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CRIMINAL INVESTIGATIONS. For 20 years, the Justice Department improperly allowed the CIA the sole authority to decide whether to prosecute federal criminal charges involving CIA employees and agents. Never confirmed in writing, the agreement apparently was made orally in 1954 by then Deputy Attorney General William Rogers, who later served as Eisenhower's Attorney General and Nixon's Secretary of State, and then CIA Director Allen Dulles. Top agency officials had argued that the arrangement was necessary to eliminate any danger of public disclosure of CIA operations and procedures. So secret was the deal that according to Justice Department Press Officer Robert Havel, several of the Attorneys General in the ensuing years were not told of it.
During the 20-year period, no CIA employee was prosecuted on federal charges, apparently because of the agreement. Offenders were simply quietly weeded out of the agency. The commission found "nothing to indicate that the CIA abused the function." Nonetheless, the report strongly criticized the Justice Department for having illegally "abdicated its statutory duties" in relinquishing the authority to prosecute American spooks and the CIA for getting involved "directly in forbidden law-enforcement activities." Attorney General Edward Levi ended the agreement last January soon after learning about it. Aides reported that he is prepared to prosecute, where it is warranted, CIA employees and agents for any crimes committed while the agreement was in force, though the statute of limitations for most cases expired in 1970.
DEFECTORS. Generally the CIA resettles defectors to the U.S. within a few months. In one case, however, the commission discovered that the CIA had illegally held a defector against his will —in effect, imprisoned him without trial —in an unnamed CIA installation for about three years while the agency determined whether he was a genuine defector or a spy. According to the report, "for much of this time, the defector was held in solitary confinement under extremely spartan living conditions." Eventually, he was released and, despite his treatment, became a U.S. citizen. In another case, the panel reported, "a defector was physically abused, although not seriously injured." The report included no other details except that the CIA employee involved was fired.
BRAINWASHING. Concerned over Soviet and North Korean brainwashing techniques, the CIA in the late 1940s and early '50s began testing the effects of behavior-influencing drugs, radiation and electric shock. Many of the records were later destroyed. But the commission learned that the CIA had fed LSD to a number of unsuspecting people between 1953 and '63. In one case in 1953, an employee of the Army developed such serious side effects that he was sent to New York for psychiatric treatment. Several days later, he jumped to his death from the tenth-floor window of his hotel room. According to the report, Dulles reprimanded the two CIA employees involved, but the study continued for another ten years, even though several other test subjects became ill for hours or days.