C.I.A. ‘plotted against Warren panel’s critics'

Press, 6 January 1978, Page 5

C.I.A. ‘plotted against Warren panel’s critics'

NZPA-Reuter Washington A former aide to Dr Henry Kissinger told the United States Congress yesterday that the United States Central Intelligence Agency had ordered its overseas agents to discredit Americans who attacked the official version of the death of President John Kennedy. Mr Morton Halperin said C.I.A. documents he had seen showed that the agency had used its files to suggest that people who questioned the official version of Presis dent Kennedy’s assassination were controlled by the Communist Party.

Mr Halperin was an aide to Dr Kissinger when Dr Kissinger was head of the National Security Council. He was testifying to the intelligence oversight committee of the House of Representatives. Mr Halperin based his testimony on C.I.A. documents to which he had won access under Government laws guaranteeing the disclosure of previously secret documents. Mr Halperin said the papers did not explain why the C.I.A. had felt obliged to attack critics of the Warren Commission, which found

that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in murdering Presiden. Kennedy. “The C.I.A. sent a dispatch to some of its field offices directing them to take action where there was discussion of the John F. Kennedy assassination to discredit and counter the claims of American authors challenging the results of the Warren Commission re. port,” Mr Halperin said.

“The material to be used in attacking the books contained information about the political activities and views of Americans from C.I.A, files,” he added.