General YARBOROUGH. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. I want to ask you, have you discussed this with the Secretary?

General YARBOROUGH. Very closely, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. In other words, the Secretary is familiar with all of this information you have?

General YARBOROUGH. Yes, sir

The CHAIRMAN. That is what I am getting at, Mr. Secretary.

Mr. McGIFFERT. I am sorry. Maybe I misled you, Mr. Chairman I feel completely up-to-date with respect to what information the intelligence community has gathered.

The CHAIRMAN. Either you misled me or I misunderstood you. So now we have it cleared up. Do you have information that the leaders of this movement have said that they are going to come here and block bridges leading into Washington and block traffic, the free flow of traffic? Do you have that information in your intelligence?

General YARBOROUGH. Mr. Chairman, we have all the information that the FBI has.

The CHAIRMAN. I did not ask you that. You can either answer or refuse. This is a conference. Do you have information as to what I have asked you? Is that in your intelligence?

General YARBOROUGH. We have information that such statements have been made; yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. By leaders of this movement?
General YARBOROUGH. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. By officials in what organizations? SCLC, as an illustration? Southern Christian Leadership Conference, by high officials in that conference? Do you have that intelligence information that they have made such statements?

General YARBOROUGH. I Would say, Senator, that we have every bit of information that you have there.

The CHAIRMAN. How do you know how much I have here?

General YARBOROUGH. Because I think, sir, we have access to what all of the principal intelligence collectors have gathered.

The CHAIRMAN. You have not given us that information. How do you know what I have? I am just asking to find out how prepared we are and are we taking into account these things. All I am asking you is just be responsive to my questions, if you will. Do you have this information that leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference have made such statements? General YARBOROUGH. Yes, Senator.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you also have statements from them or others associated with this march movement or camp-in demonstration program or project, rather, that they intend to disrupt the functions of government including the executive and legislative branches of the Federal Government, by blocking office buildings, office suites of Government officials, Senators and Representatives and hallways in public buildings?

General YARBOROUGH. Senator, this information has been reported to our intelligence collectors.

The CHAIRMAN. To your intelligence collectors?

General YARBOROUGH. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Through what source? You gave three sources.

General YARBOROUGH. Through the FBI, the press, Senator, and the police. The CHAIRMAN. So they have that information?

General YARBOROUGH. Yes, sir; they have it.

The CHAIRMAN. Have you also information in your intelligence file that large numbers of participants in this camp-in, in this march, may engage in acts of civil disobedience to such an extent and with such zeal that the police will be faced with the problem of having to make more arrests than they are capable of handling? Do you have information that that will likely occur? General YARBOROUGH. We have no firm information on numbers, Senator. The CHAIRMAN. But that they will engage in civil disobedience; do you have that information?

General YARBOROUGH. We have heard expressed intentions on that score. The CHAIRMAN. Is that also from the leaders of these organizations, the ones I mentioned particularly?

General YARBOROUGH. Secondhand to us through other sources.

The CHAIRMAN. The FBI as an illustration?

General YARBOROUGH. The FBI; yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you have information through that same source or any other source that they intend to defy any Government order or injunction which would restrict their movements or actions in committing these acts? General YARBOROUGH. I am generally aware of statements on that order. I can't say that that exact quote is the one I have seen.

The CHAIRMAN. From that information did you get the implication, if not the direct impression, that they do plan and have said that they will defy any Government orders or injunctions that will restrict their movements or actions? Did you get that impression from the information you have?

General YARBOROUGH. Senator, our intelligence, if you will permit me, sir, goes through a couple of stages. One is the collection of raw material. The next stage in collating this material and trying to deduce something credible out of it in order to pass instructions to task force commanders or people that need it. A great deal of this material is winnowed out in that process as not being worthy of passing on. There is a difference between making statements, obviously, and the capability to carry these things out.

The CHAIRMAN. I am indulging the assumption that you weed it out and so forth. After doing that, do you still have this impression, or does it carry to you that implication?

General YARBOROUGH. The implication to me is that the people who made these statements would like to carry those things out, but I see no hard organizational structure at this point or any indications of actual numbers or the things that we deal on in the military, of time-space factors that would permit these things to happen to the degree that those statements would indicate.

The CHAIRMAN. That is kind of begging the question. The question is: Do you get the impression they want to do it and intend to try to do it? General YARBOROUGH. All I can deduce about their intention, Senator, is what they have said.

The CHAIRMAN. And what they have said declares that intention; does it not?

General YARBOROUGH. I would think perhaps on the part of the individual who made the expression, but not necessarily reflected into an organizational capability. I don't know the degree to which it would be.

The CHAIRMAN. You do have information that they plan to construct shanty-type buildings, preferably on public property, to symbolize the plight of the poor? Your intelligence tells you that; does it not?

General YARBOROUGH. We have that information, Senator.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you also have the information in your intelligence from their public statements and from other sources possibly that they will continue to engage in all of the above activities until their demands are met?

General YARBOROUGH. We have gathered such statements; yes, Senator. The CHAIRMAN. So you cannot say you are not on notice of what they have said they plan to do and intend to do?

General YARBOROUGH. We cannot say that.

The CHAIRMAN. You are on notice?

General YARBOROUGH. We are on notice.

The CHAIRMAN. Let me ask you one or two other questions.

Does your intelligence information also reveal that there have been meetings of known black militants-I will, for the moment, ask you generally, and if necessary I will confine it to the State-in which meetings they have discussed that the militant and revolutionaries, that is, the most radical and extremists of these groups are preparing and ready to take over and support a different leader once they get to Washington and get started?

General YARBOROUGH. Senator, I have no intention of trying to evade the question but I must say, sir, that the primary agency for gathering this information and the one that has the entire responsibility is the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

If I were to report what has been passed to me along that line, I would naturally have to get a release from the Attorney General.

An interesting sidelight to this controversy is that the Department has made witnesses available on demand to staff members of another committee which made inquiries into Army spying. Ap

parently congressional staffs have privileges Senators do not. Perhaps when the generals testify before the Constitutional Rights Subcommittee staff, the general counsel will be kind enough to let the Senators listen in.

Another aspect of this controversy is very significant. One of the major reasons to have the generals appear is to get testimony on how the program was originated. Was it conceived by the generals and concealed from their civilian superiors, or was it in response to civilian orders?

Obviously, the civilian officials in the Department do not want to risk the chance that these generals might set forth the story in a way which differs from the carefully framed Department position. But at the same time, there is much political gain in shifting the responsibility to their predecessors in the Department who might be of a different political party. The solution in this case was a deliberate leak to the press, including documents which they have. not sent to the subcommittee. This leak, and I will ask to have it printed in the record, details the present administration's political case against their predecessors. And as if such leaks were not sufficiently damning of themselves, the Secretary of Defense himself chose to lend the weight of his office to such charges by alleging in a statement quoted widely in the press that:

Contrary to some of the public statements made by the former Attorney General, he had knowledge of this order [authorizing military surveillance of civilians] and it was circulated at the highest levels of our Government.

I know the chairman wants to resolve the Army spying issue on a nonpartisan basis, letting the chips fall where they may. But one cannot ignore the blatant political aspects of the Department of Defense behavior.

The upshot of the missing-generals case is that the press and the public gets only the side of the story that the Department wants them to hear. But the subcommittee does not get the witnesses it wants, and the public still does not get the information it needs about Army spying.

Mr. Chairman, my second example involves the computer printouts produced by the computers which constituted the Army's data banks. One of the aspects of this inquiry is to determine why the Army spied, what standards it used, what information was deemed important, and how broad was the net. The best evidence of this is the actual printout of the Army computers. Naturally, the subcommittee requested the copies, and to my surprise if not the chairman's, the printouts were delivered to him.

But one of the important goals of the inquiry is to demonstrate to the Congress and the public what the results of the Army spying were. Unfortunately, the printouts were all classified. Consequently, the chairman has sought to have the materials declassified. The Department has refused to do so. Its reason is that it wants to protect the privacy of the persons named in the reports. (March 19. 1971 letter.)

Now, many people, including myself, find it noteworthy that the Department of Defense, which spent a number of years invading the privacy of thousands of American citizens by spying on their exercise of the right to free speech should give privacy as a reason

for not letting Senator Ervin use these materials in his effort to protect privacy. The irony, however, seems to escape the Depart

ment.

To avoid jeopardizing anyone's privacy, the chairman asked the subcommittee staff to prepare a report analyzing the printouts. The report contains no one's name. My understanding is that the chairman would not use a name unless he received permission from the individual concerned. Nonetheless, the Department has refused to declassify the subcommittee report-Senator Ervin's own report. As a result, the Department's privacy remains protected. under a misuse of the classification rules, merely to protect it-and not the Americans it spied on-from an invasion of privacy.

Let me review briefly the reasons given by the Department of Defense for refusing to allow the subcommittee's own report to be made public. This comes from a letter dated June 10, 1971, from the Department of Defense counsel to the subcommittee's Chief Counsel.

(1) Publication would be prejudicial to a lawsuit now in progress. (2) Statements of an individual nature are contained in the report:

"It is one thing to put it in an investigative file, but quite another thing to publish it in a committee report available to the publicat-large."

(3) Publication would be in contradiction to the conditions under which the printouts were made public.

(4) The report is outdated.

(5) No useful purpose would be served since the programs have been discontinued.

(6) The report contains misstatements of fact, or omissions. The short answers to each of these excuses are simple.

1. There is no rule prohibiting a congressional investigation when a lawsuit, and certainly not a civil suit, is in progress. That suit may go on for

years.

2. All the descriptions of individuals in the report are carefully selected with names deleted so as to avoid identification with a specific person.

3. The condition-unilaterally imposed-was to protect individual privacy, not the Army's.

4. The report has been updated.

5. If the subcommittee sees a useful purpose, that is enough. The Defense Department does not control Senate investigations. 6. The report can be corrected.

Mr. Chairman, as you know, there is much more to your epic quest for information about Army surveillance. I would like to present for the record the full story, because I think it is a sorry story of Executive disregard-and I would even say contempt-for you, for the subcommittee, for the Senate, and for the American public. However, that would take a good long time. More of the story can be found in the long, patient correspondence you have addressed to the Department over the past 18 months. If you have no objection, I would like to ask that this correspondence be placed in the hearing record.

Senator ERVIN. It will be placed in the record immediately after your statement.

Senator TUNNEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Quite clearly the Congress cannot legislate on this matter unless and until it has the full story. From the last letter the chairman addressed to the Army, it is apparent that he has learned of entire new areas which must be explored. Since I know how little information he has been able to extract from the Army directly, I assume he has been forced to fall back on other sources. In this entire inquiry, the Army has provided only corroboration, and then grudgingly, to what the chairman has found out elsewhere. My evaluation of this correspondence reveals quite clearly that the Army has kept from the subcommittee the original materials and the fruits of its own inquiries. It has done this to limit and frustrate the subcommittee's investigation. It apparently fears that subcommittee access to witnesses and documents that can give undigested, raw facts will disclose information the Army would rather keep private. It much prefers to have only its interpretations of facts and events, carefully phrased and full of plausible denials and evasions, before the Congress. That is the real explanation for the attitude it has taken towards the subcommittee's investigations and requests.

My last example is drawn from the subcommittee's experience with representatives of the Justice Department concerning the nature and extent of surveillance by its various agencies and in particular, the existence or nonexistence of guidelines governing the conduct of such surveillance and the confidentiality of data collected. I have designated this example as the "Elusive Memoranda” for various reasons that should soon become obvious.

Beginning last June the subcommittee wrote to 32 Federal agencies inquiring into the existence and nature of data banks throughout the executive branch of the Government. The responses of 22 agencies, describing such data banks in varying degrees of detail, were received by the subcommittee. Of particular concern however, as might be expected, was the reply of the Justice Department, listing a variety of agencies which collect and assemble data in various forms on millions of citizens who have broken no laws and are not suspected of unlawful activity.

That reply was typical of the tactic which was to become most familiar to the subcommittee in the months that followed: Incomplete information justified by the narrowest possible reading of the subcommittee's request, necessitating further inquiry by the subcommittee.

As a result, a further request was made in the hope of obtaining a complete response on the nature and extent of data collection by the Justice Department. You may recall, Mr. Chairman, that in order to refresh the recollection of the Department, the subcommittee in fact, listed some of the additional data banks discovered by the subcommittee, but theretofore omitted from the Department's response.

Again, the reply was grudging, limited, and omitted any reference to the standards or guidelines governing these activities. It was therefore, of particular concern to the subcommittee to determine