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The commission reported no evidence that CIA investigations of security breaches were directed against any Congressman, judge or other public official. But the panel learned that the CIA tapped without proper judicial authorization the telephones of three newsmen in 1959 and in 1962 and assigned agents to follow other reporters in 1967, '71 and '72 in an effort to identify their sources.
WHITE HOUSE PRESSURES. The commission found that on several occasions the CIA gave in to improper pressure from the Nixon White House in providing help to presidential aides. As Watergate investigators had determined previously, the CIA in 1971 drew up a psychiatric profile of antiwar Activist Daniel Ellsberg; aides to President Nixon intended to use it to discredit Ellsberg's motives for leaking the Pentagon papers. That same year, the CIA gave Watergate Burglar E. Howard Hunt, a former agency employee, bogus identification papers, disguise materials, a camera and tape recorder that he later used in the break-in at the Beverly Hills office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist, Dr. Lewis Fielding.
Nonetheless, the Rockefeller panel turned up no evidence that the CIA had known about or participated in the Fielding and Watergate break-ins or aided the White House coverup. But the commission roundly criticized the agency for not willingly cooperating with the Watergate investigation from the outset. At first, for example, the CIA withheld some information about Watergate suspects who were former employees or agents. Moreover, the commission decided that Helms had used "poor judgment" in destroying tapes and transcripts in 1973 that were related to the agency's dealings with Hunt. Said the report: "It reflects a serious lack of comprehension of the obligation of any citizen to produce for investigating authorities evidence in his possession of possible relevance to criminal conduct."
The report also disclosed that in the spring of 1970, at the request of the White House, the CIA improperly provided $33,655.68 to help pay for replies to people who had written to President Nixon after the invasion of Cambodia. The White House sought the funds from the CIA apparently because its "secret budget provided an opportunity to hide the expenditures." In 1971 Nixon made another improper demand on Helms for highly sensitive files relating to the 1958 U.S. landing in Lebanon, the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, the 1962 Cuban missile crisis and the 1963 fall of the Diem government in South Viet Nam. Nixon told Helms that he wanted the documents as part of his short-lived program to declassify Government documents; if that had been true, the request would have been perfectly proper. But in fact, the commission reported, Nixon hoped that the documents would provide information that would discredit critics of his policies, particularly Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts.