Rising Criticism Of the Leaks

Wisconsin Republican Robert Kasten could take no more. Before his colleagues on the House Intelligence Committee last week, he angrily addressed Chairman Otis Pike, a Democrat from New York. "Do something," he demanded, to stanch the leaks that were discrediting the committee with its friends in Congress as well as its foes in the Administration. With an irate glare, Pike shot back: "What do you recommend? Lie detector tests? I do not know where the leaks have come from."

Pike's testy confession of helplessness only served to intensify the growing backlash in Congress against his committee's six-month investigation of the CIA, FBI and other U.S. intelligence agencies. Week after week, confidential information gathered by the committee's investigators had wound up on the front pages of U.S. newspapers. Last week the leaks turned into what outgoing CIA Director William Colby angrily called "the bursting of the dam." The committee's entire final report was given to newsmen. The leaked report contained little that had not been disclosed, and the revelations tended to be relatively minor. Among them:

> In the late 1950s, at the CIA's request, Robert Maheu, a former top aide to Billionaire Howard Hughes, supplied King Hussein of Jordan and other foreign leaders with female companions. Maheu was also the go-between the CIA used to recruit two high-ranking Mafia members in an attempt to assassinate Cuban Dictator Fidel Castro.

> Despite CIA objections, Graham A. Martin, then U.S. Ambassador to Italy, secretly paid $800,000 in 1972 to Vito Miceli, a right-wing general who headed Italy's military intelligence agency. The money was to demonstrate U.S. support of Italian antiCommunists. According to a story in Turin's La Stampa, the $800,000 for Miceli was small potatoes: the paper claimed that one of its reporters had obtained secret documents from Pike's committee showing that the CIA had given Italian political parties $74 million from 1948 to 1972.

> In a futile effort to keep the U.S. from cutting off secret arms aid, Kurdish General Mustafa Barzani gave three valuable Oriental rugs and a gold and pearl necklace to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Wife Nancy when they were married in 1974. Brent Scowcroft, the President's national security adviser, said that actually one rug and one necklace had been received and both had been promptly turned over to the White House, as required by law.

> Although he was a member of a Senate subcommittee that was to monitor CIA activities, Democratic Senator Henry Jackson of Washington advised the agency in 1973 on how to handle another Senate subcommittee's probe of CIA ties in Chile with ITT Corp. Jackson retorted that he was asked only for procedural advice.

The committee concluded that the CIA has been operating so secretly as to be beyond the control of Congress and the Executive. Colby held a press conference--the day before the Senate confirmed former G.O.P. National Chairman George Bush as his successor by a 64-to-27 vote. Colby denounced the charge of excessive secrecy as an "outrageous calumny." The report, he said, was "a disservice to our nation, giving a thoroughly wrong impression of American intelligence."

What most outraged the Administration, however, was that the committee had violated an agreement with President Ford. In exchange for secret documents about covert CIA activities in Italy, Angola and Iraq, as well as the "Hollystone" project (involving U.S. subs edging close to Soviet shores to monitor missile launchings), the committee had promised it would not disclose any details if Ford decided that their release would jeopardize national security. Then the committee voted 9 to 4 to renege on the promise, reasoning that no one in the Executive Branch had the right to censor a report from a congressional committee.

As Ford made one last attempt to get the committee to stick to its original pledge, the report was leaked. Although Pike insisted that the source of the leak was not known, committee investigators told TIME that members of the committee's staff were responsible.

Tough Standards. Ford insisted he had been doublecrossed. In the House, a dozen Republicans rose to protest the committee's bad faith. North Carolina's James Martin was so furious he sputtered: "Holy mackerel, Mr. Speaker!" The senior Republican on the Pike committee, Robert McClory of Illinois, protested: "What agency do you think will provide us information if it thinks we cannot be trusted?"

Many Democrats found that argument persuasive, and the House voted 246 to 124 to require the Pike committee to delete the disputed material before formally issuing its report. The rebuke came too late, since the sensitive information has already been disclosed. The dispute will probably prompt Congress to adopt tougher standards on secrecy than might otherwise have been the case. For example, Tennessee Republican Senator William Brock has sponsored legislation that would punish congressional staff members with fines of up to $100,000 and jail terms of up to 20 years for leaking secret information.

Meanwhile the much criticized CIA received some strong support from President Ford, who spoke at the ceremonies installing Bush as new director of the agency. While saying that the CIA must be prevented from exceeding its authority, Ford declared: "We cannot improve this agency by destroying it. Let me assure you I have no intention of seeing this intelligence community dismantled and its operations paralyzed or effectively undermined."

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