Leaving Murky Murders to the Senate

Jauntily holding the 350-page document aloft for reporters to see, Vice President Nelson Rockefeller last week prepared to deliver to the White House his commission's report on the alleged improprieties and machinations of the CIA. "We've done a good job, I think," said Rockefeller. "There's been no stone unturned, there's no punches pulled." Then the Vice President gave a brief synopsis of the report on the agency, which his eight-man panel had been preparing for the past five months: "There are things that have been done that are in contradiction to the statutes, but in comparison to the total [CIA] effort, they are not major."

That tantalizing glimpse of the eagerly awaited report's contents was all that was vouchsafed the public. Accepting the volume four days later, President Gerald Ford took the report home for what he called a "long weekend's reading." Later, White House sources indicated that Ford would probably make the report public this week.

Domestic Spying. Initially, Rockefeller and his panel were commissioned by Ford to look into allegations about domestic spying--made principally by New York Times Reporter Seymour Hersh--that the CIA had conducted a massive domestic intelligence operation in the U.S. during the late '60s and early '70s against antiwar activists and dissidents. If so, this was seemingly a violation of the agency's charter that banned "internal security functions."

But as Rockefeller's investigation went on, other stories appeared in the press linking the CIA to assassination plots against Cuba's Fidel Castro, the Dominican Republic's Rafael Trujillo (killed May 30, 1961) and Viet Nam's Ngo Dinh Diem (shot to death Nov. 2, 1963). In March Ford directed Rockefeller to investigate such charges.

The Rockefeller Commission also looked into the recurring speculation that Castro had tried to gain revenge for the CIA's attempts on his life by using Lee Harvey Oswald to kill John F. Kennedy. Like the Warren Commission, the Rockefeller group concluded that there was no credible indication of any such conspiracy behind Kennedy's death and Oswald acted alone.

The document delivered last week by Rockefeller contained nothing about any assassinations of foreign leaders. In explanation, Rockefeller said that his commission did not have enough time to look into the allegations thoroughly. Said the Vice President: "We didn't feel we could come to a conclusion on partial information."

As explained by Presidential Counsel Philip Buchen, the White House liaison with the commission, the members found that the study of the assassinations "was almost a bottomless subject. If they were to go into the whole thing, it would have taken more time and resources than they had." The group could have asked for an extension and a larger staff, but the members clearly had no stomach for digging deeper into those affairs of the CIA. On Monday afternoon, four days before the report was delivered, the commission voted unanimously not to include any material on the foreign assassinations. However, the White House has agreed to hand over the commission's tentative research on the subject to the Senate's special eleven-man committee, chaired by Senator Frank Church, that is vigorously probing all U.S. intelligence activities.

Misused Powers. As for the CIA's domestic transgressions, the commission reportedly absolved the agency of much blame, noting that Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon drove the CIA to overstep its bounds. Johnson had an obsessive belief that foreign money and influence must have been behind the students' revolt and the antiwar movement. Nixon also prodded the CIA to misuse its powers and spy on dissenters. The commission called for tighter controls on White House access to the agency and tighter congressional oversight of its operations.

Just how poorly Congress has been performing its task of monitoring the CIA came to light last week in an incident involving Democratic Congressman Lucien Nedzi, the chairman of one House committee that supposedly watches over the CIA. The New York Times reported that Nedzi had been briefed more than a year ago by the agency about its involvement in assassination plans and domestic espionage and he had done nothing whatsoever about the matter. Particularly, Nedzi did not mention it when he was made chairman of the special committee created by the House in February to investigate charges that the CIA had violated its statutes--a seeming conflict of interest.

When Nedzi did not deny that he had known about the CIA'S shadowy activities all along, five of his six Democratic colleagues on the investigating committee hotly called for his resignation as chairman. If Nedzi does not go quietly this week, his fellow Democrats on the committee made it plain that if necessary, they would force a House vote to get him out.

With Nedzi's committee incapacitated and the Rockefeller Commission's report handed in, the job of pursuing the investigation of the CIA was left in the hands of the Senate committee. Under Church, a liberal Democrat from Idaho who may run for his party's presidential nomination in 1976, the committee has been zealously holding private hearings since May 15. After the Rockefeller Commission handed in its report, Church accused it of ducking the assassination issue. As to the Vice President's claim that the CIA was not guilty of "major" sins, Church angrily declared: "I don't regard murder plots as a 'minor' matter."

Church has hard evidence for his harsh statement. During his three appearances before the Senate committee--more than ten hours at the witness table--CIA Director William Colby said, according to intelligence sources, that the agency had worked with Chicago gangsters on plans to kill Castro. In one case, the hit man was to have been a Cuban army major who was close to the Cuban leader. The allotted fee for the job: $150,000. (For another example, see box.)

An Abomination. To find out more about the assassination plots, particularly who authorized them, Church will devote the rest of this month to closed-door hearings on the subject. Not only does Church plan to recall Colby and other CIA officials, past and present, but he will call the Mafia's John Roselli, who reportedly was signed up by the CIA to direct some of the schemes to assassinate Castro. Church also plans to question Robert Maheu, the onetime FBI agent and aide to Howard Hughes, who is said to have recruited Roselli for the CIA.

"Ours is not a wicked country, and we cannot abide a wicked government," says Church. He prefers to talk not of "assassinations" but of "murder--a simpler, clearer term." Says he: "The U.S. cannot involve itself in any way in murder. The notion that we must mimic the Communists and abandon our principles [is] an abomination."

When it draws up its final report on the CIA, Church's Senate committee will face the same dilemma in proposing solutions that Nelson Rockefeller outlined when his commission began its study in January: "We must have an intelligence capability, which is essential to our security as a nation, without offending our liberties as a people."

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