Reagan makes spying easier

Press, 7 December 1981, Page 9

Reagan makes spying easier

NZPA-Reuter Washington New rules approved by President Ronald Reagan will make it easier for the Central Intelligence Agency to get information from American citizens and businesses in other-countries as well as in the United States. The rules refer only to actions by American authorities —- they do not refer to any actions by other governments and what may be legal or illegal according to their laws.' Under President Carter the rules required that the agency have a reasonable belief that the American per-

son or company it was investigating abroad was an agent of another government before it could use a series of intelligence techniques. These include "pretext interviews” — sending an operative to talk to the suspected American on some pretext different from the real purpose of collecting intelligence. Another such technique is to assign informants, and still another to keep a physical watch on the American target in another country. The new rules no longer require any suspicion on the

part of the C.I.A. that .the subject of the investigation is a foreign agent, only the belief that he or she — or it, in the case of a business — has significant intelligence that the agency can obtain in no other way. It is conceivable although nothing in Mr Reagan’s order says so, that an American reporter abroad could be considered to have that kind of information obtained during news work. In . American counterintelligence investigations abroad these techniques can now be used in any probe authorised by American

authorities. The order does not refer to the authorities of to other countries in the United States, either. Previously it was required in counter-intelligence cases that the United States authorities have a reasonable belief that they were spying on an agent of a foreign government. For the C.I.A. to use “intrusive techniques” in another country — electric surveillance or break-ins — it will still be required to have a reasonable belief that the American person or company is a foreign agent.