Covert Deal Gives FBI Intelligence to SISS

In March 1951, the Federal Bureau of Investigation established a formal, covert relationship with the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee (SISS). This previously undocumented alliance united two of the nation’s influential political institutions in the 1950s, and together they played key roles in the guiding the domestic debate over internal security issues. Created in the aftermath of the onset of the Korean War and the passage of the Internal Security Act, the Senate Internal Security Committee emerged as Congress’s most powerful anti-communist body, surpassing both Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Beginning in 1951, the SISS publicized the perceived threat of communism among Far Eastern policy experts, United Nations employees, the educational system, radical labor unions, the entertainment industry, the federal government, the civil rights movement, and the print media.

Ostensibly authorized to investigate violations of federal law, the FBI since 1946 disseminated non-criminal data, obtained either illegally or without specific authority, to the media and conservative congressmen who shared the FBI director’s obsession with the Red Menace. With the onset of the Cold War and the creation of the McCarran committee, [J. Edgar] Hoover found a uniquely reliable outlet for the bureau’s substantial collection of political intelligence. Hoover’s decision to formalize his personal relationship with the McCarran committee in 1951 reflected his confidence in the SISS as a dependable ally in his efforts to protect the nation from the perceived danger of communism. For Hoover, the McCarran committee proved reliable in two senses: first, the SISS shared the director’s near total obsession with communist influence in American life; secondly, and equally important, Hoover could rest assured the committee would protect the confidentiality of bureau sources and prevent any disclosure of its relationship.

Hoover’s confidence in the committee’s ability to protect FBI sources began to erode in 1953 when William E. Jenner assumed the SISS chairmanship. Under Jenner’s tenure, the committee became more overtly partisan and reckless with bureau intelligence, as when SISS claimed in 1953-4 that former Democratic presidents had knowingly promoted a communist espionage agent to an important government post or had ordered the destruction of Navy counterintelligence files supposedly documenting communist activity. These actions forced FBI Director Hoover and other senior FBI officials first to limit and then terminate the FBI-SISS relationship by 1954. The relationship was reinstituted on a less formal basis in 1955 when James Eastland, another SISS member who had previously enjoyed a personal relationship with Hoover, assumed the SISS chairmanship. In 1956, the bureau established a formal relationship with the HUAC modeled after the earlier FBI-SISS agreement. By that time, however, FBI officials recognized that their strategy of leaking derogatory information on subversive individuals and organizations to congressional committees was becoming tenuous in light of Supreme Court rulings in 1956-7 which restricted the use of FBI reports. FBI officials were concerned as well with the spread of alleged communist influence within the militant civil rights movement. Given these concerns, in 1956 FBI officials began a new formal programs of counterintelligence (COINTELPROs) to deal with the threat of the Communist party and then other radical organizations. Designed to discredit dissident groups, these more aggressive bureau programs were intended not to inform the public of the danger of radicalism through congressional hearings, but to infiltrate, monitor, and disrupt what senior FBI officials believed were “Un-American” activities.

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