The Ellsberg Break-In Case

SFChronicle MAY 1 3 1973 los angeles The Ellsberg Break-in Case . ENIOR agency officials 1--) were "angry and de- pressed." • According to a The testimony described • source with close connec- how Hunt and co-conspirator tions to the Central Intelli- G. Gordon Liddy first g e n c e Agency. officials "cased" the doctor's home felt that "irreparable dam- neighborhood and his office: age" had been done to the how they secured a special organization. "They think," camera for the job from the said the source, "that the CIA and how they visited a whole project was an abso- CIA "safehouse" in Wash- ton to secure disguises and lute violation of the CIA's false identification materi- charter." als. The ',"whole project" in Last week, The New York question was none other Times reported that General than the alleged break-in at the Beverly Hills offices of Robert Cushman Jr., the Marine Corps commandant Daniel Ellsberg's psychia- who, in 1971, was deputy trist. It was the second time director of Central Intelli- a major U.S. government- gence, had authorized the al agency had been be- use of CIA material and re- smirched by the Watergate search in the Ellsberg files affair. And, ironically, the first agency to be so stained This World, Sunday, May 13, — the FBI — was Inow involved in the investigation of the second. The CIA's role in the plot surfaced last weekend when Grand Jury testimony given by Watergate conspirator E. grand jury that he believed Howard Hunt was released that cooperation with the , by the Pentagon 'Papers CIA had been arranged by trial judge, Matt Byrne.. The Egil Krogh. `White House Plot' Man in Charge According to Hunt's testi- West At the time, according to mony, the plot to break into grand jury testimony, Krogh the office of Daniel Ells- was directly in charge of a berg's psychiatrist was con- special White House team ceived, engineered, financed that had been set up in the burglary. And the sources aftermath of the June, 1971, and supervised by the White fingered John Ehrlichman, House, while the CIA sup- publication of the Pentagon President Nixon's chief ad- Papers, to determine who plied the camera and the viser for domestic affairs disguises to accomplish the was involved in the disclo- (who recently resigned) as sure of the documents. job. the man who specifically so- Disclosing an elaborate licited Cushman's coopera- Krogh, at the time one of scenario in detail. Hunt said tion. Ehrlichman's key deputies, that he had been perSonally reportedly recruited both Cushman, who left the CIA Liddy and Hunt over the directed by two men then on in 1971, was questioned by the White House staff - next few weeks, and the two FBI agents and reportedly m e n immediately began Egil (Bud) Krogh Jr. and accepted "full responsibili- David Young. planning the operation to get ty" for the decision to the psychiatrist's records. permit the CIA to help E. Howard Hunt and Gordon Krogh, who last week re- Liddy prepare f o r the signed his new job as under- break-in. secretary of transportation, sent a classified affidavit to Hunt, a 20-year CIA veter- the Ellsberg court nine days an who, along with Liddy ago, in which he reportedly. and five others, was arrest- accepted full responsibility ed in connection with the for the burglary. Watergate hugging,- told the I n the rush of fast- AP Wirephoto KROGH AP Wirepholo CUSHMAN breaking developments, it was also learned that FBI wiretappers had worked under the authority of then At- torney. General John Mitch- ell, to lead the White House "Mission Impossible" team to Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist. Mitchell, according to government investiga- tors, had cited national se- curity needs in authorizing — without court orders - more than a score of tele- phone wiretaps to try to plug the leaking of the Pentagon Papers in 1971. .

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