Senate Minority leader Howard Baker, the moderate Republican from Tennessee and former member of the Ervin Watergate Committee as well as the Church Intelligence Committee, has become a strong advocate of reopening the Kennedy assassination probe. Senator Baker is reported to.have long harbored various suspicions relating to the assassination, and conducted a lengthy investigation into various Cuban exile activities during the Ervin Committee probe - activities that many Warren Commission critics believe may, relate to the Kennedy assassination. In a CBS interview on May 23, 1976, Senator Baker voiced strong misgiving's over the extent of CIA and FBI information turned over to the Warren Commission.

I don't think the Warren Commission was privy to all the facts, for instance, it did not know even of the 56 attempts by CIA on Fidel Castro's life and apparently did not know of Castro's threat in public, saying look, you're trying to kill me and I know it. If you don't stop, no American leader is going to be safe. I have no record evidence that the, Warren Commission ever considered that.

I think that Gary Hart and Dick Schweiker did a great job, a monumental undertaking, and I think just as clearly that the new intelligence oversight committee ought to decide how to pursue the matter, it certainly should not be dropped. I:have no information that would indicate that the Warren Commission is wrong, or that Oswald was an agent, or did not act on his own. All I have is a basket of loose ends that Hart and I think they've got to be examined.

I believe the covert action capability of our intelligence community is vital to the United States. We must maintain our strength in this capacity, but, we must also control it. The key and difficult question, of course, is how we can control. it without destroying or damaging its effectiveness. In my view, the best way to both maintain strength and yet insure accountability is to have strict control of the covert action programs through the Operations Advisory Group, with parallel control and supervision by the proposed permanent congressional oversight committee.

Covert action is a complex United States intelligence capability. Covert action provides the United States with the ability to react to changing situations. It is built up over a long period of time. Potential assets are painstakingly recruited all over the world. Having reviewed the history of covert action since its inception, I do not look upon the intelligence agents involved in covert action as a modern day group of bandits who travel the world murdering and kidnapping people. Rather, a vast majority of covert action programs are not only valuable but well thought approaches through media placement and agents of influence which produce positive results.

Covert action programs cannot be mounted instantly upon a crisis. It is naive to think that our intelligence community will be able to address a crisis without working years in advance to establish sources in the various countries in which a crisis might occur. These sources provide what is referred to as the "infrastructure," which must necessarily be in place throughout the world so that the United States can . predict and prevent actions abroad which are inimical to our national interest.14 I believe that, were we to completely abolish covert action or attempt to remove it from the CIA and place it in a new separate agency, these sources would dry up, and, when a crisis did come, our intelligence community would not be able to meet it effectively. Not only do I question the effectiveness a new separate agency for covert action would have, but such a re-structuring would unnecessarily increase our already burgeoning bureaucracy.

Finally, I wish to address briefly an area of the Committee's investigation which I pursued for the most part independently. At the close of the Senate Watergate investigation I filed a report as part of my individual views which outlined remaining areas of investigation with respect to the relationships between the Central Intelligence Agency and the former CIA employees who participated in the Watergate break-in. By virtue of my membership on this Select Committee. I have been able to pursue a further inquiry into these matters, and wish to thank the Chairman and the Vice Chairman for the staff assistance and latitude provided me to pursue this area of investigation.

Many of the concerns raised in the Watergate Committee investigation have been overtaken by time and events. For example, the reported references to illegal CIA domestic activities have now been confirmed, as described in detail in the Committee's Report. The reference to the CIA maintaining a file on Jack Anderson proved to be part of a lengthy investigation and physical surveillance of Anderson by the CIA during a "leak" inquiry. Similarly, the detailing of Howard Hunt's post-retirement contacts with the CIA has been supplemented with still more such contacts. Since July 1974, we have witnessed a variety of other disclosures relative to the CIA's domestic activities; indeed, the creation of our Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Activities was due in part to the continuing public concern about these matters.

Unlike the Watergate Committee investigation of CIA activities, which was terminated because of the refusal of the CIA to turn over documents, this investigation was conducted in an atmosphere of cooperation. After some initial difficulties, which the Committee encountered in a variety of areas, the cooperation afforded by the CIA was exemplary. In particular, I especially want to express my appreciation to former Director William Colby and present Director George Bush for cooperating to the fullest extent in this investigation. I also want to thank Ambassador Richard Helms and former Counterintelligence Chief James Angleton for their patience and extensive assistance in in numerous conferences, in trying to reconstruct the elusive details of this significant period.

In pursuing this area of inquiry, the Committee staff examined a great volume of highly sensitive material, much of which contained speculative matters and a multitude of information of marginal relevance. This information, which had not been made available in large part to the Separate Watergate Committee, was examined in raw form and without sanitization deletions. Because of the sensitivity of the material, it was reviewed on the Central Intelligence Agency premises. Thus, it was in a spirit of cooperation that this examination was accommodated; and, this experience indicates that the Congress and the intelligence community can cooperate in an investigation without incurring unauthorized disclosure of sensitive information.

At the close of this Committee's examination of the available record, I wish to state my belief that the sum total of the evidence does not substantiate a conclusion that the CIA per se was involved in the range of events and circumstances known as Watergate. However, there was considerable evidence that for much of the post-Watergate period the CIA itself was uncertain of the ramifications of the various involvements, witting or otherwise, between members of the Watergate burglary team and members of components of the Agency. Indeed, the CIA was apparently, at times as perplexed as Congressional investigators. It should be noted that the Agency undertook an extensive internal inquiry in an effort to resolve these uncertainties. The investigation of Watergate and the possible relationship of the Central Intelligence Agency thereto, produced a panoply of puzzlement. While the available information leaves nagging questions and contains bits and pieces of intriguing evidence, fairness dictates that an assessment be rendered on the basis of the present record. An impartial evaluation of that record compels the conclusion that the CIA, as an institution, was not involved in the Watergate break-in.

Howard Baker details his discovery that CIA Director of Security Osborn ordered Pennington material removed from CIA Watergate files before the files were handed over to Congressional investigating committees, and points out that the information on Pennington came to light in the first place "only as a result of the position taken by a staff employee of the Personnel Security Division." This staff employee "was so concerned that the documentary evidence - of the Pennington information would be destroyed by others in the CIA that he and a co-employee copied the relevant memoranda and placed them in their respective personal safes:" An unsung Ellsberg, this staff employee. The "relevant memoranda" referred to appear to be a single internal CIA report by Paul Gaynor on the results of agent Pennington's trip to the McCord house several hours after the Watergate arrest. As we shall see, Gaynor remained in close contact with the McCord operation from then on, at least up to the March 19 letter and the opening of the Sirica phase.

One or both of these anonymous CIA "staff employees" ( intelligence analysts?) balked at going along with a CIA letter notifying the Ervin Committee that it had seen everything the CIA had to show on the question. According a Jim Squires story appearing in the Boston Globe, March 26, 1974, Gaynor's report had been kept secret over a year by Security Director Osborn, who "took an early retirement last month." Paul Gaynor also "retired from the Agency last year." Heads falling in the forest-do they make any sound.

Our investigation clearly shows that the CIA had in its possession, as early as June of 1972, information that one of their paid operatives, Lee R. Pennington, Jr., had entered the James McCord residence shortly after the Watergate break-in and destroyed documents which might show a link between McCord and the CIA. This information was not made available to this committee or anyone else outside the CIA until February 22, 1974, when a memorandum by (Howard Osborn) the then Director of Security (McCord's old job) was furnished to this committee.

The evidence further shows that in August of 1972, when the FBI made inquiry about a "Pennington" the Agency response was to furnish information about a former employee with a similar name.