More fun stuff from page 100 of the Theoharis boo:
FBI officials were interested in the sexual indiscretions of elected memebrs of Congress. FBI agents were specifically encouraged to report and record any such discoveries and to do so discreetly. During an interview with the so-called Pike Committee in 1975, a former FBI agent described this practice. Puzzled over why such information was being collected, the agent claimed to have consulted his boss, FBI Assistant Director Cartha DeLoach. He then recounted DeLoach’s response: “The other night we picked up a situation where the Senator was seen drunk, in a hit-and-run accident, and some good-looking broad was with him. He [DeLoach] said, ‘We got the information, reported it in a memorandum’ and DeLoach—and this is an exact quote—he said ‘by noon of the next day the good Senator was aware that we had the information and we never had any trouble with him on appropriations since.'”
Now, I have no evidence that today’s NSA or FBI is doing anything like this. But of course, someone in the 1960s wouldn’t have realized what the FBI was doing then, either. We certainly shouldn’t be passing legislation making this sort of thing easier to pull off and harder to uncover.
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