Americans Stung By Moscow’s “Big Brother” Jibe

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31247, 20 December 1966, Page 17

Americans Stung By Moscow’s “Big Brother” Jibe

(From FRANK OLIVER, special N.Z P.A. correspondent J

WASHINGTON, Dec. 18.

It really hurt when Moscow started making fun of the United States as the home of Big Brother, the official snooper privy to everything everybody did as in George Orwell’s spine-chilling "1984.” It hurt because everyone here realised that there was too much truth in the charge for comfort.

Everyone realises that as things now are no one is safe from electronic snooping. People remember with a degree of discomfort the indignation that swept the country when Mr Cabot Lodge produced in the Security Council a wall decoration from the American Embassy in Moscow and showed how it had been "bugged” by the Russians. This was the sort of disgusting and unfair practice one might expect from the dirty communists would be a fair representation of what most people thought and many said at the time. Now people are saying, apparently we do it too. No-one yet knows what will come out of the current squabble between Senator Robert Kennedy and the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation Mr Edgar Hoover, over bugging

but, as the “New York Times” comments, the one thing that emerges with clarity from the "flak” enveloping these two gentlemen is the apparent impossibility of putting effective restraints on invasion of privacy by electronic snoopers.

The Kennedy-Hoover argument looks at first glance to be a direct confrontation in which one or the other must be lying but some comment indicates that it is more complicated than that. Jackson Doctrine In 1941 Mr (later Justice) Robert Jackson was AttorneyGeneral and he handed down a doctrine that official use of electronic devices was all right so long as the information obtained was not made public, in or out of court. Under the Jackson doctrine, says a writer in the “Washington Post,” there has grown up “an extraordinary practice of bureaucratic self-decep-tion.” He adds that police authorities use bugging devices “on a massive scale,” confident that if it leads to apprehension of criminals there will be general public approval, but the practice is covert “so as not to embarrass political superiors.” In the case of Mr Kennedy and Mr Hoover, the same writer says, the tradition was deepened by “a competitive zeal” growing out of Robert Kennedy’s concern over organised crime. It is widely accepted as fact that the F. 8.1. had, up to 1961, not been able to penetrate the strongholds of organised crime as it had managed to penetrate the activities of

the communists in this country. The “Washington Post” suggests that in order to keep pace with Robert Kennedy’s concern, as Attorney-General, about organised crime, Hoover, described by the “New York Times” as the “supposed subordinate” of Robert Kennedy, and his organisation resorted to widespread eavesdropping and, the paper says, there was a great increase in “bugging” by the F. 8.1. Mr Hoover Confident

This would explain, says the “Post” writer, why Mr Hoover is so confident the then Attorney-General must have known the bugging was being done.

It is also suggested in the press that the liaison people between Mr Kennedy and the F. 8.1. may have been prone to spare him trouble “about such dirty business as wiretapping.” It is further suggested that when material got by such means was used, it went to the Justice Department in ways that made these taps look like informers. A former Justice Department official is quoted in the press as saying: “The F. 8.1. did everything it could to make it seem that the wire-taps were informers. They almost put arms and legs and names on the bugs.” This would explain to some extent the conflict of statement between Mr Kennedy and Mr Hoover, but it adds to the public impression that a lot is going on that scarcely stands up before the constitutional rights and guarantees of the citizen. The “New York Times” says somewhat bitingly that the cross-fire of self-serving documents unleashed “is unlikely to per-

suade anyone that either (Kennedy or Hoover) lay awake nights worrying about the dangers to civil liberties involved in wire-tapping or bugging.” What does seem clear is that, as the press says, noone in the Justice Department knew at any given moment just what homes, offices, embassies or hotel rooms were being bugged, much less why. Rights Violated It is unlikely, said the “Washington Post” a little while ago in discussing wiretaps concerning Bobby Baker, that Mr Hoover will be prosecuted for crime but the awkward truth is he is responsible for wire-taps which violated the constitutional rights of Baker. “It is a crime,” said the “Post,” “punishable by 10 years in prison and a 5000 dollar fine for two or more persons to conspire to Injure the constitutional rights of a citizen.” A “Post” columnist says it is possible that Mr Hoover and Mr Kennedy are both right, Mr Hoover in believing he had authority for more bugging and Mr Kennedy in believing that he had given no such authority. “But it is clear that in another sense they both were wrong. Both seem to have been insufficiently sensitive to the issue of private rights.” The “New York Times” says the Kennedy-Hoover exchanges merely underscore the difficulty in trying to establish practical limits to eavesdropping, even when performed solely by law-en-forcement agencies in the interest of national security or crime control. “The minimum requirement before any tap is established,” it com-

ments, “ought to be an order signed by a judge, but it becomes increasingly evident that watching the watchdogs can be as vexing a problem as what they watch.”

That Congress may do anything potent about invasion of private rights ■ via electronic devices is not very likely. Scared by organised crime, Congress in its last session passed an anti-crime bill which would have enabled police at the scene of a crime to take in a whole neighbourhood. As one writer put it: “No warrants, no habeas corpus, no nonsense. Suspects could be held for four hours for questioning .. . and another six before arraignment, and material witnesses for six hours.” Well, President Johnson vetoed that one, remarking as he did so that under the bill “a person can disappear from sight merely on a policeman’s judgment.”