Operating at Home

By law, the Central Intelligence Agency is prohibited from doing any spying or other internal security work.

But the Watergate scandal has raised doubts about whether the agency is following the rules.

From the beginning, the CIA has had links to the case. Two of the convicted conspirators, James McCord and E.

Howard Hunt, are former employees of the agency. The CIA admitted supplying Hunt with equipment--including false identification papers, a camera and a disguise kit--used in burglarizing the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist.

Last week the CIA deputy director, Lieut. General Vernon Walters, said that White House aides had persistently, though unsuccessfully, tried to enlist the agency's help in covering up the Watergate breakin.

On other occasions, the CIA has been exposed as operating within the U.S. In the late 1950s, according to David Wise's book, The Politics of Lying, the CIA trained Tibetans in Colorado's Rocky Mountains to fight against Chinese Communist rule. At the same time agency men were preparing Cubans for the Bay of Pigs invasion.

For 15 years, until exposed in 1967, the CIA subsidized the National Student Association so that it could send delegations to international gatherings that were well attended by official Communist groups. During some of those years, the agency also had been secretly giving funds to other private organizations --among them, the Asia Foundation, Radio Free Europe and Frederick A.

Praeger, Inc. The intent was to finance work abroad that would enhance democracy's image, such as cultural projects, helping to organize agricultural cooperatives, and anti-Communist propaganda.

In February the agency admitted that it had trained policemen from nine U.S. cities and counties, including New York, in clandestine photography, identification of explosive devices and analysis of intelligence data. The purpose was to improve police ability to fight crime.

Then there was the curious case in 1960 of the gangster's girl friend. Under a deal that was never fully explained, the CIA got information about Fidel Castro's regime in Cuba from Sam ("Momo") Giancana, then boss of the Chicago Mafia. Memo's girl friend was Phyllis McGuire of the singing sisters, and he wanted to chase off a rival, a well-known comedian. Sam's strategy was to convince Phyllis that the rival was a philanderer. The co median returned to his Las Vegas hotel suite one night to discover two private detectives digging through his belongings. At his call, sheriff's deputies arrested the pair, and they languished in jail for days before disclosing that they were working for a Miami detective agency. Three years later, some embarrassed CIA officials admitted that they had staged the raid as a favor to their gangland spook Giancana.

Supporters argue persuasively that the agency sometimes has to act on home ground to counter Communists and other subversives, who have much latitude for operating within the U.S.'s free society. Still, one of the consequences of Watergate will be rising demands by Congress that it get greater powers to police the CIA.

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