LETTER TO JAMES ABOUREZK FROM STANSFIELD TURNER RE LETTER FROM MR. CARL MARCEY

Created: 2/27/1976

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Honorable James Abourezk United States Senate Washington, D.

Dear Senator Abourezk:

I rogret the delay in responding to your letter of IS7 whichopyetter to you from Mr. Carl Marcy, and contained five specific questions concerning7 Israeli attack on the USS Liberty and CIA communications with Mr. Marcy on this matter.

As you know, Mr. Marcy has directly requested information on this subject from the CIA. These requests have been made under provisions of the Freedom of Information Act, and the Agency has responded to these requests in accordance with CIA procedures established pursuant to this Act. Since Mr. Marcy can pursue his interests under FOIAill not attempt to address his concerns in this letter but anopyetter to him. Set forth below aro your five questions together with our comment.

1. Why was there no reference in the7 letter to Mr. Marcy to the existence of the CIA Intelligence Memoranda of June

Comment: The letter ofistakenly identified both thendune documents as being originated by other agencies. The loiter said that we had initiated action to have these papers reviewed by other agencies for possiblo release. After this review was completed, these papers were corroctly identified as belonging to CIA. Theune report was then provided to Mr. Marcy Theune report was not declassified and not provided to Mr. Marcy. The error in the7 letter to Mr. Marcy was an administrative oversight forpologize.

you make available for my personalIntelligence Memorandum of7 whichin its entirety from the American

Comment: ave no objection to your seeing this document, itery sensitive paper containing references to intelligence sources, and is classifiedestricted basis. uggest thorefore that our mutual neods can be served by taking advantage of tho procedures establishod by tho Senate Select Committee onmopy of the7 memorandum available to that Committee for your use.

you assure mo that there are noor similar documents on this

Comment: Wo have continued to search our records, particularly those for the period from early Juno through Decembernd have located two7 documents. Neither adds any new intelligence Both are briefing papers prepared for CIA Congressional oversight committees. They do not change our position that the attack on the USS libertyragic mistake. You should know that we have recently found ten Middlo East situation reports dating after the Liberty incident but bo forehoy do not contain any new intelligence on tho Liberty affair nor do they change our overall evaluation of the cause of the attack.

there are no such CIA documents relatingincident, other than the three describedhow did the CIA decide that thosedid not altor the judgments made immediatelyattack?

Comment: The CIA analysts who wero working on the Middle East7 were experienced men and vop.cn who had been exposedreat doal of raw intelligence over the years. It was their judgment that the three reports wero based essentially on hoarsay and speculation. These reports were considered to be substantially less trustworthy than other evidence which supported tho conclusion that the attackragic mistake. Nothing wo have seen to this day alters thTat judgment.

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5- Finally,ave your judgment and that of the Agency you head, based on information acquired by the Agency from all sources, that the Israeli attack on tho USS Liberty was deliberate or an honest mistake?

Comment: It remains our best judgment that the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty was not made in malice toward the United States andistake.

I am sorry that the additional documents mentioned in this letter for the first time were not uncovered previously, even though they do not alter our conclusions. o want you to know that we tTy very hard to avoid such incidents in our searching of the files. Historically though, for good reasons of limiting access to sensitive information, the CIA files are highly compartmented andaster index. The only way of conducting an exhaustive search is to ask each employee who may have any remote contactubject to search his or her files. Even this would not cover our files in the archives for which there is no central index. You may recall that weimilar problem last summer when we unearthed some files on drug experimentation. Sinceaveeam of people going through the most critical portions of our archives to begin to bring some order to this situation.

I hope that these answers will meet your needs.

Yours sincerely, /s/ stanafleld Turner

STANSFIELD TURNER

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