Examining the Examiners

Democratic Senator William Proxmire of Wisconsin complained to reporters that President Ford's commission to investigate the Central Intelligence Agency was "very one-sided." Republican Senator Richard Schweiker of Pennsylvania questioned whether "a panel so dominated by those oriented to Government and the military intelligence establishment can render an independent judgment."

So it went last week for the eight prominent Americans named by Ford to investigate charges that the CIA conducted a massive--and illegal--domestic spying operation against thousands of Americans in the 1950s and 1960s. In particular, the liberal critics challenged Ford's choice of Vice President Nelson Rockefeller as the commission's chairman. They noted that he had served from 1969 until last month on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. Rockefeller denied any conflict of interest.

Indeed, it was certainly premature, if not unfair, to fault the commission before its members had reported their findings and recommendations to Ford by his deadline of April 4. Still, Ford obviously had no intention of appointing a commission that did not reflect his own moderate-to-conservative point of view and that might unduly expose legitimate CIA activities. Thus, besides Rockefeller, Ford chose the following:

JOHN T. CONNOR, 60, Secretary of Commerce from 1965 to 1967 and now chairman of the board of Allied Chemical Corp. As president of Merck & Co., Inc., from 1955 to 1965, he was an outspoken pharmaceutical executive who recognized the value of federal drug controls.

C. DOUGLAS DILLON, 65, Secretary of the Treasury from 1961 to 1965 and now an investment banker on Wall Street. A friend of Rockefeller's from school days, he took part in forming the Office of Strategic Services (predecessor of the CIA) during World War II. As Under Secretary of State, he helped concoct the false cover story that Francis Gary Powers' U-2 reconnaissance plane was merely on a weather-scouting flight when shot down by the Soviets in 1960.

ERWIN N. GRISWOLD, 70, a former dean of Harvard Law School (1946-67) currently practicing law in Washington. As U.S. Solicitor General, a post he held from 1967 until 1973, Griswold presented the Government's unsuccessful Supreme Court case against publication of the Pentagon papers. He also argued before the Supreme Court that the Army's surveillance of civilians from 1967 to 1970 was legal, though "inappropriate." But Griswold refused to argue the Nixon Administration's appeal of a court decision requiring court orders before domestic radicals' telephones could be tapped. After that, he was forced to leave his job.

JOSEPH LANE KIRKLAND, 52, secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO and President George Meany's right-hand man. Kirkland is known in labor circles as a skillful behind-the-scenes negotiator.

RETIRED ARMY GENERAL LYMAN L. LEMNITZER, 75, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1960-62, who retired in 1969 after serving for six years as Supreme Allied Commander in Europe.

RONALD REAGAN, 63, former film star, who stepped down this month after eight years as a conservative Republican Governor of California.

EDGAR F. SHANNON JR., 56, who retired last year as president of the University of Virginia, where he earlier had taught English and specialized in Victorian literature.

As staff director of the commission, Ford settled on David W. Belin, 46, a Des Moines lawyer who served as a counsel to the Warren Commission during its investigation of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. In 1968 Belin was chairman of Lawyers for Nixon-Agnew.

The CIA commission was to begin its inquiry this week by meeting with CIA Director William Colby, former Directors Richard Helms and James Schlesinger and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who heads the National Security Council, which oversees the CIA. There will be no lack of questions to ask: fresh revelations about the CIA continued to come out. James T. Devine, former head of the Justice Department's Interagency Domestic Intelligence Unit, told reporters that in 1970 he asked the CIA to keep watch on 9,000 U.S. radicals while they were on trips abroad. Among them were members of the Black Panthers, the Weatherman and the Students for a Democratic Society. Devine's unit wanted to know whether they were getting foreign help and training in sabotage. A CIA spokesman denied that the agency ever acted on the request and claimed that the list was destroyed last year.

In another development, the Washington Post reported that the CIA secretly read the mail of Meany and two of his senior officials during the 1950s to monitor the flow of covert U.S. funds through the AFL-CIO to anti-Communist trade unions in Europe. Both the AFL-CIO and the CIA insist that there never was such a relationship between them. Still, reports of the monitoring increased suspicions about the CIA'S activities, adding to a sense of uneasiness that Ford's commission hopes to remedy.

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