Originally published in Synapse on October 22, 1981.
Nearly a year after the conservative Heritage Foundation called for a renewed campaign against internal subversion, Congress and the Reagan administration are on the eve of completing a package of new laws and executive orders unparalleled since the antisubversive crackdowns of the late 1940s and ‘50s.
The Heritage report, endorsed by presidential adviser Edwin Meese, recommended restoring secrecy to the activities of law enforcement and intelligence agencies, and called for investigations of “clergymen, students, businessmen, entertainers, labor officials, journalists and government workers who may engage in subversive activities without being fully aware of the extent, purposes or control of their activities.”
Administration and congressional spokesmen have cited the rising tide of international terrorism as justification for the new campaign — even as FBI director William Webster has cut his own counterterrorist squads, citing a decline in domestic terrorist activity during recent years.
Three key moves are expected within the coming weeks:
- Release of the long awaited Executive Order on Intelligence which, according to a 23-page draft proposal, would remove proscription against domestic CIA covert operations and permit the CIA to resume surveillance on American citizens. The order also would relieve intelligence agencies from the current requirements to report crimes committed by their members, thereby reducing the likelihood for prosecutions of illegal “black bag” burglaries and the like.
- Submission of administration legislation that would severely limit release of government files under the Freedom of Information Act. The bill would offer complete exemptions to the CIA, the National Security Agency and the Defense Enforcement Administration, and restrict the release of documents concerning businesses holding government contracts and those under federal regulation.
- Passage by the Senate of the “Agents Identities Bill,” which would make it a crime to identify a “covert agent” or informer “in the course of a pattern of activities intended to identify and expose covert agents and with reason to believe such activities would impair or impede” foreign intelligence activities.
Aimed directly at former CIA agent Philip Agee and CIA critic Louis Wolf, both noted for publishing lists of covert agents’ names and their activities, the bill has passed the House and is regarded as a sure thing in the Senate.
The two most controversial proposals — limiting public access to government files under FOIA and an Executive Order on national intelligence — could trigger the most heated fights the administration yet has faced.
Sen. Daniel P. Moynihan, D-N.Y., vice chairman of the intelligence committee, has expressed “genuine concern” about a recently released draft of the presidential order, while Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., has promised to “spend the rest of my career in the Senate opposing this order.”
Critics of the Agents Identities Bill, particularly the ACLU and the Center for National Security Studies, see a nearly inevitable Supreme Court test as their only hope of killing the legislation.
They argue that newspapers as well as anti-CIA groups will be subjected to a virtual “official secrets act” under the new deal. Had it been enacted earlier, they say, the bill would have blocked publication of the names and backgrounds of the Watergate burglars, many of whom were CIA covert agents.
Discouraging trends
Rep. Donald Edwards, D-Calif., chairman of the House Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights, has announced that he intends to fight what he calls “these very discouraging trends.”
“Public oversight — not just committee oversight of the FBI or the CIA — is very important,” he said. “White House directives are not enough. The public has to have oversight, too. We cannot have secret government. And that’s what you will have when you cut off all these avenues.”
While the spotlight has focused on these broad changes, a flurry of smaller bills and amendments so far have gone virtually unnoticed. Several also intensify secrecy on intelligence matters; others would block application of the FOIA by allowing each agency to exempt itself from the act.
Most of these exemptions would be superseded by a general FOIA amendment. But fearing that the administration’s proposals will not pass this session, many agencies, including the Department of Energy’s national security program, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Justice Department, have sought to accomplish the same end independently.
Other recent and pending proposals would draw still more government agencies under the umbrella of national security.
The Treasury Department, for instance, has recommended that guidelines prohibiting the FBI from spying on domestic political groups be dropped. And the Justice Department has canceled guidelines prohibiting the prosecution of any government employee who reveals confidential information obtained while he was on the job.
Already passed in the budget bill last summer was an amendment requiring the Consumer Products Safety Commission to withhold reports filed by manufacturers on defective projects.
And in last summer’s tax bill, an amendment was inserted permitting the Internal Revenue Service to withhold general data on IRS auditing procedures.
David Sobel, general counsel for the Washington-based Campaign for Political Rights, a coalition of civil liberties and anti-secrecy groups fighting the FOIA changes, believes that these actions indicate a trend spreading through all three branches of government.
“It is a trend toward restricting avenues of information that could possibly relate to oppressive government activities. More sinister, it is adding authority for law enforcement agencies to again involve themselves in the political arena.”
