Services Committee and other committees now having the jurisdiction to get their information from the new Standing Committee? Senator TOWER. We could not function that way. There is no subcommittee in the Senate that functions that way. Every committee within its jurisdictional lines has direct access to the agency that it deals with, and I think we must have that in the Armed Services Committee. We cannot have it siphoned to us or through another committee.

Senator ALLEN. Now, when do you anticipate the report of the Select Committee?

Senator TOWER. Probably not until after the recess, although we would have completed the work by April 15, we could not bring it to the Senate floor until after the recess.

Senator ALLEN. Does that report contain the recommendations of the select committee on the new standing committee and the reasons therefor?

Senator TOWER. The report makes reference to an oversight committee but does not specify this. It could apply to a subcommittee of Armed Services. Let me ask counsel to address himself to that. Mr. SMOTHERS. I was beginning to mention the important thing is the report will identify the problems and will highlight where it feels the Senate can do it better and it is intended as a guidance to the committee.

Senator ALLEN. I see. Thank you very much.

The CHAIRMAN. Senator Griffin.

Senator GRIFFIN. Senator Tower, I wonder if you have in mind any change in the rules or any kind of a resolution to implement your suggestion that each of the present standing committees create a permanent subcommittee on intelligence which would meet jointly and regularly with the other subcommittees to share information of common concern, or is it your belief that that could be done under the present rule?

Senator TOWER. I think we can resort to the present structure. I would say we should make a substantive change but not structurally, except to the extent that we make the subcommittee by resolution a permanent subcommittee of the Senate-for example, the Housing and Urban Affairs Subcommittee, and that an appropriate staff be authorized for that purpose, maintaining the continuing responsibility for oversight.

Senator GRIFFIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Senator SCOTT. Mr. Chairman. I will not ask for comment on this because it is a pun and I will not ask the Senator to comment on it, but I take it by having permanent jurisdiction in the Subcommittee of the Armed Services over that part of your intelligence community to the extent the Senator is aware of the fact that this has the effect of divorcing the matter from both church and state. I will not ask you to

comment.

Senator TOWER. That reminds me that I am vice chairman of the committee that was called-sometimes called the Church-Tower, and the staffers softball team was called the Steeples. But, I think that with the committee assuming what Congress wants it to assume and and that is more in the way of day-to-day oversight, that the Armed Services Committee can function that way, that is where the jurisdic

tion is now and the arrangement as far as the Foreign Relations Committee is concerned, and you can describe it yourself better than I can, has had a satisfactory relationship with the Intelligence community. Senator SCOTT. I do not recall a single instance of the Foreign Relations Committee leaking any matter of secrecy confided to them by the intelligence agencies. There have been some leaks at times, staff leaks of more minor matter that came out of the State Department or something of that sort, but I think they have carefully observed all of the restrictions on testimony from intelligence agencies.

Senator TOWER. And, I think the Armed Services Committee has been very responsible in that connection, too. I think that the Armed Services Committee is fully competent to do what the Congress apparently wants and that is to maintain oversight on a continuing basis of the intelligence agencies. I think Judiciary is prefectly competent to monitor the FBI and the Finance Committee is competent to monitor the Secret Service. and et cetera, and I do not think the super committee serves anyone. I think it can make our work here in the Senate less efficient and not more efficient.

Senator GRIFFIN. Mr. Chairman, I did think of one other thing. That gets to the matter of whether or not a majority on a committee or a majority on a subcommittee should have the authority to make classified information public. The resolution which is before the committee speaks to this, even though Senator Church says it is not necessary. He claims that under the present rules the majority of a committee already has the authority to release classified information, nevertheless he has language in there to permit a majority of a committeewithout the authority of the Senate as a whole-to make public classified information.

Senator TOWER. I will refer to that as reservation on that matter and perhaps some clarification of that rule can be made. I happened to be one who disagreed with the Church decision when we got into the question of releasing the assassination report.

The CHAIRMAN. Anything else?

Thank you very much, Senator Tower, and we appreciate your being here. Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Senator Taft, we will be pleased to hear from you at this time.

STATEMENT OF HON. ROBERT TAFT, JR., A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF OHIO

Senator TAFT. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, I would like to thank you for the opportunity to testify before you today on a proposal which I believe to impact in many serious ways on a vital aspect of our national policy: Senate Resolution 400.

I believe that Senate Resolution 400 must be of concern to all Members of the Senate. I am certain that there is no Senator who wants to see abuses of power or authority in or by any arm of the Government. This is certainly true of those agencies and authorities involved with our national intelligence functions. When we look at the world around us, we see all. too many cases where national security is used as a justification for domestic repression. We see, equally, cases where foreign intelligence services of various states, especially the Soviet Union,

engage in practices on foreign soil that violate the rights and sovereignty of other states. We cannot view any of these practices with equanimity or approval.

At the same time, I am sure there is no Member of this body who is not aware of the vital national needs for adequate and accurate foreign intelligence. Our international opponents, particularly the Soviet Union, are closed societies. They do not publicize their capabilities or their intentions.

I think the question of intentions is particularly acute for this country. We know that the ideology of the Soviet Union calls for the spread of communism. What we may not know is how seriously that ideology is taken, in terms of policy plans. We cannot obtain such knowledge without using covert intelligence collection, yet without it, how can we establish a policy toward the Soviet Union other than one based on general mistrust and suspicion of Soviet intentions? This is, of course, only one example of the need for intelligence, but at a time when we are hotly debating the merits of détente, it is a timely example.

There are, as the members of this committee well know, many aspects to the problem of how to exercise adequate oversight over the intelligence community so as to prevent potential abuses, while at the same time not impairing our vital intelligence-gathering capability. I would like to discuss two aspects of the problem as they relate to and I fear originate in Senate Resolution 400.

One major problem that I see with the proposed Senate Resolution 400 is that, in my opinion, it is impossible to separate budgeting for the intelligence function from the process of authorizing and appropriating funds for national defense, generally. It is clear to me from my work on the Armed Service Committee that intelligence is a part of national defense. Certainly anyone who has served in the armed services in a staff capacity will have found very quickly that intelligence is inexorably intertwined with operating decisions. I served on a naval staff in planning capacities during several invasions with the intelligence officer-I was an administrative person on the staff and the intelligence officer actually lived with me, practically in the same room throughout the entire planning phase of the operations, and there is no way which you could separate the functions, in my opinion, at any level in the military establishment, of intelligence and planning of operations as well as execution.

They are linked together in a complex network that could not be unraveled. For instance, Navy ships and military bases carry intelligence-gathering equipment, for both tactical and national intelligence. How are funds for these systems to be authorized and appropriated? In practice, it is impossible to draw a distinction between national and tactical intelligence, much less say that one system gathers only national, and another only tactical intelligence. These differences exist only on paper, in Senate Resolution 400, not in fact.

I would like to point out one further fact that is not in my prepared statement. It occurs to me that we have this problem in part today because of the fact that we take the CIA budgeting in separate items, and then provide by law for the transfer on certain approvals from various other budgetary items to the CIA finance. If you put military intelligence in that same area, you would have the same problem of transfer or disclosure, if you do it as a separate itemization of the authorization or the appropriations for intelligence in the military.

So, you would make a problem of military intelligence much worse, which is, as you know, a very large percentage of our total intelligence activity. Actually, it is budgeted in the Defense budget to the departments involved and you do not have that problem arising.

A second aspect of Senate Resolution 400 that disturbs meSenator GRIFFIN. Senator Taft, I think before you go on it would be well if we focus the record to the language in Senate Resolution 400 where the attempt is made to separate tactical foreign military from national intelligence. As I understand it, it is in section 13 at the bottom of page 18 to the top of page 19—at least in that one place there is an effort to make that distinction.

Senator TAFT. Yes; that is not the one I was concerned about. Senator GRIFFIN. Which you are pointing out as impractical? Senator TAFT. I do not think there is any way you can do it, in military operations, particularly.

Senator GRIFFIN. I just want to be sure everybody knows where it is. Senator TAFT. The Normandy operations, for instance. We had on our ship's maps material which certainly related to tactical intelligence, but at the same time the entire timing of the operation was certainly national and strategic intelligence. There are many aspects of that information. We could not have drawn up operation plans or orders if you did not know the time, the tides and everything else.

Senator GRIFFIN. As I understand it, this resolution, as now drafted, would require the intelligence community to make an arbitrary separation or distinction as between tactical and national intelligence, a distinction for which there is no basis and which would just make it very difficult to operate in the field.

Senator TAFT. Take the strategic weapons in the Soviet arsenal today. I suppose that the information about the weapons themselves, how they might be used, certainly is military intelligence whether you call it strategic or tactical, and I suppose it is a matter of terminology. But also let us take the most important thing about those weapons, in many instances, how the Soviet is expected to use them or why they are going ahead with a particular program. That is national intelligence. Yet in making our plans, we must have an assessment of those overall considerations in order to be able to make any kind of sound judgment where our programs, our countermeasures, and retaliatory measures will have to go.

Senator SCOTT. If I could inject-I had somewhat the same, and maybe a more limited experience, as executive officer to the intelligence officer of a naval force. I have had some experience in working on the drafting of operation plans, and I agree with the Senator, it is totally impossible to carve out one area as tactical and one area as national or policy-type intelligence. It is just not possible to do it. The CHAIRMAN. If the Senator will yield. In one of the Armed Services Subcommittees, of which I am chairman, as an inherent part of our proceedings, we have to have our briefings from our intelligence community on the foreign threat and that is known from a tactical standpoint, and also from a strategic and national standpoint, so we start off our hearings every year with the assessment of the threat from the intelligence community, both CIA and DIA, and then go into our requirement from a tactical standpoint.

Senator TAFT. That is the same procedure exactly as followed in the R. & D., with Senator McIntyre's concurrence.

A second aspect of Senate Resolution 400 that disturbs me profoundly is the stipulation that it be a "B" committee, with not only members but staffs limited to a 6-year term of service on the committee. In fact, as every Senator knows, "B" committees do not always receive the attention from their members which they might deserve. This is fully understandable in terms of the severe constraint on time faced by every Member of the Senate. In recognition of this fact, we usually designate as a "B" committee those committees responsible for areas which, while vital, are perhaps not as vital as certain other

areas.

Extending this logic, by designating the committee a "B" committee, we state that its area of concern is not as vital as a number of other areas, and that it is recognized that members may not be able to give its committee business as much attention as they would like to. Can we do this in regard to the area of national intelligence? I strongly think we cannot. It is clear to me that national intelligence is one of the most critical areas for which the Congress has some responsibility.

In fact, is it not contradictory that the increasing awareness of the importance of the intelligence community has brought us to consider a bill, which implies strongly, by designating the proposed committee as a "B" committee, that the subject in question is comparatively less important? I do not think this aspect of the proposed legislation can be considered at all satisfactory or acceptable.

The restriction to a 6-year term on the committee for both members and staff has equally disturbing implications. In theory, every Member of the Senate would be happy to serve on a committee on intelligence, even if there were a 6-year "death sentence" imposed on membership. But let us face the facts: How many Members would really seek to serve on such a committee under such a condition? We cannot let ourselves be blinded in this case by senatorial dignity or our penchant for complimenting one another; the matter at hand is too vital to play with. In fact, there would be little enthusiasm for serving on this proposed committee under a 6-year limitation.

Members, particularly those with the greatest abilities, would tend to seek to avoid such a committee assignment. Can we afford to have this committee regarded by the membersip as one of the "dogs," as far as committee assignments are concerned? Given the tremendously important nature of the national intelligence function, I do not believe we can afford that. We want our very best people to serve on this committee, if such a commitee is established; and we want them to be motivated to devote their full attention to it.

The same considerations apply, I think, to the committee staff, who are also limited to a 6-year term. In this case, however, there may equally be a danger that a staff position on the committee would be regarded as a steppingstone; that staff members, knowing they would be unemployed 6 years in the future, would use their 6 years on the committee to build a personal reputation or personal connections that would lead to future employment.

There is also the fact to be considered that, by replacing the entire staff every 6 years, you are putting out a steady stream of people. knowledgeable about all of the most sensitive aspects of our national

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