of the Tax Reform Act which deal with when, how, and to whom individual tax returns may be shown?

Mr. WEBSTER. I'm not certain of that. I think that is an ambiguity that maybe the committee ought to try to resolve.

Mr. DODD. I can think of a whole variety of scenarios. We have the Bank Secrecy Act having to deal with any kind of bank transactions, and that one, of course, was something that we sort of ran into, as I recall, Mr. Chairman, a little bit in our own investigation here, or the availabilty of CIA documents.

Mr. WEBSTER. Yes. My interpretation of that section isn't that it is a license to abrogate all existing laws and statutes; it is simply to suspend any statutes which preclude cooperation, the use of particular services; and I may be mistaken in that interpretation, but I wouldn't assume, for instance, that the third party access, the Bank Privacy Act, was suspended by this. I don't think that is the

case.

Mr. DODD. You can read it a couple of ways.

Mr. WEBSTER. And I do not think there is much help in the legislative history on that. Maybe there is and I have not seen it. Mr. DODD. Would you care to express your feelings on how broad it should be?

Mr. WEBSTER. I am conservative about this. While it is a traumatic experience for anyone to live through the assassination of a President, it ought not to be the predicate for investigative conduct which in essence is the declaration of martial law. I just simply do not believe that we ought to be in a position to use something of this type, to suspend everything that was put in place to protect the rights of citizens. I am not convinced that we cannot conduct our investigations effectively, provided additional restrictions are not laid down on us that we do not have an opportunity to speak to, such as precluding us from using informants without a warrant or something of that kind. That in my mind would be very dilatory. If the other laws are put in place, it is important that we get an answer but it is also important we do it in a way that safeguards citizens' rights, and I would take a narrow construction of this section.

Mr. DODD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman Stokes. The time of the gentleman has expired.
The gentleman from North Carolina, Mr. Preyer.

Mr. PREYER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to ask several questions concerning the assassination statutes, the congressional and the Presidential assassination statutes, and get clear on that.

Today, with the President traveling more abroad and with examples such as Congressman Ryan's case, I think the extraterritorial reach of these statutes is something that is important.

There were press reports that the Justice Department investigation of the Guyana killings based its jurisdiction on the very narrow possibility of finding a conspiracy to murder Congressman Ryan, and that an act furthering that conspiracy had to be committed in this country. Is that correct?

Mr. WEBSTER. I think it was not a conclusion. I think that was the initial opinion that was expressed very early on.

There had been earlier opinions going back several years that we have produced, and they were reanalyzed and considered to be still operative, but we got a very positive opinion that there is an extraterritorial effect, as I understand it, without the need for conspiracy.

Mr. PREYER. So that first report was based on a preliminary view of the law?

Mr. WEBSTER. That is my understanding.

Mr. PREYER. And I would agree with your final conclusion that that was a bad law.

Mr. WEBSTER. Yes.

Mr. PREYER. Then do I understand it that these two statutes in your judgment do have extraterritorial reach?

Mr. WEBSTER. Yes, sir.

Mr. PREYER. That would be subject, of course, to the principles of international law, I assume?

Mr. WEBSTER. That is correct.

Mr. PREYER. Following up questions that Mr. Dodd was asking you concerning the fact that these statutes do not have an automatic effect. Each one begins, if Federal jurisdiction or prosecutive jurisdiction is asserted, somebody has to decide who exercises that, and I believe you said the Department of Justice would do that. Mr. WEBSTER. That is my understanding. As the chief law officer that responsibility would fall on the President's lawyer.

Mr. PREYER. Do you think this is the way to handle that, or do you think Federal jurisdiction ought to be made automatic without anyone making a decision to do it or not?

Mr. WEBSTER. I suppose somebody is going to have to make a finding or declaration of some kind that the act has occurred which makes a basis for Federal jurisdiction.

I cannot think of any reason why Federal jurisdiction would not be asserted, given the base that the power is there to assert it. I think the pressure would be irresistible and the need would be irresistible to resolve the question.

If you conclude that the mechanisms within the Department of Justice are inadequate, then I suppose you ought to address the question and make it a more automatic approach. They have an effect on what you would do by statute by providing the internal mechanisms to trigger it.

Mr. PREYER. One thing in favor, it would seem to me, of letting the Attorney General certify a Federal interest in it, for example, rather than mandating it, is the question of Federal homicide statutes creating a Federal police force.

Mr. WEBSTER. That is what I meant by findings. Someone would have to make some findings.

Mr. PREYER. Should the CIA be required to give the FBI any information which it has which is relevant to the assassination of a President regardless of any security clearance involved or any security classification involved?

Mr. WEBSTER. I think that under our present working arrangement with the CIA absent any statutes, absent any executive orders, that is what we have. Whether it needs to be formalized or not I cannot say.

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The understanding that we have with the CIA and other intelligence agencies is that information of this kind will be furnished to us. Now they can put restrictions on our use of the information to the extent that we may not be able to use it for prosecutive purposes, because to do so would disclose a very sensitive source of information, perhaps in a foreign country, and expose that source to injury or death, but at least it would be important to have it for purposes of solving the problem, even though it came to us with strings on its use. That is the present working relationship we have with the CIA and other intelligence agencies.

Mr. PREYER. Should requests for assistance from the CIA be restricted to guard against any unwarranted CIA involvement in domestic affairs?

Mr. WEBSTER. I do not really regard furnishing information as involvement. There is no operational responsibility there at all. We have worked very well with the CIA in terms of that sort of thing. The Kampiles case demonstrated that working together we can accomplish our particular responsibility without any interference or operational responsibility in this country by the CIA.

Mr. PREYER. I am asking these questions because I think the statute does say "any assistance may be requested" from these other agencies.

Mr. WEBSTER. That is true, Judge Preyer. Again, as I said earlier, I take a very narrow, restrictive view of that statute, and I would not ask the CIA to supply agents to operate in this country or do anything of that kind that would be contrary to our traditions. I would simply expect that the Agency would cooperate with us in terms of furnishing us needed information. If our leads took us abroad there may very well be assets of CIA capable of corroborating or disproving those leads, and we would want to have the advantage of that, even though it was a criminal problem and not an intelligence-gathering function.

Mr. PREYER. Mr. Chairman, I see my time has expired. May I ask one other question along this line?

Chairman STOKES. Without objection, the gentleman is recognized.

Mr. PREYER. What role would the National Foreign Intelligence Board play in presenting intelligence information in the event of assassination? As I understand it that is an advisory board intended to coordinate the production of national intelligence, and to coordinate between the agencies.

Mr. WEBSTER. Well, it might play a very significant role if information were developed tending to establish that the assassination was prompted or encouraged or conceived by a foreign hostile power.

Mr. PREYER. This is probably the board that ought to play this role between the collectors of information, producers of information and the users of it.

Mr. WEBSTER. I think we would have to find that external involvement before it would be of any real value, if government X, or a representative of government X was involved, or some evidence of taking this information abroad. If it was a local thing I cannot see the relationship with that board.

Mr. PREYER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman STOKES. The time of the gentleman has expired.
The gentleman from the District of Columbia, Mr. Fauntroy.
Mr. FAUNTROY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Webster, up to this point we have been primarily dealing with the assassination of a President or Members of Congress under U.S. 1751 and 351 respectively.

I would like to ask some questions about the jurisdiction of the Federal Government over assassinations of political figures other than Members of Congress and the President. Does the FBI have jurisdiction to investigate the assassination of a foreign official in the United States?

Mr. WEBSTER. Yes, it does. It is under the Protection of Foreign Officials Act.

Mr. FAUNTROY. Does it provide specifically that the FBI have jurisdiction over it?

Mr. WEBSTER. I know that we consider it to be assigned to us. Some of these are assigned by statute, and some are assigned by the Attorney General.

Mr. FAUNTROY. I think it provides that the Attorney General may request assistance from any agency.

Mr. WEBSTER. I would have to refer to the statute to see.

Mr. FAUNTROY. We will leave that for the moment.

Am I correct in stating that Federal jurisdiction to investigate and prosecute assassination of a person such as Dr. King is not found in a homicide statute as such, but is rather primarily to achieve other purposes such as protecting the rights of citizens? Mr. WEBSTER. That is correct.

Mr. FAUNTROY. Is it fair to say the Federal Government possesses a wide discretion in deciding whether or not to investigate the assassination of a private citizen in the public domain like Dr. King?

Mr. WEBSTER. I think that is a fair statement.

Mr. FAUNTROY. What factors do you think should be considered in deciding whether or not the Federal Government should investigate a private citizen, say, in the public domain, a Dr. King, a Jimmy Hoffa? What kind of factors do you think should guide the decision?

Mr. WEBSTER. Of course, if there is evidence of a racketeerinfluenced crime and it involves a public figure, I do not have any problem with that. The jurisdiction is there. We would be investigating the crime. We should take it. It becomes more difficult where you do not have that, where you have not had a bomb go off or you have not had one of the other events that invoke Federal jurisdiction regardless of who did it, where you have to look at the problem and say: well, this is a local crime but for the fact that an important political figure is involved. And that is where you have your area of discretion. I call it an area of discretion. Another way of saying it is that you have to reach for your jurisdiction, where you have to really sit down and say: How can we take this case? What is the basis under which we can assume jurisdiction?

The right to travel to the average citizen would seem a pretty tenuous basis for asserting jurisdiction in the case of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., but that is the basis under which the investigation was initiated back in those days. I am not aware we have

really increased our arsenal of jurisdictional bases. We would probably have to find a similar type of basis to take it.

We have covered all of the public officials so now we are talking really about civic leaders, religious leaders, labor leaders, those who are out in the public scene.

I suppose that all of us have, today, intense sensitivity to people who are injured or killed in the exercise of civil rights or in the assertion of civil rights or in encouraging others to assert legitimate civil rights. It is a special kind of area where we think the Federal Government has such an interest in seeing that constitutional rights are protected that when people are shot down because they are involved in the assertion of rights, there is a Federal interest there, and so you start to look for the Federal interest, if you think it happened in an area where the local law-enforcement agencies would be hostile to a full scale, effective investigation. We still have from time to time those kinds of cases that have been assigned to us. We have civil rights responsibilities, I am sure you know, to investigate allegations of police brutality which affect individual rights that could result in murder, and we do that. It is hard to say when a person has reached a level of prominence, whether he be a national figure, or whether he could be a State figure. Thus far I am not aware of any case, any prosecutive effort by the Federal Government in this area where the case has been thrown out or conviction reversed because there was no jurisdiction.

Mr. FAUNTROY. Would you agree that the ability that the FBI now has to take jurisdiction in the assassination of Members of the Congress and the President might well have served as well had they been applied in the assassination of Dr. King?

Mr. WEBSTER. Well, if you could draw a statute that brought within its protection, leaders such as Dr. King and had it been specifically there, it would be a clearer brand of jurisdiction, but I must say it would not have invoked any different degree of investigative activity, because once we have the jurisdiction we can do anything that we could do in any other type of case except involve the Army and the Navy and so on as they have in the Presidential and congressional type cases.

Mr. FAUNTROY. I guess I am getting at the question of whether or not there should be some guidelines to be followed that would be useful in assisting you to make the decision as to how far to go with respect to public or private citizens in the public domain. Would such guidelines be useful to you?

Mr. WEBSTER. It might be useful to us.

The basis for jurisdiction in the King case would have been just as available to the most autonomous citizen in the land. It was not a jurisdiction based on who Dr. King was. If anybody in Dr. King's organization known or unknown had been involved, we could have asserted jurisdiction. It was not based on who he was, it was based on a right that was being interfered with, but the practical matter is that we reached out for that particular type of jurisdiction in Dr. King's case when we would not have reached out for it in what would have been in effect a local situation for somebody other than Dr. King, or of his prominence or participation in the civil rights movement.