With rare exceptions, J. Edgar Hoover maintains tight silence about the FBI's investigations in process. Last week he broke that silence before a Senate appropriations subcommittee to tell of a terrorist "conspiracy" involving radical Catholic priests and nuns.
Hoover told the committee, which was considering an appropriation to expand the FBI, that followers of Philip and Daniel Berrigan, the priests now jailed for destroying draft records (TIME, Aug. 24), planned to "kidnap a highly placed Government official. The name of a White House staff member has been mentioned as a possible victim."
The ransom was to be "an end to United...