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Under the new Executive order, responsibility for CIA and other intelligence operations is clearly lodged with the President and his top aides. Presidential passing of the buck for any unsavory covert activities will now be much harder, if not impossible. The National Security Council remains at the top of the intelligence pyramid. Two of its committees, set up last year by NSC Director Zbigniew Brzezinski, will have expanded powers. The Policy Review Committee will continually examine all intelligence operations. Chaired by Turner, the committee will include the Vice President; the Secretaries of State, Treasury and Defense; the National Security Adviser; and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Special Coordination Committee, chaired by Brzezinski, includes the members of the NSC, along with other senior officials who are chosen to attend. It will be responsible for special intelligence operations, thus sharing with the President the supervision of all sensitive covert activities carried out by the CIA.
This committee will also take over coordination of counterespionage, an activity that is handled by the FBI within the U.S. and by the CIA abroad. No one is sure how this change will work, since counterespionage has become the unwanted stepchild of intelligence. The FBI admits flatly it no longer has the manpower to keep track of all the Soviet KGB agents flowing into the U.S. and its efforts, like the CIA's, have been impeded by growing restrictions on surveillance. Admits one Carter aide: "Counterintelligence is still a mess. We haven't resolved anything except to deal with it in the classic bureaucratic sense: move the function and rename it."
The new set of prohibitions is extensive and severe. Perhaps most important, the Attorney General is drawn into the heart of intelligence to ensure a legal basis for all domestic operations. His approval is needed for an intelligence agent to open mail sent through U.S. postal channels, to join any domestic organization, or to contract for goods and services in the U.S. without revealing his identity.
Surveillance of American citizens within the U.S. can be conducted by the FBI only in the course of a formal, lawful investigation; surveillance of a U.S. citizen abroad is allowed only if he is thought to be involved in some activity inimical to national security. The Attorney General is instructed to make sure that any "intelligence activity within the United States or directed against any United States person is conducted by the least intrusive means possible."
Assassinations are flatly prohibited.
So is any experimentation with drugs, unless it is done with the subject's consent under Health, Education and Welfare Department guidelines. U.S. spies will not be permitted to join any other federal agency without their identity being disclosed—a directive that has drawn fire from CIA officials, who rightfully claim there are very few places left where their agents can get secure cover.