THE NATION INTELLIGENCE Rattling Skeletons in the CIA Closet It's been tough going for the Cen- to him by courier plane. The cause of under whose stewardship the most re- tral Intelligence Agency of late. The the furor was a story in the New York cent abuses ostensibly occurred, is now agency was tarnished by Watergate and Times charging that for about 20 years ambassador to Iran. Before he left Teh- embarrassed by revelations that it had the CIA had illegally spied on many ran last week for a vacation trip through spent $8 million to undermine Chilean American citizens within the U.S. Europe to the U.S., he "categorically de- President Salvador Allende's Marxist One immediate consequence was the nied" in a cable to the State Depart- government. Last week threatened to departure of a little-known but impor- ment that the illicit operations had bring even worse opprobrium. On Cap- tant official, James Angleton, who had taken place. Defense Secretary James itol Hill, the heads of four different com- served as CIA chief of counter-intel- Schlesinger, who was Helms' immediate mittees and subcommittees announced ligence. Angleton, it was believed, su- successor, remained silent. parallel investigations of the CIA to be- pervised the domestic espionage oper- Other members of the intelligence gin when Congress reconvenes. From ations. But he denied having anything community, however, maintained that his vacation retreat in Vail, Colo., Ger- to do with domestic surveillance and the report was exaggerated. One intel- ald Ford ordered up a report by CIA Di- insisted that his resignation was solely ligence officer said that the report "sug- rector William E. Colby that was flown because of an indiscretion in the course gests, most unfairly, that these violations STEVE 0 RTH UP of an interview with the Times were systematic and massive rather than that could have jeopardized a U.S. aberrations." Some experts theorized agent in Moscow. that the Hersh figure represents not sur- The main outline of the do- veillance in the sinister sense but the mestic spying was drawn by Times number of Americans whose names Reporter Seymour M. Hersh (see have been fed into CIA computers un- THE PREss). He wrote that the der a name-check system. Being includ- agency had conducted in the U.S. ed was not necessarily invidious. Ac- clandestine surveillance opera- cording to Victor Marchetti, a disillu- tions—including wiretaps, break- sioned former agency official and co- ins (known as "bag jobs") and sur- author of The CIA and the Cult of reptitious interception of mail Intelligence. "Into that system go the —and eventually amassed intel- names of anyone who visited an 'ene- ligence files on some 10,000 my' or politically sensitive country Americans. Hersh disclosed no whom the agency might have wanted names, though he mentioned that to debrief. There are also lists from trav- at least one Congressman had el companies and airlines and others been involved. shared with the agency by Army intel- Among the targets of CIA sur- ligence or the FBI." Using Actress Jane veillance, TIME has learned, were Fonda as a hypothetical but plausible Supreme Court Justice William 0. example—she opposed the U.S. involve- Douglas, former Democratic Rep- ment in Viet Nam and visited Hanoi resentative Cornelius E. Galla- —Marchetti speculates that the CIA AMBASSADOR RICHARD HELMS gher of New Jersey, Democratic computer would probably store the Representative Claude Pepper of names of all her known business, pro- Florida and the late Democratic fessional and personal associates. Senator Edward V. Long of Mis- Gray Area. The agency's defenders souri. A high CIA official, respond- emphasize the distinction between ing to a TIME inquiry, denied that 10,000 names in a computer memory the agency had kept any kind of bank and 10,000 dossiers. They also in- watch on these public men. But sisted that whatever domestic spying other sources insisted that the sur- took place was relatively isolated and re- veillance had been conducted. sulted from links—real or imagined Such activity would clearly vi- —between Americans and foreign sub- olate the National Security Act of versive organizations. The defenders 1947, which states that the CIA suggested that there is a "gray area" in "shall have no police, subpoena, which foreign and domestic operations law-enforcement powers, or inter- cannot be neatly separated. According nal-security functions." The law to insiders, these borderline transgres- limits the agency's espionage sions tended to follow four patterns: functions to foreign operations. 1) A foreign agent takes up resi- When the CIA follows a target to dence in the U.S., perhaps under em- the U.S. or uncovers a connection bassy cover, and contacts U.S. citizens. between a foreign operative and As a consequence, the agency decides a domestic group, the case is sup- to keep tab on those citizens. posed to be turned over to the Fed- 2) An American political dissenter eral Bureau of Investigation. goes abroad and travels to Communist For the moment at least, the or other unfriendly countries. The agen- CIA DIRECTOR WILLIAM COLBY agency was hunkering down. For- cy decides to run computer checks on Hunkering down. mer Director Richard Helms, his associates in the U.S. 44 TIME, JANUARY 6, 1975 "Happy New Year, yourself—I'm CIA!" 3) A CIA agent who has been posted ver reportedly exclaimed at one point. year prison sentence for income-tax eva- abroad returns to Washington and de- As a result, the CIA increasingly by- sion that had no connection with na- cides to follow up on a domestic angle passed the FBI, though it always care- tional security), the CIA apparently of his work overseas. fully established a foreign connection to sought information about his contacts 4) An employee like Marchetti justify each domestic operation and give with officials in the Dominican Repub- leaves the CIA and begins exposing its it a quasi-legitimate appearance. Anoth- lic. In the case of Senator Long, it was activities, prompting the agency to in- er justification was the law's rather his negotiations with foreign companies, vestigate the ex-employee and his as- vague provision making the CIA direc- and in the case of Representative Pep- sociates in the U.S. tor "responsible for protecting intelli- per, his relations with Cuban refugees Handing these cases over to the FBI gence sources and methods from unau- living in his district that apparently in- became increasingly difficult as relations thorized disclosure." terested the CIA. between the two agencies deteriorated None of these reasons seemed to ex- When told of the CIA's attention to in the 1950s and '60s. On "hundreds of plain the CIA's interest in Justice Doug- him, Pepper said, "I do declare, I didn't occasions," one source recalled, FBI Di- las and the three members of Congress. know anything about it. I'm utterly at a rector J. Edgar Hoover arbitrarily Donglas came under scrutiny in the mid- loss." Douglas said last week that he was turned down CIA requests for surveil- '60s after he visited the Dominican Re- unaware of any CIA concern with him. lances, wiretaps and bugs. "Screw the public. As for Representative Gallagher Whatever these excesses of the '50s CIA—let them do their own work!" Hoo- (who recently served 17 months of a two- and '60s, there is a strong suspicion that years at Harvard Law School, then fol- The Spy Who Came into the Heat lowed his father into the oss. Immedi- ately after the war, he worked for a U.S. Until recent weeks, James Angleton ton became a lieutenant colonel in the intelligence operation in Italy that was a paradigm of his arcane trade. Cul- oss. The son went to Yale (class of '41). helped pro-American politicians win tivated in taste, shrewd in intellect, and Fellow Student William Bundy, an ex- election over leftist opponents. He joined above all discreet in his work for the CIA man and now editor of Foreign Af- the CIA when it was formed in 1947 and CIA, Angleton, 57, was in thetwilight of fairs, recalls Angleton as "a person of served for a while overseas. a distinguished career.,,_ great depth in whom one sensed a con- Kim Philby,the British spy who de- Then, suddenly, he became a casu- stant searching." Athong &tar tlilitgs, teitBa MiTscow, m'enti'oned Angleton alty of the constant tension that a co- Angleton worked on the campus mag- in his book My Silent War. Philby found vert agency must live with in an open azine, the Lit. Angleton hard-driving and liked his society. As the New York Times was After Yale, Angleton spent two American colleague. They frequently about to blow his cover, Angleton blew dined together, and Philby described his cool. In a telephone conversation him as "one of the thinnest men I have with Seymour Hersh, he let slip that the ever met and one of the biggest eaters." CIA had a "source" in Moscow who was In 1954 Angleton assumed respon- "still active and still productive." sibility for counter-espionage—combat- Last week, his career ended, Angle- ting the activities of adversary spooks ton's gaunt, 6-ft. figure was more stooped round the world. Victor Marchetti, the than usual. His speech slurred by ex- ex-CIA official who turned agency crit- haustion, he insisted that his actions had ic, said that colleagues regarded Angle- been intended solely to protect the U.S. ton as "a gentleman, a connoisseur of from its archenemy, the Soviet Union.