The names of officers in charge of the principal divisions of USAINTC are included at Tab G. This information is solely for your use in conducting your inquiry. I request that these names not be released to the public without our prior approval. I believe that the questions in number 4 of your letter have been partially answered by the material supplied by Mr. Froehlke with his March 29, 1971 letter. These included a listing of the locations of tactical military intelligence units, a map depicting their locations and a description of the missions of these units. I regret that the authorized and assigned strength figures and the names of key officer personnel which we are supplying you for the USAINTC units are not similarly available for the tactical units. Many different tactical units were organized and trained in the United States and then transferred for duty in Vietnam during this period In addition, there was a significant amount of personnel turnover associated with the buildup of these units. The records for these units and their personnel cannot be obtained without an inordinate expenditure of time and effort. However, if you have a specific question which does not fall within the scope of an Army investigation into allegations against a tactical unit, I will attempt to obtain the information required to answer your question. You have also suggested that Mr. Froehlke made certain statements at his March 2 appearance before your Subcommittee about the staffing of military intelligence units. I have been unable to locate any such remarks in the transcript of the hearing. Perhaps, what was referred to is a Defense Investigative Review Council study of the standards for recruitment, training, and accreditation of DoD investigative personnel. This study has not been completed, but its purpose is to ensure that DoD investigative personnel are properly trained in accordance with current directives. As for your last request, I have been informed that Mr. Froehlke provided your staff with a list of inspections of Army intelligence units. Sincerely, R. KENLY WEBSTER, MAY 3, 1971. Mr. J. FRED BUZHARDT, General Counsel, Department of Defense, DEAR MR. BUZHARDT: Senator Ervin asked me to send you a copy of the draft analysis of the various Army documents which were delivered to the Subcommittee by the Justice Department. The analysis is prepared in the form of a statement by me to be submitted to the Subcommittee. As you will note, it was prepared on the assumption that references to certain publiclyknown figures would be made, but without any disclosure of information pertaining to any identified person. Senator Ervin wished you to see this draft because, as he has stated in his correspondence to Secretary Laird, he believes it is essential to make a public report on the materials. While he prefers to have the materials declassified, I expect that any other arrangement which would permit the report to be made would be satisfactory to him. Copies of the report also have been circulated to the Members of the Subcommittee. Colonel Cannon was also given a copy. Sincerely, LAWRENCE M. BASKIR. Chief Counsel and Staff Director. SUBCOMMITTEE ON CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS, Hon. MELVIN R. LAIRD, DEAR MR. SECRETARY: For many months, as you know, the Subcommittee has been endeavoring to secure various kinds of information relating to Army surveillance and data bank programs which infringe on the privacy and First Amendment rights of citizens. My requests have included the appearance of certain officials of the Department, the delivery to the Subcommittee of various documents, and the declassification of others which have been made available. While certain of our requests have been granted, the most important information has thus far been denied the Subcommittee. I now find to my surprise that information of the very sort we have sought for many months has leaked to the press. This gives the appearance, if not the reality, of a contempt for the right of Congress and the American people to full information about the operations of their government. In the case of the Army's surveillance, the people and their elected representatives are entitled to know precisely what the Department has been doing, and they are entitled to be given this information in a forthright manner. While I had hoped throughout the course of this inquiry that the Subcommittee would receive the full cooperation of the Department, I have been disappointed. I am constrained to say that the cooperation we have receivedand I have expressed my appreciation for it on many occasions-has not been complete. Despite outward appearances, we have received little information from the Department which we had not already secured elsewhere from sources outside the government. The information we have received from the Department has served merely to corroborate testimony presented by the witnesses which in any case could not have been successfully ignored or denied. My correspondence with you and other members of the Department, as well as innumerable oral requests, has thus far produced unsatisfactory responses. I have requested the appearance of certain general officers in the Army who were charged with immediate supervision and implementation of this program. I have asked for documents, of the same nature as that leaked to the press in the accompanying article. I have asked for other materials, as well, and for the declassification of a number of them so that the Congress and the country could be informed of the nature and scope of this program. My reasons are set forth at length many times in my correspondence and I will not repeat them yet again. I have no wish for a confrontation with the Department over the power of Congress and the American people to learn of the past activities of the Executive Branch. We have been told this Army program has now been ended. It is all history, and I see no reason why the country cannot be fully informed of its origins, extent, authority, purpose and usefulness. Certainly such a full public disclosure will impede no legitimate programs. It will serve the essential purpose of insuring that such illegitimate activities will not again occur. Public accountability is a cardinal principle of this nation. It is one of the few powerful weapons the people have to control their government. Therefore, I call upon the Department once again to provide us with the witnesses, the documents, and the information we have requested. If the Subcommittee continues to be frustrated in its inquiry, and must rely upon leaks to the papers for its answers, I feel the Subcommittee has no recourse but to compel their production. I hesitate to take this step, but fully intend to do it if I have no other recourse. DEAR MR. CHAIRMAN: Upon receipt of your letter of March 30, 1971, requesting the appearance of further witnesses and the submission of additional information, I requested my General Counsel, Mr. J. Fred Buzhardt, to conduct an over-all review of the actions taken by the Department of Defense to furnish the Subcommittee with a full account of the information gathering activities of the Military Departments. It may be worthwhile to summarize the events which led up to the Committee's hearings, and the Department's testimony in March of this year. As early as January 22, 1970, the Subcommittee requested the Department of the Army to survey the development and maintenance of its data banks, which survey was immediately begun. In March 1970, these inquiries were expanded to include the investigations conducted by the U.S. Army Intelligence Command. During this period, the Army was busily engaged in preparing and providing you data in response to your several inquiries. In July 1970, you directed a letter to me in which you addressed some nineteen questions regarding data banks containing personal information about individuals. At this point, the scope of the inquiries was further enlarged to include the other Military Departments as well as other Department of Defense components concerned with the collection of information about individuals. The resulting compilation and submission of data by the Department over the next several months included memoranda, directives, military regulations, manuals, field instructions, guidance letters, computer print-outs, and correspondence concerned with the general subject. To facilitate the Subcommittee's inquiries, interviews and briefings were also arranged both in Washington offices and in various field activities. Measured in terms of volume, the submission by the Military Departments included hundreds of documents. Measured in terms of effort, many thousands of manhours were willingly expended by Department of Defense personnel to accommodate to your requests. At all times during this period leading up to February and March 1971 hearings, the Military Departments and the Office of the Secretary of Defense strove to respond to your requests, and to leave no stone unturned in an effort to get an accurate and complete picture of Departmental operations. At the same time the Department took steps to declassify its records whenever possible in order that your Subcommittee could include them in the public record. That this spirit of cooperation was recognized by your Subcommittee is reflected in your comments to the Departmental representatives during the hearings, and in your correspondence to me. It was against this background that the Department of Defense decided that the proper spokesmen for the Department in these hearings should be the senior civilian officials directly responsible for the programs under review by your Subcommittee. As our General Counsel advised you, I designated the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Administration), Mr. Robert Froehlke, to represent me at the hearings and to provide you with an in-depth report of the events surrounding the counterintelligence role in the Military Departments. He was also directed to report to you the actions which have been taken to ensure that civilian control is maintained, and that adequate safeguards are instituted to ensure against violations of individual privacy. The Assistant Secretary and the General Counsel were completely candid in their evaluation of what transpired, and sought to give you a full and complete account of the organizational and policy changes which I had directed. The eighty-six page prepared statement by the Assistant Secretary was supplemented by that of the General Counsel of the Department of Defense, and in the closing part of the hearings by the General Counsel of the Department of the Army. Following the hearings, additional documents and information were collected and transmitted to your staff, and additional submissions will be forthcoming as a result of still further requests set forth in your March 30 letter. Against this background of events, the request for the appearance of Major Generals McChristian, Blakefield and Yarborough before the Subcommittee is frankly disquieting. These individuals, while highly qualified in their area, cannot speak for the Department of Defense on the broader issues to which the Subcommittee has addressed its attention. These individuals do not occupy high level policy positions as they relate to central issues under discussion, but are instead under the direct supervision and control of senior civilian officials. Even though your invitation to these witnesses be based on a desire to review past events during the period 1967-1969, I believe this has been fully covered in the testimony and in the records submitted by the Department of Defense before, during and subsequent to the hearings. Consequently, I do not believe it appropriate that the general officers in question appear before your Subcommittee, but that any "desired testimony" as referred to in your March 30 letter, should be furnished by my designated representative, Mr. Robert Froehlke. As to the request that the Subcommittee have access to the Army's investigation of the 113th Intelligence Group, referred to in your letter as the "Plant” Board transcript and report, I fully concur in the position taken by my General Counsel during the hearings on March 2. As he noted, it is the policy of the Executive Branch not to divulge the contents of investigations while an investigation is still open and prior to final action being taken. As the testimony taken by the "Plant" Board may possibly provide the basis for disciplinary action, it would be in appropriate to authorize the release of these documents. To do so might jeopardize the rights of the people involved and prevent them from being afforded a fair hearing. In the General Counsel's letter to you of March 9, Mr. Buzhardt explained that in the course of an investigation and possible subsequent disciplinary actions the Army generals named above might be called upon to testify as to the nature of the instructions issued the military investigators assigned to the field activities. With respect to the list of investigations made into Army intelligence operations, a print-out of the subordinate units inspected by the Army Intelligence Command was compiled in order to ensure compliance with the Department of the Army's policy letter of June 9, 1970. This print-out was given to your staff by Secretary Froehlke on March 2 immediately following the conclusion of his appearance before your Subcommittee. As to the detailed questions regarding the computer print-out from the Fort Monroe computer, referred to on page 2 of your letter, the Department of the Army has been requested to compile the necessary information. As for the remaining questions which concern the Fort Monroe and Fort Hood data banks, and the additional files referred to on page 3 of your letter, these also have been referred to the appropriate offices for the preparation of a detailed response. Answers to these questions will be submitted by separate letter at an early date. Following the dispatch of your March 30 letter to me, an oral request was made by your Chief Counsel to permit the Subcommittee to include in its report excerpts from the print-outs from the Army's Civil Disturbance Intelligence Data Banks. As you recall, the Department of Defense and the Department of Justice worked out arrangements whereby your staff was permitted to examine the print-outs in order that they might ascertain their general character and in order to get a general understanding of their intended purpose. The General Counsel's letter of March 19, 1971 expressly stated that none of the specific information contained in these print-outs should be made public. As was noted in that letter, "The kinds of characterizations and unsubstantiated information contained in these print-outs, like other information contained in intelligence files, could be misleading if taken out of context and could be detrimental to the individuals and organizations which are mentioned." Accordingly, I find that declassification of these documents can not be accomplished. In the past year, substantial changes have been made in the policy, organization and management procedures relating to our mutual areas of concern with military investigative activities. You noted in your letter to me of March 12 that "it is apparent that you and the other members of the Department have made a commendable effort to rectify the abuses of the past and to prevent their recurrence. It is my hope that our work, of which much remains to be done, can be concentrated on the positive side of current and future management of military investigative activities, rather than in a continuing iteration of details of past activities which have already been thoroughly aired to the public. Our cooperation with your Subcommittee toward this objective, which I am sure you share with me, will continue. Sincerely, MELVIN R. LAIRD. SUBCOMMITTEE ON CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS, Hon. MELVIN R. LAIRD, DEAR MR. SECRETARY: In the short time since the recess of the Subcommittee's hearings, I have had an opportunity to review the testimony and other information relating to data gathering by the Defense Department. Although my review is by no means complete, a number of questions occur at this time, and I would appreciate your assistance in having them answered. In addition, there are still a number of unresolved requests which I have made in the past. These are: Permission for Major General Joseph A. McChristian, General William H. Blakefield and Major General William P. Yarborough to testify at the hearings. Access to the "Plant" Board trancript and reports, if any. A copy of the list of investigations made into Army intelligence operations. (March 2 hearings, transcript p. 657-658). A complete report on the courts-martial investigation referred to by Mr. Buzhardt in his letter to me of March 9. Mr. Buzhardt's letter of March 26 does not elaborate on the information he previously furnished nor does it explain why this investigation relates in any way to the desired testimony from the Generals. I hope that these requests of mine can be granted without any additional delay. I have reviewed the materials which the Department of Army transferred to the Department of Justice for possible use in the Tatum case. I appreciate the cooperation of Mr. Buzhardt in enabling me to have temporary custody of these materials. I believe that the record of the hearings would be seriously incomplete if a description of them were omitted. For that reason, I would like to request that the materials be declassified. Since they are being held for possible use in the lawsuit, obviously this may have to be done eventually in any case. The Subcommittee, of course, will, as it has throughout the hearings, respect the privacy of persons whose names appear in these materials. With respect to the computer print-out from the Fort Monroe computer, I should appreciate answers to the following: 1. Following the name and address of each entry, there is a designation "PLINK," and a 9-digit number, apparently consecutive throughout most, but not all of the six-volume print-out. What is this reference, and what is the significance of the "PLINK" numbers which are not consecutive? 2. After "Data Source," most of the designations are “FBI." How was this information obtained from the FBI: pursuant to what authority; was it done on a case-by-case basis, or by general authority: from what level of the FBI did the approval and the information come? Please submit copies of all regulations, and agreements pertinent to your answers. 3. Some of the "Data Source" designations are 10-digit letter-number combinations-for example "9015004 USC." What do these designations mean? What is the source of data where there is no entry after "Data Source"? 4. Following each entry is a 17-category list. including "Ethnic Group," "Race." "Religion," etc. What are the possible entries for "Character." "Leader Of," "Effectiveness," and "Picture." and what is the meaning or definition of each possible entry? How and by whom were these categorizations made? 5. Following these categories, there appears "Entry # Organizational Membership, Influence Therein" and below this certain numbers. Under "Entry #" there appears most often "001" followed by a 7-digit letter-number designation, apparently identifying organizations and perhaps also membership. Please explain these designations and list all the organizations which have such designations? Are these references to other files or data banks, either maintained now or in the past by your Department, or any other federal or State agency? 6. Following each entry at the right margin is a 5-digit number, in most cases “69221." What is the significance of these designations? To aid in the understanding of this print-out. I would appreciate copies of manuals, instructions, and other materials used to train or guide personnel in the operation and use of the system. The Subcommittee has previously been informed that the Fort Monroe data bank was destroyed. On what date were the "master tapes" destroyed? How many master tapes were there, and have all been destroyed? Were there any other tapes containing some or all of the information existing as of this destruction date? If so, have they all now been destroyed? When were these other tapes destroyed? The brief discussion of the Fort Monroe data system in Mr. Froehlke's statement does not give many details. I would appreciate a detailed report of the origins, purposes, sources of data, and uses made or planned for this system. |