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DD/M&S Requirements - Watergate Incident

6 JUN 1973

MEMORANDUM FOR: Deputy Director for Management and Services

FROM: Director of Security

1. This memorandum is for information only.

2. In July 1971, the New York Times featured an article under the by-line of William Beecher which contained an exposition of the then current status of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT). It was evident from this delineation of these talks that William Beecher had obtained the information from highly classified U.S. Government documents or from a person or persons having had access to such documents.

3. In this regard, Mr. Egil E. Krogh, Jr of the White House telephonically contacted the Director of Security of this Agency and requested that this Agency provide a polygraph examiner to conduct polygraph tests on four Department of State employees. In conjunction with Mr. G. Marvin Gentile, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Security, Department of State, this Office arranged for a polygraph examiner to conduct these examinations but with no CIA involvement to be acknowledged. In other words, this Office loaned the polygraph examiner to the Department of State and the polygraph examinations were conducted for Mr. G. Marvin Gentile.

4. This Office in 1970, requested approval to have disguise kits issued to approximately fourteen people. The disguise kits were never issued for operational purposes, but they were issued for practice surveillance to train local field office personnel in their use, [...] Of these fourteen disguise kits, four were returned to the Office of Technical Services.

5. In regard to other activities that this Office has conducted domestically, the following two projects are submitted:

A. Project WESTPOINTER: In September 1969, February 1970, May 1970, and October 1971, a project, similar to Project SRPOINTER, was conducted by the Office of Security, East Asia Division, and the Office of Technical Services in the San Francisco, California, area. The target was mail to the United States from Mainland China.

B. [redacted]

6. [...] an Office of Security employee, who will retire effective 29 June 1973, had a chance meeting with Mr. James W. McCord, Jr. on 24 May 1973 near the Senate Office Building. According to Mr. [...] the substance of the chance meeting was an exchange of pleasantries.

Howard J. Osborn
Director of Security

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