Mr. KLEINDIENST. Yes, they were. There were five strike forces when we came in. There are now 18 or 19, and there will be 23 by the end of this year. But the essential difference is that we have as a matter of committment, when we came in, the full cooperation of all the branches and departemnts of the executive branch of the government, the Tax Division, the Antitrust Division, Internal Revenue, the FBI, Customs, Secret Services, the United States Attorneys' offices, working together in a cohesive way to bring results.

One marked difference, of course, is the fact that this Administration is willing to use court-ordered electronic serveillance in organized crime cases, as a result of which in some 200-approximate such court-ordered electronic surveillances in the last two years we've obtained about 900 indictments in organized crime type situations, and then I think you know that Ramsey Clark, the former Attorney General, absolutely refused to use this technique which was given to the Department of Justice by the Congress.

Miss DREW. Well, that brings up a lot of things that we'll-
Mr. KLEINDIENST. Yes, I'm sure it does [laughing).

Miss DREW [continuing]. That we'll be getting into. I wanted to ask you, and we will get to electronic devices in a few moments, the Attorney General, in talking about the need for the right to use wire taps without court orders. made a speech over the past weekend in which he said, "Never in our history has our country been confronted with so many revolutionary elements determined to destroy by force the government and the society it stands for." I'd like to talk about what he means.

Mr. KLEINDIENST. Well, I think he means that on a relative, comparitive basis in our country today there are probably more-in terms of numberssubversives, or people who reside in the United States who actively advocate the overthrow of the institutions of our government under the Constitution by either force or violence, or by some other means. As a result of the increased number of such persons and I'm not talking just about political dissent in a free society. I'm talking about the increased number of persons who advocate the overthrow or the elimination of the government of the United States as we know it under our Constitution.

Miss Drew. How much danger are we in of overthrow of our government? Mr. KLEINDIENST. Well, I don't think either the Attorney General or I feel that as of right now there is any appreciable danger of our country being overthrown by this number of persons. However, I think that he feels, and I share this opinion myself, that if this government and this society stood by, did nothing, and let the number increase year after year, apparently with the approval of society, that kind of a person who would advocate the overthrow of our government by force or violence or some other means to substitute in place of it a non-Constitutional form of government, we perhaps would arrive sooner than we wish at a point where the threat would be real. Miss DREW. How do you keep the number from increasing?

Mr. KLEINDIENST. Well, you keep it from increasing, it seems to me, by public debate and disclosure, by being sure that those who actually advocate this kind of conduct are exposed. Secondly——

Miss DREW. Exposed?

Mr. KLEINDIENST. To expose to the public so that you and I and the public know that an individual really is a person who advocates the overthrow of our government. He's not just a person addressing himself to some of the problems of America, problems that all of us are dedicated to solving.

We also feel that when these persons violate the laws that the Congress enacts and let me provide a footnote there. The only jurisdiction that the Department of Justice has is the enforcement of a valid Constitutional law of the Congress. No other law. It's not laws that we make ourselves, or would like to make ourselves, but it's just the laws of the Congress. Many of those laws of the Congress strike at illegal conduct and activity of persons like this, which constitute in some respects criminal conspiracy. We believe that those persons should be prosecuted if in fact they are violating a federal law on the same basis as the organized criminal or any other type of federal criminal in the United States.

Because some of their conduct strikes at what we call our national security, the basic security of this government, we feel that if it's of that kind that aMiss DREW. What sort of conduct is of that kind? That's what I'm trying tounderstand, is what you think of as a threat to national security.

Mr. KLEINDIENST. Well, maybe I can say it this way, that a person who is a citizen of the United States can engage in conduct which is subversive of our national government in cooperation with foreign agents or foreign countries or foreign ideologies just as much as a citizen of a foreign country who interdicts himself into our country to engage in espionage, and that if a person not only uses his precious first Amendment right of free speech to advocate change or a new philosophy which we think is permissible, but goes beyond that and engages in overt acts of conduct calculated to change our government by non-Constitutional means, by force and by violence, then we feel

Miss DREW. Like what?

Mr. KLEINDIENST. Well, to create situations that attack the ability of the government to function at any particular time.

Miss DREW. I mean, would you include Mayday in that definition or are there things beyond that that you'd be concerned about?

Mr. KLEINDIENST. Well, I know that many of the persons-or many persons who were the organizers of the Mayday incident here in Washington, D. C., are persons whose ultimate objective is to overthrow the government of the United States.

Miss DREW. Overthrow

Mr. KLEINDIENST. By one means or another. The mere fact that they came here to stop the government by what was acknowledged to be, on behalf of the perpetrators of it, illegal conduct I think is an example of what I'm talking about.

Miss DREW. And when you say "overthrow," does that mean that they want to seize power?

Mr. KLEINDIENST. Well, either they want to seize power for themselves or they want to destroy our constitutional government so that other persons who share their belief that the American society and the American government is essentially evil, essentially unable to provide for its citizens, should be eliminated, and that there should be something else put in its place. And what they usually talk about are concepts that they derive from Lenin, from Mao, from Castro, from Che Guevara, from the China-Chinese experiment in Communism. The flags, the slogans, the sayings, the concepts, the ideas seem to suggest that they want to eliminate our form of government, a constitutional government, and substitute for it, a kind of concept of society that is very similar to different forms of communism in the world.

Miss DREW. Do you think they have the power to do it?

Mr. KLEINDIENST. No, I do not. Right now, no, I don't. But I think that it's incumbent upon a constitutional government to use the legal, valid powers conferred upon it by the Congress and approved by the Supreme Court of the United States to deal effectively with that kind of conduct when it arises.

Miss DREW. Now, when the Attorney General made the speech, it was to bolster the Justice Department position that there should be well, that you should be able to continue to do wiretapping in domestic casesMr. KLEINDIENST. Yes.

Miss DREW [continuing]. Without

Mr. KLEINDIENST. Just like Ramsey Clark did and Nick Katzenbach and Bobby Kennedy and Bill Rogers

Miss DREW. Did what? I didn't finish the question.

Mr. KLEINDIENST. Well, electronic surveillance in national security cases. Miss DREW. In domes-of domestics?

Mr. KLEINDIENST. Yes.

Miss DREW. They did it?

Mr. KLEINDIENST. Oh, yes. Mr. Mitchell, as the Attorney General, acting on behalf of the President, is not engaging in non-court-ordered electronic surveillance of a different order essentially, than any attorney general who proceeded him-and as a matter of fact, statistically is doing less of it. Certainly less of it than Senator Kennedy did when he was the Attorney General. And I believe less than when Mr. Katzenbach was the Attorney General, and just about the same amount as Mr. Clark authorized when he was the Attorney General.

Miss DREW. Well, we're talking about the wiretapping of domestic people held to be a danger

Mr. KLEINDIENST. American citizens who

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Miss DREW [continuing]. To the national security.

Mr. KLEINDIENST [continuing] Who are engaged in subversive activities and in-thereby endangering our national security.

Miss DREW. Tht's right. And the Attorney General has asserted that power— I thought it was unprecedented what-when he asked for it in the Chicago

case.

Mr. KLEINDIENST. No. No, it's not unprecedented.

Miss DREW. And the court of appeals has said that has ruled it out, said that it you know, he can't do it. And now it's before the Supreme Court

Mr. KLEINDIENST. Well, that doesn't mean it's unprecedented. I think every President and every Attorney General since Roosevelt, when they began to use this type of electronic device, because of the advance of electronic engineering, has assumed that they had the power to do it. The Supreme Court, by virtue of either dicta in its decisions or its refusal to hear cases like this, has created the further belief in that assumption and now, for the first time, after these many forty years, the issue will be raised squarely with the Supreme Court. And of course, if the Supreme Court says, "You can't do it," then we won't do it.

Miss DREW. Yeah. Well, to get to my question

Mr. KLEINDIENST. Oh, I'm sorry, Liz.

Miss DREW. That's all right. Why-what's the problem with going to the courts to get the court order on it?

Mr. KLEINDIENST. Well, superficially you'd say if you have a court order to electronic surveillance in organized crime why not in a case like this?

To begin with, the court really doesn't have the expertise, the background and the facilities to make that kind of judgment, with respect to internal security, the protection of the government. The executive branch can, not because you have a new President who can do it better than another President; but in the executive branch you have a continuation of professional career people whose business it is to understand the whole sensitivity of this issue. That's reason number one.

Reason number two, it seems to me, is that you have some 500 judges, you have thousands of clerks and court personnel. The possibility of a breach of security in cases like this, of extreme sensitivity, both respect to our relations with foreign governments with whom we have diplomatic relations, with respect to the whole business of security, to be sure that innocent persons aren't hurt, and also that-with respect to those that you want to surveythey are not possibly informed about it.

And I think that most people who understand the whole comprehensive nature of this subject matter believe that the executive branch of the government in this kind of case is the proper repository. Now

Miss DREW. Would there be any limits on it at all?

Mr. KLEINDIENST. Well, sure, there should be some limits, and the Supreme Court, over a period of time will carve and has carved out carefully what those limits are. But there's one additional thing here that Attorney General Mitchell has emphasized, and that is that no such electronic surveillance is authorized except by his personal decision. This fixes direct political and administrative responsibility

Miss DREW. But we won't know he's doing it if he doesn't go to court. There'll be no way of telling.

Mr. KLEINDIENST. You will know about it-you will know about it because they are a part of the official records of the Department of JusticeMiss DREW. Could I go in and see the record of who he's

Mr. KLEINDIENST. No, you could not

Miss DREW. Okay.

Mr. KLEINDIENST [continuing]. But appropriate persons in the United States Congress can.

Miss DREW. Oh, they can?

Mr. KLEINDIENST. Yes, they can. Now, that does not mean that the executive branch would give out sensitive information, but the Congress has a way and is informed regularly, you know, of the nature

Miss DREW. Who is being?

Mr. KLEINDIENST. Huh?

Miss DREW. Of who?

Mr. KLEINDIENST. Well, of categories, not exact individuals.