be, fael comfortable

with its membership. If any President inherits such

a board

and is not comfortable, then he ought to make his own board.

I am saying

such a board is extremely important,

especially if the recommendations of the Board get to the

President, and there have been times in the past when they have

not gotten to the President soon enough, and in some cases

I am afraid not at all.

MR. BELIN: What particular types in the past are you

referring to?

TO

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MR. GRAY: Well, I can speak very frankly. I think that

it was more difficult at the beginning of the Nixon Administration

than it had been in earlier days in having the reports, the

written reports get to the Board, although I think it fair to

say also that Mr. Nixon met fairly frequently with the

Board.

MR. BELIN: Did MI. Johnson meet fairly frequently

with the Board?

MR. GRAY: Mr. Johnson, as I recall it, and I am going

back some years now, and I have not checked the records, I think

Mr. Johnson met twice with the Board, once for ceremonial

purposes; that is, picture-taking, and once for substance. And

General Eisenhower, for whom I was a liaison to the Board, met

with the Board every threa months for two or three hours.

President Kennedy met almost every time the Board met, which

was every other month. President Johnson practically not at

all, and President Nixon quite a good

deal. And we have had

understandably only one with a President trying to get on top,

a new President trying to get on top of his job. We did meet

with him once or twice, I think, as Vice President.

Well, back to the Board. I think it is true, I think

it is fair to say that either the Board or the members of the

Board have been responsible for many of the innovations in the

Intelligence field which have been vital to our national security.

I have in mind the U-2, the reconnaissance satellite program,

and at least the members of the Board had a good deal to do

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with that.

The introduction of data processing in the intelligence

community, for which the Board has fought for years with only

I would say limited success so far, and the Board has very strong

scientific expertise, and it has other expertise

we are now

constituted, and as any board

should have.

CHAIRMAN ROCKEFELLER:

Economic activities, economic

intelligence.

MR. GRAY:

That's another thing.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman, Mr. Vice President.

Actually, when I say it has been innovative, the

current activity in the United States Government, and interests

in and reliance upon in the field of economic intelligence is

larger than this board in the recommendations made to the

President a couple of years ago, and I think the Board can be

credited with that.

You asked me about oversight. We have tried to monitor

the various agencies in the foreign intelligence field, the

CIA, the DIA, and to some extent the others that I have mentioned,

and I think we have been kept well informed." This Board has

had all of the clearances that anybody in Government has. And

I might say, Mr. Chairman, that to my knowledge in the years sinde

1956 when the first board was created, there has never been a

leak from this board..

CHAIRMAN ROCKEFELLER: That's right.

MR. GRAY: And that is a record that is hard to match

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in this

town I must say, either in the Executive agencies;

and

especially on the Hill. That is one

reason

I think that this

is

a reliable mechanism, because the members

are loyal, it is a

small and lean staff, and it undertakes studies in addition to

its

general monitoring

responsibilities. It undertook

studies on its own initiative, or some at the request of the

President or a representative of the President, and

some of these

have been very important. Again, sometimes nothing seems to happen

to

them. The Board made a very important study about our naval

forces, now quite some time ago, and it has gone nowhere.

The Board made

rather

important

study I think about

human intelligence, the most comprehensive study that has ever

been made in the government, and the first one that has been made

at all in many years. I have

to credit the atmosphere for the

failure of that report to go very far, because obviously when

you are talking about human intelligence, you raise questions

which are involved in Watergate and this kind of phobia that

people have.

On the other hand, the Presidents have by and large

accepted the very many recommendations of the Board

over the

years which I believe have tended

to strengthen the intelligence

community, and without which it would not be as mature and

sophisticated as it is today.

MR. BELIN: MI. Gray, you mentioned that you were the

advisor for National Security Affairs for President Eisenhower.

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During the Eisenhower Administration did you ever hear any

discussion of what was known as an Executive Action Capability

which might be defined as a capability to assassinate foreign

political leaders?

Have you ever heard that expression?

MR. GRAY: I don't remember ever hearing that expression

until we talked this morning. I mean, I don't remember while

I was in government hearing this expression.

MR. BELIN: You never heard the phrase until I asked

you the first question in our interview this morning, is that

correct?

MR. GRAY: That is correct.

MR. BELIN: While you were working

with President

Eisenhower, did you ever hear any discussion of any operational

plan to try and assassinate any foreign leaders, and specifically

Castro or Trujillo?

MR. GRAY: I would like if I may, Mr. Chairman, to not

answer that yes or no because it is

a complicated question.

I

would suppose if one were serving in government, and he would

put the national security interests ahead of most everything

else, he would not fail to think about

assassination if this

were a vital necessity to the national security. I think you

would consider anything, and I have no doubt that at various

times and at all levels, without the knowledge

of any President,

people have talked about assassination.

But I know of no

plan,

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plot, operational organization that ever came to President

Eisenhower with respect to any assassinations, and specifically

including those that you have mentioned.

Now, it is my impression that there

was -- I would

be surprised if there was any American discussion even of the

question of the assassination of Trujillo. But you asked about

Castro.

I don't know how much detail I should go into, but I

can say I am willing to go into detail if the members are

interested. There is a memorandum covering every discussion

President Eisenhower had with respect to Cuba, beginning

in the

winter of 1960, which ultimately culminated in the Bay of Pigs

operation in 1961, he having approved a four point program,

sabotage, stepped up economic sanctions, propaganda, and the

training of Cuban refugees.

I am reasonably sure that if Truman had

ever -- I

mean that if Castro had ever been a target of the President

or the top people who were engaged in this program which he

had authorized, certainly there would have been talk of assassi-

nation at that time, and I naver heard it even hinted

at. so

specifically, I had a chance to see if the plans, or at least

the training and other activitias which would lead perhaps to

a change in governments in other places, in another

place, and

I never heard the word assassination

or anything of the equivalent

mentioned once:

MR. BELIN: While you were serving

on the President's

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Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, did you ever hear that

discussed?

MR. GRAY: Well, I never heard it discussed in the

sense that the Board

ever seriously discussed it. There was

a member of the Board who is a well known individual.

He is no

longer on the Board, who practically

every time the Agency

people came before us and briefed us on Vietnam, he said have

you considered trying to bump off some of the leaders in North

Vietnam, and the CIA would shrug, and then the next

time they

would come back a couple of months later, and he would say have

you thought of trying to bump off some of the leaders in North

Vietnam, and I heard that kind of discussion. But you never

had any taker from the CIA. And, indeed, that has been my

understanding beginning with Allen Dulles, and with all DCI's

since, that Agency policy was against assassination on the ground

that it didn't accomplish anything when you get right down to

it.

But I might volunteer one other thing, Mr. Belin. Wher

I was a special assistant to the President and presided over

the planning board, which in those days, in the Eisenhower days,

prepared all of the papers which went to the National Security

Council, we were doing a paper on. the Near and Middle East.

This was within -- was at the time when Colonel

Nasser

was

riding very high in the saddle, and the big

issue in this paper

was what were going to be the relationships of this government to

TO

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Colonel Nasser, and the opinions ranged everywhere

from

assassina

tion on the one hand, suggested by somebody, to the

other extrene,

and that was that we

get in bed with Nasser

because

he was

considered

to be the wave of the future.

Well, when the paper got written, there

was no mention

of assassination and no consideration even given to it. In

fact

the paper came down about the middle of this thing, which was

where it should have come. But I am saying that that is why I

wanted.to. not say yes or no. I have heard the word

assassination

mentioned, but I know of no plan or operational capability that

has ever been authorized at any high level of government.

MR. BELIN: You are saying you might have heard on

occasion one person discuss it, but that was never in any way

adopted as a policy, to the best of your knowledge, during the

Eisenhower administration?

MR. GRAY: That is correct.

Now, how many other times it might have been discussed

down in the bowels of some agency, I would have no way of knowing.

MR. BELIN: You mentioned to me early this morning

that President Eisenhower talked to you about having the '54/12

Committee looking over activities of the Agency with regard to

an oversight function.

Do you want to discuss that with the Commission?

MR. 'GRAY: Yes. Well, I really had forgotten what

we discussed.

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MR. BELIN: You talked about it particularly with

reference to activities which might impinge upon governments.

MR. GRAY: Yes, indeed. When I became Special Assistant

the President called me in with Allen Dulles,, then DCI, and

well, I think of Allen Dulles, but anyway, if it wasn't

Allen Dulles, I then communicated this message to Allen Dulles.

This I think was soon after the disclosure of the Berlin Tunnel,

which

some of you will remember as a very successful intelligence

operation, and the President told me that he wanted the : 54/12

group

to pass upon all activities of this government which

impinged upon the sovereignty or the people of some other

nation. For example, the Berlin Tunnel, this was after the

fact, would have been such, and overflights would have been

such, and the '54/12 has always concerned itself in

its

successive incarnations with the overflight problem. President

Eisenhower was

vary sensitive to the necessity of having the

top people in government from the appropriate agencies pass upon

the wisdom, and in some cases, feasibility of those kinds of

operations. There were times when in the covert action field I

would, in effect, appeal a decision of the 54/12 or the Special

Group because I wondered whether it was in the national interest

and when I took it back to the President from

the Committee, I

think at least on two occasions or on both occasions he over-

ruled me in support of the Committee.

But at least the matter

got the attention of the President. There were not

assassinations,

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I should say, but covert actions.

MR. BELIN: You also mentioned, though, that if there

would have been discussion of assassinations with the President,

that he was a staff man, and you feel that as a key person on

the staff you would have been advised.

Is that a fair summary?

MR. GRAY: Let me say that in the tima I served,

Andrew Goodpasture, lately General Lemnitzer's

eloquent

successor as Commander of NATO, General Goodpasture was called

Staff Secretary in the White House, and he was a good deal more

than that. He was the President's right hand man

for support

matters in relationships with the Joint Chiefs, immediate

relationships with all kinds of entities in Government, whereas

my job was more in the long range field and the planning field.

Well, it is obvious that if we had not been men of

good will and loyalty, this could have caused a lot of trouble,

so wa kept each other mutually informed. I told him

about what

was going on in the Special Group field, and he told me of all

of the things that the President was asking him to do. And then

when Eisenhower, General Eisenhower went out of office, these

functions were sort of combined, first into McBundy, and then

Walt Rostow, and what every other special assistant there had

been. In other words, there was not Gray

and Goodpasture, there

was Bundy. This is clear? So now, in response to your

question, I have recently been in communication with Andrew

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Goodpasture, and I am able to say to you that neither of us,

now back

to assassination, remembers anything coming to the

White House, and I cannot believe that anything could get to

the President without going through one of us.

MR. BELIN:

Is it

fair summary that he did believe

strongly in staff?

MR. GRAY: He was the most staff minded - well, that

is a big statement. He was

a very staff

minded

president.

MR. BELIN: We also talked this morning about the

question of Congressional oversight, and some people have

suggested the possibility of having a Joint Committee of

Congress akin to the Atomic Energy Committee, perhaps, performing

Congressional oversight in lieu of the present Congressional

structure.

Do you have any comments on that?

MR. GRAY: I do, yes..

In the first place, I think the

present situation where, if I understand it correctly, if the

Agency seeks to undertake or does undertake a covert action, must

not only be reportad to the appropriate Congressional Committees

whatever they are, but approved by the President, and someone

told me this means that about 80 people up on the Hill would

know about this.

I personally happen to think that there are

many agents that have influence on Capitol Hill, and I think

that there is a greater need for a tighter rein on security

information going just like a shotgun to the Congress. I would

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worry then, about a Joint Committee such

you suggest, not

because of the Committee itself, but because Joint Committees

tend to generate large staffs, and are frequently, not always,

the Committee becomes the captor of the staff. But I would worry

most about leaks out of such

a large staff, and

there is not

any question that much of this stuff that is appearing

in tha

press, which in my judgment should not appear in the press, is

coming right from Capitol Hill.

So I would think that oversight

Committees are appropriate in the Congress, and obviously the

Congress should have the authority and the power to oversee

what they want to oversee, and perhaps their oversight Committees

have not been as active as they might have been, or as aggressive.

That is easily corrected.

I can visualize some situations when a Congressman

would not want to know some of the things that the Agency is

doing.

MR. BELIN: We also discussed this morning your concern

about leaks from people who have worked within the Agency and

then have left the Agancy.

Do you have any comments about that?

MR. GRAY: Yes, I do. I feel very strongly that the

Congress should be encouraged to enact legislation which would

give the Agency at least the same protection that the IRs

has or the Agricultural Department has.

Now, it does not even have the protection of its

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information that the Internal Revenue Service has, and this to

me is just nonsense. I believe in the right of privacy. I am

for keeping the Internal Revenue records private.

But I am not

for telling the whole world about

what is going

on in the

intelligence community. And right now there seems to be no way

to stop this process, and it is not that one worries about so

much having people know what the Agency is doing, but people's

lives are being put in jeopardy, and people's lives are going to

be lost as a result of some of these disclosures. The DCI

is by statute charged with the protection of sources and methods

of intelligence gathering. This absolutely destroys his statutory

authority. He cannot protect sources and methods if anybody,

any disgruntled former employee can write a book.

So without being specifically familiar, I think there

is legislation pending, or I know Director

,colby has proposed

spacific lagislation

to help alleviate this situation. I don't

hope for, although I would welcome, an official Secrets Act

such as we have in Britain, but then that is breaking down the

old system, it's not working so well

anymore, but I do believe

that we ought to have some way to deter and punish those who

deal lightly with the national security.

MR. BELIN: On the subject of the DCI, do you have

any opinion of the problems that the DCI has as the Chief

intelligenca officer?

MR. GRAY:

Yes.

We have wrestled with this problem

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of leadership in the community. When I say we, I am speaking

now not as a former Special Assistant, but if it is all right for

me to speak as a member of the Prasident's Board, how the

community could be organized, and one of the problems has always

been what I would describe as a constitutional problem. If

X Agency has 60 percent of the dollars, and the head of z

Agency wants to or is told to give guidance and leadership, he

simply cannot under our system giva orders to a constitutional

officer in another branch of government, spacifically the Secretary

of Defense. And at the same time, I feel

thare should be a

chief intelligence officer of the Government. I think he must

have the confidence of the President and

rapport with the

President, and if he has that, his job is easier, and if he has

to only persuade and reguest, but if your Committee is going

to make recommendations about this, it seems to me that you might

want to recommend that there be someone who is considered a

chief intelligence officer, and that if you wish, it can be the

DCI, or a new thought that we did not discuss this morning, there

might be a special assistant to the President for intelligence

affairs, and he could then represent the President a cross the

board, and perhaps have greater success and leadership.

But I urge that you bear in mind the realities of the

situation where one Agency simply canrot instruct another Agency

under certain circumstances.

MR. BELIN: Do you have any opinion as to whether or

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MR. GRAY: Yes. I think it vitally important that it

be under civilian control, and as

a matter of fact, I would almost,

I would almost think that would be axiomatic, although I think

under the statute a military officer could be, and indeed, the

first DCI I think, Hillenkoetter, Admiral Hillenkoetter, was

indeed military. But I feel it should be under civilian controli

and the issue we did not discuss this morning is one which I

think this Commission must address itself to, and that is whether

it is to be a careerist, or should it be an appointment of a

citizen from private life.

Let ma make the distinction clear. Richard Helms

was a careerist, and John McCone was appointed from

public

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life.

MR. BELIN: Do you have any opinion on that?

MR. GRAY: Yes. My own preference would be I think

for a careerist, but if pressed now to name or give you some

names of people in the. Agency whom

I would, and I think I know

most of the top people, I would find it difficult to say to a

President in good conscience, that I would recommend that you

stick to a careerist. So that I have come down

on

a

waffle

there.

I have to say generally speaking I prefer

a careerist,

but in some cases

I can see a very good intelligence officer

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who is not. I know, I happen to personally think that Allen

Dulles was

a fine intelligence officer. It was not his career,

but he had been in it during the war, and successfully in it.

He was more intelligence officer than

administrator, but all

in all, he served his country well in that post.

But this is

an issue which I don't really think there is any question

about whether it be a civilian. The real question is whether

you are going to have a policy or sort of play it by ear when

the time comes to make a change.

MR. BELIN: Do you have an opinion concerning whether

or not there should be amendments to the statutory charter of

the Agency?

MR. GRAY: The statutory charter, as

I understand it,

that was written before I came to Washington so

_I was not

involved, but as I understand it, it was purposely written in

somewhat vague terms to take care of situations that necessarily

would be vague in and of themselves. I would

see no objection

to making it crystal clear, if people find it necessary, that the

responsibilities of the Central Intelligence Agency are not in

the domestic field, and do not involve domestic institutions or

American citizens except insofar as the question of foreign

intelligence activities becomes involved.

The trouble with trying to spell out the precise

functions of the CIA and FBI, for example, this problem gets to

be a very complicated one because there are a lot of grey areas,

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and to say that the CIA cannot have any personnel, and cannot

be involved in this country, of course, is sort of silly. I am

speaking now of not the intelligence analysis and publications,

but I am talking

about the acquisition of

intelligence and

counterintelligence and counterespionage. If you are too precise,

then some matters are going to get lost between abroad and at

home.

Now, there's got to be some way for the flow and

transfer back and forth from the CIA and the FBI, so I would

myself find it very difficult to see how the Congress could

precisely define the functions of the Agency.

But I would see no objection to making it clear that

the American people need not fear that we are going to have a

national police force under the name of the CIA, and this is

what we are talking

about, or the FBI, for that matter.

MR. BELIN: Did any members of the Commission have

questions?

Yes, Mr. Connor.

MR. CONNOR: Mr. Gray, you were talking about the

qualifications for the position of Director of Central Intelligence.

Based on your experience, would you limit the term of the DCI

to any fixed period of time?

MR. GRAY: I would not.

MR. CONNOR:. You would leave it at the pleasure of

the President who appoints the person and subsequent Presidents?

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MR. GRAY: That's right.

MR. CONNOR: Going back to your earlier testimony

about your experience as assistant to the President

for

security

matters, do you think it is wise for the same person to occupy

that position and Secretary of State?

MR. GRAY: No, sir.

MR. BELIN: Any particular reason why you feel that

way?

MR. GRAY: Yes. I think that the Secretary of State,

the responsibilities of the Secretary of State are vary clear.

I think the responsibilities of the Secretary of Defense are

very clear. I think the responsibilities of other executive

agency heads are very clear. And I have a strong feeling that

the Special Assistant for National Security Affairs should not

be tied to any other agencies. I think he should be not a

Secretary of Defense and a special assistant either. I think the

special assistant should have his loyalty only to the President

and not to any one department, and my own feeling

is that the

present situation creates some bottlanecks, administrative

bottlenecks that should not exist.

MR. BELIN: Does that relate to your earlier testimony

of actions by the Advisory Board perhaps not getting through to

the President?

MR. GRAY: It relates in good measure to that. My

own feeling is we have made recommendations

to the President

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which have gone to the Special Assistant to the President, and

then been bucked down to more junior people in

the NSC staff,

and which get to the President later or perhaps not at all. And

my observation to you this morning, Mr. Belin, was that this

Board is composed of big boys, and so if the President does

not consider them big boys, he ought to get some big boys,

and their studied conclusions should not be staffed out by

junior people in the NSC staff.

CHAIRMAN ROCKEFELLER: May I make a comment there?

The procedure which Gordon has just described is

not. limited to papers coming through NSC. This is a White House

procedure established by President Nixon which involved all

papers coming to the President, all of the staff work in this

way, all of it was bucked down and staffed out so-called, in

quotes, with the alternative recommendations, and it makes its

way across the board so very little gets through to him without

this staffing process.

So I think just to put it in perspective, this is

a procedure which was daveloped by the Nixon Administration for

staffing that involves all material.

MR. GRAY: I think it is fair to say, Mr. Vice President,

that the fact remains that it does frustrate, I guess

across the

board, but it does frustrate.

CHAIRMAN ROCKEFELLER: That is right...

MR. GRAY: And we,. the Board, or the staff on the

Board,

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has had the unusual experience, at least on one occasion, of

saying you sent this paper over to the President for his recommen-

dations, and would you please write for us the response that the

President ought to make to it. So it

is somewhat

discouraging.

Now, if I could volunteer a couple of things?

MR. BELIN: Please feel free to volunteer whatever

you would like to for this Commission.

MR. GRAY: All right.

Let me say, Mr.. Chairman, just a few observations.

I

wish we in this country, and I wish this Commission, perhaps,

would worry more about the KGB and the GRU than the CIA. By God,

I think that here they are operating in this country, we know

they are operating

freely here, and in New York there has been

a recent incident when a Soviet agent was caught red-handed, and

he was not declared personna non grata because of detente, and

this worries the very - this worries me very much. They

are

operating, and as far as they are concerned, the Cold War has

not abated one bit, and the Cold War I describe is that war

below the public, diplomatic talks.

Now, they have got hundreds of agents in this country,

and I have indicated that my guess is that they

have agents of

influence, if not precise agents, up on Capitol Hill. I know

this, almost know this to be the fact. They

are operating

freely in this country, and here our newspapers are trying to

tear apart one basic, absolutely basic element of our national

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security and anything the Soviets do, it's fine.

So that is

from the heart.

I did want to say a couple of things, that I think

if there is to be a Presidential Foreign Intelligence Advisory

Board, one of its principal functions has got to be for the

President to seek to avoid subjective judgments in the

intelligence community, and this

is very difficult to do. I will

give you three or four examples, if I may, or three examples.

The Cuban missile crisis. You will recall that there was a

Congressional election in progress. You will recall that we

were

getting all kinds of'refugee reports. You will recall that

Senator Keating was sounding, and was almost ridiculed by the

Administration at the time, and then you will recall finally

the U-2 flight which disclosed the existence

of these missiles,

and thereafter we had constant surveillance and knew about it.

Well, now, I have talked then, I have conducted a

post mortem of that crisis, and in my judgment, the intelligence

failure, or it almost was a failure, because another three or

four days, and these missiles would have been camouflaged, and

we might not have known about them, was the fact that nobody

wanted to find those missiles there. They knew the President

didn't want to find missiles. The last thing he wanted in this

campaign - this is no criticism of President Kennedy. No

President would want to find Soviet Missiles in Cuba.

So that

the then DCI, the Director of Current Intelligence, whom later,

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he carried in his briefcase for three weeks a cable on

an

agent report from Cuba which turned. out to be an

accurate

description of these missiles, and he was then

personally

briefing the President, and he said I

was

never

sure enough.

There were so many other reports, and we knew they were false,

that the weight of my gut feeling fell on the side of new missiles.

Well, this is a subjective judgment which was dictated in part

by what paople wanted to hear.

Now, the Chairman of this Commission will remember in

recent years the Board had been able to get out of the national

intelligence estimates of offensive military capabilities of

the Soviat Union, language to the effect that by no stretch

of the imagination, and I am paraphrasing, can the Soviet Union

be a threat in this area for ten years, this type of statement.

They used to have a statement that there is no way to conclude

that the Soviets would ever.take action against an American

reconnaissance satellite. Well, we got that changed. These

are subjective.

When the missiles, it was a question of MIRVing.

the missiles, the Agency was about the last place in the government

to believe that the Soviets were MIRVing missiles, and for some

reason they didn't want to find missiles being MIRVed. So

somebody on behalf of the President has

got to watch this

business of subjactive judgments, passed

forward

as unfinished

intelligence.

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I did

want to say, and I am afraid I have not said it

here, and if

I have, I hope you will stop me, I talked twice

this morning, and I can't remember about the innovative role

that the PFIA has played in terms of its numbers or the board,

and I guess I mentioned the U-? reconnaissance and the satellites

and etc.,

and the economic_reports of the Government.

That

reminds me.

Now, finally, one thing that might be considered, and

I have suggested this in the Board from time to time, but it

has

never gone

very far, and I'm not sure about its wisdom myself,

one solution, one action that might be taken in connection

with

the covert activities of the Agancy would be to move them to

a warehouse in Philadelphia, or a music store in Dallas or

something

and get them out of washington so that they

are not

on the cocktail circuit, although in fairness, I think that the

Agency personnel through the years have done very damn well in

not leaking. But if there is to be a reorganization, one thing

that might be considered would be to keep the completely

overt activities, which comprise, as you know, the majority of

the CIA

functions, or involve a majority of their personnel, and

move the covert stuff outside, and just get it out of the nation's

capital. I would not eliminate it because I think it is necessary.

But this is a consideration which

perhaps may not have been

presented.

MR. BELIN: Are there any other questions by members

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of the Commission?

MR. LEMNITZER: Under whose direction would this new

function outside be?

MR. GRAY: I would leave it under the

Director of the

Central Intelligence Agency -

CHAIRMAN ROCKEFELLER: Could

I ask, Mr. Gray, whether

when he analyzed some of the statements that the FIAB had

corrected, that were misleading, that came from CIA to the

President, whether he has

ever given

consideration of whether

FIAB has ever investigated the possibility of double agents

in CIA being responsible for misleading information?

MR. GRAY:

You mean whether I feel that some of

these

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things --

CHAIRMAN ROCKEFELLER: Were intentionally done to mis-

lead, or whather it was just caution?

MR. GRAY: I think the latter, Mr. Chairman. I think

we would be very foolish to assume that the Agancy has not been

penetrated. I think it would be a foolish assumption. After

all, they are the number one target for the

Soviet Union. But

my guess is that they have not penetrated at the top among

the

people who actually have been writing these

estimates.

Are you asking for my opinion? That is my opinion.

But I think you would be making a mistake to assume

that the

great preoccupation of Mr. Angleton, who left the Agency, about

penetration of the Agency, his preoccupation I think was not

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misplaced. It is entirely possible that we are penetrated.

MR. BEL,IN :

Mr. Gray.

MR. MARVIN GRAY: MI. Gray, I have one or two questions

on the Dominican Republic, and the U.s. relations there in

1960. I beliave the government from during 1960, moved from

a large degree a policy of non-intervention, to a more active

role of trying to topple the Trujillo ragime. And in May of

1960, Ambassador Farland returned to Washington for consultation

and reported that among the dissidents with whom he had contacts,

that they reportedly wanted support, and one of the things that

they needed was high

powered rifles with

telescopic scopes.

Subseguently he was given clearance, or subsequently, I'm sorry,

the Director of Central Intelligence was authorized by the

Assistant Secretary of State to provide that assistance.

Did you know anything about that, do

you recall any

discussions of providing rifles to internal dissidents?

MR. GRAY: Was this in '60 or '61?

MR. MARVIN. GRAY:

1960, sir, May and June of 1960.

MR. GRAY: I recall there was concern in this govern-

ment about developments in the Dominican Republic. To the best

of my recollection, I did not know about the military equipment

that you were speaking of.

MR. MARVIN GRAY: At the very end

of the Eisenhower

Administration, November 29th, January 12th, the matter of the

Dominican Republic was taken up at the Special Group and discussions

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were had to work with the internal dissidents

and exiles,

and

also to furnish arms to the internal dissidents?

Do you recall those meetings particularly?

MR. GRAY: I don't recall those meetings particularly,

but if you say that the Special Group did indeed do this, I will

not say it didn't. I just don't remember this specific instance

MR. MARVIN GRAY: If you can recall, who would it have

been, or if you can speculate any, would it have been your

understanding that such arms which were furnished were for the

purposes of an internal uprising and something

of that nature

and not specifically for doing away with the leadership?

MR. GRAY: Well, as far as I am concerned, I would be

shocked to be reminded of anything that had to do with doing

away with the leadership. No, I would think our concern was,

if we had that kind of concern, was with being of assistance

to the dissidents, and not assassination, or that kind of

activity.

MR. MARVIN GRAY: Thank you.

MR. BELIN: Any other comments that you want to

to the Commission, sir?

MR. GRAY: No. You have been very patient,

and i

am afraid that I have been somewhat longwinded.

MR. BELIN: You were patient to wait, and we ara

sorry you had to wait so long.

Any other questions by the Commission?

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Thank you, sir.

MR. GRAY: Right.

(Whereupon, at 1:12 o'clock p.m., the hearing

was

recessed to reconvene at 2:30, o'clock the same day.)

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(3:50 p.m.)

CHAIRMAN ROCKEFELLER: If you will raise your right

hand, do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and

nothing but the truth,, so help you God?

MR. BISSELL: I do.

CHAIRMAN ROCKEFELLER: We appreciate your coming.

TESTIMONY OF RICHARD M. BISSELL, JR.

MR. BISSELI: I am glad to be of any help I can.

MR. BELIN: Do you want to state your name before

the Commission?

MR. BISSELL: Richard M. Bissell, Jr.

• MR. BELIN: And Mr. Bissell, what is your educational

background?

MR. BISSELL: Yale undergraduate education, and later

a Yale Ph.D. in economics, and a year at the London

School of

Economics.

MR. BELIN: And you got your Ph.D. in 1939?

MR. BISSELL: I think it was '39, yes..

MR. BELIN: And then during World War II were you here

in Washington?

MR. BISSELL: I was. I was in the War Shipping

Administration, and later at the end of the war, in the Office.

of War Mobilization and reconversion.

MR. BELIN: And after World War II, then what did you

TOP

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CIA HAS NO OBJECTION TO

DECLASSIFICATION AND/OR

RELEASE OF THIS DOCUMENT,

The tent route,

blows,

Deputy Dine tes

cit,

21 APR

Contessa,

(84 2295-2351)

1s Aug?!

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do?

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MR. BISSELL: I returned to MIT where I was then a

member of the faculty for about two

years. Then I came to

Washington

as Chief of Staff of something called the Harriman

Committee, which was one of the planning committees

for the

Marshall Plan, and I then was recruited by Paul Hoffman to

serve in the ECA from almost the beginning of the Marshall Plan,

and did serve for three years, and then became Deputy Director

of the ECA, and finally Acting Director.

After that, two years

in the Ford Foundation organization, but I still had my office

here, and then I think it was in 1954, but I am a little vague,

a year plus or minus on dates, to the Central Intelligence

Agency.

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MR. BELIN: And who asked you to

come to the Central

Intelligence Agency?

MR. BISSELL: Allen Dulles.

MR. BELIN: When he asked you to come to the CIA,

in what capacity did you come?

MR. BISSELL: I had the title of Assistant to the

Director oh, for about five years, as a matter of fact.

MR. BELIN: And then what?

MR. BISSELL: Then I became the Deputy Director of

Plans, in I think the fall of or

toward the end of '58, or the

very beginning of '59.

MR. BELIN:

And how long did you stay with the Agency?

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MR. BISSELL: Until February of 1962, if memory serves

MR. BELIN: And after leaving the Agency, then what

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did you do?

MR. BISSELL: I joined the staff of United Aircraft

Corporation in East Hartford, where I had a very unrevealing

title of Director of Marketing and Economic Planning. It really

was a cosporate planning responsibility.

MR. BELIN: Wasn't that 1964?

MR. BISSELL: Yes.

MR. BELIN:

Before that you worked for the Institute of

MR. BISSELL: Yes.

I'm

sorry.

I skipped over two

years as President of the Institute for Defense Analysis. It

is to that that I moved directly from the CIA.

MR. BELIN: And you retired from the United Aircraft

in 1974?

-MR. BISSELL: That's correct.

MR. BELIN:

Mr. Bissell, during the time that you

were with the Agency, did you ever have any discussions with

anyone in

the White House concerning the

planning of what was

called an Executive Action Capability, which was defined in

substance as a capability of the Agency carrying out assassina-

tions, if required?

MR. BISSELL: My recollection of this is far from

clear. But I am satisfied that

very early in the Kennedy

Administration I did participate in such conversations.

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MR. BELIN: And do you have any recollection of with

whom you might have participated?

MR. BISSELL: I am almost certain it was either

Walt Rostow or McGeorge Bundy, or probably the former, and

possibly both.

MR. BELIN: Do you remember specifically what, if

anything, was discussed in any of those conversations?

MR. BISSELL: My recollection, which isn't too specific,

is that this was a discussion of the desirability of developing

such a capability within the CIA that presumably would be a

small, special unit, and highly compartmented from the rest

of the organization.

MR. BELIN: Did you have any feeling as to whether

or not this was done with or without the knowledge or consent

of the President?

MR. BISSELL: I had no specific feeling on that point,

but I had a great deal of confidence that the two gentlemen

whose names I have mentioned, would not have discussed this,

discussed with me or encouraged any course of action that they

were not confident the President would approve.

• MR. BELIN:

Did you ever have any such discussions

with any official in the Eisenhower Administration?

MR. BISSELI: Not to my recollection, and I think I

am almost sure that I did not.

MR. BELIN: Now, apart from discussions of an executive

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action capability, did you ever or were you ever aware of any

development of plans insids of the Agency with a specific plan

or goal of the assassination of any particular

foreign leader?

MR. BISSELL: Yes, I was aware of investigation and

planning to that end.

MR. BELIN: Will you please enumerate before the

Commission which foreign leader or leaders were

involved?

MR. BISSELL:

There were three cases I remember. One

of them

would have involved Sukarno, the second would have

involved Lumumba,

and the third did involve Castro.

I am

not

giving that order chronologically, I don't remember what the

chronology was, but those are the three cases I remember.

MR. BELIN: Could you please state for the Commission

your

entire knowladge with regard to the Sukarno matter?

MR. BISSELL: There was planning of such a possibility.

I beliave this was initiated in the Far Eastern Division of the

CIA.

The planning progressed as far as the identification of

an asset whom it was felt might be recruited for this purpose.

The

plan was never reached, was never perfected to the point

where it seemed feasible. The difficulty concerned the possibility

of creating a situation in which the potential agent would have

access to the target, and because the plan never

reached that

stage, it was never, so far as I am aware, discussed outside

of the Agency with a view to obtaining approval or

authorization.

MR. BELIN: So far as your concern with the Agency,

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this would have required such approval or authorization before

they would have undertaken such a plan?

MR. BISSELL: They would.

MR. BELIN: Does that relate not just to Sukarno, but

with any other target?

MR. BISSELL: That is correct.

MR. BELIN: Now, what about Lumumba?

MR. BISSELL: The Lumumba case planning began,

was

initiated within the Agency, and in that case, on my initiative,

a case officer was directed to look

into the possibilities.

He reported back in a matter of weeks and convinced me that this

was probably unfeasible, and probably an undesirable course of

action, and he recommended instead that a quite different

kind of operation, somewhat larger in scale, be attempted

for

the purpose of discrediting Lumumba and undermining his

authority.

MR. BELIN: To the best of your knowledge, did the

Agency in any manner whatsoever, have anything to do with the

death of Sukarno?

MR. BISSELL: Absolutely nothing.

MR. BELIN: Did the Agency have anything whatsoever

to

do with the death of Lumumba?

MR. BISSELL: Nothing.

MR. BELIN: All right, now, you said there was a third

MR. BISSELL: The Castro case.

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MR. BELIN: All right.

Could you tell the Commission the background of the

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Castro case?

First, before you answer that, I will ask you the

same question about Lumumba that I asked you with regard to

Sukarno. Would there have been any operational plan put into

effect without approval from the White House on that kind of a

situation?

MR. BISSELL: No, there would not.

MR. BELIN: All right.

Now, let's turn to Castro.

Could you tell the Commission about the Castro

situation?

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MR. BISSELL: I became aware, and the timing of this

I believe was the very beginning of 1961, of the possibility

that án assassination attempt might be planned using Mafia

resources, or syndicate resources.

My very uncertain recollection

is that I first heard of this possibility from Shef Edwards, who

I think has testified here.

MR. BELIN: He has been interviewed by me.

MR. BISSELL: I see.

MR. BELIN: And for' the record,

he was the head of

the Office of Security?

MR. BISSELL: That's correct.

MR. BELIN: During this period of time in the Agency,

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is that correct?

MR. BISSELL: That is corract.

You should, the

Commission should also understand that this would have been a

very different kind of an operation than anything that the Agency

normally undertook in that it would not have been carried

out

through DDP; that is, Agency operational

channels, or through

any

case officer in the clandestine service. The possibility that

seemed to exist was that through several intermediaries, the

Office

of Security or the Director of Security could be, and

indeed, was in touch with individuals in Las Vegas, who claimed

they could make such

an attempt using their own personnel.

This possibility was discussed by me, again I think probably

with Walt Rostow. It may possibly have been discussed directly

with McGeorge Bundy, but I suspect that it was through Rostow

who was then Bundy's assistant and on

his staff. My impression,

but again I must emphasize that this is an uncertain impression,

is that I was encouraged to go ahead with.

the investigation and

planning of this operation, and by investigation I mean

simply to find out what would be involved to make some assessment

of the likelihood of success, and other aspects of the matter.

Under the circumstances, this had to be and was the

responsibility of Shef Edwards.

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MIR. BELIN: Again, I will ask with regard to this

aspect of your testinony the same question I

asked you concerning

the exacutive action capahilities.

Did you have

an opinion

to whather or not what you refer to

as this encouragement had

any authorization from the President or that the President in

any manner knew about this?

MR. BISSELL: I had no direct reason to believe

that

he did, but I big male the sone answer, that y harl a hich darror

of confidence that the gentlemen

I was

talking

to in the White

Ilouse, whom I have identifiad, would not have given

such encourage

ment unless they were confident that it would meet with the

President's approval.

MR. BELIN:.

Did you ever have any discussions with

anyone in the Eisenhower Administration concerning any possible

plan to assassinate Castro?

MR. BISSELL: I have no clear scollection of such a

discussion, but there could have been.

MR. BELIN: Do you have any recollection,

if it could

have been, with whom that discussion might have taken place?

MP. BISSELL: I would suppose that it would have been

with Gordon Gray.

MR. BELIM:

If it occurred?

MR. BISSELI: If it occurred, but

the balance of my

recollaction is that it did not occur.

MR.

BELIN:

Do you know whether or not during the las

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few months of 1950, which would have been in the Eisenhower

Administration, any

plans were developed within the Technical

Services Branch of the Agency to develop any kind of poison

pills that might be used

to assassinate

Castro?

MR. BISSELL: I very much doubt if

any such develop-

ment was attempted with this or any other specific operation

in view, but the Agency did have

and does have an on-going

RaD program, and I

am quite certain that products of this

sort were among those that it had available.

MR. BELIN: Do you have any other recollections

concerning the Castro matter

at this time?

MR. BISSELL: I am vague as to the final outcome of

that attempt.

I do not recollect, I have no racollection of a

specific authorization that it should go forward. I beliave,

however, that we probably did movs to be in a position

to carry

it out, or to authorize it if authorization were recaived.

Ons

of

the reasons were, I believe that my own

recollection of the

final stages of that plan is vagus is that, as I have already

explained, what

it contemplated was furnishing probably, furnish-

ing probably some money and such items

25

Pills 0i other devicco

through a number of cut-outs or internediaries to a group which

we ourselves, of course, did not in any direct sense control.

This was not an operation of such

a character that

the communi-

cations would run through Agency channels, or that authorization

on the spot would be by Agency personnel, or that the Agency

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could precisely and tightly control it.

MR. BELUI: Did you ever call Mr. Milliam Harvey, who

was

a CIA man to eventually take over this operation within the

latter part of '61 or early '62?

MR. BISSELI: Now, I did ask Mr. Harvey

to take over

a part of our reviving efforts against Castro and the Castro

Administration. I probably urged

him to look into this plan

that was by that — that had baen active or that had been the

subjaci of active attention nearly a year before. I have no

recollection of authorizing him to revive it, except to look

at it as a plan, or to proceed with any action along those

lines.

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IR. BELIN: Do you have any personal recollection

as to whether or not the pills or pills of any kind, poison

pills were ever delivered into Cuba?

MP. BISSELL: I do not have any recollection of that.

MR. BELIN:

One way or the other?

MR. BISABLI: One way or the other.

MR. BETIN: Do you have any recollection on any other

facts ralating to this mattor?

MR. BISSIL: I don' baliers so.

MR. BELIN: Now, I want

to turn to the question of

Trujillo. Do you want to take over the questioning on trujillo,

Mr. Gray.

MR. GRAY:, Yes, if it's all right.

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matter?

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MR. BEJIN: Before we go to Trujillo, let's stop with

Castro right now and find out if the commissioners have any

questions.

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MR. CONNOR: Well, I would have a question. At the

time you had these discussions with either Mr. Walt Rostow or

McGeorge Bundy of both, as you recall them, to whom in the

Agency did you report?

MR. BISSELL: Allen Dulles, and well, or Mr. Caball

his Deputy.

MR. BELIN: And did you ever have any discussions

with

them about this matter before you talked to the Director

of

Security?

MR. BISSELL:

Well, as I have already

testified my

impression is that the first time I heard about this was in my

first conversation at least with the Director of

Security, so

that would have preceded. any conversation with

the Director.

And my own belief is that matters took that cause I believe the

original approach was made to the Agency,

that this was not

a matter of the Agency

seeking out the individuals with

whom

subsequently messages were

exchanged.

CHAIRMAN ROCKEFELLER:

You mean approached by the

White House?

MR. BISSELL: No, approached by the syndicate interes

IS ,

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that they had their own very strong motivations

for carrying out

this.

MR. KIRKLAND: What was their price if they would

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cooperate?

MR. BISSELL:

well, they had,

as I say, very strong

motivations on their own. You remember that Castro had fairly

recantly come to power. They had been

powerful under Batista

in Cuba, and they had a vary lucrativa set of interests for the

syndicates, and they had been in effect been thrown out. There

was

still, of course, reasonably free travel, and

so they had

the strongest sort of reasons for

anti-Castro sentiment on their

own.

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MR. KIRKLAND:

But did they want

any specific quid

pro quo from the Agency?

MR. BISSELL: I'm

sure they wanted

some money as

well as technical help, but I don't remember

exactly

what.

MR. CONNOR:

Well, after you did learn about this from

the CIA Director of Security, and then had some White House

discussion, did you thereafter

have

any

discussions about it

with Mr. Dulles or his deputy?

MR. BISSELL: Yes, I am sure I did with Allen Dulles,

simply that he should be aware that the planning was

going

forward.

As a matter of fact, I believe the Director of Security had talkea

to Allen before I did on the matter.

MR. CONNOR:

So that the subsequent activity and

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planning was with his, at least his tacet understanding?

MR. BISSELL: Correct.

CIAIRMAN ROCKEFELLER:

Through previous testimony I

got the impression

that there were

two attempts,

one through

this syndicate, and then

another one directly through agents.

MR. BELIN:

I think that the record basically is that

in the first

stage

it was through the syndicate, and that in

the second, stage basically they used Cubian exiles but CIA

agents, but the exiles who were being used were not necessarily

CIA agents at the time so far

as regular, full-time employees

of the Agency.

MR. BISSELL: I don't have a recollection of that

second one.

MR. GRAY: You left the Agency

when,

sir?

MR. BISSELL: In February of 1962.

MR. KIRKLAND: During this time that you were

interested or this operation was under consideration, no one

in a position of authority ever said flatly no, kill it?

MR. BISSELL: To the best

of my knowledge, that is

correct.

MR. CONNOR: Did you ever discuss with the Attorney

General, Robert Kennedy?

MR. BISSELL: I have no racollection of discussing it

with him.

MR. BELIN: But you do have

a recollection of discussing

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it with Allen Dulles?

MR. BISSELL: Yes.

MR. BELIN: If the records ware

to show, or if Mr.

Edwards were to say that rather than he contacting you that

you contacted him concerning the Mafia, would you say that they

are wrong, or would you say that

perhaps your recollection

is

wrong?

BISSELL:

Well, it is possible that my racollection is

wrong, but I will - I think I will stand on that

as my

racollection and it may 'be that Edwards and I simply have

inconsistent recollections.

But I seem to remember rather

clearly that it was from him that I first learned of the

possibility of this operation, and that he came to see me for

this purpose rather than my sending for him. Now, could I just

say that I had

several conversations with Shef Edwards on this

matter and it is very possible that I, that in

a subsaquent

conversation I did take the initiative and sand for and discuss

it with him. But there may be an inconsistancy

here.

CHAIRMAN ROCKEFELLER: Was there ever

any question

raised

as to whether this violated any of the domestic

statutas limiting CIA's activities within the United States?

MR. BISSELL: That question

was

never raised

to my

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knowledge.

of the Commission?

MR. BELIN: Are there any other questions by members

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2310:

Mr. CORBIN: May I ask a question? You

said that

you did not discuss it with Attorney General

Kennedy.

So

far

as you linow, did you have any information or believe that he

was ever aware of the proposed plans here?

MR. BISSELL: I don't

remember any conversations

incident. that would have constituted evidence to me that he

was aware, but I would not have been in the least surprised it

he were.

He could have been aware from Bundy or Rostow and

conceivably in other ways. If the President knew of this,

then I think it highly likely that the Attorney General did,

because the President was in the habit of

talking over matters

of concern to hin with the Attorney General.

CHAIRMAN ROCKEFELLER:

Do you remember any letter

from the Attornay General saying that all

activities of

this

character relating assassination of Castro should stop?

MR. BISSELL: No, I do not remember that, Mr. Chairman.

CHAIRMAN ROCKEFELLER: That was

alleged by some of

his associates in the press?

MR. BISSELL: NO.

MR. WALLISON: MI. Bissell, after the assassination

of President Kennedy in November of '63 you were no longer with

the Agancy I understand?

MR. BISSELL: That is correct.

MR. WALLISON: But knowing what you do about the

events here concerning Castro, at least the planning, did you

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relevant to the Warren Commission's inquiry?

MR. BISSELL: I really did not, no.

MR. WALLISON: And you had

119

discussions with anyone

who is also involved in this matter about that?

MR. BISSELL: None.

MR. BELIN: Any other questions by members

of the

Comnission concerning the Castro situation?

CHAIRMAN ROCKEFELLER: Yes.

Was there evidence to

your knowledge that Castro was aware of this attempt or became

aware of it?

MR. BISSELL: I don't remember any evidence to that

effect. I don't think that the actual

attempt was

ever made,

although it is physically possible that the devices to be used,

the poison pills did reach Cuba and it is

perfectly possible

that with some time lag Castro would have

come on some evidence

of this operation.

But I don't remember

evar

seeing any report

to that effect.

CHAIRMANT ROCKEFELLER: The operation wasn't under

your direct management?

MR. BISSELL: Not really, indirectly, but not directly!

Within the Agency the key

individual was

Shef

Edwards, yes.

MR. KIRKLAND: Here there efforts during the period

following tha Bay of Pigs to land

agents on the island?

MR. BISSELL: ExCuSe

Ine,

sir?

MR. KIRKLAND: Were there efforts post-Bay of Pigs to

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land agents on the island?

MR. BISSELL: Well, there were none for

a mile, and I

don't know, I would assume

that such

efforts have been made

since then. But I think for a good many months after that it

was not, would not have been easy to racruit agents, and also

there was absolutely no internal underground or resistance

that could give any infiltratad agent support. So my guess is

that no

such efforts were made for at least a year or more.

MR. BELIN: Mr. Bissell, you were in charge

in a

sense of the Bay of Pigs operation with the Agency, were you

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not?

MR. BISSELL: I was.

MR. BELIN: Could this have been part of an overall

Bay of Pigs operation as opposed from in any way being a

dirsction from the white House?

In other words, could this

have been something that the Agency just developad internally

as its overall Bay of Pigs operation?

MR. BISSELL: I don't think this -- well, in fact I

am quite clear that this was not developed in that, this plan

was not developed in that way. I don't think it was sven known

to many if any of the individuals within the Agency

that were

concerned with the planning and preparation for the Bay of Pigs.

MR. KIRKLAND: Mr. Edwards was not involved in the

Bay of Pigs?

MR. BISSELL: No, he was not.

TO

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2313

MR. CORBIN:

I believe you testifiad that you discussed

the establishment of the executive

action capability with either

Mr. Bundy or Mr. Rostow. Did I understand that correctly?

MR. BISSELL:

Correct.

MR. CORBIN: Who was it that first raised this subject,

as you recall it?

MR. BISSELL: I can't - I have no racollection of

who first raised it. My belief is that this would have

come

up as a subject very probably

in conversations between myself

and Mr. Rostow, and the reason I give that as my belief is that

I had on a number of occasions discussed with Mr. Rostow the

various kinds, various kinds of capabilities, and especially

unconventional ones that the Agency should or might develop.

At a somewhat later stage, for instance, he

asked me and I

asked for a small interdepartmental group to examine the ways

of improving our military capabilities, and his thinking ran

along

the lines of developing these

tools

of action. And I

think, therefore, that it is very probable that this came

up

in conversations with hin, but which one of us would have

coined the phrase, for instance, I don't know.

MR. CORBIN:

So far as you rscall it, were there any

plans for such a capability being developed at the Agency when

you had your first conversation with him?

MR. BISSELL: Oh, I'm reasonably certain the answer

is nagative to that.

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MR. KIRKLAND: There was no such capability in the

Agency prior to that?

MR. BISSELL:

There was no separated organization,

identified capability of that sort.

MR. BELIN: Did you have any discussions with any

people in the White

Ilouse during either the Eisenhower Adminis-

tration or the Kennedy Administration

to the effect of why can't

you do something about Castro?

MR. BISSELL:

Well, it's possible.

I don't remember

a spacific case, if there were any. When you asked earlier

if there had been any discussions of this during the Eisenhower

Administration,

the reason I said that there could have been

was just that sort of remark might easily have been made in a

meeting.

You know; couldn't you, is there any way that you

could

remove Castro and

do

something

much simpler than the

Bay of Pigs operation, that sort of remark could have been made

in, for instance,

a meeting of the Special Group. I don't happen

to remember such

renark having been made in the Eisenhower

Administration.

MR. BELIN:

Would Presidant Eisenhower himself have

made such a remark, or was he not a member of it?

MR. BISSELL: He did not attend the Special Groups.

MR. CONNOR: This small group that was formed by Mr.

Edwards aftar your discussions, how many people were involved

within the Agency?

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• SECRET

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MR. BISSELL: Well, I don't know that he formed a

group. I think he conducted

probably with the help of one other

nan in the Security Office such conmunications as there were.

MR. BELIN:

Mr. Olsen I think has

several additional

questions in this area.

MR. OLSEN: Howard Hunt has stated in several of his

writings that in connection with his work in

preparation for

ths Bay of Pigs he recommended an assassination

of

Premier

Castro be undertaken either to precede or to be contemporaneous

with the Bay of Pigs operation.

Now, Mr. Hunt was working under

your direction?

MR. BISSELL: Right.

MR. OLSEN: At that time, was he not ?

MR. BISSELL: Yes, he was.

MR. OLSIN: Did such a recommendation from E. Howard

Hunt ever come to your attention?

MR. BISSELL:

I wouldn't

be at all surprised. I don't

have a specific recollection. It is the kind of thing he could

have said in

a meeting orally and. I don't remember any written

proposal to that effect originating from Headguarters.

MR. OLSIN: Is it your testimony that you have absolutely

no recollection of an oral recommendation from Mr. Ilunt to that

effect?

MR. BISSELL: I don't have any specific racollection,.

but that doesn't mean that it couldn't have happened.

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MR. OLSEN: Do you have a general impression that

it happened?

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MR. BISSELL: I would suspect that he is

telling the

truth when he said that he made this recommendation. Whether

he would have made it in my presence or to me, or to Colonal

King or others, I don't know.

MR. OLSEN: Mr. Bissell, there has also been testimony

that has been taken by the staff of the Commission to the effect

that

a Bernard Barker, a contract agent of the CIA, or employee

of

the CIA, I baliave it was at that time made contact with

the person acting in the Cubian community down in the Miami

area and asked him about this time whether he would be willing

to undertake an assassination. Do you have any knowledge of

that?

• MR. BISSELL: I don't remember that.

MR. OLSEN: Were you aware, Mr. Bissell, in the

period' 1961 early 1962 of there being a great deal of talk

among Cuban exiles in this country of desire to kill Fidel Castro?

MR. BISSELL: Again, I have to say I have no specific

recollaction: of reading newspaper stories to this affect, or

hearing raports through CIA channels but it seems

to me highly

likely, given the nature of the

situation, that

there would have

been talk of that sort.

MR. OLSEN: A great many of the Cuban exiles in

Florida in particular and elsewhere in the southern part of the

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United States at that time were being in effact utilized

through front organizations that were being sponsored by the

Agency, were they not?

MR. BISSELL: Uh-huh. I think that is true. Yes.

MR. KIRKLAND: Was there discussion

of

targets there

confined

to

Fidel Castro, or would it include Guevara

and

others?

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MR. BISSELL: Exclusively Castro.

CHAIRMAN ROCKEFELLER:

Were not most of those Cuban

organizations penetrated by Castro representatives?

MR. BISSELL: They ware, indeed.

CHAIRMAN ROCKEFELLER:

So that it would be very easy

for double agents to report back to Castro what was going on?

MR. BISSELL:

That's right. Exactly. I think our

judgment at the tine, as a matter of intelligence, and I am now

talking about after the Bay of Pigs operation in particular,

but the same applies, by the way, to most of the preparation,

I think our belief was that Castro was extremely well informed

on what was going on. I don't think that he penetrated, so far

as

we knew, parts of that preparatory activity that

were under

the Agency's direct control, but all of the exila groups in

Miami,

including the political groups that we attempted to

form and did form as front organizations, I'm quite sure he

knew what was going on.

CHAIRIIAN ROCKEFELLER:

Did CIA know, have any information

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to the effect that Oswald was trying

to penetrate some of

those groups?

MR. BISSELL: I don't remenber that, Mr. Chairman.

MR. CONNOR: Did it ever come to your attention

in

any way that Oswald have any interest in the Cubian situation

or was associated with it in any way?

MR. BISSELL: Never. I don't ever remember hearing

any

association, in anything that associated

him with that.

MR. KIRKLAND: You mean prior to the assassination?

MR. BISSELL: Prior to the assassination.

CHAIRMAN ROCKEFELLER: Did Bill Pauli work for you

during that period?

IR. BISSELL:

Well, yes, in a sense. I mean, he served

as a messenger, but for the most

part that was in the final days

of the Batista regime and he was used in

an effort to persuade

Batista to leave the country.

MR. BELIN: Mr. Olsen?

MR. OLSEN: After the assassination of President

Kennedy, when it bacame well known that Lee Harvey Oswald had

been active in attempting to penetrate anti-Castro groups, and

had engaged in kind of a one-man operation for the Fair Plan

For Cuba Committee, did it not occur to you, Mr. Bissell, that

there night have been some relationship between the assassination

of President Kennedy, in attitude, at least, that Oswald might

have daveloped in connection with his Cuban contacts in Nsw Orlaans?

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MR. BISSELL: Well, I think I can

honestly say it

didn't particularly occur

to me at

that time.

I

read

the

usual neuspaper accounts of the assassination, but it wasn't

until a good deal later that these facts about Oswald

surfaced

and I

will honestly say that

really didn't occur

to me, that

there was a connection.

MR. BELIN: Any other questions by the Commissioners

on this particular area?

Now lst's turn to the question of Irujillo,

and I am

going to ask Mr. Gray to interrogate you in that area.

MR. GRAY:

Mr. Bissell, we have

gone over the circum-

stances surrounding the death of Trujillo just before you

testified, is that correct?

MR. BISSELL: Correct.

MR. GRAY: Incidentally, in the 13 years or so since

you left the Agency, have you had occasion to review the docu-

ments dealing with that?

MR. BISSELL: I have not, no.

MR. GRAY: Now, in early 1960 the records I reviewed

indicate that the government was maintaining

a policy of non-

intervention toward the Irujillo regime, and that in the early

months of that year Ambassador Parland, who

was then our

Ambassador in the Dominican Republic, suggssted that that

policy be changed. Do you recall Ambassador Farland?

MR. BISSELL: I don't remember whether I ever mat him

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parsonally, but I do have some recollection of this reconmen-

dation of his.

MR. GRAY:

And do you recall anything

about his back-

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ground?

MR. BISSELL: He had been I baliave in the FBI at

one tima and he had

an intense interast in

intelligence

matters

and I think he had worked very closely with the CIA

station, Chief of Station in the Dominican Republic.

MR. GRAY:

Incidentally, was that

station declared

to the Dominican Government?

MR. BISSELL: I beliave it was.

MR. GRAY :

That would mean that

the governmant, even

though the people were under cover, would know who

they were

and what they were?

MR. BISSELL: At least. who some of them were.

MR. GRAY: Now, the records reflect that when Mr.

Farland returned to Washington for consultations in May of 1960

he stated that he had baan

in contact with some internal dissi-

dents in the Dominican Republic, that they needed support from

the United States, and in particular that they needed a number

of high-powered rifles with telescopic scopes, and the Agency

records reflect in conversations at the Agency he further went

on to say that the Dominicans planned to remove Trujillo from

the scene through use of some sort of explosive device.

DO

you recall conversations along these linas?

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2321

MR. BISSELL: My recollection is that on the occasion

of this visit of his to Washingon he did urge that some military

or equipment or guns or other devices be made available to

the internal dissidents. I have a dim recollection that this

was to include ona or more rifles with telescopic sights. I

wouldn't have

Ismembered the number unless you had

mantioned it

from the records.

MR. GRAY: The records also reflect that at the end

of June or the baginning of July you approved of the furnishing

of such rifles to the Dominican dissidents

on the basis of

a memorandum from Colonel King, who was then Chief of the

Hestern Hemisphere Division, stating

he had

received authori-

zation from Mr. Rubottom, who was then Assistant Secretary of

State.

Do you recall such approval?

MR. BISSELL: This is

all consistent with my

recolle-

ction.

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MR. GRAY: Mould you yourself be involved in any

nagotiations with the Department of

state

as

a normal

matter?

MR. BISSELL: As a normal matter I would not have

been involved with mestings at the Assistant Sécretary of State

level. I would have been involved if and when

this

matter

was

discussed in the Special Group.

MR. GRAY: And do you recall, do you have any recollectio

of whether or not you were involved

in any discussions involving

the furnishing of these rifles?

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MR. BISSELL: I don't remember that.

MR. GRAY :

NOV,

the records

pretty

much

petered out

at this point. They

don't show that either this plan

was killed

or that the rifles were actually sent. It could not be

developed whether they were or not. Do you have any recollaction

why that change of course might have taken place?

MR. BISSELL: None whatsoever.

MR. GRAY: At the beginning of '60 and '61 you pre-:

sented a proposal to the Special Group

to work with the

internal dissidents, and at the same time work with exile groups

for paramilitary

capability and things of that sort, am I

COLLeCE?

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MR. BISSELL: Correct.

MR. GRAY: At the January 12, 1961 meeting,

at the

instance of Department of State, the Special Group, which

approved these covert operations, approved

the provisions to

the Dominican internal dissidents of limited supplies of small

arms and soma

explosive devices, some explosives, I believe,

do you have any recollection on that ?

MR. BISSILI: Such as it is, it would confirm what

you state.

MR. GRAY: In your opinion, when they approved the

provision of small arms, were they talking about assassination

weapons, of were they talking about guerrilla

supplies

and things

of that nature?

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2323

MR. BISSELL: I would

have

said definitely the latter.

However, I think it was the understanding of everybody in

Washington that if you provided weapons to internal dissidents,

and especially in fairly small numbers, and were contemplating

truly guerrilla-like activities as distinguished from something

on the scale of the Bay of Pigs, that these might well include

assassination attempts. But the concept that I seem to remember

was that this was

a plan for, in effect, the logistic support

of the internal dissidents, and it did not contemplate that

the Agency or the Station would be planning specific operations

for them to carry out.

MR. GRAY: So, it would be their operations and the

Agency furnishing of the equipment?

MR. BISSELL: Right.

MR. GRAY: And you draw a distinction there, do you?

MR. BISSELL: I do partly because in

situations like

that the Agency really has very little effective control over

the group that is

supported once the support has been granted.

MR. GRAY: And with respect to the explosives which

were authorized, the Agency had been in contact with thesa

internal dissidents and was aware that they did plan to use a

bomb to kill Trujillo?

MR. BISSELL: I imagine that's the case,

yes.

don't

specifically remember.

• MR. GRAY: And you then, if you don't recall

Of YOUr

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2324

Own

state of hind, do you have any recollection as to whather

other members of the Special Group knew what the purpose of tha

explosives might be?

MR. BISSELL: I believe that they would have, yes.

MR. GRAY: You think they would have?

MR. BISSELL:

I think they would have, ysah.

MR. GRAY: Now, the dissidents had difficulty coming

up with a workable -- oh, very important, the Special Group

attach the condition that these weapons

and explosives be

delivered to the representatives of the

dissidents outside of

the Dominican Republic, is that correct?

MR. BISSELL: Correct.

CHAIRMAN ROCKEFELLER:

Did this get the approval

of the White House?

MR. GRAY:

The records that I have reviewed show it

was

approvad by the Spacial Group.

There was

on inno

MR. BISSELL: There was

also

a White House Represen-

tative on the Speical Group.

CHAIRMAN ROCKEFELLER: And you said earlier that any

assassination or assassination attempt would have to have the

highest approval?

MR. BISSELL:

That's corract.

CHAIRMAN ROCKEFELLER: From the President?

MR. BISSELL: That is correct.

MR. GRAY: Would include this sort of instance of

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to

furnishing material to people knowing what they are going

usE

it for, but where the Agency itself is not directing the

operation?

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MR. BISSELL: Well, let me answer that question this

way: this clearly raquired and

received the Special Group

approval. The procedure

always in

the Special Group was that

the White House Representative was presumed to inform the

President of whatever was brought up in that Group that in

his opinion should be brought to the President's

attention.

And furthermore, it was presumed to obtain presidential assent

to action in those cases where he believed the presidential,

personal assent of the President was called for.

MR. CONNOR: And who was the White House Representative

sitting on the Special Group

at that time?

MR. BISSELL: Gordon Gray. And frequently, given that

procedure, it was frequently the case that a proposal would be

made at one meeting of the Special Group, it would be discussed

but no action taken

until the next meeting, in part to provide

this opportunity for the hite Housa Representativa to consult

with

the President to the extent ha believed necessary.

MR. GRAY: Now, the dissidents

wers

naver able to

develop a capability to receive

these goods, nor did they

ever

provide any persons to be trained in

the techniques of explos-

ives and detonators and so forth?

MR. BISSELT: (Witness nodded in the affirmative.)

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2326

MR. GRAY: In March the station cabled the request

of

Mr. Dearborn, who was then Counsel General, that Trujillo's

relations having been severed, cabled his request for

three

38 police specials to ba turned over to the dissidents as a

show of good faith

and materal support. Now, do you recall

a discussion of the pistols and

sending pistols by pouch and

SO

forth?

MR. BISSELL:

Yes. I think I do remember that dis-

cussion, and for that purpose you have identified.

MR. GRAY: The record. also reflects that on the first

couple of occasions such requests were made by the station the

Agency refused them stating that it was inconsistent with

the limitations imposed by the Special Group. The last request

was not responded to for a pariod of some week, approximately

a wask, following which you approved it. It appears there was

a mesting in the State Department between some State Department

officials and Agency officials and the State Department menorandum

of that meeting is not in their files.

Based on that statement

of documents, would you say whather or not you think there

would have been State Dapartment approval of pouching

those

pistols?

MR. BISSELL: I think there almost certainly would

have baen State Department approval, because there had been

a specific prohibition imposed by the Special Group, and the

Agency would not on its own authority have considered it possible

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violate that prohibition unless

and until thare had been

consultation with the State Department and concurrence by the

Stata Department.

MR. GRAY: Would such

consultation normally have been

at

your level or on Colonel Kings?

MR. BISSELL: I think probably Colonel Kings.

MR. GRAY: Assuming the State Department agreed to

waive the Special Group restrictions, and the Agency felt this

was appropriate, would you have felt it necessary to go back

to the special Group in any formal fashion?

MR. BISSELL: I think probably not, but I think the

Special Group menbers would have been

informed of this action

at the next meeting.

MR. GRAY: As I stated, the record reflects that the

pistols were sent to the Dominican Republic and were passed

to the dissidents.

MR. BELIN: When, Mr. Gray, does

the record reflect

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that?

MR. GRAY: I believe it was March 25th.

I don't have

my notes with me.

MR. BELIN: Of what year?

MR. GRAY: 1961.

MR. BELIN: When does the racord reflect the riflas

were shipped?

MR. GRAY:

The Springfield rifles, the ones that

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Ambassador Farland talked about?

MR. BELIN: The first rifles that want down.

MR. GRAY: As. near as I can tell

on the rifles that

I spoke about earlier, they naver went to

the Dominican

Republic.

MR. BELIN: In other words, the early rifles that

were talked about never were shipped, is that correct, according

to the records?

MR. GRAY:

The records

no longer discuss

the matter

once approval to ship them was given. There is no transmission,

no further reference to receipt of them, nothing

of that

sort.

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MR. BELIN:

All right, go ahead.

CHAIRMAN ROCKEFELLER: I would like to ask Mr.

Bissell whether there was any question of violations of

statutes by sending

these weapons to a group through the use

of the pouch, diplomatic pouch in relation to sither a direct

assassination

attempt, or implied or possible?

MR. BISSELL: Well, I am not aware of

any.

In any

case, I think that consideration did not arise at the time, and

it

obviously didn't arise

in the minds of the State Department

or the Special Group members or the Agency.

MR. GRAY: Now, following the shipment

of the pistols,

the station cabled back that they

had discovered in the

Consulate three Carbines that had been left behind by departing

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2329

Naval porsonnel and roquested authority to pass

those.

Again,

Headquarters delayed, and again there was

a meeting with the

State Department. There is a memorandum of

this meeting

and

it doesn't reflact this subject

came up, but the same

day your

Deputy, Mr. Barnes, approved the passage of the Carbines.

would you say that this would -

MR. BISSELL: I think almost certainly that the

State Dapartment would have been consulted.

MR. GRAY: Now, following this the station and the

Consul requested, the

Consul ragusstad

some

more or

relayed

the request to the dissidents for some so-called grease guns,

M-3 submachines, and three or four such weapons were pouched

to the Dominican Rapublic. But with the Bay of Pigs and un-

settlad conditions in the Caribbean area they were never passed.

Do you have any further recollection of the events preceding

the death of Generalissimo Trujillo?

MR. BISSELL:

• I really have none, no.

MR. GRAY: Do you recall discussing these matters

with anyone, let say of your superiors or anyone outside of the

CIA?

MR. BISSELL: Ilo special discussions, nothing other

than

those that would routinely occur

in reviswing

projects with

Allen Dulles internally and any special reports to the Speical

Group.

MR. BELIN:

Did the Special Group give or reaffirm its

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position to pouch the weapons that were actually shipped in

the spring of 1961?

MR. BISSELL:

I don't know whether they did or

not.

As you have just heard, there is the indication

that this was

cleared with the State Department, and I have said that the

normal

procedure would be that averything: cleared with tha

State Department and the Special Group at least would have

been informed of this at its next meating, and presumably,

therefore, it accepted that, or

at

any

rate did not reverse

the

agreed upon position between the Agency and the State

Department.

MR. BELIN: Who were the members of the Special

Group, in summary, if you remember?

MR. BISSELL: I will have to have the date again.

MR. BELIN: Into the spring

of '61.

MR. BISSELL: Well, by this time the Special Group

would normally have included Bundy or Rostow,

and

at the beginn-

ing,

at

soms date

about mid-'61 I balieve

that Genaral Maxwell

Taylor, as the President's Military Adviser, sat in on most of

the meetings. It would have included probably the Undersecre-

tary of State, and the Deputy Secretary of Defense

and

the

Director of CIA.

MR. BELIN: And you mention the fact that in the fall

of 1960 when this was

first discussed, that at that time Mr.

Gray was on the Special Group?

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MR. BISSELL:

Right. Correct.

MR. BELIN:. And who was the Special Group at that

time,

who else?

MR. BISSELL: Hell, it would have been, with the

exception of the hite House representation, it would have been

the same individuals ex officio. It was suppose to be the

Deputy Secretary of State, I mean the Undersecretary of State,

the senior Undersecratary.

Later, at certain stages in the

organization of the Department it was the Undersecretary for

Political Affairs

in

the State Department. The Deputy Secra-

tary of Defense was a member, although there was sometimes a

substitute for hin.

And the Director of Central Intelligence

was the other person.

MR. KIRKLAND: Was that representative to the OAS

involved in these discussions?

MR. BISSELL: I baliave not, sir. I believs it

is

very unlikely.

MR. GRAY: Mr. Bissell, one other aspect of the cable

traffic I should call to your attention is that shortly after

the shipment of

the pistols and the authorization to pass the

Carbines, there is several cables botween

the station and the

Agency leadquarters reflecting some concern

whether Counsul

Dearhorn is going to mentioned these

matters in his correspondenca

with the Department of State. Now, I suppose there could be

tro

reasons

for that,

either nobody in the State Department knew

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2332

it,

or very few people in the State Department knew it. Would

you have any opinion as to which of

those

situations

existed?

MR. BISSELL: Yes. I am almost certain it would have

been the latter. Operational information of this sort was

suppose to be confined to the Assistant

Secretary concerned and

his Deputy. Quite often, for matters of somewhat lesser

sensivity involve the station desk officer in the State Depart-

ment, but it was suppose to be limited to two or three below

the level of the Undersecretary and the Secretary.

MR. KIRKLAND:

Was the Ambassador back in the country?

MR. BISSELL: I believe the Ambassador was back in

the country, but in this particular case where Farland had

been

the Arbassador

and was succeeded by Dearborn, they were

both kept

completely informed of what was going on at all times.

The reason I say in this particular case

is that these were :

two men who I mentioned earlier, were intensely interested

in intelligence and covert activity or operations of this sort.

It

was Farland, as you have heard, who really initiated the

policy of supporting the dissidents, and they were, to my

recollection, very fully informed of what was done.

MR. BELIN: Again, you mentioned

earlier that you

felt that the Special Operations Group approved possibly a ship-

ment of rifles in 1960 which evidently were not shipped.

you have any specific recollection of that approval, or do you

have any specific recollection that it was approved or not?

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MR. BISSELL: I don't have a specific recollection,

but I take it there is a record of that.

MR. BELIN: Are you assuming that if they were shipped

they were approved, and if they were not shipped you don't know

whether it was approved?

MR. BISSELL: I think that is what I

am saying, yes,

as you are stating, yes.

MR. BILIN: And if the record shows there were

weapons shipped in the March or April of 1961.

Then is it your

specific recollection or just that you are assuming that the

Special Operations Group approved that?

MR. BISSELL: No. I have some recollection of that

one, the shipment involving the three revolvars, and I partic-

ularly remember the case that was made by Dearborn for doing

it, which was to be able to give, to issue some weapons to

the dissidents

as evidence of our continued

interest and good

faith.

• MR. BELIN: And would that approval of the Oparations

Group then have been in the spring of 1961 or the first part of

1961, or still going back?

MR. BISSELL: I'm quite cartain it would have been

the first part of 1961.

MR. KIRKLAND: Following the death of Trujillo, did

the Agency give any help or aid to the surviving executioners?

MR. BISSELL: I don't remember that specifically.

It

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was a confused pariod, of course, and the Agency was very active

there in the next few months attempting to, in making

contact

with the various political groups and individuals that emerged,

but I do not remember anything specific of the sort you speak

of.

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MR. BELIU: The records of the Agency show that Mr.

McCone was not briefed about sither the Castro plan or the

so-called executive action capability until some period

aftar

he becane DCI, which would have been in 1963 or so. Do you

know any reason why he was not briefed about this?

MR. BISSELL: Well, I think by the time he took office

which as I remember it it was late in 1961, I think it was about

the first of December in 1961, any plan to davelop an executive

action capability internally was in abeyance.

I don't know

whether it ever was revived, certainly not while I was there,

and I think that's the reason that he

was not briefed on that.

The

possible plan of a possibla Castro assassination had aborted

and although an individual was designated by me just about that

time to begin to look at the potential operations against the

Castro regime, that designation would have occurred only a

few

weaks before I left, and I think, I don't think anything ever

came of that. Bill Harvey, who was

put into that position, was

active in planning for a time, but I know that after a

fairly

short tour of duty he was removed, and so I am assuming the

reason McCone was not briefed about these was that really nothing

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was happening that worth bringing to his attention.

MR. BELIN: Any other questions

on the assassinations

before wa turn to one final area?.

MR. GRAY: I do

have one other question.

was your Deputy for a portion of

this time?

Mr. Helms

MR. BISSELI: He was.

MR. GRAY: And ultimately your successor?

MR. BISSELL: Right.

MR. GRAY: Was he involved in any of these operations

or planning that you have described?

MR. BISSELL:

Well, ha was generally informed about

them because he saw copies of all of the cable traffic that

came through, and

sat in meetings with the Director

and things

of this kind. He was not actively

involved

in the Bay

of Pigs

preparations when that was going on. It was nearly a fulltime

job for me, and I was handling much of the rest of the business

of the cs. I believe that

he would have been -- there's a

chance that he would have been involved in the Dominican

activities, but to just what extent I don't remember.

MR. KIRKLAND: I have one question. This group that

carried out the assassination in the Dominican Republic were

not initially sponsored by the CIA?

MR. BISSELL:

That's correct, sir. They came into

existence on their on, and as you have heard, it was Ambassador

Farland's reconmendation that they be supported, and I do want

to

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emphasize, as I have said, that this was regarded by the

Agency as a logistics support operation, in full knowledge that

it was giving then the capability

for violence.

But nevertheless,

there is quite a

distinction, or at least there was in our minds

between supporting

an operation

and either initiating it, organ-

izing

it, running, it and controlling it.

MR. KIRKLAND: And this was not too long after the

Trujillo assassination of a president of a

friandly state?

MR. BISSELL:

Exactly.

MR. GRISHOLD: Did anyone give consideration as to

whether this was a wise thing to do or a legal thing to do?

MR. BISSELL:

well, I would presume, sir, that

consideration was given in the State Department. And as you

have heard, it was the Ambassador who first recommended that

this support operation be undertaken. This

was then approved

by the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State. Ile is the approver

of record, but this must have also included Tom Mann, who was

the Assistant Secretary of State.

It was discussad in

the

Special Group where it was approved at the undersecretary lavel,

and by a White llouse Representative, and the general presumption

in the way the Agency's covert action operations were run

was

that the policy considerations of the wisdon of the action was

a matter for the State Department, the White House and

in a

sense the National Security Council and the Pentagon wherever

its

interests were relevant, which was in many of these.

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MR. GRISHOLD: But the CIA didn't regard itself as

having any responsibility for either wisdom or legality?

MR. BISSCIL:

I wouldn't

say that. I would not

say

that it had no responsibility for wisdom.

The CIA obviously

was represented both at the Special Group and on occasion with

the ad hoc nsstings when operations of this kind were discussed,

and CIA representatives were quite often not backward in giving

their views about wisdom. But this was not the part of the

Agency's charter.

I think that

was

recognized at the time,

and it was one of the Allen Dulles'

repeated exertation, that

the CIA does not make policy. It is there as an agency in this

capacity, it is there

to carry out policy decisions.

Now, as to legality, I think there was a real effort

in the years that I was in the Agency to restrict the Agency's

operation within what was believed to be its chartar. And in

that sense, at least there was a concern for a legality. I am

not - I have to say that I am unclear myself as to how the

concept of legality : can be

applied to many covert

activities.

MR. CONNOR: Who was the Undersecretary of State in

the Special Group at that time?

MR. BISSELL:

Well, back in '60 it was Mr. Murphy,

and in '61 it was Chester Bowles who was the Undersecratary.

Hs

did not represent the Department very often on the Special Group

and I don't remember whom he used for that purpose.

MR. GRAY:

Mr. Merchant

was there at that time.

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MR. BISSELL:

Yes, I think he was.

MR. SHANNO!: Staying on this matter of approval as

to the wisdon, you assumed the State Dapartment had covered

this, and that would mean you assumed the Secretary of state

was informed?

MR. BISSELL: Yes, sir.

CLAIRMAN ROCKEFELLER:

Was Goodwin involved in any

of this stuff?

MR. BISSELI: Dicl: Goodwin became somewhat involved

in the Bay of pigs operation, but very

late in

the gans.

FOr

the most part, only

after it was over in the business of picking

up the piecas. I suspact that he was involved a bit in the

Dominican operation, and I believe

that he would have been

one

of its supporters and very sympathetic to it.

CHAIPMAN ROCKEFELLER: How about the Castro assassin-

ation astempt?

MR. BISSELL:

No, I am

almost certain that he knew

nothing of that.

MR. BELIN: At least not during the time

that

YOu wEre

with the Agency?

MR. BISSELL: That is correct, yes.

MR. KIRKLAND: Was John lill, do you recall, was John

Hill in the D.R. at the time ?

MR. BISSELL: I saem to remember him being there at

soma point, but I don't remember when

it was.

I think during

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the period we are talking about in the

D.R. it was Farland

followed by Dearborn.

MR. KIRKLAND: He was the charge d'affaires' I think

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afterwards?

MR. BISSELL: Yes.

MR. GRAY:

Dearborn along with the members of the

sation were removed very quickly after the death of Trujillo?

MR. BELIN: The final area of inquiry that I want

to go into pertains to racommendations

you might have concerning

Agency operations or based upon your experience in the Agency

and your experience both befors in government and after in the

business world.

Do you have any specific recommendations as to

how to

improva the operations of the Agency?

MR. BISSELI; Well, as I have mentioned to you, Mr.

Belin, I had

few that are

rather scattered, and to which I

do not attach any vary great importance. I had occasion a few

years ago to do a paper on

this, and I am going to supply Mr.

Belin

a copy of this if it is of interest to him.

The main

thrust of that, I will out it this way, is that the Agency, most

of the Agency's so-called failures, and especially its more

massive ones

have taken the form of a compromise of operations,

or operations have been deemed to be failures largely because

they were compromised.

That is not true in all cases, by

any

manner of means, I mean the Bay

of Pigs is a notable exception.

But in general that is true, and that had lead

me to argue, or

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2340

really to remind any readers of this essay

to which I have

referred that the prime expertise the nation should

sack

the clandestine service, in a foreign clandestine service

is an

ability to keep things secret, and to perform operations in secret

and without compromise. And in part because of my own failings

and shortcomings, by the late 60's the Agency already had I

thought a rather lamentable record of not being

able to do this.

Now, in reviewing the whole range of different kinds

of covert operations, they involved progaganda operations,

paramilitary operations, political action operations and the

whole range. And with respect to each of these, the clandestine

service is not the place where one would expect to, where one

would look for professional

competence, nilitary competence..

One would lock to the Pentagon. Competence in political

analysis and political science he would expect that the most

competent people in the nation would be elsewhere, and he would

not look there for competent aconomists as such. The pro-

fessional competence that the clandestine service should have,

is as

said, the ability to plan and organize and carryout

operations, both intelligenca collection and such covert action

operations

as are authorized with high security, and hopefully

avoiding compronise.

Given that as its role, given its poor record, I

suppose the thrust of this paper was that every effort should

ba made to

improve this aspect of

the

Agency's operations.

I

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made one organizational recormendation. It is just ons way

of doing

it. It was to propose that there ba a

small internal

staff in the Agency, in the clandestine service, but with the

direct line to the DCI that should scrutinize every proposed.

ner operation before it is initiated, and

at last oncs

' a yzar

should

scrutinize every on-going operation from one standpoint

soley

that was the prospects of compromise, and their changs

from year to year. ly

feeling is that in the years that I was

in the, it was the DDP in particular that lacking this or any

similar mechanism, a number of our mistakes occurred because

there was not a strong

enough voice raised internally in the

councils of the Agency in favor or the precautions that would

be required to maintain sacrets.

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MR. KIRKLAND: Would that not be a function of the

Counterintelligence Division?

MR. BISSELL: Well, it could be, but actually the

CI staff or Division did not function in that way and did not

really attempt to perform that role. It was attempting really

to protect the Agency and other parts of the Government from

penetration, and I really had in mind not the compromise by

classic penetration, but if you stop to think of it, it hasn't

produced the great, dramatic revelations of recent years. It

is the compromise from letting too many people become knowledgeable

of

an operation and still letting the operation go on, of having

inadequate cutouts, and having inadequate compartmentation both

within the Agency and elsewhere in tha

Government.

MR. BELIN: Now, you contrasted that with the

Inspector General's review, which was a review of operations

that had already been completed as opposed to current operations?

MR. BISSELL:

That is correct. I am talking about

before the fact review, and for this, the sole purpose really

of what I have identified as security.

MR. BELIN: You also had a recommendation -

MR. CONNOR: Excuse me. You made an exception for the

Bay of Pigs in that. Now, why would you say that that operation

failed?

MR. BISSELL: Well, that operation not only was

dramatically compromised, and indeed, it is questionable whether

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that could have been avoided under any circumstances, but it

was also a military failure, and it seems to me perfectly clearcat

that that is the case.

My reference to that was to contrast this with, for

instance, the by now much publicized support to the Student

Association and support to labor groups overseas. These oparations.

in my opinion, were

tested by what

they

accomplished up to the

point of compromise, and could perhaps still have accomplished,

were brilliant. ly successful, and what destroyed those operations

was purely and simply

compromise.

I also happen to think that they became, that they are

examples, although parhaps I have not looked into them enough

to be confident of this opinion, but I am

afraid I think they

became

examples of very sloppy procedures. I think that anyone

who had looked by the early '60s at that set of operations,

coldly, and somewhat at arm's length

from the standpoint of

security would have said that they

are absolutely doomed to

compromise, and quite soon if major changes were not made.

After all, the very fact that, for instance, in the

Student Organization you had new officers every year, and most

of the officers were knowledgeable of the source of funding,

well, it was absolutely inevitable that that would be brought

up before long, and indeed, a state of mind had developed, I

think, that it really would not do much harm if it wera blown.

I think that state of mind was perhaps perfectly proper with

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regard to the radios because they really had been blown before,

but there are instances in my view of operations that did achieve

notable results, and which eventually

failed and had to be

ended for the reason of compromise.

MR. BELIN: You have also had

some recommendations

concerning the type of personnel that the Agency ought to

recruit.

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MR. BISSELL: I will mention before touching on that,

I had one other specific one

which is really the subject of

longstanding discussion inside of the clandestine service. I

felt the Agency had come to rely much too heavily on official

cover

and was

using its official cover again

somewhat carelessly

and it is a very difficult job to build up unofficial cover,

either governmental or nongovernmental. But I falt that far

too little was being done about that. Mr. Belin refers to

a quite unrelated recommendation of mind. I was fearful that

the course the Agency was on was placing more and more reliance

on staffing, on men and women brought in fairly young, in many

cases right out of college, or soon after college, trained

in the Agency and then spending or planning to make life careers

there, somewhat in the fashion of the military services, and of

the Foreign Service. I think that that is a perfectly appropriate

pattern for those other services, but my own belief is that

one

of the great strengths of the Agency as a corps of individuals

in say the mid-50s under Allen Dulles was that it attracted

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men from all walks of life, and because it was

such a new

organization at that time, most of its officers and all of its

senior people had had some other kind of professional exparience

and

accomplishment before they came into the organization.

It had quite

a scattering of men who had had military

exparience, it had

some professionals like myself, it had

lawyers, and Helms himself, before his OSS

period, had been a

journalist, and it had

a wide range of skills.

I do not mean

those skills were important to be used. I never used economics

in the Agency, and Helms I don't think ever used journalism, but

my point is I think when it is engaging in the kind of business

it is, it is better to have a variety of backgrounds, and not

to have more than perhaps half of its personnel men who were

in there for lifelong careers.

This relates to my remarks about official cover and

its overuse. The pattern that I think was developing by the

end of, by the beginning of the '60s in the clandestine service

was that people more and more, its members thought of their

carears as a little different in kind, and a little removed

from Foreign Service careers. They expected to spend

a life

doing tours of duty in every case under official cover, and

usually identified to the host government. And in short, to

follow much the same career

pattern as

the Foreign Service.

I believe that this is not consistent really with the

maintenance of the state of mind that ought to animate the

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clandestine service.

MR. BELIN: Any other questions by members of the

Commission?

Thank you for coming.

MR. OLSEN: I have one that I would like tw get kind

of on the record.

Mr. Bissell, there have been people responsible or

irresponsible who have suggested that because you and Allen

Dulles and General Cabell were all terminated from the Agency

in effect by President Kennedy within a fair pariod of time

after the failure of the Bay of pigs, that the three of you

and other people in the Agency would have had a motive to

retaliate against President Kennedy.

Could you describe for us what you know of your

relationship and that of General Cabell and Allen Dulles with

President Kennedy after the termination of your respactiva periods

of service with the Agency?

MR. BISSELL: I can't say very much about the other

two gentlemen.

I am sure that Allen on occasion saw the President,

and I have every reason to believe that it was a friendly

relationship. I rather doubt whether General Cabell had any

direct contact with him aftar that.

I did have contact with him on perhaps two or three

occasions. He asked me quite soon after I left the Agency to

lend a helping hand to the then head of the rather new Alliance

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2347

for Progress, and he also asked me to do a paper for him, that

is, for the President, which I did do, on the question of what

lessons from the Marshall Plan might have been applicable to the

Alliance for Progress.

On another more lighthearted occasion, he got me to

come over to the White House to give him some advice on cruising

on the Maine coast. And the final time, I think, I suppose the

final time I

saw him, which couldn't have been but very shortly

before his death, was the award of a medal. I think I can

honestly say that the relationship was an extremely friendly

one in my case, and as far as I could judge, mutually so. I had

quite a number of contacts with him in the roughly eight months

that I was still in the Agency after the Bay of Pigs, and I can

say the same of that period.

And finally, for the record, I perhaps should say

that shortly before I did finally leave the Agency, John McCone,

with the President's knowledge and concurrence, and also that

of the then Attorney General, asked me to stay on in the Agency,

but in a somewhat different position

than

that of the DDP.

thought it was wiser for me to leave.

MR. LEMNITZER: I have a question.

Don't you believe

that in carrying on the covert operation of the magnitude of

the Bay of Pigs, that compartmentation was one of the weaknesses

compartmentation in a clandestine operation to maintain cover

and security was absolutely essential, but on the other hand, on

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an operation of that size with military aspects involved, it

seemed to me that compartmentation was a weakness

in the

preparation of carrying out of the operation, not to mention the

changing decisions that took place along the line

as the

operation unfolded?

MR. BISSELI: Well, I certainly agree with you,

General Lemnitzer, in the change in decisions,

and I agree

with you, I probably would agree with you if you and I discuss

specific examples of the compartmentation. I will say, however,

that some of the compartmentation I think to this day was

absolutely essential, and I will give you an example. We

really could not allow the Cuban politicals in Miami, the

exile members of the political parties, to visit the brigades

in training in Guatemala, and the reason for that was that the

brigade was shaping into a disciplined and unified force, and

the politicians

were totally insecure, and

at odds with one

another

on almost everything. There was a great deal of

intriguing in Miami, because if one politician could become

identified in the eyes

of the brigade, and if the operation was

then successful, ha would have been the leader.

So there is an example of where I think we were right

to enforce compartmentation. But I don't think that is the kind

of thing you have in mind, ard I

think I would agree with what

you have in mind.

MR. LEMNITZER: Well, specifically

I have in mind that

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within the Joint Chiefs of Staff

at the time we could

not find

out what the diplomatic estimate of the situation was, that if

this force did get ashore, and up in an

accessible place, that

the Cuban people would rally to it, and as

a matter of fact,

I have not found out yet what the diplomatic estimate of the

situation was.

MR. BISSELL: Yes, I agree with you. That is an

unfortunate example .

MR. GRISWOLD: Let me ask you, did the

Bay of Pigs

operation have anything to do with the gathering of intelligence?

MR. BISSELL:

No, sir. It was somewhat dependent on

It, but it didn't have anything to do with it.

MR. GRISWOLD: Then what business is it of the CIA

to

engage in operations which have nothing to do with the

gathering of intelligence?

CHAIRMAN ROCKEFELLER: Covert.

MR. BISSELL: Well, the category that came to be

called covert action operations are justified under

a much quotea

clause in the CIA's charter which

refers

to such

other activities

as the National Security Council diracts.

MR. GRISWOLD: Is there any evidence that the National

Security Council directed this operation?

MR. BISSELL: Well, there is a question of definition

of exactly what constituted the National Security Council at the

time of that operation, but I will say that the plans for tha

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operation were repeatedly reviewed by a group that included the

President of the United States, the Secretaries of State and

Defense, and the Assistant Secretary

of State who was involved,

the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, or the Acting Chairman of the

Joint Chiefs, and then Army Colonel, now General I believe, who

had been designated the Chairman of a group of three officers

by the JCS to review plans and preparations.

So I would say that rarely has what started out as

a clandestine operation been more intimately directed by a

group, by those individuals who are, I balieve, the mambars of

the NSC.

CHAIRMAN ROCKEFELLER:

Was that both President Eisenhower

and President Kennedy?

MR. BISSELL: No, this was President Kennedy, and this

began with the new administration.

CHAIRMAN ROCKEFELLER: And did the brigades have reason

to expect that if they were successful, they would get support

from the U.S. military forces?

MR. BISSELL: No, it had no reason to believe that.

MR. LEMNITZER: Isn't a part of the answar to this

question the comment made by President Kennedy after the opar-

ation failed that he was responsible, that

It was at his direction

that this operation was carried out?

MR. BISSELL: Yes, I think that's true, General

Lemnitzer, but you remembar I am sure just as I do, the degree

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to which the group I have identified was repeatedly involved

in review of plans and whatnot.

MR. BELIN: Any other questions from the Commission?

Thank you very much, sir, for coming.

MR. BISSELL: You are welcome.

CHAIRMAN ROCKEFELLER: We are very grateful to you,

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Mr. Bissell.

Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and

nothing but the truth, so help you God?

MR. DONOHUE: I do.

CHAIRMAN ROCKEFELLER: Paul, do you swear to tell the

truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you

God?

MR. O'NEILL: I do indeed.

CHAIRMAN ROCKEFELLER: Okay.

MR. BELIN: Mr. Donohue, we have generally had just

one witness at a time in the room, so parhaps you had better

leave the room while your boss testifies, and then we will call

you back here.

MR. DONOHUE:

Okay.

MR. CARGILL: Mr. Chairman, we thought we would begin

the session on OMB with Mr. O'Neill giving a short background

of OMB's role in Government,.

and then we will

proceed to some

more specific questions in dealing with the CIA with Mr.

Donohue.

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CIA HAS NO OBJECTION TO

DECLASSIFICATION AND/OR

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the testimong of Paul

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TESTIMONY OF

PAUL O'NEILL

MR. O'NEILL: Very quickly, Mr. Vice President and

members, I think it would be useful if I would try to give

you some perspactive about

how OMB does its work with other

agencies of government; that is to say, with agencies outside

of the intelligence area, and specifically outside of the CIA

area, so that as you come to the direct testimony from my

staff

member, Mr. Donohuz, you will have a background in mind.

I know many of you have had lots of business dealings

with the government, and you have some appreciation of how

OMB works, so I will indeed be brief. I think I was just

looking at some testimony that I am going to be giving in the

next couple of days on OMB's budget, and I was looking at the

historical members that show how many staff people are in OMB.

And I think maybe that is a useful way to come to the subject.

In 1947 OMB had about 550

total staff people.. Today

we have 580 total staff people, including 380 professional staff

people who examine the budgets and the programs

and activities

of everything in the Federal Government. And that means this

year, as you know, over $350 billion worth of

expenditures.

I think the budgat function

is a familiar one.

We

look at the amount of dollars that we are spending and compare

it to what we have spent in the past. We look at equity

considerations between groups that are served by Federal

programs.

We try to look at efficiencies, we try to look

at

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geographic distribution questions

and all of the other prospects

that you might expect in a budget oparation.

Now; in addition to that budget examination function,

of course, we put together each year the President's budget

for the approval of the Congress, and those same people

who do the reviaw and the analysis do that preparation function.

That is not to say that we print it, but we do everything short

of printing the President's budget.

In addition to those budget functions which are ongoing

through the year, we also perform a legislative clearance

function or a legislative review function for the President.

Every piece of legislation that is introduced by the President

goes through the Office of OMB so that it can be coordinated

with

the program of the President, and so that every

dapartment

and agency of government that has any kind of an interest in

that legislative proposal from the President has the advantage of

a crosscutting aralysis from any interestad

party within the

Executive Branch. In addition to doing that kind of process

with Presidential legislation, all legislation that is introduced

in the Congress by sither House, by

a member of either House,

comes to OMB when a member makes an appropriate request for that

same kind of a review, and a report on the Administration's

position on the provisions of that legislation just

as though

it were a piece of Presidential legislation.

There are two times during the year when the Director

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get deeply involved in the program activities and budget of all

of the Departments and agencies of government, once in the

spring and secondly in the fall as we are doing the final

preparation of the President's budget, and the Director and

Deputy sit down with examiners who have the responsibility, and

their straw bosses and foremen, and go through with them their

examination of the programs, the recommendations that are

made

by the Department and agency heads, the insights that our own

staff have about how resources can best be distributed in

preparation for a series of meetings that we have with the

President to in turn discuss with him

at somewhat higher levels

of abstraction the alternatives that we see he has in making

the judgments for the upcoming year.

In addition, we have, of course, some responsibility

for efficiency as indicated earlier,

and we

do spend some

time

trying to ferret out programs that are not working well,

proposing legislative changes, management changes, on occasion

personnel changes to try to accomplish and accommodate better

public performance.

I think maybe just by way of an example, to give you

a more detailed feeling as to how the resources that are invested

in the CIA area, or in the intelligence area, or the Defense

area as compared to other areas, I might take an example in

another area that we examine, and let me say Social Security as

an example.

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This year, Social Security spending will be $70

billion. We have one full time individual who examines the

program of the Social Security Administration. Now, we do have

on call some paople who are not directly responsible for

examining the budget in our management divisions to help out

with examination of important management questions.

We do call

upon financial system experts in our budget review divisions

to help support that one individual.

But what I am saying to you is we have one individual

that examines on a full time basis the activities of

the Social

Security Administration. At the same time, we'have one indi-

vidual who examines the activities of the CIA, which in budgetary

terms is a much, much smaller agency.

CHAIRMAN ROCKEFELLER: One individual?

MR. O'NEILL: Yes, sir. We have one

full time examiner

looking at the Central Intelligence Agency. He is backed up

by a so-callad branch chief who in turn reports to a division

chief that is responsible for all of the international affairs

programs of the government, who in turn reports to myself and

Jim Lynn. So we are not performing an

audit function

for

the

programs and activities of the government, not by the furtherast

stretch of the imagination are we performing an

audit furction..

If you think back over what has happened with the explosion of

government programs in the last 20 years, it is apparent on the

face of it that as that explosion has taken place, OMB's role

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has changed in a fairly marked way., In looking

at the historical

files of OMB, it is interesting to note that back in the

1950s

there were some 45 people examining the programs of the Veteran's

Administration, and they were examining them then in

a way that

was more like an audit function, because it was possible to do

that because we did not have the great

number of programs we have

now.

But that was all changed, and we are not examining

programs in anything approaching an audit fashion in any

activity of Government, not a singla one.

CHAIRMAN ROCKEFELLER:

Paul, would it be fair to

ask, since you gave the figures on the

comparison between '47

and '75, as to whether you are not grossly understaffed in

relation to the responsibilitias

that were then carried out in

terms of the size of the budget, or that

is now carriad out in

terms of the size of the budget? It must ba what, about ten times

as big?

MR. O'NEILL: I think it is probably a lot more than

ten times as big. It has really grown by leaps and bounds. I

guess I do not think

so, but it depends very much on one's

philosophical view as to what can ba done at the center when

you have an explosion of governmental function.

My own feeling is that

an audit function, and

inspector general function that could hope to deliver real

results would be so big that if it were in the Executive Office,

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that it would overwhelm the Executive office. That is what

happened in the OMB as the character of what Federal Government

is doing has changed, which is that we have moved

away

from

45. people looking at 170 VA hospitals and trying to know ourselves

whether what they were doing in each of those hospitals was right

or not. We have moved back into a position where we are really

testing, we are testing the general concept of a Veterans

health care program against the general concept of health

insurance, or we are looking at what

is going on in the private

sector, and we are dealing at a much more abstract level than

we were 25

or 30 years ago, by necessity.

oux office would have to be, I would say 2000, if we

were to begin to approach a more detailed audit kind of an

approach to our work.

CHAIRMAN ROCKEFELLER: And is GAO moving into that

vacuum?

MR. O'NEILL: Somewhat, yes, although the character

of their operation from my point of view has changed quite a

bit in the last ten or fifteen years. Ten or fifteen years

ago they were very much of an accounting mind. They made sure

that the numbers all added up, and that people had not defrauded

the Federal Government.

I do not think they ever told anybody

very much interesting about what was going on, about whether

it

was useful or not, but over the last especially five years, I

think they have changed their focus so that they have become

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less accounting focused, and less, spending

less of their time

making sure that the numbers add up, and more of their time

in trying to inform both the Executive branch and the government

as to the value of those things that are being

done with public

monies.

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So that they have changed their focus

some also, in

part by necessity.

CHAIRMAN ROCKEFELLER: llave we not got a former head

of the Bureau of the Budget there?

MR. O'NEILL: Yes, sir. They did, the former deputy

director, as a matter of fact, two former deputy directors,

Mr. Hughes and Mr. Staats.

CHAIRMAN ROCKEFELLER:

That is very interesting.

MR. GRAY: How big is GAO, how big a staff do they

have?

MR. O'NEILL: I don't have a number in my head, but I

could give it to you if you had a budget here. It is much

larger than our operation, and my guess would be off the top

of my head about 4000.

CHAIRMAN ROCKEFELLER: GAO?

MR. O'NEILL: Yes, sir.

MR. KIRKLAND: In these areas where there has been

some episodes of misuse of funds, as in some of the poverty

programs, and in the housing area, where do they get uncovered?

Do they get uncovered in the internal audits of the agency, or

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at the OMB level, or how do these things come to light?

MR. O'NEILL: Let us take housing as an example.

think the uncovering of fraud problems in those

programs has

taken place at the local level, and it has taken place with

GAO identifying a program, and the Inspector General of HUD

has identified problems in those programs.

And I think

a similar

finding on the OEO programs came out of those sorts of things.-

OMB's problem with the housing programs really recognized what

had been found in the way of fraud, but our focus was more

on the equity considerations, what was

wrong with the program

from an equity point of view.

That is, the Federal Government

was providing huge subsidies to a very small set of theoretically

eligible population, and as we talked to the President as to

what we saw wrong

with those programs, that is the point we

stressed, that there was no way in the world that we could

ever equitably provide the sama level of housing benefits to

the set that was eligible under the current terms and

conditions

of the programs, and that combined with the cases of fraud that

were

identified by GAO and the HUD inspector general led

us to

a recommendation to the Rresident that we stop those 235 and 236

subsidized housing programs.

MR. KIRKLAND: But the rural line of defense was

actually in the cortrol of the Agency, that is, your surveillance?

MR. O'NEILL: That is exactly right. Prevention of

fraud really begins and ends, or almost ends, with the assigned

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responsible officials in those departments and agencies, and

I guess my own

feeling is that Government has gotten so big

that if we can't depend on good surveillance and prevention of

fraud by the Cabinet secretary and his officials, that we are

going - we have to depend

on public oversight, and I guess I

don't think that that works as well as it should.

And therefore

indeed, we do have to depend on those cabinet and agency

officials to see that we don't use the public's money in an

unauthorized way.

MR. LEMNITZER: With the fiscal '76 budget being

defended before the Congress, I presume you are now starting

on the '77 year's budget.

MR. O'NEILL: Yes, sir, we

are.

MR. LEMNITZER: Within your agency. How will CIA

approach the problem and present it to you, to your office for

1977?

Just what

are the mechanics

of

it?

MR. O'NEILL: Well, they will receive the so-called

budget calling, all of the departments and

agencies in about

June.

MR. LEMNITZER: Do they get any guidelines?

MR. O'NEILL: Yes, they will. Right now we are begin-

ning to tune up for the "77 process, and over the month of May

the Director and I will sit down with all of our

examiners and our division heads

and go through the prospects

for fiscal year 1977. that our intelligence tells

us will be

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TO

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coming in as requests to the President, and we will be looking

at that against the backdrop of expected revenues based

on

anticipation of performance of the economy

for

fiscal year 1977.

We will take all of that assessment of what the agencies are

likely to be asking for, separating it out between those things

that

are new things, and those things that are driven by

current authorizations and appropriations, and taking that

whole package to the President along with his other aconomic

advisors, Allen Greenspan, and Bill Siedman, and giving

judgment, getting a judgment from him as to how many dollars

in broad blocks he wants to tell the Cabinet secretaries

and the

Agency heads they should use as a planning

figure for their

work over the next several months.

In June,

those numbers from the President will go

out as guidance to the Departments and agencies, and over the

months, July, August, September, they will be within the limits

provided by the President, deciding what kind of a specific

program, detailed recommendation thay want to make to him, and

then

in September these requests will begin to come in, and in

September, October, and November, we will go through our regular

budget process, evaluating what it is that is in the base that

we must do, that wa think it is desirable to keep doing, those

things which we think should be taken out,, evaluation of new

things that are being proposed, and then through a series of

sessions with the President, going through and getting his

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juâgments on all of the numbers for fiscal year 1977.

MR. WALLISON: Do you in the course of your activities

evaluate the activities of the various agencies in relation to

their statutory charters or restrictions?

MR. O'NEILI: Well, yes, within the limitations of our

staff reach.

MR. WALLISON: In the case we have here, assuming

there were no Commission and there were no Congressional inquiries,

would you consider it your responsibility to review what the

Agency has done to determine whether it complied with the statutory

charter?

MR. O'NEILI: Well, I don't think so, Peter. I guess

because I think it is beyond our reach to assure ourselves or

the President that everything that is done in the Federal Government

is within the statutory authority provided by the Congress. It

is just a human impossibility that 380 professional staff people

could

ensure that everything that is done by a public, government

official, a Federal official, is within the limits of the

statute.

MR. GRAY: I think MI. Donohue, who was the CIA

examiner for five years, can probably answer some of the detailec

questions.

MR. O'NEILL:

Right. Right.

MR. BELIN: Any more questions of this Witness?

MR. KIRKLAND: I take it from what you

said

earlier

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2363

that say if it were possible and

useful to put another ten people

on to protect against any real misapplication of funds by an

Agency like the CIA, that you feel that they

would be more

usefully put in the auditing section under the comptroller of

the agency rather than the OMB?

MR. O'NEILL: Well, I think it would depend in part

on whether or not you look at that kind of a change in OMB

vis-a-vis CIA only, or whether there was a broad precedent for

OMB's role and function. I suppose

such a function could be

lodged in the OMB, although I must say to you, with the number

of people you are talking about, ten paople, I would be highly

skeptical that you can ensure that things you do not want to

happen will not happen.

Bureaucracy is so big, even in the

case of CIA, that I am skeptical that ten good peopla can ensure

that there would not be any examples or cases of operations outside

of the law. I think that has to start at the top with a tone,.

and direction, and a sense of responsibility that the key officials

bring to their job.

So I guess I am not saying that you can

cut off problems by having ten more people. You might make

some difference because it would be a signal that somebody is

going to pay closer attention than they have in the past.

MR. KIRKLAND: I just took the figure out of the air.

You are saying that if that were commensurately multiplied

through

all of the oversight functions, it would create an agancy

the

size of which you do not want in OMB to be useful.

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MR. O'NEILL: I think that is right.

MR. KIRKLAND:, An element of strengthening would be

more in terms of pure misapplication of funds, it would be better

done by strengthening the audit arrangements in the Agency?

MR. O'NEILL: Yes, and perhaps protecting that inspector

general or auditing function from too close an

association with

the Agency

that it is involved in so that it has a separate,

clearly defined function, and a supporting relationship that

makes it clear that it is expected to be independent

of the,

agency

that it is looking at .

MR. KIRKLAND: Do you and Jim Lynn, let us say, have

a direct relationship with the Comptrollers of the different

agencies independent of the director?

MR. O'NEILL: You mean with the inspectors general or

with the comptrollers?

MR. KIRKLAND: Yes, whatever.

MR. O'NEILL: It is uneven. It depends on, I think,

in both Jim's case and mine, on our previous association with

individuals in the government.

I am sure he knows the inspectors

general.

MR. KIRKLAND: Well, where does an inspector general

go beyond his boss if he has a problem?

MR. O'NEILL:

I frankly cannot think of

case and

time that I have been in OMB when an inspector general came to

me and said here's a problem you should know about,

no.

But

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there have been occasions when a Secretary of a comptroller would

come to me and say we think we have got a problem here that

you should know about. I carnot think of fraud problems, but

undesirabla practices problems, for example, yes.

MR. BELIN: Any other questions of this witness before

we go

to Mr. Donohue?

Thank you very much, sir.

MR. O'NEILL: Okay.

CHAIRMAN ROCKEFELLER: Thanks a

lot, Paul.

TESTIMONY OF ARNOLD E. DONOHUE

CHAIRMAN ROCKEFELLER: Are you the

one gentleman- who

is responsible for CIA in OMB?

MR. DONOHUE:

No, Mr. Vice President. I head a staff

of five professionals who review the budgets of the intelligance

community, one of which -

CHAIRMAN ROCKEFELLER:

The whole community?

MR. DONOHUE: Right, one of which individuals is assigned

to the Central Intelligence Agency, and that has been practiced

for I believe the last 13 years.

MR. GRISWOLD: Can you speak up, please?

MR. DONOHUE:

Sure. Excuse me.

MR. BELIN: Could you please state your name for the

record?

MR. DONOHUE: Arnold E. Donohue.

MR. BELIN:

You are with OMB?

SEC

CIA HAS NO OBJECTION TO

DECLASSIFICATION AND/OR

RELEASE OF THIS DO -44 1

AS SANITIZED 16-8-94

(B)

The tat on Is chold

OMB offici

botte the

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MR. DONOHUE:. That's right, the international affairs

division, the intelligence branch, I am the Chief thereof.

MR. BELIN: And what is your educational background?

MR. DONOHUE: I graduated

from Georgetown University

in 1960, and from Princeton, the Woodrow Wilson School, in 1962,

and worked five years in the Central Intelligence Agency, primarily

as an analyst, political, economic, and joined the Office of

Management and Budget in 1967, and have been in the Intelligence

Unit of the Office of Management and Budget since that time.

became chief. of that branch in 1973.

MR. BELIN: Could you describe OMB's activities with

the CIA in preparation of its program budget?

MR. DONOHUE: Let me give you a vary broad

answer to

that because it probably is the primary work that the unit is

involved in during the first nine months of any calendar year,

generally from January through the October budget submission of

the Agency. The examiner will be involved directly with the

Agency, CIA or any other intelligence agency in preparation,

looking forward to developing a budget recommendation for the

director of the Offica of Management and Budget , and ultimately

to the President as far as the budget of those agencies goes.

So generally the first

nine months would be a period

where the examiner would undertake a work program looking at

various aspects which for one reason

or another would be important

for making budgetary recommendations.

This would be done

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sometimes in conjunction with the Agency, attempting to have the

Agency analyze a particular aspect of its program or activity,

of done independently by the budget examiner as something he

felt he had to take the lead in and develop an analysis of his

own on, in which context he would then review the official

budget submission coming in October Ist, coming in on October

Ist.

That is a very important phase of the work because it

really involves the nine month preparation whereby the examiner

puts himself in line to review the

rather detailad dollars and

numbers, personnel data that will come in to him during the

course of a budget examination beginning in October.

MR. BELIN:

Do you have any more

specific examples

of the level of detail and the type of justification material?

MR. DONOHUE: Well, this preliminary phase would be

something that would be interactive with the Agency. On October

Ist, the Central Intelligence Agency, and that's the one I will

illustrate with, will come in with a fairly detailed budget

submission.

MR. BELIN: And you are holding --

MR. DONOHUE: And I am holding that in my hand right

now for you to see the amount of material in

it. It is a very

detailed submission in traditional terms of the

Office of

Management and Budget.

MR. BELIN: About how many pages there?

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MR. DONOHUE: 250 approximately, 250 pages, with detail

really on avery office of the Central Intelligence Agency down

to division levels, and the examiner would use this as a base

of information.

MR. LEMNITZER:

Would it include proposed covert

operations specifically?

MR. DONOHUE: It would include in most cases a covert

action operation that would be continuing during the coming

fiscal year.

MR. LEMNITZER: New ones?

MR. DONOHUE: Generally it would not include new ones,

because it would be nine months in advance at least of the

beginning

of the fiscal year, and it would be doubtful that

new onas would be known that much in advance. In most cases

the covert action projects would begin in a shorter time frame

than that, and they would not be budgeted for in

advance.

MR. CONNOR: Is that document classified?

MR. DONOHUE: Yes, that document is classified top

secret, and I can give a brief rundown of the sort of information

it contains.

MR. GRISWOLD: Does it include a catagory for

prospective covert operations?

MR. DONOHUE: No, it does not. It would include

funding of continuing covert action projects.

MR. GRISWOLD: I understand.

But how is the Agency

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going to carry out when it suddenly gets some situation where

it seems to the Agency wise to move immediately into a covert

operation?

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MR. KIRKLAND: The contingency or discretionary funds?

MR. DONOHUE:

Let's move into that area, and I think

that probably will help.

MR. GRISWOLD:

That's what I meant.

MR. DONOHUE: I will answer it. CIA does have a unique

contingency reserve which is provided for the purposes

of meeting

basically extraordinary expenses that the Administration, that

the Executive branch would not want to propose a

supplemental

to the Congress

fox.

This contingency would then be used

for

purposes that came up during the course of the year, any

supplemental purpose, whether that ba covert action, whether

it be the increased pay costs for employses, and it has been

used for that in the past, or for emergency intelligence needs.

Some new project would begin, and supplemental neads would be

identified, and the contingency reserve would

be used for that

purpose.

MR. GRISWOLD: And there is a figure for that in the

budget?

MR. DONOHUE: Yes, there is.

MR. GRISWOLD: How is that figure determined?

MR. DONOHUE: The figure is determined, as with any

budget figure, with a recommendation or a request by the

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Agency for a

level of what it anticipates, or some level of

funding that it would anticipate being available for the suppla-

mental purposes during the coming fiscal year. It would be re-

viewed by the Office of Management and Budget, and it would be

referred to the Congress through the Chairman of the Appropriations

Committees, and they would be informed of the amount of that

reserve that we anticipated would be available during the coming

fiscal year, and that program and financing schedule, which is

included in the budget, and they would have the opportunity to

write back and to identify, if the Chairmen of the Committees,

the Appropriations Committees, would have the opportunity to

write back and indicate whether that was reasonable, basically

through their appropriations action, and whether there was a

reduction involved.

In some cases the Congress, for example, has made

reductions in the amount of that contingency reserve, and in

other cases they have not.

MR. KIRKLAND: Is it not maintained on a historical

basis and

just replenished up to a cartain level?

MR. DONOHUE:

¿ is generally replestshed up to the

Level of approxinately (850)million a year. That has historically

been, and I do not have the exact numbers in front of me, but

historically it has been somewhere around §50)million a year

which has been judged adequate in recent years. There were

occasions in the past when I think it was over that, and there

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are occasions when it has gone below that for any period of time

MR. BELIN: Whose approval is necessary to allow the

CIA to use this contingency fund?

MR. DONOHUE: As I stated, the basic function of the

contingency fund

is in lieu of supplemental appropriations

requests identified for CIA because of the hidden nature of its

budget. Therefore, depending upon the type of activity involved

the approval for the contingency has to come from the office,

the use of the contingency funds comes from the Office of

Management and Budget, but we would rely on a number of checks

on that

system.

If it was pay supplement or somathing, that

could ba easily calculated based on past experience, and our

office would take action by itself. If it was a supplemental

request

for

some special intelligence project, we might review

that, determine that, in fact, it was a priority need, meeting

the needs that the Office of Management and Budget

and the

President has established for supplementals during that year,

or particularly if it was a covert action project, we would

attempt to determine, and usually have been

successful

ir

astermining that' 40 committes approval had baen given for that

project, and hopafully Presidential approval had been given

for that project.

MR. KIRKLAND: You would not make an independent judgment

on its marits, you would look to the authorization?

MR. DONOHUE: As far as the merits of the project

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itself, we would look in terms of covert action projects

to the 40 Committee, with an indication of Presidential approval

and since I have been head of the unit in 1973, I think we have

had indications in

every covert action project of Presidential

approval

of that covert action project. We would make an

independent financial assessment as to whether the dollar amount

requested by the Agency to carry out that covert action

project was reasonable, and that would amount to a fair amount

of detailed review of each raquest to use the contingency

reserva for covert action projects.

We would hold a hearing,

based at the time of the request

Or

the facts and information as

to the financial cost of that particular project, and do that in

a fair amount of detail.

That does not mear getting down to every last dollar

or person involved, but it does amount to looking on an aggregate

basis

as to whather this is a reasonable

amount, and car they

provide, just can the Agency provide justification for that

need?

MR. KIRKLAND: Well, in point of fact, since future

contingency or future covert operations by their nature cannot

be budgeted in advance, and usually must be initiated out of

the contingency fund, in the OMb, you would get a look at each

of these projects for all practical purposes at their inception,

wouldn't you?

MR. DONOHUE: Yes, sir. We would.

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MR. LEMNITZER: I had in mind particularly the recovers

of the Russian submarine and the large expenditure that was

involved. How was

that handled, for example?

MR. DONOHUE: Do you want me to answer, David?

MR. BELIN: I will ask you this question because the

Witness

is concerned about secrecy agreements that he has

signed pertaining to certain projects.

Is there any large project that involved an expenditure

of more than $10 million by the Agency in any one year that was

not audited or reviewed by OMB?

MR. DONOHUE:

It would not be audited.

MR. BELIN: I used the word audit incorrectly because

you do not audit. That was not carefully reviewed by the OMB?

MR. DONOHUE:

I do not know

of any

large project

of

that magnitude that we would not be aware of. I will be glad

to go off the record and answer the question.

MR. GRISHOLD: You couldn't get that out

24

($50

million contingency fund.

MR. DONOHUE: That is correct.

MR. BELIN: Why don't we go off the record because

of your concern with regard to the secrecy agreements that you

yourself are signing, Mr. Donohue.

Can wa go off the record for a minute?

(Discussion off the recora.)

MR. BELI!: Let me get back on the record here.

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Can I return to the review aspects of your work at

OMB?

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MR. SHANNON: Before we get to that, could I just

follow on right here where he was talking about approval by the

40 Committee?

This is nothing to do with his immediately

precading comments, but just in general I take it if the 40

Committee, if you thought you had approval from the 40 Committee

or from the Presidant, then you would not look into the question

of whether it was, whether it seemed to you to comply with

statutory provisions or the Act

as

far as the Agency was

concerned?

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MR. DONOHUE: I am not sure of that. I have not found

an instance where I would challenge it on a legal basis. I

have found one project for example, a covert action project,

that I would challenge on maybe a roles and missions, proper

emphasis, priorities basis, and I would review that and send it

up the chain

of command in OMB to determine if in fact they

feel strongly enough about it to reopen the issue with the

President. I think

we would do it in that context and have to

inform my superiors that, in fact, the President had indicated

approval or the 40 Committee had indicated approval, and if he

wished to reopen it with the President, that would be his

decision.

MR. SHANNON: I just thought that came in under where

we were discussing more appropriately, and if you were starting

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a new line --

MR. BELIN: I an going now to the question of review

by oMB.

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Would you care to discuss that as to the number of

examiners, the choice of portions of the budget that are reviewed.

and any pertinent questions or hearings or recommendations?

MR. DONOHUE: Certainly. I have already explained

the nine month preparatory. Here on October 1, and almost,

usually always on that date, this column will coma in and the

examiner will usually, the examiner, and there is one examiner

for CIA, will usually review this document in detail, going through,

marking it up, seeing what areas he does not feel are adequataly

addressed, or in which he

wants

more information to address them

in terms of a budget recommendation.

The things he would look for there are the criteria

he would use, which would be for ons thing incremental change

from

year to year, what it was in 1974 versus what they are

proposing for 1976. He would look at the magnitude of resources

involved here, and if it

is a $50,000 project, he obviously

would not have time to look over every $50,000 project, but if

it is a $500 million project, he might very well look into it.

He would look into critical areas, critical areas where we

felt, or the Administration felt, or somebody had expressed a

liview that this was a critical area that needed

to be addressed,

and he might look at that area very closely. A new project

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coming along in the satellite field where the CIA had a

responsibility, for example, might be looked at very closely,

and he might look at something just to refamiliarize himself

with the activities of a particular office.

He would, the present examiner at least, and thare is

no uniform guide here that an examiner would uss, but the present

examiner for example then prepared a list of written questions

for the comptroller of the CIA for him to respond to based

on

his review of this document. In this case it was six pages worth

of questions, 33 questions in all, asking specifically about a

number of items, and I can give you some illustrations if you

like of the type of detail that he would go into.

MR. GRAY: Why don't you read one or two and give us

an idea?

MR. DONOHUE: All right.

Hearing to discuss the totality of KeNNeN)

related

costs to the Agency covering

as

a minimum 1974, '75, and '76.

The discussion should include by component the costs of RaD,

computer and personnel distributions made by the Agency, and how

this distribution is integrated into the United States overall

classified photo interpretation effort. That may not mean

much to you.

MR. BELIN: I wonder if we could include a copy of

this as an exhibit to your testimony here?

Is there any particular reason that this cannot be

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included

an exhibit? This is all theoretically secret? Or

do you feel you might not be able to?

0f

MR. DONOHUE: Well, the code word I just mentioned,

(KENNEN, as a working paper, was not fully classified, so ifI

could check that out.

MR. BELIN: All right.

MR. DONOHUE: Lot me give you one other example

because it relates to one other aspect OMB has with respect

to CIA, which

is

somewhat unique.

Hearings with Office

of

Personnel to cover a justification of the 1976 raquest, and in

general persornel management for the Agency supergrades and

average grade requirements, and the status

of the CIA retirement

and disability system.

Prior to this meeting the examiner would like the

following information: supergrade positions

by name of

position as of the end of FY '74 and anticipated for the end

of FY '75. Lists should include whether occupied on June 30,

1974, and planned occupancy rate for the end of fiscal year

'75. Overall accession, termination, trends and plans, 1970

through 1976, and average grade and averaga salary for these

years. A paper indicating the Agency's long range plans for

the financing of the CIA retirement and disability system fund

in the light of the declining balance budget hearings in 1976.

Those are very detailed questions in terms of a

budget examiner, and it is part of what I might say is a very

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intensive review on the part of OMB of the budget of CIA and

in this particular case; fulfilling

of

a function

somawhat

beyond the scope of the normal budget examiner while looking at

the personnel structure of

the Agercy, the rates of promotion,

the average grade structure, the number of supergrades, the number

of executive pay levels involved, the financing of the retirement

system

primarily here, becauss the Central Intelligence Agency

system is not part of the Civil Service Commission and is

now

not reviewed by the Civil Service Commission as a government

personnel

system, so OMB does perform somewhat an additional tole

there.

Let me mantion one other question here just to show

you the amount of datail. Breakdown of personnel, full-time

permanent, temporary part-time, and

station overseas for 1974 and 1975

indigenous or local by

and 1976.

MR: BELIN:

What number: of examiners or analysts

do you have in connection with your review?

MR. DONOHUE: One examiner, full time, plus my

own staff time that I would use in suparvision of that

exam.

MR. KIRKLAND: He works axclusively on CIA?

MR. DONOHUE: That's

correct.

MR. BELIN: What choice of portions of the budget or

offices is made for the

closast scrutiny apart from the

sizz?

MR. DONÓHUE:

Well, I gave you some criteria earlier

for what his choice might be motivatad by.

He in this particulat

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case I think looked at approximately 20 of the offices in some

more detail out of approximately 50 offices, and that means that

30 were not looked at in closer detail other than what was

in the written material. But he would give in to a fair amount

of detail to a lot of the offices which would be rolatively

uncontroversial in terms of the resource requirements.

MR. BELIN: Are the hearings held on these areas,

ox are the written questions relied on exclusively?

MR. DONOHUE: No, the written questions would serve

as a base for then holding a hearing, and I think in the case

last year, the examiner indicated he spent approximately 75

to 80 hours

in oral hearings, usirg the responss he got in

the written quastions, plus the budget material, to elicit

further information to serve as a basis for his recommendation

to ma, and ultimately to the Director

on the level, of resourcas

that the CIA would raquire for 1976.

MR. SHANNON: Of the peopls

participating in these

hearings, they would be representatives from the administrative

part of the CIA and parhaps the Deputy Diractor or one of the

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MR. DONOHUE: Particularly in the case of 1976, in

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fact, I accompanied the examiner for an initial sassion with three

2:3

of the four major directorates in the CIA, and I think each

liot those sessions ran about two hours with Mr. Procter, Mr.

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welson, and Mr. Duckatt. There was an additional session hald wit

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and 5b

Mr. Blake, who is in charge of the administrativa side, but

these were really introductory to provide a total scope of each

directorate's activities, followed by the s0 hours of hearings

that he had, with usually representatives from the individual

offices, whatevar side they be in, operations side, or the

intelligence production side or support side, and would request,

or those people would be present for testimony, or not testimony.

hearings on justifications for the budget.

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". Sumi: In still not clear or ocar sateri

she Diractor of is incy rucipates in siis cind or a revier.

Is he involved in this at a1!?

tie knows this is ning on?

AR. Don mhe siroctor of central Intelligence?

MIR. SHANDT: YeS.

•R. D0:010D: the Director, of courat, rould have

hlessed this budres subrissim to 0.B.

tig internal cirle

calls Eor developient of a mogean in the dine-taly tineframe.

Prior to the potcher 1 submission, the tine bossen

jane-July

ware ha, as I nderstand it, would parsorally terien it in

the Jime-July tinfrano would then be put into a budget document

for potober 1st, and generally is would be acquainter with that

was going on, the nagnitude of the resources, the rajor itens

sha's might influance the sine of the judget in the une-July

timefrare.

But hen you go back -

"IR. DOOHUN: Then we do badi -

R. Staini: to chae on this, he is not sitting in

on these things, you are doing is further don the line?

MR. DOIO0D: That's cocrocto It vould he sease officas

chronhout CIA not the pimator hinself. If that mas a nseà for

a cas: to,

in faci, bave a session with the pirootos, in ua

felt it tas important, I sappose a could comest that but in

rost Cases

the warney attitate" thinl is very coon-rative hers,

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and if th infomation can i provides at mutiver leval. it

is not e question of the individual direror beird present.

MR. OPTT: Mr. Tenous -

MR DOOr: Apprals?

AR. GOT: Appeals, that'o righ=.

MIR. Do:usa: The process at that point would bi CIA,

Ehe examiner of the cIA budget mating a reconnencation

with my review to a division chies and the office of veneranent

and Bucoat, prentint a for al mritton preparation, sub issior

on our iscommendation, our guadf recormancasion to tha directo:

of 0:b in providing that in i session so the associate nirector,

and the cirector aid the manut birdoboer a review de that

budget with a recommendation es far as da ectal anotts so ba

involvo, and the soccific come that ve toull arcanet for

delation.

it that point ter burget broosse provides for an

appeal by sue agorer head ason on tir circator of p's decisio.

is can appoal on is cannot. In the tact five yoars he has

appealed the last to deans. to die see cobral lie Previous

thrae merge to e19 appeal to tha vaseiders and the dicision

nuld to code to the persi it.

!. g?":

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Traes, hot mach are you

on't nost gicific figuros

normation, to stuff rents recornehlationg te the Director

ccisior?

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2. CA": it's tell abrit the firetor's decision.

M. Daton: It in here to find toreant.

congrass?

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. D0:010: By the provisions of in 100-103 which

is the basic CIa statute. the Director of an is authorized to

transfer funds to the agendy "ror osher accoass, and y traditio.

the mathod of identifying me accounts in dice the ci budget

is carried to tir conmesso iony & letter toon the Director of

01B to me Chainen of the Moropriation: Comittees in the

louse and the fanate idensifring the ergropriation arount, its

location in the bilact, and the financine scherule incliding

the arous of contingents or cesari or thids the daney woul?

have coilable during the corint trer. 1h0or ttlers 9u17

in. in the last more to de. declellan end to abon, and they

could be responded to at the completion of the appropriations

process by tire tahon and "e. "oClellan, senator MeCleilan, and

intreagman Mahor in the virator co m identifying the amount

they har appropriated.

MR. BRUCT: And that is in the Debartment of Defense

budget tonerally, is that mit?

13. DONOUT: Ves.

is has reer.

"R, BLItt: And after the arrogrintiong bill is passer!

Lou are the funds nade argitable to the "TA?

• Doter: loon completion de the approprintions

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bill, 1l, they could be operating under a continuing resolution

prior to the corplation do the concomriation action, but shoy

would sa transferred first Ern: the Don eccount to a separats

account in the ircasury, and secondly an apportionnent of thoss

funds in the Cle for actual expendituren. mose numbers minht

dieser primarily on the basis pi it sunds more identified for

continancy reserve the appropriation amount, that arount trans-

farred, ord apportionad, the mount appropriated mould always

he tranofersed into this moscial areasury account, and the

amount apportioned micht vary depending moon the anont

identified for holding vithin a contingoney and subsequently

Islease?.

IR. BETI!: Is there any other way in which funds

are mar availahls to the deney?

¡IR. DOnOUr: yes. the major other additional

way,

of course, is transfers

under the iconomy ict provisions.

"all, I am not an axpert on the Econony det, but it essentially

provides the funds to be transferred to an agency where it can

parfor: a servic: "ith economy to another governnent arency,

and has e unique capability, or a unilue ability of can

provide

common strvice to a number of povernment anoies, ad those

trans?:is 10uld be nade in this case to CIl. One of sa

largest as citer hore would be those from the iational reconnissa

offica in charos of satellito development phore CIA acts as a

devels. crand procurer of sone of that aquipront, and

Fairly

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large suns have armally been provided to the cla through that

mechanis". I would

point out that those funde are revieved by

the intelligence unit of Dis

in the context of the lational

Reconnissance office and the total satallite programs.

MIP.. BELTT:

that is the largest amount transferred in

such manner?

HIR. DONONU!: I can't vivs you a detailed answer there,

but I think the transfer by no has historically run in tha

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MP. BETTI: Are nost funds -vantually transferred to tha

agency under the siconony Act identifier as such in the budget

submissions of the transferring

agencies?

MR. DonoNOr: No, I don't boliare they woul ha

identifi:! as transfer items in the burget submissions by the

agencies. os course, in nost casas

large iters here would

the satellite activities, and also the other problen re discussed

sarlier, the other area that we discuss:? sarlier, those would?

not be identified, but would as know generally

as thoe pro-

grams in mich CIA had an interest, and barl the responsibility

for carering out thr rassarch, developrint, procurement, engin-

esting and the prcjset.

MP. BRLIX: IS 0115 approval escuirod for the cla

to shits funds fron one proprar to anothre?

AR. DONOUR: Internally within CIA, ClA does have a

flexibilit to reprote within the toor! budrat anount approver

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by

the Prosilent. of course, that is sonothing that would

generally not he the wisest thing for an agency to do, espacially

if

it was a

progran that had not been approved

for some reason,

or had been delster in the previous budget submission, hecause

it would entail, therefore, a further look at it by the omB

examiner, and an

additional

justification, but they technically

could reprogran their funds within sheir total availability to

cover their needs as they saw then.

Obviously working nine

months ahcad of the fiscal

"ear in tarns of preparation of ths

budget there would be itons that would increass, and they

wOUld

have to cover those, and they would not require our approval

for the reprograming as such

MR. GRIS DID: What is IRO?

MR. DONOUUD: National Reconnissance Office.

That

office wich is rooponsible for the development, procuraneni,

launch and operation of satellite reconnissance vehicles.

R. BROTT.

"ow, one doas not have any responsibility

for any audit of inspector coneral duties

OraT

at the CIA,

doûs is?

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MR. DONOUR: io, i: does not. Obviously our intarest

in prior wear funding is prinarily an interest in

wich

to

develon a'base of infomasion on historical expenditures for

the purpos. of evaluation Entur year raguirements, the budgats,

fiscal veer budget voar raquiremants that have been identicied.

Te is not for purposes of going bacl: in sas that funds weir

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actually spent for the intended purposs, although it is

concaivahls that we night run across a cuestion along that

lina. It is not a function that we

would normally parform.

The inspactor general role, of course, is one that ve also do

not perforn and CIA has their own inspoctor gensral function as

part of the agency.

I would like to commont addisionally on that, that

those two functions of auditor and inspector general would

basically be in conflict with the primary, the basic budget

function of OMB in terms of attomptine to assess future

year

requirenents. The honesty with which an

agency would projact

his future year requirements based on an indepth audit approach

to prior vear funding would probably create more difficulties

for

us in terms of

attempting to exanine these

future needs.

MR. BELT: Mould OBM generally detect

an impropor

activity if it involved a small number of people and a sall

anount of monay?

MIR. DONOHUE: As a general rule, I think it would

probably not have the capability to got down to snall numbers

of people engaged in improper activitiss or a snall nunder of

collars improperly usad. Obviously we cannot follow red wigs

bought ou an individual basis.

•R. DILT!: Ab what level

MIR. DONOIUE: We do not absompe to do that

ans have

not succeeded in doing that.

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MP. BELIN: 1E that lovel of sither people or roney

would such an activity ha datected if it were improper?

MR. DOJOHUR: That is very hard to answer. It would

depend on a lot of factors, some of which I enumerated earlier.

But for example it there was express presidential interest in

questions of illagal activities conducted by the Forcign

Pesources Division of CIA's Diractorate of Operations, the

budgat sianiner right look at that very intently during the

coning year, and naybe the coning two or three years, and might

notice sone illegal activitias at a fairly small

size. But

as

a ruls, I think or can say that unless

you are approaching

something on the order of s1 million or something on the order

of 100 people involved, that the large nunber of ClA

peopla

that there are, we probably could not notice it.

1P. BALT!: Chen did Miß becons

aware of a CIa srans-

fer of $34, n00 to the hite douse

in 1970 to fund responses to

lotterson "Tirson's Canbodia speech?

MR. DOONUS: TO, be were not aware and it was not

requester, it was not transferred under the authority of the

CIA ACt Or I0An.

PR. BRItt: Did the o1 bacore avars of Richard Ober's

special Decrations Group which was moritoring Anarican dissidents?

13. DO100ae e did not.

WR. BUIlT: Did 013 bocone aware of mail opening or

nain intirect proceans of the CIA?

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'UR. DONOUT: He ware not familiar wish any mail

opening operation in the u.s.

MP. BRuDi: 10rc you avare of any assistance to police

al spartments giver by the office of Security of CIA?

MR. DOTONJE: I have chacked the files on that partic

ular question, and as of the nonent I cannos locate any infor-

mation incicating our knoledge.

As I say, I was not the

examiner on CIA during that period, but I found no infornation

in the siles indicating out inowledge tharzoe. My own

recollaction is that CIA din not atsannt to hide, and is vas

known

that they were invoives in sons

training of police on

a reinburgable basis fron sha dapartmonts. I do not think that

was hiddan, but I do not have any racords in provs it, anc is

is

very vague recollection?

for me.

MP, BALIM: Tore mie people aware of investications

by she office of sacurity of CiA which might have involvad virs

tapes and surreptitious entries?

•IR. DOOHUR: Other than things that I have read in

the nevereper, no, we wars not tauliar mith any such activit

iss in the United States.

11. BENIT: 10:12 you please describe for us cases

in which the OBM has cuestimed the propriety of CIA activities?

MR. DONONUT: Propriety is a difficult term to deal

with. re she question bacoss one of illegality, I think there

probably are only too instances, if it is broadly interproted in

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terms

of rhother the Agency should, in fact, do that for whaterar

reason. It would cover a large nunber of things.

Obviously ve

nake a nunber, a large numer of spacitic recommendations in

their budget sach vear. let me touch on

a couble of those.

one was the liquiration by CIA of sons airlines it was running

as

propristary operations in which Cit originally proposed to

its congressional connittes that the proceeds from thess liqui-

dations be used to off-sas their budnot request for fiscal '74.

As it turned out, they vers, in fact, used partially vith tha

approval. of the Congress to off-sat GA)million of CIA budgotary

requirements for fiscal year 174. In fiscal year '75, CIA did

not make a proposal to include such liquidating assest as an

off-set to its ragular budget, and thr office of Management and

Budgst prooosed that it do so and, in fact, reduced CIA's

appropritions by Geomillion bacare of anticipated resipts

From these, fron the sals of these proprietarics during fiscal

year '75.

subsequently ths CIA General. Counsel, Mr. Warner, indi-

cated that he felt there was

some lorial question

involved

tarms of the propriety of use of propristary recipes here to

off-set the obligation requirenents of ClA. To roviced it with

him.

Based on the legal opinion that ha gave, which tir. Colby

concurecd in, ve viewed it with our legal counsel, and our

legal counsel indicated that shis was probably a reasonable

position on the ¡ait of the CiA, and so those ruacs are now not

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being used to off-sas CIA appropriations. It was not one wa

originated. In fact, the CIA Ceneral Counsel originated it.

It

is probably a debatable legal question, as

a matter

os fact,

but as it turnad out we decided those funds would not be

utilized to off-set regular appropriations.

IR. GRISHOLD: But they ars recovered into the treasury

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receipts?

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MR. DONONUE: At this point they will be used as

regular receipts in the treasury.

MR. GRISUOLD: Thoy are not addisional funds for the

CIA to spend?

MR. DONOHUE: That is correct,

and we

were attenpting

to ensure that they vere used

to off-sat

regular CIA approp-

riations at the time os the appiopriations

and?

of the Drssident's

budget

as opposed to tha

subsequent Congressional reduction, using

the save funds.

A couple of other items which I would just like to

cite

in areas

where OBill has been

involved

in the past where CIA

activities might clevant is the Equal Employent opportunity,

which arain becaase of CIA's unique statutory axerption, not

unique, but axenption from the Civil Service Commission review,

MMB has initiated action to insure that CIA made a conscientious

effort to achieva equal employment opportunity goals. I havs

mentionad the covert action project

previously which there was

a question of roles and mission. I think thera

is one other

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episode like that were it is partly roles and missions, but

it is certainly where I as the unit chist in onM could use tha

guidanes of this commission, and that is the use of some CiA

equipment and

some CIA involvenent jointly with the FBi in

conducting surveillance of foreign embassies, foreign residences,

and which the connission, or which I think it is unclear at the

prasent time the extent to which these operations are involved

in positive foreion intelligence collaction, which obviously is

an appropriate mission for CIA versus counterintelligence

activities

nore appropriately seens a mission for the FbI.

MR. SALIT: Basically hat --

AIR. DOINHUE: Can I add a couple of items to this?

"R. BOLIN:

Go right ahead.

MP. DOJONUR: I do recall very heavy involvement by

our office in it, and again I vas no: personally involved in

the implamentation of the ratzcnbank repors in '67 when it vas

decided that CiA involveront in private volunteer orgenizations

seemed at that point to be inappropriate.

And while I

am not

sure

there vas a distiret question of legality involvad, it was

decidod that sore of these activities should not be continued

and 0v3 was instrumental in insuring that the drency did not

fund those activities which by presidential decision had boen

citer in be beyond the realm of Cly at that particular point.

MIP. BATT: has impact, if any, has 0103 had on the

managonent of the CIA?

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MR. DONOUR: You get into a nuch broader quastion

there, and i vould lite to soond a foy ninutes just elaborating

on the larger role that oMB has with

respect to management,

some of which I shink may ba Me. O'Neill coverad. But, there

would be smaller instances of management activities that we

would becone involvai in on an almost routine basis.

I hat

mentioned personnel nanagemant as an arsa that we look into

heavily, but there are other programmatic areas where we would

feel that cIA's relationship with anothar anency of government

might noed to ba straightense out, and we would initiate steps

to try and straighten that out. I can think hore of trans-

ferring of funding or certain third-party SIGINT operations

to

the National Security Agency where we were heavily involved.

on a broader scale we vere vary intimately involved as a staff

in OMB in support of Dr. Schlesinger in his 1971 re-organization

study of the intellirence community, and that had very broad

reconmentations with raspect to the organization of the Forsign

Intelligence

activities of the t.s., such as the President

signed off I guess a 1n page directive in lovembar '71 which

provided for a greator role for the Diractor of Central Intelli-

gence in the managenent and coordination of the overall u.s.

Foreign Intslligence offort.

I could no into that in nore detail, Ie. Belin, but

this is up to you. this is a very lon? and sxhaustive stuây

anounting to abous a year of staff tine and assentially six

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membars of the intelligence community.

?1R. BILI:: Because of the tine linitations, I an

going to turn to another area, and that is whether or not since

the CIA is not subjact to the fensral Accounting Office, and

it is nos subject to thoroud! Congressional review, do you

balisve that oMb's oversighs role should he expanded either in

concept or in staff o that there night be a better opportanity

to reduce any inproper activity?

i!?. DONONIUS: I thinl: that the chanca there of an

enlareer MI staff, in Fact, discovering illogal or inpropar

activit..o rith

an agancy that is entrously acept at hiding

things is it wishes vould really be impossible. I don's think,

with one craninor presently on the budget, and ravisy os that

agency thas two, thres, five vould essentially make a differencs

and it would essentially require a large aunber of peopla to,

in fact, do the broo oe audit function that to does for tho

question of inproper activitias to really arise in order to get

into that in such actail, at least as a guarantee, so

expande!

MuB star: could not provide thas guarantes unless it cosentially

changer its function to one of audit, and even in thes cass it

moula be a post-andit funerion. It rould ba one that corla

discorer illoral activitics committes parhaps tro or threa

years aro, and not activition cucrently under comission. I

do not i liove 013 could casily ecospt any additionel responsibilit

in tha mis of aulic. It is just beyond iss charter. It is

0115

TOR

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of

tune mith its soone as an agency, and would basically he

counterproluctire in soms of our basic function.

MR. BENI?: Hell, do you haws any other recommendations

involving niB's relasionship with the CIA?

MR. DONOUR: In torns of OMB's role I see a number of

things thet probably me could do to, in fact, strengthen it in

relatively minor ways. I offer their not in any hope of

guaran

teeing in any sense that improper or illagal activitios would

not occur, but certainly we could take a closer revie! of

CIA's propriatary operations hich now, when once established

as an element, ve would not require any continuing government

funding, and would not generally be reviewed by Oil, axcept in

50

far as they ramired annual transfers to these

propristaries

for maintenance.

There probably could he some increase in

OMB revian of transfers to and fron CIA under all provisions of

tis

law.

They

probably have to he mabricted to major trans-

fers because thers are a larce nunber of minor transfers thas

reinburs: personnel on datail that would he vory difficult if not

impossihl to track,

mus could undertale sone stricter apportionment oi CIA

sy project or by offica, or by progran which ve do not nor do.

"e essantially apporsion to CIA as

an arenoy, and thoy have the

liberty to reprogram within those funds, ve could tighten that

to a certain satan.

is could nobably no: get down to each indivilual

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Phone,(Area 202) 544-6000

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WARD & PAUL

410 First Street, S.E., Washington, D.C. 20003

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project of each individual office, but we could provide sons

limitations within four, five, possibly as many as ten categories

where they would then have to seek our approval fox reprogramming

actions. That would help us in riving

a closer review of

CIA on its reprogranning actions at the same time.

These are things that could involve some additional

paperitori:

I don't think. thoy have, would have much prospect

for really providing a guarantee against illegal or improper

activitins.

MIR. BELIT: Any questions by any members

of the

Commission?

PIR. CONNOR: 110.

MR. BELTN: Any other comments

that you want to malis,

is. Donohus, for the record?

MR. DOOUD: No. I think t've probably covered it

as well as i can, in fact.

112. BOIIIT:

Tell thank you very nuch for coming here.

MR. DONOUR: Than: you.

(hercupon, at 6:40 o'clock pon. the Connittee

was

recassed.l

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