An innovation was the creation of the Intelligence Oversight Board (in addition to the President's
Foreign Intelligence Advisory Boaold adversary of Charles deGaulle during World War II. The IOB was supposed to be a watchdog tord), which was chaired by Ambassador Robert D. Murphy, the (^)
prevent new abuses from coming out of the intelligence community. Also on this board were
Stephen Ailes, who had been Undersecretary of Defense for Kennedy and Secretary of the Army for
LBJ. The third figure on this IOB was Leo Cherne, who was soon to be promoted chairman of
PFIAB as well. The increasingly complicit relationship of Cheoversight by the IOB was a mockery. The average age of the IOB was about 70, leading Carlrne to Bush meant that all alleged
Rowan to joke that it was a case of Rip Van Winkle guarding the CIA. None of the IOB members,
Rowan pointed out, was young, poor, or black.
Believe it or not, Ford also wanted a version of the Official Secrets Act which we have seen Bushsupporting: he called for "special legislation to guard critical intelligence secrets. This legislation
would make it a crime for a government employee who has access to certain highly classified
information to reveal that information improperly." Which would have made the Washington leak
game rather more dicey than it is at present.
The Official Secrets Act would have to be passed by Congress, but most of the rest of what Ford
announced was embodied in Executive Order 11905. Church thought that this was overreaching,
since it amounted to changing some provisions of the National Security Act by presidential fiat. But
this was now the new temper of the times.
As for the CIA, Executive Order 11905 authorized it "to conduct foreign counterintelligence
activities...in the United States," which opened the door to many things. Apart from restrictions on
physical searches and electronic bugging, it was still open season on Americans abroad. The FBI
was promised the Levi guidelines, and other agencies would get charters written for them. In the
interim, the power of the FBI to combat various "subversive" activities was reaffirmed. Politicalassassination was banned, but there were no limitations or regulations placed on covert operations, (^)
and there was nothing about measures to improve the intelligence and analytical product of the
agencies.
In the view of the New York Times, the big winner was Bush: "From a management point of view,Mr. Ford tonight centralized more power in the hands of the Director of Central Intelligence than
any had had since the creation of the CIA. The director has always been the nominal head of the
intelligence community, but in fact has had little power over the other agencies, particularly the
Department of Defense." Bush was now de facto intelligence czar. [fn 35]
Poor Ford was unable to realize that his interest was to be seen as a reformer, not as someone who
wanted to re-impose secrecy. When he was asked if his Official Secrets Act could not be used to
deter whistle-blowers on future bureaucratic abuses, Ford responded that all federal employees
would be made to sign a statement pledging that they would not divulge classified information, and
that they could expect draconian punishment if they ever did so.
Congressman Pike said that Ford's reorganization was bent "largely on preserving all of the secrets
in the executive branch and very little on guaranteeing a lack of any further abuses." Church
commented that what Ford was really after was "to give the CIA a bigger shield and a longer sword
with which to stab about."
An incident of those days reveals something of what was going on. Daniel Schorr of CBS, whose
name had popped up on the Nixon enemies' list during the Watergate hearings, had obtained a copy
of the Pike Committe report and passed it on to the Village Voice. Schorr had attended Ford's press
conference, and listened as Ford denounced the leaking of the Pike report. The next day, covering