CIA Files Bare No Secret Facts

Documents taken from Dean Ford's office during the occupation of University Hall linking Harvard professors to non-secret CIA projects were published in a "special bust issue" of the Old Mole Friday.

The documents, now anonymously returned to Ford, appeared under the headline "Liberated Harvard CIA Files," but revealed no confidential information.

The eight documents include:

* Correspondence between Dean Ford and Arthur Smithies, Master of Kirkland House, concerning his ten-year "connection" with the CIA. Smithies explained in an interview Friday that he goes to Washington several times a year to give "technical criticism on straight economics research papers" prepared by the CIA on Russia, China and underdeveloped countries. "I have never concealed anything about this connection," Smithies said.

* A research proposal to the CIA drafted by Anthony G. Oettinger, professor of Linguistics and Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Math. According to Oettinger, the proposal--a public document--was a request for a CIA grant to conduct technical research involving cathode ray tubes.

This research is now being conducted at the University of Utah by Ivan E. Sutherland, associate professor of Electrical Engineering, who is on leave from Harvard. Another "liberated" document is a notation of Sutherland's contract with the CIA.

* A list of an "Advisory Board--on Soviet Bloc Studies," including the late Allen Dulles, who retired as CIA director during the Kennedy Administration. Richard E. Pipes, professor of History and director of the Russian Research Center, said he knows of no Harvard facility for "Soviet bloc studies" at the present time or of such an advisory board.

* A letter dated 1957 in which McGeorge Bundy, then dean of Faculty of Arts and Sciences, wrote to an Assistant Secretary of State about the possibility of hiring Henry Kissinger, now Special Advisor to the President for National Security Affairs, as a Lecturer in Government.

* A 1967 telegram from the State Department to Dean Ford, thanking Harvard for allowing Kissinger to go to South Vietnam on a "mission of great importance." In a statement last night, Ford said, "It continues to be my understanding that the express purpose of [Kissinger's mission] was to move toward negotiations for peace."