Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume XXXVIII, Part 2, Organization and Management of Foreign Policy; Public Diplomacy, 1973–1976

44. Memorandum for the Record¹

Washington, June 30, 1975.

SUBJECT

• Meeting in Situation Room on Friday, June 27 concerning pending requests of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Activities

Participants were:

• Colby, Clarke, Knoche—CIA
• O’Connor, Shaheen—Justice
• Latimer, Wade, Marshall—Defense
• Hyland, Hitchcock—State

also

• Rumsfeld, Marsh, Scowcroft, Cheney
• McFarlane, Buchen, Hills, Wilderotter

I. Access to Assassination Documents

Reported to the meeting was the arrangement made with the Church Committee to allow it to use assassination documents in a way that will facilitate the Committee’s investigation and examination of witnesses in its Executive sessions.² For that purpose the documents will be put on loan to the Committee but cannot be used for any other purpose and cannot be disclosed or released. Instead, if the Committee should want to disclose any of the documents, it must treat the documents as though they had not been delivered and would have to subpoena them unless the Administration agreed to their release.

II. Access to Material on Designated Covert Action Projects

The Committee by letter of June 2, 1975,³ had designated six different programs on covert actions for its in-depth investigation and had

specified numerous files and documents which the Committee wanted its staff to review. At a discussion held by the White House Counsel’s staff with the Church Committee on Thursday, June 26,⁴ the Committee Members agreed to hear briefings by CIA officials on a limited number of covert actions, but the Committee insisted that, pending the return of the Committee from its current recess and the opportunity to receive such briefings, the Committee staff should be allowed to see the requested materials at the CIA offices.

For the purpose of avoiding a complete impasse on this issue, it was determined that the Committee staff should for the present be allowed to review documents concerning only the following:

A. Programs undertaken in Laos during the period [less than 1 line not declassified] the late 1960’s.

B. Programs undertaken in Indonesia between [less than 1 line not declassified].

C. The effects on covert action programs of the Presidential Order following the Katzenbach Report of 1967.⁵

It was also determined that there should be excluded from documents on these topics any materials which do not deal solely with the ways in which these programs actually were conducted or with the fact that the programs were approved in accord with required procedures. To be excluded would be papers evidencing the approval process such as proposals or recommendations made to the President or to groups which advised the President, as well as deliberations within such groups. As to the materials to be included within these guidelines for inspection by the Committee staff, references to identities of agents or of secret collaborators and to sources of information would be eliminated. It was also proposed that for the three programs listed above, the CIA would prepare detailed briefings and be ready to present them to the Committee following the current Congressional recess. (See attached at Tab A⁶ a statement of CIA procedures to implement the foregoing.)

III. National Intelligence Estimates

Requests for materials on this subject were embodied in a letter from the Select Committee to Mr. Colby dated May 27 asking for material to provide, “Foreign Intelligence Case Studies.”⁷ At meeting of Counsel with Church Committee on Thursday, June 26 the Committee Members insisted that its staff be allowed to study the documents in question even before the Committee is given a briefing on this subject. To enable the Committee staff to continue in a limited way with a study of the subject, it was the consensus of the meeting that the CIA should give the staff a full briefing on the subject of National Intelligence Estimates, similar to that which will be given later to the Committee, and that only after this briefing would the staff be permitted access to particular documents. This access would provide information as to how particular National Intelligence Estimates are developed but would avoid getting into materials which dealt with how the estimates were used in the policy decision-making process.

IV. General Comments

It was realized that the conclusions reached at this conference would not resolve the major issues with the Church Committee but that the steps which were approved were consistent with the principle of protecting information which falls within the legal doctrine of Executive privilege prior to the time when consideration must be given to furnishing additional documents.

1. Source: Ford Library, Richard B. Cheney Files, Box 6, General Subject File, Intelligence Subseries, Congressional Investigations (3). No classification marking. Initialed at the end of the memorandum by Buchen who presumably drafted it. Copies were sent to Rumsfeld, Marsh, and Scowcroft. A separate transcript of the meeting, drafted by John M. Clarke of the CIA, is in the Central Intelligence Agency, OPI 10, Executive Registry, Job 79M00467A, Box 18, White House Correspondence Re: Congressional Investigations, 010175–311075.
2. Arrangements for Church Committee members to have access to documents related to covert action briefings and documents were made in a June 26 meeting between Committee members and the White House Counsel’s staff. These are summarized as a series of ground rules prepared by the CIA on June 30 and forwarded by Knoche, under a covering memorandum, to Buchen. (Ford Library, Richard B. Cheney Files, Box 6, General Subject File, Intelligence Subseries, Congressional Investigations (3))
3. Not found.
4. See footnote 2 above.
5. On March 29, 1967, a committee appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson to review the relationship between the CIA and private U.S. voluntary organizations abroad, chaired by Under Secretary of State Nicholas deB. Katzenbach, delivered its final report. The report recommended that “no federal agency shall provide any covert financial assistance or support, direct or indirect, to any of the nation’s educational or private voluntary organizations.” See Foreign Relations, 1964–1968, vol. XXXIII, Organization and Management of U.S. Foreign Policy; United Nations, Document 260.
6. Attached but not printed.
7. The Church Committee’s May 27 letter to Colby requested documents related to the “quality and utility of National Intelligence Estimates,” “the authority the DCI exercises over the entire intelligence community,” and “how successfully the Foreign Intelligence agencies of the United States alert policymakers of impending events, e.g., the Middle East War of 1973.” A copy of this letter is in the Ford Library, National Security Adviser, National Security Council Institutional Files, Box 87, Church/Pike Committees—Requests for Documents (1).