2. Each agency of the Executive branch that originates or handles classified information shall adopt internal procedures to govern the reporting and investigation of unauthorized disclosures of such information. Such procedures shall at a minimum provide that: -- a. All such disclosures that the agency considers to — be seriously damaging to its mission and responsibilities shall be evaluated to ascertain the nature of the information disclosed and the extent to which it had been disseminated. b. The agency shall conduct a preliminary internal investigation prior to or concurrently with seeking investigative assistance from other agencies. c. The agency shall maintain records of disclosures so evaluated and investigated. d. Agencies in the possession of classified information originating with another agency shall cooperate with the originating agency by conducting internal investigations of the unauthorized disclosure of such information. e. Persons determined by the agency to have knowingly made such disclosures or to have refused cooperation with investigations of such unauthorized disclosures will be denied further access to classified information and subjected to other administrative sanctions as appropriate. 3. Unauthorized disclosures of classified information shall be reported to the Department of Justice and the Information Security Oversight Office, as required by statute and Executive orders. The Department of Justice shall continue to review reported unauthorized disclosures of classified information to determine whether FBI investigation is warranted. Interested departments and agencies shall be consulted in developing criteria for evaluating such matters and in determining which cases should receive investigative priority. The FBI is authorized to investigate such matters as constitute potential violations of federal criminal law, even though administrative sanctions may be sought instead of criminal prosecution. 4. Nothing in this directive is intended to modify or preclude interagency agreements between FBI and other criminal investigative agencies regarding their responsibility for conducting investigations within their own agencies or departments. 5. The Office of Personnel Management and all departments and agencies with employees having access to classified information are directed to revise existing regulations and policies, as necessary, so that employees may be required to submit to polygraph examinations, when appropriate, in the course of investigations of unauthorized disclosures of classified information. As a minimum, such regulations shall permit an agency to decide that appropriate adverse consequences will follow an employee's refusal to cooperate with a polygraph examination that is limited in scope to the circumstances of the unauthorized disclosure under investigation. Agency regulations may provide that only the head of the agency, or his delegate, is empowered to-order- an-employee to-submit_to_a. polygraph examination. Results of polygraph examinations should not be relied upon to the exclusion of other information obtained during investigations. 6. The Attorney General, in consultation with the Director, Office of Personnel Management, is requested to establish an interdepartmental group to study the federal personnel security program and recommend appropriate revisions in existing Executive orders, regulations, and guidelines. to its premises is allowed-it mission was first discussed openly in the 1975 hearings of the Senate Select Committee to Study Government Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activiues. Various aspects of the agency's responsibilities also have been touched upon in a handful of depositions filed by the agency in Federal crurts, several recent executive orders and a few aging documents found in the towering stacks of the National Archives According to these sources, the N.S.A. has two broad goals, one offensive, ane defensive. First, the agency aggressively monitors international com munications links searching for "foreign intelligence," intercepting electronic messages as well as signals generated by radar or missile launchings Second, the agency prevents foreign penetration of com munications boks carrying in formation bearing on "national recurity." According to an unpublished analysis by the House Government Operations Committee. the N.S.A. may have employed 120,000 people in 1976 when armed-services personnel were "luded in the official count. (According to a letter from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. overseas listening posts numbered 2.000) In comparison. the FB.1. had one employee for every six working for the N.S.A The House report also estimated that the agency's annual expenditures ashigh as $15 billion. The Senate select committee's study of the N.S.A., one of the most extensive inde pendent examinations ever made of the agency, was initi ated in the wake of Watergate and the disclosure of other abuses by Federal Intelligence agencies. During the course of the investigation, Its chairman, Senator Frank Church, repeatedly emphasized hus belief that the N.S.A's intelligence-gathering activities were essential to the nation's security. He also stressed that the equip ment used to watch the Rus sians could just as easily "monitor the private communications of Americans." If such forces were ever turned against the country's communications system. Senator Church said, "no American would have any privacy left... There would be no place to hide." 32 deed included Americans who were merely stating their political beliefs. The agency first became involved in this more questionable kind of surveillance in the earty 1980's when either Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy or the F.B.1. asked it wo moni for all telephone calls be tween the United States and Cuba. This list of international calls was significantly enlarged during the Johnson Administrtion as Federal thorities became concerned that foreign governments might try to influence American civil-nights leaders. The N.S.A gradually developed a "watch list" of Americans that included those speaking ou against the Vietnam War. According to the subse quent investigation by the Senso intelligence commit. tee, a total of 1,200 Americans were targeted by the N.S.A between 1367 and 1973 be cause of their political activi. ties. The subjects chosen by the F.B.1., the Secret Serv. Ice, the C.L.A. and the De fuse Lutelligence Agency included members of radical groups, celebrities and ordi nary citizens. When it op peared that Congress might learn about the eavesdropping, the surveillance halind The Senate intelligence committee also discovered a second illegal surveillance program, under which the N.S.A.. and its military predecessors, examiand most of the telegrames entering or Leaving the country between 1915 and 1973. The program was abruptly baltad in May 1975, a date coinciding with the Senate commitive's first expression of interest in it. The records obtained by the committee indicate that from the project's earliest stages, both Government officials and corporate executives un derstood that the surveillance flatly violated a Federal law against intercepting or & vulging telegrams. Certainly. they were aware that such interception viointed the Fourth Amendment, guaran teeing against unreasonable searches and seizures, wtuch also holds that a court war. rant can be issued only when there is probable cause to believe a crime has been com mited. Using the information thus gathered, the N.S.A. between 1962 and 1974 developed files an approximately 75,000 Americans, some of whom undoubtedly threatened the nation's security. However, the agency also developed Flies on civil-rights and antiwar activists, Congressmen ard other citizens who law. fully questioned Government icies. For at least 13 of the 23 years the agency was building these files, the C.I.A. had access to them and used the data in its Operation Chans, another computerized and legal tracking system set up curing the Vietnam War. At its peak, the Chaos files had references to more than 300,000 Americans. Several months after the hearing the Senate intelligence committee issued a re port that expresser great cundera about boch the N.S.A.'s activities and the ailure of Congress and the Federal courts to compre bend them. "The watch-İst activities and the sophisticated capabilities that they highlight present some of the most crucial privacy issues DOW Incing this nation," the Comittee warned. "Space single source of today." The logic of the cold war also dictated that intelligence include not only secret blue priats for the latest weapon or infiltrating the enemy's ranks with spies, but also early signs that a blight had hit China's nice crop, india tions that a new o neid had been located in a remote corner of Russia and analysts of radio traffic at an important Soviet-bloc airport. The already expensive appetite of American Intela. gence analysts was further sharpened by technical ad vances that were occurring. not entirely by chance, at the same time. The technology in question was the digital com puter, the wondrous tool dis gently developed by American scientists working for such companies as IBM. the RCA Corporation and Sperry Rand, and covertly underwritten in a major way by the N.S.A. The computers ability to acquire, organd®, store and retrieve buge amounts of data was an es sential factor leading to the agency's enlarged definition With the end of World War II and be start of the cold war, the value of effective intelligence remained high. In 1962, a special Presidential committee recommended the establishment of the N.S.A.. replacing the four separate surveillance agencies within the Dx terse Department, concluding that a unified ef. fort was essential because electronic surveillance of international communications **ranks as our most important ❘ of intelligence |