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1704-10303-10007:

2025 RELEASE UNDER THE PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY ASSASSINATION RECORDS ACT OF 1992

;

1 June 1973

NEMORANDUM FOR :

Mr. William E. Colby

SUBJECT: •

Special Activities

1.

Following our recent conversation, I have

searched my memory and Mr. McCone's files for examples

of activities which to hostile observers or to someone

without complete knowledge and with a special kind of

motivation could be interpreted as examples of activities

exceeding CIA's charter.

2. First, as we discussed, on 7 March 1962,

DCI McCone, under pressure from Attorney General Robert

r. Kennedy,

agreed to tap the telephones of columnists

Robert S. Allen and Paul Scott in an effort.to

identify

their sources for classified information which was appear -

ing in their columns.

Because the primary source appeared

to be in the Department of Defense, McCone ordered me

personally to brief General Joe Carroll, Director of DIA,

orally, which I did. I understand more complete information

on to prote cloned

on this operation is available from the Director of security.

I, personally, managed to avoid gaining any knowledge of

what precise actions were taken, what information was gained,

what was done with it, and when the operation was terminated.

As a result of a developing relationship with

Phitippe de Hosjoli, the SDECE representative in Hashington,

and also as a result of certain information conveyed by

Anatole Golitsen, James Angleton, with the approval of

Dick Helms, agreed to mount a counterespionage operation

against the French Embassy in

• Washington.

This involved

breaking and entering and the removal of documents from

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the French Consulate.

On 18 June 1962, DCI McCone and

Helms briefed Secretary of State Rusk generally on the

operation without going into operational details.

Later

on the same day, President John F. Kennedy was briefed.

Actual breaking and entering occurred somewhat later, and

on 15 April 1963, DCI McCone met with Picsident Kennedy

alone and briefed the President on the details of this

new phase of the operation.

On the same day, the Attorney

General was briefed and he agreed that he would not

mention it to the FBI unless the FBI themselves

raised

it with him.

On 3 February 1964, DCI McCone met alone

with President Lyndon B. Johnson and briefed him on the

operation.

On 4 February McGeorge Bundy was briefed.

On 6 February 1964 in a briefing of Secretary of State

Rusk on the results of the operation, Rusk expressed

reservations about the propriety of such an operation.

He raised this same concern in subsequent conversations

with McCone on 17 April 1964, 28 May 1964, and 14 June

1964. On 12 September 1964 Rusk continued to express

grave reservations and repeatedly suggested that the

French be informed directly that we knew about their

espionage operations in the United States and ask them

to desist. .

In a meeting on 28 May 1964 Rusk expressed

these reservations in the presence of bel Mccone and

President John-F. Kennedy ?:Secretary of Defense McNamara

was also present, and there is no record that he had

previously been made aware of this operation.

4.

Although certain activities never got beyond

the planning stage, there are, I believe, three examples

of such planning which could be subject to misinterpretation.

A second involved

a paramilitary strike against the Chi-Com nuclear instal-

lations:

Outside the United States Government, General

Eisenhower was

briefed on such planning.

A third, which

assumes a new significance today, involved a proposal by

Angleton and Helms for a greatly increased

I intelligence

collection effort against foreign installations in this

country.

This planning also involved a scheme for selected

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exposure of

KGB activities and counteractions against the

Soviet intelligence service.

The reasons are still unclear

to me as to why the FBI chose to brief the PFIAB to the

effect that CIA was planning to wiretap extensively and

indiscriminately in this country, to greatly increase

the Agency representation in the Moscow Embassy, and

generally to use KGB-type tactics, also extensively and

indiscriminately. This led to a heated exchange between

DCI AcCone and Mr. Belmont of the FBI, one such meeting

taking place in the presence of the Attorney General.

It is clear that the FBI was opposed to any such proposal

then, as now, and the plan never went forward.

5.

During the period when Des FitzGerald was in

charge of the Cuban Task Force, DCI AcCone's office

learned, quite by accident, that FitzGerald had secured

the cooperation of several prominent US business firms

in denying economic items to Cuba.

There was no question

but that the businessmen were glad to cooperate, but know-

ledge of this operation had to be rather widespread.

On 17 April 1964, Mr. Robert B. Anderson came

to DCI McCone on

behalf of American business interests,

offering to insert some $300,000 to try to secure a

favorable result in the elections in Panama.

shortly

after this approach, Mr. Clyde weed of Anaconda Copper

Company made a similar proposal to McCone in connection

with elections in Chile.

in chato

On 12 May 1964 at a meeting of

the 303 Committee, it was decided that the offers of

American business could not be accepted, it being neither

nor an honorable way of doing such business.

This declaration of policy at this time bears on the recent

ITT hearings, but I am not surprised that McCone has

forgotten that he helped to set the precedent of refusing

to accept such

collaboration between the Agency's operations

and private business.

7.

At the direction of Attorney General Robert

Kennedy and with the explicit approval of President Kennedy,

McCone injected the Agency, and particularly Cord Meyer,

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into the US labor situation, and particularly to try

to ameliorate the quarrel between George Meany and

Walter Reuther. .

Cord Meyer steered a very skillful

course in this connection, but the Agency could

be

vulnerable to charges that we went behind Meany's back,

or were somehow consorting with Reuther against Meany's

wishes.

8. There are three examples of using Agency

funds which I know to be controversial.

One was the

expenditure of money under Project MOSES in securing

the release of Cuban Brigade prisoners.

Details of

this gperation are best known to Larry Houston, Mike

Miskorsky,

Geotger wackanus, and James Smith.

Second,

as you well know, when lou Conein received

his summons

to report to the Joint General Staff Headquarters on

1 November 1963 a large amount of cash went with him.

My impression is that the accounting for this and its

use has never been very frank or complete.

Third, at

one of the early Special Group meetings attended by

McCone he took strong exception to proposals to spend

Agency funds to improve the economic viability of Kest

Berlin, and for an investment program in hali.

general position was that such expenditures were not

within the Agency's charter, and that he would allow

such spending only on the direct personal request of

the

Secretary of State or the Secretary of Defense, or

the white House.

9. I raise these issues of funding because I

remember the

Agency's being severely criticized by the

House Appropriations Subcommittee for having spent $3,000

for stamps in connection with a program to buy tractors

to secure the release of prisoners from Cuba.

10. Under the heading of old business, I know that

any one who has worked in the Director's office has worried

about the fact that conversations within the offices

and

over the telephones were transcribed. During McCone's

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tenure, there were microphones in his regular office,

his inner office, his dining room, his office in East

Building, and his study at his residence on White Haven

Street.

I do not know who would be willing to raise such

an issue, but knowledge of

such operations tends to

spread, and certainly the Agency is vulnerable on this

score.

11. Also under the heading of old business, I

well remember the hue and cry raised, especially by Carl

Kaysen in the White House, when the Agency injected

te House, whe

contaminating agent in Cuban sugar bound for the Soviet

shortly after the Cuban missile crisis, there was

a disposition in Washington to reexamine the Bay of Pigs,

and the fact that several Alabama National Air Guard

officers lost their lives in the Bay of Pigs was surfaced

with surprisingly little excitement at the time.

12.

During my stint on the 7th floor there was

a special

arrangement with the Office of Communications

whereby the Director's office gained access to non-CIA

traffic.

This surfaced briefly at one point shortly after

Admiral Rayborn became DCI. He had visited the Signal

Eyes Only.

He returned to his office and proceeded to

discuss this telegram with George Ball who was naturally

quite curious as to how Rayborn knew about it, and also as

to how Rayborn had it in his possession before Ball did.

Ben Read in the Secretary of State's office and I spent

several weeks putting this one to rest.

13. Finally, DCl McCone, as you and I well know,

operated on a very

lofty plane, and I think certain of

his activities could be misunderstood.

One example was

his decision in July of 1964 to have Aristotle Onassis and

Maria Callas flown from Rome to Athens on Air Force KC 135.

Their arrival in Athens in this airplane attracted the

attention of

local press and in due course Mr. John

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Hightower, Chief of the Associated Press Bureau for

Washington, came to see me to ask about the propriety

of this action.

14.

The use of Fairways Corporation aircraft

has been remarkably secure, but DCI McCone himself

forgot about the cover arrangement and became quite

exercised when he saw Candidate Goldwater land in the

San Francisco airport for the Republican National Con-

vention in 1964 aboard the Grumman Gulf Stream with

the highly visible tail number N 8 E.

This was, I

explained to him carefully, a perfectly legitimate

charter, but he didn't like it.

15. McCone dealt quite extensively with newsmen

in Washington.

In fact, they gave him a gift and a

luncheon when

he left Washington, which is perhaps

indicative of the press's relations with him.

However,

in the case of the Ross and Wise book, The Invisible

Government, he did try to bring pressure on

the publisher

and the authors to change things.

They did not change

a comma, and I doubt that this old saw willever sing

again.

16. Finally, and this will reflect my Middle

Western Protestant upbringing, McCone's dealings with

the Vatican, including Pope John XX III

and Pope Paul

VI,

would and could raise eyebrows in certain quarters.

17.

The above listing is uneven, but I have a

sinking feeling that discipline has broken down, and

that

allegations from any quarter which cast these things in

the wrong light would receive great publicity and attention,

and no amount of denial would ever set the record straight.

If I may be of any assistance in tracking down further

details, I am of course at your disposal, but I would point

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out that I was very much in the position of the

enlisted

man who knew that the commissioned officers

were aware of these activities and better able to

judge their propriety and possible impact or misinter-

pretation.

Wilder

WALTER ELDER

EYES CHEY

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