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Show Anthony Lewis Firi Section Monday Morning, July 23, 1973 Page Secret Evidence? Sounds Absurd 1 1 Promised Review of CIA Statutes New York Tines Service Timely, But Dont Expect Much the conservSen. John C. Slennis, ative chairman of the Armed Services Come review of mittee, has ordered a Central the laws governing Intelligence Agency (CIA). Good luck, senator, may your effort bear fruit. But history is against you. Few details concerning CIA operations whether successful or not have ever come to light. The agencys most publicized failure was the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba and its greatest success, disclosed as the result of a r sensational failure, was the aerial The committees interest in the CIA was revived by the agencys secret activities in Laos and its role in the Watergate affair. reconnaissance over the Soviet Union which ended with the shooting down of Francis Gary Powers 2 in May, 1960. The CIA was created by the National Security Act of 1947, the same legislation which unified the armed and set up the Des partment of Defense. In the last two decades, more than 200 bills aimed at making the CIA more accountable to Congress have been introduced. None has been enacted. In the 26 years of CIAs existence, Congress has never known how much or for what purpose it appropriated money for the agency. Funds for CIA are hidden in the annual appropriations for other agencies. full-scal- foi-.e- The most recent attempt to put congresswas thwarted by Sen. Stennis own Armed Services Committee just last summer. The committee bottled up a bill by ,hen Sen. John Sherman Cooper, requiring the agency to submit regular reports on intelligence information to congressional committees. The laws Sen. Stennis now says will be reviewed to give the CIA broad authority to coordinate intelligence work of government and to engage in undercover operations similar to those of the World War II Office of Strategic Services. The CIA was-borat a time during the Cold War when the Communist threat was considered grave and agressive. The agency, however, was to have no police, subpena, law enforcement powers or internal security functions. ional controls on the CIA ., four-yea- Jrckson originally wanted to the eliminate restriction on right of only on the proposed incurred width way Mineral the project by Leasing Act of 1920. On Feb. 9 the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington held the right of way requested by Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. up to 146 feet in some stretches was wider than the 50 feet permitted under the mineral leasing laws. Sen. Henry M. 789-mi- Jacksons original bill and the product reported to the Senate by its Interior and Insular Affairs Committee removed the statutory width restrictions. But the Senate, by a vote with Vice President Spiro T. Agnew breaking the tie, amended the Jackson bill to declare that the environmental impact statement prepared by Interior Secy. Rogers C. B. Morton was sufficient under the National 50-4- Environmental Policy Act of 9 1969. The Congressional declaration of sufficiency came on an amendment by the two Alaskan senators. Mike Gravel and Ted Stevens. What the Gravel-Steven- s amendment did was to substitute the judgment of Congress for Even bureaus and departments subject to Congressional inquiry tend to get flabby and stray from their original purpose. The danger of such drift is even greater in a super secret rrganization, a fact that Watergate has amply documented. But the motion that there is come legal right to withhold such evidence is quite another matter. It is time, it is long past time to deflate the mystique of executive privilege." In the sense of an absolute discretion to withhold information, hallowed by the Constitution or by a long tradition, it to come out of such a study will be disappointed. Imposition of tight congressional scrutiny over a clandestine operation of global scope will preclude the operations usefulness Some tightening up can be accomplished without harm but in the end the alternatives are to abolish the CIA altogether or put faith in the who hold effective only two persons control the Director and the President. that of the courts in determining the of the impact statement. sufficen-:- y While this is not the usual turn of events, it is not without precedent. As Sen. Gravel pointed out in debate on the amendment, I note that no one doubts the authority of the Congress to act on corrective legislation or to substitute its judgment for that of the courts regarding legislation it has passed into law. In fact, much of the legislation we deal with falls into this category. There are clear instances of settlements, notably the Alaska land claims, which were arbitrated by the Congress entirely, not by the courts. While Sen. Gravel cites only the Alaska land claims case as an example of legislative judgment substituting for that of the courts, the multitude of private legislation that passes through Congress every year aug ments his position. The Senates Alaskan Pipeline bill eliminates the two major legal roadblocks to getting North Slope oil to the American consumers. To weaken it in any way would delay delivery of that urgently needed oil far longer than can be justified. The Senate of United States is satisfied that proper consideration has been given by the oil 'ompanies to preventing adverse environmental impacts. The U.S. House of Representatives when the bill comes before it in September ought to demonstrate a similar satisfaction. just ain't The Public Forum Intermittently Irrational Editor, Tribune: Spontaneous reaction to Prof. Oguahs observations (July 8) ranged from fairly sensible to insanely inane. I am afraid, as a native Utahn sprung from pioneer stock, that I, too, have a builtin, inherited (quite probably) defense mechanism. I am inclined to rasped this is what is loosely and contemporarily labeled paranoia alarmingly. Paranoia is not an exclusive personality property of ours, but it seems temfying how we revere it almost as we do our temples, with apprehensive Forum Rules Public Fonun letters most be submitted to The Tribune and bear writer's foil name, signature and address. Names most be priated oa political letters but may be withheld for good reaseas oa others. Writers are limited to oae letter every II days. Preference will be given to short, typewritten (double spaced) letters permitting use of the writers true name. All letters are subject to condensation. excl-tsivel- y awe. Also anxiously were our ances-ra- l oioneers. filled with trepidation and on the lam irom our eastern shores distrustful of all, fleeing across the praines with oacicward glances. Conceivably, the greatest panic was not caused by the pursuer but was the temfying doubt of the unseen and the unknown. d Somehow, I can perceive that our ancestors and then ancestors possessed this faculty of paranoia as well. And the more I dig into my genealogy across the Atlantic, from Scotland south hinterland, through England, into the and, finally, to delve into the Middle East, the same paranoia stands out like a sore pyramid or a tower of babbling defensive fraidy cats! Man! no wander I am at limes a wee bit irratishirt-taile- d onal. By the way, did our pioneer forefathers have to displace any scrounging Injuns? I reflect upon a casual query: Were there any Injuns audacious enough to have felt this land was Home to them0 the point is that the nowaday-majoritWell, whatever have no rightful ownership of their chief claim to fame as champions of paranoia! They must, simply must, be willing to share it with todays Injuns and the blacks of always . No one can argue with my feelings, nor my genealogical inheritance. Stdl, 1 have tremulous doubts about my free agency, am alarmed that it might be contradicted! Confidentially. I am almost to the point of panic because I have been receiving strange vibes. Its just as if I myself might be strangling in the morass of my paranoia. If it would lessen my anxiety, and come as a relief. Id be promptly ready, willing and able to share mine with any who are smug in their security, sane in their maturity, and especially with those who possess logic and the ethical quality of equality. ... Pentagon Lying to the American People Ameri- can bombing of Cambodia have confirmed another outrage of the Indochina war, an outrage not only against a people with whom the United States had no national quarrel but also an outrage against the American people and against the American system of government. Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger has now laid bare the sordid record, but only when it was forced from the Pentagon by revelations of an Air Force officer. And it is a record all the more chilling because it shows President N'xon deliberately lying to the American people Every American will remember the President's famous speech of April 30. 1970. when he an- - The Holland Cartoon Another Matter trust that Sen. Stennis resolve to CIA is stronger than it used to be the study and that the review of statutes will go forward. But anyone expecting radical changes We Another Viewpoint From the Los Angeles Times Official statements regarding the secret Stated thus baldly, the proposition sounds absurd. As a matter of law or history. it is absurd. Yet. when someone m the White House we take puts the label "executive privilege on it, lies a tradition assume that long it seriously and behind the theory. So reverential have we become about the Amencan presidency. The tapes produced by President Nixons surreptitious practice of recording everything said in his office may or may not be telling evidence in the Watergate inquiry. One should be skeptical that there is a magic key to the truth in such complex affairs, and the authenticity of these tapes may always be questioned. U-- Senate Says Sufficient The possiblity of starting construction of the Trans-Alask- a Pipeline within the next six or seven months moved a step closer to reality when the Senate passed the Jackson bill. The finished Senate product went further than the Washington legislator had intended. The President of the United States is accused of conspiratorial involvement in serious enmes lie turns out to have a large amount of physical evidence that may bear directly on the truth of the criminal charges. He announces that he is going to keep the evidence secret, that he has a nght to do so because he is President. LONDON nounced the invasion that wasn't an invasion of Cambodia. Step by step, he explained how the patience of the United States had been worn thin by the transgressions of the Communists while, as he explained, the policy of the United States has been to scrupulously respect the neutrality of the Cambodian people. To prove the good intentions of the United States, he went on to say that for the past five years we have provided no military assistance whatever." And now we know this was not true. The secrecy was essenUal because of the sensitive military and diplomatic situation" and the need to protect American troops m South Vietnam from a Communist buildup m nearby areas of Cambodia. So we are told. The Americans wanted at all cost to avoid embarrassing Prince Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia and his pretensions to neutralism. So the Americans did in secret exactly what they were accusing the Communists of doing: ignonng the 1954 peace and neutrality agreement for Cambodia. more persuasive explanation for the secrecy has coine from Maj. Hal M. Knight, whose revelations finally forced the truth from the Pentagon. He reports that he was told that the secrecy was necessary so that Sen. J. William Fulbright. chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, would not find out. And, with him, the Amencan A people. Gen. George S. Brown, Air Force chief of staff, reached the pinnacle of contempt for the American people in defending the secrecy. There was no falsification here because "higher authority knew what was really going on, he said. He could anyone fault such procedures when it was clear, the not intended to general said, that they were deceive those with a security need to know But it was not the generals who qualified for that need to know, and it was not the driven to deception, who required it. It was the uvncan people who had the security need to know That is one of Vietnam's mot urgent les- Pre.-aden- t. y . GEORGE REID Shared Concern Editor, Tribune- May I respond to the appropriate concerns expressed in Shirley G Jones letmothers ter (Forum, July 19) regarding teen-ag- e who keep their babies. Social welfare agencies are also greatly concerned about the welfare of children bom to adolescent parents. We are. after all, in a unique position to know first hand the consequences to children of inadequate parenting (whatever its variety) Social agencies are not causing the problem, however; we are responding to the needs which have been created by situations we also view with the teen-agalarm pregnancy, in the first well of adolescent as as the vulnerability place, parents and their children. The reasons young girls are keeping their babies are multiple and complex. They include the strong pressure of their friends and not infrequently the desires of their own mothers Whatever the reason, the fact of the mattei is that the mother has the absolute legal right to make this choice herself. Agencies and courts may not intervene, w hatev er our apprehensions - e The law in Utah and elsewhere strongly sup- ports the legal rights of parents (regardless of their age or other incapacity) and steps may im be taken to protevt children until after the (Act ot t nr oh inrlimment , ti ni' If agencies and courts are weakened in their ability to give the child the consideration demanded by Shirley G. Jones, that weakness originates in the law. We believe parental rights should be protected but not, as so often occurs, at the expense of defenseless children. May we suggest that Shirley G. Jones and other concerned citizens could provide a great service to children by supporting chaHges in Utahs law which would promote the rights of children as individuals. In the meantime, agencies and courts will continue to act in whatever ways are possible to us to alleviate or prevent damage to children tins includes serving their parents. This is both our purpose and our commitment. LILLIAN L. FLOWERS Executive Director Children's Service Society of Utah One-Side- d Coverage Editor, Tribune: From what I have read in The Tribune concering the EPA proposals, there is need for alarm. There are two things which alarm me about the issue as reported in The Tribune. One is the seemingly solid block of unquestioning opposition to the proposals in the area. The other is the coverage by The Tribune. It is hard to believe that no one in the valley had anything to say in support of any part of the EPA's ruling. If people such as the Utah automobile dealers are given room to voice their opinion, why arent the environmentalists? Asking an automobile dealer or petroleum retailer what he thinks of a proposal to cut back auto use is like asking a stable owner what he thought of the new horseless carriage 50 years ago. What response would you expect? If you did report the stable owners opinion, wouldnt the objective paper also give the automobile dealer a voice? The Tribune has a right to its editorial page, but being the sole paper m this area it has the obligation to give both sides of any issue in the news section. It is not fulfilling that obligation. As to the other cause for alarm, there seems to be a lack of thoughtful concern for our citys air and the quality of our environment. I hope it is not that such concern doesnt exist, but rather that it isnt being heard at present. Before we rake the EPAs proposal as a bureaucratic scheme, lets look at the quality of air in Salt Lake. Is it really worso great that we dont want it improved sened in fact, as we ignore it? Lessening automobile traffic downtown wont mean the death of the city center if we start now to build alternate means of transportation. In the end the city, especially the people who live and work there, and the entire valley would benefit. JOAN GOUGH one-side- d Cant Be Overdrawn Editor, Tribune: The first two letters in the Forum July 17 span a wide spectrum of human thought. In somewhat gray visions of the future, if more dams are built for power generation and flood control, Randy Wright forsees . . . once pure rivers with dams running up and dow n their length." But dam builder Nick Badovmus, superintendent for Gibbons and Reed at Rine Dam, would probably say, facetiously, that dams are built not up and down, but crossways of the rivers. In another shade of gray thought, Mr. Wright The dams, of proclaims that after siltation and "One can hardly visucourse, are useless. alize any use for mud flats with sterile trickles of water running in.ough them. Yet, could that stenle water, if it would be sterile, be used fnr and for irrigating those vast mud flats drinking as valuable new f,rm lands? It is probable that the heat of the Earth, whose source is the sun, cannot within reason be overdrawn by mere man as Mr. Wright, still in gray mood, proposes. In actuality, solar energy enables water to be fluid rather than to exist as perpetual ice. Solar energy produces the fossil fuels from vegetation. It maintains the heat of our which would cool if the Creator extinplanet guishes or diminishes the sun. In Dooley P Wheelers constructive remarks, immediately following Mr. Wnght in the Forum, there is candid, worthwhile and colorful evaluation of our many gray areas of knowledge and thought, including a brilliant assessment, by contrast, of the mentalilici of builders and DOUGLAS MURRAY MURPHY 1HP Irfihn non-doer- s so. There has been a good deal of recent scholarly research on the subject, and its conclusions are in that doubting vein. In a long paper last May, Prof. Norman Dorsen of the New York University law school and John H F. Shattuck of the American Civil Liberties Union found the idea of letting a President deny information in his own discretion was without basis in historical or judicial precedent or in the constitutional doctrine of separation of powers." Another scholar said the doctrine was built upon fantasy. The idea that presidents have an absolute right to decide what they will tell Congress has developed only in the last 20 years. It was first claimed in 1954 by Attorney General Herbert Brownell Jr., in support of President Eisenhowers decision not to let subordinate government officials testify before Sen. Joseph McCarthy. Good Reasons Of course there may be good reasons to keep some information confidential. For example, almost everyone would be against disclosure of unverified and defamatory investigative files. Congress has authorized many exceptions to the rule of disclosure. But it is arother thing to say that the President should decide these issues on his own. Congress is an equal branch of the same government, with a right and duty of inquiry that has been exercised since its very first days. These are matters to be worked out by the two branches in terms of the public interest in particular cases, not swept aside by an empty claim of absolute presidential power. It is no accident that the doctrine of executive privilege has flowered during the years when the power of the White House has grown. For it is an expression of power, an essential instrument in the fight by successive presidents and especialto exclude Congress from a meanly this one ingful share in the government of the U.S. Working Privately The affair of the tapes shows how far the reach for presidential power has gone. President Nixon orders Secret Service officers not to testify at all about his bugging system. It is as if they worked privately for him. in a private White House. But they do not. They are paid by all Americans, in sums appropriated by Congress, to perform a public function Their oath is to preserve the Constitution, not Richard Nixon Just a year ago the Supreme Court reiected the presss claim of privilege to keep secret from grand juries. Justice Byron White, for the majority, spoke of the longstanding principle that the public has a right to every man's evidence. And then, m a footnote, he cited the opinion of Chief Justice JohnMarshall m 1x07 that in proper circumstances a subpoena coujd be issued to the President of the United States (Copyright) Orbiting Paragraphs A young friend has gotten married His family has gamed a daughter but the neighborhood, u ank goodness, has lost a motorcycle. Rural residents, wher asked for directions, used to measure the distance in country miles Now its in country gallons. Congressman Sludgepump always urges those who disagree with him to think the problem through. !!s says this gets them so confused they never bother him again. Intcrlantli |