Hearings Before the Select Committee on Intelligence of the United States Senate: Ninety-fifth Congress First Session on Nomination of Admiral Stansfield Turner to Be Director of Central Intelligence

Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (February 1977). Hearings Before the Select Committee on Intelligence of the United States Senate: Ninety-fifth Congress First Session on Nomination of Admiral Stansfield Turner to Be Director of Central Intelligence (Report). Washington, DC: Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

• Has attachment: File:UU4FCNXB.pdf

Abstract: ...A. Existing procedures require that CIA's General Counsel review activities which raise questions of legality. Some potentially sensitive clandestine activities are reviewed by the CIA's General Counsel who is placed in a somewhat a contradictory position of both reviewing the particular activity and facilitating CIA's overall mission.

Question 1. Would you support a requirement that potentially sensitive clandestine activities such as those alleged to have taken place in Micronesia be reviewed for legality by the Attorney General of the United States?

Question 2. What threshold would you establish to trigged such a review?

Answer. I believe the Attorney General generally should be consulted, but I question the wisdom of a statutory requirement for consultation. Further, it would be extremely difficult to define the activities which would require a request for the Attorney General's opinion. Accordingly, I would not favor a statutory requirement. B. At present the General Counsel is required to refer to the Department of Justice allegations regarding activities by CIA employees that violate Federal law...