Seduced by the KGB

While concentrating its efforts upon the CIA, Senator Frank Church's special committee that is investigating U.S. intelligence programs has also been accumulating data on the FBI. Last week TIME learned that the committee has heard some startling reports of misdeeds, break-ins and cover-ups, including the story of an agent whose mistress was linked to the Soviet KGB.

The affair was discovered in 1968 when a CIA source in Moscow reported that KGB officials were jubilant about getting one of their operatives in bed with an FBI agent. To check out the CIA'S report, the FBI broke into the apartment of the woman, a middle-aged waitress, and discovered bureau manuals, documents and reports. Some FBI officials urged prosecution, but J. Edgar Hoover's palace guard of deputies stopped the inquiry to avoid embarrassing the bureau and its boss. The agent was simply allowed to resign. The KGB also appears to have penetrated the FBI in 1961. In this case, the agent suspected of giving FBI reports to the Soviets (a polygraph test on him was inconclusive) was fired on a minor technicality.

The Church committee has also turned up evidence of a variety of extra-legal activities practiced by the FBI. The bureau is said to have maintained special schools to train agents in the techniques of the "bag job," a euphemism for breaking and entering. The graduates--lockpickers, burglars and a few safecrackers--managed to steal some code books from foreign embassies. For this they received "incentive awards" ranging from $250 to $500.

The Senators would like to know more about the private files Hoover kept on public officials and what use he made of them. John Mohr, a former top FBI official, has told TIME that he had been questioned three times by the committee about the dossiers assembled by Hoover on scores of people. Just what happened to some of the files after Hoover's death in 1972 is still a mystery.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.