Mr. Alan liarth The ilashington .Post 1315 L 1.4W viaLskiiatAtinfi).(4

Dear ;4121;1,4

0 quotes fron :iour excellent edAorial arUelo J. tedni'a jai:cr 'xocipty tUa lett,orm Ow) if th ina statement it tic Coplen uk,ae thew_t it t,. .tints "had LO of° to widespread wiretap in& The othor is yo4r re-feral-a:4: t th-ir :-,eciautnktLa FL :padon.

Tho first ruoind 40 of o of the products of aiy nocettosful rraiodeK. of Information Act snit for that part of tha nupprooLed oviacnoe . could "identify" (the ri;quirealt of tilv. law) in the e.artim Luther anuaasir.ation, It in the.: afadavit of FD/ firearm expext Robert A* Frazier, weed to get Ray oxtradictod (ana thus rlot uUbjot to oroof:-- examiuntion) and in the kiamphia Uaable to seauust what Aa ealcd "th* bullet" (tut only a fraBsert, for hil; k4e,i It :tful exploded) with th:1 no-called ilav rifle, Frunior Wid instead' "As a result of q axorC.asAico of the enivuitted rifle, I determined that it preducen general rifling inpkrzsl'hions on 'eulita havin3 the phy6ica1 chAractlainettlne of thou' of the submitted 15uI1et,"

Booed oa thiv, the prneeImxtor said it wa3 ztost" with havinz broeD fired lei thin tanw rifle. I add also consistent with cillion7J of otter. Itokod. up what I aboold never haw mizend in his Zia to doviaw piece on 4y tnat this is preeloaty what wan allega4 14 tho -ijadco- Vanzetti ouzo, whiwo it waz knowa that the shot has not fired fro::: thy. w:tapon in vestion. I tnclono a 79,4. td. oopy of Cook/a nvim.

In order 4g) cover hiximlf and t)r. FBI, Fralier fol (mid thie to ataterannt that h "maid drrm no ecaclutitle enahline: hi.t to say thy: shot haa bsiia fired from that riflo. Which:tot:elm t ere was no proof it had boon, but that to not what was wanted bAleved. I print this parezraph so p. 506.

I filed a nialor mit for the ewtppressed xyr-ctmErhphia analyola ef the ballIntie.rs OVIAMCO ta tbG J owe. Imamelbla an it ?Ay mkt:, it wa3 nover in pcmentIon of the

Conaloaon and la not an in their filen. Bare Justice filnd what is at loa=t a "bodwinkine affilsvit, ad :ii tlith azeut not oubjact to erono-eztanination, I =clone my ma. Pd aprociato its roturn4 You wir_ note that tho agpntWilliatio does not qualify as al-r exmrt en qwetrocemphyl that it gnome ulaw-anforcxmont purposes" when t!::: Warren 4;=aisaLma and the no federal orinc) bad acne; that the file wan "oampiled nolaky. for official UM of U.S. Cover:wont porsoancl" Ilet it waz: publigh)d by tlw Warren (41.-loalon with tUe analvein anitteC an4 roplacod by a paragram, also zivon to thci Dallas polims chief, who also Adalzhed it privately); that thi:: is deearibed as "rev data" and "inveatisc,- eve file" tqw!roas it wru 4 naientifio toot, no rlorow no lees, not an inve-tintalF, r• port;

1%lne rs-crA;liasim of "low onforent roapo=ibilltleon when :=1:: o.ro involvld; that "it would o2or., thy. door to Itriwarrant(4 Invasioan of privcxy", is oxpletzly impossible ma no 1,: e. Jaw:low:at! that "It cowl! lad, for oot.;214e, to exi:ennr., of concid.:otinl iiiformaate (a simple, =1...socret laboratory tor‘parison?)1 wth dioalo;-.ur3 out or c.Joilt • thl rco_zoo5) of ia,..co.cnt parties, such aa itnesaeon (ditto oemf-int, 01.010-ear); and a moat% just a.e: bad that follow-n.1

And brookottoo thio, in court. Asoistent U.S. Atoaroey Robert We oilAo told JuAge

Sirioa (who no dad little telling) t3mt tha Mummy Gonooal had dotormi000 tbat the

national Ontoreot roquirod the withholding of this alople, oalontifie test. Do you

ouppooe for . minute. lot no interOoat, thair; would bo ti Rio soorooy ir it oupoorted

the FBI repreountation7 Wow it oapootoo toot tha Atbornoy L;onorol La colpcooreA to makt no

such dotorminotion. ho ouch dotaalinationvao prosented to tk,o ooket. And t} lamina

oaolo, part, to eliminc.e that troditionol dodee for cup ression. Thoo !louse _deport

ilihbar it) oolti4 not be bor.:: eopliait and ie rcootitiouo on thio vo!.or

fior is the 'l1i accurate. Justioe Warran swag its viotimoo In coaowti= with

Oswald's hoodbills, it intoroiewod tho two po0;410 at the priotiar plant. Th.04 told the

Fmt It 10711% not Old, woo het cotton that naodbil.. One of theae reports in printod in

Volume 22, p. 796. Even in tho YL1 oemantico it doeo mot say it was Oswald. T have both

wits: ones o topas cool both art quite axplioit, it gyres not Osuold. Bot when theee two

flold rolo:rto =oohed Vmohinotaa. thoy ware roorit'coa And a L4V;k2", r oort va. 2. nt to tho

Coo.tationo Ito third oaroorpsh oars the oposolto wita fiold o o My at;ils ooyine

that Qawaltl, "Undor tiro ram OBBOA4". 1i the printioo ..4.aa. If you will 1°41: rat o. 407

of the Vorran Sports you will fiwa precisely tom: false words mood. Nood I aut;:;;ant the

lop(rtonco of thio misr:ipromontation whon there wan the questiou of conopiracy. was

Unoolift olono. (And I hovo an enornaun =con:: oorte oa this .) I ouol000 a file

this revitten ropurt, the roturu of uhion 1rd aporoolato. I'd as eoblod the ,00eo for

a difioroot parnoao. O1 ooy interost you, thoogho

OAT o;. an thoz Ostold uned ken.,. the) YAI hid from tno Corooloolon) tie ad treso 544

camp street. That was the sdoreao or tho i;uban -4ovolution000 eou 1, tho CIA front.

Hardly reol 000-Cootro activity' by Cratald. Woo, yoo m42 )4.130 thrty `..ro', to intcrol000

tr to learn that the uac was an aatip-Oontro oraidalatioa"? Tito CIA oroazLood it.

tto Banieter roport, you'd moor know 'oo her: boon on 1131 agant :it; a opoo'mvolar

oarczr, aro tLet he had obtainol t.10.o SAA Como ice fo;' •tho CRC. Or that 531 hof-oette

Jtroo. -tLc ztlirtm far Bunicmtoto io aide door to tbot id,ntial 544 boildirol

I wool t and muon oro en the :eD1 in oy 0114oLD Li NEW Q;11:73,11S, but then, al oith

arg othor bookop =body in tho eta it iuterottoa In tho PF1. Ono of nr books hos more

than 100 pagta of this kind of tilins in facsimile..% bor.; tlomsoola of pagen of FBI ropooloo

La the appendix of 1011APZ.U1'. I have SOMC FBI report*, you oioht find rolevnnt. T.

pert Oogin oa p. 468 aod it titled "The Miltoor Documents". The tape transcript that

follows sus withheld from the WarLco Commlazion by PBX. The FBI zoports that fol.ow

are is j :kooalaloioa filoo. but until oo dog tiool out. %ht Amilivon alaiood oot to have taint

a fr000d uai I uo'ooa oa Woio togotharo)loo ooto that what the FBI otil uithholds

oag bu clue to ho solutooa o: tho Biroinoham Aoroh borrtbirsor (r. 473). 4inoomsed in the

We in a maaaar suooaato that if tho iTi feared it =04 tot got a conviction for

=Ardor, it might at least have tried for one on porjury.

That to I:Lich you refer in yont todao4o oLoce and. haz beoa ialo norm oith the FBI.

Pala 3 tLnu Lan a oopy of .eRAI-Z-oUP. I hope you can find time to rood it. You'll find

quite a "004rY of UL ioto uhat the Puhliohorve Ubokly reviewer said of this (markod,

eticlened).4o..lio frau qty can lonG reran froo with thia kind of national polioo, 'thich

Opovor donloo he iao..II4 uol000e a voaoko: to di m:. thta qhNo mat r sAth ;ME-A.144111N

* \Cobalfulltaleaoruc,u,a =woo': of oatorial. The T3I mot lanz:t

of infolaton. own tioir filoo on Zacoioto aro lioted under "ftwo1ol.

'1WoOLa"1 rage aZtJo paoo of thcao. Rooller's looriuto And politico.

Sinner:11y,

Judith Cop/on at the time of her trial in. 1949.

Bureau Lost Some Files 22 Years Ago fiviet/

The Judith Coplon Case and the Embarrassed FBI THE MISHAP at Media, Pa., which has By Alan Barth

caused the FBI so much embarrassment was not the first occasion of its kind. Twenty-two years ago some FBI files came to light after they had been stolen by a young woman named Judith Coplon, an employee of the Department of Justice. Disclosure of the contents of these stolen files gave to the American public for the first time an insight into the way the FBI works and into the quality and character of the material it col-lects. That was what proved so embarrass-ing.

Miss Coplon was prosecuted in the sum-mer of 1949 for attempting to transmit to a

ant ND-305 advised December 25, 1945, that the subject (Fredric March) partook in the entertainment program at a meeting spon-sored by the American Society for Russian Relief held at Madison Square Garden, New York City, December 8, 1945. The informant, who was one of about 13,000 attending the meeting, stated that Helen Hayes, a noted actress, and the subject portrayed a Russian schoolteacher and a Soviet soldier, respec-tively, in a skit, whereby they described the devastation of Russia by the Nazis at the battles of Stalingrad and Leningrad."

This event seems to have been about as covert and surreptitious as the recent ob-servance of "Earth Day" at rallies all over the United States—rallies at which Sen. Ed-mund Muskie, himself a speaker at one of

"They show the FBI shad-owing people who are not charged with, or even sus-pected of, crime, who are not employees of the gov-ernment and who do not occupy positions in any way affecting national security"

Soviet agent certain classified documents al-legedly vital to the security of the United States. The Department of Justice tried to bring about her conviction without disclos-ing the contents of these documents. But the late U.S. District Court Judge Albert Reeves, who presided over her first trial in Washington and who died at the age of 97 just about a fortnight ago, ruled that the documents had to be shown to the jury in order to let it determine whether they were really vital to security. "If it turns out that the government has come Into court expos-ing itself," the judge said, "then it will have to take the peril."

The government—or at least the FBI—in-dubitably exposed itself, although it is hard to see what possible interest the Russians could have had in the exposure. Surely Miss Coplon duped them as much as she duped the FBI. Most of the stuff so painstakingly collected in the stolen files should have been filed in the most convenient trash bin. Nevertheless it is interesting and useful to recall some of this material for the similar-ity it bears to the material stolen recently from the Media, Pa., office of the FBI.

0+-9 THE MOST significant similarity between

the FBI papers stolen 22 years ago and those stolen last month is that, then as now, they, show the FBI shadowing people who are not charged with, or even suspected of, crime, who are not employees of the government and who do not occupy positions in any way affecting national security.

For example, the papers stolen by Miss Coplon reported that "Confidential Info:m-

them, says that the FBI conducted "general political surveillance." Owing perhaps to a slight semantic confusion, conservation in-stead of communism seems to have become the bugbear of the seventies.

Another example: A file disclosed at the Coplon trial furnished the information that one of President Roosevelt's assistants had given some help in obtaining a passport for a trip to Mexico to a friend with whose wife, according to an informant, the presidential aide had once been in love.

Another tidbit brought to light by the Co-plon case was a statement by an unidenti-fied informant that she had seen her neigh-bors "moving around the house (their house) in a nude state" and that her 11-year-old boy said he saw one of these neighbors go out on the porch, without any clothes on, to get the morning paper.

Even when one acknowledges that intelli-gence or counter-intelligence activity in-volves the collection and collation of seem• ingly trivial and irrelevant bits of informa-tion, one can hardly help regarding this sort

be recalled in the light of contemporary crit-icism of the bureau.

At the first trial of Miss Coplon in Wash-ington, her lawyers made a charge that the government's case against her was based on evidence obtained through wiretapping—evi-dence not then admissible in a federal court. That charge was indignantly denounced by the U.S. Attorney prosecuting the case as a "fishing expedition." Judge Reeves, accept-ing the government's word, declined to hold a pretrial hearing to determine whether wire-tapping had taken place.

Judge Sylvester Ryan, who conducted the second Coplon trial in New York, did hold Such a hearing. The inquiry revealed that no fewer than 30 FBI agents had monitored tapped telephone wires leading to the home of Miss Coplon's parents. The judge re-quired the government to produce about 150 discs on which tapped conversations involv-ing the defendant had been recorded.

of pot pourri as anything more thanback-stairs gossip.

WHAT THE revelations from Media, Pa., indicate is that the level of FBI intelligence gathering has not been raised appreciably in the intervening two decades. The files pur-loined from the Media office of the FBI dis-close that the agency was keeping a sharp eye on the teen-age daughter of a distin-guished congressman, that it was full of con-cern about the activities of black student un-ions on college campuses, that it had mobi-lized an intricate network of undercover op-eratives—including telephone operators, let-ter carriers and the like—to maintain a con-. tinuing surveillance on the behavior of a professor who was characterized as "radi-cal."

The FBI can say about these disclosures—as, indeed, it has said currently and also

about the Coplon files—that they are not typical of the bureau's work, that they were selected with a view toward ridiculing rather than extolling the bureau. There is doubtless truth in this defense. But FBI re-ports are hard to come by. Critics must base their criticism on what, by hook or by crook, they can lay their hands on. Perhaps a full-scale congressional investigation of the FBI's work would show a much higher level of competence and insight. It ought to be undertaken.

But these stolen dossier are all that have been granted to the public as a basis for judging the FBI's performance. And they suggest that the bureau is not looking for es-pionage, sabotage and crime so much as it is looking for political non-conformity and op-position to official policy. That is at once dangerous to the country's safety and dan-gerous to its liberty.

c+-3 THE Coplon case disclosed something else

about the FBI's conduct vihich deserves to

There were, however, additional record-ings made by the FBI which could not be produced in court because they had been de-stroyed—destroyed in obedience to a spe-cific FBI directive to get rid of them "in view of the imminency of her trial." The directive, contained a notation, reading, "This memorandum is for administrative purposes. To be destroyed after action is taken and not sent to files." The directive it-self was not destroyed and was read into the court record.

Throughout the hearing, FBI agents sat si-lent while the prosecutor expressed outrage at the defense contention that wiretapping had been used by the government, and sev-eral agents said they "had no knowledge of wiretapping." Judge Ryan called these state-ments evasions.

Partly as a result of the wiretapping and partly because the FBI had not bothered to get a warrant for the arrest of Miss Coplon

in the first place, the defendant's convic- tions were reversed, and she went scot free.

More serious than the bungling of the case, however, was the hoodwinking of al court and of the pub-lic. The bureau had systematically and de-liberately violated the law in making use of information obtained by wiretapping and then bad systematical-ly and deliberately sought to disguise its misconduct.

How history repeats itself! The FBI ap-pears currently to be involved in a lot of

semantic convolutions about what constitutes surveillance or elec-tronic eavesdropping designed to conceal what it is doing. "If we record a conversa-tion and it is directed to us, we do not con-sider it as surveil-lance as such," an FBI spokesman said on Friday.

It is impossible to escape a fear that, in the 1970s as in the 1940s, the . FBI is en- -gaged in widespread

invasions of privacy and in a lordly disregard for the limitations imposed upon it by law and by American traditions. The incumbent attorney general claims for the bureau an unlimited power, whenever he gives his approval, to tap or bug the homes and offices of American citizens in the name of national security — and to do it without judicial authorizatin of any knd.

Perhaps the most devastatng comment on the bureau's conduct was made by J. Edgar Hoover himself. Writing on "Law Enforce-ment and . the Democratic Tradition" in the bulletin "onfidential—from Washington," is-sued by the George Washington University in December 1949, Mr. Hoover said: "The law en-forcement agency in a democracy has lim-ited powers, powers specifically defined by the Constitution, judicial decisions and acts passed by legislative bodies. Totalitarian law enforcement, on the other hand, has unlim-ited powerl The secret police, responsive only to the will of the ruling elite, creates, defines, interprets, and reviews its own ac-tivities."