CIA Activities in the U.S.

Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.

eliminating material not justified by CIA's counterintelligence responsibilities, and about 1,000 such files have been removed from the active index but not destroyed.

Aside from our Congressional liaison working records, we hold files on fourteen past and present Members of Congress. These were opened prior to their election to office and were caused either by the process of clearing them for work with the Agency or because we were interested in them for foreign intelligence purposes. There is no, and to my knowledge never has been any, surveillance--technical or otherwise--of any Members of Congress.

The New York Times articles makes a number of specific allegations of improper activity domestically by CIA and relates these to the above program. In the 1973 compilation by the Agency of all activities which might be questionable, a number of items were raised which were not related to that program. The Agency's action in most of these cases was founded upon the section of the National Security Act of 1947 which provides that the Director of Central Intelligence is responsible for protecting intelligence sources and methods from unauthorized disclosure. Over the many years in which CIA has been operating, some actions have been taken which were improper extensions of the charge contained in this language. Apparently The New York Times reporter learned of some of these items and erroneously associated them with the above program. Examples include:

a. Unauthorized entry of the premises of three individuals, a defector and two former employees, to determine whether they had classified documents, and in one case to recover them (in 1966, 1970 and 1971). Two of these incidents involved breaking and entering.

b. Electronic surveillance (telephone tap) of two newspaper reporters (1963) and physical surveillance of five reporters (in 1971 and 1972) to determine the sources of classified information published by them. Similar physical surveillance of three ex-employees of the CIA who were suspected of unauthorized possession of classified documents (1969, 1971, and 1972).