Spooks on Ice

Unleashing the CIA

The Reagan Administration has been trying for weeks to work out language in a proposal that would roll back the restrictions the Carter Administration placed on the Central Intelligence Agency. As usual when the CIA is involved, the issue has raised blood pressure levels on both sides of the debate. "President Carter went too far in protecting civil liberties," argues a Reagan Administration official. "He erred in placing too many restrictions on the intelligence community." A former Carter official fumes in rebuttal: "It is the most threatening proposal I have seen come out of the Executive Branch since I first began dealing with the CIA."

The agency's critics, sputtering anew as various versions of the Administration's proposal were leaked, revised and leaked again, received some strong bipartisan support last week. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee recommended that the Administration abandon its plan to permit the CIA to infiltrate and influence domestic groups, a key part of the proposed Executive Order. In a cryptic defense of the plan, an Administration official says, "Our aim is to allow flexibility for the CIA."

Preferring to avoid another cloak-and-dagger uproar, the Administration appears to be listening to the congressional complaints. "Some changes will be made to meet their objections," an Administration official acknowledges.

President Carter clamped a number of restrictions on the CIA after disclosures in the 1970s that the agency, in violation of its own charter, collected files on 7,200 U.S. citizens in an effort to link Viet Nam War dissenters with foreign governments. Under the Carter order only the FBI, with approval of the Attorney General, may infiltrate and influence domestic groups. The congressional critics urged the White House to maintain this restriction in any new guidelines, and also recommended against weakening Congress's authority to oversee CIA operations.

If the President chooses, he can ignore the recommendations and sign the Executive Order as it is now drafted. White House officials say there is disagreement between hard-liners like National Security Council Adviser Richard Allen and moderates like CIA Deputy Director Bobby Inman on how far the Administration should go to accommodate congressional critics. In Congress, even the CIA's boosters would rather avoid yet another damaging, headline-making controversy. "Why is the Administration doing this?" asks Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. "They're making the CIA a huge issue again, just when it was getting back to work."

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