◆ SpookStack

- i, Approved For Release 2008/11/06: CIA-RDP04M01816R000502010009-4 46 and covert subversion required extraordinary vigilance. There was widespread, if unjustified, belief that opposition to government policies, occasionally expressed violently. was generated, encouraged or supported by potentially hostile foreign powers. These concerns unquestionably affected per- ceptions of the government and of presidential power to respond by using covert activities. These attitudes were reflected in the men who authorized and conducted the mail openings program. The reasonableness of their attitudes would influence, in sub- stantial part, the reasonableness of their beliefs that they were entitled to act as they did. A trial of this case there- fore would open a searching inquiry into the perceptions of a generation of Americans; it would be, as Professor Wechsler put it dur-ing the course of his consultation with the Department, to "indict an era" -and would raise fundamental jurisprudential questions concerning the application and use of the criminal law. The defendants in any mail openings prosecution would be able to present circumstantial evidence to indicate that Director Allen Dulles secured President Eisenhower's approval for the East Coast program; at least, the potential defendants reasonably could.have beli~ and apparently did.believe, that he had. The potential defendants, in any event, continued a program already begun -- a program tha~ by the time Richard Helms became Director of Central Intelligence, had acquired a A roved For Release 2008/11/06: CIA-RDP04M01816R000502010009-4