WATERGATE ‘C.I.A. destroyed material’

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33452, 6 February 1974, Page 15

WATERGATE ‘C.I.A. destroyed material’

(N.Z.P. A.-Reuter—Copyright) NEW YORK. Senator 1 lowarcl Baker, the Republican vice-chairman of the Senate Watergate Committee, said that the Central Intelligence Agency had told him that it destroyed all its material on the White House “plumbers” last month.

Senator Baker, quoted in the magazine, “Time,” said that the material was destroyed on January 18, the day after the C.I.A. had been asked by the Senate Majority Leader (Senator Mike Mansfield) in a letter to safeguard

all material relating to the Watergate scandal. The “plumbers” group was appointed by the White House to plug information leaks after the leaking of the Pentagon Papers to the press. Egil Krogh, the head of the group, was sent to prison for six months on January 24 for Watergate-related crimes. “Time” reports that Senator Baker learned that the C.I.A. material had been destroyed when he asked the C.I.A. two weeks ago for any tapes the agency might have in its files on conversations between the “plumbers” and CJ.A. agents. The magazine quotes him as saying: “It is possible, of course, that the Mansfield letter was somehow lost in channels before the destruction occurred, but when you recall all the talk of C.I.A. involvement and the President’s own statements about the possibility that the C.I.A. might be compromised, and then when you hear that the C.I.A. had original documentary evidence and ‘routinely’ stroyed on Januray 18, the to me, at best, to be questionable judgment.”